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Dean stares at the banner proclaiming, “Welcome Class of 1997” and turns on his heel. No. Fuck this. No matter what Sam says, there isn’t going to be any one he particularly cares about inside. The friends he had while he was scraping C’s and just praying to get through another day were all in the same boat-- none of them will be here.
Sam’s friends will show up to reunions, with their cars and partners and photos of their kids. Dean’s friends… they all knew where they were heading: military or jail or some dead-end job that’ll barely make ends meet. Wife and kids, maybe, fucked up joints and at least one addiction, for sure.
There’s a coffee shop a couple blocks away from the school, one he thinks has been there since he was in school. He may have spent an afternoon or two waiting for Sam, struggling through his homework.
Cas helped when he could. Would have helped more if it was an excuse to stay away from his family, even if Dean was beyond help. But his family had expectations for their eldest daughter, and Cas didn’t know how to tell them that’s not who he was.
But Cas won’t be at the coffee shop any more than he’ll be at the school and Dean just needs to get the fuck over himself. Sit down, have a cup of coffee, and then head back to his apartment having at least done something with his evening.
There’s a few other folks his age in there, at least a couple of them probably doing the same thing he’s doing-- it’s not like he remembers the faces of all four hundred classmates-- but one of the arm chairs is still available, so he settles there, sharing an end table with the other chair, occupied by a vaguely familiar looking face nursing his own cup of coffee.
“Dean?” the other man asks, and Dean meets his eyes and the face might only be vaguely familiar, but those eyes haven’t changed a fucking bit.
“Cas! Is it still Cas?”
“Short for Castiel, now,” Cas says with a smile, “but yes.” He pauses, takes a sip of his coffee. “How have you been?”
Dean hates small talk, he never has anything interesting to say, and twenty years in this town has given him nothing. He shrugs. “Took over the shop, so I’m spending less time under a hood than I like, but that’s what growing up does to you.”
Cas nods. “I thought you’d be at the reunion.”
“I thought you would get the fuck out of this town and never look back.”
He huffs unhappily. “I did. I was. And then... yeah. I guess this is what happens when you grow up.”
Dean lifts his coffee cup in an unhappy salute. “Yeah. Family.”
They lapse back into silence, twenty years of change weighing them down, no longer the silence of two kids who had nothing in common except for what they did, but two men who have no idea where to start. Dean’d always imagined, when he let himself, that they would be able to pick up where they left off, but he should have known better.
Twenty years is a lifetime, but not forever. And while Cas was always the brave one, Dean is the foolhardy one. “I had biggest fucking crush on you in school. Are you seeing anyone? Do you want to go on a date?”
Cas stares at him and then breaks into a grin that Dean does recognize. “I’d like that, yes.”
“Awesome.”