Chalk & Chainmail

Chapter 1

There was a back-to-school excitement thrumming through the halls of Lawrence Free State High that Dean had never learned to understand. He longed for endless summers, sticky as they were, where he and Charlie and Sam could stay up all night watching every episode of Star Trek known to man and devouring as much junk food as their teenage stomachs could possibly hold. And sure, they had spent the most recent summer doing just that, but it hadn’t been long enough. Not for Dean.

As the last day of summer had ebbed into night, Dean had stared out his window at the inky Kansas sky and sighed, willing the sun not to return. With the sun would come school, and school meant grades and teachers and curfews and homework, none of which were on Dean’s “Things That Are Awesome” list.

But despite Dean's efforts to wish away the Monday that would bring the first day back to school, it was inevitable, and so, there he was, backpack slung over one shoulder, Charlie jabbering away at his side, and swarms of his peers congregating in groups around him.

“I think today’s meeting, aside from welcoming all of our new members and tipping our hats to the old ones, should include a strict set of rules that must be followed,” Charlie said as she and Dean approached their lockers.

“Such as?”

“Well, for starters, we should discuss the reduction of LARPing in the hallways. After what happened with Andy last year, Principal Colt said he’d dispel our club immediately if we weren’t more careful. I tried to explain to him it's not our fault Andy actually thought he had Jedi Mind Powers, but he wouldn’t listen.” Charlie already had her locker open and was hanging pictures of her and Dean, her favorite comic book characters, and images of her Hunter Heroici character, Codex, to the slick metal walls. Dean scowled at the photo of him in an extravagant crown sitting crooked on his head that had been taken during the LARPing championships the year prior but didn’t ask her to remove it.

"Andy's a nut job," Dean commented with a smirk reminiscing on what the Fandom Club now fondly referred to as 'the incident.’

"Andy's on a Buffy kick as of late; he’s got the hots for Sarah Michelle Gellar, which I can’t say I blame him for, but hopefully he doesn't start thinking he's the Master and try to suck someone's blood," Charlie retorted. She looked over at Dean for a response but found his gaze trained on a locker down the way from them as he watched Castiel Milton shove a huge stack of thick course books into the small locker space. It was only the first day of school, but Castiel was notorious for cramming all summer and then showing up the first day of school having already studied for the first week of classes. When Castiel shouldered his obviously lighter messenger bag and hurried off in the direction of the auditorium for the junior orientation meeting, Dean turned his attention back to Charlie, immediately glowering at the look of pity on her face.

"Don't," he said closing his locker with a definitive click. "Not one word."

It was a conversation they had often. Dean had been hung up on Castiel since they’d first met several summers ago when they were ten and eleven. Charlie had been vacationing in Delaware that summer, but she’d remembered the aftermath clearly and had never let Dean forget how things had ended and how hurt he had been. It was her way of protecting Dean from trying to reach out to Castiel again, as he sometimes did, but the reminders still stung.

Charlie sighed but kept her comments to herself and looped her arm through Dean's, leading him in the direction of the auditorium.

Orientation was boring. No one understood why the school even offered a junior orientation in the first place. It wasn’t as if they were new to school or about to graduate. As far as they were concerned, it'd be another year of the same stuff they'd been doing for the past two years. Nonetheless, all the juniors were gathered together in the auditorium, listening to the junior class president, Balthazar Roché, ramble on in his better-than-you British accent about how excited he was to be back and what a great year it was going to be.