Still Learning

Fandom: Supernatural

Rating: T

Genre: Romance, Humor

Pairing: Later Dean/Castiel; side of Sam/Jessica

Summary: [College AU] Castiel needs a new roommate and so big brother Gabriel finds him one. Except Dean Winchester is the roommate from Castiel's worst nightmares, and this can't ever work out, can it? Later Dean/Castiel with a side of Sam/Jessica MULTICHAPTER.

AN: I wasn't sure whether or not to post this, because it was just some drabble I wrote one day after watching too much Carmilla, but one chapter became two and two became five, and, since this took over my entire summer holiday, I decided to go for it and post it! Hope you all enjoy.

Quick warning: I know basically nothing about the American college/university system. I tried to go off what little I do know from Internet research and also my assumptions based on the UK system, so I apologise if any of the education/class stuff is wrong.

DISCLAIMER. I do not own Supernatural.

1. Intro To Vlogging

"Hey, Clarence?" Meg said suddenly, interrupting the silence that had fallen over the room in the past couple of minutes. "You know that this whole vlogging thing requires you to actually say something, right?"

Castiel leaned further back in his chair, letting his reading glasses slide off his nose and tumble onto the desk in front of him with a quiet thud. "What exactly should I say, then?"

His best friend let out a light snort, rolling her eyes as she perched on the unowned bed that sat opposite to his. "How should I know? This is your project. I'm just providing you with the right equipment." She nodded towards the camera balanced on Castiel's desk, resting on top of at least seven different books.

"You know much more about technology and the Internet than I do."

She smirked. "And you call yourself a business student, Clarence."

"Not that I really have any right to. We all know I'm useless when it comes to this sort of thing."

"It's the one certain fact in my life to which I cling on, Cassie." Gabriel, his older brother by two years, crammed another chunk of sandwich into his mouth, showering crumbs all over his brother's duvet. It was the very same sandwich that Castiel had been saving for dinner that night, no less. But, then again, he really should have known better than to leave it on the top shelf in the refrigerator where Gabriel could easily find it.

"And, besides," Meg continued, as if the elder Novak sibling hadn't spoke. "Just because I know how to work a video camera doesn't mean that I know the ins and outs of vlogging. Didn't you get a project brief?"

"Yes." Castiel rescued it from the pile of papers on his desk and passed it to her; she skimmed it in under three seconds.

"Sell Life On Campus. There you go. That's where you start."

"I don't know how or where to even begin."

"Just introduce yourself and see where it goes, Clarence. It's not as if we can't re-shoot anything later on."

"Alright." Castiel turned back to face his desk, staring directly at the blinking red light on the front of the camera that indicated it was recording, trying not to sound self-conscious as he felt his best friend and older brother watching him. "Hello there, my name is Castiel Novak, but just call me Castiel if you ever meet me in public, which is highly likely if you attend the university here in Lawrence, but otherwise, it would probably be extremely rare for us to ever come face to face, unless we were to meet on the sidewalk or something -"

"Ugh, boring!" Gabriel cut off his brother's rambling with a loud, over-exaggerated sigh. Castiel turned to glare at the source of the interruption; just when he was beginning to get into his stride too...

"Do you have something to contribute, Gabriel?"

"Well, for starters, Cassie, nobody is going to be sold by videos of you sitting in your dorm room all the time. Seriously, you only ever seem to leave the building when you have a class, need to walk the two blocks to the library, or we drag you out to dinner because your little refrigerator and cupboards are empty."

"Yes. And who's fault is that?" Castiel looked reproachfully at the half-eaten sandwich sitting on the plate in his brother's lap.

"Never mind that, Cassie. The point is, nobody is going to be sold by your current set-up. It has to be more interesting than...well, than this."

"I know I'm going to regret asking, Gabriel, but what do you suggest?"

"You need something remarkable, Cassie. Something special, unique, you know what I mean?"

"Why do I feel like I'm suddenly watching an episode of America's Next Top Model?" Meg muttered from her side of the room, loud enough for Gabriel to hear her.

"You know I could win that show without breaking a sweat," the elder Novak replied with a wink, before returning to the issue of Castiel and his feeble attempts at vlogging about student life. "But, yeah, Cassie. Remarkable. Something like..." He glanced around his brother's dorm room, as if he would be able to find something printed across the beige paint, wrinkling his nose at the empty walls and simple wooden furniture. "Sheesh, little bro, even your room is dull enough to send anyone to sleep. It's all so...organised." He shuddered at the word. "No wonder your little vlog is so tedious."

"Well, I like it," Castiel replied, sounding rather indignant. The room was small enough already without taking up space by being unnecessarily untidy, and he personally found the plain uncluttered walls therapeutic. Nothing like Gabriel's room at all. He'd been forced to spend a night there a few weeks ago when there had been a leak in his ceiling, and it was one of the worst experiences of his life to date. Gabriel's room looked like a bomb had exploded inside it, showering clothes and papers and leftover plates of food in its wake. Castiel thanked his few lucky stars that he hadn't been assigned to share his brother's dorm room permanently and that Balthazar had gotten that responsibility; he was pretty sure that he would have slowly descended into insanity living amongst Gabriel's waste.

"Like I said, dull," Gabriel quipped, before he let out a noise of triumph as inspiration struck. "Aha. Where would you be without me, eh, Cassie?" He heaved himself off Castiel's bed and crossed the small room in a single stride, proceeding to yank open his brother's chest of drawers and start to search through each one, ignoring Castiel's cry of protest. When the elder Novak had eventually found what he was looking for - two different socks, messing up his brother's neatly organised sock collection, much to Castiel's chagrin - he crouched down onto the floor so that he was effectively hidden under the desk.

"Gabriel? What on - ?"

"Hello, there!" Gabriel stuck a hand above the desk, a sock pulled over it, imitating his brother's deep tone of voice. "I'm Sockstiel, and I hate people!" He raised the other sock-covered hand. "And I'm Sockbriel, the much cooler, much more attractive older brother, who has to deal with my nerdy little brother refusing to leave his dormroom and refusing to throw away those stupid bee pyjamas - Hey!" Castiel had yanked one of his socks back - sock Gabriel, to be exact. "Sheesh, just trying to help, little bro! You're such a misery! Don't you think he's a misery, Sockstiel?" He nodded at the sock puppet. "Yes, big brother Gabriel, Castiel is such a misery!"

Meg rolled her eyes, swinging her legs over the side of the unoccupied bed. "Okay. I think this is the point where I leave, before some big sock fight breaks out." Extremely likely between the Novak siblings. She stood, stretching her limbs, grabbing her jacket from the foot of the bed.

"Hey," she said suddenly, as if she'd just been reminded of something. "Did you have any luck with that roommate thing in the end, Clarence?"

Castiel let out a sigh. Ever since the leak-in-the-roof situation, the people who worked in Student Services had decided to re-evaluate his living accommodations and concluded that, really, since he no longer had a roommate (he'd been assigned one at the start of the year, but they'd dropped out during the first week; Castiel had barely learned their name before they were gone), he really would be more suited to another room, a single room, on the other side of campus, miles away from the building where he had all of his seminars. He'd put out a notice advertising for a new roommate in a vain attempt to avoid the inconvenience, but nothing had ever come of that. Within a week, he would find himself being relocated into a new room.

He shook his head in response to Meg's question. "I have to start packing up by the end of the week. Nobody ever got back to me about sharing a room."

"Um, actually -" Gabriel had moved again and was back to sitting on his brother's bed, now looking shifty. "That's not entirely -"

"Gabriel..." Castiel narrowed his eyes. Meg raised an eyebrow at the dangerous expression on her best friend's face, and decided that now would be wise to back out of the room, calling "See you two idiots later," as she went, providing, of course, that Gabriel was actually still alive by the time that the day was out.

"What have you done?" Castiel persisted.

His brother was silent for a moment, as if contemplating whether or not he should confess to anything. "I may or may not have hacked into your email account and intercepted the emails about the roommates -"

"Gabriel!"

"Oh, c'mon, Cassie, your password is ABCD! A four year old could crack that!"

Castiel glanced at the red light of the camera, still recording. "Could you not reveal my private information on camera?"

"Just edit this bit out, then!"

"I don't know how to do that yet!"

Gabriel let out a sharp and exasperated exhale, but he still moved back to put a little more space between his brother and himself. "Look, all I did was talk to them! Make sure that they were right for you!"

"You make it sound like you were trying to hook me up with them rather than judge my ability to live with them."

"Sheesh, Cassie, I've lost all hope of that ever happening after watching you fail at romance one too many times. Do you remember the last time I tried to set you up? I'm not putting either of us through anything like that ever again. Anyway, back on topic, I may or may not have found you the perfect roommate through my little interrogations."

"Oh, yes?" Castiel looked interested in spite of the fact that Gabriel had meddled, yet again.

"Well..." The smirk was now back on the elder Novak's face. "I say perfect."

Castiel's eyes narrowed once more. "What? What is it?"

"Nothing! What're you looking so worried about, little bro?"

"You've done something to screw with me, haven't you? What have you done this time?"

Before Gabriel could answer - or try to defend his non-existent innocence - the door swung open, banging against the wall and making the two brothers jump, effectively ending their conversation, and turn their attention towards the blonde student that was now standing in the middle of the room, backpack slung over his back, jacket on his arm.

"Hey," he greeted offhandedly, seemingly oblivious to the bewilderment - and also amusement - from the others in the room. "You Cas?"

"Castiel," Castiel corrected quickly, his usual head tilt accompanying his confused frown. "Who are you, exactly?"

"Name's Dean Winchester," the student replied, unceremoniously dropping his bag onto the middle of the floor, too busy connecting his IPod to a pair of portable speakers; the thumping guitar chords of AC/DC began to blare out. "I'm your new roommate, buddy." He all but hurled himself onto the spare bed opposite Castiel's, taking a moment to raise an eyebrow at the dumbfounded student sitting at his desk. "Nice jammies, by the way."

Castiel glanced down at the bee pyjama pants he'd been wearing for the past two days, then looked back up at Dean. "What?"

"Just tellin' you that I like the bees, Cas."

"It's Castiel," he corrected again, this time with a little less patience. "And, what exactly do you mean, you're my new roommate?"

"Exactly what it says on the tin, Angel." Dean glanced up to smirk at him, kicking off his shoes and letting them clatter to the floor without bothering to pick them up.

"What did you just call me?" Castiel's face switched from confusion to mildly horrified in the space of a few seconds. "Okay - No - There has to be some mistake -"

"Sorry," Dean said, although the tone of his voice didn't sound sorry at all. "No mistake." He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and threw it in Castiel's general direction. "There. Paperwork that says I live here now. Your brother signed it himself."

Castiel stared down at it for a moment and then looked back up, his expression now more than just mildly horrified. "Oh, this is not - No, no, you're not - You can't be my new - Gabriel -!" He turned back to his brother, only to find that his bed was empty. It seemed that the elder Novak sibling had wisely taken this opportunity to slip out of the room unnoticed, leaving Castiel alone in Dean's company with the obnoxiously loud chorus of Highway To Hell playing in the background.