Non-insane Friends

Who: Caleb and Dean
Where: Art class
When: 3rd period

Dean's intention today was to actually go to class - all of his classes. Every one. For an entire day. It had been a while - he'd been skipping for a while now. And apparently it had been noticed, as the teacher called him aside as he walked into his class to tell him that if he wasn't here from now on, he'd be looking at detentions and a letter home to his parents. Dean took it with a blank face, choosing not to mention that his parents were in an entirely different country and that he was staying with his cousin. Whatever. That done, he turned and headed to sit down.

As Caleb entered the classroom, just a little late, he saw that at least he wasn't going to be singled out by the teacher--as he was already talking to some other guy. So, he went and found a table to sit at towards the back of the room, not paying a whole lot of attention to the others in the room, even if they were glancing at him as he passed. He dropped his books down on the table, and dropped into the chair, crossing his arms on the table and resting his head on it. This sucked. He didn't particularly want an art class this early. Traditionally, he slept through the first three hours of his day, and now he had a class he wanted to be awake for. That blew.

Dean slowed as he approached his table - since the beginning of the year he'd got used to sitting on his own during art, which was fine by him, but there was some guy he didn't recognise sitting at the table already. Not that he knew a whole lot of people, but he generally managed to recognise the people in his classes by now - faces, if not names. Dean had a god-awful memory for names. He dropped his bag against the leg of the table and pulled his chair out with a screech against the floor, before sitting down, looking over at the other guy - he had to wonder if he was asleep or something.

Caleb wasn't, though he wished he was. When he was joined, he cracked his eyes back open, and turned them on the kid who'd been talking to the teacher. He'd caught the word 'detention'. Wasn't it a little early in the year for detention? Nevermind, scratch that. He'd caused other people to get it this early. He usually skipped out on trouble because adults generally thought he didn't look like he'd done anything wrong. Something that greatly worked to his advantage quite often. As he looked at the other guy, he realized he didn't quite know how to deal with this sort of situation. Generally speaking, he'd not really talked to anyone at his old school. Was he meant to talk to people here? He'd made friends before, and Journey'd fucked off... He gave a little half nod in greeting.

Dean was no stranger to detention - he figured he'd only not got one this time round because of everything that was going on. And, to be honest, he would have been in class a whole lot more if it hadn't been for everything that had happened - so that worked. The truth was that he was actually enjoying living here, he was starting to feel like he fit here better, even with the insanity. Okay, so he only had the one friend, but it was early days yet - and she was undeniably great, he had to smile a little just thinking about her - until he realised that the guy was looking at him and he was staring into space like a little puppy. Shit. He dropped the upturn, slouched lower in his seat and upnodded. "'Lo," he muttered.

"Hey." Caleb spoke. He'd noticed the little happy puppy stare off into space being smiley thing. He propped his head up on his good hand, and levelled his gaze on Dean. "There a girl?" he asked. Because he could pretend he hadn't seen it, but he quite clearly had. And he didn't usually see looks on people's faces like that unless they were daydreaming about pleasant things. So, didn't hurt to ask, right? Females were on his mind a lot too. He'd been spinning his wheels on Leija the entire night, and there'd been another marble. Another memory. He didn't know if he should tell her she'd dropped one or not. What he couldn't do was leave it there for some nurse to pick up and get hit with...whatever she'd get hit with. So he took it instead. And found out that even if he didn't touch the fucking thing, picking it up was enough to hit him with the piece of her that it carried.

Oh shit - busted. Arse. Dean shrugged a shoulder and settled a bit further down into his chair, before moving to grab his pencils and sketch pad from his bag. Anything to cover up the 'what the fuck do I say to that?'ness of this situation. He straightened back up again and put everything down in front of him. "So, you new then?" he asked, going for ignoring it all together - it was a plan, right?

Caleb smirked faintly. "Very." he answered. He also took the non-answer as a resounding 'yes'. Because c'mon. Really. "First day today." He didn't mention he'd been in town a lot longer. Because lately his sense of time was off anyhow, and oh yeah, he'd just spent two weeks in the psych ward. He wasn't going to be mentioning that. The less people knew about it the better.

"Welcome, I guess. Me too - start of the year," Dean told him, though his accent was a dead giveaway that he hadn't been round here very long, and was very definitely not a local. "Where you from?" he asked - he'd found that when you were a few thousand miles from home, you grew to like that question. Maybe it was that he didn't feel so far from everything if someone else was too. Maybe it was simply that you were more interested in location when you were somewhere new.

"New Orleans." Caleb answered, catching the very clear accent. And, just because, he slipped a bit of a drawl in his own words, but only for the name of the city. After that he dropped it. "You're quite a ways from home...or you're a good actor. Where are you from?" he asked. He absently started sketching on his own sketchpad--though it was clear that it was his, and he wasn't actually using the art department's shit. He hadn't looked at any of the supplies, he'd just gone to sit down, and usually, it wasn't any good quality. So, he opted for his own. And he started to sketch Leija, even if he didn't actually intend to sketch her. Sometimes that happened with him though. He'd start drawing, and the page brought out something other than what he'd had in mind.

Dean was more doodling - he could draw, but he'd never make a fine artist or anything. His bent was more comic-style stuff, much to the disdain of his art teachers back home. He'd never been able to doodle in class - not officially anyway. It was always - here, have a still life we've put together for you. Now draw it. Utterly and completely boring as all fuck. But so far, they didn't have a project, so Dean was sketching out a character in his own style, absently. At least it made it look like he was doing something. "I'm not a good actor," he gave the other guy, his lips quirking up into a half-smile. "From England - Britain. Manchester actually." Not that he expected the city to ring any bells, but hell, he always said anyway.

Caleb hadn't ever been there, he didn't skip the country very often, and all he knew the name from was from some team name or something. Manchester...something with a U. He didn't remember. "Definitely a long way from home then." he assessed. "The hell are you doing here of all places? Kind of a random place to move to. What with the flyspeck on the map of it all." he said, starting to fill in more features, and now he actually noticed it was Leija. Which halfway made him want to quit this one and start over again, to draw something else. But in the end he didn't.

Again with the small shrug. He did that a lot. "My aunt lives here with her boyfriend." Not that Sophie was actually his aunt, but he still called her that. "My parents sent me out here to live with them." And see him not giving any more information than that. Or looking terribly impressed by it - not that Dean generally looked terribly impressed by anything, as a habit. "How about you - New Orleans isn't exactly local, is it?"

"No." Caleb said. He was looking down at his drawing, but paused to glance up at Dean now and then. "I was dropped on my brother's doorstep by my parents because they wanted to fuck off to Europe for...like the rest of their lives." There was a mild 'hey' from the front of the room, and Caleb glanced over, and gave a mildly apologetic look, not that he was actually anywhere near apologetic. And it didn't look like the teacher actually cared that much either. So, whatever.

Dean whistled slightly under his breath. "Ouch, that's... Yeah," he said, sympathetically. "Mine decided I'd be best not at home anymore and put me on a plane out here." And the thing that really got Dean about that? The fuckers had been right. As much as he hated to admit it - he was, in fact, better off out here. Though he missed his friends and everyone he grew up with, he had to admit that he'd gone weeks without using his abilities and the migraines had all but disappeared. And he felt better for it.

"So we've both been dropped into the middle of nowhere in a weird fuc-- town." Caleb said, noting the Look he got from the front of the room. That was going to be fun. Toning down his language was probably going to be a bit of a stretch. Awesome. "Like it so far, or are the occasional streams of messed up that've been hitting lately taking the shiny off a bit?"

Dean chuckled a little as the guy got another look for his language. Usually it was him in that position. The laughter died though, as he heard Caleb's question. He didn't answer straight away, concentrating for a few minutes just on drawing, shading in and giving depth to his character. He had to answer, though, he knew, and eventually he looked up. "Grew up in a city, y'know. Shi... Stuff happened all the time there," he muttered. Which was true, but not stuff like this. And though Dean liked to make out that he'd been in the thick of that, he hadn't - sure, he grew up in a city, but he'd grown up in one of the nicer suburbs, away from all the violence. The closest he'd got to any of it was hearing about it on the evening news.

Caleb eyed him for a few heartbeats. "Sure." he said. And he left it at that. Technically, he came from a city that it was practically required that you be some form of supernatural or had ties to it in some way, but he didn't especially think Manchester was. Maybe he was wrong. Or maybe this guy just didn't notice anything crazy going on here. It was possible. The normal residents of Marquette seemed to ignore he living shit out of it all--even the shit they shouldn't have been able to. For example, demonic fucking clone cats all running around attacking people. That had been a new kind of special when the town blew that off.

Dean caught the Look, and it got his interest and he returned it, raising an eyebrow a little. "You?" he asked. "Shine gone yet?" His pencil stilled on the page a little, the cartoon forgotten for now.

Glancing down at the cast on his right wrist, and he knew the bruise was visible on his face from Melia's little snit, thought it was safe to say if there had ever been anything shiny about the town--he'd stopped thinking so a while back. "You could say that." he said. Then he shrugged, and he filled in more details of Leija, before he stopped abruptly, flipped the page, and told himself he was drawing someone else for fucks sake. "Least the place is interesting." he added. Because it was. In that nice, potentially fatal sort of way.

Dean caught the picture as Caleb flipped the page - he didn't get to see the drawing for very long, but it was obviously a girl and she looked kinda familiar to him. "There a girl?" he asked, mirroring the other guy's earlier question in a tone which said that, yes, he knew exactly that that was what he was doing. He gave the guy a small smile, not really expecting an answer one way or another. "'Interesting' would be one way of putting it." Hell, there'd been people who'd disappeared into another fucking dimension, or something. Dean sat up a little, realising something. "I know her," he said, mentally making connections.

Caleb internally twitched. Damnit. He hadn't thought that he would have been caught there. "Not mine." he said, to the question about there being a girl. Then he just went on, looking around the room to see if there was even anyone remotely interesting to try and draw. In the end he didn't, he just started drawing the little demons he always surrounded Leija with. He noticed that they seemed to match a little better with what he'd been drawing. A more comic book sort of style, his own more in the vein of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, or Lenore. When Dean actually said the words 'I know her', he stopped, pencil stilling on the page, and he looked up. "Do you." Did you know she was missing? Were you there? Who the fuck are you again?

Dean paused - it had been a reflex comment and now he didn't know where to go from there. Hell, he couldn't say 'yeah, we were up at the mine and I remember her because she was one of the people who didn't come out' now, could he? "Well, sorta - kinda. Friend of a friend of a friend kinda thing. Not yours? Yeah, she has a boyfriend. They were the ones that went missing." Because the whole school knew that. The four kids - the two guys who nobody could stop talking about, the redhead nobody knew but people were saying was dating one of the guys and the younger girl, who Dean had been surprised to find that people were actually being really mean about. And that was just in the time before he'd said 'fuck it' to school and skipped to avoid the gossip.

"I know. She's...a friend." Best friend, technically. Though she was currently fucking with his head so bad he no longer knew oh...anything about anything in regards to her anymore. Only that things were kind of fucked, and she still did in fact have a boyfriend. Which he was going to respect, and that was that. Even if sometimes it killed him to keep his hands to himself. "A good friend." he added. "I know she went missing, I...was a little indisposed, I couldn't go looking for her. What happened?" Then he paused, glanced around the room, and quite abruptly wished they weren't sitting in the middle of a classroom, where he could tell people were sort of half eavesdropping, since the missing people had been mentioned. And possibly because they were both new. Who the fuck knew, he could tell they were being heard.

Dean didn't answer right away. He was aware that the muted conversations around them had dropped since the missing people had been mentioned. And he heard a girl on the next table whisper to her friend that the 'two new guys' knew something about the missing people and that very firmly shut him up. He sat back in his chair and looked Caleb in the eyes. "I don't know," he lied - and it was very clear that he was lying - well, if you happened to be looking at Dean's face, that was. Which he was fairly sure that only Caleb would be doing.

Caleb definitely caught it. "Right." he said, as evenly as Dean had. And, since there was reading of expression and everything else, he sort of made it clear that he'd like to discuss that 'not knowing' thing at a time when they weren't being listened to. Say, while not at school. That would be fine. "By the way that's not bad." he commented, nodding at Dean's drawing.

"Sure," Dean said, answering the unspoken question. Not that he knew if he'd tell the guy everything he knew, but he said he was a friend of hers, which meant that she'd probably told something and he figured he could play it by ear as to how much would be acceptable. "And thanks - you're better. My old art teacher would love you. I used to get detention for this shit." He threw an apologetic look at the teacher. Oops. "Apparently cartoons aren't proper art, or something." He rolled his eyes and relaxed a little. There was something about the unspoken agreement between them that made him a whole lot more comfortable. "And, your earlier question - yeah, there's a girl. And she's not mine either," he commented - and then wished he hadn't as he realised that the girls on the next table were still listening in. Shit.

Caleb smirked faintly as the girls at the table kittycorner to them practically sounded like a snake pit with all the hissy whispering they immediately started doing. Subtle. Quite suddenly, he remembered why he hated high school. That was right. There was a lot of sucking going on on a regular basis. He had to deal with people. "Well, your art teacher is full of shit." Caleb told him, actually just ignoring the look he got from the teacher that time. Was shit even a proper swear anymore? Whatever. "What's she like?" he asked. "She have a name?" Chances are he wouldn't know her. But it didn't hurt to ask, and now he knew who Caleb's not-girl was.

Dean gave a half-look towards the other table, then looked back at Caleb with a 'right, like I'm gonna give them more to go off' look. Sometimes he actually enjoyed being able to hear the conversations going on around him - not so when they were gossip, even less so when they related to him. At least, he figured he was 'the cute new guy - no, the one without the broken arm, silly'. He sighed a little and leaned forward, away from the girls. "She's... a friend." And there was special emphasis on the 'friend' part. He was well aware that he was stuck in the friends zone - Thia wouldn't even look at him in that way. He probably didn't even count as a guy to her any more. It was depressing, yet he still followed her round like a puppy, glad for whatever attention she'd give him.

Well that he understood. And okay, Leija had kind of shattered his brain the other night with the admission that she 'sometimes' didn't know how to feel about him. Which was kind of in the like area, but at the same time, was incredibly vague, and he was half thinking that she by now would have come to her senses, and would be telling him 'Caleb, I thought about it, and we're just friends. So...sorry about that, I've got to go meet Thom, see ya!'. Caleb really wanted to know who the girl was. He wondered just how highschool girl they could get, and he put a question mark on the edge of his page, wondering if Dean would follow suit and write the name down for him. He had nothing better to do, than talk to this guy. Who wasn't seeming so bad. Besides, didn't he have a few too many females fucking up his life in the past few months in the first place?

Dean looked at the question mark and laughed, silently. Oh god, what was this? Anyway, this guy only got here today - what were the chances he'd know her? Then again, Dean was figuring that he'd only been off school because of the injuries, and he knew the missing-girl. Damn, what was her name again? Began with L. Or something. Anyway - maybe he knew a few people. He shook his head, then wrote Lullaby Draven and turned the pad round enough so that Caleb could see it. And then, promptly scrubbed it out and started to doodle over the patch were he'd rubbed it out from, just in case. Thia didn't know, he didn't particularly want her to know, he definitely didn't want half the school to know. She had a boyfriend, and though he was fairly sure that said boyfriend was aware of Dean's crush, Dean would prefer it if it stopped there. And, obviously, with this guy.

Blinking for a second, Caleb arched an eyebrow. "...I know her." Weren't they just full of echoes today? He was even wearing something the girl had given him, and he clumsily tugged the pendant out from beneath his sleeve cuff, though both bracelets were visible then. Including the one with the hello kitty guitar pick. "She gave me this over the summer...really random. Sweet though. Cute." He remembered her being really, really friendly, and really overly concerned with everyone being fed, and having a necklace. He didn't think he'd seen her since then, but yeah, he definitely remembered her. One didn't forget a name as off the fucking wall as 'Lullaby'.

There was that slightly dreamy look again, briefly appearing on Dean's face before he shook it off - he really had to stop doing that. But she was - sweet, cute. And the rest. He concentrated on Caleb's wrist, looking at the pendant. He thought of the cross that she'd given him a while back, that was nestled under his top. He never took it off - much to the disapproval of his aunt, since it was apparently made of silver, which was a potential problem for Oz, being a werewolf. But Thia had given it to him - there was no way in hell he wasn't going to wear it. Dean frowned. "So... what's with the pink cat thing?" he asked, his tone very much amused.

Caleb turned his wrist slightly, to eye the guitar pick. So, he was weird. He always kept anything anyone ever gave him, and he wore the stupid thing. He didn't much care if anyone saw it, or tried to say anything about it. So far, however, Dean was the only one who had. But then again, it was still early in the day, too. "Got a problem with hello kitty?" he asked, smirking. "It was a gift when I was in the hospital." he added. And it was possible with his glance down at his notebook again that it had been given to him by Leija. Yep. Friends. Sure.

The name meant nothing to him. Dean had never even heard of Hello Kitty. "Mate, it's a pink guitar pick with an overly cute little cat on it..." he pointed out. He paused, arching an eyebrow. "So, she give it to you then?" he asked, figuring that that was the obvious explanation. And no, he wasn't talking about Thia here.

In response to that question, Caleb just flashed a grin. Yep. That was who gave it to him, and that was in fact, why he was opting to wear the stupid thing, instead of merely keeping it in a drawer somewhere, or in his room hanging on something. "Wouldn't want to be rude, and unappreciative." he commented. And maybe he had a slight obsession going on too, and that played in as well. Just maybe. He shrugged one shoulder. "Can't say I care what anyone says about it, so..." Fuck it. Hey. He'd even caught himself that time.

Dean laughed a little and drew the cross out from under his t-shirt, then let it drop back in place. At least his wasn't pink. It was, actually, kinda cool - wearing it wasn't an issue at all. But even if it had been potentially embarrassing, Dean knew he would have worn it all the same. "Can't be unappreciative," he agreed. "I'm Dean, by the way," he added, cos they hadn't actually got as far as names. It was insane - they knew about who the other fancied and couldn't have, but they didn't know each other's names.

"Caleb." he said, thinking that had probably taken them a lot longer to name drop than it would oh, say, anyone else ever. He had a habit of that though. He didn't always introduce himself until he decided if he ever wanted to speak to someone again, if he could help it. "Yours is far better than mine." he pointed out, in regards to the necklace. And he was hearing his brother echo in his head. "You're sure she doesn't like you like that?" he'd asked. And Caleb had adamantly insisted no, she didn't. Caleb had to wonder if it was a little of the same thing, since he turned out to be stunningly wrong. Maybe. "You sure she only sees you as a friend?" he asked. It was a valid question. That necklace didn't look cheap, the brief look he'd got.

Dean upnodded slightly at the name, trying to commit it to memory, at least half sure that he'd forget it. He usually did. "Yeah, I'm sure - totally, completely, unbelievably sure," he told Caleb, looking miserable. It was the whole hanging out with the boyfriend thing that gave it away. And the completely platonic hugs. And just the general vibe. "Don't even think she realises I'm a bloke, y'know?" And then there had been that whole embarrassing conversation where he'd had to admit that he'd never had a girlfriend and... "No, she doesn't know I exist, not like that," he repeated, firmly.

Yeah, see, I was too? And then I talked to Leija last night, and the the world ceased to make any fucking sense. Caleb thought. "Huh." he said. "Still...you must be some level of special. That's nice." He said, referring againt to Dean's necklace. "Never know on this shit." Oops, he hadn't caught it that time, and there was a throat clearing at the front of the room. And yet he still didn't get in any actual trouble. Sometimes it was good to be as unassuming as teachers seemed to think he was.

Dean shrugged again. "Wouldn't matter even if she did - boyfriend and all." And Dean had always been stupidly straight laced about that kind of thing - which could go a long way to explaining why he'd never had a girlfriend. Joshua bugged him for the simple reason that he got there first, but the guy seemed okay - even if Dean could only allow himself to admit that reluctantly. He doubted they'd ever be best mates or anything - Thia would always be both the connection between them and the thing that stopped them really looking at friendship, but the guy seemed an alright sort. He'd been going to add more, about the fact that he was just the best friend - and that he'd just walked into her life at the time when she needed a new best friend - but the he heard the girls whispering again, trying to work out who they were talking about and he heard one of them clue into the fact that he hung around with Lullaby Draven a lot. The other girl told her that that couldn't be it, but the name was being bandied about. Dean closed up a little and sunk down further into his chair, a hand coming up to his forehead.

Caleb glanced over to the girls again, and rolled his eyes. Didn't they have better things to do? Jesus. Probably not. He was sure the gossip about the two of them, or well. Probably mostly Dean, he didn't figure he factored in so much, was exciting fucking news. Idiots. He hated highschoolers. Which was stupid, probably, because he was one, but he just hated the high school politics. He'd always avoided it back home, and planned to avoid it here too. "Yeah...I know what you mean." he said belatedly to Dean. Because yeah. Even with the knowledge of Leija's maybe possible feelings she wasn't sure about, she still had a boyfriend. And let's not forget the half demon thing. That'll be great. he added to himself sarcastically.

Dean was resisting the urge to just blow the electrics in this place and run. He'd promised himself he'd stay in class all day today. He'd promised. But he hated gossip, any gossip - more so when he was the focus of attention. His hand still moved on the paper, but he wasn't drawing any more, instead just creating circle after circle on top of each other, more scribbling than anything else. He could still hear the girls talking and it was getting to him. His eyes darted to the clock, but there was at least twenty minutes of the class still to go.

Caleb could tell that Dean had just shut down. It was really, stunningly obvious. He looked at the guy for a few long moments, then past him to the girls. This time, he levelled his gaze, and kept it there. Which got a bit of a startled squeak out of one of them, when she turned to stare, and noticed that not only had they been noticed, but they were being zeroed in on. He kept staring, until all four of them had looked over and been caught, and their whispering seemed to at the very least get slightly quieter. When the first one looked back again, she actually ducked down, and held her hand up over most of her face, and he gave her a clear 'Well?' look. "Did you want something?" he asked aloud.

"No!" she said abruptly, and turned firmly around, suddenly far too engrossed in her own artwork to continue whispering to her friends. The other girls seemed to pick up on it all and followed suit, glancing up and quickly back down when they noticed Caleb's attention was still on them. He kept it up for a good five minutes, until they no longer were risking looks up again.

Dean didn't look round, but he did know they'd stopped talking. He still felt that little twitch to run though, and had it been any other day, he knew he'd be gone by now. He looked consistently down at his page, knowing he'd totally ruined his cartoon by scribbling all over it and he told himself that he didn't care. Eventually, though he threw down his pencil. "Fuck it," he muttered under his breath, ripping the paper from the pad and balling it up. He tossed it onto the table and finally looked up at Caleb. "I hate school," he grumbled, only really loud enough for them to hear.

"Seconded." Caleb said, agreeing wholeheartedly, in the same low tone. He had half gone back to his own drawing, but wasn't paying nearly as much attention to it. He wondered if by next hour, there were going to be rumors about him now. Just what he'd wanted to avoid, but he couldn't help it. It was that or sit down and try to be small and not draw attention, which he wasn't that big on, personally. He was more confrontational by nature than that, and he really didn't plan to start dialing it all down now. Not with stupid, gossiping little airheads. Fuck that noise.

More to be looking like he was doing something than anything else, Dean started to draw again. He didn't have the heart to start in on the cartoon he'd been working on and instead started to sketch a caricature of Caleb instead. "If I'd stayed back home, I could have been out of here by now. Got a job or something." Course, he was of the suspicion that that was another reason why his parents had shipped him over here - to keep him in school.

Caleb thought about that. "Not sure what I'd rather. Though you could probably drop out. How old are you? I think here you can drop out when you're sixteen." He considered it. Of course, it went without saying that if Dean did drop out, he wouldn't see his not-girl at school. "And you'd have to deal with the public. The public sucks." Caleb was never sure how to answer questions like what he wanted to be eventually. He never figured he'd get that far for one, and for another, it wasn't like he was a people person, now was it? No, not really. He was an okay artist if people were to be believed who'd told him so, and he killed shit occasionally. Not really good skills for the job market.

"Sixteen," Dean said, not realising that he'd be able to drop out if he wanted to - the way it'd been sold to him, education had been compulsory to eighteen. Of course, he realised that would be how it was sold to him, wouldn't it? "Couse, if I dropped out, they'd probably drag me back home again. And... well, I f... really hated my parents for shipping me out here, but... Even with the insanity...." He paused looking for the right words. "I feel like I kinda fit here."

Caleb gave Dean a brief half smile. "I know what you mean." he said. And he did. As fucked up as his life had gotten since he'd arrived, if one totally ignored the suicide attempt, he did better here. He liked some people, the area was slightly less potentially fatal to him, and he didn't have to deal at all with his parents. Though, just thinking about them sank his mood some. Fucking assholes.

"So, stuck here, I guess - put up with the..." He jerked his head towards the girls a little. Who were, amazingly, still being remarkably quiet. "Thanks, by the way," he told Caleb. Dean had never been that confrontational. Sure, he held grudges against people and was generally an ass at times, but it wasn't in a truly confrontational way. If Caleb hadn't been there, Dean would either have hunkered down and tried to ignore the whispers, or cut and run.

"No problem." Caleb said. "And it could be worse." He didn't say how it could be worse, but that was because he figured if the guy had been at the mine with everyone, he could have oh, say, gone missing. Or been killed, or whatever other bullshit went on in this town. There seemed to be an overabundance, after all. He glanced to the clock, and wasn't sure when classes actually did let out. He hadn't paid attention so far. He didn't especially mind, and he noted that he was fully awake now. Maybe he'd get better grades this year or something. Or, maybe he'd skate by on the bare minimum, like he'd started doing when he realized his parents didn't actually care at all.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Could always be worse." He glanced down at Caleb's arm. Like, I could have broken something... he thought, wondering what the story was there. But then again, maybe the guy had just fallen off his bike or something. Whatever, Dean wasn't asking.

Caleb smirked and thought that the broken wrist was nothing. But that was a good thing. It was all that was really obvious, besides the bruise he had on his face, and that would fade soon enough. Then he'd look almost normal again, and no one would be the wiser. He was a fan of that idea, really. He didn't say anything more, but he figured he'd see the guy around. Probably talk to him again, if he saw him somewhere. Which was probably weird, since he wasn't sure how this sort of shit usually worked, but whatever. He did feel the need for someone non-female to be around occasionally. Women were crazy. Really, he'd decided that. They were all batshit fucking insane, and you just had to find ones that had dealable levels.

Dean lapsed into silence, finishing off his caricature as the bell went and tearing it out of his sketch book. It was clearly Caleb, though a comedy variation of the guy, with a Hello Kitty cat in the background, hanging from a chain as Caleb tried to save it. Across the bottom Dean had scrawled his name and phone number. He passed it over as he packed up. "See you around," he added, before heading off to his next class.

He looked at the drawing, and laughed, sliding it into his drawing notebook, and he shoved it into his backpack before he waited a few minutes, letting most of the people file out before he started. Being jostled, not too good for sprained ankles. He noticed the girls looked back at him again, and he smirked at them too, which had them running off and whispering some more, though he didn't quite know why. Either way, that had been...weirdly productive. Maybe he'd have a non-insane friend. That would be new and inventive.