Brandon and Ian glanced at each other, trying to decide whether to pursue Cas or continue to pester Nick. What they ended up doing was going Nick a rough shove and then walking off, laughing to themselves. Nick brushed himself off and went after Cas. “Cas! Wait!” he called, hurrying to catch up to the other boy.
"What do you want?' Cas asked dryly, not even bothering to look over at Nick. He was sick and tired of Brandon and Ian always being around Nick.
“I just wanted to thank you for trying to intervene back there,” Nick replied, a look of hurt flashing across his face. “That’s it.”
"No problem. I'm not as much of an asshole as most people." Cas shrugged and sighed. "See you around unless we've got our next class together."
“I think we do, actually,” Nick responded. “You sit a few seats away from me.”
Cas nodded a bit and awkwardly stayed silent, not sure what else to say. They soon reached the classroom and he sat down.
Nick was actually the tiniest bit relieved once they got to class, since he hated random silences. He sat down, also glad that both Brandon and Ian took a different class this period.
Cas still didn't know how to read or understand any of whatever this topic was, so he resigned to zoning out in the back of the classroom.
Thankfully, the school day was over soon enough, and Nick was finally able to be on his way home. Unfortunately, he lived only a couple of blocks away from Brandon. He glanced this way and that as he left his last class anxiously.
Cas gathered his things, not even bothering to grab his textbooks, and headed out. He didn't exactly need the textbooks because he couldn't read them to do work.
Nick noticed that Cas had left his textbooks on his desk and picked them up, following the other out of the classroom. “Cas, wait! You left these!”
"Hmm?" Cas glanced over at Nick. "Oh… I don't really need them. Thank you though." He smiled weakly, holding his things closer to his chest.
“Are you sure?” Nick asked, furrowing his brows. “They’re kind of important to the class. I don’t know how you’re going to do your history homework without the history book.”
"I can't do it with the book either, so what's the point?" Cas sighed softly.
“Mr.Santiago wants us to write down the answers to the questions on page 27,” Nick responded. “It more or less tells you the exact answers in the passage. It’s not as hard as he makes it out to be, I promise.”
Cas hesitated a few seconds, trembling a bit. "I can't… I legitimately can't do it."
“Oh,” Nick replied, still not understanding. “You sure you don’t want these textbooks? You don’t want them to get stolen or anything.” The likelihood of that was probably fairly low, but still.
"Do you think anyone really wants them? Most people have their own…" Cas sighed. "I think so, anyways… I'm not too familiar with school."
Nick frowned. "Okay, I guess. You don't even want to keep them in your locker or something?"
"It doesn't matter to me what you do with them. It's not like I can fucking read them anyway." Cas turned away and started walking off.
Nick just stood there for a moment. Was Cas saying that he didn't know how to read? He blinked, confused before walking off and putting the books back.
Cas walked out the door, still clutching his things to his chest as he headed towards his foster home.
Nick managed to evade the bullies today, but the questions about Cas lingered in his mind. Could he really not read, and if so, why not? He wondered about it all the way home. He obviously couldn't just ask the kid, but maybe he could find out another way.
Cas headed into school the next day, looking out for Brandon and Ian. He sighed softly, holding his things close as usually.
Luckily for him, the two of them had decided to skip first period, so they were nowhere to be seen. Nick, however, was looking for Cas and grinned when he saw him. “Hey, Cas!” he called.