Author's Note: I do not own Supernatural or any of the characters.
Charlie and Dean were still sitting at the dining table, digging into pizza and guzzling down beer after beer, long after Sam had gone upstairs. After their small hunt together, Dean had meant to show Charlie to the room they had deemed as hers, while he would drink his burdens away alone. Though he rarely cared that people were around while he drank, he hadn't wanted anyone to witness his latest drunken attributes.
"Aw come on Dean, fess up!" Charlie squealed, laughing at herself. Her cheeks were rosy, red hair flaring out, and couldn't keep herself still. She kept swaying back and forth, trying to focus on Dean as she also tried to keep with the amount of alcohol he consumed.
He stared at her, certainly more self-aware than she was at the moment. When he realized that she wouldn't leave him alone, he had come up with the brilliant idea to make her match him drink for drink, knowing he had the higher tolerance. Hopefully, she would drink herself stupid before his own stupid antics came into play.
Unfortunately, the more she drank the feistier she got, and the more adamant she became about getting the answers she wanted. As her stubbornness increased, Dean's resolve was gradually weakening, and he knew he no longer stood a chance at resisting giving her what she wanted. Still, he wasn't giving up without a fight.
"Fess up about what?" He growled playfully.
She laughed even louder. Apparently, she had confessed earlier that day, she thought it was adorable when he got all tough and sharp-edges, knowing he meant none of it towards her. "You know. Dreamy Cas."
"Stop calling him that."
"That's what the books calls him."
"Yea right."
"No seriously," she reached out to place her palm on his shoulder in a sisterly manner, attempting a serious expression. "I know Dean. Everyone who reads the books knows." She hiccupped. "Hell, anyone who has seen the two of together knows."
He rose an eyebrow at her statement. "You haven't seen us together. You haven't seen him at all."
"But I know."
He sighed. Her eyes were so huge, so filled with desire for a response, while the rest of her fought against the urge to sleep away the blurry senses the alcohol was causing. "And what more do you want to know?" This time he actually did growl out his response, and not necessarily playfully. He didn't want to scare her, or push her away, but he really didn't want to talk about it, and he was hoping for one last out.
As expected, though, Charlie was resilient, and she the feral undertones of his question didn't faze her at all. "Why haven't you acted on it yet?"
He almost felt like asking, "Acted on what?" To keep on playing dumb. To keep pushing away the subject until everyone got it through their thick skulls that it just wasn't happening. That no matter what he said nothing would change, so why were they so hell bent on him talking about it?
But it was late, and he was drunk, and he was on the verge of breaking into his new habit gained from excessive drinking and excessive stress.
It wasn't like it was secret anyways, as much as Dean wanted to pretend it was. Like Charlie said, everyone knew. Everyone could see the way Dean and Cas looked at one another. Everyone could see how protective they were of each other, not only of their physical health, but also concerning everything else. They could see how much Dean had changed Cas, and how much Cas had changed Dean. It was obvious they had something that went far beyond a "profound bond".
"You've read the books. You've heard us talk. You tell me, when exactly was I supposed to act on something?"
This sobered Charlie slightly, enough for her to lean back and stare deep into bottle-glass, green eyes. "What do you mean?"
Dean gave a bitter chuckle, because he knew what was crossing her thoughts. She had thought she'd ask her questions, and when he finally answered about how he wasn't gay and that's exactly why he hadn't acted, thank you very much, she would turn around and yell at him for being a bigot. It had never occurred to her, or for anyone else for that matter, that there were far deeper reasons as to why Dean had never confessed his feelings for the angel.
He took a long swig, emptied the bottle and reached for a new one. If he was going to talk about this, he was going to let it all go. His pride be damned. Charlie would probably be too drunk to remember what he said in the morning anyways. Might as well get it off his chest. It was better to shout and curse and cry at a living soul, than pathetically do so alone, as he had been doing for so many nights. Just as long as she didn't remember. Just as long as she didn't say anything when they were both sober and Dean would be forced to pretend that he didn't care and that he was in fact a bigot that refused to admit he was bisexual and that it was his own pride that got in the way of living a happily ever after with the angel of his dreams.
"How do the books describe Cas' and mine's relationship that first year we met? The year before Lucifer rose?"
The question surprised her, but she shook her shock away, got a headache for doing so, and then tried to answer properly. "I don't know. He was an angel. You were a hunter. It was a budding friendship, a stepping stone for becoming 'brothers' when the apocalypse was happening."
Dean scoffed at the thought. Stupid Chuck. "Truth is, I could barely tolerate the guy that first year. And the only reason I did tolerate him was because he at least was trying to understand where we were coming from. All the other angels were complete dicks. At least Cas had potential. That being said, I didn't really like the guy. Thought he was too rigid, too self-righteous, and an all around bore."
"Obviously that changed." She gave a cheesy smile, imagining some pathetic romantic notion. "He did give up Heaven for you. He chose to take a risk and following his heart to save you and your brother, all for your sake. The books were pretty clear about that. Cas made his decision based off of what you told him in the building."
"Yea, he changed his mind because I manipulated the situation." Before she could argue, he explained, too far gone to let go of any of the details. "That case where we first met Chuck, and he had a vision where Sam was going to make a deal with Lilith; I threatened Cas with a pretty stupid threat. Told him I wouldn't speak to him again, or help him. I pretty much said we were done. And then, to my surprise, he gave me what I was asking for. When I was running out of options in that building Zachariah stuck me in, I used the same threat. Told him we were done, knowing that he cared about me enough that he wouldn't want to be done with me, and that if anything, his attraction was strong enough to break him out of whatever daze his brothers had him under."
Upon realizing that Cas had not only given up his family for the sake of Dean's family, but had also sacrificed his life, Dean had felt horrible about his manipulation. However, it wasn't something he would ever take back. He had known of Cas' feelings even then, when he himself felt almost nothing for the angel, and that knowledge had helped saved the world. As much as he now regretted the pain that had caused Cas, he would never take that back.
"Of course, when he came back, my opinion of him changed. How could I not respect everything he had done for me? And then one day he came to ask me for help, admitting I was the only person that would help him, and I just couldn't help but feel something. I mean, it wasn't love, not even close. But I admired him, while feeling bad for him all the same. Then," Dean had to laugh at the memory of the "Den of Iniquity", "man, I must have laughed more that day than I had laughed in years. So yea," he smiled fondly, "he grew on me. We became best friends. And that was our relationship during the apocalypse."
Truth was, despite what Sam and some others seemed to believe, Dean hadn't fallen head over heels for Cas the moment he had seen him. He hadn't even fallen in love with the angel during those long weeks of Sam trying to get away from his destiny and Cas constantly being by his side alone. It didn't even happen after seeing that pseudo Cas in the altered future, though that had also been a turning point in their relationship. It had been what caused Dean to not only feel bad for the angel and grudgingly like him, but made him truly want a friendship.
Sometime between the case with Famine, where had Cas had been infuriatingly adorable with his newfound desire of things, and the case with the Whore of Babylon that Dean decided that friendship couldn't cover what they had. They were fighting a war together, side by side, and that made them brother-in-arms. If Cas was his brother, then, that meant he was one of the most important people in Dean's life, because family meant everything to the hunter.
Then Dean had given up. Cas had beaten up. They had gone to Zachariah in an attempt to save Adam, Sam naively hopeful that Dean would fight against the angels' demands, and Cas knowing exactly what Dean was planning to do. Not that it had ended up like anyone had thought, and by the time Dean and Sam were driving down the road, he felt the cold, deadening ache of letting his family (Cas) down by not fighting sooner and for not stopping him from sacrificing himself once again.
It was a miracle when Cas had called him from the hospital to say that he was alive and he was sorry for not believing in Dean because he wasn't the "broken shell of a man" he had thought him to be. At the sound of his deep, throated, thunder-and-lightening voice, something brightened in Dean's chest with a renewed hope, and it was then that Dean realized just how far their relationship had developed in such a short amount of time.
"I fell in love with Cas only at the end of the apocalypse, when it was too close to the end to really do anything about it. I did try though," Dean choked back a manly sob at the memory of yearning for Cas to stay and help mend his broken heart and life now that his brother was gone. "When everything was said and done, Cas and I were in the impala, and I wanted nothing more than for him to stick around. If he had decided to stay, I wouldn't have gone to Lisa or given up hunting. But he didn't stay," again, he had to fight back letting a cry escape. "Said he had to help fix Heaven. Like I gave a damn. Was going to tell him to stay anyways, that I needed him more, but the damn fool had flown away before I could say anything."
Charlie hadn't said a word in quite a while, too entranced his Dean's tale. Her eyes were wide with something that looked an awful lot like pity, but Dean tried to ignore it.
"When he showed back up, he was barely the Cas that I had known near the end. And I was still technically with Lisa. I had spent six months with her and Ben; I couldn't just drop them and try to run into the arms of an angel I wasn't even sure cared about me anymore. Because I swear, sometimes it did seem like he didn't care. But then Lisa dumped me anyways, and I was beginning to see the Cas I loved beneath the cold demeanor and constant disappearances. It didn't last long though."
"Because of his deal with Crowley."
His bitter laugh now was hollow, dark, and filled with the same emptiness that he had felt the entire year after Cas had betrayed him, far worse than anyone had ever betrayed him before. It was even worse than Sam's betrayal, because at least Sam came back immediately to try and set things right about the things he had done wrong.
"The idiot unleashed an unthinkable evil into this world, and then when he realized his mistake and was about to try and fix it, he went up and died. Died. Left me. Again." There might have been a few tears that escapes from the corner of his eyes, but both parties paid no attention to it. "He was gone before I ever had the chance to forgive him. That whole year I was stuck between being angry as hell at him, cursing his name, to missing him, and loving him."
Leviathans be damned. The worst part of that year was that Cas hadn't been around to mend broken fences.
"When I found him again he had no memory of who he was. And then, trying to fix at least one of his mistakes, mending Sam's mind, he went and got himself hooked into Lucifer's psychological games. He was in and out of it for weeks, and Sam and I had Leviathans to hunt. When he did come to, he was bat-shit-crazy."
Not to say that Dean hadn't partially appreciated the sight of a naked Cas covered in honey, but for the most part it wasn't an enjoyable experience having to watch a deranged angel that used to be his knight in shining grace.
"Then there was Purgatory," Dean went on, and now there was definitely a stream of silent tears. "I searched that place up and down until I found, hoping against all hell that he had in fact lost all of his craziness and that he was back to being my Cas. I prayed to him every night, promising I was going to find him and bring him home. I promised that things would change and that we could fix whatever broke between us. I even came to the point of making the decision of telling him loved him once I found him. A part of me wondered if I had told him that earlier if he would have made a deal with Crowley to bring with. So, I decided, I was going to confess. I was going to find him, hug him, and tell him I loved him. And I did find him, and I hugged him, and," he breathed out sadly, "he didn't hug me back, so I didn't tell him."
That reunion had been so bitter-sweet.
"Not that I didn't come close to telling him again while still in Purgatory." Because, man, Purgatory had been long and Dean had refused to let the angel have his space, just as the angel had once not given the hunter his space. "We got close in Purgatory." He shook his head at the strange memory, too far gone to get a hold of, and in a world too strange to connect to once they were top-side. "Pretty damn close, but you know what? None of that mattered to Cas."
That stupid son of an angel had stayed behind because of the belief that he needed to be punished for his crimes. A part of Dean understood that. Hell, even then, Dean still had lingering anger issues towards him, and he knew perfectly well how guilty Cas should feel. The problem was though, Cas just wanted the punishment, rather than the journey of actually redeeming himself. To Dean, it had seemed like Cas would have rather rotten in the world of monsters, than try to fix things in a world where Dean needed him.
"When Cas got top-sided too, he acted like nothing had ever happened. He started acting like he had the year he was secretly working with Crowley. Except almost worst at times. And maybe it was worst, because between the times he was being suspicious and downright dickish, he had his moments of being Cas. It was to the point where I couldn't bring myself to actually want him, but I couldn't' bring myself from not wanting him."
That confusing and ridiculous, but it was true.
"Now he's gone and I don't know where he is and he's not answering my prayers," Dean cried. The pain became unleashed. The alcohol had let loose his last shred of dignity and he yelled without abandon. "Tell me, damnit, when you expected me to act one anything?"