"I can't…I mean, I don't…" Castiel fumbled, trying to form a valid excuse up in his warped mind.
"Don't what?" Dean bit back harshly, staring into Castiel's bloodshot eyes.
Castiel looked at the soles of his scuffed up grey Chucks and swallowed the lump in this throat. "Nothing," he whispered.
"Yeah, damn straight!" Dean fumed. "I mean, look at you! Come on, Cas, this behaviour…the drugs, the partying, the fighting…this isn't you."
"That's where you're wrong, Dean." He looked back up into Dean's eyes with a newfound confidence in his monotone voice. "You don't know who I am. You never tried to learn who I am. Nothing's been easy for me since I've moved here. I tried reaching out to you, but you didn't listen."
Dean rubbed a hand across his five o'clock shadow and sighed deeply. "Cas, you're the one that pulled away from me. I was here all along. You didn't want my help."
"No, Dean, I didn't need your help, I needed your love. And you shut me down every chance you got!"
"Because I'm not gay!" Dean shouted.
"Neither am I!" Castiel shouted back. He sighed inwardly, trying to make the Winchester boy see things from his point of view. "I don't…feel sexual attraction…towards anyone," he tried to explain.
"Okay…" Dean said hesitantly, nodding his head.
"But with you…the world stops. You make me doubt those things in which I already thought I was solid about. You make me do crazy things in your name. I've let down people, I've betrayed my own brothers, I've become something I'm not, for you. Because it felt right. And I don't even know why I do these things. My freedom is my curse, Dean, and you are my drug. And if I couldn't have one without the other, well…I guess you know the rest of the story. I just, for once, wish you could do something for me, Dean, sacrifice something in my name. I wish you would stop caring so much what people think and just let go."
"What, and become a meth head like you and your boyfriend Crowley?"
Castiel shook his head. "Crowley is not my boyfriend. He is nothing to me; just a means to an inevitable end."
Dean didn't know what to say back, other than trying to drill it through Castiel's ignorant skull that he was not gay. He didn't think about guys that way…at all. Not even Cas, who, admittedly, had become I guess what he would call a best friend. And Dean didn't keep too many friends. You get close to people and they start leaving you, start ripping holes wide open in you. That's the last thing Dean needed when he was struggling just to get through day after day without eternally giving up.
"I can't be what you need me to be, Cas," he finally said, after choosing his words carefully. "I can't love a guy like that. I don't think I could love anyone like that."
Castiel let out a low, bitter laugh. "You, Dean Winchester, are the most selfish man I have ever met. This world does not revolve around you 100% of the time."
Dean was taken aback by Castiel's harsh, angry tone. "That's…not what I'm saying."
Castiel scoffed. "Whatever, Dean. You don't have any right to judge the choices I make. You're not even legal and you're already an alcoholic. So stop pushing your hypocritical values at me and leave me alone. Come find me when you're ready to face who you really are."
Castiel fumbled in his back pocket for his package of cigarettes and lighter and lit one up, sucking in the cancerous particles. He blew the smoke out, deliberately into Dean's face, and began to walk away from the man.
"Cas!" Dean yelled after him, his voice strained.
"Fuck you," Castiel mumbled almost incoherently, and continued walking on, hoping someday he could patch things up with the one person who made sense in a sea of heartless dicks.