Cas couldn't come the next weekend, either, since it was the one right after Thanksgiving and Meg had wanted to stay in Maine for another few days. By the middle of December, Dean had given up on seeing him before January. It had already been two months, why not add another?

He had also given up on ever meeting anyone that could take Cas's place in his heart and in his bed, and on making his family happy. Dean could see the years stretching on before him in this pathetic cycle. He always ended up calling Cas's name when he came, which meant he certainly never ended up sharing anyone's bed twice but his own. Half the time, he didn't see the point in picking anyone up, he just ended up drinking, alone and bitter.

Thus the inability to make his famly happy. No one but Sam understood why he felt the need to drink so much, and in the year or so since he'd found out, Sam had managed to go from disbelieving sympathy to uncomfortable disinterest to angry dissuasion. He still managed to scold Dean for drinking, though. Cas and his family were in perfect agreement about that.

So, Dean had stopped drinking so much – at home, where they could find the evidence. No more whiskey bottles weighed down his trash bags, but his savings were almost empty. Drinking eight or nine whiskeys to himself and maybe a few drinks for his chosen prey was much more expensive than just a bottle to himself.

He didn't know what he'd do when they ran out, because he would never do what his father had done and stop paying his bills to keep himself in liquor. It was mostly a problem he tried not to think about when he was sober, and when he was drink the plans ranged from impossible to laughable.

Sometimes, when he woke up with a particularly brutal hangover – or had too few memories of the night before – he thought maybe he'd give in to Bobby and Ellen, who had been offering to take him and pay for him to go into rehab. He thought that maybe it would be okay to accept their help because they loved him and he loved them and they would work it out between them.

Dean remembered what it was like to wake up with no headache or shakes or nausea when Cas managed to come down and he thought it would be a nice change. He never really drank when Cas was around, because he didn't really feel the need to. But then he would leave again and he remembered why they were a small price to pay for a little numbness.

He had managed to keep himself at home that Thursday night until he'd gotten the half expected call. Meg wanted to leave early Sunday morning so they could do some last minute Christmas shopping before meeting her parents for Christmas in Paris on Tuesday. Dean refused to beg him to come down for just one night, knowing Cas could always say he wanted to see his family for a night first. That refusal and his hanging up before Cas could say he loved him were all the power he had over the situation.

It was petty and he knew he would regret it when he was staring at his ceiling, not drunk enough to sleep but too drunk to get up and do something about it, trying to remember what it sounded like but not quite remembering. It had been so long since he had heard the words whispered into his skin and he felt like a rash was going to develop without it's soothing power.

He had just needed to convince himself that he wasn't helpless and that he had some sort of control. He was always waiting on Cas – to text back, to call, to visit. He never made any plans because there was always the thought that in the back of his mind. What if Cas came at the last minute? What if Meg decided to be alone and he could have two fucking nights where he didn't feel like he needed to be stone drunk just to sleep in his own sheets because they didn't smell enough like cinnamon?

When it didn't happen, he either filled it with the scent of someone else, or spread his scent on someone else's pillows, or got so drunk he half the time woke up in the bathroom leaning over the toilet. He didn't really like doing any of those things. He always washed his sheets as soon as he woke up because it didn't matter who it had been, they felt dirty and unclean and unready for Cas. He showered as soon as he got home from someone else's because he didn't want to do the same thing to his sheets. And sleeping over a toilet was not the most comfortable of positions, nor did it give him any sense of dignity.

Honestly, he should have known this would happen. Everything he had heard about Meg said she was impulsive and unable to stay at any one thing for too long. Cas would obviously have to be the responsible parent.

Maybe that was it, though. Maybe Dean was waiting and watching and hoping for Meg to get sick of Cas so he could finally have him to himself. It didn't matter if it seemed hopeless right now; Dean just had to believe that this wasn't forever. Maybe that was why he only made half-hearted attempts to purge himself of his love for the other man.

The bar was the perfect place to contemplate his inability to cut Cas out of his life. He knew because he was generally here three times a week, sometimes more. It didn't get him very far toward a solution, but he was comfortable here.

It was a little after one in the morning when he finally decided he was numb enough to go back to his empty house. The thought had brought him back to drinking the other two times he had thought he was ready. Now, though, he was resigned. At least with no one waiting for him he could be as drunk as he pleased when he stumbled in.

The bartender gave him a wary look but he turned a charming smile on him. He was more interested in the women in front of him anyway, so he just gave a shrug and went back to flirting. Dean made his way to the car, not bothered with how much he stumbled. He'd made it home in worse condition.

When he slid into his baby, he relaxed and patted her dash. There was nothing he could do to her to make her hate him or want to leave. She didn't even mind that it took him three tries to get the key in the ignition. The radio roared to life and he gave a laugh, because he really loved that song. "I love my whiskey straight, the only way you taste it. When I take that bottle down, it's good to be my friend." He might as well sit back and enjoy it before his ride home. He sang along to the words, refusing to make the connections he sometimes did with it. "I love the way you move, all the things that drive me crazy. What a way to spend my life, to wake up next to you. Can I take just a little more?"

em"You're my favorite addiction, I know. Of all the things I love, there's nothing quite like you."/em

Song was Whiskey by Royal Bliss.

Here's the important point. Does this really feel like an ending?

That_one_girl and I started this fic because I really like Anarbor and was obsessing over Passion for Publication, where this fic gets it's title, and because she said there wasn't enough angst in the fics she was finding. So, as your ever humble writer extraordinaire, I said "You want some fucking angst? I can give you fucking angst!"

However, as we (I) wrote and discussed and such, we discovered that we wanted different types of endings. So, does this really feel like an ending? Of course not, sillies. It's a cross roads. There will be two more stories in this series. One will have a happy ending (-cough- after a shitload more angst -cough-). Sorry, I seem to have developed a cough. That one is to be named Tempered. The other will not end well, and that's about as far as I'll go before I start tagging it. It will be called Letters to Cas.

So, it's like a choose your own adventure! Or you can be like me as a child and read them both! However, as a warning, that would probably make the sad one sadder. :[

I plan to update them alternately. Enjoy! I hope you guys come to the other fics and keep reading. I won't mind if I don't see you on both. That_one_girl won't either. Though, she may call you a little bitch.

[this fic was originally posted on AO3 by me (ketaminekendra) and a friend (That_one_girl). I don't think she has a profile and such here, but if she does, she'll find it eventually. Not sure if there's a handy series option like on AO3, but I'll do my best to make sure you can get to them. I still love you FFers.]