AN: This is a timestamp briefly covering Dean's time between Cas disappearing and Thomas showing up on his doorstep. All that's left now is a short epilogue of some of the things that happen after the last chapter. So basically this addition is kinda depressing, the next one will be super fluffy.
He starts off pissed, probably because that's one of his default emotions. Pissed and indignant because Cas always does this shit. Just fucking disappears out of the blue for long periods of time without a word. Doesn't answer prayers or his damn phone, makes Dean worry sick about him.
And yeah, he'll come back and have a decent excuse. The angel dickbags who run things in heaven needed his help. And of course he just does what they ask. Cas is just too nice of a guy and too good to just tell them to fuck off. Dean's this close to offering to do it for him, to tell all his brothers and sisters where to shove it if they ever thinking about asking for Cas' help again.
So yeah, Dean's pissed off for a while. It's easier to be angry than acknowledge that he just misses his friend. And yeah, it makes him kind of a dick to people for a bit. He can't help how much he snaps at Sam, or the rude way he brushes off the chicks that flirt with him at the bar, or the dismissive tone he has for most of the people he encounters on hunts. He's just a little preoccupied, is all.
The longer Cas is gone though, the more the rage in his gut twists into something more uncomfortable. Yeah, Cas disappears for long stretches at a time, but this is just too long. He would've sent word by now, in some small way. All Dean can feel is worry. A deep, unending worry that festers like an open wound.
Until it boils over and that mix of worry/anger/need drives him nearly crazy. Sam can't do much to stop him, knows his brother is losing it, but tries his best to direct that neurotic energy somewhere useful. And well, let's just say there just aren't enough vamps, werewolves and ghouls in the continental United States to vent his frustration. Hell, he's even considering hopping the border just to find some more hunts.
Nearly a year goes by and Dean kind of snaps. Breaking point reached, he can't hide behind useless hunts anymore. Something is seriously wrong and he's got in his mind that he's going to fix it. (It still hasn't occurred to him that it might be too late to fix it, that whatever happened is long over and at best he'll be able to find out what it was and just deal with the consequences.) Then it's Purgatory all over again.
He tries summoning angels, but they won't talk. Then he goes for demons, but they won't deal. There are pagan gods and other spirits, creatures that might know something but they all refuse to help. (Or at least, that's how Dean sees it. He doesn't have it in him to consider that maybe they simply can't.)
When Sam finally sits him down and tells him that maybe they'll just never find out what happened to Cas, that it's a mystery that'll never be solved... All things considered, Sam thinks his brother takes it rather well.
There's a cold, "Yeah, maybe you're right Sammy." And a pat on his shoulder to signal that it was a "good talk."
Then it's Dean's turn to disappear. Not hunting this time, no, because much as Dean hates to admit it, Sam is right. He's followed every lead on Cas and nadda. Not even a rumor about what happened to the angel. (Well, aside from the whispered warnings among the supernatural to stay the fuck away from Dean Winchester if you can help it - his hunt for the angel will destroy everything in its path. They ain't exactly wrong.)
So he just gets in the Impala and hopes to out drive his pain.
He drinks. Obviously. A lot. This isn't like when Cas, filled to the brim with Leviathan, walked into that lake. That was pretty fucking bad and Dean did his fair share of drinking over it. But there'd been a certain finality about it. He knew what had happened to Cas (or at least he thought he did, but his false assumption at least gave him leave to mourn). This not knowing, the complete lack of an ending burns something fierce.
Cas might be out there, right now, needing him and he can't do shit about it.
Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he hung up his wings, retired to some beach somewhere and couldn't care less about the rest of them anymore.
Or maybe he's dead.
No. He doesn't let himself think that last one.
So he drinks and drinks and drinks. Hopes he can at least numb the ache in his chest. And he sleeps around. Side effect of the drinking, he tells himself. Not that he's trying to fill the hole in his heart with meaningless one night stands. He's not an idiot, he knows that's not going to work. But they do serve as a decent distraction, something to occupy his mind and his time as he tries desperately to cope.
Sam, poor, understanding, loving Sam, gives him a couple months to dick around. (Haha, get it Cas? Dick around? You up there listening, buddy? It's funny, I swear. It's really fucking funny. Come back and I'll explain it to you.) His brother finds him passed out in some alley behind a bar. Drags him to his motel room and waits for him to sober up. Dean expected yelling or at least a lecture, but the pity in Sam's eyes is somehow so much worse.
The drive back to the bunker is awful. He lets Sam take the wheel while he sulks in the passenger seat, curled in on himself and trying to ignore his hangover.
"You can't do this anymore, Dean. I know it sucks, but you gotta find a way to move past this."
They don't talk about it for a while. Actually, Dean will never admit it to anyone, but it only ever comes up one more time after that. The next September 18th, Sam finds his brother sobbing in a corner of his room. Nearly trips over an empty bottle of Jack Daniels before he's hugging him. Dean's so past caring in that moment that he lets it happen, lets his little brother hold him while he cries over his lost best friend and whimpers about how he misses him so fucking much and why can't he just come back.
"I don't know," is all Sam can offer.
But aside from that, they don't dwell on the past. Just like they don't bring up their other fallen friends, whatever did or didn't happen to Cas stops being a topic of conversation. They have to focus on the future, on those that are still alive (scant though their numbers might be).
It takes some time, but he starts to get over it. He'll always qualify that he's not over missing Cas. He'll always miss Cas. And he's pretty sure part of him will always hold out just a small thread of hope that he'll see the angel again. But he gets over feeling like shit about it. The guilt that he didn't do enough to save him (assuming he needed saving). The raw pain of uncertainty.
Slowly but surely, he picks himself up and moves on.
He starts working with other hunters. Tries to get a network like Bobby's up and running. Sam sees it for what it is - a project that makes him feel useful and more importantly occupies a shit ton of his time - and enthusiastically does what he can to help. The bunker eventually gets turned over to a new order of Men of Letters, ones that don't lock up all that knowledge just for the sake of having it but actively get out there to help people.
It gets so crowded Sam decides to move out. Seeing Dean in good hands, he starts going to law school again. Though he misses having his brother around, Dean encourages him to do it. And is very happy to see Sam fall for this chick he meets in one of his classes. (Because one of them deserves a break, right?)
You'd think that Sam proposing to her a few years later, with all the talk of love and whatnot, Dean would've figured it out. Put two and two together. But apparently he is as emotionally constipated as has been suggested. It takes a girlfriend of his - a hunter turned partner turned lover turned actual honest to god girlfriend - to point it out.
They hit a rough patch, which happens. And in the heat of the moment, she yells at him that she's tired of not being enough for him. That he's clearly in love with someone else and it's not fair to her because she knows she can't live up to that.
"What are you talking about? I'm not-" Oh shit. Oh shit.
He falls back onto the nearest chair with a dull thud, world spinning around him under the weight of this long overdue epiphany. "Oh my god," he gasps. "I'm in love with Cas."
"Wait, you didn't know?" Then her annoyances shifts to concern. "Damn, you really didn't, did you? Fuck, sorry- I thought it was some ex or something-"
Dean just waves off her apologies. They end things, obviously. Even after he explains that Cas is definitely out of the picture, she just pats him gently on the arm and says it still won't work out. She doesn't want to be a rebound and he needs to get his shit together before he can offer anything in terms of a romantic relationship. They part friends, or at least he think he does. He's a little dazed by the whole thing.
It takes him a while to process all of it. To reevaluate him and Cas. And it's pretty fucking clear, now that he's objectively going through his memories. He's had it bad for the angel for longer than he cares to admit. And fuck it all, he didn't even figure it out until seven fucking years after the guy just up and disappeared on him. Ain't that a kick in the nuts?
("Sam," he'll casually ask one night he's visiting his brother and sister-in-law, his beautiful niece just tucked away to bed. "Did you know I was in love with Cas?"
Poor Sam will choke on his mashed potatoes. "Jesus Christ, Dean!" A whole glass of wine isn't enough to get his color looking normal but at least he doesn't appear on the brink of suffocating anymore. "Now? Seriously? Now you figure this shit out?"
"So is that a yes?"
"Yes it's a fucking yes.")
Somewhere along the line, he kinda falls out of the hunting scene. Yes, he hunts and all that, but he doesn't live the nomadic hunter's life he's grown up with. No more long stretches on the road, no more room on hold for him in the bunker.
Instead he finds himself a place in Lawrence, which aside from the bunker is the only place that's ever been a home to him. Gets a job and everything. Apple pie life and all that. Well, his version of it anyway.
He dates. Mostly to avoid being lonely and to have some fun. There are women, then there are some men. (He spent a lot of time ignoring that part of himself, and he just plain old doesn't give a fuck anymore. If you get down to it, he's spent a large chunk of his life being miserable and he's just done with that.) More often than not, he finds himself drawn to a pair of baby blues or messy dark hair. It's not the same, of course it isn't, but if it's the closest he's ever going to get...
But even though he dates, he keeps it pretty casual. All he's ever looking for is a drinking buddy that he occasionally gets to fuck. Some he hits it off with more than others, and sometimes they press him for more. Once or twice he tries at the more part, but he just can't get invested in it. Now that he knows what love feels like - the mushy kind of soulmate love they go on and on about in chick flicks, not quite the same as what he felt with Cassie and Lisa all those years ago - he realizes he can't settle for anything less.
A couple of his significant others are insulted. "You don't think that's something we could have?"
No amount of sugar coating can cover up the hard "No" he gives in answer.
Not unless you're gonna pull me from Hell, believe in me when even I couldn't, give up everything you know for me despite me telling you I don't deserve it. Not unless you can stand up to the Devil himself for me. Not unless you'll always come when I call, be for me even when I don't.
That type of bond isn't easy to forge and harder yet to break.
He prays to Cas. Not all the time, just when he's feeling particularly low. It's a habit he can't quite shake and isn't sure he wants to. Praying's the only connection he's got left to the angel, and even if those prayers aren't going through it's still kinda comforting. Tells him what he's been up to, about the movies he's seen or new faces he's met. Always ends with something sappy like, "I miss you," or "Would love to see you again," or "I hope you're happy, whenever you are, you deserve it after all we've been through." Something that makes his heart ache. Not in the gut wrenching way it used to, but in the more muted way that's lingered on.
Twenty two years later, all in all he's content in the little life he's carved out for himself. It ain't perfect, not by a long shot, but it's his and it ain't half bad. Hell, only thing missing is this angel-sized piece of his heart. But he's got a handle on that. He only has a few sleepless nights thinking over the what if's and should've been's of his life.
Well, he thinks he does anyway. That idea gets blown out of the water by a familiar set of blue eyes showing up on his door.
"Cas?"