Indifference

The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference.

Hate is screaming at the person you used to love, with your voice shaky and hoarse from crying. It is blaming them for breaking your love and your heart. It is breaking your dishes at 3 am because you can't stop thinking about them and what they did to you. Hate shows you still care.

But indifference, that's a whole other thing.

Indifference is hearing about your ex-lover's new relationship and neither feeling sad nor jealous. It is going anywhere you want to because you don't care that you might meet them there. It is stopping to compare anyone you meet to them. Indifference shows that you're done, completely and utterly done.

Cas isn't done, and he knows that. He feels hate and sadness and disappointment and a million other things; in short, everything but indifference.

But he wants to be done. He wants to be done so badly because if he was it wouldn't hurt so damn much.

It wouldn't hurt to see Dean with his new girlfriend, who is blonde and pretty and above all, a girl. It wouldn't hurt to find random things that he left in their apartment, like the blue mug he found in the back of the kitchen cupboard. It wouldn't hurt to remember, to go through their old photo albums and see the remnants of what they used to be.

But he isn't done. And so it hurts. It hurts like hell. And it doesn't stop hurting for a long, long while.

Eight months later, they meet in a coffee shop they used to go to when they were still together. He's expecting the sharp sting of pain he got used to by now, but it doesn't come.

"Hey.", Dean says with a forced smile.

"Hey.", he answers.

"I haven't seen you in ages. How are you?"

He shrugs. "I'm fine. I was travelling for a bit. Just got back."

Dean gives another smile, one of those smiles that used to make his insides melt. "Well, I've been…"

He interrupts him, and as soon as the words leave his mouth, he knows they're true. "Frankly, I don't give a damn."

The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference.

And in this moment, he couldn't care less.