I want to live. I want to love. I think I am ready.

suffer in the quiet of darkness

D E A N

Hello, Dean.

Those were usually his first words to Dean.
How fitting it was for his last to be;

Goodbye, Dean.

Getting up in the mornings were the hardest part of the day. He usually woke with a calm and peaceful feeling, but that was quickly replaced by a much darker mood as he remembered. Remembered everything that had happened recently.

After Sam had closed the door, and Miracle had taken his place by Dean side in the bed, he laid there in the dark of his bedroom, staring at the empty side of his bed, and at the chair that sat in the corner.

Once Dean had been scolding the angel for watching him sleep, but Dean grew used to Cas peacefully resting beside him as Dean slept. He even wished for it most days. Wished for the feeling of safety he got whenever he woke to feel that presence. He had lost count of how many times Dean had dreamed or imagined a certain angel laying beside him in the bed, on the side of the bed that Dean always left empty, as he slept peacefully. Cas never did though.

But sometimes, he would wake in the middle of the night and feel a presence in the room. He never had to turn over to know that the angel was sitting in the chair in the corner, and Dean came to long for Cas to stay with him like that. He never dared imagine anything else though, as he knew it would hurt more than the moment of joy it would bring him. Dean knew nothing would ever happen between the two, as Cas was a cosmic being, and Dean wasn't exactly a lovable person. But he would dream and wish for just the presence of his best friend. Having him beside him like that was better than nothing at all.

How wrong he had been.

Because he could have had all the things he had never dared to even wish for. He could have had it all. Had he not been such a coward. Never being brave enough to face his deepest fears, Dean would forever live in regret, knowing he never had to fear them at all. And now Cas was gone. Cas had told Dean everything he had ever wanted, needed, to hear. And then he was gone.

Dean remembers every single second of that night. Every single word Cas had spoken to him. Every single regret had flashed before him in the dark room, as he sat crying on the floor the whole night. The world was ending outside the bunker, another apocalypse that the Winchesters had to save the world from.

I cared about the whole world because of you.

The world didn't matter to Dean that night, and it still doesn't. The world was literally dying in front of them. But that didn't matter to Dean, because his whole world had already died that night. Dean lost his big win. Lost his best friend. Lost his happiness, a happiness he didn't even know he could have. He watched his greatest love get taken from him right in front of his eyes, and he could do nothing about it. He had lost his angel.

The one thing I want... it's something I know I can't have.

He never got to tell Cas that he had always been his. He had loved Cas for such a long time now, that he can't remember the feeling of not loving him. For so long he had believed that his feelings were unrequited. Dean had believed for so long that angels couldn't feel the same way humans did, he didn't think they were capable of such emotion. Oh, how stupid he was. So much time wasted. He could have had Cas all this time, had he only had the courage to tell the angel how he felt.

I love you.

He never got to tell Cas that he loved him too. That would forever be his biggest regret. He would be haunted by those blue eyes and the knowledge of how much time he had wasted. Haunted by the knowledge that his greatest love, loved him back, but that he was too much of a coward to tell him. He had to live with that for the rest of his life, and he would never ever want to forget it because he deserved to be reminded of it. Dean deserves to be haunted by that regret.

Why does this sound like a goodbye?
Because it is. I love you. Goodbye, Dean.

They could have had so much time together, but in the end, Dean didn't even tell Cas that he loved him too. And Cas died thinking that Dean didn't love him back. Of course, he loved him.

Yes, Dean had been in love with others in the past. But never like this. The love he felt towards his best friend was something else entirely. He loved Cas with not just his whole heart, but with his soul too. His whole being. His love for him ran so deep in his bones that he no longer could picture a time where he did not love the angel. He couldn't remember a time where Cas wasn't his, and he never wanted to see such a time where he didn't have the angel.

«I love you too, you stupid son of a bitch. I'm coming for you, you're not getting away from me ever again. You hear that Cas?» He said to the dark of his bedroom with a low and somber voice, before finally rising from his bed to start the day. «I'm gonna bring you home.»