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Dean didn’t seem to notice anything was different the next morning. He woke, threw a pillow at Sam’s head to wake him up and made his way to the bathroom with a “Get up Sam! Cas ain’t here, we gotta get a move on. Old fart’ll catch us up later.” Cas did have a tendency to disappear with no warning and not be there when they woke.
Sam watched his brother carefully as they travelled from Minnesota to Florida, hunting down something that was eating humans and leaving only broken bones in its wake. It was only on the third day and the fourth or fifth call to Cas-just to “check in and let him know where they were going to be” that Dean started to realize something was off.
Cas had been spending the majority of his days and nights with the two brothers for the last several months and, to Dean, had not indicated that that was about to change. Dean had thought this was a routine check in to Heaven until they’d nearly reached Florida and Cas had not so much as returned a phone call.
Dean’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, his lips thinned and Sam could feel his shoulders tensing, waiting for the snide remarks, the attacks of unreasonable rage that Dean seemed to exhibit anytime he felt someone was abandoning him. The remarks that “Cas had better get his punk ass down to earth-he deserved answers,” made Sam’s stomach clench even as he murmured quiet words meant to sooth Dean’s unconsciously broken heart.
All Sam could do was pray that Castiel would show again. He hadn’t meant for Cas to take his meaning so literally. He prayed every day to naught. Cas did not show his face and as they went through the hunt, it only got worse. Dean got sloppy. Drank a little too much and left Sam with ‘saving Dean’s butt yet again’ duty. The Kolowa should have been a relatively easy job for them, but Dean seemed to find reasons to draw the hunt out-“Let’s just see what it does next. We’ve never dealt with one of these, want to do it proper after all.” “We should have multiple ways of killing the beast”
Excuses. Waiting for Cas to show. Sam finally had to slaughter the beast with a 100 year old blade blessed by a Creek Indian chief as Dean lay passed out near the Impala, a blow to the head having knocked him out of the battle early on.
Patching his brother up, Sam finally gave up holding his tongue. “Dude. He’s gone. Just accept it.” Dean pushed him away and stalked off, going for a drink at the nearby bar. He didn’t come back until the wee hours of the morning, stinking drunk.
Dean didn’t talk to him for two days as they drove aimlessly back up towards Georgia. There hadn’t been calls for help from anyone and nothing in any of the papers they’d read as yet. Sam had a friend in Atlanta from his time at Stanford. He hadn’t seen anyone since he’d taken off with Dean so many years ago after Jess’ death. “We really gotta go and have some kinda girly reunion with some guy you haven’t talked to in five years. Dude.” Dean griped all the while they drove and finally Sam had enough.
“Just cause you miss Cas doesn’t mean you get the right to shit all over my wanting to see an old friend. Dude.” Sam slanted an annoyed look at Dean.
“Bitch.”
“Jerk.” Sam turned to look back out at the unchanging scenery. It was a good thing, then, that it turned out there was a ghost haunting just down the street from his buddy’s place, kept Dean at least partially occupied-even as he called Cas several times a day and bitched at Bobby for the rest of it.
“You keep calling Cas, I’m gonna think you’re in love with the man,” Sam growled, knowing full well that was the case, even as Dean had never considered the possibility before. Those words caused Dean not to speak to him for another day. Sam rolled his eyes and left Dean to his thoughts while he flirted with a pretty bartender in the closest bar to their rundown motel in Virginia.
It only got worse from there as they made a race up to Ohio to take care of a ghoul. Sam could handle a ghoul on his own, but when the fact that there were five or six of them took Dean and Sam by surprise, Sam had to question whether they’d make it out of this hunt alive and whole. He shot out as loud a prayer to Cas as he could, hoping the angel would hear it. He had a feeling Dean was doing the same thing, despite not mentioning the angel’s name out loud for at least the last ten days and refusing to even come close to referencing him.
It was then that Cas blinked in, throwing himself into the fight, giving neither of the brothers a chance to process his presence beyond relief that they perhaps were not about to die in five seconds.
The ride back to the motel in the Impala was silent, tense shoulders all around and Sam was surprised Dean didn’t start shouting as he stood above a bloodied ghoul’s body. He followed the two into the motel room and tried not to make a show that he was getting ready to go out again. He wanted to leave quickly and quietly.
“What the HELL, Cas.”
“I do not know what you mean, Dean.” Cas had cocked his head to the side as he did so often. Dean growled and glared the seemingly oblivious angel.
“You can’t just go and LEAVE and show up with no god damn warning and expect everything to be the same!” Dean pointed, gesturing wildly, his eyes laser focused on the shorter man.
Cas took that moment to take a step forward, eyes fierce, unreadable. Sam edged towards the door. Dean stepped back, mirroring Castiel’s movements. “Do you want everything to be the same?”
“I-What?” Dean looked flummoxed and Sam inched closer to the door.
“I said-“
“I heard what you said. What the hell does that even mean!” Dean’s eyes were wild, as if he didn’t quite know what was going on.
“Do you not see what is between us?” Cas stepped forward, again, forcing Dean into the wall and stood three inches away from Sam’s older brother. Sam took the opportunity to flee and practically ran down the block towards the library, which, thank god, was right next to a bar. Hours of entertainment right there and he could get drunk enough that sleeping in the Impala wouldn’t seem like such a bad thing until tomorrow morning.