I can’t believe you’d say something like this to me. I thought we were friends.
Because now I’m just thinking about Cas looking up startled when Dean approaches him in 9×06, and he’s taken off-guard because he’s been so used to knowing where Dean is at any moment.
Maybe he didn’t even fully realise it himself: it properly started in Purgatory. Knowing where Dean was every second of the day just became a second nature, a part of the torment of that place. But it didn’t go away even when they were out and Dean technically stopped searching for him. Cas came to rely on it – he could tell you where Dean was from the other side of the universe.
After Dean vocalised that desperate last “I need you” at the crypt Cas felt that longing spike so hard in a wordless, unspoken prayer, and somewhere far off where he was free to think for himself he wondered if the prayer Dean wasn’t saying had changed somehow from merely wondering where Cas was. He was already right there in the room with Dean – how could he be subconsciously reaching out for Cas to be any closer? And then Dean gripped Cas’s sleeve and Cas cupped his face and for the first time that longing cut off as Dean slowly realised that Cas was only healing him, not killing him…
But this is a different lack of that longing: Dean is right there smiling at Cas, and Cas has no idea how Dean feels. When Cas was darting all around the country on his Biggersons coffee crawl he could pinpoint constantly where Dean was in relation to him from halfway across the continent, every time, instantly. Cas practically navigated by it.
He could close his eyes right now and Dean wouldn’t even be there.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was? When I fell to earth, I didn’t just lose my powers. I –”
*Long, gusty sigh the likes of which hasn’t been heard since Metatron ended that sentence with, “…with humanity.”*
Okay here’s the short version:
During the crypt scene in Goodbye Stranger, Dean’s original line was supposed to be (and I paraphrase because I forget exactly where the line went in his speech), “We need you. We’re family. I love you.”
Jensen Ackles was like, “What the hell, Dean doesn’t say the l-word,” and the line got changed.
There was drama about it.
Personally, I have always come down solidly on Jensen’s side about this issue. The only person Dean has canonically said the l-word to is his mother. If he’s never managed to choke it out to Sam, there’s no way he’d say it to Cas.
Season eight was way too early in Dean’s arc to delve into Destiel (right now is still too early, too), there’s no way Dean would have said that in the way we would have interpreted it. He wasn’t there, emotionally. He’s only barely getting there now. So it would have been highly out of character for Dean to say it no matter how platonically he thought he meant it.
And since Jensen’s Dean-instincts also led to the trenchcoat thing, I tend to trust him and agree with him. Dean shows his love, he doesn’t tell it. The trenchcoat felt right, the “I love you” would have felt like queerbaiting since it would have been referring (at least in Dean’s head) to a familial kind of love.
To sum up: It was scripted, it got changed, I agreed with the change, we all moved on except for periodically reminding each other that it was supposed to happen and sighing with longing.
But not for the line as we would have been given it (I love you… like a brother), for the line as we would have written it (I love you… and want to touch your butt a little).
In 1997, when the show had it’s first run, I remember spending an entire week anxiously awaiting the pilot episode after seeing an extended promotional spot for it. Within the first ten minutes of episode one, I was hooked, but…
Carver’s not Whedon in more ways than that and I suspect that’ll play in favor of all fans who want to see Dean and Cas’ endgame realized of being both alive and together/not getting stuck forever on two different planes of existence in the series finale, perhaps right after confessing their feelings.
(Note that /even Joss/ couldn’t kill his darkhorse character in the end, but he sure hit fans hard because in my experience he can be a bit sadistic sometimes just for the effect per se, without it being a /strict/ means to another end. I might end up being wrong of course, but not everyone’s like that).
MAN. If I hadn’t already known Marsters would be back the next season in Angel, the Buffy series finale would have broken me, maybe worse than [REDACTED]. And that is by God SAYING SOMETHING.
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