Title: Recovery in Twelve Acts

Author: Psammead

Rating: NC-17

Summary: Cas has been MIA since the whole Leviathan fiasco. Dean and Sam have to learn to cope in a world without demons after God comes home and cleans house post-Godstiel. Sam seems to adjust pretty well, Dean does not.

Notes/Warnings: Destiel, and Sabriel. Alcohol abuse, and then recovery. I wouldn't call it fluff or drama. Maybe flama? Druff? I dunno. Spoilers up to 7.02. I just always kinda wonder when I watch the boys drink on the show, what would happen if the world was saved and Dean had to face up to his alcoholism? The Sabriel part just sorta… happened. Inspired by gedry's 12 Steps, which can be found by looking up gedry and 12 steps on livejournal because this site blocks links, I think.

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural in any way, shape or form, and this is why. (This = gay sex)

Recovery in Twelve Acts

Overture: Tom Traubert's Blues

Dean and Sam really thought that the Leviathans would get dealt with in some climactic, bad ass, end of the series run-style showdown, all guns blazing, and maybe they'd go out Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid style. Instead, they just stopped seeing them. The Leviathans never made a move. It was weird as fuck, and then it got weirder.

It started out with a vampire attack. Sam got bit, and they couldn't gank the vampire that bit him. They were braced for the end, Sam locked in the panic room again, Dean and Bobby pacing, waiting for him to have a symptom, any symptom, but it never happened.

Reports started pouring in from hunters all over the world. There was a mysterious absence of demon attacks. People were still getting attacked by things like werewolves and vampires, but they weren't turning.

Around the time they let him out of the panic room, Sam started claiming his hallucinations were over, that he was cured. After a few months had passed, he announced he was going back to school over dinner one day, casually, and was gone barely a week later. It seemed silly for Sam not to go back to school. After all, it had been his heart's desire, and the excuse that the world needed the Winchesters could hardly fly anymore.

Within a year, supernatural creatures were predominantly extinct. There was the odd salt-n-burn, or stray evil thing that had stayed under the radar, but it was over, really, truly over.

Dean found out very shortly after Sam's departure that he had no fucking clue what to do with himself in a normal, human world.

He stayed at Bobby's, got a job as a mechanic. Within a month, he was fired for showing up drunk. Apparently, it was easier to fight demons drunk than it is to fix an engine.

Bobby bailed him out of jail the first few times he got locked up for bar fights.

Bobby bailed him out of jail the day after he wrapped the Impala around a tree driving home after a few bottles.

Bobby brought him to court when he kicked the window out of the cop car he was in after he was arrested for instigating a street fight.

The night Bobby found Dean in the junkyard, shivering in between seizures, covered in vomit, gasping for air, was the night Bobby gave up on Dean. He hauled Dean's drunk ass to the ER, dropped him off and told the doctors that he was washing his hands of the matter. He didn't tell Sam. He figured, Dean had to learn to exist on his own, or he'd never get a chance at an apple pie life.

That morning, Dean woke up in treatment. He thought he'd been miserable before in his life, but he realized at that exact moment he'd been wrong. Yeah, his life had sucked, and yeah, he'd been unhappy, but he'd always had a reason to keep going, work to do. Now, he had nothing.