(1) There has been an ongoing conversation on Twitter about when did Dean and Cas realize they are in love with each other so I decided to do a quick rewatch of the series and try to look into this in the most "realistic" way. Shipper googles off an all. [A BREAKDOWN THREAD]

(2) Let’s skip the part where I prove to you how Dean has always been coded as bisexual. Kripke basically lifted Neal Casady’s (Dean Moriarty) personality and copy-pasted it onto Dean. This has always been part of his characterization but was never supposed to become textual.

(3) Dean’s very devil may care, flirting with danger no matter if the villain is male or female. But the showrunners didn’t expect the very intense chemistry between Jensen and Misha, and that Cas eventually turned from scary antagonist to ally and this dynamic just stuck on them

(4) (It also didn’t help that they ditched the character Anna and gave her role to Cas, which was originally written as a romantic B plot)

(5) So Season 4 and 5 left Dean and Cas in a "brothers in arms" (war buddies) kinda relationship. One interesting thing is that their dynamic during this period is probably the most “flirtatious” on the show.

(6)S6: The romantic tension is turned down considerably. Bc Dean just left Lisa. The whole season Dean acts like a married, family man away from home. He is also a jerk. Dean and Sam are not the best friends to anybody this season, something they got called out for by Bobby.

(7) But still Cas's betray hit Dean pretty hard, because the relationship he had with Cas until now, was based on loyalty as old war buddies type relationships are.

(8)S7: The core theme for these two is guilt. Dean’s guilt is front and center. He is revealed to feel guilt for Jo, Sam, Amy, But of course, the thing that leads the guilt train is Castiel’s death. Something that Bobby and Sam keep pointing out. But he's also angry and...

(9)Cas has amnesia then goes crazy, so he never has the chance to confront him. But Cas reveals that his inaction is caused by guilt and fear of destroying things all over again and Dean who spent the season with his own guilt arc for the first time can really empathize with Cas.

(10)S8:purgatory. Dean’s feelings towards Cas are very different than in previous seasons. He simply feels for the guy. He doesn’t want to abandon/fail him like he sort of did in season 6, he empathizes with his guilt and won’t let him punish himself by staying in purgatory.

(11)Sam abandoned Dean and even when they reunite there is a massive Sam-sized void in Dean’s life. Dean looks at the people around him and starts to ask, where do these people fit into this space that Sam left empty in my life? Charlie, Benny, Kevin, Cas.

(12)Cas mysteriously comes back and the show puts Cas in a partner role for two episodes. First Cas joins them on a hunt as a hunter then Dean and Cas pair up to look for Alphie while Sam is gone with Amelia.

(13) Dean already forgave him and opened up a place for him in his life but Cas doesn’t take it. Cas is still ridden with guilt over destroying heaven so he goes off with the angel tablet and later decides to go back to heaven and try to fix it with Metatron.

(14) Also I think an “I love you” here would have been premature. For now, Dean looks at Cas as a partner but he is not at a point where he can redefine that definition from an (equal, adult) hunting partner to a romantic one.

(15)S9:Redefining partnership. Experiencing humanity, allows Castiel to start to add more names for the feelings he has for Dean. His devotion and loyalty are a very angelic take on being a partner, but his human experiences especially with April and Nora, are very "educational"

(16)This changes Dean’s take on it too.For the first time, Dean sees Cas take interest in sex and he gets excited about this. He already offered a place for Cas in his life (one he is willing to take now) but now there is a cracked door of possibility for romantic emotions.

(17)But then the other shoe drops and Dean’s mayor fuckups catch up with him and he regresses to thinking about himself as poison, somebody who destroys anybody who gets close to him. So that door of opportunity? He closes it and tries to forget about/erase it.

(18)As the season goes Cas takes a couple more steps towards humanity, for the first time he can truly empathize with Dean’s guilt. “You’ve been stupid for the right reasons” and then later with Sam’s “The only person who has screw things up more consistently than you, is me”

(19) I believe that for Cas the redefinition of partnership happens fully as Metatron tells him Dean is dead and for the first time in his existence Cas’s eyes tear up. Now he has a new name for his feelings, Love.

(20)S10:Cas starts out with acknowledged romantic feelings for Dean. Dean replaces Cas with Crowley as his partner. Their partnership has sexual subtext to it, while Cas has Hanna initiating romance that he promptly rejects. (This is not like April or Nora this time he is taken)

(21) Mid-season Cas tries to come back and actually take the place he was offered (dinner date), but now Dean is hesitant about it and the closed-door is completely ignored. In The Executioner’s song, we have 3 people (Sam, Cas, Crowley) who love Dean in different ways...

(22)These differences get pointed out in the parallel Cain draws for Dean. Crowley/Abbadon, Cas/Colette, Sam/Abel. And it finally clicks for Dean! It actually helps him reject Crowley and chose Cas as his partner for good but also now he cannot ignore that closed door again.

(23) He might not be ready to open it but acknowledges it in text with his own words in the confession scene two episodes later “There are things, people, feelings that I want to experience differently than before or even for the first time.”

(24)S11:An interesting thing here is that Dean got an explicitly romantic plot. It’s an incredibly creepy, uncomfortable one but: Here Amara acts as a stand-in for A(as in any) romantic partner. The acknowledged door? She ripped it open and force herself inside.

(25)She is not the right for that place in Dean's life but the door is open and for the rest of the season, Dean is being encouraged over and over again to accepts this. We get lines like “Follow your heart”, “love is cloaked in shame”, ect… but these are not about Amara or Cas.

(26)They are telling Dean to accept the part of his heart that wants a romantic relationship. And with who the audience might ask? Well as soon Cas is taken by Lucifer and Amara’s hold on Dean is broken, we get a pretty obvious answer.

(27)S12: This season is mostly about overall family dynamics. We get Mary back, whose role Dean took thirty years ago and he needs to confront Mary so he could move on from this role.

(28)As Dean is resolving his parental role he and Cas mostly act like an old, bickering married couple. They have a serious problem with miscommunication. The door is open but Dean doesn’t know how to invite Cas in, he doesn’t have the right words and he fears Cas will reject him

(29)Cas tries tho. He gave two speeches about his feelings. One when he killed Billy, and once when he was dying. He tells Dean he loves him but Dean understands it as platonic love not as romantic. Neither of them use quite the right words or actions, bc of the fear of rejection

(30) Things come to a halt between them tho when Cas starts his own journey to fatherhood.

(31)S13:The famous widower arc. The way Dean mourns Cas is not something we’ve seen in this show before. There is no parallel to it. The way Dean loses faith and gives up is a reaction reserved only for their relationship.

(32) But what really makes the grief arc extra is the insane amount of parallels and role changes. This is gonna be complicated I’m sorry but bare with me...

(33)Dean, lost his partner (Cas) and Mary, he is thrown into John’s role! Sam has to become Dean, the older brother, whose sibling (Jack) now has to be protected from Dean (John). Jack taking Sam’s role as the younger sibling, whose birth indirectly killed their father’s partner

(34)When Cas comes back from the empty for one episode they are one big happy family. It’s not a real dynamic yet more of a foreshadowing of TFW2. It is another door that cracks open with a new possibility and Dean and Cas gets a preview.

(35)Ironically it’s Jack and his new door that’s standing between Dean and Cas for now. Parents priorities their children over each other in healthy families. Cas is oblivious to what losing him did to Dean and he won’t even listen.

(36)After Jack goes missing, he gets captured. Dean tries to talk to Cas twice about it, but Cas shuts him down. He is in warrior mode. Dean tells him Jack brought him back because they need him. Cas understands this as Jack needs his protection, but that's not what Dean meant.

(37)S14:Is a great season bc for the first time Cas and Dean get to bond with Jack. Castiel can relate to Jack losing his grace, finding worth in a human life and Dean who taught humanity to Cas now takes his time with jack too. Their family dynamic slowly became almost complete.

(38) And here I’d like to take an opportunity to talk about Want VS Need because we arrived at an important turning point. Want is what the characters think they need to achieve to be happy. Need is what they really need to be happy.

(39)Dean always says he just wants to keep hunting just not on an apocalyptic scale, yet he is a family man through and through. Every dream sequence in the show shown him out of the hunting life, with his family.

(40)When he is locked inside his own head he is retired and owning a bar with his partner Pamela, who is littered with angelic symbolism and at one point asks him why does he want the thing he cannot get. That thing is a romantic relationship with not her but Cas.

(41)At this point in the show, what Dean wants is what he needs to be happy, and now he has the family part of that. When his dad comes back and tells Dean he wanted him to have a normal life, a family, he tells him that he already has a family.

(42)Cas had known for a while what he needs to be happy. When he is in the empty the entity can clearly see it inside his head and taunts him with it. Later it bargains with that want for Jack’s life.

(43)But now it’s not just a romantic relationship with Dean, it’s also Jack and the family unit they are. Cas sort of says it after everything falls apart: “We were a family and I didn’t wanna lose that.” No matter how much he loves Dean, he is always gonna pick Jack’s side.

(44) Dean and Cas spend very little time with each other this season they mostly split up one bonding with Jack while the other goes hunting.

(45) Ok last season, I'm just going to post the screenshot from the full post:

The full, more detailed breakdown: https://404dumbitch.tumblr.com/post/636712169139027969/a-destiel-breakdown