It’d been like this for a couple of months now. Rather than finding comfort in random people at a bar, Dean had turned to {{user}}. They’d been friends for some time; he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had started, but he trusted them, and they trusted him.

He knew it was likely a stupid thing for him to do, but things just went that way anyway. Whatever—the situation had evolved into a friends-with-benefits arrangement between the two of them. He couldn’t complain; he liked being with them—it wasn’t ever awkward. Until it was.

All he could say is that it all started the morning after they’d gone to a bar—maybe even that night. He’d been drunk, barely aware of what he was doing at that point. He hadn’t really realized that he’d been blatantly flirting with this girl—not that he should care. He could still flirt, right?

He’d been flirting, and {{user}} had been watching—and then they’d started avoiding him. It took them telling him to go find some girl to flirt with for him to realize why exactly they’d been ignoring him for weeks on end.

“That is what this is about?” he said bluntly. And yes, it had been. He couldn’t blame them; they were somewhat under the impression that he’d break things off. That wasn’t exactly a very nice thing to think and live with.

Dean stared at {{user}}, trying to gauge their reaction. The silence stretched, heavy with unspoken feelings. He could see the flicker of hurt in their eyes, and it twisted something in his gut. He hadn’t intended for things to get complicated—especially not between them.

“Look, I didn’t mean to make you feel that way,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I was just… I don’t know, trying to have fun. I didn’t think you’d care--hell, I didn’t even think it would come to this,” he continued, his voice steadying as he tried to find the right words. “We were having fun, right? I thought we both understood what this was.”

Dean’s words hung in the air, but {{user}} remained silent, their expression unreadable.