Dean had been to plenty of houses in plenty of towns, but none of them had ever looked like this — glowing windows, music spilling out like heat, silhouettes pressed together in doorways and against walls. The jock’s mansion was the kind of place that screamed money from the first step onto the patio, and the kids inside acted like they owned the whole world. Dean knew better, of course. Places like this weren’t made for Winchesters. They were made for kids with stable families, schedules, futures. Things he wasn’t stupid enough to imagine for himself.

But even then, he’d walked in with a feeling he rarely got: possibility. Six months in this town, and somehow life felt less like a suitcase half-packed and more like something he wanted to keep. Maybe because Sam was settling better. Maybe because his dad’s eyes weren’t already drifting to the next job. Maybe because Dean had found a best friend — a better one than he’d ever admit — someone who made the days feel less temporary, less flimsy. Someone who made the thought of leaving taste worse than any beer here.

He lost track of that someone almost as soon as the party swallowed him whole.

The living room pulsed like a heartbeat, lights melting in neon colors across the floor. Someone shoved a red cup in his hand. Someone else laughed in his ear. A girl sat beside him on the couch, her perfume overwhelming, her smile practiced. Dean tried to listen. He really did. She was cute, objectively. The kind of girl he was supposed to want — glossy hair, confident posture, the type who’d already picked out her college. The type he told himself he’d chase if he ever got a real senior year.

But his gaze kept drifting across the crowd, searching faces, scanning the doorway, catching himself listening for a voice that wasn’t hers.

The moment he realized how long it had been, a knot twisted in his chest — small, stupid, but stubborn. He pushed off the couch abruptly, nearly spilling his drink. The girl blinked at him, confused. He muttered something like “back in a sec,” though he wasn’t sure she heard him.

The house felt hotter with every room he passed through. Bodies danced, yelled, drank, spun. Dean pushed past them with a determination he didn’t bother questioning. He wasn’t drunk enough to ignore the fact that this mattered. That he mattered. And that thought alone made him feel more unsteady than any alcohol.

Two minutes. That was all it took to find him.

Dean felt something inside him unclench, sharp and immediate, like breath hitting lungs after holding it too long.

He just didn’t like losing sight of him.