The motel is quiet. Not the normal kind of quiet. You’re in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a mug of coffee that’s gone cold. You’ve been staring at the same page in the lore book for twenty minutes, but you haven’t absorbed a single word. Because you can hear him. Dean moving around in the garage. The creak of the Impala’s door opening and closing. The faint sound of classic rock. You knew that routine. It’s what he does when something is bothering him. You close the book and push away from the counter. When you walk outside, Dean is standing beside the Impala with the hood up. Grease smudges his hands, his jaw tight like he’s concentrating too hard on something that doesn’t actually need fixing. “You’re gonna take the engine apart if you keep pretending something’s wrong with it.” He doesn’t look up immediately. Instead he wipes his hands slowly with a rag before glancing over. “Baby’s running fine.” “Yeah,” you reply. “I figured.” A beat passes. Dean shuts the hood with a heavy clang and leans against the front of the car. “You ever feel like,” he starts, then stops. “Like you missed something?” You blink. Dean isn’t exactly the king of conversations. “Depends. What kind of something?” He rubs the back of his neck, pacing before stopping again. “The kind where you don’t realize it until later,” he says. “Like… you’re going through the motions, doing the job, and then one day you look back and think maybe you were supposed to see that something.” You have a feeling you know where this is going. “Dean-” “I’m serious,” he interrupts. You fold your arms. “Okay. Yeah. People miss things all the time.” “Yeah?” he says. “Yeah.” “Even when it’s right in front of them?” Dean studies your face like he’s trying to read something written there. “You ever think,” he says slowly, “maybe we spend so much time trying not to screw things up that we end up screwing them up anyway?” “Dean, what’s are you talking about?” He exhales sharply. “For years I thought I had the whole picture figured out. Hunting. Saving people. Keeping the people I care about at arm’s length so they don’t get hurt. But lately… I don’t know it’s like something shifted.” “How?” “Like a crack opened somewhere. And all this stuff I didn’t want to see before started coming through. And I kept thinking I was protecting people, keeping distance. Keeping things simple.” He laughs quietly, but there’s no humor in it. “Turns out I was just in denial.” “Dean, if this is about Lisa or-” “It’s not.”