Song Remains the Same

Chapter 110: Bad Moon Rising

"I am swimming in an ocean all alone."
- Backstreet Boys

Two Weeks Later

Dean threw his jacket down angrily as he stormed into another predictably derelict motel room. No one came with him or waited for him. He was alone. And that's what had him so fired up.

The oldest Winchester wasted no time in expressing his furious frustration—the second after he slammed the door behind himself, he snatched up and then threw the motel phone that was sitting innocently on the kitchenette table. The plastic object cracked loudly against ugly flowered wallpaper before landing in broken pieces onto water-stained carpet. The sound of it hitting the wall abruptly jarred him out of his mania and Dean stared at that phone in a sudden crestfallen hopelessness—he breathed hard for a minute, raking a hand through his short hair in an attempt to calm the fuck down.

Everything was sideways. Sideways and screwed. A couple weeks ago he'd emerged from Purgatory and felt uncharacteristically optimistic. Like he had this and could handle it. He'd been overjoyed at the thought of seeing Sam, of finding Jamie and the baby, of getting Cas out of Purgatory and finding a new normal. See, after monsterland, planet earth was so much brighter than it had been before.

And then all his hopes and dreams had all gone to shit in a second: Alex disappeared back into Purgatory after inexplicably leaving behind an oddly formally worded note. Then the unbelievable phone call to his brother during which he had discovered Sam was basically a quitter and a traitor. Then Dean had stumbled into Jamie's childhood home and found out the daughter he'd been supposed to have had been miscarried. So, yeah. Dreams, crushed.

Now it was two weeks later and things still weren't really going his way. Scratch that: nothing was going right at all. The final letdown: while at breakfast this morning, he and James had fought over something stupid, she had blown a fuse at him and said she was done with his attitude then dumped her orange juice all over him on purpose before storming off and disappearing. She had just now sent him a text telling him she to go back to his life and leave her out of it. The hurt and confusion and anger inspired by that text message? Had just resulted in a broken motel phone. And a broken heart. But who cared about that?

Dean sank down to sit on the end of one of the motel room beds. The room was offensively quiet and empty, so silent that his chest hurt and anxiety grew inside. He stared at the TV that was off and blank in front of him.

...Now what? What is even happening right now?

He didn't know.

Dean was worthless without a mission to be part of and a role to fill. He was drifting internally, panicking a little because he was so powerless against the huge odds stacked against him. Alex and Cas missing and beyond his reach, Sam an ass, Jamie gone after, you know... breaking up with him or whatever that was. He knew she was scared shitless and that fear was making her self protect and run away. But his feelings were deeply hurt. She was so hot and cold lately, so volatile. Not really herself... and he knew that she was acting like that because she was getting more and more terrified with each passing hour. Dean's biggest fear was that maybe today was the day. He wondered that every single fucking day—he'd wake up and look over at her and wonder is today the day the Hellhounds are gonna come? And he had never known because she refused to say.

He'd woken up beside her every day for the past couple weeks as they'd lived in this weird bubble existence of avoiding reality... which was funny because they were hunting Jake the demon the entire time and that demon was the most bitter symbol of reality there was for Jamie. In the better moments it had been just the two of them and the Impala and the open road as Dean had headed up the get-James-out-of-going-to-Hell thing. Although there was a lot lying underneath the surface between them—questions, doubts, suspicions—just being near her gave him a sense of happiness that was few and far between for him in most respects. Even though there was a new heaviness there because of the lost child and everything else that was screwed up in their lives... even though they clashed and bickered like an old married couple half the time... he found himself a little deeper in every day as far as his feelings for her were concerned.