Damn Nuisance When It's Raining - Hypomania
Sam doesn’t look too happy when he walks into the sweet cloud of smoke that’s their motel room.
“You’re smoking again?”
He purses his lips until they're a thin line, raises his eyebrows until they’re hidden under those ridiculous bangs of his which makes Dean snort and then cough.
“No. No, yesterday I was smoking again. Today, I’m smoking still.”
“Oh great, you’re in one of those moods.”
Dean flops down on his bed, the joint sticking straight upwards between his teeth so that when he focuses on it, Sam’s face gets all blurred out of shape in the background.
“Yeah…”
“You know, the last time I saw you act like this, you stole the car so you could go to Seattle and find the ghost of Kurt Cobain.”
Dean grins. Because that was one hell of an awesome hunt ‘till the police picked him up and Dad had to ride the bus all the way to Washington State to get him out and also because, dude, if Sammy thinks Dean hasn’t been in this kind of mood since he was seventeen then the kid’s got serious issues with reality.
“You’re not gonna hunt down the ghost of Kurt Cobain again, are you, Dean?” Sam asks but it’s more of a growl, mixed with a sigh.
Nah, Dean thinks. Been there, done that. Plus, he’s got other plans. Mainly to finish this joint so he can focus on all the other plans he’s been making. He’ll probably pick the one that involves finding a couple of the special kids so he can figure out what's the deal with that.
Or, you know, ice cream. Ice cream and waffles. And tacos.
Ghosts are boring. They’re boring personified, howling and shrieking, like they don’t even realize they all sound the same. And they have stupid names like Trevester Garvey or Temperance McFarren and Dean is pretty sure they should be focusing on Yellow Eyes and the chosen kids right now, anyway.
“We should,” Sam agrees. His face is sweaty, gleaming slightly in the light from the full moon. “But we don’t have any leads on him right now, so can you maybe get down here and help me dig?"
Temperance is flickering in and out of focus just outside the salt circle they drew around her grave (which is something Dean came up with and damn, is he proud of that stroke of genius). She points one grey finger at them and screeches.
They always screech. And they're always so grey, like someone spoon-fed them boring for five-hundred years. Dean makes a face at her, sticks out his tongue and crosses his eyes and next to him Sam looks up at the sky and huffs out a tired sigh.
Dean tries to ignore the gentle buzzing under his skin as best as possible. He shifts on his bed and Sam barely opens his mouth when he tells him to “se’le th’ fuck down, ‘m tryn’ t’ sl’p.” Dean is jittery, his mind going from Temperance McFarly to Yellow Eyes to the hot, throbbing cut on the inside of his elbow.
He wonders when he last slept like a normal person. Lawrence probably. And maybe not even then because Dad always said he’d get up in the middle of the night and crawl into Sammy’s crib.
Sighing softly, he turns back onto his other side and runs his nails over the cut until one of the stitches pops out and the can feel the fresh blood pulsing against his skin.
Blood.
Dean should look into blood magic if he ever wants to figure out what Yellow Eyes wants with Sammy. His finger presses down into the soft flesh of his arm.
Dean needs coffee.
His mattress creaks when he hops down onto the floor and Sam groans again and throws a long arm over his face, mumbling into his pillow.
“Night, night, Sammy.”
Dean grins all the way to the coffee shop. And then another idea occurs to him. And then another.
He’ll just have to look into everything.
Sam politely ignores the weed which is a pretty fuckin’ big accomplishment, seeing how Dean isn’t exactly going out of his way to hide it.
Someone offers him some blow once, says, “you don’t look like the downer type, man,” but Dean’s not going down that road again.
It’s not even that it helps. Not really. But sometimes it’s enough to make a heavy mist settle over the dozens of thoughts and even if it doesn’t slow them down, not having to look at them is kind of nice.
"Don't get caught, okay?" is all Sam says when Dean smacks his lips and stuffs money in his pockets to head into the nearest Wendy's parking lot. Dean grins big and pretends he didn't forget about that business with the FBI entirely.
Dean has this idea.
Actually, he has several ideas and they all somehow circle back to the special kids. They circle back and around them, lead to them and every theory sparks another one. He's got Dad's journal open on the passenger seat, a couple of copied pages from the library stacked behind the steering wheel, Sam's laptop balanced on his knees and Bobby on speed dial in case he gets any new ideas that need cross checking.
His eyes have moved right past dry and gone straight to watering from the bad lighting. The websites aren't helping either. Watching them load, out here in the parking lot, running on the motel's shitty wireless makes Dean feel like he's watching a little slave army build the page one pixel at a time. And then once they're done loading, the pages are almost exclusively neon red or stark white text on black background and yeah, hell for Dean's eyes but he doesn't particularly care.
He doesn't know how long he's been sitting out here. Sam threw him out, sometime around four thirty because "normal people sleep, dude. Turn off my computer. Your porn won't disappear overnight."
Dean wasn't even watching porn. Much.
He reads through a forum, some girl claiming she’s got a personal relationship with a demon and she’s trying to have his baby. Dean shakes his head and makes a couple of notes on one of the papers. Maybe he’ll use them later.
His eyes are really starting to hurt.
He tries to ignore them, stay focused. A few minutes later he gets interrupted anyway, by a plate suddenly appearing in front of him, right on top of a black-and-white copy of some newspaper clippings. There is some toast, salami, lettuce, and some cut-up tomatoes arranged on it, but for the life of him, Dean’s brain can't figure out the significance.
"I made you a sandwich."
"Okay," Dean says because that seems like the right thing to say. He looks up and forces himself to focus on Sam where the window's supposed to be, leaning down to fit his head and shoulders through the doorframe, both eyebrows raised in a somewhat bemused expression.
The sky behind Sam's giant floppy head is a light blue. Huh.
And oh, right. Sandwich. Breakfast. Dean's brain kicks back in like a cold, stuttering engine.
"Thanks?" he tries because again, that seems to be expected. "When'd you learn to cook?"
"I made you a sandwich." Sam gives him the weirdest look.
"Okaaaaay. When'd you learn how to make sandwiches?"
That doesn't seem to make Sam any happier. "When I lived on my own for three and a half years? What, you expect me to live on mac'n'cheese all that time?"
Dean shrugs. Actually, that sounds kind of awesome.
"Look, I just got tired of you eating mini pretzels at four in the morning. It's annoying, so I made you something."
Right. That's just... yeah, that's just weird's what that is. Dean eyes the sandwich suspiciously, then glares up at Sam but for once the kid's got his poker face in place, so Dean decides to focus on the most obviously weird part of this.
"What're you watching me eat for at four in the morning? Creep..."
Dean doesn't know why but that blows the passive look right off Sam's face.
"What?" he laughs in a weird, sort of yell. "You live within three feet of me and when you eat it sounds like you’re having sex with your food."
Oh. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
"I gotta work on this demon-witch special relationship thing." Dean grunts and takes the sandwich off of his notes without taking a bite.
Dean is on his eighth purple nurple, he thinks. They numb the constant, gentle buzzing. Make everything pretty. Starla’s pretty. Real, TV pretty.
She matches him one shot for every two of his and she’s giggly and presses her breasts against his arm when they’re talking.
Sam was here at some point, bitching about their case like he always does, or maybe jealous because Starla’s really more his type than Dean’s, but Dean’s got dibs. He went away though, probably sulking in a corner or something.
Starla whispers something into his ear, her breath ghosts over Dean’s skin, warm and soft and it makes the little hairs on his arms stand up straight. The bass from the jukebox is loud enough to drown it all out, but it doesn’t matter, Dean gets her drift. He gives her a smile made of teeth which she returns and God, he doesn’t even care about the dead professor anymore, as long as he can have those legs of hers wrapped around him for one night.
Bobby comes and sets them straight about the car and whatever’s wrong with Sam’s computer. He says it’s all because of the trickster, but then he gives Dean that long, passive look that makes Dean’s skin crawl with some sour anxious emotion.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asks before he gets into his truck.
Dean touches his busted lip and shrugs, grinning so big it hurts his face.
Here's the thing: These kinds of moods, the insomnia, it isn't so bad. Sure, sometimes Dean will lie in his bed, watching the stains on the ceiling blur in and out of focus, but it's never as bad as it was when he was on the anti-depressants. Dean can sleep when he absolutely needs to. Not for long and not without some seriously weird-ass dreams, but he always wakes up alert enough to function.
There're no hallucinations either, which is good because Sam probably wouldn't approve of Dean's 'shoot at the shadows to figure out if they're the real deal' approach.
Sam groans and mumbles curses into his pillow when Dean comes back at four in the morning, smelling like booze and sex and still feeling too wired to go to sleep.
He kicks off his boots and falls headfirst onto his bed without bothering with his other clothes.
“Great night, Sammy,” he says and Sam groans again and shifts as close to the wall as possible. “Seriously awesome. I met this hippy chick - Rainbow or Raspberry or somethin’ - you know, batik shirt, peace and granola bars for everybody, life affirmation kinda shit.”
They affirmed life alright. Four times.
Sam makes another sound in the back of his throat that’s almost kind of like a small sob and that’s Dean’s cue that he really isn’t ready to listen right now. He’ll tell him about it in the morning.
His pillow smells like coffee.
Dean vaguely remembers knocking over an almost empty Starbucks cup and thinking he’d call for housekeeping later.
Three days ago.
The smell doesn’t seem particularly moldy, so Dean shrugs and moves his face out of the stain.
Sam’s getting annoyed with him.
Dean can tell, but life’s just so much fun right now, he can’t force himself to care. It’s nice, not worrying and not caring and getting shit done with a smile on his face.
Sometimes Sam looks at him and Dean knows he's been doing that thing again where he starts out fast and only gets faster and faster and even Sammy's little genius brain can't follow along.
It makes him grin, that kind of thing. He forces himself to stop his mouth, and throw his head back to laugh. He tells Sam to relaaaaax and turns up the radio no matter what stupid Top40 shit it's playing.
Dean’s brain goes off on crazy tangents.
Sam has a headache. He insists it’s not from a vision and refuses to let Dean help beyond bringing him some Aspirin.
So Dean lets his mind wander and keeps up a running commentary of his thoughts, because why the hell not? They’re interesting, these thoughts of his.
“It’s kind of like being one of the X-Men, don’t you think? I mean dude can you imagine what that’s like for the other kids waking up one morning and being able to do all kinds of crazy shit just like that snap your fingers and congratulations you’ve just turned into Magneto here have a cupcake you can buy a t-shirt on the way out.”
Sam looks at him with wide eyes from where he’s resting against the headboard of his bed and Dean realizes he’s been doing the talking without commas thing again. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to slow down.
“That’s like…man, that’s gotta feel like you’re tripping balls. Like finding out the kids from Full House are all Uncle Joey’s.”
Sam still looks super lost.
“How’d you? I thought you were talking about the X-Men - Uncle Joe-- what?”
Must be a bad headache. Or the Aspirin’s off and turned into something stronger. Actually, that might be really useful, get rid of the whole stealing prescription meds from hospitals deal and just let the Aspirin turn into morphine and save them all the hassle.
Uhm…right. Full House. Joey’s kids. Dean’s totally back on track.
“The kids on Full House. They’re all Uncle Joey’s.” It’s so freakin’ obvious. Why is Sam looking at him like that? “Like, you know how their mom was Greek and Bob Saget’s got dark hair, so for three blonde kids, she’s gotta have been fuckin’ Joey.”
Sam tries to say something several times but stops himself and shakes his head. Dean decides to help him along.
“Simple biology, college boy.”
Sam shakes his head again. “You realize that’s not how genetics actually work, right?” and Dean can’t clamp down on the stupid happy grin because dude, he got Sam to say something that isn’t about how nobody cares about Dean’s 80’s sitcoms. “I mean, Uncle Jesse’s kids were blonde too, so-“
“Yes! Yes, only ‘cuz good ole’ Joe hit that first.”
“Oh God.”
“Fool proof theory, Sammy. Admit it.”
“The neighbor girl’s a blonde,” Sam says, rubbing his temples, and he looks like he’s scared of what Dean’s got to say to that. He needn’t be because damn, Dean’s got this shit on lock down.
“Uncle Joey’s kid. And the dog. The yellow dog’s his kid too.”
Sam looks up at the water stains on the ceiling. Looks like he might be doing some kind of breathing exercise. “Oh my God. I’m gonna go out and buy…something. You take a cold shower. Please.”
They go to California and Dean becomes the best PA the industry’s ever seen. Sam is still annoyed with him and Dean is still having too much fun to care. He bangs the lead actress and a couple of the girls in catering and life’s great.
Sam is worried Dean’s spending too much money, leaving too much of a trail with the credit cards, but Dean figures if he’s going to be running from the FBI, he’s going to do it with some goddamn style.
Here’s the other thing: Dean would probably stay like this forever if he could. He’s fast and alive and thrumming with energy that’s not quite the electric shocks that would make him want to peel his skin off, back when he was on the Prozac. He doesn’t need to sleep, but he can when he wants to and everything would be great if it weren’t for the inevitable crash. And because he’s not been so completely free fallingly gone over the edge ever since the whole Cassie fiasco, he knows that the crash is coming.
It’s not always brutal, dark, plummeting into a hole, but it’s enough of a threat to be hovering on the edge of his consciousness as soon as he feels his mood going back to normal.
And this time…
Well, this time it’s not a crash and it’s not a gentle let-down that leaves him empty for a few days.
Sam dies and Dean straps a ticking time bomb to his heart and that cools him down like a bucket of ice water.
| Depression|