Chapter Text
Drop in the Bucket
Chapter Track: Gospel Whiskey Runners - Muddy Waters
There’s a bottle of whiskey in his bag.
There are two more in the false-bottomed bottom drawer of his desk.
There are pills labeled ‘Effective’ and ‘Efficient’ and ‘Extreme Circumstances Only’ hidden in a box beside the first aid kit in his cabinet of a closet.
He keeps two joints, rolled painstakingly tight in thin pages ripped from a bible, hidden in each of the double-barrels of the sawed-off above his headboard. The first sawed-off he ever made, unstable and damaged and unusable, in the place of honor – another relic, another symbol, another reminder hanging above his head.
He has a small stash of miscellaneous paraphernalia hidden in the trunk of the Impala, in the space between the false bottom and the left taillight.
They were supposed to remain untouched, in case of emergency only, painful pieces of nostalgia, but he’s already made the first move.
Tomorrow, he’ll add a plastic pint under his pillow, and the hip flask he keeps tucked in his boot reserved for holy water will now be a holy water and whiskey cocktail – dual purposed.
His lip twitching, pulling back against his teeth momentarily before falling to the frown that has become his neutral, he dares anyone and everyone to tell him that he can’t prepare, can’t think ahead, can’t ‘plan for the future’. He knows where he’s going. In the end, it’ll be the very bottom of the pit; right now, it’ll be the very bottom of the bottle.
The mark on his arm, his newest scar, his newest brand, begins to heat beneath his skin; a tremble that begins as a twitch in his thumb spreads to take his hand, his wrist, his arm; a screeching, a squeal, a dogs whine quickly builds, filling the space behind his eyes, at the base of his skull, in the hollow of his throat.
He blinks his way through it, clenches his fist, shakes his head to clear away the more pervading than tinnitus ringing in his ears. There’s no point in contemplating what he already knows, and there’s no point in surveying what he has. It’s not a kingdom; it’s an escape.
He doesn’t bother to shut his door behind him as he steps into his room, finished hovering in his own doorway; Sam is out. Out-out. Won’t be back for a few days kind of out. Hasn’t been home in a few days. He reaches for the bottle in his bag first, and sets it beside the empty, though used and unwashed, coffee cup sitting beside the closed laptop on his desk. There’s no one to be polite for, no one to convince that he’s handling this – everything -- responsibly, no one to lie to about –
The box in his closet is dust covered and battered, but it rattles satisfyingly when he fumbles to pull it down from the shelf, all the little stolen pills with their hard to pronounce names in ugly-hunter-orange plastic and childproof bottles, bearing names that aren’t his. ‘Effective’ and ‘Efficient’ are easy enough to pick out from the rest, and he hastily replaces the box on its shelf as he eyes how many of the innocent white little caplets are left in each – more than enough for tonight. More than enough to last, unless he decides to do something stupid.
He steps back to his desk, uncapping the bottles and digging out a single pill from each – hesitating before digging out another from ‘Efficient’ and replacing their tops. He sets the bottles in his top drawer; hidden from immediate sight but there; just in case; just because; as he carefully sets the pills onto the desk. He hasn’t done this in years – exactly twice after Purgatory, a few times after Hell, a handful of times before that. It’s no ‘In Case of Emergency Only’ situation, but it’s definitely a ‘Sobriety Not Recommended’ situation. He takes the coffee cup with its dried dregs still ringing the bottom and begins crushing those three innocent enough little pills - slowly, methodically, push-and-twist - between the desk and its base, until there’s nothing but clumpy white powder left of them. He carefully brushes off the underside of the cup, uses his pinky to corral what’s on the desk into a pile and then off the edge of the desk into the waiting mouth of the mug, licks his finger clean as he untwists the cap off his whiskey. The chalk of the pills sticks to the back of his throat and the underside of his tongue, but he breathes through his nose for a moment, blanks his mind, muffles his own voice, and takes a swift mouthful of liquor. The burn washes the film from his tongue, tears through his throat, and for a second he breathes fire, gratefully warm and the relief immediately calming. But it’s momentary and superficial, so he splashes a finger of whiskey into his mug and with hasty, jerky movements swirls the dissolving powder, just barely, just enough, before tipping everything down the hatch.
The film coats his tongue again, so he takes another gulp from the bottle and hisses through his teeth, biting at his bottom lip. And for the next fifteen minutes, he repeats the process, until the ringing in his ears finally smothers itself to white noise, until his vision begins to fuzz and blur and soften the brick of the wall he’s been staring at, until his lip is raw and his teeth are pulling thin strips of copper and iron tainted skin away with them. He checks the bottle clenched in his fingers, breaking the rhythm he’s built in its journey between his mouth and the edge of the desk, and finds that it’s already nearly half empty. He hadn’t tasted any of it, only drowned his senses in the burn, but now he can feel the clench in his belly and the heat pooling in his core and the fuzz of his tongue.
He tries to raise a hand to rub at the bridge of his nose, at the itch starting in his eyes, but his fingers are heavy and fumble lazily. He blinks at them confusedly – this is progressing much quicker than it used to, as far as he can remember, though he doesn’t try very hard to. Taking stock of his own body, he realizes that the constant ache in his feet has soothed, that the ever present tension along his spine has released, that his shoulders feel loose and his arms heavy, that his ears feel warm, and his face relaxed, that his skin itches, feels both too loose and too tight around him, that his right arm, his mark, has begun to burn again, smolders straight from his bones, warms through to his fingertips, but it is easy to ignore and just adds to the weight pulling him down; it’s as though every piece of him has become triply susceptible to gravity, every muscle and molecule being pulled towards the ground, and it takes much more focus than typically necessary to ensure that his tongue is fit comfortably in his mouth, that his jaw doesn’t hang open. As if on cue he stumbles, though he doesn’t recall attempting to move or any reason for his knees to buckle, and he has to throw his arm out to catch himself against the back of his desk chair heavily.
Breathing through his nose he tries to draw in a deep breath, wills his chest to expand, for oxygen to fill him, but instead his lungs only stutter and hitch, cough out an exhale. He tries again, and though it ekes and protests, he manages to swallow and gulp enough to steady the swaying of walls around him. His legs are still unsteady, though, and he clumsily falls to his ass on the floor, forgoing any attempt at grace. The edges of the mattress behind him are both insistently prodding and comfortingly giving, as he tips his head back and fumbles to raise the bottle to his mouth again, knocks his knuckles against his nose. The edges around his thoughts are beginning to blur, just as every other sensation is, and he forces himself to swallow heavily, once to clean his palate, again to calm the sudden angry boil in his gut. But it doesn’t quiet, and his lungs fill with static. It takes every fuzzy, flickering, straining, escaping bit of focus to keep from wheezing his lungs dry and instead suck in steadying, small, thin gasps of cool air for as long as he possibly can, no matter which part of him protests.
He does not know when he loses that focus, when any focus at all leaves him, when his eyes fell closed, and his mind, his thoughts, his head, his body, goes still and calm, floats through space unaware. He only notices their absence upon their return, to a muted buzz of vibration from his pocket like an unsteady heartbeat. His lips are sticky, catching against each other as he ensures his jaw still works, his tongue grates against his teeth and cheeks, his lungs complain at their sudden call to action, forcing a rushed and heavy hack, groan, curse out of him. As he blinks first one eye open and then the other, clears the crust from his lashes, the blur from his vision, he realizes that the beat from his pocket – his phone – has silenced, and that, surprisingly, though his head feels heavy and slow, it is clear of both pain and thought.
Assessing the situation, he finds that he has a crick in his neck from sitting with his chin against his chest for the not-yet-known amount of time he’s been here, his legs are still attached to his body, his boots are entirely uncomfortable, his clothes smell old and wrinkled and unwashed, his left arm is mildly numb and just now starting to tingle back into sensation, and his right hand is still clenched tight and stiff around the neck of the whiskey bottle, more empty than he remembers it was but not a drop spilt, and the skin around his brand feels like an open wound, vulnerable and raw, pulsing with his heartbeat. He sniffs thickly, and raises the bottle to take a mouthful, swirling the day-old and dried spit and fuzz and cotton away and down his throat.
In the meantime, his pocket begins its buzzing again, and he coughs the burn from his lungs quickly, licks the last remaining drops from his lips, and sets his bottle aside with too much force than really necessary but with no strength to do otherwise. He pries the phone from his pocket with shaking hands and too-thick fingers, groaning to his empty room as the bright name across the screen finally registers into recognition. He swipes the screen and presses clumsily at the green dot to answer the call he really would have rather ignored, but Sam would probably just call again, anyways; he wasn’t sure what Sam would do if he’d ended up ignoring that call, too, not with the way they’ve been lately, ‘Business Only’.
“Hey.” His voice comes out hoarser than he expected it to be, and he screws his eyes shut, rubbing at his brow line and over the bridge of his nose.
“Dean? It’s past noon – were you sleeping? Why the hell are you sleeping?”
One at a time Sam, please. “Yeah.” His voice still croaks, and his throat feels tight, closed up, choked off, so he clears it instead of snapping the excuses and reasons building under his tongue. “What’d’ya got?”
The two second pause and burst of crackling static into his ear tells him that Sam isn’t satisfied – with him or his answer or his actions; a reoccurring theme. But Sam jumps right over the words, all the same. “Nothing. Open and shut over here. I’m gonna start heading back tomorrow, should be there the day after.”
He grunts an affirmative, he hopes, sounding huff, and tries to lick his lips again but his tongue twists against his teeth.
“So yeah. That’s it. I’ll see you when I get there, Dean.”
“Yeah.” Goddamnit, he can’t help the strain in his voice. “Be safe, Sam.” He wants to say more, but that’s all Sam will allow him. Wants to say, ‘drive careful’, ‘can’t wait’, ‘I’ll be here’, but knows that Sam doesn’t want to hear any of it, so tethers it down.
“Yeah. I will. Bye.”
The phone beeps, call ended, and he throws it over his shoulder onto his unused, hardly ever used lately, bed. ‘Fuck’, he hisses into his empty room, and rubs his palms against his eyes, pushing the light away from them and relishing in the silence it leaves, just for a minute. It’s all he can get.