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[dedikated]

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status: [ available ]
location(s): [ spiral 2, house 1404 // the clinic ]
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Comments

text;

[kickingand]

[ He may be an asshole, but he is generally a good. ]

my thoughts exactly.

text;

[dedikated]

Bar in an hour?

Or just bring a bottle round. Loser's choice.

text;

[kickingand]

bars good. tabs on me.

text;

[dedikated]

See you there.

action!

[kickingand]

[ Dean.. instead of waiting an hour, just heads on straight to the bar. Why? Because why the hell not.

But mostly because drinking is easier than about a hundred and one things right now and so he gives in and finds them a place to sit and kicks back with a beer. There'll be tequila, he promises, but he's not downing shots for a full hour before Kate gets here, that'd just be... y'know, stupid. ]

\m/

[dedikated]

[ well, some people decided they have to work in order to prevent going stir crazy, so they can't just roll on down to the bar whenever. but she is there, in an hour, as promised - halfway through switching her bun out for a ponytail. ]

Starting th' party without me? [ It's said nicely enough, a smirk on her face as she sits down at the table, leaning back in the chair. ]

fistpump!!!

[kickingand]

[ Well! Well!!!

Some people wouldn't know how to work if it bit them in the ass and took them out to dry but that's not really the point. Dean is firmly in the land of trying to figure out how to drink himself to a solidly early grave, even if beers won't do him in by a long shot. And yet he's still in a haze by the time Kate arrives, looking up like a whipcrack at the sound of her voice and raising his eyebrows as if he's been caught before he catches hold of the moment and waves a hand towards the free chair. ]

Always a party when i'm invited. [ except he sounds a touch dour about the idea. ]

[dedikated]

[ She probably wouldn't have waited for the invite anyway, but it's nice to be acknowledged. And sure, this entire bet is a bit silly when one considers that there's no economy here to speak of - so ordering is less a question of buying and more one of throwing out orders at the people bartending - but it's an excuse for a drink, so why the hell not?

The comment gets a raised brow for nothing more than the fact that she doesn't miss the tone that doesn't fit with the words being said. ] Sound thrilled about that. [ What sarcasm? She rests her arms on the table and watches him rather than simply looking. ]

[kickingand]

[ As if Dean ever really needs an excuse to drink, but he's taking it anyway and running - hitting the pavement so damn hard he's going to break his own skull. He's been pounding it hard lately and he knows it, not helped by the constant stream of Cas putting him to bed like he's a child, but Dean's all hung up on too many things and he's already avoiding topics, waving a hand at whoever's bartending for the night to bring over the first round.

And then he's looking back to acknowledge the words, not necessarily pointed but still on target and he shrugs a shoulder as if it's not a problem. When it is. And lord is he ever trying, but he only has it in him to fail right now. ]

I did lose a bet. [ and there goes the last of his beer. ]

[dedikated]

[ She's not going to comment on the drinking, because she really has no room to, when she pulled this bet out of her ass in the first place. It's not like she hasn't slammed back drinks like water for enough of her life anyway. He'll survive a bit too much beer and tequila.

Shotglasses, salt and lime. She doesn't even hesitate in grabbing a glass and knocking it back, chasing the burn down with the same quick movements she got way too used to back in Manchester.

(You either drank quickly enough to keep up with Alicia or you didn't drink.) ]

It was a dumb bet. [ She really is in a good enough mood that nothing she says sounds mean, it's just. Direct. ] How long've you been drinking now? [ Like that. It's just a question - how much catching up does she have to do? ]

[kickingand]

[ Dean snorts, because aren't most bets dumb? He even cracks a marginal grin before knocking back his own shot once they've appeared, ignoring the burn without even fragmenting his features. He's done shots more times than he can count, this is no different... except everything is different and that's the goddamn problem.

But that's not something that's on the table. Booze is; booze is always on the table, and it's a damn excellent hiding place when you know how to abuse it. ]

Not too long. [ There's not even a shrug this time - he doesn't care that he's mixing liquor. Probably should, has to wonder just how far he's willing to take this alcoholic joy ride but he just doesn't care, and he slips his shot glass upside down a little too proudly. Fake as fuck. ] Couple of beers don't exactly count, do they?

[dedikated]

Depends on the beer. [ She has tried some fucking toxic ones in her time. Ones that state 10% and come with enough bite to make you wonder if that wasn't an understatement when you find yourself face down on the bar after three pints.

The one problem with shots is that they need to be topped up too quickly, so she grabs the attention of someone and just asks for the whole bottle and enough lime - or whatever these citrus fruits actually are - slices to get them through it.

Much simpler. ] Never tastes right, does it? [ The burn is like tequila, but something in the aftertaste lingers all wrong in the back of her throat. ]

[kickingand]

Point. [ Because hoo boy some beer is crap and that hipster shit? Is not somethi--- okay that's a lie, some of the hipster shit is pretty good and he's ashamed of that fact, but once again: whatever. The point he's making is that he's desperately looking for things to hide behind and so far? It's effective.

But hey, the bottle is making its way over and for that, Dean is thankful. He feels a bit like he's had something glass and alcoholic glued to him nonstop for days now and the trend doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon but it's there and so is the weird fruit and that's all that matters, because Dean is already lining himself up for another shot like an afterthought. ]

Got it close enough to count, though, didn't they? [ He bobs his head a bit, almost apologetically, as if he's the one who has something to make up for. ]

[dedikated]

[ The hipsters make good beer. It's basically their only real use.

Unlike her drinking partner, Kate does at least take a few moments to let the taste of the last shot settle in her mouth before pouring another. ]

Like everything else here. [ She guesses. What with the furniture that doesn't look right and the appliances with their strange settings. This place feels like it was built by children who wanted things to look cool without much consideration of how they, practically, would work. Another shot gone and Kate tilts her head, letting the taste linger without a chaser for a moment.

Nope. Not better without the chasers. She rips into the salt and the lime and starts pouring another. ]

[kickingand]

[ It's true. Dean won't fess up to it because he has no reason to, but it's... undeniably true.

But Dean isn't interested in letting the booze languish. He just wants it absorbed, wants himself doused and drowned in it, doesn't want to have to think about anything at all apart from how much can he get away with drinking and still be able to get his sorry ass home without Cas' help. But he's still not thinking about it hard enough - another shot, another chaser, and at least this time Dean is wrinkling his nose and peering suspiciously at what would normally be a lime. ]

You'd think they could'a at least read a Dummies Guide or two. Starter manual to fucking our shit up.

[dedikated]

[ starter manual or no, the gods certainly seemed to know how to do that. the thought flits across her face in a sour twist that has nothing to do with the last shot she knocked back - everything, damn near everything that's happened here so far seems to be geared to fucking them up. designed to drag out all the wounds and shit she thought she'd buried under a nice layer of being too busy to think about it. there is nothing worse for her - perhaps for anybody - than idle time, which ticks by until you're thinking of that kid whose pen you nicked when you were seven and feeling like a dick for it.

all that time plus a skewed understanding of their prisoners? somehow made it that much worse down here.

fuck it. ] Fuck 'em. Don't want to think about their ideas. [ actually... she'll take another shot, thanks. because trying not to think about a thing inevitably means you're going to think about that thing and kate is expecting that they're not getting a break this month. last month seemed too tame already. ]

[kickingand]

[ It's the worst part of this all - all this sitting around on his ass with nowhere to go. Nowhere to drive; escapism is Dean's finest art and one he was taught to achieve at an early age without even the solidity of meaning behind it. But it's all Dean knows - how to go, how to run, and there's none of that here except within the bottom of a bottle of booze. The God's have forced him here and he hates it, can't stand the walls closing in on him and the terror on the edge of his seat is enough to propel him into stupid acts just because he has nowhere to hide. ]

But they've got such good ones. [ It's bitter sarcasm and down with it goes another shot, this time Dean foregoing the chaser just so he taste the acrid twist of it across the back of his throat, the burn that chokes. ]

Keep telling myself it could get worse and then, hell- [ but he doesn't truly mean the gods. Not really. Not when it's himself he's starting to hate more than everything else. ] Lookit that, it just keeps getting worse.

[dedikated]

[ The place is a true cage, and she'd understand that probably better than most. The way the walls seem to cling at you and no amount, no amount of bounding from roof to roof - no matter how often she does it or how many time she changes the circuit - makes that go away. Nothing the gods have done can truly make this place feel like the kind of cities she's used to jumping across and the decorative efforts - no matter how relaxing they were at the time - just do nothing but somehow drive that point home even better.

God, she hates the underground. Even one as spacious as this. Even with the good things that can be scraped out of this situation, nothing quite erases the fact that she will always feel, on some level, that this is some delayed punishment for all the things she did with The Agency. Like she isn't allowed to forgive herself for that, even if Glacius asks her to try.

It's too much like those things for her to see anything else in it, no matter how much she distracts herself with work. It doesn't change the place she has to see when she walks from building to building.

She waits on a shot for a moment, until Dean's finished talking, and then pours herself one, the slowly building buzz of alcohol enough to ask the kind of question that would normally have that little, Marc-sounding voice in the back of her head talking about tact and other things. ] You don't just mean the shit they put us through, do you? [ She glances to the side when she says it, watches someone walk past and keeps her voice low enough to not leave their table. ]

[kickingand]

[ It's a slow death, this breed of suffocation, and Dean doesn't know what to do about it. He doesn't know how to escape himself right now and it's driving him further up the wall than he might usually crawl, desperate to find a home away from himself when there is no escape, no respite. There are no long stretches of road, no loud speakers, no music to dull the steady, furious ache. He's raging, mad at himself for a million and one things and all of them rest so steadily on his shoulders that it makes it hard to breathe and god, sometimes he hates it here more than he wants to admit to.

But right now; right now he hates it more because he hates himself most of all. He hates the confusion, the sickening taste of not knowing himself beyond the rampant alcohol, not knowing where to find his own limbs and how to access his own mind. He feels foreign and lost, like he keeps stumbling into walls onto to find himself on the other side of the room where he wasn't meant to be in the first place.

He doesn't want to blame it on Cas, because it's not his fault, this terror. This terror that he'll lose it all, lose himself and more. But he can't help being angry - it's what he's good at. It's what he knows, and what he knows is all he cling to right now.

The words don't entirely catch him off guard. Not that he's expecting them, but they aren't a shock either, and he narrows his gaze a bit, staring a sharp hole through the table because right now apparently he's forgotten how to lie. He even stumbles over some empty words through parted lips as if he can brush it aside easy and when he finally looks up he's got nothing. Nothing good at least. Though he does manage to shake his head and almost force a laugh, anything at all to provide that isn't a lost cause. ]

This place isn't actually any worse than home. [ He shrugs a shoulder, as if that's an answer. As if it means all the things he wishes he could make it mean. ] I got the bullshit down pat.

[dedikated]

[ She's heard enough about home for Dean to know that's actually true; heard from spewed out late night confessions all sorts of ways that their fucked up life caused Sam to fuck up and she's not innocent enough to believe that was all of the shit that happened.

(She would like to believe it, she really would, as if she could believe hard enough to make it true. But she can't do that any more than she can bury the memories of her parents' bodies or Marc's throat being slit in front of her.)

The slowly building haze of alcohol is, however, not quite enough to have her trip up on those revelations - not verbally anyway. The fact that her expression barely twitches at those words, that she doesn't bother to turn her head back to the table just yet, though... That might come across as a little unusual.

Or maybe her own world just sucks that much, who knows?

(Hint: she actually likes home, now that her life doesn't have to revolve around killing and torture any more.)

Eventually, Kate gives up watching the people in the bar and rests her chin on threaded fingers, just watching Dean silently for a moment. ] Therefore booze? [ It sounds like a quip, said lightly and easily, but her expression remains this flat, inscrutable thing. Yeah. Therefore booze. That is something she knows how to do. Things hurt and you drink until the only thing you can find space to concentrate on is how to move your limbs to get yourself standing, walking. ]

[kickingand]

[ He's thankful for the fact that there's no questions on what home is and he has to know why that's the case without thinking too hard about it. It's not as if he was teasing Sam for no reason whatsoever - they've talked, the two of them, Sam and Kate, and Dean isn't jealous so much as he wishes he knew how to speak about anything anymore. Words have suddenly become frozen in mid air between him and everyone and Dean feels like a wreck, as if his mind was handed away without his permission. Trying to verbalize a single thing is like finding himself entwined with his own foul carnage and it's one more useless attempt to find himself.

Another shot is pounded by Dean, another chaser gone down and Dean wouldn't care if they were quips or jokes or softly offered gestures that she's giving. All he knows is that he doesn't know how to speak or react or be himself anymore but he's been lost since the second he stepped foot in these damned caves.

All he wants is to go home, but now he has to wonder if that would even help. If that would take back the moment he was forced to step back and wonder if he had always been all these things, and if he'd just never noticed.

It's Dean's turn to look away, to people watch, or more like stare at anything that isn't Kate, the warm blur of alcohol finally starting to make an entrance. Dean can't even pull apart his own threads and yet everyone seems to know better than him and it's insane, it hurts, it makes him feel like he's battling far more than the Mark and he just doesn't know where to turn. There's no part of him left in his own access and it's turned him inside out. ]

Not like there's anything else. [ Except Cas - the words are so obvious they make even Dean cringe. ]

[dedikated]

[ Words never are easy. They're only ever pulled out from the mouth like wisdom teeth without anesthetic and every time it hurts just as much. She's left far too many things unsaid in her life because of it and trying to change that comes in stops and starts of too much and not enough said, comes with that never-changing urge to stop dead halfway through and wrap those layers around her heart again.

The answer she gets, unlike the last, does get her full attention, earns a flicker of surprise that crosses her face and disappears into nothingness quickly enough that it could have been imagined if it wasn't for the fact that whatever neutral expression she usually defaults to is decidedly not there, is replaced by something cagier and more melancholy.

Nothing else, when they both know he isn't here alone - that his brother's here, that Cas is - and it's painful to admit, it's always painful to admit that she can never really stop being jealous of the people down here who have their loved ones from home by their sides, no matter how many reasons she lists that it's better to be anywhere but shithole cavetown. ] Or like you're by yourself. [ Those words could be saccharine, could be pure after school special if said the right way. But instead they're said after three shots in a row without a chaser and can't properly shake the bitterness that's crept into her mind. ]

[kickingand]

[ Dean knows what it's like to be alone. He's been there, done that, lived that life. Maybe he did it with his father in tow when Sammy was away at college and maybe he experienced Hell without a life raft of anyone cushy around so why the fuck is he bitching? He knows, and the words she give in response make him feel like shit because he knows. He's got Sam, he's got Cas, and therefore he's got more than his fair share already and it's shit to say he's got nothing when he's got both of his everything's and then some. They're his whole world, isn't that enough?

Except right now he can't grapple with it and it makes him feel even worse, like he's rotting from the inside out, unable to access the two things he needs most. Makes him feel lost when he's standing with a map, as if the guide book should be telling him the way when all it is, is in another language entirely. ]

Yeah, I know, I know- [ He hangs his head, runs his fingers through his hair in something like apology because like hell is he going to say those words (i'm sorry is reserved for the very few) and yet it's his problem in a nutshell. He's convinced he's running on empty with nothing left to give, that he can't even find himself amongst the two people who know where to look, and he's just so goddamn sorry that there's nothing else he knows how to say. ]

I got nothin' to bitch about.

i'm o...kay... this is... okay... sobs

[dedikated]

[ It's more complicated than that, though, isn't it? She should know that - hell, she does know that. Having Marc sure didn't stop her drinking when she was younger, or feeling like there was nothing else to do but drink. It didn't stop the resentment she felt (still does, sometimes) at him for leading them this way, either. For making her follow when she never knew how to handle blood or death or any of the things he knew they'd have to deal with working at The Agency.

(That? Was kind of a dick thing to point out. She knows. She fucking knows.)

Kate exhales in that way she does when she knows that she's saying things that are hypocritical as fuck. ] Not saying that. [ Because who can blame anyone for bitching in this place? Really, just bitching is kind of one of the better outcomes for this place. ] Just-

[ She taps her fingernail against the shotglass in front of her. ] Trying to remember that it doesn't all suck down here.

ITS..... PERFECTLY.... FINE.....

[kickingand]

[ Dean wants to say he hadn't meant it in a way that implied that he had no one. Hell, all he'd really meant was that he didn't have Baby, that he had no other outlets, no venues like fucking his little heart out to save the day. There was nothing but the booze left over to pick him up off his feet and dust him off and even that was starting to fail, a steady trickling over of what he needed and what he wanted and what he couldn't have all becoming a steady blur until there was nothing left to do but sleep. And even that's a waste- he has to do something.

Except there is no something's anymore.

But he's guilty as fuck for saying it in the first place, for letting the words drop, and he scrubs his mouth before pouring another shot and souring the taste in the back of his throat. The bitter feeling that he's left Sam and Cas out in the for the benefit of earning a little pity.

And pity? Is not what he wants. No, he wants answers, he's desperate to know. To understand. To get a grip on himself with fingers that don't keep slipping. ]

Not like we're alone, right? [ Except he near chokes on the words and it's stupid, he feels stupid, and he wants to get up and walk away because of it. Find where the gravel notes of his voice have wandered off to and shake the life out of them for betraying him and his confusion, for pedaling out the pain of his self hatred and leaving nothing in its wake. ]

I know Sam likes place more than I do- nothing wrong with that.