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soddersays2021-02-25 12:33 am
sodder) wrote in soddersays2021-02-25 12:33 am
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MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME
MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to MARCH's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR.
All Test Drive Memes contain at least one clue to the Deerington's upcoming in-game events for the month! Keep your eyes peeled! But...not literally.
Characters may die during TDMs, but you do not need to count it towards a game-canonical death unless you want to. Consider it a freebie. All TDMs can be considered game canon as TDMs introduce minor aspects about the world of Deerington that can be revisited by characters later on in the game. You may also use TDMs for your application writing sample as well as AC.
CW: psychological horror that deals with gaslighting, losing one's grip on reality, being trapped and restrained, threat of drowning, threat of being eaten, sensory deprivation, bleach, blood, violence, haunting apparition of a child, injury by rusty implements
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!
IMPORTANT INFO FOR PROSPECTIVE PLAYERS: This past month we were excited to announce that Deerington will be entering a new chapter in a few short months. This new chapter will involve a permanent setting shift that you can read about in more detail on this post. All prospective players are welcome to ask any questions they have on the linked post.
THE WALLS HAVE EARS. AND EYES.
With all of the shifting in Deerington, it's not shocking when you start to feel like something in your home or workplace has begun to shift. You can't put your finger on what it is. Your furniture is exactly where it should be. Nothing seems moved. Maybe it's just Deerington paranoia acting up. God knows Sleepers have plenty to be paranoid about. Then you start to notice little oddities. Scratch marks on the baseboards of your bedroom. If you have a bedframe with posts you might notice what looks like human bite marks have taken out chunks of the material. Only surely no one's gone around biting your bed? When you walk by windows, you start to think you see a trick of the eye and you could swear you see bars on the other side of your window. What? No. You don't have bars on your bedroom windows...
You're just seeing things. You're just seeing things. But maybe you're hearing things too. You can hear scuttling in the walls - maybe the rats from February? No, no...This is different. It sounded too big. More of a sliding shuffle than a scuttle. Maybe you look into your vents just to make sure but there's nothing to find. Nothing at all.
Then you start to look at your walls. Was that stain always there? Was it just part of the wallpaper or paint? Hmm...You don't remember there being a stain there.
You keep looking at the stain. Maybe it only takes a few days or a few hours but eventually, you start to see a face in the stain. If the stain's big enough you could swear it looks like...a person crawling. No. No! That's ...Just your imagination. Get a grip. But that stain may start to look like it has eyes, eyes looking right at you. Or the design in your wallpaper might start to look like a face is tucked among the floral patterns, eyes staring right at you.
You start to notice creeping figures out and around Deerington. While you're shopping for groceries you swear you can see a woman crawling from one aisle to the next, quick and scurrying. Were you the only one who saw that? Surely not? Maybe others have too. Then you see more women crawling across yards and you feel paralyzed with fear because they all look like that stain on your wall.
When you come back the stain has moved.
This drives many mad. You start to obsess over the stain. Maybe you even break apart your walls to see if there's really a person behind them. Maybe you start to peel the wallpaper off your walls or try to repaint everything to hide it. But the more you do, the more you sink down into paranoia. Eventually you start crawling around, trying to see if you can conjure up these creeping figures. You find yourself scratching at the baseboards and gnawing on furniture, becoming the very creeping fiend you feared.
Maybe you even eventually start to creep into people's homes, into their walls, to start the cycle of madness all over again. The only way to break free of this cycle is to catch one of the people in the walls, take their hand and pull. If you win this tug of war, you and the figure you chased in your madness into the walls will fall back into the three dimensional space of regular Deerington and you'll find the person you were chasing was just another sleeper trapped in the cycle like you. If you lose... you find yourself falling into an endless void and when you slow to a stop--
WASH AWAY THE MADNESS. PURGE THE SIN.
--You find yourself floating in midair in the middle of a sterile white room. You lost the tug of war with the other sleeper in the walls, or perhaps you were just walking down the street and got distracted by your reflection moving strangely in the storefront window and touching it pulled you through the glass and landed you here. Regardless of how you got here, now you are in what looks like a room that belongs in a hospital. Somehow you are also dressed in white pants and a t-shirt and there's a hospital bracelet on your wrist that has your name and blood type printed on it as well as a patient number. Beside you is another sleeper, either the one who you lost the tug of war to or a completely new one. You are able to speak to each other in this space and there is a slight echo as you do, enjoy it while it lasts.After a moment of weightlessness, your bare feet touch the ground, which feels cold like concrete but is as white as the white subway tiled walls. There also appears to not be any light source, it just comes from everywhere and you may notice you're not casting a shadow. And neither is the albino german shepard that's appeared in the room with you. It looks friendly enough and you get the sense that it wants to guide you somewhere as it turns to walk through an open door that has suddenly appeared in the room.
Follow the dog and you'll find yourselves in an all white hallway, only there's a mirrored ceiling and the yellow stains of age on the peeling white wallpaper move in ways that make you uneasy. Almost immediately, you'll notice that there is no sound, not even from the dog or your own steps, not even your own heartbeat can be heard. But oddly, you can hear your own breathing, so loud in the otherwise utterly silent space that you speak to your companion just to have a different sound, but your voice is muted as well. Charades might be the only choice of communication between you two for some time. And as you continue on in this odd liminal space, out of your peripheral vision you'll notice your reflections on the ceiling above acting oddly, walking backwards or twirling in a childlike fashion while you are walking a straight line.
Spend long enough in this never ending silent white and bright hall with nothing but your breath to remind you that you're physically occupying this space and you start to feel on the edge of your sanity. After pulling your gaze from the disorienting reflections and stains on the wall, you look for the dog, but the dog is gone and in its place far down the hall is a small child dressed in white from head to toe with very little skin showing. It feels like it's been so long since you heard a voice that when the child speaks your ears hurt, blood trickles out. Wait, that can't be right... is it because of the silence from before or is the voice just supernaturally immense?
"GET OUT."
Is all the child says before water starts slowly rising up from the floor, but take a whiff and you catch the strong chemical scent of bleach. You and your companion must rush to find an exit or another creative solution to the problem at hand before you are drowned, and there will be no holding one's breath and swimming with your eyes open if you are submerged in bleach so you must act quickly. At the end of the long hall where the child stood there is a red light, but if you run towards it, it seems to only get further away.
If you can't go forward or back, then through the walls is the only solution. It is difficult though, at all the spots on the walls that are white, they are indestructible. It's the aged, yellow stains that are perpetually moving and shifting that are the weak points. Together, you must try to corner the shifting stains to stay still long enough for you to kick and punch your way through very thick walls. The stains seem to move away from anyone experiencing strong emotions and towards those who are calm and collected, and the key is to get them to stop moving entirely.
Once you burst through the thick wall and escape drowning by bleach, you'll either find yourself back in Deerington, or...
BREAK MY CHAINS AND I'LL BREAK YOURS.
You stumble into a mostly empty and dimly lit surgical room with blood on the floor and old dinge and rust on tiles and sinks. If you came here from the white hallway slowly filling with bleach, the pungent liquid will spill into the space as you enter, but turn around to look at the hole you and your companion made and you'll see it magically stitch itself up, like a wound in flesh speed healing rather than tile and drywall reorienting itself. However, it's possible to arrive here from Deerington without going through the white hall and that's by passing an empty lot in town. You could have sworn that lot had a house or a store the other day, but instead there's a dingy storage shed that draws you in with an intoxicating scent that wafts from a jagged hole in the side. No matter where you came here from, when you walk through, one or more other sleepers can walk through holes in the other walls at the same time and each hole will stitch up behind you.It's too late to turn back once you're in and you barely have time to realize the danger you're clearly in when you are struck from behind and knocked unconscious. No matter what your body is made of or what abilities you have, you are knocked out cold... and when you awaken you are chained in the center of the room to a rusy old cair. The other sleeper or sleepers you found yourself with in this place are in the same situation facing you and on the floor in between you is a pile of old rusted keys of varying shapes and made of all different kinds of metals. The only thing these keys seem to have in common is the look of sharpness on every edge, like if you picked them up too hastily you could slice open your hand and get a tetanus infection from the rust.
The next thing you might notice is the heavy breathing of another person nearby, and when you look you see a large man in a soiled button down, jacket and khakis. He looks like a pro wrestler that went to a court hearing that then got blown up and he was the only survivor. But more striking than his size and attire is the fact that in place of a human head is just a black smoky blur with what looks like hundreds of eyes poking through the darkness, and when he turns, his face is nothing but a gaping circular maw with rows and rows of jagged teeth that spin like a food processor. The man doesn't speak, the only sound that seems to come from that horrifying void that is his head is haunting and hard to describe. It gazes at its prisoners with its infinite eyes for a moment, washes blood from its hands in one of the sinks along the wall and then lumbers over to the only exit while sharpening a butcher's knife.
It is rather clear what his intentions are. But why leave a pile of keys and not kill and eat you now? Who cares what game he's playing, what test you're undergoing? Time to figure out how to get free and obviously the keys are important. The chairs can be moved, tilted over and pushed, but they are heavy and you'll have to work together to get the right leverage to start picking up keys and testing them on each other's locks which are placed by your hands bound behind your backs. Your hands are so tightly bound that you have to use the keys blindly on the other person's lock, and don't forget that those keys are sharp and hard to hold too. One of you will get free first, but then the haunting sound and the thump of his feet can be heard in the next room. Do you leave your companion to the monster or risk it and try the other keys?
Whatever your choice, the door to get out is locked and unbreakable, but there's a vent high above it that you can get through alone with great difficulty, but will be much easier and faster with the help of your fellow sleeper. The moment you are inside and moving through the vents, the hulking man with the void head will let out an ear shattering screech and chase you from below, the butcher knife and other stabbing objects will slice through the bottom of the vent and you'll have to dodge and weave until you see the light at the end. Kick the exit vent open and you'll crawl out onto grass outside any building in town.
Character Arrival
You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.There is not a collective "all these characters showed up at the exact same moment" occurrence in Deerington. Since characters fall asleep, die, or pass out at various times throughout all their worlds, it wouldn't make too much sense if they arrived in-game all at the exact same time. There should be some discrepancy between character arrival, whether by a couple minutes, hours, or even days up to a week.
The players are entirely in control of how/when they want to play their characters arriving in Deerington. For TDMs, you can play it like your character has just arrived and that can be maintained as your game canon, or you can wait until game events for that moment. Or you don't need to acknowledge it at all. The flexibility for character allows a bit more of an organic feel to the character arrival situation, so please play it to whatever feels right for you.
If you are interested in having an "arrival" introduction for one of your TDM prompts, you are more than welcome to explore that option.
no subject
Damn, she's just a kid?
[ Dean easily follows after him; it's old habit, falling right back int other routine like it was yesterday. Keeping pace with his brother, drinking his black, bitter coffee, talking about a job. ]
Wait a minute -- what? Dragon heads?
no subject
Nobody knows for sure if she's aged or not... but she usually seems like a kid.
[Sam glances over at him as they wander out the store, onto the sidewalk of a mild-weathered Deerington night... and yeah, okay, it's the most normal he's felt in a long while. He leaves his coffee to cool a bit, half-expecting Dean to burn his lip on his own at some point.
This might be all he gets. He's honestly not sure what Dean's reaction is gonna be, when he drops the full truth in his brother's lap. He wouldn't blame him, of course, for whatever reaction he's got to offer; it's just... he can at least have this, you know?]
You're pulled into an apparent dream world, and you're going to sound surprised over people from other universes with dragon heads? [He huffs, mildly amused.] Yeah, Dean. Dragon heads. There's every kind of person you can imagine here. Robots, living toys, witches — and not the kind we deal with. I mean... Hogwarts witches.
People out of our books. Out of our movies.
Just like how we're books to some of them.
no subject
Wait a minute, wait a minute. [ He stops them, carefully holding his coffee but also managing to gesture with it just so. Them being novels in their own world was wild enough - it's meta af between those damn books and those frickin Ghostfacers that used to get in the way.
Dean squints, brow furrowed, the creases at the corners of his eyes wrinkling in thought. ]
Are you telling me I may run into Gandalf the Grey or something? That this kid brought all these people here?
no subject
[He's got a very 'as a matter of fact' look on his face, a ghost of ye olden times, when Dean would say something and Sam would be on the cusp of rolling his eyes; it may have been years for Dean, but Sam has at least gotten some feeling back into the numbed space called 'obnoxious, know-it-all brother'. Even if he is crap at it now, and he's even more depressing than he's ever been before. And that's saying a lot, he knows.]
... For the record? Most people here aren't used to being from books or movies, so try not to point it out to them. Not everyone has our gifted experience of being protagonists in a novel series.
... So don't start get too weird if you run into Spider-Man.
[You might meet Gandalf the Grey, Dean.]
The kid is incredibly powerful, for the record. Not only is she pulling us here and has a bunch of layers of a dream built and stacked on each other, but she also keeps angels like Cas at low power.
He's here too, by the way. Him and the other timeline's Dean, they're around.
[He's been coming and going in their neck of the woods; they want him to live there, and he makes it a habit of borrowing a room now and again, but... with him as he is right now, he's not so sure he's going to continue the trend. Sam sits down slowly at one of the small metal cafe table, lays one hand in his lap as it clenches and unclenches. (Just wants to feel himself in control of his hands, sometimes. Lately most of all.)]
People come and go a lot here. Sometimes they come back into town and remember being here before. Sometimes they're a fresh slate. I don't really know what causes it, but it makes things way more complicated.
no subject
Well, to be frank, he's a little shell-shocked. Dean has been through a lot in the last twenty hours, and it's all beginning to catch up with him. While he's used to little to no sleep these days, that doesn't mean he isn't bone-weary, and he sits down, hard, in one of the little metal chairs. Graceless, in comparison to Sam's slow, deliberate movements. ]
Oh, he's here? Great.
[ Arrogant little shit that he is. Was. Used to be.
Still is?
Whatever. ]
And Cas, too? My Cas? [ His poor, broken, shattered glass Cas that's a shell of who he used to be, that Dean sent into a meat grinder to try and kill...
the man sitting in front of him.
Or is it another Cas, an unbroken Cas that Dean hasn't somehow managed to utterly destroy. ]
Alright. So what's the plan, what do we do, here? Gank her? How do we get to her?
no subject
He goes ahead and sips his coffee, a little desperate for the influence of caffeine.
He's tired, Dean. Really very tired. And the mention of their own Cas, it only makes him more tired; his expression dims, his frown deepening as he glances away.]
... No. Our Cas was here for a little while. Came and went. [And that's all he says on the matter. It's all he can afford to say, because if he thinks too much about Cas, he'll start thinking about what's happened here — what it was like to come home to a quiet, dark house with nobody left in it.] But, uh. I've been in contact with the winged version here. Been using his books for spellwork studying; he's got a place with a lot of old texts, things I haven't seen before. Could be useful.
[But not for getting out of here.
And at the inquiry of getting out of here, Sam sighs.]
I don't think ganking her is going to help. And frankly, I think we should probably not be on the same side as the creepy nun who also wants her dead. [A pause.] The mayor of his place? He's her father. He sent everyone an invite to his place, and I think whatever he's got in mind... could help us stabilize this place.
Maybe everyone can stay and live here, then.
[He hesitates to take another sip, his gaze still as skittish as ever.]
... It's not like a lot of us have anything to go back to.
no subject
He presses the hell of his hand to his forehead, trying to relieve the pressure behind his eyes. It doesn't work. ]
Okay. [ So icing the kid is out of the question, though it sure sounds like she'd be on their normal list of things to hunt. But he's new, and Sam isn't, and so for the time being, he's letting Sam steer the bus. ]
I go back home, I got your pretty foot on my neck, and a buncha dead friends. [ He takes a sip of his coffee, and desperately wishes it were whiskey, instead. ] So, okay. We go check out the mayor's place, then?
[ He's lapsing right back into their old ways, treating it like a hunt, getting all the information from Sam so they can form a plan. They're a team, this is what they do, right? ]
no subject
[Ah, yes, there it is — the very obvious guilt that blooms on Sam's face, as loud as spoken word. He never was good at masking his feelings; open book, always the emotional one in the Winchester family, never could keep his emotions under wraps, since childhood and beyond. He could feel the snap of Dean's neck, before he came here. He knew Dean was dead and gone, and the thought of Dean going back again like some purgatory... some existence where he just dies and resurrects and loops... makes Sam's stomach twist into knots.
(Snap, crackle, pop goes the brother, Lucifer says, and Sam can feel the reverberations of Dean's broken bones through him again — he stares at the coffee in his hands, tries to ignore the sudden silence, the way sound suddenly seeps out of the world around him — Dean's there, he's moving in the corner of his vision, but there's no rustling of clothing, no sound of coffee being gulped down. A cold sweat on his brow and on his neck forms. )
We go check out the mayor's place, then?
He blinks, looks up, and his expression falls into something — more hopeless.]
You and the other Sam, you should go.
[His fingers tremble again, like they had in the Hart Mart. He'd honestly lost track, didn't even realize that they'd stopped shaking until now. But he feels the pressure in his head again, so overbearing that it's hard to even get his thoughts sorted out; there had been too many times in the first months, times where he'd sit for hours staring at the walls, or times where Dean and Cas would have to snap him out of it, get him back into reality.]
You guys can focus on the bigger picture here. Work together. Without me.
[His lips twitch, and he looks — apologetic.
He slowly raises a finger, taps his temple.]
I have to — finish getting rid of him.
no subject
[ Dean knows it wasn't Sam doing his chiropractic work, he's not stupid. It was Lucifer, wearing Sammy as his prom dress. Dean knows that, and while that doesn't really make any of it any better, he feels like maybe Sam needs to hear that. That Dean, no matter what fucked up shit he's been through, knows his brother wasn't behind the wheel., knows that it was Lucifer, not his snot-nosed kid brother Dean's spent his whole life looking after.
He shifts in his seat, knees spread wide as he leans back, running a hand through his dirty hair, but those words--
I have to — finish getting rid of him.
Those have him sitting right the fuck back up, muscles tense. ]
You're telling me he's still in there?
no subject
[It's something Lucifer had said once. Stuck with him in all of his time sitting alone in the dark, quiet place he'd been left in. Words like that, they just bounce off the walls, echo loud in your ears.
Sam flinches at the scrape of Dean's metal chair — at the way he sits up sharply. He half-expects the bullet to come next, but then nothing happens, and his gaze flicks back up to Dean's eyes. He looks a bit helpless, really, and nods.]
When I came here, about half a year ago - he was in charge when we woke up. But the town weakened him enough that I could take over, before he could do any damage. And — I've been in charge ever since. [He breathes out.] But I can feel it... The weaker Sodder's getting, the more power he's getting back. It's only a matter of time before I...
[He runs a hand down his face.]
I'm tired, Dean.
I can't — I have to figure things out before then.
no subject
Don't give me that crap. That wasn't you breakin' my bones.
[ He refuses to believe it, because that's insane. It's not an option he's willing to even entertain. Lucifer can get fucked.
And while he certainly thinks about pulling the colt out - he sure pulled it on the other Sam - he doesn't. Not yet. He's stumbling through all of this, exhaustion tugging at him, but he refuses to succumb. Maybe that's why he's slower to react, a little sluggish in his movements. Coffee's helping, though. ]
Okay. So what do we need to do, then? There's gotta be a way to get him out. What've you found out?
cw: the most casual discussion of suicide
A vessel gives permission.
[Sam knows, deep down, just how awful it is to say. Lucifer had been in his dreams every night, more and more by the day, until his dreams seemed like nothing but the devil — sometimes just as himself, sometimes as Dean, sometimes as Jess or Mom or Dad. Every night, softly spoken words like chisels, breaking off pieces of his resilience. Every time he died, a new resurrection, a new way to drag him back kicking and screaming. Every time the demons found him, a new day for Lucifer to promise more and more good things in exchange for one, tiny three-lettered word.
He sighs, rubbing his eyes.]
Objectively speaking, I considered killing myself? But the problem with that is we'll just both come back. And I have no clue if I'll come back in control, or if he will, and it's just not — a risk I need to take.
[Even if the quiet would be nice, for a time. He is absolutely oblivious to how dark and awful that all sounded, though, as he adds, almost comically:]
Besides, I told you and Cas once before I wouldn't do anything stupid, so.
I've been reading instead. And there are a lot of promising books in Cas' bunker room I've been borrowing; I've been trying to piece together what I can do with the spell-work, and I think I've got something figured out, even if it's just temporary.
no subject
[ It's already old, it's annoying, and he is really wishing he had a flask right about now. Why oh why didn't he fill it up before he left the house - hindsight is such a nasty bitch sometimes. The need for something is thundering in his veins, right alongside his weariness.
He considers Sam, considers his own resolve for the last five years. He would've shot Sam in the head without thinking twice about fifteen hours ago, and here he is having coffee with him.
Life's real funny sometimes. ]
Alright. So whats the something you got figured out?
no subject
Sorry.
[He's not exactly the most healthy and enjoyable presence. He'd feel bad about that more, but they're kind of at a pretty big crossroads here. This is the end of the line — end of Deerington, possibly, and Sam doesn't have the time to truly enjoy his brother's company in the way he wishes he could. God, he would give anything to just work a case. Go to some lake and sit next to it for hours. Watch bad hotel television.
But they're here. And Sam doesn't have a whole lot of time.
He needs to fill him in, and then... cut him loose. Shoo him off, so that he's got a running start from whatever potential danger Lucifer (Sam) poses.]
A spell that'll reverse time for me — just me. In Deerington, sometimes people reverse backwards — lose memories and literally age back to another year. And when they do that, they lose everything between the future and past. Scars, magical attributes, skills they learned. All of it.
If I can decode and use the spellwork in the lore from this bunker...
I think maybe I can send myself back to before I said yes. Just... before Detroit.
No 'yes', no devil.
no subject
Wow. [ He rubs his jaw absently, dragging his fingers over day old stubble. ] That sounds like a hell of a spell, Sammy. You sure about that?
[ He can't imagine what would happen if it went awry - literally, he can't even fathom what it would mean for Sam. But...his brother is smart - Sam's been here longer, and Dean has to defer to what Sammy knows for the time being. If Sam thinks he can do it, then Dean's gonna support him. ]
What do you need me to do?
no subject
Yeah. Wow. [It sure is a hell of a spell. One he's not even sure he can pull off, especially with his faith in tatters as it is. But...] What other choice do I have?
[The other option is Lucifer taking over in full. The worst possible fucking choice, one Sam would rather destroy them both over than let happen. But at the question, Sam's gaze flicks up to Dean's, and he looks a little off-guard. Sometimes he forgets that Dean's there through thick and thin. Just because they split up, it didn't mean anything otherwise. He has to remind himself of that. A lot.
Expression slipping into a quiet admiration, he smiles thinly.]
I need you to not get into any trouble on my account. Maybe read a little latin for me later, when I sort all this out.
How about that?
no subject
[ Lucifer taking back over is not a choice, because at that point Dean would be forced to do some shit he really, really doesn't want to do - so if that's avoidable, that route is the preferred way to go. ]
Okay. I can do the Latin. [ He quirks a little smile, because...c'mon, man. You know him - better than damn near anyone. Every time Sammy snaps his fingers, 99% of the time Dean comes scrambling back like a lost puppy. You're his brother. He'd do anything - and that includes smashing faces when shit goes awry. ]
The rest, man - you know that's debatable.
no subject
[He grins, but the expression shifts into one of pain; he has to take a moment, eyes shut, expression downcast. He feels like his insides are reworking themselves, the pressure between his ribs taking his breath for a moment. The hand around the coffee clenches hard, spilling it everywhere.
He doesn't seem particularly bothered by it, not compared to whatever else is going on in his head.]
Sorry — dammit, I'm sorry.
He just won't... fucking stop. He never does.
[It feels like having some kind of fucking disorder, or something. One moment he just sits there, feeling like he's alright, like he can talk; the next second, he's scrambling to keep himself contained, or staring off into space, or getting a migraine so strong, it gives those old visions a run for their money.
Either way, he's never gotten a chance to forget what's inside him.
God, he hopes this shit works.
Even if it backfires to the point of killing him or whatever — as long as the devil's gone, it's a welcomed outcome.]
no subject
[ He's immediately cleaning the spill up, careful, wiping coffee away, dabbing it off Sam's skin because it's his little brother and he's here, its okay, it's all good. Big bro is back in the house, and he's here to give you his drinks and attention. ]
Fuck Lucifer, man.
[ God, like -- seriously fuck this guy. It's wrecking Dean, just arriving, knowing that Lucifer is in there, that Sam barely has the reins. Youll be lucky to get rid of him later. ]
no subject
Yeah, fuck him.
[He's not gonna take your coffee, you pushover. He slides it back over to Dean's general space, opting to exchange back the napkin and clean up himself. He's not five anymore, Dean — and he's got the devil in his literal body.
It's almost kind of funny, though.]
It's been months already, but I still haven't gotten used to it.
Feels like two cats fighting in a bag, sometimes.
... He's just mad that I left him where he left me.
no subject
How long have you been here?
[ He's starting to figure time moves different here than it did before; He may not be Ash level of genius, but Dean isn't stupid, he's figuring out how this place works as he goes, fairly quickly.
Regardless. Shut up and enjoy your coffee, kid. ]
What do you mean?
no subject
... But he does really want coffee right now.]
Since... November? Almost half a year now.
[Dean had been here, too, at the time. It was a mess, and it seems they'll continue the tradition of all of this being one big mess. But that can wait; the details of the last five months aren't as important, not when he knows Dean's already got a killer headache from all this information, he's sure.
At the questioning, Sam shrugs, one hand fidgeting with a loose string on his jeans. Focusing one something to fidget with, that's a certified Sam Winchester method, even before Lucifer had come along and made it all the more imperative. It helps him think.]
After I said yes, I got pushed down. Down really deep.
He used to try to set up, uh... these imaginary worlds, the first few months. These big elaborate set-ups in my head, so he could keep me occupied with them. They'd have you, or Jessica, or mom and dad... But they never lasted long, because I would see through them after a while.
He got impatient with it — so he just left me in the dark. It was all just — black.
I could feel things, sometimes. Hear distant sounds... if he let me. Before I came here, I was there. I was — in the dark. I remember, um... I remember Lucifer talking to me, telling me you showed up. Saying... things. And then I felt — [He shakes his head, quieting.] ... Now he gets to feel what it's like.
[It's always weird, when he gets to explain it to someone.
Not very many people even know what's wrong with him, anyway. Almost nobody knows the details.]
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Well--I'm here now.
[ He takes a deep breath, frustrated that he was here, or some iteration of himself, past or present or..whatever, and he doesn't remember. It's infuriating for him and if it sucks for him he can only imagine what that was like for Sam. Dean just...coming and going. ]
Man, fuck Lucifer. [ Like, Dean swears but he doesn't swear out loud, it's not his style to throw the f-bomb around recklessly but shit. Fuck this guy. ]
Let him suffer. [ It's probably weird to try and explain, but if there was ever anyone who has a clue about what the hell Sammy is talking about, it's his big brother. Dean...gets it. Shit, he should be a drooling mess after Michael, but oh hell naw, he had to keep saying No til it was too late.
But he gets it, as much as anyone can. ]
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Maybe it's just nice, to have his brother argue him into having his coffee. Maybe it's been a very long time since they've gotten to do this, and he only had his brother for a few months, and maybe it actually feels normal.
..............
He makes a face. A suspicious, squinting, disapproving face.]
... Dean...
Where is the other Sam?
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And...it really is like riding a bicycle, isn't it. Sam gives him that look and Dean's automatically got his hackles and defenses up, straightening a little in his chair because whatever he's about to be accused of, he's probably guilty of.
Ah. Yes. He pulls a little face, reaching to rub the back of his head and flick his eyes anywhere but Sam's. ]
...He's. Around.
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