Tick Tock Spots
Summary: The motel is dirty, John's away, and a young Dean can't sleep.
No warnings (I behaved this time, no bad language!). No real spoilers, just preseries drabbling.
A/N: True to my typical 1 am mood I'm trying to pick up writing again, as the last few weeks have shown me why people go insane over writer's block. Argh… There are pieces I so badly want to work on, but every time the doc is pulled up on the screen my blind goes blank. I repeat, argh. Don't give up on me yet, though, to the reviewers of previous stories who suggested ideas for other fics, they have not been abandoned, I promise you. Current fic is somewhat disjointed, much like my current train of thought. Read, like, hate, maybe enjoy? Do what you will with it.
Disclaimer: Still hoping for Dean to come sweep me off my feet, but, alas, he's still out fighting monsters. Don't own 'em, no infringement intended.
There's a spot on the ceiling.
It's not surprising, really. Their place is filthy as per their usual fare, filled with unidentifiable smells and stains and moldy corners and ugly decorations to top it off. But that one spot, that's on the ceiling, is right in Dean's line of sight. And he would just turn over on his side, really he would, but the bedsheets smell weird too and he doesn't want to get his face too close to them.
Maybe he could just ignore the spot. Yeah, that'll do it, just close his eyes and let it flit right out of his mind and just drift off into sleep…
So he does. Close his eyes, that is. But there's no drifting off, and he swears even with his eyes closed that he can still see it, that weird inkblot that remains in his blackened vision, the one that he can never quite focus on because it moves away when he does but he can tell it's still there.
Ah, darn it. He shakes his head to dislodge the blot and tries to replace it with the view from the front seat of the Impala, as Dad drives through clean cut cornfields in August with the windows down. And that image should help, something much less stressful than a wayward stain, and at last he's ready to sleep.
Except there's the ticking.
Could be from Dad's watch somewhere in the room, or from the motel alarm clock on the far dresser. Or maybe someone's clock one room over, these walls are thin enough for that. Or maybe it's Dean's internal clock, ticking away the hours of the night.
He never was good at getting the thing to shut up.
He hums a tune in his head—or maybe not in his head, he's not really sure if he's doing it out loud—to try and block out the ticking, and it works, for a moment. He's actually getting a bit tired.
Until he gets an itch on his toe.
That's it. Clearly the spot and the tick and the itch are all in league with each other tonight. With a quiet huff, Dean hauls himself out of the bed. It's scratchy anyway, and Dean doesn't need to sleep tonight, not really. They're moving in the morning again, out of the motel with its spots and its ticks and into a more permanent place, permanent likely being a month or two, so the boys don't miss the start of the school year.
He looks over at his brother, sound asleep in the other bed, soft snores coming out of his mouth, and smiles. Sam can sleep well tonight.
Dean takes up residence in the chair by the door. He's thinking about getting some food from their little kitchen, but there's not much there to get, and it's nothing he wants anyway.
So instead he sits by the door and counts the spots on the ceiling.
Sam shifts in his sleep a little while later, opens bleary eyes to the empty bed next to him, and Dean can actually see the little pistons in his head start to move out of the fog of sleep. His eyebrows rise and he leans up, about to open his mouth when he catches sight of Dean and relaxes.
"Y'kay?"
Dean nods. "Go back to sleep, Sammy."
His little brother is too tired to put up an argument or ask why Dean feels the need to lounge in a chair at past 1 o'clock in the morning, so he smiles and slinks back down. He's asleep again in minutes, nose pressed into the bedsheets. Clearly not concerned with unusual smells, and Dean envies him a little.
His eyes burn after a while, and the burning numbers on the far dresser seem to tick by ever more slowly. He's currently rifling through every AC/DC song he knows in his head. Yeah, some people count sheep. Dean counts music notes.
When AC/DC's finished he moves back to spot identification. By the time the glowing numbers say 3 0 0, he's categorized every spot on the ceiling by size, color, and potential story for how it got there. His favorite is the one to his left, over the TV. It's shaped kind of like a hand and Dean's convinced it was made by a giant man determined to leave his handprints on every crummy apartment and motel in America when he hears a scratching at the door.
He tenses and immediately thinks to go for the gun beside his nightstand. Never mind that the salt lines are down and the door is locked, he's learned enough from his dad to know how to prepare.
He doesn't make it to the gun before he hears the distinct sound of a key in a lock. The door swishes open and Dad, larger than life and looking older than Dean thinks his dad should look, steps in with duffle in tow. He turns to his right and his tired eyes widen in surprise when he sees his son, half out of the chair.
"Dean? What are you doing awake, son?"
And Dean goes to answer him, but suddenly the weight falls heavy on his eyes and his mouth goes a little slack, and all he gets out is a shrug.
He doesn't realize he's swaying, not until Dad comes over, having managed to close the door and set the duffel down and push the salt line back into place in the time it took for Dean to try to get words out, and easily sweeps him up into his arms. Dean wants to complain that he's not a little kid anymore and doesn't need to be carried, but the sight and smell and feel of his father back with them is enough to quiet his protests.
He lets his dad settle him back into bed. Dean wants to ask how the hunt went, if he's okay, if they can really leave tomorrow, but the spot's gone from the ceiling and there's no more ticking and the itches have stopped, so instead he smiles up at his dad and closes his eyes.
Dad's hand is steady on his head, and Dean sleeps.
End.