To Dean, losing things was just a fact of life, starting with Mom, and in a way, Dad too, because John Winchester, loving family man had died that night, right along with his wife. John Winchester, obsessed, revenge driven hunter had risen to take his place. Dean had learned quickly not to bother making friends that would just be left behind when his family moved on.
Even those he had allowed in he never got to keep. Pastor Jim-dead, Caleb-dead, Ash, Ronald, Victor-dead, loss after loss, over the course of a lifetime, a pile of pain that just kept getting bigger. And he had dealt with that. Sure, with the help of too much booze, too much anger, too much blocking it out with the overpowering physical sensations found in an endless stream of one night stands, still better, in his opinion, that letting it crush you into a useless basket case that couldn't make it out from under the weight of the pain to crawl out of bed in the morning. So yeah, by the time Lilith's hound had drug his soul down into the pit, his life pretty much added up to a great big pile of suck anyway, and while he didn't like it, he had endured it, kept moving forward and doing his job.
This, this whatever the fudge (where had that come from?) this was, was a whole new level of suck. This morning seemed to have opened the floodgates full. As he'd lain, curled on the floor, just inside the door, which was as far as he had gotten, tears and anguish, broken sobs pouring out of him, the still unrecovered pieces of his life had poured in to fill the void, his life in fast forward. Friends had been rememebered only to be lost again moments later, bloody deaths and incompatible lifestyles ripping people from him before he could fully embrace the renewed memories of the good times that had been.
It was losing everything all over again, all at once, and it was too much. The sack in which he had shoved every hurt he had refused to face and deal with at the time had been ripped open, and the contents shook out over him, threatening to tear him apart just as completely as that hell hound had. It had been a mercy when the combination of exhaustion and overstimulation had made him pass out.
That's where they had found him, fetal position on the floor, heart pounding, pulse racing despite being out cold, drenched in his own seat, shivering and whimpering like a frightened, wounded animal.
He woke panicked, the lion's share of thirty years of worth of memories clamoring in his brain, his vision fuzzy, and a high pitched, rapid beep, beep, beep, filling his ears. He bolted upright and was suddenly at the center of a noisy confusion, more than one set of hands grabbing at him, trying to push him back to prone as he struggled against them, growling incoherent threats at unseen attackers.
An insistent voice forced its way through to chaos, "Sir, can you hear me? You need to calm down. We're here to help, but I need you to calm down. Vistoril, ten cc's!"
He surged forward in one last effort to break free of whatever had ahold of him, and then an entirely pleasant relaxation washed over him and he let himself fall backwards into it feeling better than he had in days.
"Yeah, I can do that," he slurred through a giddy smile. "Calm, nice and calm." he turned his head to the face that went with the voice. "So," he asked, "come here often?"