❛ cook . present my muse with home - cooked food . (sam)
Sam's slender fingers were buried in his hair as his lidded eyes traced slowly over the laptop screen. He then cleared his throat and straightened up, typing away on the keyboard. He barely blinked, barely even moved beyond the slight tremor in his shoulders and the rapid pacing of his fingers. He was a quick and somewhat aggressive kind of typer, the pinky finger slightly bent in the air as it twitched with each movement.
It's been over five hours. Sam didn't get up for the bathroom, to get water, and he hasn't really eaten since he woke up. Part of it was his usual depression, his latest episode had been a bit rough the last couple days. But there was more to it. There was always more to it. Even when he was awfully depressed, he managed to force a fake, reassuring smile on his lips. Or at least, he was capable of pressing his lips together to a thin line, nod a couple times, and mumbling that he's going to be just fine.
He was on a medication. A medication for something that he'd been suffering from since he was born, he suspected. Something, that was such a common and sometimes even an over-diagnosed thing in some places, but no, Sam couldn't have it. Not openly, at least. No, not in a household like this, raised by the likes of John Winchester, and the ever fretting-yet-tough older brother.
"You're just afraid he'll dismiss you. Ridicule you. Flush your pills down the toilet." Lucifer leaned on the table next to Sam. The archangel didn't bother playing with Sam when he was like this, there was no reason for him to. What the younger Winchester was doing, the typing, the digging, the self-dissection and psycho-analysis... That was much better than poking at his insecurities and toying with his mind.
Lucifer's tone, for that reason, was nothing but factual and somewhat understanding. He leaned his bicep on the table, leaning his scruffy cheek across the back of his knuckles, his head positioned right by the laptop screen. "It always hurts worse when the cruelty is born from the panic bred by love rather than malice, doesn't it?" He twisted his nose slightly with mock disdain.
Sam didn't even nod, or acknowledge Lucifer's words. He was used to just listening, and the archangel was used to the human's lack of response. Dean was awake and in the kitchen, so it was all according to their usual dynamic. Satan gets to run his trap and in exchange, Sam pretends his presence isn't affecting him. Despite having notified Dean that Lucifer latched onto him and won't leave, they haven't delved into what it meant in depth. How often he's there, what are his goals, what is he saying, what makes him go away.
"Big bro is coming, at least try to stay within your usual level of freak, Sammy."
Sam blinked, exactly once, tabbing out of his personal document to another. He had an unexplained anxiety when it came to people hovering his shoulder, even if they weren't watching what he was doing, even if they weren't capable of reading the small text. The decoy page had written documentation of the side-effects he was experiencing each day on his medication. Today was day 4.
He wasn't taking the pills day after day, only when he felt like he needed the boost in focus, a small push in the right direction. Only that... he already learned that this is apparently not how the medication worked. Sam started typing away in the decoy document, about how his vision blurred less today, but the inability to stop and tear himself away from his hyperfixation got worse.
His heart was beating fast. Sam was already an anxious creature by nature, but the stimulant was increasing his heartrate, and with that, his sense of restlessness - creating an artificial panic attack. The last three days it wasn't so bad. His restlessness allowed him to tidy his room, transfer some notes from his laptop to his journal, and then organize his folders. This time something was different, but Sam couldn't pinpoint what the issue was. If there even was any, really. For all he could know, it could've been pre-existing anxiety amplified by the stimulant. It was his safest bet right now, while his statistics pool was so damn low.
Sam's sensitive nose picked up on the hot meal before Dean's forearm showed in the corner of his eye, placing down the tray next to his laptop. He couldn't do it. He wanted so badly, to tear his eyes away from the screen, look up at Dean, and thank him. It was a thoughtful gesture, real, home-made food, instead of a chicken salad boxed in see-through plastic tossed in his direction.
It felt like such ungratefulness. Sam was screaming at himself to turn his head away, to look up. At least say something. Let Dean know he noticed, he appreciated him. But he was swallowed whole by the white page he was filling with thin black text. His bandaged wrists trembled worse by then, his right hand lifting itself off the keyboard, his digits raised and bent in the air, shaking in unison while his index finger hovered the comma key.
Before he could control himself, he tapped at it, and continued typing with the same fervor as before his abrupt pause. Now his vision was starting to blur, his lips parting slightly as he continued lazily skimming the text that wrote itself quicker than he could read. Only this wasn't the medication's side-effect this time, no. Those were tears welling up in his eyes.
