Contrary to popular belief, Dean was fine. Lately, everyone was acting like he was on his way into a meltdown, or something, like all his drinking was a danger sign and he was going to do something stupid or something soon, but he wasn’t, because he was fine. Okay, maybe he kinda did have a grand go-down-in-flames plan in mind, but it was a good one, right? If he could save the world, it would be worth his life to do it. Not saying yes was selfish, put all these people and the entire world in danger.
So, maybe he was drinking more than usual, lately. Seriously, who could blame him? He’d come back from the dead, missing a year but with all his memories of Hell intact, only to discover that his parents were alive, he had another brother he didn’t know about, and Sam was dating (marrying, now) a demon, and had been addicted to demon blood and started the end of the world by letting the Devil out of his cage...
...and then on top of that, he’d seen exactly what five years would turn him into, what five years not talking to Sam or keeping him from making stupid choices would turn the world into, because all it took was one moment of weakness and his brother could become the worst thing the world would ever have to face, and that weakness wasn’t Sam’s fault it was his, Lucifer said it and Sam had said it and even Ruby did. The demon who had lured his brother into this mess in the first place had blamed him for it.
And it was his fault, wasn’t it? He’d made the deal. That had been it, the starting point for all of it. His failure, his weakness, his fault, his responsibility to fix it all.
So, yeah. He was drinking more than he should have been. But he was pretty sure that was not really a bad thing. Yesterday, he’d gotten Hermione drunk - or, really, he’d let her get herself drunk, because he was pretty sure even if he hadn’t had much to do with it she’d have done much the same, and she deserved having a little downtime after what had gone down. Which was his fault, too. He wasn’t sure how, exactly - maybe he hadn’t really killed the demon properly, maybe him breaking that first seal was to blame for the bastard coming back - but it felt like it was.
His head was sort of heavy and throbbing, but he wasn’t too bad. He’d sobered up at some point after he’d sent Sam half a dozen pictures of clowns (...he was probably going to have to apologize for that one, wasn’t he?) and curled up in bed, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been... but it wasn’t exactly pleasant. He was barely out of bed before someone was knocking at the door, and he shuffled to the door in the same clothes he’d fallen asleep in, blearily expecting it to be Sam here to give him some kind of payback for the clowns, but instead it was Mom’s voice outside the door, and he hesitated just a second (his breath still reeked, the kitchen was a disaster from last night’s pie-making attempts, he probably looked like a bum) before he opened the door and offered his mom a small smile that was both confused and uneasy.
”Hey, uh. Hi, Mom,” he still almost tripped over the word Mom, even after all this time, unfamiliar in his mouth because they never talked about her, or at least Dean didn’t, because it hurt too much and it just reminded him of all the pieces of her he couldn’t remember anymore, reminded him of the way her face had started to become blurry and unfamiliar and the fear that he’d really forget.... “You- you wanna come in?”