InsaneJournal

Who? Chuck (open to Jo? Otherwise, open-ended narrative!)
What? Visiony craziness and pain, followed by depowering/dewishes'ing?
Where? Roadhouse
When? Midnight, Lawrence time!
Warnings? Maybe. Chuck's visions are painful and vivid and creepifying. I almost got my migraine back just writing them.
Also I wrote a lot of this while half asleep so it might just not make sense.


Chuck was growing used to pain in the sort of way that actually he wasn't at all but he almost forgot what it was like to exist without it. There was this thick gritty pain and then a smaller, squeezing plan, like something was shoving his brain through weird things and into places and shapes it didn't belong in. On top of that, there was the dull throbbing, in time with his pulse, and the feeling like someone was sticking needles in his eyes, and, sometimes, if he moved, there was a swirling haze of soundlightcolorsmell that made him want to throw up his entire central nervous system. Yes, seriously.

Migraines of Destiny were seriously not his favorite thing. The ones where he was being legitimately blocked like this were even worse.

When the images did start to filter through the haze, they didn't make any sense, at first. The pressure got worse, and the images were short flashes, most of them like looking through a cracked and warped window. While someone had a strobe light going. Eyes were featured promintently in these snippits of visions. Clouding over, but never there long enough for him to see clouding over with what, or why. What did it mean? Why couldn't he see more?

He knew for a fact he'd seen Ashley, pale hair and Jo's eyes, and then she'd just disappeared, there one second and gone the next while the scene remained the same, and then the entire scene was gone and swirling colors replaced it.

He'd jolted awake after that one, wrapping up in his robe to fight off the shivers, putting his sunglasses on, throwing his phone into one robe pocket, and a handfull of pills into the other. He was not entirely sure how he'd made it down the first flight of stairs, from the living areas to the bar. He grabbed the first bottle his hands landed on, something clear, and he'd somehow gotten down even more steps without breaking his neck or any limbs, and made a beeline for the closet they stored the salt in. It was safe, there. Salt meant safe, right? Plus, down here, behind the wards, nothing could get him. Nothing. And it was quieter, down here, and dark - especially with the door closed, the only light his phone, the screen dimmed.

Chuck knew, in a distant and fuzzy sort of way, that Jo hated when he drank excessively. Especially when it was because of a vision, or a panic attack, or the combination thereof. But that did not stop him from unscrewing the top of the half-full bottle, and using the liquid inside to down three of the pills from his robe pocket. Nor did it stop him from washing them down in several large swigs. It tasted kind of like fire, but it was almost nice to focus on that burn instead of the raging tornado of sensation going on in his head, so he didn't really care.

Jo eventually found him. He wasn't sure how long it took, or how upset with him she was. By that time he was pretty far gone, falling in fits and starts into the images, lost in them and nearly drowning, then coming up, gasping for air, only to be pulled back down. He was back in bed, the next time he had a clear moment long enough for him to notice that, and his phone and the alcohol were nowhere in sight. He didn't really care for long.

Then the images started to clear up.

The eyes he'd been seeing clouding over, before - they were blackened, slick oil-slide of demon. Familiar eyes, some of them, some of them strangers'.

Things disappearing. Powers. Items. Places. People. Ashley, gone - gone like she never existed, leaving just an empty crib.

Lucifer stood in the midst of some kind of chaos, this self-satisfied little smile on his face-

-and then suddenly all Chuck could see was his ceiling. His head was clear - and, he noted with shock, pain-free. Not even just the sort of pain-free he usually felt after a vision of that intensity, what he called vision-hangovers, where his brain felt scooped out and hollow, and he was so drained he couldn't move. No, he felt completely fine. No pain. No images. No after-vision exhaustion.

Not that he wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth, or anything, because he was more than grateful for the reprieve, in theory, but... no. That wasn't right, was it? That shouldn't have happened. That never happened. It had to run its course, any other time - and now suddenly, it just stopped? In the middle of a huge and important Lucifer-related--

No.