Rock Bottom

Who: Dean
Where: England - school and home
When: July 07

Dean sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, his head resting back against the dark wood-panelled wall as he stared up at the ceiling. Cooling his heels outside the headmaster's office again - he practically had his own chair there by now, not that he gave a damn. He had a migraine - he could hardly see, the pain was throwing up little blooming spots of light across his vision. But his physics teacher hadn't given a damn about that, deciding that it had just been a tactic, a play to avoid the trouble he'd got himself into this time.

It hadn't been a ploy - it had been a side-effect, a repercussion of his actions. Everything had got too much today. It had started out badly, fight on the school bus. Dean's anger-management had been at a stupidly low level for months now, and today he couldn't even remember really what it was that had tipped him over the edge. Something someone said to Andy, he thought. He didn't much care, except the split lip and bruising against his ribs didn't help any - backing to the throbbing pain of the migraine.

He'd almost got sent home there and then, the moment he rolled off the bus, one shoulder of his blazer ripped, his tie awry, blood dripping down from his lip to dot the white shirt he wore. The other kid had had his friends back him up. Dean had as well, of course, though mostly they'd just been trying to drag him off, calm him down. His friends didn't much understand what set him off these days. He knew they didn't - he saw the way they looked at him sometimes.

Nobody understood him anymore. Nobody. Nobody knew what it was like, the world he lived in. They were all just there, getting on with their fucking stupid little lives, thinking that things mattered, but they didn't know what it was like. What it was like when the entire fucking world had it in for you.

There was a whining noise, high pitched and annoying. It cut straight through his migraine, like nails down a blackboard. Feedback from something - an amp. The school's theatre was right next door - weren't they rehearsing some kind of performance right now? It was hard to concentrate, the join pain of the migraine and the noise filling his world until he couldn't think. He should just leave it, he knew. That part of him that knew, that had once ruled him, that he'd shut away. He should leave it, he should be more sensible, this was the wrong thing to do. That voice was the one he ignored. Why should he leave it? Why should he be fucking sensible? What was the point anyway? It didn't do him any good - it never made his life better. His gran had been wrong - he couldn't choose his own path. He'd tried and it was too hard. He couldn't do it anymore. There was nothing left but to give up, to give in, to just live life the way he was made.

The sound ceased suddenly, replaced by exclamations instead. Dean's world swum and his heart raced, the rhythm changing, turning irregular as he slumped to the side and threw up all over the waiting room floor. Not that there was much to that - he hadn't eaten in days now.

It was that moment that the door to the head's office opened. Dean's blurred vision made out a pair of highly polished shoes standing before him.

*****

He just wanted his mum to stop shouting now. His dad, at least, showed his anger silently. That was better. His mum, though, had hit the roof - she'd been screaming at him from the moment she'd arrived at school and every moment since. He doubted she'd even paused for breath. He would have been surprised that she hadn't dragged him out of there by his ear if he wasn't almost crying with the pain in his head. He really didn't fucking need it today.

In true style for the teenager, Dean hadn't even tried to defend himself against the accusations levied against him, either by the school, or by his mother. The school had a long list of fights, had finally got 'evidence' for destruction of property, and then the clincher - apparently he'd turned up at school today drunk. That one was the only real false one, he had to admit. He hadn't touched a drink for a few weeks now - he'd not been able to stomach anything more than water recently. But they'd decided that the swaying, the behaviour - and the throwing up on the waiting room floor had been enough to suggest he'd been drinking. Personally, Dean figured they'd been waiting for an opportunity to expel him anyway and that had just been more evidence on the pile. No one big thing, just a slowly growing heap of smaller misdemeanours - and, clearly, suspending him hadn't worked. They'd tried that, after all.

His parents had more of an idea of what had caused everything. And they were furious - they'd clued into what he'd been doing outside of school, when they'd been around. The way that he used his abilities at the slightest provocation, for little niggly things. They'd been increasingly aware that his ability to put up with minor annoyances had basically disappeared. And they'd been worrying more and more about what he was doing to himself.

His mum was currently making that crystal clear. She'd been shouting for five minutes now, standing in the kitchen, going on and on about how he was 'killing himself'. Clearly, she knew he had a fucking migraine, so why couldn't she just shut the fuck up and let him go lay down and get over it? But no, she couldn't fucking do that, could she? She didn't give a damn - not really. She didn't understand. None of them could understand. Nobody understood. Maybe it would be better if he was dead. Not that he had any particular wish to die. In fact, the idea of it sent him cold to the core. He didn't want to die, but maybe the world would be better off without him. Better off without a problem, without what he was.

He took her shouting silently. Once upon a time she would have asked him why he wasn't engaging with the bollocking he was getting - though not in those words, he knew. But, all the same, she would have wanted to know. Once upon a time neither she nor his father would have taken the silent treatment in that way. Once upon a time they'd been more about two way communication, about talking things through to make sure that their son knew where he'd gone wrong, so that he wouldn't do it again. They still did they with Scott. He'd heard them. It was always calmer with Scott, their precious little golden boy. Dean knew they'd given up on him. Total communication breakdown. Now, his dad just looked worried and disappointed, and his mum just shouted. And cried. He knew she tried not to cry in front of him, but she cried afterwards. He'd hear her, once she'd let him go to his room. He'd hear her alone, crying. or sometimes talking to his dad about him. He knew from that that they didn't know what to do with him any more. They couldn't cope with having something like him for a son - his words, not theirs. They were giving up on him.

Dean just wanted her to be done so that he could go to his room. She'd get bored sooner or later, right? Since he was doing a sterling impression of a brick wall - she had to get bored. Or finally calm down enough to care that her eldest son was sick. So, he'd got himself expelled from school. So, he'd caused several thousand pounds of electrical damage to the physics department and ruined several kids fucking shitty school projects. Like they really mattered anyhow. Something had been annoying him and he hadn't been able to pinpoint it, so he'd gone for overkill and downed the whole lot. It just happened to be at the same point that he'd fucked up the experiment he'd been meant to be doing and hadn't really been concentrating on. It was a fucking witch hunt, that's what it was. Just because they'd been sure that he was to blame for a shed load of other things going wrong at the school over the last year but couldn't come up with the evidence, they'd pinned this one on him. And, sure, okay - he was, in fact, guilty, but not in the way they'd put together. Only his parents weren't fighting that because they knew that he was guilty - and, oh look, his mum had got onto the issue of costs. And how the school was going to be billing them for the damage their son had caused. Right, of course, that had to come up sooner or later - except, right, she'd already gone over it ten fucking times already. Or so it felt. Anyway, he'd been expelled, which meant they wouldn't be paying fees for that fucking school anymore anyhow.

She had to be done soon, right? Couldn't he just... shut her up like he could turn off a TV? That would make everything so easier. He just wanted to lie down. He needed to lie down. He hurt - he just wanted to go to his room and curl up into a small ball and give himself over to the world of hurt. After all, that's all there was. A lonely, empty world of hurt.