Bargaining

Dean stares up at Ida with horror stricken blue eyes, his yellow sclera glistening wetly, having just pulled his head out of his hands - his shoulders drawn up anxiously and his posture slumped. This is how she found her coworker, facing away from his desk in a swivel chair, hunkered down to silently accept a barrage of whatever terrible thoughts brought him to this place. Ida and Dean just watch each other in shock, surprised by the state of the other, until he lets out a short, choked noise, and quickly jerks around in his chair so that he now sits away from Ida, doing everything he can to obscure his sorry state from view.

"Are you alright?" Ida finally speaks up, stumbling over her overwhelming concern clashing with her habit of avoiding close conversation with Dean whenever possible.

Though he stays facing away from Ida, she can hear Dean begin to sniffle, and her heart drops. Ida rushes forward, still holding the doughnut she was going to give him, and puts one hand on his shoulder as she drops to a kneel beside him. He turns his head away, though Ida can still catch sight of his beading tears. His hawkish, sunken-cheeked profile is flushed, including the bridge of his beaky nose, and his watery eyes have become red rimmed. Ida squeezes his shoulder, instinctively moving her hand down his back.

“I-I’m fine,” Dean still doesn’t look at Ida, seeming unable to make himself do so, his scarlet eyelids fluttering and twitching as if in pain, and falters over a shaky breath meant to steady himself.

He is tightly gripping the arms of his chair, his bony knuckles white. He's trembling, and his desperation to avoid meeting Ida’s gaze only becomes more and more apparent as he begins to sputter over trying to force back the urge to cry. Ida wavers back, shocked and appalled; not repulsed by Dean’s behavior, but horrified on his behalf. She’s never seen him crack like this before, despite him being the literal humanoid avatar of Depression. When it sinks in, just how bad things must be for Dean to have finally hit his threshold, Ida pulls him into a hug, which causes him to tense and sharply inhale.

“What happened?” she asks him softly, pulling him tighter against her, holding his head close against her neck, her lips now near Dean’s ear as she embraces him in her best attempt to comfort him.

Dean shudders, jolting stiffly for just a moment as though he intends to push her away, but then he crumples sadly, and finds himself burying his head willingly into the crook of Ida’s neck despite himself. He smells of light but overpriced cologne, something so terribly in line with his habit of trying to compensate for some other shortfalling he seems to think he has that Ida hasn’t quite put her finger on yet.

“Nothing,” he says after a small pause, and then after a longer he admits with an uncertain quietness “Everything,” and then he chokes again over a sound that comes from trying to suppress the urge to cry.

Finally, Dean brings his arms around Ida with a ravenous ferocity and squeezes her as tightly as he can manage until a tremor takes him and his body weakens against hers. His desperation for assurance and closeness isn’t something Ida had been privy to until now. She realizes she has no idea if Dean has been hugged by anyone in all the time she’s known him. He has always seemed so lonely, but that was something she never dwelt on for long, as he’s always clearly been the clear cause of this problem of his. But his fragility now stills her there, and his tragic grip on her keeps her mind from wandering.

“It’s okay,” she pulls back, speaking very slowly and gently, and stifles a shocked and sad noise when she finds him staring miserably back with a face wet with tears “Y-You’ll be alright, Dean.”

He nods slowly, but when the tears don’t stop welling up in his eyes and begin to spill in hot waves down his pallid, gaunt cheeks he panics again, and covers his face with his hands, realizing his fault in letting Ida see him break down like this. He shakes his head fervently, and stands up, taking a long stride away, presumably staring at the blank wall of his cubicle as he drags his arms back down to his sides and balls his fists. Ida, confused and a little afraid for her coworker, gets up as well and steps back several paces back to give him space but not leave him by himself again.

“Why did you come here, anyways? To my desk?” Dean sounds oddly suspicious, suggesting a characteristic paranoia that this chain of actions could be a set up.

“I brought you a doughnut,” Ida tells him, looking down at the pastry she holds, and to her relief finds she didn’t totally squash it.

“Oh,” he glances back at her, pale blue face tinged by an embarrassed pink “Thank you.”

“Mira bought them. Amy said I should get one to you, as no one had seen you since you arrived to work,” this time as Ida approaches him she holds out the doughnut as a peace offering “You can have it, if you want it.”

He turns reluctantly, and takes it, and she notices his hand shakes slightly. Dean moves it to his mouth, but does not take a bite, and stares past it into the floor. With a slight and forced movement he brings it all the way up to his lips, dusting sugar there, but still doesn’t begin to eat it, like he can’t manage to make himself do it. Ida studies him with a pained sympathy, watching him struggle to eat something he would usually like.

“I can’t right now,” Dean changes his mind rapidly, speaking with a slurred rush, and he puts the doughnut down on his desk.

He looks horrified with himself, though Ida can’t figure out why.

“Don’t you want to?” she asks him, and to this he crosses his arms with a mix of nervous stubbornness “I can get you another flavor if you’d prefer that. I just remembered you liked blueberry.”

“I’m not hungry,” Depression assures Ida very shortly, now looking sidelong at the pastry with some contempt “I’m really not.”

Ida wants to protest, but then her wristwatch beeps and she jumps, squeaking, and looks at it quickly, and her eyes widen.

“Dean, I’m so sorry, I have got to get started on my work for the day. I’ve got a deadline this evening. I’ll… I’ll see you around, okay? I hope you enjoy your doughnut, when you do eat it,” Ida gives him a bittersweet smile, beginning to retreat reluctantly from his cubicle, now very worried for her office nemesis “L… Let me know if you need anything, okay…?”

“Thanks,” he replies with a growing sense of apathy, wiping his eyes on his sleeve “See you around, Ida.”