Work Text:
Bright, shining lights and sickening vertigo spun in an ungodly whirlpool of nausea around Sam’s head. His thoughts scrambled rapidly to collect and form a single thread past acknowledging the unfortunately not blinding enough headache that had made anything other than screaming silent cries impossible. He dared not open his eyes, though, that wouldn't have made much of a difference would it have? He could still see the outline of each bone that made up the things that clung to his face, the silhouette of thin, snaking lines that carried blood where it needed to go.
Amorphous shapes and brilliant hues danced across his vison like back when he was a bored kid with nothing to do but dig the heels of his palms into his eyes. They spun in maddening circles around his head, every heartbeat seemingly invigorating them and spurring them to shine twice as bright.
His stomach lurched suddenly, as if he'd reached the bottom floor on the world's worst elevator ever. The world was dark- No, it was. . . back to normal. Tentatively -- and rather painfully -- Sam blinked his weary eyes open. He was still falling, he was sure of that. . . er, was he? It was hard to tell after not feeling ground for. . . God, how long?
Sam tried to fight past his body's incessant cries for stability and actually observed what was around him, leaning back in his. . . chair? Yes, he was sat in a chair. Wooden, from what he could feel from under his scraped palms. His stool was on, uh. . . the ground? Well of course it was on the ground, what else would it be on? That was it, his seat was on the ground, and in front of it, a table.
A table made of the same wood as his chair, on the same, sturdy ground. Sam tried to focus on it, tried to see what the ground was made up of, what the nauseating swirl of shifting nothing was. It just made his head hurt worse, he decided it was better to focus on what's in front of him instead. Right, the desk! It was. . . a desk for sure! The thing was round, he supposed, and just like everything else, aided his splitting headache when he looked at it too long. However, he noticed, there was something upon the counter. A mug.
A simple, ivory white mug. It stayed so very still, and even the steam that its warm contents emitted seemed to be frozen, static in space. It did not move nor bend or warp like everything else, and when Sam leaned forward in his seat to look inside he was pleasantly surprised by the consistent and warm amber drink that invited him to take a sip. It smelled of. . . what. . . what did it smell like? Like. . . It didn't matter, it. . . it looked nice.
Sam didn't notice the man sat opposite of him, didn't notice his careworn, yet friendly smile, his torn coat, the ragged jumper underneath, or the parts of him that where most simply put, missing. The man didn't mind, and when he spoke he knew the words would never find their way to his guest's ears, because by the time he had cracked open his mouth to advise the O.I.A.R. worker to have a drink, he had already moved on.