Chapter Text
Dean wasn’t afraid of much. When he was younger, he was afraid of his dad—of the alcohol that poisoned him, of what he would do to Sammy. He was afraid of anything happening to Sammy, even now. He was afraid of flying, and didn’t understand how in the fucking world a person would voluntarily get aboard those metal death traps. But he certainly wasn’t afraid of the dark.
It was almost soothing—he couldn’t see anything around him, nothing there to remind him that he was a complete fuck-up, that he needed to get his life together. If the light was on, he could see the stupid picture frames on the dresser, the clothes scattering the floor that he had flung off of himself the night before, the unopened letters on the bedside table that he knew warned him about the electricity being turned off: This is a notice. Four days left.
He slammed his fist down onto his alarm clock, halting its hateful song, and pushed his legs down off the side of the bed. The light emitting from the numbers of the clock lit the room dimly, outlining the picture frames, the clothes, the letters, and he pushed back a groan. It was too fucking early to worry about any of that. He needed a bit of a wakeup before he started worrying about life again.
The wheelchair squeaked softly as he pulled it toward him, then again as he slowly settled himself in. He hadn’t really wanted it, but Sam had insisted, and who could resist those puppy eyes? That argument had lasted for days, Sam insisting that Dean was an idiot and of course he needed a wheelchair, and Dean, telling his younger brother that he was probably going to die soon anyway, so he should have the right to lie in bed all day and get fat. It eventually ended with a threat to babysit Dean for the rest of his sorry life and a pair of really big, adorable, stupid fucking candy-apple green eyes.
Having a chair on wheels was better than having a pimply seventeen-year-old constantly looking over his shoulder, Dean reasoned. It was definitely more expensive, though. (“Less expensive than a care home,” argued Sam, when Dean brought up that point. It was pretty much the turning point in their conversation.)
After pulling the green corners of his duvet straight, Dean wheeled himself out the door, grumbling at the shirts his wheels got caught on, then blinking hazily at the lights streaming in through the kitchen window. That wasn’t supposed to be open. It let the fucking dust in. And there certainly wasn’t supposed to be a teenager taking up the whole goddamn counter.
“Morning,” said Sam. He threw a banana at Dean, and it landed in his lap. Dean glared at him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Visiting. Am I not allowed to visit?”
After a few tries, Dean picked up the banana and threw it back at him. “Not if Azazel doesn’t know you’re here. And I’m not eating that fucking thing.”
Sam blinked at his brother.
“ Fuck , Sam,” Dean groaned.
“I made breakfast,” he said helpfully. “Which, by the way, wasn’t easy. You seriously have absolutely nothing in your fridge.”
“Just because I don’t have rabbit food doesn’t mean I don’t have food.” Dean looked pointedly at the pan on the stove, which was emitting a satisfying sizzling sound. He hoped the burner was off.
“There were eggs and grape jelly,” said Sam. “There isn’t much else you can do with that.”
“I have bread. I could make a sandwich or something.”
“But you don’t have peanut butter. And I threw out your bread because it was getting green. Dean, why can’t you take care of yourself?”
Dean shrugged. “Thanks for the eggs. Now go home, Sammy.”
“Don’t call me that. And I’m not going, because I’m taking you to your very first therapy session.” He scraped half the eggs onto a chipped plate and placed it delicately in Dean’s lap before forcing a fork into his right hand. “Eat.”
Dean stared at the plate, then at his brother. “Excuse me?”
“Your therapy session? You’ve been avoiding them since the…” His voice trailed off, avoiding the words that, accompanied with smoke, seemed to be Dean’s trigger if they sounded even slightly capitalized. “Anyway. I know the doctor said that you needed to start going to them. I found you a place.” He lifted the pamphlet and waved it around for a bit before dropping it back onto the counter. Dean slid his eyes to it. It looked happy. Colorful. “There are really great reviews for it online. If you don’t like it, we can find another.”
“No.” Dean’s voice was soft. The fork he clutched clattered onto the plate below it, and his now empty hand curled into a fist, his nails biting into the skin of his palm. “I told you. Please don’t get me started on this again.”
Sam pulled his giant frame onto the counter and dangled his legs, swinging them back and forth lazily. Dean wondered if he knew how much that aggravated him. “Your session is in an hour. And it isn’t one-on-one. And it’s for people disabled in accidents. So you won’t get any weird staring, and you won’t be in the center of attention for more than a few minutes, because nobody will push anybody.” He sounded like he was advertising something, rehearsing a well-prepared speech that could not possibly have a downside. But it did: Dean. He was so not going.
“I’m not going,” Dean said. “Nope. Not gonna happen.” In his clenched fist, his nails broke skin, but he ignored the pain.
“You have an hour,” Sam said. “And I know for a fact that you only have a few clients to work with today, so taking away two hours is not going to make that much of a difference. You should probably shower and get dressed and all that.” He paused, then added, “Also, you should eat. When was the last time you ate, like, an actual meal?”
Dean looked down at his plate. The eggs looked a little rubbery and were swimming in something watery—dear God, did that kid put water in the eggs again?—but it was better than what Dean had had yesterday, which was nothing at all. Except for a cup of shit coffee about this time to wake him up.
Speaking of.
“Did you make any coffee?”
Sam brightened. “Yeah, I’ll pour you a cup.” A cup meaning this travel mug that wouldn’t open unless you pressed a button on the side, perfect for a spaz like Dean that constantly dropped whatever he was holding. “What do you want in it?” he asked, as if there was something to put in it.
“I want it black. Like my soul,” Dean told him, hissing the last part because he’s a cliché.
“You used to take it with cream,” Sam reminded him, then froze, as if he just realized what he referred to, as if he didn’t realize that what he just referred to was being spoken about quite freely just a few minutes earlier.
That would be BTA—before the accident. When Dean was a teenager like Sam, the thought made him a little angry, but he just forced a smile that felt plastic and said, “Yeah, those were the days. An inch of coffee and the rest was just cream and sugar. I was such a fucking wuss.”
His face visibly relaxed, which was good. Dean hated it when Sam was all worked up. Dean’s fist slowly relaxed, returning to its natural, comfortable position. “I used to ask you if you wanted some coffee with your cream. Remember that?”
“Dude, how could I forget?” Dean smiled at him again as he took the cup, pressed the button, and waterfalled some of the contents down his throat. He could feel Sam’s eyes on him, watching carefully, seeing if Dean would collapse and die on him at any moment.
Dean wondered briefly if collapsing in a wheelchair would look as dramatic and badass as people with fully functioning bodies.
“Ellen likes her coffee just like yours,” said Sam, a little tentatively, pulling Dean out of his thoughts. “I always made them exactly the same, and you both made the exact same sound when you took the first sip.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting loose a moan Dean never wanted to hear from him again.
Dean flicked an egg curdle at him. “Oh, shut up, you bitch. I have never made that disgusting sound in all of my life.”
Sam’s head snapped back and he grinned. “Oh, really? I seem to remember hearing that sound come from your room several times when I was younger. You know, all those times you kicked me out.” He looked adorable, with his stupid long hair and ginormous eyes and crooked smile.
“Adorable?” Sam asked. He pulled a face, and Dean laughed. He hadn’t realized he had spoken out loud. “I’m not adorable,” he continued indignantly. “God, I’m seventeen! I am not adorable.”
“You’re my kid brother,” Dean chuckled. “You’ll always be adorable.” He gulped down some more coffee and set the mug down on the arm of his wheelchair, rocking it back and forth absently. It felt good to laugh again. He hadn’t done it in a while—his life was a constant cycle of coffee, internet, and sleep, and there was no room for laughter there.
“Hey,” said Sam quietly, “Want me to take those for you so you can get ready?”
Dean moaned at him.
“Hey. You’re doing this whether you like it or not. I just want you to go and see how it turns out, okay? You don’t have to say anything until you’re comfortable. Just try it. For me?” He widened his eyes and gave Dean the look again.
“You’re a horrible human being, you bitch,” Dean told him. He smiled.
“Oh, I know.” Sam grabbed the plate and the coffee cup, then spun Dean’s chair around so it was facing the bathroom. “Off you go, jerk.”
“I need clothes, moron.”
“So get clothes. Your room is pretty much in the same direction.”
Dean threw him a glare as he wheeled away, and hoped Sam knew he was smiling when he turned back around.
Forty minutes later Dean was sitting in Sam’s stupid Chevy with his wheelchair folded him behind him. Sam helped him buckle up his seat belt, despite his grumblings of “God, Sam, I’m not a kid” and started the car, pulling out smoothly. Dean gripped the door.
“When did you learn to drive?”
“I got my license a few weeks ago,” said Sam. There was something calm about watching him change gears, Dean thought, but it was also vaguely terrifying. His nerd brother was growing up. How did this even happen? “I started driving when I was, I don’t know, fourteen? Fifteen?”
“You never told me,” Dean said.
“Yeah, well. You don’t really talk to me that often.” He shrugged nonchalantly, but Dean could see the pain behind it, the hurt. “There are only a few days when you’re like this. Willing to, I don’t know, socialize, I guess. Other days you’re just pushing everybody away. I never know what to expect, so sometimes I don’t say anything at all.”
“I’m not bipolar or anything,” Dean said, “Believe it or not. One of the problems I don’t have.”
“That isn’t funny, Dean.”
“What isn’t?”
“Joking about your problems. It isn’t funny.”
“So what? I’m depressed. Suicidal. Have chronic anxiety. I’m a cripple. Might as well say them outright.” Dean’s tone was bitter, and he didn’t like complaining. So he changed the subject. “Who taught you?”
Sam shot him an irritated glance. “Taught me what?”
“How to drive. Who taught you?”
“Oh.” He shifted in his seat. “Azazel.”
Dean licked his lips and nodded a few times. Just because the guy was an ass to Dean didn’t mean he would be a jerk to Sam, too. “Is he.” He swallowed. “Is he good to you? He doesn’t hurt you?”
Sam looked at Dean strangely as they slowed to a stop in front of a crosswalk. “No. Why—” Then realization seemed to dawn on him. “Oh my god. Dean, did he hit —”
“What’s this therapy thing about, anyway?” Dean interrupted. “Do I get to see the pamphlet or am I supposed to just sit over here with my only functioning thumb up my ass?”
Sam sighed and flicked the folded paper to his brother. “Take a look. We’re still about ten minutes away.”
Dean scanned the pamphlet. It was happy and cheerful, advertising a group called Tired Tears , which was cheesy as fuck. Tired tears? It should’ve been ‘Crippled Losers’ or something. The group was supposed to be led by a lady whose picture was displayed on the first flap. She was plump and pleasant looking—if pleasant looked like your friendly murdering neighbor—with a thick pair of glasses and a wide smile on her face. She looked like the type who would speak to people like they were four years old. Dean dropped it onto the dashboard with a sigh.
“What?” Sam asked, “What is it?”
“Fuck this,” Dean whispered, “I don’t want to do this.”
“I know. Do you want me to stay through it?”
Dean started to laugh. Sam looked offended.
“Okay, fine. I guess not.”
“Not that I don’t like you or anything, but there is no way I’m going to let you sit in and listen to me talk about my feelings.”
“Really.” He raised a slow eyebrow, but didn’t move his head to look at his brother. Huh. Guess he was a safe driver. “You’re going to talk about your feelings. You. Talk about your feelings. You .”
“Shut up. I was being hypothetical. You aren’t coming because you’re just going to shoot me stupid sympathetic glances the whole time.”
“I’m a supportive brother,” he protested.
“Oh, yeah. Super supportive.” Dean rolled his eyes at him and fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “Listen. Could you…wait outside? Just in case?” He was starting to sound like the kid brother, and he hated it. “If I wanted to leave.”
“You should try and stay through the whole thing.”
“I know. But just in case.”
Sam tapped his long fingers against the leather of the steering wheel. “Okay. I’ll park the car outside and hang out in the diner. If you feel like you absolutely need me, then I’ll come and get you.”
Dean nodded. “Not that I need you or anything,” he added. Sam laughed softly.
“No, of course not. You don’t need anybody.”
“I don’t.”
“Here we are.” They pulled into the surprisingly long driveway of a small townhouse. “Don’t make any judgments. Just give it a try.”
“Right. A try.” Dean pushed open the door and dropped his wheelchair onto the ground, pushing the seat down so it unfolded. “This is going to be fun. How long am I going to be here?”
“Two hours.”
“And how many people?”
Sam laughed. “Just get out of the car. Do you need help?”
“I know how to get in my wheelchair, bitch.” Dean slid his right leg out first and balanced on it before slowly easing himself down onto the seat. “See? I’m perfectly fine.”
“Do you want me to walk inside?”
“I can manage.”
Dean shouldn’t have said that, because he was panicking three feet before he reached the door. What was he going to say? Was he supposed to knock, or was he supposed to ring the doorbell? What did normal people do?
But as his hand reached to connect to wood, the door slid open, and the woman from the pamphlet stood in front of him. She beamed and stuck out one manicured hand. Dean shook it hesitantly.
“Hey there, sugar,” she said, her voice bright. “My name is Madge Carrigan. Are you here for support group?”
“Uh. Yeah.” Dean glanced uneasily back at the Chevy, where Sam was still sitting. “I guess so.”
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
There’s that demeaning voice he was expecting. “Dean Winchester,” he said, returning her smile with a much dimmer, weaker one.
“Well, then, come on in, Mr. Dean Winchester. I think you’re the last one to arrive, so we’re just going to get started.” She led him through the foyer into the living room, where two guys and two girls sat in wheelchairs, and two other people that had missing arms. They were arranged into a half circle with a coffee table full of cookies and juice and paper cups sat in the middle of them. Madge directed Dean to position himself beside one of the wheelchair girls, a frail looking blonde, and sat herself in a wooden chair facing the others.
“Well, then,” she said cheerfully. That seemed to be her favorite phrase. “Why don’t we start introducing ourselves before we get anything else started? After all, what’s a support group if we don’t know what group is supporting us?” With this she let out a high pitched giggle that made Dean flinch. “Why don’t we start with you, Jake, and we’ll move in a counterclockwise direction. Go ahead, Jake.”
Jake was a younger guy with a missing leg. His head was smooth shaven, his jaw set. Other than the absence of his other limb, he looked pretty healthy. “My name’s Jake,” he said, speaking in a droning tone. “I was in a crash in Afghanistan that cost me my leg. Truck fell on me and my buddies, and I got out lucky. I’m twenty-four.”
“Alright, good,” said Madge, nodding. “Next?”
After Jake was a skinny guy named Garth who was missing his right arm (Which is A-Okay since I’m left-handed anyway,” he had told the group, smiling a bit), taken from him in a motorcycle accident after he went drunk driving. “Don’t drink and drive kids, especially when you’re like me,” he said, when he was done, and Madge gave him a nod of approval before they went to the next person, a brunette girl with a rickety wheelchair and a blanket covering her lap. Her name was Meg, and she was born with malfunctioning legs. Then there was Andrew, paralyzed from a fall while rock climbing, and Gary, whose left arm was eaten by cancer, and the girl next to Dean, whose name was Haley, who lost one leg to an infection. She looked like she was still sick.
“Now it’s your turn,” said Madge. By then she had consumed a whole dozen cookies and was working on a thirteenth, a juice cup in the hand that wasn’t shoving something into her mouth. BTA Dean would have been doing the same. He swallowed.
“Uh. Hi. I’m Dean. I, uh. I’m left-sided hemiplegic, got in a car crash when I was sixteen and got my head banged up pretty good. I’m twenty-one.”
“Well, then, since that’s all settled, let’s start talking,” said Madge. “Obviously you’re all here for a reason, right? You guys want to talk about something, share with people that would understand what you’re going through.”
“Hey,” said Jake, jerking a chin at Dean. “You. Dean. Can you walk?”
Dean looked down at his lap. He didn’t want this, didn’t want the attention. “Not really,” Dean said, so quiet it was almost a murmur. “I can balance long enough to get in and out of the wheelchair, but that’s about it. My body gets too confused.”
He nodded, and Dean expected him to say more, but he didn’t. Instead, he just twisted his fingers in his lap.
“Let’s light some candles to set the mood,” said Madge, grinning at the group. “Excuse me for a moment.” They were all quiet as she stood up and sauntered to the kitchen. It wasn’t until she struck a match that Dean realized the problem with the situation.
“No, wait—”
But there it was. The smell of smoke, curling into Dean’s nostrils, worse as she came closer with the candle, her smile still happy and bright, oblivious to what she had done.
She had pulled Dean’s trigger. And he was off.
Images flashed before his eyes, sounds echoed in his ears. The smell of burning rubber, of smoke, of fire, and then there were the screams, the sirens. The concerned face of a firefighter peeking in through the scorched car door window. Sobbing, crying.
“Dean. Dean!” Somebody was shaking him. Dean forced his eyes open—everybody was still there, wearing vaguely concerned faces, but also ones of pity. Even the people worse off than Dean pitied him. Great.
The candles were gone, and so was the smell. Madge came rushing back into the room, looking terrified and apologetic at the same time. Garth was standing next to Dean, and he drew back his hand when Dean opened his eyes.
“What happened there, kiddo?” he asked.
“I need to leave,” Dean mumbled. “Excuse me.” He grabbed his wheel and spun himself around, hastily moving toward the door. Garth pulled it open for him.
“Take care of yourself,” he called as Dean shot out.