Dean Winchester hated the dark. Hated it.
Ever since he was three years old, he demanded his closet door to be shut, his bed checked under, and his race car night light to be turned on. If need be, he would do all those things himself with his tiny hands and tottering gait.
When he was five, he parents installed a fire pit in the backyard and made a bonfire, inviting over neighbors. This was when Dean first experienced fire. He loved the was it snapped and crackled; the way flames reached up to the sky and danced with the wind. He did not love it when he touched the side of the pit and acquired a large burn on his arm that he needed to be taken to the hospital for. Eleven years later and there was still a faint scar on his right arm.
When he was seven and Sam was five, he'd sneak into his little brothers room and sleep on the floor, because he didn't want to be alone in the dark. What he told his parents was that he needed to protect Sammy from The Monsters. The Monsters that would hide behind corners and keep him from sleeping. From then on, if Dean was not sleeping in Sammy's room he slept with the blankets over his head, wrapped up like a cocoon. Old habits die hard, and habits born out of fear must die harder, because Dean still slept like that now, curled up and scared.
One night when he was nine and he was playing in the backyard, he caught a glimpse of a firefly. Then another firefly. And another. This resulted in two hours and many back and forth trips in and out of his room with jars inhabited by little lightning bugs. At the end of the night, Dean had captured over two dozen lightning bugs and kept them in his room, free to fly around. He still remembered how they flew around and lit up the dark. Within two days his mother found out and was furious that he was letting insects roam around in his bedroom, and all of the fireflies that he could find had to be returned "to the wild."
When he was twelve years old, he tried to shut away his fear of the dark. He was in seventh grade, and seventh graders were practically adults now. Adults weren't afraid of anything, so neither was he, not anymore. From the minute the sun set and the lights were turned off, Dean closed his eyes and refused to let the dark win. He let the tiny, almost invisible pinpricks of light behind his eyelids be his comfort, and he told himself "I will not be afraid, I will not be afraid, I will not be afraid." Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but for a few short minutes he was able to slip away and fall asleep.
Fifteen years old, and his fear had not wavered. His fear had twisted and turned into something new. He was afraid of everything and nothing. It was now not about fear of something, it was about the physical form of it. Fear with a capital F. Anxiety, was what it was called, but Dean Winchester had built himself a reputation at high school, and he would not be labeled as afraid. He would not let on about how he could not sleep, or how Fear followed him with every step. It became a second skin that he walked in, but he would not let anyone know. Not his so-called friends, his teachers, and especially not his family. His dad was working a lot to keep them afloat after his parents got divorced, and they were finally getting into a nice rhythm at home. And Sam was out of the question. He would never tell Sam anything, never add another burden for the kid to bear. At eleven years old, Sammy was getting picked on at school, and Dean would not add to his hurting, no matter what. And Bobby. Bobby was like his father. He could lean on him in a way that seemed impossible to do with John. But he needed to support himself, and he would not be a burden to those he loved. So he kept it hidden. All of it.
Now, seventeen years old with a spot on the baseball team at high school, it was getting harder to hide everything. At the same time, it was easier. Last year stress and outbursts could be blamed on testing. It was stressful for everyone, so breaking down was quickly deemed normal. However, this year it would be harder. Senior year was supposed to be the best year. The year where you finally grew up, where you felt better about drinking at parties. The year where you pushed through and got to smirk at underclassmen. The year where everything was coming together and with one last burst of effort, you could make it in the adult world. That's what it felt like, but the reality was that here on the outskirts of the sixth largest city in Kansas, a quarter of the people in the community would never get a good secondary education, and for those that did it was shitty community colleges all the way. Not to mention that the quarter of the people who didn't go to college were giant jerks who peaked in high school and would be stuck in this city for the rest of their lives. Even the downtown area of Lawrence seemed small and claustrophobic compared to the rest of the world. Flashlights were enough if you'd never touched the stars, and Dean had seen stars. He saw stars every night. He looked to the skies. But he still craved more. He craved big cities with lights that lit up the skyline exactly like stars. Except those stars looked in reach. He could sit in the middle of downtown L.A at night, and the buildings would be alive. Here, you could drive a couple miles out of town and encounter acres of sleeping fields that would never wake up, even in the daytime. Dean craved expansion and new heights and towering structures or trees that scraped the stars. A rainforest whose soil held more life than his school. A skyscraper that swayed with the wind and whose lights never turned off. Dean craved so much more of that lively something that this place had almost none of.