So, I dunno who is reading this, but if you've read my other fic 'The End Of Summer' then I'm here to let you know that I'll be putting up some epilogue chapters for it. They'll be under the title; 'The End Of Summer; Epilogue Years'. Yeah, so that's that.

This is where we start learning more about my OC, his name for instance :)

I hope you enjoy.

A constant beeping roused the brunette from his sleep, and though groaning like some un-dead being and reluctant to move he lashed out at the bedside table where the alarm hopefully was (it may or may not have been thrown it across the room the morning before) and eventually he managed to slam his fist down on the button that would switch it off.

Breathing deeply, the silence seemed to bang at his eardrums and immediately he began to regret waking up at all. He much preferred sleeping and dreaming to being awake, where all the realities of how shit everything felt would crash down upon him as soon as consciousness reached him.

But today was important, today he had things to do, and if he didn't do them then people would be more disappointed in him than usual.

He began his morning to-do list in his head. 'I need to open my eyes'.

Forcing his eyelids open seemed like the toughest thing to do everyday, because it meant he actually had to start something. If he just rolled over end went to sleep it'd be okay. He'd not have to put up with the day and everything it brought that made him feel worse about being awake and alive. With a groan he opened his eyes, and bright light blinded him temporarily, causing him to squint and hiss slightly, and it seemed the only cure was to blink rapidly until he became accustomed to the light. He'd left the curtains open again, and the young man stared as golden white light streamed in through the window, the specks of dust floating through the air were illuminated and they caught his eye, glittering in their own little way.

With a sigh he wondered if this is as good as his day will get... dust mites in the morning.

But he'd managed to open his eyes. So it didn't really matter if his day was utter crap, he'd managed to start it, and that was the important thing. So now on his to-do list... 'I need to actually get up'.

Pushing back on his arms, digging elbows into the soft mattress he sat himself upright, yawning widely and blinking the sleep away. He grabbed his legs, not feeling them really, but he took a moment to imagine how it would feel to have fingers wrap around them and pull. He could pretend that they still had some use, even though he could medically amputate the lower half of his body and still function as he did that very second. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed the brunette grabbed his wheelchair that wasn't too far away and slid into it, something he did every day. Pushing himself into the bathroom he peered into the mirror and grimaced.

The man had a mop of brown hair that stood on end every which way. Bed head, but he never combed it because if he did he looked like he was trying to imitate Artie from 'Glee', that show his ex made him watch when she went out with him, because she felt sorry for him being in a chair. Then she decided she couldn't dedicate herself to a guy who didn't really exist from the waist down and dumped him... via text. Not his brightest hour, but he'd seen it coming.

He had a bit of stubble on his face that he'd always grown on purpose, shaved a little so he didn't look homeless, but creating enough shadow that it would hide the series of scars on the left side of his face left there from the car crash when he was a kid. As he rubbed his chin thoughtfully he wondered if he should grow it out and try and shave it so he sported the Tony Stark look. Admittedly he had a bit of a crush on Robert Downey Jr... but who on earth doesn't?

He look into the big, brown eyes reflected back at him. He got those off his mum, because his dads were some variant of blue. He was also skinny enough, but the years of having the top half of his body make up for what the lower half wasn't doing means he'd managed to build up enough muscle to be able to pull himself around surely enough. Climb with ease. Hang off monkey bars like an idiot in the park. But then the scars littering his body didn't help, because all people see is a scarred, disabled man, and you don't want to be the wing-girl stuck with the cripple. It's just embarrassing for both of them. So he tended to avoid socialising.

Grabbing for his toothbrush and the toothpaste he set to cleaning his teeth, staring blankly at the reflection who stared blankly back. Smirking slightly to himself the brunette remarked in his head how the guy in the mirror was a miserable tosser.

Washing quickly he wheeled himself back into his room, dressing quickly in a pair of jeans and an old tee, emblazoned upon it the image of the stick figure guy tipped out of his stick wheelchair, and the word 'FAIL' in bright blue upon the white. He'd done that a fair few times himself, and he'd managed to turn his little mishap into a laugh. It was always good to inject a little humour back into life, and if he was the first to start laughing when he got tipped out of his chair, then the people around him wouldn't feel so bad about watching a grown man sprawled on the floor, completely unable to do anything to help himself. And it was easier to laugh than to show people how frustrated you are, or how you're ripping up inside.

When dressed he grabbed the suitcase laying by the bedroom door and placed it on his lap, wheeling down the hall and dropping it by the door, before heading into the kitchen and grabbing some toast, and the phone. The plane took off in four house, which meant he needed to phone a taxi now, because he'd need one with wheelchair access, and they're not the easiest to come by. He was sort of dreading the idea of going to the airport, but he needed to to catch his flight. He just didn't want to deal with the overly kind women at the reception desks or the people rolling their eyes as he made his way onto the plane first so he could be sorted out into the disabled seat, biting back bile and angry retorts as people muttered about 'special treatment'.

Maybe he thought too little of humanity? Maybe he'd just started to tar everybody with the same brush, and though he had to admit some people were fairly cool about him being disabled and scarred they were few and far between. He let every cruel word someone said stick in his brain like a pin, and now he found he had so many bad words and so much darkness in his head it was hard to find something nice in there that someone said to him. He knew how bad it felt to feel like nothing, so he never treated another person as nastily as he had been. He cheered on the underdog, because he knew all too well how it felt to be in his position.

After phoning about half a dozen taxi offices, he found one that had a car that would accommodate a wheelchair, and they would be there in ten minutes.

So he whipped around and shoved various things into the carry on bag; his ipod, mobile phone, a pillow, a spare shirt, and a couple of books. The Hunger Games, it had become really popular, and he'd watched the film and Jennifer Lawrence was fairly hot. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He loved the book, but he'd have to man up and not cry (again) when he read Snape's memories. The guy was a legend, how could he not cry though? And finally in went Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Why not?

Everything was ready by the time the taxi arrived, and the bloke lowered the ramp for him to wheel himself on, and he put the bags in for the brunette, chatting away, but he paid little attention and replied with short one word answers – not the the driver noticed.

Relaxing back into the chair, trying to keep his eyes open. He'd been diagnosed in his teen years as having chronic insomnia, caused most likely by his mental health. It was bad enough that he had trouble finding a reason to wake up in the morning, but whatever crap was going on in his head was making it hard for him to sleep altogether, which just made the day after even harder... it was a nasty, vicious circle.

The drive was nice enough, the driver made small talk, asking what he was doing flying out to America before Christmas, and it set the young brunette to thinking. He was going out there to visit family, his brother who'd gone about fifteen years ago – leaving him with their alcoholic of a dad – while he went out there to set an insurance company up. There was a thirteen year age gap between them, and his brother had tried to look after him but the wide world was calling to him, and as a young entrepreneur he wanted to go out and set himself up. Looking after his little brother was too difficult a task for him. His brother loved him, and he knew that, but had he not gone to find his place and set up a business then he'd be stuck in Manchester too being just as depressed.

So every year around Christmas when his father went back to alcoholism to curb the pain and it became harder to even think about celebrating something you didn't want to celebrate when your father was in an alcohol induced stupor, he packed a bag and set off to America to visit his family out there, escaping for a little while.

As he got out of the cab via the back ramp and paid his fare, he ignored looks from other holiday makers and wheeled himself into the airport. This was probably the one time he was able to ignore the stared without feeling subconscious, because he was doing one thing that made him truly happy, and he didn't give a damn what other people thought.

He was flying today.

And, grinning, he wheeled himself up to the check in, dropped his bag on the scales and the check in girl took his passport and ticket from him, beaming as she did, checking the details.

"Shaun..." she looked between the passport and the ticket, nodding happily. "Shaun." She proceeded to ask him the basic safety information. Had he packed his own luggage, was there a chance anyone could have interfered with his luggage, did he have any dangerous objects in his luggage?

"Okay, here's your ticket Mr Bennett, your plane is departing from gate twenty three, you can wait in the departure lounge... and enjoy your time in Burgess!"