A Good Man
Author: Cheryl W.
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.
Summary: Every mother wants her daughter to find a good man and settle down and Lisa Braeden's mother is no different. It doesn't take long for her to see that Dean Winchester, he isn't your ordinary good man.
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Family
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"I think they purposefully put everything on sale at the store so you can't use the coupon," Lisa theorized as she maneuvered her car out of the shopping mall parking lot.
About to agree with her daughter, Lindsey was interrupted by the chirp of Lisa's phone.
"It's the garage. Is it OK…" Lisa said to her mother, seeking permission to interrupt their girl talk.
"Tell Dean hi from me," Lindsey consented, smiling.
Activating the Bluetooth through her car, Lisa greeted, "Working late again?"
But it wasn't Dean's voice that filtered through the car, was instead Dean's twenty six year old co-worker's.
"Hey, it's Christian. Dean would kill me if he knew I was calling you but I thought you should know, he's hurt."
At Christian's statement, the very air evaporated from the car.
"How badly is he hurt? What happened, Christian?" Lisa demanded, her hands tightening around the steering wheel.
"That dumb-behind kid, Marcus, didn't set the car on the lift right. The car fell, would have fallen on him if Dean hadn't knocked him out of the way. In my opinion, Dean shoulda let the kid get squashed."
Inhaling shakily, Lisa forced herself to pointedly ask, "Did the car hit Dean?"
"I think it caught him on the shoulder, the way he's not moving it. Course our caring boss is more concerned about the client's car than his worker's health." Christian's anger was palpable through the speakers, mixed badly with the fear already permeating the car's small boundaries.
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Do not let Dean go back to work," Lisa commanded, knew Dean well enough to know that she needed reinforcements to get him to take care of himself.
"How am I supposed to stop him? You know how stubborn he is," Christian protested, his voice raising.
"Just do it, Christian," Lisa barked, using her don't-mess-with-me tone that Ben always obeyed and Dean usually surrendered to, although with ill-grace.
"Fine. Mission impossible here I come," Christian mumbled before he ended the call.
Lisa's eyes darted from the road to her mother. "It can't be too bad, right? Sounds like Dean's up and around."
Lindsey hesitated. She didn't want to give Lisa false hope, didn't make a habit of diagnosing someone, sight on seen. And besides that, they were talking about Dean here. Someone they both cared about, deeply. She didn't want to get it wrong. Not to mention that Christian was right, Dean was stubborn. Dean contemplating going back to work? That wasn't exactly proof that he was uninjured. "Honey, I'll exam Dean and then we'll both know."
It was like her words were a starting gun going off, had Lisa's foot stamping down on the gas pedal. Gripping the door and putting a steadying hand on the center console, Lindsey wondered if Lisa had been taking driving lessons from Dean. She hoped so because she really wanted to arrive at their destination in one piece.
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Lindsey struggled to keep up with Lisa as her daughter bound from the car and tore through the garage door, skirted around cars and car parts to the office like she was following a homing beacon. And maybe she was because it was there that they found Dean.
"Dean, are you alright?" Lisa breathlessly asked, her worry unmasked, as she quickly crossed over to a seated Dean.
"Lisa, what are you doing here?" Dean stammered, straightening his stance in the chair, putting on a stronger front for the new arrivals on the scene.
Crouching down in front of Dean, her eyes scanning over him, Lisa scowled when she noted something she didn't like in Dean's expression, most likely pain. Then her attention left Dean, landed on Lindsey. "Mom, can you check Dean over?" her words half entreaty and half command.
"I'm fine, Lisa," Dean steadily assured but Lisa wasn't buying that anymore than Lindsey was.
"A car practically fell on top of you. That isn't being fine," Lisa sharply countered but her fingers brushed against Dean's cheek tenderly, conveyed to Dean that her anger, it wasn't for him, that she was reveling in the fact that he was there, hadn't been taken from her.
But when Lisa stood up, side stepped Dean and came to stand toe to toe with Dean's boss, there was no warmth left in her gaze. "Dean's told you repeatedly how careless your nephew Marcus is and you've done nothing. Now he almost got Dean killed," Lisa's acidic accusation sharp enough to draw blood, her fisted hands evidence that she wanted to land a blow, would if she didn't get some satisfaction.
Foolishly, Marcus walked into the office at that moment, purposefully entered the lioness's den, as the case was. "If you're in here bad-mouthing me, I deserve to hear it."
Lisa spun on her heels, spat out, "What you deserve is to be fired."
Marcus smiled cockily, sure of his place in the garage. "That's not up to you…or him," he sent a glare toward Dean.
Stepping forward, Lisa protectively placed herself between Marcus and Dean, didn't care that Marcus was sporting skull tattoos and had fifty pounds on her. "You have no business being here! You don't know jack about being a mechanic and even less about being responsible." Dismissing Marcus, she turned again to Dean's boss, growled as she pointed menacingly at Marcus, "You either fire him or I'll tell everyone that it wasn't equipment failure that ruined Tom Fulton's car, that the brakes on Mrs. Reynold's car failed her because of incompetence not a factory recall. You'll be lucky to have any customers left after I'm through."
But Dean's boss jerked to his full height at the blackmail. "Well, if I lose business, I'll have no need to keep Dean on."
At the man's retort, Lindsey's heart dropped. She feared that Lisa had gone too far, that Dean would be angry that he was about to lose his job.
"Actually, Mr. Harper's been bugging me to take over management of his garage when he retires," Dean calmly entered the fray, backing Lisa's play, one hundred percent.
Lindsey watched all the players in the game, held her breath when Dean's boss opened his mouth. She feared the outcome of the Mexican standoff.
"Sorry Marcus. I've given you all the chances I could," the garage owner announced, regret but resolution in his tone as he met his nephew's astonished expression.
Ignoring Marcus' outraged comeback to his uncle, Lisa stalked between uncle and nephew back to Dean's side, wrapped her arm around Dean's back. "Come on, you're taking disability for the rest of the week," she announced. She gave a nod of thanks to Christian, who had cowardly hung out in the corner of the room and kept his mouth shut during the battle.
Though Dean let Lisa aid him to his feet, leaned a little on her, Lindsey suspected that Dean only did so because Lisa would demand that of him, that she be allowed to help him. But Lindsey detected the minuscule pinch of pain that slipped past Dean's facial mask, noted the way he pressed his arm to his side to immobilize his shoulder. Honestly, she wasn't sure which part of her wanted to step in and ease his pain more, the mother in her or the doctor in her.
Forced to trail behind Lisa and Dean as they left the office, she couldn't help smile as Dean teased, "I forgot about that temper of yours. It's been a long time since I've seen it."
Pulling Dean tighter into her hold as if she could protect him retroactively, Lisa countered, "I use it sparingly. Mostly, I save it for some idiot who decides to mess with my family."
"Good to know," Dean drawled, didn't make comment that he had been labeled as family by Lisa. But some of the tension in his frame eased at the inclusion.
"You didn't tell me Mr. Harper offered you a job." Lisa said, was only half successful in not letting an accusation carry in her tone.
Smirking, Dean leaned closer, whispered in Lisa's ear. "Sure but Mr. Harper, he isn't retiring for another five years. Plus, he has two sons that are part owners in the business and are waiting for the old man to kick over so they can run the shop."
Lisa's features shifted from hurt to humor as she shook her head, as if she was chastising herself for not detecting Dean's con a mile away. "You haven't lost your touch," she announced, pride in her voice instead of reprimand.
Skirting by them, Lindsey opened their car's passenger door, watched as Dean slipped out of Lisa's hold to drop into the seat. Sliding into the back seat, she ordered, "Lisa, just go to the emergency entrance."
"Hey, I'm fine. I don't need to go to the hospital. Put a little ice on my shoulder and I'll be good as new," Dean blithely stated, trying to make it all a joke, to mask that he was in pain.
"Oh, yeah. Ice. You know, that's what I prescribe the most," Lindsey sarcastically retorted but her tone was light, as if she was joining in on Dean's joke. "Nice try, Dean. And we're not taking you to a hospital." She let that statement stand, let him have his moment of relief before she corrected. "You're going to my clinic."
"NO! No way," Dean doggedly declared, his voice as harsh as Lindsey had ever heard it. "I'm not going anywhere that someone might tie me to you. Maybe Lisa hasn't told you, but if someone figures out my real last name, you, Lisa, and Ben will all be in danger."
And it made sense suddenly to Lindsey. 'I should have known what would get Dean so worked up: his need to protect the people he cares about.' Aloud she offered firm but gentle reassurances to Dean's worry. "I was in the army, Dean. I kept National secrets. I think I can make sure I don't bring your last name up in conversation."
"I didn't mean you would…" Dean began in apology but Lindsey cut him off, hadn't taken offense, couldn't when she knew Dean was reacting out of worry for Lisa, Ben, even her.
"I know that Dean." She paused a moment before she quietly implored, "I've trusted you with my daughter and my grandson. Now it's time for you to trust me."
Lindsey saw Dean stiffen at her entreaty, knew it had nothing to do with pain and all to do with the realization that he had been backed into a corner. That she had found a chink in his armor. She knew that trust mattered to Dean, it mattered a lot.
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As Lindsey examined Dean, he wouldn't meet her eyes, was giving her absolutely no opening to ask about the scars he bore, about the hand shaped burn on his shoulder. A million questions came to her and no answers with them. But she cared enough about Dean to not pry. Many soldiers that had come and gone from her medic unit had had scars. There were some that bragged about how each scar had been earned, like a medal of valor. And others…were like Dean. They endured their pain in silence, thought of the scars as a scrapbook of their failures.
Dean didn't flinch, didn't show one sign of pain as she prodded his shoulder, pressed on the harshly bruised flesh. His tolerance for pain, it didn't surprise her but it hurt her, that the man that had come into her family's lives, into her own heart was so used to agony- of body, heart and soul.
"Your trapezius muscle is deeply bruised and we need X-rays to rule out that your clavicle is cracked," she diagnosed.
"It's not cracked," Dean levelly stated, speaking for the first time since her exam had began. But he didn't meet her eyes, wouldn't.
Dean's certainty only concreted what Lindsey already knew, what every mark on Dean's torso proved: Dean was used to injuries, wounds, was an expert at determining the extent of his own injuries. She wouldn't even have been shocked to find out that he knew how to treat the worst of them, because, some of the scars indicated where stitches had once held his flesh together, stitches like a medic in the field would use, medics who didn't have time or supplies to follow the medical textbooks, not when their patients were lying on some desert floor, dying on them.
But Dean didn't object when she insisted on the X-ray all the same and that almost hurt worse than seeing his wounds, fresh and old, his defeated compliance.
The X-rays proved what she had suspected and Dean had known: no broken bones.
Walking back into the exam room, she grimaced when his head didn't come up, when he sat there, having already pulled on his shirt like he knew he was just about out of there. "Since I know you would toss any prescription I write out for you, here's some muscle relaxants and pain pills," she strove for lightness she didn't feel, two pill bottles in her outstretched hand.
"I don't need them," Dean gruffly returned, focused on buttoning up his shirt.
"Well maybe it's not about what you need," Lindsey sharply countered, earning Dean's startled eye contact. "Maybe it's what you deserve and that's to not be in pain."
Dean's expression softened even as he began to protest, "Lindsey…"
Seeing a rare opening to reach beyond the barriers that were so much a part of Dean, Lindsey spoke frankly. "Whatever you're punishing yourself for, is it worth hurting Lisa, Ben…me? Because seeing you in pain, it hurts the people who love you."
Lindsey's breath caught as Dean paled, knew that her good intentions had inflicted pain upon Dean. She was almost relieved when he bowed his head, gave her a reprieve from the sorrow in his eyes that she couldn't look away from. She nearly flinched when Dean spoke, his voice raw with grief and regret.
"You don't know the sins I have to atone for."
Swallowing, willing herself to not let tears spring to her eyes, she straightened, drew upon the strength Iraq had carved in her, day by day. "Who's demanding this atonement from you Dean? The people you think you wronged? Or just you? Because from where I'm standing, it seems the only person who's blaming you…is you."
Dean shook his head in denial of her statement but he didn't speak. After a moment, he raised his head, met her eyes. And, for the first time, he didn't bother trying to conceal the agony in their green depths. Lindsey knew that, Dean dropping his walls in front of her, it was a show of trust unlike any other Dean could have offered to her.
"Dean, Lisa and Ben, they don't need some guy on a pedestal that never does anything wrong," she gently stated, fervently wanting him to believe her words. "They need, they want you, someone who's real, who makes his own brand of mistakes but works to undo them, someone who loves them back, in spite of their own shortcomings." Reading the acceptance in Dean's eyes, Lindsey rejoiced that her words had reached him.
And then, in a blinking of an eye, Dean's expression slipped back into its familiar boyish charm. "Guess it's all your years and years of experience that make you so smart."
"Watch it! Lisa will never know which bruises came from the car and which ones I inflict on you," Lindsey sputtered out the threat, pointing her pen light into his eyes. "Now hop off there and let's get out of here. It's my day off, you know."
But before she could vacate the exam room, Dean's hand wrapped around her own, stopping her. Turning, she was confronted with an earnest looking Dean.
"Lindsey….thanks."
And she knew he wasn't thanking her for her medical ministrations, just as she knew she hadn't worked so hard to ease his pain because he was her patient. "Your welcome, Dean," she tenderly returned and then he slipped by her, went to find Lisa who was probably pacing in the waiting room, irate she hadn't had an update.
It was a strange thing, to realize that she had gained a family member almost without her knowledge, that somehow Dean had become a son to her. That, what had occurred that day was simply family taking care of family.
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TBC
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Thanks for reading and reviewing!
Have a great day!
Cheryl W.
