Eye of the Beholder (3/?)

Rating: PG-13 for some swearing.
Pairing: None. Gen with hints of het
Characters: Dean, Sam Lori (OC), other OCs.
Author's note: This was supposed to be a two-parter, but somehow got longer and longer. Part of my Blind!Dean 'verse.
Summary: AU, Dean was badly injured in the last fight with The Demon, and has to readjust to life. In this part of the 'verse, his first 'date' after his injury goes very wrong. All the rest of the 'verse stories can be found in my profile.
Warnings: Angst. No beta, all mistakes are mine, and I'm sick at the moment…
Words: Around 1,500
Disclaimer: Don't own them.

"Thanks for letting me stay," Lori said, rolling her suitcase through the open door. Her old dorm room was small and crowded, but it was only for a few days. She still had no idea where she was going to stay after that, but she'd figure something out.

"I'm sorry it didn't work out with your Dean," Hannah said.

"It was just a job; it's okay" Lori replied, lowering her head. "Hey, can I have anything to drink?"

"Help yourself," Hannah said, pointing at the mini-fridge's direction. Lori bent over to open its door, and took out a can of coke. Then she sat herself on Hannah's chair. It was just a job, she repeated to herself, if an intense one.

"What happened, anyway?" Casey asked.

"It's not important," Lori said, putting her arms around herself.

"Lori, he fired you over this, of course it's important," Hanna put in.

"Technically speaking, he didn't fire me – I quited." Lori corrected.

"So why did you quit?" Casey asked.

"Well…" how was she going to say that without sounding like she was accusing Casey of anything?

"Remember when you called? It sounded, kind of…like you're asking Dean out. I got it wrong, and it went downhill from there."

"Asking him out?" repeated Casey. "What made you thinkthat?"

"You called and asked him out for coffee; that's a date in my book."

"I wanted to be friendly," Casey said, "I need to interview him, and my professor said we have to make our research subjects feel comfortable. You know, have them open up to you. I can't believe you thought it was a date!"

"Asking someone for coffee is…universal language for dating!" Lori protested. "I think it was a reasonable mistake."

"Usually, yeah," Casey agreed, "but…"

"Butwhat?" Lori asked. Dean couldn't have been right, could he? He couldn't have been right, because that meant she was an idiot, and her self-esteem wasn't doing so well at the moment.

"Lori…" Casey said, slowly, "Dean isn't exactly every girl's dream date. I know I'm not being PC, but I don't want to date a guy who has to have his beer bottle opened for him."

"You're going to be a social worker," Lori pointed out. She made herself focus on the coolness of the coke in her hands.

"That doesn't mean I want to date my cases - just the opposite. Dating a handicapped person would be like working."

"He's not a 'handicapped person'," Lori said. He was, of course, technically speaking, but that was just it – a technical definition. "He's…Dean."

"Sure he is," Casey said gently, "but you can't ignore his handicap."

"I'm not ignoring anything," Lori said, a bit too loud. "I'm saying there's more to him than that."

"Like what? Come on, Lori. He sits at home and lets his brother and you care for him. He hasn't got a job…"

"He's still recovering from the accident."

Casey snorted. "That was what, a year ago?"

"Ten months." Lori clenched her free hand to a fist. She hoped Casey would show her future cases more understanding than she was showing Dean.

"Ten months, and he hasn't done a thing. Blind or not, he's a slacker. "

And that was it. Lori looked at Casey, looked at her coke, looked at Casey again.

"AAAHHH!!!" Casey screamed as the coke spilled all over her, dripping from her face and sweater, all the way down to her jeans and snickers.

"Lori!" Hannah said in alarm.

"Don't worry, I'll let myself out," Lori said, rolling her suitcase out of the room before either one had a chance to stop her

Only a Dean-shaped life form, Sam mused as he unlocked the door, could survive such high decibels. He put down his duffel at the hole and went straight to the living room. "Dean!" he shouted, trying to make himself heard above Black Sabbath.

"How ya doing, Sammy?" Dean shouted back.

"Fine! Would you turn the damn thing off? I can't hear myself think!"

"Then don't think," Dean replied, but he turned the volume down, "how was the search for Nessie?"

"Wet," Sam said, "And it wasn't Nessie. Nessie is in Loch Ness, in Scotland."

Dean waved his hand airily "If it's big, ugly, and lives in the water, it's Nessie."

"Lori isn't home, right?" If she had been, she would have been deaf by that time. Hell, their neighbors, by that time, were probably deaf, at least temporarily. "Did you have anything to eat?"

"Why are you always trying to feed me?" Dean groaned. "I may be invalid, but I can find my way to the fridge."

Sam wrinkled his forehead. "You're upset because I want to make you something to eat? Are you sick?" Dean only refused food when he was too ill to move.

"I ate…" Dean pressed the watch-calculator next to him; 'it's two forty-one p.m.' it said in its metallic voice, "about an hour ago. I won't be starving to death anytime soon, so just…leave me alone, okay?"

Whenever Dean said 'leave me alone' Sam knew he had to stick around and try to fix things. Trouble was, he didn't know what was wrong. Dean turned the volume up again, so high Sam thought his ear drums would explode. He used his power to unplug the amplifier.

"Cheater."

"Yeah." Sam agreed.

"Put it back."

"No."

"Go away."

"No."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"No," Sam said, because really, Dean was asking for it. "I'll tell you what: I'm going to grab a shower, then we can talk."

"Nothing to talk about," Dean insisted.

Sam sighed and left the room, going down the corridor, he noticed Lori's door was open, and…

"DEAN!"

"Dude, I'm blind, not deaf, stop yelling."

"Why is Lori's room empty?" It wasn't empty, so to speak - all the furniture was there, but anything Lori-related was gone. No Garfield slippers on the floor, no books on the shelves…

"She left." Dean said, his voice all too casual.

The good news was, Sam thought, that he found out what Dean was pissed about. The bad news was that it was bad news.

"Why?"

"I'll tell you why. She's an idiot, that's why."

"Since when?"

"Since she brought her study group here."

"Wait - you told her not to, and she brought them anyway?"

"Not that…she asked, I said okay, then that girl Casey asked me out, only she didn't – not really. She just wanted a guinea pig for her study…"

"Slow down, will you? A girl from Lori's study group asked you out?"

"Lori thought so," Dean said, grimly, "kept telling me that I can't spend the rest of my life sitting at home and such bullshit. I swear, the girl thinks we're living in some sort of a fairy tale. So Casey came over and we went for a walk. She started talking about her project, and how I'll be doing her a really big favor if I agree to talk about the way I deal with the disability…shit like that."

"And…"

"I told her I'll think about it, and that I think I'm about to have a headache because of, you know, my disability."

That, Sam thought, was bad. Whoever that girl was, she wounded Dean's already badly hurt pride, and apparently Dean took it out on Lori.

"Please tell me you didn't fire her over this," Sam said.

"I didn't fire her," Dean said, "she quited."

"What did you tell her that made her quit?"

"What does it matter? She quited, it's over, good riddance."

"You don't mean that," Sam said. In their odd-couple way, Dean and Lori made good friends.

"Sure I mean it," Dean said angrily. "She's an outsider, you know that. She doesn't fit in with us, man. We can't talk about anything important when she's around."

"As if that bothered you so far. You enjoy talking above her head about 'cases' and 'being a PI'." Who is going to look after you when I'm not around? Sam silently asked.

"Besides, it was bound to happen," Dean went on as if he didn't hear Sam. "In a month, or a year, or whatever from now she would have found herself a new job, or a boyfriend to move in with, or saw something she shouldn't have and freaked out."

"She would have left anyway. Is that what you're saying?" So it wasn't just Dean's wounded pride, Sam understood at last. He remembered the damn shapeshifter, a long time ago, telling him how Dean knew he was a freak, and that everyone was going to leave him.

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying," Dean stated in a tone of finality. "Go grab your shower."

"Dean…" Sam began, but Dean was already on his feet, leaving the room.

Sam rubbed his forehead, wondering how the hell he was going to fix that one.

TBC

Thanks for all the reviewers! Please leave a way to contact you so I can thank you personally (yeah, I mean you, Amy!)