Um. I wrote Dead Poets' Society fic, because people were poking me, and I kind of like it?
This is about John Keating, and it has backstory and het. Also it is totally not mine.
When John Keating is fifteen he decides he is going to be a poet. The words flow from his pen and his mind and they work and he knows he's good. His father doesn't approve. All summer he makes plans to run away from home, packs his things, even—except then one morning he touches pencil to paper and nothing happens.
He stares at the sheet of (white, empty, blank) paper and wonders where the words went; wonders when the vowels and consonants and syllables stopped battering at his mind and settled, instead, into mundane rows like textbook paragraphs. The pencil falls from his fingers and clatters on the wood of his desk, and he takes a breath (he never knew breathing hurt so much) and he thinks, tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes, and the next day, and the day after that and the weeks after them, and one Sunday he closes his eyes and folds his notebook shut and spends his money on a down-payment for a car. He unpacks his toothbrush and his favourite shirt and feels himself growing number and number. He leaves his duffle bag under his bed, though.
He's lost the words and nothing seems to matter, not anymore, not when paper is just paper and not opportunity, not clay just waiting for him to shape it. The worst part is that the words haven't left him; sometimes he gets a glimmer of golden shining words and they're on his tongue or in his hand but then they dance just out of reach and he's alone again.
He sits in class and stares out the window, and he can't seem to care anymore, not about algebra or dead kings or Latin, and he drums his fingers on his desk and wisecracks, hints of the words seeping through into embittered repartee and detentions. His father screams and yells but John's numb and his hands, limp at his sides, don't even clench.
He's sixteen and he takes to reading other peoples' words, dead men's poetry scrawling across the yellowed school-library pages. If his stories won't be written, then he'll learn others and maybe then the paper will be a promise again. Kyle finds a cave and his friends drag him there and beg to listen to the words rolling off John's tongue as the lamplight flickers on their faces and they feel like men.
When he's seventeen, her name is Jessica. She has blond hair, shimmering in the sun, and vivid green eyes that make him remember poetry. His friend James introduces them ("This is Jess, she's staying with us for the summer,") and his eyes meet hers and the words are singing, golden on his tongue, and he almost runs for a piece of paper, but they're all for her.
They have one glorious perfect summer, eating peaches and watching the sun set, lazy kisses dripping with fruit, and then she goes back to Boston and the words falter and slow and stop. He writes her letters, but they're awkward and stuttered and he winces, reading them aloud, and crumples them up and misses the wastepaper basket.
When he's eighteen he graduates—not top of his class, or even second, and he can feel his father's eyes boring into him like drills but he doesn't care. He stands between Robbie and Ethan, seventeenth out of a class of forty, and throws his cap in the air and he can't stop grinning.
Her name is Jessica, again, but this time her voice has an English lilt, and she has dark brown hair and soft brown eyes. They get drunk on the midnight train from Liverpool to Manchester, drinking wine neither of them can afford and when he kisses her she tastes rich and fruity, red staining her lips as she kisses him back.
In the morning his head is a watermelon with forty knives in it, and he's never felt better in his life. He says, "Will you marry me?" Feels the words in him, shining for the first time since Jessica with the green eyes who still tastes like peaches, in his mind.
She says, "Take me on a date, at least!"
He says, "Is that a yes?"
They travel, go to Paris and Venice and Rome, and she stands in front of a little out-of-the-way fountain, rainbows sparkling behind her in diamond-spray, the sun on her shoulders and she's so beautiful. They get pictures taken, in a tiny shop with peeling green wallpaper and the shrunken old man says that they fit together, smiling, half his teeth missing.
His life is written in summers, he thinks, and hopes this one will never end.
Of course it does; they always do. She stays in England, and he goes back to the States, goes to teacher's college and wonders where the hell he got enough arrogance to think that he, John Keating, terror of the classroom, could mold young minds. He gets a letter at Christmas; his father's solicitor and he's wanted home for the funeral; January 16. He has an exam (twenty percent of his grade) and he goes to that instead.
His mother writes him, tear-stains on the corners of the scented flowery paper, and tells him she's getting married. His inheritance comes shortly after that, a bank box number and a deed to the ramshackle old summer-house he spent his childhood summers in, and he slips the letter in his inside pocket, and goes back to studying.
He invites Jess up to the cottage, the summer he graduates, and meets her at the airport. She's got a bottle of wine in her hand, not hugely expensive but not swill and somehow familiar. It takes him till nightfall, the both of them curled in front of the fire with wine-glasses in hand until he realizes, and then he says, "You're romantic," and smiles at the redness of her mouth.
When John Keating is forty-three he gets a job at the old school (Hellton, it hasn't changed) and in that vast place, swooping with ghosts and shadows, he feels the words start to rise. Neil Perry is the Prince of everyone, shining so bright and Todd Anderson has the words to describe him; Steven Meeks and Gerard Pitts would rather build things than listen to John teach—between them, he thinks they'll change the world. Knox Overstreet stares out the window, lovestruck, and Charlie Dalton doodles on his desk and Richard Cameron loves rules.
They make John remember his sixteenth summer, dead poets' words lingering on his tongue and in his mind in lieu of his own. He tells them, Carpe Diem, and means it.
Gunpowder covers every trace of Neil (Puck, Prince), turning the snow black, and winter's never been John's season. His boys, his legacy, the inheritors of the best of the words that he could manage, are all of them turned against him, and he packs his things and leaves.
He becomes a captain and loses his crew and Neil Perry's face burns in his mind and (he did this) he can feel Todd's words faltering, slowing, stopping, even as he stands and says, "My Captain," the last of his youth's words, and he knows there will never be Neil again.
His boots crunch on the gravel as he walks out of the old gates, and he picks up the telephone and says, "Hello, Jessica."
They have a summer wedding, and Jess has flowers in her hair. He writes his own vows.