I ATEN'T DEAD.
Srsly.
It's just been Real Life kicking me in the shins, and scaring the little plot bunnies by pulling faces at them until they cry. But little Alfie-Con is a determined little sod, and whilst peeping out from behind the Kale Of Plot Bunny Inspiration, he managed to impart this via a series of timid squeaks and some surprisingly articulate gestures...
Chapter Sixteen
Credit where it's due, 'Samantha' thought – her 'bestie' had managed to come up with a story in which, during a Hunt, Ronnie somehow got a mouthful of human blood and developed a taste for it. As the Hunter likely to succeed, Dean had heroically set out to put her down, and ended up getting killed himself instead.
The explanation of the background was contrived and stilted, the narrative was rambling and given to exactly the annoying sort of tangent musings that Dean was so good at, the punctuation was as casual as the grammar, and the description of the fight was drawn out and lurid, with Dean giving himself a series of snappy one-liners whilst Ronnie was reduced to crude insults, then just grunting and snarling.
It was something of a relief by the time the tragic hero was dead and the villainess had pissed on his corpse, then loaded him into his car and set the whole shebang on fire before finally limping away, possibly to die somewhere cold and lonely – at the very least, Dean had inflicted wounds that would never full heal with his silver weaponry, of course – cackling maniacally and muttering insanely to herself about killing Sam next then moving on to blowing up the Sara Lee production facility then burning down the JD distillery before desecrating the grave of Louis Chevrolet.
"Wow," breathed the woman next to Samantha, "Just… wow."
Samantha grinned. "Yeah, I know what you mean – where do you even start?"
Another woman, who had a small dog snoozing in her tote, fished around in it for a tissue. "That was…"
"Lurid?" suggested Samantha. "Turgid? Overblown?"
"Intense," snoozing-dog-woman finished, blowing her nose. "I mean, that was just so, so… Dean."
You don't know the half of it, thought Sam. "Yeah, I guess he's not exactly the intellectual type…" her voice trailed off as she noticed tears in her neighbour's eyes. "Uh, are you okay?"
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'Dee' sat with RJ on her lap, waving to the other people in the room and generously offering a small girl his own age a taste of Stanley, grinning. Ever since 'she' had discovered the existence of Supernatural fan fiction, she'd had something of a soft spot for stories about Dean encountering his beloved car in human form – wild horses wouldn't get him to admit it, but the AU ones where Baby turned out to be a hot woman around Dean's age, who suddenly showed up scantily clad – or, even better, buck naked – were a guilty pleasure that she kept hidden more assiduously than the most careful embezzling stocks trader covering his tracks. It was probably just as well that her bestie wasn't there, Dee thought, because Samantha would probably not cope if the first reading was as hot as the panel leader intimated it would be.
Rather than try to read along, she settled back to listen to the story. It was immediately shaping up to be a good one – Baby was caught in occult cross-fire when a Hunt chasing down a witch didn't go quite according to plan. One minute, his car was parked in the lot, a sculpture in steel and chrome glory, and the next…
Dean blinked, and shook his head to clear his vision. Nope, his car was definitely not there.
But the parking space was not empty.
Gone was nearly two tons of Detroit steel, and in its place there knelt a human figure, alone, naked, and shivering in the cold. A finely chiselled face framed by dark tousled hair turned, bewildered, to look up at him with frightened yet trusting eyes that bored into his soul, and a timid voice stuttered,
"D… Dean?"
Smiling reassuringly, he took off his jacket and draped it around the shuddering shoulders. "Yeah, it's me. Don't be frightened, it's okay, I promise, everything will be okay"…
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Samantha was impressed –she couldn't figure out how her bestie had so perfectly hit the mark for a bad fan fiction.
She also couldn't figure out why the others in the room apparently loved it.
"It's so Dean," repeated snoozing-dog-woman, "That's just so like him, heading off to save the world, one fugly at a time."
"Going down swinging," agreed another.
"Uh, well, yeah, maybe," Samantha conceded reluctantly, "But it's the English expression I'm looking at here – it could do with some editing, I mean, it's just rambling in places…"
"That's what makes it so authentic!" insisted yet another woman, "It's like you get to read about it, from the perspective of being in Dean's head, like he was the one telling the story!"
Now that's a scary idea, thought Samantha. "Yeah, sure, but, uh, well, for instance, the description of Ronnie goin' bad, it's rambling, it's chaotic, it's completely out of left field…"
"Exactly!" declared a panel member, "It's the nature of Hunting. Things can go wrong, really badly, really quickly, completely unexpected. It's the story of the Winchesters' lives."
"That's the tragedy of it," sighed a male voice – Samantha turned to see cosplay 'Ronnie' from the morning's registration. "Ronnie's fought so hard to defeat the monster, because she knows that if she was bad, she'd be really, really good at being bad, and she fears that she'd come to enjoy it."
"And that's what's happened here," someone else said, "This isn't just a story about Dean losing a fight, and dying. It's a story about Ronnie losing her fight and dying first – the Ronnie that Dean knows, Ronnie the Hunter, is dead, gone."
"Okaaay," said Samantha, in a tone reminiscent of an atheist who was headed for a seminar on the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution but suspects she's got the wrong room and instead has walked into a lecture entitled 'Absolute Proof Of Intelligent Design And The Final Location Of Noah's Ark!' "I'm just saying that this story might have a bit of a case of the JK Rowlings, you know, it could've done with the once-over from an assertive editor…"
"It's long and drawn out because that's how it feels for Dean," mused somebody, "This is something he really doesn't want to do, but he has to."
Samantha blinked. "But he and Ronnie can't stand each other!"
The eye-rolling around the room was practically audible. "That's what they say," chortled cosplay-Ronnie, "But really, they're so alike, it's just that they strike sparks off each other. If one of 'em was really in trouble, the other would drop everything to go help. Remember when that Black Dog Hunt went south, and Sam got turned into a werewolf to save his life, then later on, Ronnie did the same for Dean, then she just about mother-henned him to death afterwards?"
"Wild horses won't get them to admit it," a girl announced with a grin, "But Ronnie's the closest thing to a best friend that Dean has, and vice versa. He doesn't have to explain stuff to her – the impossible choices that Hunting sometimes throws up, the whole older sibling guilt complex, she knows, she's lived it too."
"He's always going to see Sam as his baby brother," cosplay-Ronnie went on, "But she's his peer, and deep down he knows that he can rely on her in a way that he'll never be happy relying on Sam." A mutter of agreement went around the room. "That's what makes this story so tragic, so… epic."
"Best friends?" gawped Sam. "Tragic? Epic?"
"Totally," sighed yet another girl. "This is some amazing writing. I hope this ImpalaDude writes some more stuff!"
"The English expression could use some work," the panel convenor agreed, "But what we have here is clearly a story with a great appeal, working on a lot of levels…"
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Sam was scowling at the laptop by the time his brother and RJ emerged from their session.
"Here," Dean plopped a dozing RJ into Sam's lap, "Hold this, I need coffee."
"Get me another one too," snapped Sam.
Dean cocked an eyebrow. "Don't take that tone with me, bitch. What's got your panties in a bunch?"
"It's not my panties," Sam complained, wriggling a bit, "It's this damned bra – fuck, how do women live like this?"
Dean went for coffee and an immodest number of doughnuts, and came back scowling just like his brother. "Don't you bitch to me about bras," he muttered, dropping into a seat and stuffing a doughnut into his face. "You aint got underwires, you small-chested freak."
"Sucks to be you then, Jordan," Sam gave Dean a thin smile, "And why are you sitting there with a scowl like thunder, stuffing doughnuts into your face like a girl who's just broken up with her boyfriend?"
"Shut up," griped Dean, taking another bite. "I need this to recover."
"Recover?" Sam looked puzzled. "Recover from what?"
"From bein' traumatised," Dean answered, "I tell ya, I'm this close to findin' the fugly here, and askin' if I can join in."
"You seemed like you were kind of looking forward to your session," Sam said, a note of accusation in his voice. "Stories about your Baby turning into a human, and presumably screwing your brains out."
"Oh, yeah, she did that," snorted Dean disdainfully. "First, it was a Hunt for a witch goin' tits up, and she got turned into a statuesque brunette with soulful eyes and a devotion to me that bordered on worship."
"Oh God, I'm glad I didn't hear that one," moaned Sam.
"Well, I wish I hadn't," grumped Dean.
"What's the matter?" asked Sam. "Graphic depictions of sex not graphic enough for the Living Sex God?"
"Ohhhh, they were plenty graphic," groaned Dean. "The thing is, we had to come up with a name for Baby in human form – you can't just go around callin' an adult 'Baby', that's weird. And you picked a totally uncool name."
"What?" pressed Sam. "Muriel? Mavis? Esmerelda?"
"Tristan," Dean scowled again. Sam's eyes bugged, then he laughed. "Don't laugh, it aint funny! My Baby is female! And you sure as hell wouldn't be laughin' if you'd heard the one after that!"
"Oh, I might," chuckled Sam, "If it got you as outraged as this."
"You'd be laughin' out the other side of your face," humphed Dean, "Remember when Gabriel turned you into my car? The Sampala, the fangirls called it."
Sam's smile disappeared. "Now that, that was not funny."
"Ha! You don't know just how not funny," Dean growled. "The next one, you got stuck as my car, and you started to… to…"
"What?" asked Sam.
Dean's face paled. "You started to enjoy it," he whispered in a tortured voice.
Sam looked blank. "How the hell could anybody enjoy bein' a car?" he demanded.
"Well, in this woman's mind, you did," Dean managed in a strangled voice. "Every time I went to get somethin'… you know, out of the trunk… remember how I said we got the holy oil when I, uh, pulled it out of your ass?..."
"Aaaaaaaargh!" yelped Sam.
"And whenever I put a hand on the gear shift…"
"Aaaaaaaargh!"
"Or crawled underneath you for basic maintenance…"
"Aaaaaaaargh!"
"And then you started leavin' these… puddles…"
"Okay, I get it!" yipped Sam.
"I really wish I'd gone with you after all," Dean almost wailed, shoving another doughnut into his mouth.
"Uh, I don't think you do," Sam replied, giving his brother a scowl, "They read your story. The one about you goin' after Ronnie, and her killing you instead."
Dean looked up. "Yeah? Well, that's good, isn't it? We want to get this fugly's attention, don't we?"
"We want to get the fugly's attention, yeah," Sam agreed, "But for some reason, they loved it!"
Dean paused, and sat up a bit. "What? My story?"
"I mean, it's crap!" Sam went on, "It's, it's, it's like just listening to you ramble on about whatever comes into your head – just add in your love-to-loathe relationship with Ronnie, add some insults, stir briskly and serve. But these women – and one guy who's cosplaying as a woman who looks like she's perpetually cosplaying as a man, and doesn't that just do my head in – they loved it!"
A small smile bloomed on Dean's face. "They… they did?"
"Check for yourself," muttered Sam, as Dean opened and started the other laptop.
His eyes widened as he read some comments. "They… they like it," he said uncertainly. "They like my story."
"They don't just like it, they loved it," Sam huffed. "Though God knows why."
Dean looked up with a smile. "I… I have fans!"
"So does Justin Bieber," Sam sniffed disdainfully, "That doesn't mean that what you're doing is actually any good." He took out the small compact and opened it. "Mirror mirror, flat and clear, who's the crappest writer here?"
If you mean out of you two,
Dean writes much much worse than you.
"See?" Sam smirked, "Don't get too cocky, your writing is…"
But being angsty, dark and gory?
Dean can tell a better story.
"Hey!" Sam yapped at the mirror, "You're only supposed to answer exactly what you're asked!"
Trying to give you all the facts, pronounced the mirror, it's tone sounding a bit sniffy, To help you track down these attacks.
"We appreciate any intel you can give us, mirror," said Dean sincerely.
But Sam is right. He knows. You should:
'Popular' does not mean 'good'.
"Who asked you?" Dean griped in outrage. "Clearly, some of these people think it is!"
Sam thought he might have heard a small snigger before he shut the mirror.
"You're not here to get fans," Sam reminded him. "We're here to attract the attention of the fugly! So, you can just write something else. Something else that people won't like. Something that they'll turn on, and denounce as garbage, and decide that you're a jerk."
"Like what?" asked Dean.
"I don't know!" Sam shot back. "Just do the exact opposite of what you did in that deathfic!"
"Uh, okay," mused Dean thoughtfully, biting into another doughnut. "I'll see what I can do. We should head back to the room so RJ can have his nap, anyway." He hurriedly ate his last doughnut as they packed up and readied to leave.
On the way out, Sam caught a muttered conversation – Dean didn't notice, because he was in an earnest conversation with a sleepy RJ about how many doughnuts a honey badger might eat in a single sitting, but it was pretty clearly about 'Deanna'.
"Oh – my – GOD. Did you see how many doughnuts she ate? How the hell is she not the size of a house?"
"And she's had a kid – don't talk to me about 'post-baby body', I know I'll never have abs or boobs again."
"She's clearly blessed with really good genes – I bet she has no idea how lucky she is."
"Cow."
On the bright side, Sam mused as philosophically as RJ having an adult decline to have a chew on Stanley, 'Dee' might turn out to be more successful at Make The Other Women Present Dislike You than he'd estimated.
Oh dear, Dean as the fanfic equivalent of Stephanie Meyer. How frightfully discombobulating.
Cas knows what sessions they'll attend next. Any suggestions? (Keep them T-rated, you depraved beldames...)
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