SPN FIC - Author, Author...Author
Hope Verse, 2026. The boys have a home, and a family -- but there's still the question of, how does one pass the time in the big, wide world of Normal? Dean's working on cars. And Sam? He's got a plan.
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, and a surprise
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG, for language
SPOILERS: Brief mention of something non-plot-related from After School Special
LENGTH: 1861 words
No, it's hilarious - and the fact that Dean's cackling makes Sam pull the bitchface makes it even funnier. When the laughing settles down enough for Dean to actually breathe again, he sputters a little, swipes at his eyes with the back of one hand and says, "Tell me again. You're gonna do what?"
AUTHOR, AUTHOR...AUTHOR
By Carol Davis
It's funny.
No, it's hilarious - and the fact that Dean's cackling makes Sam pull the bitchface makes it even funnier. When the laughing settles down enough for Dean to actually breathe again, he sputters a little, swipes at his eyes with the back of one hand and says, "Tell me again. You're gonna do what?"
Sam just sits there sulking.
"Dude," Dean grins. "I love that. It's the funniest frickin' thing I've heard all week."
"I wasn't kidding," Sam grouses.
"Seriously, man. I love it."
"Okay, could you stop?"
"You're gonna write books."
"Why is that so ridiculous?"
"Because -" Dean stops there, because something's popped into his head, something that begins to fill him with a creeping horror. "You're not -"
"What?"
"You're not gonna write about me, are you?"
The corner of Sam's mouth curls up a little. It's not a smirk, exactly, but it's close enough to make Dean cringe. Yeah, he remembers that story Sam wrote in, what, eighth grade? About himself and Dad and Dean taking down the werewolf? The teacher he turned it in to told him it was good, that the kid was a good writer, and while it was way too long ago for Dean to remember many of the details, he remembers thinking the story wasn't bad. Not good enough for Sam to hop a bus to New York City and start banging on the doors of publishing houses, but not bad. For a kid.
The thing was, the story was about them.
And there's not a doubt in Dean's mind that if Sam sits down to write about them, what he comes up with isn't gonna make Dean look like Eastwood. Or Van Damme.
Shit, he's not even gonna look like Austin Powers.
Dean turns to his brother and he knows he looks pathetic. He's gonna reduce himself to begging, which is probably what Sam was aiming for in the first place: convincing Dean to do something he doesn't want to do, by threatening him with this.
"No," Sam says.
"What?"
"They're novels."
"You want me to remind you? That stuff Chuck used to crank out was 'novels'."
To Dean's surprise, the bitchface pretty much evaporates. Sam sits there for a minute, staring at the worn knees of his jeans and picking at a loose thread in one of them. "I feel like -" he says with a long sigh. "Like I'm contributing exactly nothing. Like I'm freeloading. Like John and I are freeloading. You pitch in, with the car repairs. And you're -" Sam grins lopsidedly, but it doesn't look like he's amused. "I never thought you'd get into it like you have. Being around these people. The boat rides and the cooking and the tours and all that. You love it."
"I wouldn't go that far."
"You love it," Sam repeats.
"Okay, I love it. Sometimes. What's that got to do with you and books?"
"It's a way to contribute."
"Nobody's askin' anybody to contribute."
Sam shakes his head, like that's enough to dismiss the whole question. "It's something I can do. I've been asking around, and there's some definite interest in the subject matter."
There it is again. Subject matter. What the hell does Sam know about, other than their lives? "What," Dean says, just to fling something out there on the table, "you gonna do, like, a John Grisham thing and write about lawyers?"
"I don't know anything about lawyers. A couple of years of pre-law twenty years ago doesn't make me knowledgeable about lawyers."
Dean crinkles an eyebrow. Asks a question without asking it.
"Vampires," Sam says.
"Vampires?"
"I know about them."
There's so much of the stubborn, middle-school Sam in that that it makes Dean break into a genuine (and affectionate) grin. "None of that twinkling shit," he warns.
Sam stops picking at his fraying knee and peers at Dean as if he's trying to decide whether Dean's on board with this or not. Turns out the answer's "I think so." "They're still popular," he forges ahead, building up enthusiasm the more he talks, just the way he did way back, when he was shorter than Dean. "Ever since Dracula - the novel, you know, 1897. All those early movies, Bela Lugosi, and the later ones; that old daytime soap; the Twilight stuff, Buffy - people love vampires."
"Mostly 'cause they've never met one."
"Whatever."
"And you're gonna write a whole series of books?" Dean says skeptically.
"Lily said she'll help."
"And that's a plus?"
"Because of her Internet stuff."
Dean snorts, "The blog?"
"The porn."
"The what, now?"
"You didn't know about the -"
"Dude," Dean wheezes. "Lily writes -"
"Erotica."
"Why did I not know this?"
"Because you'd mock her?"
There are moments in Dean's life when that life does a kind of seismic shift. This is one of them. Forehead furrowing, he shifts in his seat on the couch to look at the desk in the corner of the den. The laptop he's seen his sister-in-law use more often than he bothers to pay attention to is sitting there, lid down, silent and somehow incriminating. He's gonna look at Lily in a whole new way from now on, he figures.
He's a little bit skeeved, yeah. But that doesn't mean he's not intrigued.
"Wow," he says, lips moued. "That's - huh."
"She's got a following."
"So what you're telling me is, the two of you are gonna write vampire porn."
Sam sighs, long and almost girly, as if that’s it right there: the Meaning of Life. "It's all basically porn, in a sense. That's the appeal. Being immortal. Forever young. The blood; being mesmerized by looking into the vamp's eyes. But no. There's more to it. A whole roster of characters. Shifting locations. Shifting time periods."
"Which is your excuse for going into research geek mode."
"If I need to."
There's more. Something Sam's not saying. Dean could have known the guy at the other end of the couch for half an hour and figured that out. "What?" he prods.
"I've got…other help."
"Morgan?" Dean winces. "Or…you ain't ropin' my kid into this enterprise, so tell me Liz and you're done."
"It's not - no."
"Sam."
Apparently Sam's used up his ability to just come straight out with information, at least as far as this conversation is concerned. He gets up from the couch and starts pacing around: back and forth between the couch and the fireplace, then full loops of the room. The more he paces, the more Dean's head throbs.
This started out to be a good evening. It did.
"Don't judge," Sam says.
That could be the intro to so very much shit, in colors never before seen in nature. Other people have to deal with I married an axe murderer or I wrecked your car or I burned the house down. I'm gay used to be colossal, but not so much any more; Dean's long past the point where he'd respond to anyone in his family making that announcement with anything much more dramatic than, Yeah?
But Sam - Sam's got a way of hauling out information that makes Dean's head spin like a globe.
The door to the hallway's been closed all this time; Sam shut it when he came in to start laying out his grand plans for literary domination. He opens it now, and beckons to somebody who's been waiting out there.
Lily, Dean hopes. But this evening's going too steadily off the rails for it to be Lily.
Dark hair, yes. The resemblance ends there.
"Noooooo," Dean moans. "Not, not, not. Not in my house, man. Not with my kids."
There's an honest-to-God, freakin' vampire standing in the doorway.
"Hello, Dean," Lenore says mildly.
Fifteen years? Something like that. A little more, because they met her when they met freakin' batshit Gordon Walker, and that was right after Dad died. Sam and Dean have both changed. Lenore hasn't. Not a gray hair, not a wrinkle to be found. But that would figure.
Since she's a vampire.
"It's lovely to see you too," she smiles.
Is that sarcasm? That's got to be sarcasm. And if there's anything he loves, it's a shovelful of sarcasm from the undead.
"Not in my house," he says.
She takes a long, slow look around, like she's here just to kill some time. While away an hour or two before she goes out to kill something. "You don't need to worry," she says after a minute. "I have a little place about thirty miles from here."
"You mean a nest."
"If you must."
"Look," he sputters, hating the way he feels trapped in here, with her in the doorway and Sam looming around, being of no earthly help at all. "I get that whole thing. The cow blood," he says, and dammit, she better not even twitch in a way that hints she's gone off the wagon, "and all that. But this is my house. I live here. My family lives here."
If she calls him a racist, he thinks, he's gonna flip.
"I'm aware," she says.
"We'll meet somewhere else," Sam puts in, and hell yeah, he thinks he's being helpful.
"You're gonna collaborate on vampire novels," Dean says. Does it sound mocking? He hopes so. Because this situation is off the charts.
"I'm a big fan of verisimilitude," Lenore replies.
It's funny.
So help him, it is. An hour ago he had a nice dinner with Morgan: he grilled a steak, and she made that potato concoction he loves. His belly was comfortably full, and he figured on spending part of the evening curled up in front of the TV, flipping through the new issue of Motor Trend. Then, after Morgan finished up working on the Lodge's financial stuff…
"You got anything else you want to tell me?" he asks his brother. "You got a third eye growing in the back of your head? Anything like that?"
"No," Sam says, frowning.
Nodding, Dean gets up from the couch, switches off the TV that he muted when Sam came in, picks up his Motor Trend, and aims for the door. "Goin' to bed," he says, and stops a little more than arm's reach from Lenore.
Looking at her makes him cackle uncontrollably.
"Dean?" Sam says.
If there's anything his life isn't, it's boring.
Wheezing for breath, he swipes at his eyes and nose with his free hand and circles past Lenore, into the hallway that leads out to the foyer.
"Whatever," he says over his shoulder. "Invite me to the party."
There's a vampire in his house. And his brother's gonna collaborate with her - and his porn-writing sister-in-law - to turn out a series of smutty, time-shifting vampire novels with verisimilitude.
"That's awesome," he says around the laughing. "That's just freakin' awesome."
The bitchface is probably springing back to life, there in the den. But he's not gonna have to deal with it. He's gonna go upstairs and read his magazine and wait for Morgan.
Funny, how "normal" really isn't all that normal.
It's funny, he thinks as he climbs the stairs two at a time.
His life.
It just never, ever stops being funny.
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, and a surprise
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG, for language
SPOILERS: Brief mention of something non-plot-related from After School Special
LENGTH: 1861 words
No, it's hilarious - and the fact that Dean's cackling makes Sam pull the bitchface makes it even funnier. When the laughing settles down enough for Dean to actually breathe again, he sputters a little, swipes at his eyes with the back of one hand and says, "Tell me again. You're gonna do what?"
AUTHOR, AUTHOR...AUTHOR
By Carol Davis
It's funny.
No, it's hilarious - and the fact that Dean's cackling makes Sam pull the bitchface makes it even funnier. When the laughing settles down enough for Dean to actually breathe again, he sputters a little, swipes at his eyes with the back of one hand and says, "Tell me again. You're gonna do what?"
Sam just sits there sulking.
"Dude," Dean grins. "I love that. It's the funniest frickin' thing I've heard all week."
"I wasn't kidding," Sam grouses.
"Seriously, man. I love it."
"Okay, could you stop?"
"You're gonna write books."
"Why is that so ridiculous?"
"Because -" Dean stops there, because something's popped into his head, something that begins to fill him with a creeping horror. "You're not -"
"What?"
"You're not gonna write about me, are you?"
The corner of Sam's mouth curls up a little. It's not a smirk, exactly, but it's close enough to make Dean cringe. Yeah, he remembers that story Sam wrote in, what, eighth grade? About himself and Dad and Dean taking down the werewolf? The teacher he turned it in to told him it was good, that the kid was a good writer, and while it was way too long ago for Dean to remember many of the details, he remembers thinking the story wasn't bad. Not good enough for Sam to hop a bus to New York City and start banging on the doors of publishing houses, but not bad. For a kid.
The thing was, the story was about them.
And there's not a doubt in Dean's mind that if Sam sits down to write about them, what he comes up with isn't gonna make Dean look like Eastwood. Or Van Damme.
Shit, he's not even gonna look like Austin Powers.
Dean turns to his brother and he knows he looks pathetic. He's gonna reduce himself to begging, which is probably what Sam was aiming for in the first place: convincing Dean to do something he doesn't want to do, by threatening him with this.
"No," Sam says.
"What?"
"They're novels."
"You want me to remind you? That stuff Chuck used to crank out was 'novels'."
To Dean's surprise, the bitchface pretty much evaporates. Sam sits there for a minute, staring at the worn knees of his jeans and picking at a loose thread in one of them. "I feel like -" he says with a long sigh. "Like I'm contributing exactly nothing. Like I'm freeloading. Like John and I are freeloading. You pitch in, with the car repairs. And you're -" Sam grins lopsidedly, but it doesn't look like he's amused. "I never thought you'd get into it like you have. Being around these people. The boat rides and the cooking and the tours and all that. You love it."
"I wouldn't go that far."
"You love it," Sam repeats.
"Okay, I love it. Sometimes. What's that got to do with you and books?"
"It's a way to contribute."
"Nobody's askin' anybody to contribute."
Sam shakes his head, like that's enough to dismiss the whole question. "It's something I can do. I've been asking around, and there's some definite interest in the subject matter."
There it is again. Subject matter. What the hell does Sam know about, other than their lives? "What," Dean says, just to fling something out there on the table, "you gonna do, like, a John Grisham thing and write about lawyers?"
"I don't know anything about lawyers. A couple of years of pre-law twenty years ago doesn't make me knowledgeable about lawyers."
Dean crinkles an eyebrow. Asks a question without asking it.
"Vampires," Sam says.
"Vampires?"
"I know about them."
There's so much of the stubborn, middle-school Sam in that that it makes Dean break into a genuine (and affectionate) grin. "None of that twinkling shit," he warns.
Sam stops picking at his fraying knee and peers at Dean as if he's trying to decide whether Dean's on board with this or not. Turns out the answer's "I think so." "They're still popular," he forges ahead, building up enthusiasm the more he talks, just the way he did way back, when he was shorter than Dean. "Ever since Dracula - the novel, you know, 1897. All those early movies, Bela Lugosi, and the later ones; that old daytime soap; the Twilight stuff, Buffy - people love vampires."
"Mostly 'cause they've never met one."
"Whatever."
"And you're gonna write a whole series of books?" Dean says skeptically.
"Lily said she'll help."
"And that's a plus?"
"Because of her Internet stuff."
Dean snorts, "The blog?"
"The porn."
"The what, now?"
"You didn't know about the -"
"Dude," Dean wheezes. "Lily writes -"
"Erotica."
"Why did I not know this?"
"Because you'd mock her?"
There are moments in Dean's life when that life does a kind of seismic shift. This is one of them. Forehead furrowing, he shifts in his seat on the couch to look at the desk in the corner of the den. The laptop he's seen his sister-in-law use more often than he bothers to pay attention to is sitting there, lid down, silent and somehow incriminating. He's gonna look at Lily in a whole new way from now on, he figures.
He's a little bit skeeved, yeah. But that doesn't mean he's not intrigued.
"Wow," he says, lips moued. "That's - huh."
"She's got a following."
"So what you're telling me is, the two of you are gonna write vampire porn."
Sam sighs, long and almost girly, as if that’s it right there: the Meaning of Life. "It's all basically porn, in a sense. That's the appeal. Being immortal. Forever young. The blood; being mesmerized by looking into the vamp's eyes. But no. There's more to it. A whole roster of characters. Shifting locations. Shifting time periods."
"Which is your excuse for going into research geek mode."
"If I need to."
There's more. Something Sam's not saying. Dean could have known the guy at the other end of the couch for half an hour and figured that out. "What?" he prods.
"I've got…other help."
"Morgan?" Dean winces. "Or…you ain't ropin' my kid into this enterprise, so tell me Liz and you're done."
"It's not - no."
"Sam."
Apparently Sam's used up his ability to just come straight out with information, at least as far as this conversation is concerned. He gets up from the couch and starts pacing around: back and forth between the couch and the fireplace, then full loops of the room. The more he paces, the more Dean's head throbs.
This started out to be a good evening. It did.
"Don't judge," Sam says.
That could be the intro to so very much shit, in colors never before seen in nature. Other people have to deal with I married an axe murderer or I wrecked your car or I burned the house down. I'm gay used to be colossal, but not so much any more; Dean's long past the point where he'd respond to anyone in his family making that announcement with anything much more dramatic than, Yeah?
But Sam - Sam's got a way of hauling out information that makes Dean's head spin like a globe.
The door to the hallway's been closed all this time; Sam shut it when he came in to start laying out his grand plans for literary domination. He opens it now, and beckons to somebody who's been waiting out there.
Lily, Dean hopes. But this evening's going too steadily off the rails for it to be Lily.
Dark hair, yes. The resemblance ends there.
"Noooooo," Dean moans. "Not, not, not. Not in my house, man. Not with my kids."
There's an honest-to-God, freakin' vampire standing in the doorway.
"Hello, Dean," Lenore says mildly.
Fifteen years? Something like that. A little more, because they met her when they met freakin' batshit Gordon Walker, and that was right after Dad died. Sam and Dean have both changed. Lenore hasn't. Not a gray hair, not a wrinkle to be found. But that would figure.
Since she's a vampire.
"It's lovely to see you too," she smiles.
Is that sarcasm? That's got to be sarcasm. And if there's anything he loves, it's a shovelful of sarcasm from the undead.
"Not in my house," he says.
She takes a long, slow look around, like she's here just to kill some time. While away an hour or two before she goes out to kill something. "You don't need to worry," she says after a minute. "I have a little place about thirty miles from here."
"You mean a nest."
"If you must."
"Look," he sputters, hating the way he feels trapped in here, with her in the doorway and Sam looming around, being of no earthly help at all. "I get that whole thing. The cow blood," he says, and dammit, she better not even twitch in a way that hints she's gone off the wagon, "and all that. But this is my house. I live here. My family lives here."
If she calls him a racist, he thinks, he's gonna flip.
"I'm aware," she says.
"We'll meet somewhere else," Sam puts in, and hell yeah, he thinks he's being helpful.
"You're gonna collaborate on vampire novels," Dean says. Does it sound mocking? He hopes so. Because this situation is off the charts.
"I'm a big fan of verisimilitude," Lenore replies.
It's funny.
So help him, it is. An hour ago he had a nice dinner with Morgan: he grilled a steak, and she made that potato concoction he loves. His belly was comfortably full, and he figured on spending part of the evening curled up in front of the TV, flipping through the new issue of Motor Trend. Then, after Morgan finished up working on the Lodge's financial stuff…
"You got anything else you want to tell me?" he asks his brother. "You got a third eye growing in the back of your head? Anything like that?"
"No," Sam says, frowning.
Nodding, Dean gets up from the couch, switches off the TV that he muted when Sam came in, picks up his Motor Trend, and aims for the door. "Goin' to bed," he says, and stops a little more than arm's reach from Lenore.
Looking at her makes him cackle uncontrollably.
"Dean?" Sam says.
If there's anything his life isn't, it's boring.
Wheezing for breath, he swipes at his eyes and nose with his free hand and circles past Lenore, into the hallway that leads out to the foyer.
"Whatever," he says over his shoulder. "Invite me to the party."
There's a vampire in his house. And his brother's gonna collaborate with her - and his porn-writing sister-in-law - to turn out a series of smutty, time-shifting vampire novels with verisimilitude.
"That's awesome," he says around the laughing. "That's just freakin' awesome."
The bitchface is probably springing back to life, there in the den. But he's not gonna have to deal with it. He's gonna go upstairs and read his magazine and wait for Morgan.
Funny, how "normal" really isn't all that normal.
It's funny, he thinks as he climbs the stairs two at a time.
His life.
It just never, ever stops being funny.
* * * * *