SPN FIC - G(eneral) E(ducational) D(evelopment)
Dean Winchester's a man with a GED and a can-do attitude. Which doesn't quite cut it in some people's eyes -- and is worth everything, in others'.
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Bobby, Morgan, Lizzie, other OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2200 words
G(eneral) E(ducational) D(evelopment)
By Carol Davis
It's not something Dean gives a lot of thought to; it's just something he does.
Sam was the first, he's pretty sure, when he bothers to think about it - Sam, who was six different kinds of a challenge. Sam might have gone to friggin' Stanford, but he was all thumbs as a little kid. Couldn't tie his own shoes until he was seven, and even then, half the time he'd walk ten steps and the laces would go dragging loose.
What kind of a loser can't tie their own…
He doesn't say that to Liz. Her fingers are tiny and delicate, and she can work knots out of a fine gold chain for her mother, tongue clamped between her teeth, brow furrowed deep in concentration, but she can't tie her shoelaces so they hold.
"Honey," he tells her as he kneels in front of her, bringing them eye to eye. "You gotta pull it tight."
She watches.
Beams at him.
He suspects that what she's thinking is, Why should I, when you'll do it for me?
"Like this," he says. "See? Pull it tight."
"Okay," she pipes.
She's Sam, all over again.
And somehow, all over again, he doesn't mind.
~~~~~~~~
"Dean," Mrs. Pawlette says.
He's got no choice but to stop there, alongside her desk. For a while he looks everywhere but at her: he studies the blackboard, still bearing the faint white shadows of what's been written on it during the day; the row of cardboard autumn decorations taped to the wall above the chalkboard, colorful leaves and pumpkins and gourds; the scuffed checkerboard floor.
When he finally does look at her, she doesn't seem pissed off.
She seems kind of disappointed.
"Homework?" she says.
"I had to help my dad," he mutters. It's sort of true, and sort of not; he did help Dad for a while, but not because Dad insisted on it. It was his own choice to shove his books aside, to sit beside Dad at the kitchen table and help clean the weapons.
Maybe Dad figured he'd finished his homework.
Maybe Dad never gave it any thought at all.
"You understand that you're responsible for doing the work that's assigned to you," Mrs. Pawlette says.
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you understand that if you don't do it -" She sighs. "This isn't a good choice, Dean."
Yes it is, he thinks.
It damn well IS.
~~~~~~~~
These kids, he thinks as he slumps back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment so he can roll them at his idiot classmates without anybody noticing.
That one kid wants to be a freaking DENTIST?
At least that other kid, the redheaded one, had the balls to say he wants to work in a bank because that's where all the money is. That got him a good laugh from everybody else, even Mrs. Sternhagen, although she cut herself off in the middle of a big, loud snort.
They all kind of want to do what their dads or moms do.
And that's cool, in a way, because Dean wants to do the same thing. Wants to follow in his dad's footsteps, find all the best hunters to talk to and learn from - Dad being one of them, of course. The hell with wanting to be a cop or a fireman; those guys are all right, but they don't have a clue what really goes on.
"Dean?" Mrs. Sternhagen says.
For now, though, he's got to toe the line.
So he walks to the front of the classroom and tells his classmates he wants to work on cars.
~~~~~~~~
Screw YOU, he thinks as he fumbles his way out of the building.
He should have kept his mouth shut; should never have blurted "I'm a HERO!" into Amanda Heckerling's wake as she flounced her way up the hall. If he'd kept his mouth shut, nobody would have noticed that she'd looked at him with disdain and pity instead of the awe and admiration he's been courting all these weeks.
Screw this whole PLACE, he thinks.
It's just a matter of a few more months. He can get the piece of paper - not from this school, more than likely, but from someplace - and then he can forget the whole thing. Let Sam be the study nerd.
A few more months, then he never has to set foot in a place like this again.
Hell. It's not like he needs to be here now.
"Dad," he says that night, after he's cleaned up the dinner dishes, and Sam's shut himself in his room to study.
When his father raises an eyebrow, Dean hauls in a deep breath and says, "You got a minute? Need to - there's something -"
Dad says no.
Well, screw it, then; it's just a few more months.
~~~~~~~~
"You could come," Sam says. Just throws it out there, as if it's nothing.
For a minute, Dean can see that happen. It's not like Dad couldn't function on his own; more than likely, he'd hook up with Bobby, or Caleb, or Joshua, when he needs backup, and the rest of the time he'd just go on doing what he does most of the time: hunt solo. He seems to like that. Being a lone wolf, with no ties to anybody or anything.
So, yeah. It could work.
They could get in the car and take off. California's warm, and according to Sam his campus isn't far from the beach.
Campus, Dean thinks.
His brother's going to frigging STANFORD. Ivy League.
While Dean does…what, exactly? Finds himself a job at some gas station? That'll go over big with the college chicks Sam's gonna end up bringing home. This is my brother, the grease monkey. What? No, he dropped out. Didn't have the stones to finish.
They'll look at him like Amanda Heckerling did.
"And what's Dad supposed to do?" he snaps at Sam. "Huh? I'm supposed to just bail on him?"
"Whatever," Sam mutters.
They don't bring it up again.
~~~~~~~~
There's a summer, and a throbbing, badly broken leg, and a shelf of dusty old books.
They're not the kind of thing he'd normally reach for; he's gone through most of his life limiting his reading material to comic books and car magazines, anything he could get through in a few minutes, something he could use to distract himself while Dad or Sammy napped, or while he waited for the sun to rise.
Books always seemed like too much of a commitment.
But there are these, and he has time on his hands. A long, long stretch of time, in a place where TV's limited to a couple of snowy channels; when he's forbidden to drive and there's no place worth walking to even if he could manage it.
There's Vonnegut, and Sturgeon, and Bradbury.
Bradbury.
She liked Bradbury.
She thought he was smart. Told him so, over and over. Clapped her hands and twirled him around when he did something that tickled her.
She'd be pissed, he thinks, that he is where he is.
He can't walk away from it, though, or drive.
So he reads.
Thinks, again and again as he turns the pages, that she'd be glad.
~~~~~~~~
It'd be easier if he had any kind of a cheering section. Somebody who'd say, "Hey, man, that's awesome. Go for it!"
What he should have done, of course, was insist that Dad turn down the job that took him away from midterms, that kept him out of school just long enough to slaughter his grades. He should have insisted that his education was every bit as important as Sam's - but that would have been an impossible sell, being that Dad intended both of them to be hunters, and a high school diploma isn't worth jack squat in that world.
He should have demanded the right to take makeup exams. Should have insisted that the school give him another chance.
Should have. Should have.
That's done, he thinks. Over and done. Completely fucked up, but done.
And this isn't.
"Can you -" he stammers at the woman behind the reference desk.
She smiles when she lifts her head. There's no criticism in her eyes, and thank God for that, because it wouldn't take much to push him right back out the door.
"GED," he manages to say. "I - can you -"
"Of course," she tells him.
Thank God for that.
~~~~~~~~
"I would haul off," the guy says, with a generous slur to his words, "I would haul off and punch his fuckin' lights right the fuck out."
Dean grins a little at that, but it's more a reaction to the sloppy sound than to the words themselves.
"S'r'sly," the guy wheezes.
It's never been funny: the implication that he's never read a book. That he's got no clue how to do research on the Internet, if it doesn't involve porn. That he's never seen a movie that didn't involve naked chicks and hot cars, or Indiana Jones. That enjoying Star Trek is something he ought to be ashamed of, or at least reluctant to admit.
"I figger," the guy says, "ever'body is good at what they do."
Even if that's being completely shitfaced on a Sunday afternoon, Dean thinks.
"Got myself a GED," he tells the guy.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Good for you, man," the guy says, and salutes Dean with his glass, slopping Dewar's over the side. "Anybody else, I say fuck 'em. Everybody's got their damn issues, you know?"
"Yeah," Dean says quietly.
And wishes that were enough of an explanation for the shit his brother keeps handing him.
~~~~~~~~
"You go to college?" he asks Bobby early one morning, even though he's pretty sure he knows what the answer is.
Bobby's dead wife told him Bobby used to be "a mild-mannered junk dealer."
Yeah, that has Ivy League written all over it.
Bobby lifts a brow in a way that probably scares somebody now and then. "You got a point?" he asks, and shovels scrambled eggs onto Dean's plate with enough force to send some of them scooting over the edge onto the table.
"Kind of," Dean replies.
"Which is?"
They've known each other since Dean was a kid. Since a time when Bobby could probably still see being "mild-mannered" in his rearview. They've been through some shit together, and the odds are, they'll go through a bunch more. That's a reasonably secure place to be. Which isn't to say Bobby's likely to respond to this very well.
"You read a lot," Dean says. "Picked up a lot over the years. I respect that."
"Hmm," Bobby says.
Dean picks up his fork. "Next time you feel like putting me down for not being you? You could maybe kiss my ass."
"Noted," Bobby says, and serves himself up some eggs.
~~~~~~~~
"Ashamed of you?" Sam says. "Are you frigging kidding me?"
"You went to Stanford. And I -"
Sam gestures, a swift cut of one hand. "It doesn't matter any more. Stanford was a long time ago. It seems like that was another person, somebody that's got nothing to do with me. With what my life is."
"Still."
"I didn't graduate."
"You -"
"Dean," Sam says. "We ended up in the same place. Does it make a difference? It was a long time ago."
All Dean can give him is a mumbled, "Maybe."
Sam slides to his right on the scuffed red vinyl seat of the booth and brings himself back into Dean's sight line. "You're my brother, man. You're the best hunter I know. Who gives a crap that you didn't finish high school? It's not even worth bringing up."
"All of you. You all went to college. Except me."
"And nobody cares."
When Dean retreats to the car, Sam follows. Pulls ahead, and holds the driver's door shut with one hand. "I'm proud of you," Sam says. "You taught me everything I know that's worth knowing. Okay?"
Dean answers with a shrug.
"Fine," Sam says. "But it's the truth."
~~~~~~~~
This is not something he ever thought he'd do.
Not something he ever thought he'd be.
There was Sam, of course, but Dean was brother then, not father (or, at least, father figure). And there was Ben, but Ben was almost grown, during that year Dean almost never allows himself to think about.
He never thought he'd be this. That he'd sit on the wicker couch on the big, wide porch overlooking the lake with a children's book lying open on his lap, Liz crushed against his right side, tucked underneath his arm.
"What's this word?" he challenges her.
"ALLIGATOR!" she shrills, at a pitch that makes his ears ring.
"Hey, Teach," Morgan says from the doorway. "You gonna finish up soon? Dinner's almost ready."
There's something in her eyes - a kind of full and honest admiration - that takes him by surprise, enough so that he's lost for words, and he's come up with no response by the time she smiles and turns away, heading back into the house.
Teacher? he thinks.
Nah. He's not - he was just -
It's not teaching. This thing with the books. It's just…caring. Sharing.
Doing what he does.
Apparently, a GED's good enough for that.
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Bobby, Morgan, Lizzie, other OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2200 words
G(eneral) E(ducational) D(evelopment)
By Carol Davis
It's not something Dean gives a lot of thought to; it's just something he does.
Sam was the first, he's pretty sure, when he bothers to think about it - Sam, who was six different kinds of a challenge. Sam might have gone to friggin' Stanford, but he was all thumbs as a little kid. Couldn't tie his own shoes until he was seven, and even then, half the time he'd walk ten steps and the laces would go dragging loose.
What kind of a loser can't tie their own…
He doesn't say that to Liz. Her fingers are tiny and delicate, and she can work knots out of a fine gold chain for her mother, tongue clamped between her teeth, brow furrowed deep in concentration, but she can't tie her shoelaces so they hold.
"Honey," he tells her as he kneels in front of her, bringing them eye to eye. "You gotta pull it tight."
She watches.
Beams at him.
He suspects that what she's thinking is, Why should I, when you'll do it for me?
"Like this," he says. "See? Pull it tight."
"Okay," she pipes.
She's Sam, all over again.
And somehow, all over again, he doesn't mind.
~~~~~~~~
"Dean," Mrs. Pawlette says.
He's got no choice but to stop there, alongside her desk. For a while he looks everywhere but at her: he studies the blackboard, still bearing the faint white shadows of what's been written on it during the day; the row of cardboard autumn decorations taped to the wall above the chalkboard, colorful leaves and pumpkins and gourds; the scuffed checkerboard floor.
When he finally does look at her, she doesn't seem pissed off.
She seems kind of disappointed.
"Homework?" she says.
"I had to help my dad," he mutters. It's sort of true, and sort of not; he did help Dad for a while, but not because Dad insisted on it. It was his own choice to shove his books aside, to sit beside Dad at the kitchen table and help clean the weapons.
Maybe Dad figured he'd finished his homework.
Maybe Dad never gave it any thought at all.
"You understand that you're responsible for doing the work that's assigned to you," Mrs. Pawlette says.
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you understand that if you don't do it -" She sighs. "This isn't a good choice, Dean."
Yes it is, he thinks.
It damn well IS.
~~~~~~~~
These kids, he thinks as he slumps back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment so he can roll them at his idiot classmates without anybody noticing.
That one kid wants to be a freaking DENTIST?
At least that other kid, the redheaded one, had the balls to say he wants to work in a bank because that's where all the money is. That got him a good laugh from everybody else, even Mrs. Sternhagen, although she cut herself off in the middle of a big, loud snort.
They all kind of want to do what their dads or moms do.
And that's cool, in a way, because Dean wants to do the same thing. Wants to follow in his dad's footsteps, find all the best hunters to talk to and learn from - Dad being one of them, of course. The hell with wanting to be a cop or a fireman; those guys are all right, but they don't have a clue what really goes on.
"Dean?" Mrs. Sternhagen says.
For now, though, he's got to toe the line.
So he walks to the front of the classroom and tells his classmates he wants to work on cars.
~~~~~~~~
Screw YOU, he thinks as he fumbles his way out of the building.
He should have kept his mouth shut; should never have blurted "I'm a HERO!" into Amanda Heckerling's wake as she flounced her way up the hall. If he'd kept his mouth shut, nobody would have noticed that she'd looked at him with disdain and pity instead of the awe and admiration he's been courting all these weeks.
Screw this whole PLACE, he thinks.
It's just a matter of a few more months. He can get the piece of paper - not from this school, more than likely, but from someplace - and then he can forget the whole thing. Let Sam be the study nerd.
A few more months, then he never has to set foot in a place like this again.
Hell. It's not like he needs to be here now.
"Dad," he says that night, after he's cleaned up the dinner dishes, and Sam's shut himself in his room to study.
When his father raises an eyebrow, Dean hauls in a deep breath and says, "You got a minute? Need to - there's something -"
Dad says no.
Well, screw it, then; it's just a few more months.
~~~~~~~~
"You could come," Sam says. Just throws it out there, as if it's nothing.
For a minute, Dean can see that happen. It's not like Dad couldn't function on his own; more than likely, he'd hook up with Bobby, or Caleb, or Joshua, when he needs backup, and the rest of the time he'd just go on doing what he does most of the time: hunt solo. He seems to like that. Being a lone wolf, with no ties to anybody or anything.
So, yeah. It could work.
They could get in the car and take off. California's warm, and according to Sam his campus isn't far from the beach.
Campus, Dean thinks.
His brother's going to frigging STANFORD. Ivy League.
While Dean does…what, exactly? Finds himself a job at some gas station? That'll go over big with the college chicks Sam's gonna end up bringing home. This is my brother, the grease monkey. What? No, he dropped out. Didn't have the stones to finish.
They'll look at him like Amanda Heckerling did.
"And what's Dad supposed to do?" he snaps at Sam. "Huh? I'm supposed to just bail on him?"
"Whatever," Sam mutters.
They don't bring it up again.
~~~~~~~~
There's a summer, and a throbbing, badly broken leg, and a shelf of dusty old books.
They're not the kind of thing he'd normally reach for; he's gone through most of his life limiting his reading material to comic books and car magazines, anything he could get through in a few minutes, something he could use to distract himself while Dad or Sammy napped, or while he waited for the sun to rise.
Books always seemed like too much of a commitment.
But there are these, and he has time on his hands. A long, long stretch of time, in a place where TV's limited to a couple of snowy channels; when he's forbidden to drive and there's no place worth walking to even if he could manage it.
There's Vonnegut, and Sturgeon, and Bradbury.
Bradbury.
She liked Bradbury.
She thought he was smart. Told him so, over and over. Clapped her hands and twirled him around when he did something that tickled her.
She'd be pissed, he thinks, that he is where he is.
He can't walk away from it, though, or drive.
So he reads.
Thinks, again and again as he turns the pages, that she'd be glad.
~~~~~~~~
It'd be easier if he had any kind of a cheering section. Somebody who'd say, "Hey, man, that's awesome. Go for it!"
What he should have done, of course, was insist that Dad turn down the job that took him away from midterms, that kept him out of school just long enough to slaughter his grades. He should have insisted that his education was every bit as important as Sam's - but that would have been an impossible sell, being that Dad intended both of them to be hunters, and a high school diploma isn't worth jack squat in that world.
He should have demanded the right to take makeup exams. Should have insisted that the school give him another chance.
Should have. Should have.
That's done, he thinks. Over and done. Completely fucked up, but done.
And this isn't.
"Can you -" he stammers at the woman behind the reference desk.
She smiles when she lifts her head. There's no criticism in her eyes, and thank God for that, because it wouldn't take much to push him right back out the door.
"GED," he manages to say. "I - can you -"
"Of course," she tells him.
Thank God for that.
~~~~~~~~
"I would haul off," the guy says, with a generous slur to his words, "I would haul off and punch his fuckin' lights right the fuck out."
Dean grins a little at that, but it's more a reaction to the sloppy sound than to the words themselves.
"S'r'sly," the guy wheezes.
It's never been funny: the implication that he's never read a book. That he's got no clue how to do research on the Internet, if it doesn't involve porn. That he's never seen a movie that didn't involve naked chicks and hot cars, or Indiana Jones. That enjoying Star Trek is something he ought to be ashamed of, or at least reluctant to admit.
"I figger," the guy says, "ever'body is good at what they do."
Even if that's being completely shitfaced on a Sunday afternoon, Dean thinks.
"Got myself a GED," he tells the guy.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Good for you, man," the guy says, and salutes Dean with his glass, slopping Dewar's over the side. "Anybody else, I say fuck 'em. Everybody's got their damn issues, you know?"
"Yeah," Dean says quietly.
And wishes that were enough of an explanation for the shit his brother keeps handing him.
~~~~~~~~
"You go to college?" he asks Bobby early one morning, even though he's pretty sure he knows what the answer is.
Bobby's dead wife told him Bobby used to be "a mild-mannered junk dealer."
Yeah, that has Ivy League written all over it.
Bobby lifts a brow in a way that probably scares somebody now and then. "You got a point?" he asks, and shovels scrambled eggs onto Dean's plate with enough force to send some of them scooting over the edge onto the table.
"Kind of," Dean replies.
"Which is?"
They've known each other since Dean was a kid. Since a time when Bobby could probably still see being "mild-mannered" in his rearview. They've been through some shit together, and the odds are, they'll go through a bunch more. That's a reasonably secure place to be. Which isn't to say Bobby's likely to respond to this very well.
"You read a lot," Dean says. "Picked up a lot over the years. I respect that."
"Hmm," Bobby says.
Dean picks up his fork. "Next time you feel like putting me down for not being you? You could maybe kiss my ass."
"Noted," Bobby says, and serves himself up some eggs.
~~~~~~~~
"Ashamed of you?" Sam says. "Are you frigging kidding me?"
"You went to Stanford. And I -"
Sam gestures, a swift cut of one hand. "It doesn't matter any more. Stanford was a long time ago. It seems like that was another person, somebody that's got nothing to do with me. With what my life is."
"Still."
"I didn't graduate."
"You -"
"Dean," Sam says. "We ended up in the same place. Does it make a difference? It was a long time ago."
All Dean can give him is a mumbled, "Maybe."
Sam slides to his right on the scuffed red vinyl seat of the booth and brings himself back into Dean's sight line. "You're my brother, man. You're the best hunter I know. Who gives a crap that you didn't finish high school? It's not even worth bringing up."
"All of you. You all went to college. Except me."
"And nobody cares."
When Dean retreats to the car, Sam follows. Pulls ahead, and holds the driver's door shut with one hand. "I'm proud of you," Sam says. "You taught me everything I know that's worth knowing. Okay?"
Dean answers with a shrug.
"Fine," Sam says. "But it's the truth."
~~~~~~~~
This is not something he ever thought he'd do.
Not something he ever thought he'd be.
There was Sam, of course, but Dean was brother then, not father (or, at least, father figure). And there was Ben, but Ben was almost grown, during that year Dean almost never allows himself to think about.
He never thought he'd be this. That he'd sit on the wicker couch on the big, wide porch overlooking the lake with a children's book lying open on his lap, Liz crushed against his right side, tucked underneath his arm.
"What's this word?" he challenges her.
"ALLIGATOR!" she shrills, at a pitch that makes his ears ring.
"Hey, Teach," Morgan says from the doorway. "You gonna finish up soon? Dinner's almost ready."
There's something in her eyes - a kind of full and honest admiration - that takes him by surprise, enough so that he's lost for words, and he's come up with no response by the time she smiles and turns away, heading back into the house.
Teacher? he thinks.
Nah. He's not - he was just -
It's not teaching. This thing with the books. It's just…caring. Sharing.
Doing what he does.
Apparently, a GED's good enough for that.
* * * * *