SPN FIC - The Next Big Thing
Sometimes when the Muse hands you something, you have no choice but to give in and write it -- even when your name is Sam Winchester, and posting things on the Internet generally doesn't lead to anything good.
(Note: Takes place a little ways into the future, after what's messed up as a result of Season 8 has been resolved.)
"Don't get defensive," Dean said. "All right, so you wrote a book. Good for you."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Kevin
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2266 words
THE NEXT BIG THING
By Carol Davis
"No secrets," Sam said. "Right?"
That was a hell of an opening, Dean figured. He was still damp from the shower, wrapped in a warm robe, thrilled to finally be rid of the coating of ooze he'd been wearing for two and a half days and counting on some serious downtime: a couple of movies, maybe, a good hearty dinner, and a full night's sleep in the loving embrace of his memory foam.
Instead, there was this.
"We promised each other, no secrets," Sam persisted. "So -"
"Dude. There is nothing I'm not telling you."
"I meant me."
"You meant you what?"
"That I - well -"
Sam heaved a sigh, the likes of which Dean hadn't seen since Sam was in middle school. It brought back memories of awkward questions and stammered answers, and for crying out LOUD, couldn't a guy come home after nine solid days of chasing a thing that smelled like old socks and not have to deal with something like this?
You're sick again.
You made a deal with somebody again.
You married somebody. AGAIN.
"Dude," Dean said.
The answer was a thick stack of printer paper, nervously pushed across the library table in Dean's direction. Things have gone all to shit again was Dean's first thought; Sam had apparently stumbled across a truckload of signs and portents, a collection of dead people, cattle mutilations, an asteroid headed for the Earth. Kim Kardashian running for public office. Something like that. But the stack didn't look like printouts of news pages or hunters' blogs. The top page, at least, was black-and-white text, laid out like Sam's old book reports and term papers.
"What is it?" Dean frowned, pretty sure he didn't want to hear the answer.
"It's… a book."
"A book."
"Yeah," Sam said.
"You printed out a book? What the hell for?"
"No, man. I wrote a book."
"I repeat: what the hell for?"
Sam sighed again and slouched back in his chair. He spent a while shoving his hair out of his face and chewing his lower lip. Then he kneaded his lower lip with his fingers. None of that, of course, provided Dean with any useable information. Finally - about five seconds before Dean would have walked away, out of sheer frustration - Sam said in the tone of a Sunday-mass confession, "I got tired of researching. And this idea popped into my head. So I wrote it. I used to write, you know. People told me my stuff was pretty decent."
"People."
"Yes, Dean. People. As in, more than one."
"Don't get defensive," Dean said. "All right, so you wrote a book. Good for you."
"And I was thinking -"
The rest of it came out in a rush. The popularity of things like Twilight and Harry Potter and Hunger Games, each of them a series of stories, all of them featuring young characters in heroic roles. (The mention of Twilight and "heroic" in the same sentence did things to Dean's hackles, but he let it go by, if for no other reason than that Sam was talking way too fast to allow for protest.) The existence of a self-publishing program on Amazon.com, which meant no search for an old-school brick-and-mortar publisher, no meetings, no need to show up anywhere. Just a few keystrokes.
"And… then what?"
"Then I… see what happens."
No, Sam said, this was not at all like Becky Rosen's "fan fiction." And no, he had not contacted Becky Rosen, or seen Becky Rosen, or spoken to Becky Rosen.
Not since that whole marriage thing.
Dean stood staring at the stack of paper for a minute, twitching at the tickle of shower water dribbling down the middle of his back from his still-sort-of-wet hair. Sure, he remembered Sam scribbling stories back in middle school, amusing himself when they were stuck somewhere without a TV, or books, or a radio, after he'd grown too old to run Matchbox cars across the rug. If Sam wanted to amuse himself the same way now - well, that was fine.
The Internet, though?
So not fine.
"I talked to Kevin," Sam said. "He was a little skeptical, but he agreed -"
"You talked to Kevin."
"Yes, Dean. I put all the pieces together before I said anything to you. You were busy."
"And it couldn't wait a few days."
Something rippled through Sam's expression.
"You already did it, didn't you?" Dean sputtered. "You put whatever that is on the damn Internet."
He had to sit down for the rest of it: Kevin's being the only one of them with an ongoing, actual, real-world identity, one that included a bank account and a social security number, none of which was being scrutinized (to Kevin's knowledge, at least) by the FBI. In exchange for first-read and final approval privileges, Kevin would serve as Sam's stand-in in the big wide world of Amazon.com Internet publishing.
"Why?" Dean asked.
"He's gonna launder the money for me."
"The money? What money?"
"Amazon," Sam said. "I get paid for this."
"The hell you do," Dean replied. "You - wait. What?"
~~~~~~~~
"This is not for real," Dean said.
"Of course it's for real," Sam told him. "I told you: the payment goes into Kevin's account. He'll pay all the taxes, and we split what's left."
"How many - what's -"
Sam shuffled through his handful of little slips of paper, each of them a sheet torn off a palm-sized motel notepad. "Umm… worldwide? As of the end of last month, we had eighty-four thousand, three hundred -"
"You are seriously shitting me."
"No," Sam said. "I'm really not."
"Eighty-four thousand people bought your story. For actual cash."
"Yup."
"And your share is -"
"A hundred and eight thousand, six hundred -"
"DOLLARS?"
~~~~~~~~
It took some doing for Dean to convince himself to sit down and read the thing, being that it was so crazy freaking long. And because - well, the whole Chuck thing. After Sam had assured him that no, the story was not about the two of them, or about any thinly veiled version of the two of them, he agreed to take a look. Not to read the whole thing (again, LONG), but to peek.
"It's about a chick," he said when he'd finished the first page.
"Yup," Sam said.
"Dude," Dean snickered. "You're writing adventure stories about a seventeen-year-old girl? It's like you want me to torment you."
"Mom."
"What?"
"She's… Mom. Sort of."
"You said it wasn't about us."
"It's not. We're not in there. This is pre-you and me."
"So Dad's in there."
Sam refused to say anything more, which was some serious b.s., Dean decided. Having a short list of questions answered clearly and definitively would cut the amount of time he'd need to devote to this little Buckets-of-Crazy enterprise down to almost nil. Instead, he was stuck reading the thing, all sixty billion pages of it.
Sam brought him a sandwich when he was about three hours in.
As was true with the Harry Potter series, with Hunger Games and Twilight (at least, as far as Dean knew, because he sure as hell was not intimately familiar with any of it, thank you very much), the main character was surrounded by a supporting cast: in this case, a scholarly but sexy Asian prophet, a quippy but sexy red-haired gamer/computer whiz, and a mysterious but sexy someone known only as The Source.
"Really," Dean said.
"That's what sells," Sam told him.
"Kevin, Charlie, and Garth."
"They all agreed."
"In exchange for a cut of the profits?"
"That's only fair."
"And you didn't see fit to put me in here."
Sam took a long pull of his beer before he bothered to answer. "You've asked me to assure you, over and over, that you're not in there. Now you want to be in there?"
"I could be the determined but sexy hero who drives around in a very hot car, ganking monsters and rescuing hot chicks."
"You make my brain hurt," Sam replied.
~~~~~~~~
"They want a sequel," Sam said.
"Who does?"
"My fans."
"Your fans?"
"There are fan sites. And a Facebook page with a quarter of a million Likes. I have a lot of fans, Dean."
"Sweet Mother of God."
"Sales have passed two million, you know. I'm very hot in Japan and Brazil."
"You are not hot," Dean said. "You're not even you. You're Kevin. Or you're some teenaged chick named Lindy. You're supposed to be doing research, you know - not reading your freaking Facebook page. This is completely out of control! Did you forget, you went to freaking STANFORD? And you're a Man of Letters! Not - not - THIS."
"The money doesn't seem to bother you."
"It's the principle of the thing, Sam."
"Because you're not in there."
"It would bother me no matter who was in there. You know how things go for us, Sam. Somehow, this will all turn to crap."
"Meanwhile," Sam said, "they want a sequel."
~~~~~~~~
"I get no peace," Kevin said, sinking into a chair and lowering his head into the questionable support of his wobbling hands. "I thought being kidnapped by Crowley was the worst nightmare I could ever possibly go through. But somehow, this is worse. They found me. Do you hear me? THEY FOUND ME. I get phone calls at all hours of the night. The post office refuses to deliver my mail any more because there's so much of it - they told me I'm supposed to drive over there with a truck, now, and pick it up at least once a week. That I need to do that because they're not allowed to destroy it. They're required to deliver it, except they won't deliver it! I've gotten calls from the producers of every talk show on the planet, and I can't even tell you how many people want to talk movie rights. And action figures. Graphic novels. Merchandising. They want me to be a presenter at the Oscars, for God's sake!"
He was clutching fistfuls of his hair, looking every bit as stressed out as he had two years ago, during the whole tablet situation.
"Wow," Dean said sympathetically.
"Tell him it has to stop. Really. The money is one thing. The money is nice. My mother would be very impressed. But I'm losing my mind."
"He says he has fans."
"Oh," Kevin murmured. "He does. Or I do."
"Are they all batshit bananas?"
Kevin laughed softly. After a couple of seconds it turned into the cackle of the truly loony. "Dude," he moaned. "The mail. Oh my God, the mail. These long, rambling letters. And they send me pictures. And gifts. Do you have any idea how many stuffed animals I've gotten in the mail? And - and - they send me their panties."
"I told him it would turn to crap," Dean said.
"Tell him it has to stop. Or I'm going to out him. I'm gonna tell Good Morning America that it's not me, it's him, and he'll have to deal with all of this. Dean. People show up in the shrubbery outside my apartment. With CAMERAS."
His voice had gone high and shrill.
Kid's gonna lose it, Dean thought. "You didn't commit to anything, did you?" he asked softly.
"I was Advanced Placement," Kevin said indignantly. "I know how to read a contract. No, I didn't commit to anything. I haven't made any promises to anybody. Except your brother."
"Awesome," Dean said. "Let's go tell him."
~~~~~~~~
"There's an article," Sam said.
He'd been doing that for almost a month: surfing the Web, and coming up with some bit of something he could add to his indictment of Dean and Kevin.
"Awesome," Dean muttered, attention fixed on his copy of Guns & Ammo.
"They're comparing me to S. E. Hinton."
Dean said nothing. Didn't bother asking, "S. E. Who?" because he had no interest in knowing who, or what, that might be.
"They're calling me a one-hit wonder."
"Can I remind you? We went through the whole cult-fan-thing before. You married Becky Rosen."
"Who drugged and kidnapped me, Dean."
"I would have thought that'd be more than enough to send you running screaming into the hills - and staying there. That, and the fan fiction. And the convention. DUDE. Was that not enough to discourage you from courting that kind of stuff ever again?"
Sam sulked at his keyboard for a minute, then nodded toward the alcove in which they'd installed a small but very sturdy safe. "There's more than two hundred thousand dollars in there, man. Because of 'this kind of stuff.' That's more money than we've ever had in our lives. It's pretty much enough to ensure that we can buy what we need from here on out. Aside from the Lamborghini Aventador and the house in Pacific Palisades. And owning your own cable channel."
"Yeah," Dean conceded. "Can't argue that, I guess."
They sat in silence for a while, finishing their dinner. With Kevin gone off to hide out for a month in the Seychelles, the bunker was as quiet as it had been when they'd first moved in.
A single artifact remained of Sam's foray into the world of Young Adult Fiction: a prototype action figure that had been sent to Kevin by a manufacturer in the Philippines. When Dean had finished his burger, he reached out and picked up the little toy - a slender blonde girl in jeans and a denim jacket - and turned it around and around in the light.
"Kinda wonder what she'd think," he said quietly. "Of being a hero."
"Yeah," Sam replied. "I've been wondering that too."
* * * * *
(Note: Takes place a little ways into the future, after what's messed up as a result of Season 8 has been resolved.)
"Don't get defensive," Dean said. "All right, so you wrote a book. Good for you."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Kevin
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2266 words
THE NEXT BIG THING
By Carol Davis
"No secrets," Sam said. "Right?"
That was a hell of an opening, Dean figured. He was still damp from the shower, wrapped in a warm robe, thrilled to finally be rid of the coating of ooze he'd been wearing for two and a half days and counting on some serious downtime: a couple of movies, maybe, a good hearty dinner, and a full night's sleep in the loving embrace of his memory foam.
Instead, there was this.
"We promised each other, no secrets," Sam persisted. "So -"
"Dude. There is nothing I'm not telling you."
"I meant me."
"You meant you what?"
"That I - well -"
Sam heaved a sigh, the likes of which Dean hadn't seen since Sam was in middle school. It brought back memories of awkward questions and stammered answers, and for crying out LOUD, couldn't a guy come home after nine solid days of chasing a thing that smelled like old socks and not have to deal with something like this?
You're sick again.
You made a deal with somebody again.
You married somebody. AGAIN.
"Dude," Dean said.
The answer was a thick stack of printer paper, nervously pushed across the library table in Dean's direction. Things have gone all to shit again was Dean's first thought; Sam had apparently stumbled across a truckload of signs and portents, a collection of dead people, cattle mutilations, an asteroid headed for the Earth. Kim Kardashian running for public office. Something like that. But the stack didn't look like printouts of news pages or hunters' blogs. The top page, at least, was black-and-white text, laid out like Sam's old book reports and term papers.
"What is it?" Dean frowned, pretty sure he didn't want to hear the answer.
"It's… a book."
"A book."
"Yeah," Sam said.
"You printed out a book? What the hell for?"
"No, man. I wrote a book."
"I repeat: what the hell for?"
Sam sighed again and slouched back in his chair. He spent a while shoving his hair out of his face and chewing his lower lip. Then he kneaded his lower lip with his fingers. None of that, of course, provided Dean with any useable information. Finally - about five seconds before Dean would have walked away, out of sheer frustration - Sam said in the tone of a Sunday-mass confession, "I got tired of researching. And this idea popped into my head. So I wrote it. I used to write, you know. People told me my stuff was pretty decent."
"People."
"Yes, Dean. People. As in, more than one."
"Don't get defensive," Dean said. "All right, so you wrote a book. Good for you."
"And I was thinking -"
The rest of it came out in a rush. The popularity of things like Twilight and Harry Potter and Hunger Games, each of them a series of stories, all of them featuring young characters in heroic roles. (The mention of Twilight and "heroic" in the same sentence did things to Dean's hackles, but he let it go by, if for no other reason than that Sam was talking way too fast to allow for protest.) The existence of a self-publishing program on Amazon.com, which meant no search for an old-school brick-and-mortar publisher, no meetings, no need to show up anywhere. Just a few keystrokes.
"And… then what?"
"Then I… see what happens."
No, Sam said, this was not at all like Becky Rosen's "fan fiction." And no, he had not contacted Becky Rosen, or seen Becky Rosen, or spoken to Becky Rosen.
Not since that whole marriage thing.
Dean stood staring at the stack of paper for a minute, twitching at the tickle of shower water dribbling down the middle of his back from his still-sort-of-wet hair. Sure, he remembered Sam scribbling stories back in middle school, amusing himself when they were stuck somewhere without a TV, or books, or a radio, after he'd grown too old to run Matchbox cars across the rug. If Sam wanted to amuse himself the same way now - well, that was fine.
The Internet, though?
So not fine.
"I talked to Kevin," Sam said. "He was a little skeptical, but he agreed -"
"You talked to Kevin."
"Yes, Dean. I put all the pieces together before I said anything to you. You were busy."
"And it couldn't wait a few days."
Something rippled through Sam's expression.
"You already did it, didn't you?" Dean sputtered. "You put whatever that is on the damn Internet."
He had to sit down for the rest of it: Kevin's being the only one of them with an ongoing, actual, real-world identity, one that included a bank account and a social security number, none of which was being scrutinized (to Kevin's knowledge, at least) by the FBI. In exchange for first-read and final approval privileges, Kevin would serve as Sam's stand-in in the big wide world of Amazon.com Internet publishing.
"Why?" Dean asked.
"He's gonna launder the money for me."
"The money? What money?"
"Amazon," Sam said. "I get paid for this."
"The hell you do," Dean replied. "You - wait. What?"
~~~~~~~~
"This is not for real," Dean said.
"Of course it's for real," Sam told him. "I told you: the payment goes into Kevin's account. He'll pay all the taxes, and we split what's left."
"How many - what's -"
Sam shuffled through his handful of little slips of paper, each of them a sheet torn off a palm-sized motel notepad. "Umm… worldwide? As of the end of last month, we had eighty-four thousand, three hundred -"
"You are seriously shitting me."
"No," Sam said. "I'm really not."
"Eighty-four thousand people bought your story. For actual cash."
"Yup."
"And your share is -"
"A hundred and eight thousand, six hundred -"
"DOLLARS?"
~~~~~~~~
It took some doing for Dean to convince himself to sit down and read the thing, being that it was so crazy freaking long. And because - well, the whole Chuck thing. After Sam had assured him that no, the story was not about the two of them, or about any thinly veiled version of the two of them, he agreed to take a look. Not to read the whole thing (again, LONG), but to peek.
"It's about a chick," he said when he'd finished the first page.
"Yup," Sam said.
"Dude," Dean snickered. "You're writing adventure stories about a seventeen-year-old girl? It's like you want me to torment you."
"Mom."
"What?"
"She's… Mom. Sort of."
"You said it wasn't about us."
"It's not. We're not in there. This is pre-you and me."
"So Dad's in there."
Sam refused to say anything more, which was some serious b.s., Dean decided. Having a short list of questions answered clearly and definitively would cut the amount of time he'd need to devote to this little Buckets-of-Crazy enterprise down to almost nil. Instead, he was stuck reading the thing, all sixty billion pages of it.
Sam brought him a sandwich when he was about three hours in.
As was true with the Harry Potter series, with Hunger Games and Twilight (at least, as far as Dean knew, because he sure as hell was not intimately familiar with any of it, thank you very much), the main character was surrounded by a supporting cast: in this case, a scholarly but sexy Asian prophet, a quippy but sexy red-haired gamer/computer whiz, and a mysterious but sexy someone known only as The Source.
"Really," Dean said.
"That's what sells," Sam told him.
"Kevin, Charlie, and Garth."
"They all agreed."
"In exchange for a cut of the profits?"
"That's only fair."
"And you didn't see fit to put me in here."
Sam took a long pull of his beer before he bothered to answer. "You've asked me to assure you, over and over, that you're not in there. Now you want to be in there?"
"I could be the determined but sexy hero who drives around in a very hot car, ganking monsters and rescuing hot chicks."
"You make my brain hurt," Sam replied.
~~~~~~~~
"They want a sequel," Sam said.
"Who does?"
"My fans."
"Your fans?"
"There are fan sites. And a Facebook page with a quarter of a million Likes. I have a lot of fans, Dean."
"Sweet Mother of God."
"Sales have passed two million, you know. I'm very hot in Japan and Brazil."
"You are not hot," Dean said. "You're not even you. You're Kevin. Or you're some teenaged chick named Lindy. You're supposed to be doing research, you know - not reading your freaking Facebook page. This is completely out of control! Did you forget, you went to freaking STANFORD? And you're a Man of Letters! Not - not - THIS."
"The money doesn't seem to bother you."
"It's the principle of the thing, Sam."
"Because you're not in there."
"It would bother me no matter who was in there. You know how things go for us, Sam. Somehow, this will all turn to crap."
"Meanwhile," Sam said, "they want a sequel."
~~~~~~~~
"I get no peace," Kevin said, sinking into a chair and lowering his head into the questionable support of his wobbling hands. "I thought being kidnapped by Crowley was the worst nightmare I could ever possibly go through. But somehow, this is worse. They found me. Do you hear me? THEY FOUND ME. I get phone calls at all hours of the night. The post office refuses to deliver my mail any more because there's so much of it - they told me I'm supposed to drive over there with a truck, now, and pick it up at least once a week. That I need to do that because they're not allowed to destroy it. They're required to deliver it, except they won't deliver it! I've gotten calls from the producers of every talk show on the planet, and I can't even tell you how many people want to talk movie rights. And action figures. Graphic novels. Merchandising. They want me to be a presenter at the Oscars, for God's sake!"
He was clutching fistfuls of his hair, looking every bit as stressed out as he had two years ago, during the whole tablet situation.
"Wow," Dean said sympathetically.
"Tell him it has to stop. Really. The money is one thing. The money is nice. My mother would be very impressed. But I'm losing my mind."
"He says he has fans."
"Oh," Kevin murmured. "He does. Or I do."
"Are they all batshit bananas?"
Kevin laughed softly. After a couple of seconds it turned into the cackle of the truly loony. "Dude," he moaned. "The mail. Oh my God, the mail. These long, rambling letters. And they send me pictures. And gifts. Do you have any idea how many stuffed animals I've gotten in the mail? And - and - they send me their panties."
"I told him it would turn to crap," Dean said.
"Tell him it has to stop. Or I'm going to out him. I'm gonna tell Good Morning America that it's not me, it's him, and he'll have to deal with all of this. Dean. People show up in the shrubbery outside my apartment. With CAMERAS."
His voice had gone high and shrill.
Kid's gonna lose it, Dean thought. "You didn't commit to anything, did you?" he asked softly.
"I was Advanced Placement," Kevin said indignantly. "I know how to read a contract. No, I didn't commit to anything. I haven't made any promises to anybody. Except your brother."
"Awesome," Dean said. "Let's go tell him."
~~~~~~~~
"There's an article," Sam said.
He'd been doing that for almost a month: surfing the Web, and coming up with some bit of something he could add to his indictment of Dean and Kevin.
"Awesome," Dean muttered, attention fixed on his copy of Guns & Ammo.
"They're comparing me to S. E. Hinton."
Dean said nothing. Didn't bother asking, "S. E. Who?" because he had no interest in knowing who, or what, that might be.
"They're calling me a one-hit wonder."
"Can I remind you? We went through the whole cult-fan-thing before. You married Becky Rosen."
"Who drugged and kidnapped me, Dean."
"I would have thought that'd be more than enough to send you running screaming into the hills - and staying there. That, and the fan fiction. And the convention. DUDE. Was that not enough to discourage you from courting that kind of stuff ever again?"
Sam sulked at his keyboard for a minute, then nodded toward the alcove in which they'd installed a small but very sturdy safe. "There's more than two hundred thousand dollars in there, man. Because of 'this kind of stuff.' That's more money than we've ever had in our lives. It's pretty much enough to ensure that we can buy what we need from here on out. Aside from the Lamborghini Aventador and the house in Pacific Palisades. And owning your own cable channel."
"Yeah," Dean conceded. "Can't argue that, I guess."
They sat in silence for a while, finishing their dinner. With Kevin gone off to hide out for a month in the Seychelles, the bunker was as quiet as it had been when they'd first moved in.
A single artifact remained of Sam's foray into the world of Young Adult Fiction: a prototype action figure that had been sent to Kevin by a manufacturer in the Philippines. When Dean had finished his burger, he reached out and picked up the little toy - a slender blonde girl in jeans and a denim jacket - and turned it around and around in the light.
"Kinda wonder what she'd think," he said quietly. "Of being a hero."
"Yeah," Sam replied. "I've been wondering that too."
* * * * *