more fic. less procrastination.
Title: bounced
Ficverse: SPN
Series: SPN comment!fic
Rating: PG
Length: 1000 ish
Characters: Ash
Prompted and posted: from 1.13, Route 666
Sam: My life was so simple. Just school, exams, papers on polycentric cultural norms.
Dean: I guess I saved you from a boring existence.
Sam: Occasionally I miss boring.
Notes: I was planning on meta-ing. Then I realised I wanted to write this instead. I have read roughly five homework books in the last three days I can do what I want okay. (...) I think I'm on a peripheral hunting world kick. *headtilt*
Warnings/Spoiler: pre-series
Feedback: let's hear it. The good, the bad, the ugly....
By the time the first punch flew, it didn’t really matter what the argument was about. String theory, experimental programming logic, PBRs, classic American rock, hairstyles, the limitations of methodological naturalism ... never mattered. It was all the same thing: class snobbery. The place was pure meritocracy - right up to when you rocked up in plaid and a mullet.
Didn’t matter that Ash could show up in class and out-think even the Asian contingent while the mother of all hangovers humped his skull. Didn’t matter that he could wander into the wrong class (not even hungover, this time - still drunk) and ace the exam. Didn’t matter that he could critique his profs’ work as much as they critiqued his. (Actually, that part could be okay.) Will Hunting, eat your effing heart out.
The bloody crunch of cartilage was satisfying; Daniel Merenvald’s nose would never be the same. Maybe it’d also help rearrange his thought processes vis-à-vis being a total douchebag, asshole. And not doing anything when his elitist douchebag friends laughed at his sweet, shy, blonde little girlfriend because she didn’t know the difference between inductive reasoning and structural induction.
Not that he knew the girl; she just looked so embarrassed, and it wasn’t like it was hard to pick a fight in this bar on any subject he felt like. It still all came back to class. He wasn’t big, but he was wiry, and his daddy had bequeathed him a bloodline that demolished barfuls of all-comers with a non compos mentis grin and a broken bottle. Daniel’s friends closing in, on the other hand, had been genealogically blessed to sit in front of screens twelve hours a day. Exercising their hands.
So when he was hauled in front of the dean, again, he had nothing to offer. It had all become a blur of blue blood and fists at that point, anyway. The fact that the only reason he wasn’t still hanging head-first over the porcelain altar right now was because there was nothing left in his stomach was not helping; nor was the fact that, actually, he quite liked the dean. He knew the dean liked him, too, but Ash really hadn’t given him much help toward protecting him over the last two years. Really, it was a miracle he’d lasted this long at this damn school.
“You know he’s going to file a complaint,” the dean said. “I can’t keep this from the committee this time. I can probably argue for a suspension....”
Ash took a breath and made his tone civil; the dean didn’t deserve his contempt. “Yeah ... thanks. But just have me expelled, already.”
The brief look of pain on the older man’s face surprised Ash, but his next words didn’t. “We’ve been over this, Mr Miles. Expulsion isn’t the answer, here.”
“All due respect, Dean, expulsion should have been your only answer. You should never have let me in.”
The dean shook his head. “That’s not true. I wish I could ... I wish I could show you, Asher, that you do belong here. That all this animosity is just superficial, that your mind and this school have so much to give to one another, to the world. That you could find your place here if you would just....”
Maybe it was the hangover, but something in the dean’s tone made Ash’s eyes sting. He sat in silence, all the obvious comebacks fleeing the scene of the crime, before he eventually cleared his throat. “I, ah ... I don’t think so. I can’t fit in here. I won’t. It’s just not gonna happen. And the committee already knows that anyhow. Don’t waste your breath on me.”
That last part came out less of a command and more of a plea, and that was weak, but the dean reluctantly nodded anyway. For the tiniest second, Ash wished he hadn’t. “Where will you go?”
It was the question of a friend, not a Dean of Undergraduate Students, and Ash’s mind cleared - cleared with the vision of boundless bright skies and endless rolling roads, crap motel beds and the smell of beer soaked into the very walls of pokey old roadhouses. The smell of freedom. “Aw, hell - where I belong.”
The dean raised a wry eyebrow and plucked one of his business cards from the holder on his desk. “Oh, wonderful. Well, if you ever pick yourself up from under a pool table and decide you want to give this place another shot, or if you need my help, call me.”
Ash took the card with an unrepentant grin and no offense, and within two hours his clothes and his laptop were riding shotgun in his truck. He pulled up in front of the dome, clambered up onto his roof, and summoned up every barroom-brawl and metal show roar his diaphragm ever held.
“TAKE YOUR IHTFP AND GO SCREW YOURSELF!” he hollered, making the appropriate gesture with both hands at arms’ length, getting more than a few startled looks from passing students. He held the position and turned a full 360 to make sure they didn’t miss his point, before slithering dizzily back into the cab. This hangover was one mean son of a bitch, but all things considered, that had felt good. Goodbye to snobs, goodbye to morning classes, goodbye to boring. He did a victory lap of noise pollution, leaning on the horn the whole way around, and peeled out with a squeal of tires before campus security could catch up with him.
Three weeks later, he woke up in Nebraska to the itch of pool table felt and the tough face of a woman who couldn’t hide the kindness in her eyes. Hovering behind her shoulder was a girl who looked like her age couldn’t decide if it could drink or not, and her mouth couldn’t decide if it was belligerent or curious, and Ash knew he’d found where he belonged.
Ficverse: SPN
Series: SPN comment!fic
Rating: PG
Length: 1000 ish
Characters: Ash
Prompted and posted: from 1.13, Route 666
Sam: My life was so simple. Just school, exams, papers on polycentric cultural norms.
Dean: I guess I saved you from a boring existence.
Sam: Occasionally I miss boring.
Notes: I was planning on meta-ing. Then I realised I wanted to write this instead. I have read roughly five homework books in the last three days I can do what I want okay. (...) I think I'm on a peripheral hunting world kick. *headtilt*
Warnings/Spoiler: pre-series
Feedback: let's hear it. The good, the bad, the ugly....
By the time the first punch flew, it didn’t really matter what the argument was about. String theory, experimental programming logic, PBRs, classic American rock, hairstyles, the limitations of methodological naturalism ... never mattered. It was all the same thing: class snobbery. The place was pure meritocracy - right up to when you rocked up in plaid and a mullet.
Didn’t matter that Ash could show up in class and out-think even the Asian contingent while the mother of all hangovers humped his skull. Didn’t matter that he could wander into the wrong class (not even hungover, this time - still drunk) and ace the exam. Didn’t matter that he could critique his profs’ work as much as they critiqued his. (Actually, that part could be okay.) Will Hunting, eat your effing heart out.
The bloody crunch of cartilage was satisfying; Daniel Merenvald’s nose would never be the same. Maybe it’d also help rearrange his thought processes vis-à-vis being a total douchebag, asshole. And not doing anything when his elitist douchebag friends laughed at his sweet, shy, blonde little girlfriend because she didn’t know the difference between inductive reasoning and structural induction.
Not that he knew the girl; she just looked so embarrassed, and it wasn’t like it was hard to pick a fight in this bar on any subject he felt like. It still all came back to class. He wasn’t big, but he was wiry, and his daddy had bequeathed him a bloodline that demolished barfuls of all-comers with a non compos mentis grin and a broken bottle. Daniel’s friends closing in, on the other hand, had been genealogically blessed to sit in front of screens twelve hours a day. Exercising their hands.
So when he was hauled in front of the dean, again, he had nothing to offer. It had all become a blur of blue blood and fists at that point, anyway. The fact that the only reason he wasn’t still hanging head-first over the porcelain altar right now was because there was nothing left in his stomach was not helping; nor was the fact that, actually, he quite liked the dean. He knew the dean liked him, too, but Ash really hadn’t given him much help toward protecting him over the last two years. Really, it was a miracle he’d lasted this long at this damn school.
“You know he’s going to file a complaint,” the dean said. “I can’t keep this from the committee this time. I can probably argue for a suspension....”
Ash took a breath and made his tone civil; the dean didn’t deserve his contempt. “Yeah ... thanks. But just have me expelled, already.”
The brief look of pain on the older man’s face surprised Ash, but his next words didn’t. “We’ve been over this, Mr Miles. Expulsion isn’t the answer, here.”
“All due respect, Dean, expulsion should have been your only answer. You should never have let me in.”
The dean shook his head. “That’s not true. I wish I could ... I wish I could show you, Asher, that you do belong here. That all this animosity is just superficial, that your mind and this school have so much to give to one another, to the world. That you could find your place here if you would just....”
Maybe it was the hangover, but something in the dean’s tone made Ash’s eyes sting. He sat in silence, all the obvious comebacks fleeing the scene of the crime, before he eventually cleared his throat. “I, ah ... I don’t think so. I can’t fit in here. I won’t. It’s just not gonna happen. And the committee already knows that anyhow. Don’t waste your breath on me.”
That last part came out less of a command and more of a plea, and that was weak, but the dean reluctantly nodded anyway. For the tiniest second, Ash wished he hadn’t. “Where will you go?”
It was the question of a friend, not a Dean of Undergraduate Students, and Ash’s mind cleared - cleared with the vision of boundless bright skies and endless rolling roads, crap motel beds and the smell of beer soaked into the very walls of pokey old roadhouses. The smell of freedom. “Aw, hell - where I belong.”
The dean raised a wry eyebrow and plucked one of his business cards from the holder on his desk. “Oh, wonderful. Well, if you ever pick yourself up from under a pool table and decide you want to give this place another shot, or if you need my help, call me.”
Ash took the card with an unrepentant grin and no offense, and within two hours his clothes and his laptop were riding shotgun in his truck. He pulled up in front of the dome, clambered up onto his roof, and summoned up every barroom-brawl and metal show roar his diaphragm ever held.
“TAKE YOUR IHTFP AND GO SCREW YOURSELF!” he hollered, making the appropriate gesture with both hands at arms’ length, getting more than a few startled looks from passing students. He held the position and turned a full 360 to make sure they didn’t miss his point, before slithering dizzily back into the cab. This hangover was one mean son of a bitch, but all things considered, that had felt good. Goodbye to snobs, goodbye to morning classes, goodbye to boring. He did a victory lap of noise pollution, leaning on the horn the whole way around, and peeled out with a squeal of tires before campus security could catch up with him.
Three weeks later, he woke up in Nebraska to the itch of pool table felt and the tough face of a woman who couldn’t hide the kindness in her eyes. Hovering behind her shoulder was a girl who looked like her age couldn’t decide if it could drink or not, and her mouth couldn’t decide if it was belligerent or curious, and Ash knew he’d found where he belonged.