SPN FIC - FMOTQ
Not being a Stanford alumna, I was unaware of an event the school hosts every year -- a little something called Full Moon on the Quad. It took an episode of Drop Dead Diva to bring it to my attention, and once I was aware of it, I couldn't ignore the fact that... yes, Dean would have been All. Over. It. Trouble is, Dean knew as little about it as I did, until he turned on the TV.
I've tinkered with the timeline a bit, to bring Dean back from Purgatory. FMOTQ's held in October, but the DDD episode in question aired a couple of months ago.
"You want to know the worst thing about Purgatory?" Dean concludes. "I missed all my damn shows."
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2024 words
FMOTQ
By Carol Davis
There are a number of unshakeable truths in life, and one of them is: Dean will watch anything on TV. Anything. Marie Osmond hawking dolls on QVC. The Dog Whisperer. Hour-long infomercials for food processors and acne cream and Dyson vacuum cleaners.
Oprah's Life Class.
Yard Crashers.
Okay, he does refuse to watch anything involving Rachael Ray, because of that whole situation at the lake back in 1994, but that's the exception that proves the rule.
He's seen every episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air at least twice. He's seen Sleepless in Seattle so many times he can recite it.
Still? You'd think something called Drop Dead Diva wouldn't have much appeal.
"Seriously?" Sam says to his brother.
"It's about a dead chick," Dean replies.
Not like any dead chick Sam's ever been acquainted with. There's too much giggling and hair-flipping, for one thing - and Sam would be happy to leave it at that. Unfortunately, Dean takes Sam's frown as a request for more information, and there's been enough drinking involved in this evening that Dean's a veritable fountain of information. On characters, plot lines, motivation. The value of using Atlanta, Georgia as a stand-in for Los Angeles.
"You want to know the worst thing about Purgatory?" Dean concludes. "I missed all my damn shows."
Dean, apparently, has come back from the nether regions as somebody's grandmother. But he's content, for the moment, with his bed, his beer and nachos and his TV, so Sam offers him a big, sympathetic smile and goes back to reading the battered copy of The Bourne Deception somebody left in a drawer.
"Hey," Dean says after a while, flapping a hand at the TV. "Is that real?"
"It's a TV show, man," Sam mutters, trying mightily to stick with his reading.
"Dude."
When Sam looks up, Dean points to the screen, where a man and a woman are leaning in for a kiss.
"I don't -" Sam sighs. "What?"
"That."
Two people kissing.
Okay. Purgatory. More than likely, it messes with your head. But surely Dean remembers kissing.
"The hell, man," Sam says.
"You know something?" Dean grouses. "You'd get a lot farther in life if you'd pay attention."
"I paid attention. Jane. Formerly Deb. Died in a car crash and came back in somebody else's body. The guy's her ex-fiancee. Soulmates separated by the workings of fate. She's got a hot roommate who sells pie."
He'd like TV a lot better, Sam figures, if Dean didn't insist on it being a participatory event. In Dean's world, there's no such thing as simply watching a show, or letting anyone else in the room not watch it.
"Pake," Dean says. "She makes pakes. Pie and cake combo."
There's a wistful look on his face, like he's got a serious yen for that particular (imaginary?) dessert. Like, right now.
"The store's closed, Dean."
"The hell it is. It's only nine-thirty."
"We're not going out now, man. It's cold out, and it's too late to go wandering around some grocery store so you can feed your sweet tooth. Tomorrow. Okay? Morning. You can go buy a cake and a pie and mash them together."
There are storm clouds brewing, here in Room 607.
"What?" Sam groans.
Again, Dean points to the screen. "Stanford, asshat. They've been talking about Stanford for half an hour now. About this full moon thing they put on every year. This party. Event. Whatever. You stand out on the - what do they call it? The big patch of grass, out in the middle there. The quad? And you lay a good, wet one on whoever's closest to you."
Dean sits staring at Sam.
Waiting. Expectant.
There's been way too much drinking involved in this evening, Sam thinks. "I'm not kissing you, Dean."
"Full Moon on the freaking QUAD!" Dean shrieks. "Is it a real thing, or not??"
For a moment, Sam is speechless. Shot back in time by those few words, a living cannonball whose target is ten years in the past.
Full moon.
Stanford.
Full Moon on the Quad.
The original setup - sometime in the late 1800s - was senior guys and freshman girls, decked out in suits and fancy dresses, lined up facing each other. A rose exchanged, accompanied by a kiss on the cheek. A rite of passage: knowledge and experience symbolically handed down in the form of a flower. By the time Sam got there late in 2002, nobody'd stuck to tradition for years. Hell, for decades. Students standing in two chaste, dignified lines, waiting to give or receive a rose, like something out of The freaking Bachelor? Come ON.
In 2002 there was music, provided by a variety of bands. A truly impressive amount of drinking. A table from the student health center passing out condoms.
Streakers. One of them painted in the school's cardinal-and-white color scheme.
Laughter.
A lot of laughter.
Pretty girls.
Overhead, a silver disc of moon, drifting in and out of the clouds.
"Yeah," Sam murmurs. "It's real."
Finally, Dean is satisfied - for the moment, at least. He settles back against the big marshmallow of musty-smelling pillows he's heaped at the head of his bed, bottle in hand, a pensive but reasonably placid look on his face. He mulls over Sam's response for a minute, then smirks, "So you got into that, huh? The big kiss-o-rama? Like that bit from The King and I. You were the little bee, buzzing from flower to flower to flower."
"The King and I," Sam echoes.
"What? I watch movies."
That's certainly true. It's so very true it makes Sam's head ache.
Thank God for the comic value of watching Dean's face fall, fleeting as the amusement might be. "You didn't, did you?" Dean complains. "A setup so perfect it ought to be in the damn Hall of Fame, and you did… what? Spent the whole night in the friggin' library? Gave yourself practice quizzes? Built a jigsaw puzzle? What?"
"You coming?"
"I - no, man. I'm just not - it's not my thing."
"Kissing isn't your thing."
The lie comes quickly, easily, born of a lifetime's worth of practice. "I broke up with somebody back home. It's still - you know. Sore subject."
"Kissing."
"What can I say?"
They left him alone, ultimately.
Left him in the dorm to ponder what was out there on the Quad, and what he'd left behind. For a little while, he peered out the window, watching his fellow students lingering in shadowy spots, running hand-in-hand from one building to another. Little groups of guys, and as many groups of girls, laughing and drinking and dancing, looking for someone to flirt with. Enjoying the night, their freedom, this new experience.
His brother, he thought that night, would have made the most of FMOTQ.
His brother would have looked on it as an All You Can Eat Buffet.
When Sam glances in his brother's direction, Dean is as solemn as a judge. Brow furrowed, though the look is damaged somewhat by the ridiculous condition of his hair.
"Never let go, did you?" Dean asks after a minute.
Sam twitches a shoulder. It's as close to a shrug as he can come.
"Sammy -"
"Some people can," Sam murmurs. "I couldn't. I walked out of a situation I couldn't tolerate, right into another situation I couldn't tolerate. I told you: I never felt like I belonged there. I never felt like it was right."
"Half an hour. Come on. The profs know what night it is, man. Nobody's gonna bust your nuts tomorrow if you're not prepared. Untie some of those knots in your panties and let loose for an hour. Or I'm gonna tell the whole dorm you're psychologically incapable of enjoying yourself."
"You go ahead."
"While you do what?"
"I'm - it's fine. It's just not my thing."
"New crop of frosh, Winchester. You could find the love of your life out there."
He didn't. Not for another five months, and finding her had nothing to do with kissing random strangers under a full moon.
But he went outside, that second October. Spent an hour on the Quad with Luis, beer in hand, smiling at the music, nodding at people whose comments he couldn't make out over the din of the music. A couple of girls approached him, and he did his best not to rebuff them outright. He danced with one of them, half-heartedly; even with Jess, even months later, he would feel ill at ease, would feel like his limbs were under the command of someone else, that fluidity and grace were things entirely beyond his grasp. That fitting in was entirely beyond his grasp.
"Stop trying so hard."
"It's not - I can't -"
"Ssshhhh. It doesn't matter. Nobody's watching. And if they are, they're too drunk to remember any of it tomorrow. Let go, Sam. Nobody's grading this. Trust me."
That third October, he went outside with her.
Found a rose someone had abandoned on a table, swiped it, and presented it to her, feeling more than a little foolish.
He remembered the kiss the next day.
Remembered the way her delighted smile seemed to glow a lot more brightly than that mottled disc of moon hanging overhead.
The following October - her last October - they had to walk to campus from their apartment, hand in hand. Senior year for him, junior year for her. Somehow, he thought as they walked, even though she was younger than he, she'd passed on more wisdom to him that he could ever hope to share with her - largely because of what he'd chosen to hide from her, about his life, his past. About who he was.
My brother, he wanted to say.
My brother would be beside himself over this.
There'd been no way to tell anyone (Jessica, or anyone else) that the person he'd left behind to come to this place wasn't a girlfriend. Wasn't someone he'd kissed and snuggled, someone with whom he'd been half of a couple. Though… maybe that had been the truth, after all. His younger self, the little brother Dean had so devotedly cared for (the devotion occasionally peppered with complaints, but never mind), had bestowed kisses with great joy. Had, many times in the middle of the night, sought the warmth and reassurance of the person who was his champion, the wall that stood between him and harm.
The person with whom he'd been half of US.
The person whose absence created a void Sam had no hope of filling.
"It's a hunter's moon," he says quietly, eyes on the TV, on the box that's provided Dean with so much over the years.
Not just entertainment.
How much TV did you watch while I was gone? he wonders.
Did it help?
"Yeah?" Dean replies, one brow cocked in curiosity.
"It's this month. October. FMOTQ. And the full moon this month - they call it a hunter's moon."
"Huh."
"Maybe we should go find somebody to kiss."
"Could," Dean allows.
With the ghost of a smile drifting across his face and quickly gone, Sam drops his legs over the side of his bed and gropes for his shoes. Puts them on with his back to Dean, knowing Dean is regarding all of this with a suspicious frown. That it's possible Dean thinks Sam's going to walk out, just for the sake of being out of this room, away from this parade of giggly TV shows and beer and the smell of old socks.
"Not making any guarantees," he says as he stands.
The frown's reached Defcon Four, during the time Sam's back was turned. "About what?"
"Flavors. Or degree of freshness. I'll get what I can get." When Dean goes on being dismayed, Sam says firmly, "Pake, asshat. Store's not that far. I'll see what they've got. And you can… make a mess."
That smile, he thinks.
The one that brightens Dean's face like a summer sun breaking over the horizon.
It's what he left behind late in 2002.
The thing he could never really walk away from, as angry, as desperate for different as he might have been.
"Back in ten," he tells his brother.
* * * * *
I've tinkered with the timeline a bit, to bring Dean back from Purgatory. FMOTQ's held in October, but the DDD episode in question aired a couple of months ago.
"You want to know the worst thing about Purgatory?" Dean concludes. "I missed all my damn shows."
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2024 words
FMOTQ
By Carol Davis
There are a number of unshakeable truths in life, and one of them is: Dean will watch anything on TV. Anything. Marie Osmond hawking dolls on QVC. The Dog Whisperer. Hour-long infomercials for food processors and acne cream and Dyson vacuum cleaners.
Oprah's Life Class.
Yard Crashers.
Okay, he does refuse to watch anything involving Rachael Ray, because of that whole situation at the lake back in 1994, but that's the exception that proves the rule.
He's seen every episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air at least twice. He's seen Sleepless in Seattle so many times he can recite it.
Still? You'd think something called Drop Dead Diva wouldn't have much appeal.
"Seriously?" Sam says to his brother.
"It's about a dead chick," Dean replies.
Not like any dead chick Sam's ever been acquainted with. There's too much giggling and hair-flipping, for one thing - and Sam would be happy to leave it at that. Unfortunately, Dean takes Sam's frown as a request for more information, and there's been enough drinking involved in this evening that Dean's a veritable fountain of information. On characters, plot lines, motivation. The value of using Atlanta, Georgia as a stand-in for Los Angeles.
"You want to know the worst thing about Purgatory?" Dean concludes. "I missed all my damn shows."
Dean, apparently, has come back from the nether regions as somebody's grandmother. But he's content, for the moment, with his bed, his beer and nachos and his TV, so Sam offers him a big, sympathetic smile and goes back to reading the battered copy of The Bourne Deception somebody left in a drawer.
"Hey," Dean says after a while, flapping a hand at the TV. "Is that real?"
"It's a TV show, man," Sam mutters, trying mightily to stick with his reading.
"Dude."
When Sam looks up, Dean points to the screen, where a man and a woman are leaning in for a kiss.
"I don't -" Sam sighs. "What?"
"That."
Two people kissing.
Okay. Purgatory. More than likely, it messes with your head. But surely Dean remembers kissing.
"The hell, man," Sam says.
"You know something?" Dean grouses. "You'd get a lot farther in life if you'd pay attention."
"I paid attention. Jane. Formerly Deb. Died in a car crash and came back in somebody else's body. The guy's her ex-fiancee. Soulmates separated by the workings of fate. She's got a hot roommate who sells pie."
He'd like TV a lot better, Sam figures, if Dean didn't insist on it being a participatory event. In Dean's world, there's no such thing as simply watching a show, or letting anyone else in the room not watch it.
"Pake," Dean says. "She makes pakes. Pie and cake combo."
There's a wistful look on his face, like he's got a serious yen for that particular (imaginary?) dessert. Like, right now.
"The store's closed, Dean."
"The hell it is. It's only nine-thirty."
"We're not going out now, man. It's cold out, and it's too late to go wandering around some grocery store so you can feed your sweet tooth. Tomorrow. Okay? Morning. You can go buy a cake and a pie and mash them together."
There are storm clouds brewing, here in Room 607.
"What?" Sam groans.
Again, Dean points to the screen. "Stanford, asshat. They've been talking about Stanford for half an hour now. About this full moon thing they put on every year. This party. Event. Whatever. You stand out on the - what do they call it? The big patch of grass, out in the middle there. The quad? And you lay a good, wet one on whoever's closest to you."
Dean sits staring at Sam.
Waiting. Expectant.
There's been way too much drinking involved in this evening, Sam thinks. "I'm not kissing you, Dean."
"Full Moon on the freaking QUAD!" Dean shrieks. "Is it a real thing, or not??"
For a moment, Sam is speechless. Shot back in time by those few words, a living cannonball whose target is ten years in the past.
Full moon.
Stanford.
Full Moon on the Quad.
The original setup - sometime in the late 1800s - was senior guys and freshman girls, decked out in suits and fancy dresses, lined up facing each other. A rose exchanged, accompanied by a kiss on the cheek. A rite of passage: knowledge and experience symbolically handed down in the form of a flower. By the time Sam got there late in 2002, nobody'd stuck to tradition for years. Hell, for decades. Students standing in two chaste, dignified lines, waiting to give or receive a rose, like something out of The freaking Bachelor? Come ON.
In 2002 there was music, provided by a variety of bands. A truly impressive amount of drinking. A table from the student health center passing out condoms.
Streakers. One of them painted in the school's cardinal-and-white color scheme.
Laughter.
A lot of laughter.
Pretty girls.
Overhead, a silver disc of moon, drifting in and out of the clouds.
"Yeah," Sam murmurs. "It's real."
Finally, Dean is satisfied - for the moment, at least. He settles back against the big marshmallow of musty-smelling pillows he's heaped at the head of his bed, bottle in hand, a pensive but reasonably placid look on his face. He mulls over Sam's response for a minute, then smirks, "So you got into that, huh? The big kiss-o-rama? Like that bit from The King and I. You were the little bee, buzzing from flower to flower to flower."
"The King and I," Sam echoes.
"What? I watch movies."
That's certainly true. It's so very true it makes Sam's head ache.
Thank God for the comic value of watching Dean's face fall, fleeting as the amusement might be. "You didn't, did you?" Dean complains. "A setup so perfect it ought to be in the damn Hall of Fame, and you did… what? Spent the whole night in the friggin' library? Gave yourself practice quizzes? Built a jigsaw puzzle? What?"
"You coming?"
"I - no, man. I'm just not - it's not my thing."
"Kissing isn't your thing."
The lie comes quickly, easily, born of a lifetime's worth of practice. "I broke up with somebody back home. It's still - you know. Sore subject."
"Kissing."
"What can I say?"
They left him alone, ultimately.
Left him in the dorm to ponder what was out there on the Quad, and what he'd left behind. For a little while, he peered out the window, watching his fellow students lingering in shadowy spots, running hand-in-hand from one building to another. Little groups of guys, and as many groups of girls, laughing and drinking and dancing, looking for someone to flirt with. Enjoying the night, their freedom, this new experience.
His brother, he thought that night, would have made the most of FMOTQ.
His brother would have looked on it as an All You Can Eat Buffet.
When Sam glances in his brother's direction, Dean is as solemn as a judge. Brow furrowed, though the look is damaged somewhat by the ridiculous condition of his hair.
"Never let go, did you?" Dean asks after a minute.
Sam twitches a shoulder. It's as close to a shrug as he can come.
"Sammy -"
"Some people can," Sam murmurs. "I couldn't. I walked out of a situation I couldn't tolerate, right into another situation I couldn't tolerate. I told you: I never felt like I belonged there. I never felt like it was right."
"Half an hour. Come on. The profs know what night it is, man. Nobody's gonna bust your nuts tomorrow if you're not prepared. Untie some of those knots in your panties and let loose for an hour. Or I'm gonna tell the whole dorm you're psychologically incapable of enjoying yourself."
"You go ahead."
"While you do what?"
"I'm - it's fine. It's just not my thing."
"New crop of frosh, Winchester. You could find the love of your life out there."
He didn't. Not for another five months, and finding her had nothing to do with kissing random strangers under a full moon.
But he went outside, that second October. Spent an hour on the Quad with Luis, beer in hand, smiling at the music, nodding at people whose comments he couldn't make out over the din of the music. A couple of girls approached him, and he did his best not to rebuff them outright. He danced with one of them, half-heartedly; even with Jess, even months later, he would feel ill at ease, would feel like his limbs were under the command of someone else, that fluidity and grace were things entirely beyond his grasp. That fitting in was entirely beyond his grasp.
"Stop trying so hard."
"It's not - I can't -"
"Ssshhhh. It doesn't matter. Nobody's watching. And if they are, they're too drunk to remember any of it tomorrow. Let go, Sam. Nobody's grading this. Trust me."
That third October, he went outside with her.
Found a rose someone had abandoned on a table, swiped it, and presented it to her, feeling more than a little foolish.
He remembered the kiss the next day.
Remembered the way her delighted smile seemed to glow a lot more brightly than that mottled disc of moon hanging overhead.
The following October - her last October - they had to walk to campus from their apartment, hand in hand. Senior year for him, junior year for her. Somehow, he thought as they walked, even though she was younger than he, she'd passed on more wisdom to him that he could ever hope to share with her - largely because of what he'd chosen to hide from her, about his life, his past. About who he was.
My brother, he wanted to say.
My brother would be beside himself over this.
There'd been no way to tell anyone (Jessica, or anyone else) that the person he'd left behind to come to this place wasn't a girlfriend. Wasn't someone he'd kissed and snuggled, someone with whom he'd been half of a couple. Though… maybe that had been the truth, after all. His younger self, the little brother Dean had so devotedly cared for (the devotion occasionally peppered with complaints, but never mind), had bestowed kisses with great joy. Had, many times in the middle of the night, sought the warmth and reassurance of the person who was his champion, the wall that stood between him and harm.
The person with whom he'd been half of US.
The person whose absence created a void Sam had no hope of filling.
"It's a hunter's moon," he says quietly, eyes on the TV, on the box that's provided Dean with so much over the years.
Not just entertainment.
How much TV did you watch while I was gone? he wonders.
Did it help?
"Yeah?" Dean replies, one brow cocked in curiosity.
"It's this month. October. FMOTQ. And the full moon this month - they call it a hunter's moon."
"Huh."
"Maybe we should go find somebody to kiss."
"Could," Dean allows.
With the ghost of a smile drifting across his face and quickly gone, Sam drops his legs over the side of his bed and gropes for his shoes. Puts them on with his back to Dean, knowing Dean is regarding all of this with a suspicious frown. That it's possible Dean thinks Sam's going to walk out, just for the sake of being out of this room, away from this parade of giggly TV shows and beer and the smell of old socks.
"Not making any guarantees," he says as he stands.
The frown's reached Defcon Four, during the time Sam's back was turned. "About what?"
"Flavors. Or degree of freshness. I'll get what I can get." When Dean goes on being dismayed, Sam says firmly, "Pake, asshat. Store's not that far. I'll see what they've got. And you can… make a mess."
That smile, he thinks.
The one that brightens Dean's face like a summer sun breaking over the horizon.
It's what he left behind late in 2002.
The thing he could never really walk away from, as angry, as desperate for different as he might have been.
"Back in ten," he tells his brother.
* * * * *