Archive of Our Own

Aaah, good point. I haven’t seen it come up yet although having to travel on the second day of reactions to the show means I’ve maybe missed quite a lot.

I think I reblogged or scrolled past something mentioning at least in passing how this was the ideal version of the story, the one that is the Official Family Story of how it all happened - of course it’s heavily romanticised because it sounds like something Dean could have been reciting to himself as a story all his life and he’s taken a lot of blows to his idea of the family history, but I think this has endured no matter what - and telling it to Mary this way is uncomplicated and unchallenging. In the immediate moment he has no reason to gut her understanding of her own life SO much, and so we know that Dean knows that there’s more too it than that, but he chooses to tell her the fairytale anyway.

I actually suspect that bumping into each other moment was the moment the cupid chose to strike, since it makes sense that’s when they first “see” each other.

Oddly enough, in my rewatch/inflicting the show on my mum for the first time, we just passed Wishful Thinking, which includes this little speech from the girl who was wished into loving the skeevy asshole who started the whole thing:

HOPE
Yeah! It’s the funniest thing. We both grew up here, but I never really knew who he was. Not by name anyway. Until one day last month, it was like I just [sighs] I just saw him for the first time. He was just… glowing. Oh, just glowing. 

and also I’m thinking of this from a Dabb episode, in 8x14 the woman who was demon-dealed into being in love talking about the experience after her husband was dragged off by Hellhounds:

ALICE
I really am. And… I know I shouldn’t be because I loved Carl… I think. I just can’t remember why.
[…]
I mean… Carl grew up around here. We went to school together, and he was always mooning over me. But I never – I used to make fun of him.

SAM
When did you two get together?

ALICE
Valentine’s Day, 2003. I was at this party. Carl was there, and it was like I was seeing him for the first time. You know, suddenly he was cute and smart and funny. It was magic. Carl and I were happy for 10 years. Now he’s dead, and I’m not sad or angry. I’m just…fine.

I’m feeling somewhat certain that Cupid magic is much more powerful in the sense that I feel like this can’t be broken in the same way to have basically near-amnesia as Hope did, going back to not even remembering Wes or what she did while she was enthralled under the wish… With Alice she remembers everything but the instant the deal expires, she can’t summon up the feeling any more (it’s also interesting that demon deals don’t undo on death in any other case, but clearly faking love is a huge leap and without genuine feeling it can’t last in the same way deals for health or life in a loved one obviously don’t undo when the dealer dies, e.g. Ellie in the same episode could have died but her mom would still have been cured of Parkinsons for the rest of her life)

In any case we’re more concerned with the before, so:

DEAN 
Are you saying that you fixed-up our parents?

CUPID 
Well, not me, but… Yeah. Well, it wasn’t easy, either. Ooh, they couldn’t stand each other at first. But when we were done with them–Perfect couple.

and 

DEAN
March 23rd you walked out of a movie theatre. Slaughterhouse Five. You loved it. And you walked into a big marine and you knocked him flat on his ass. You were embarrassed and he laughed it off and said you could make it up to him with a cup of coffee. So you went to [some place I can’t decipher] and you talked, and he was cute and he knew the words to every Zeppelin song, so when he asked you for his number, you gave it to him even though you knew your dad would be pissed.

(I suspect Mary actually threw John on the floor and passed it off as knocking him over while he was too stunned to process it, and she was horrified she literally threw him on the floor and was having a moment about being a violent, socially mal-adjusted hunter when he asked her out >.> This story feels excessively tidied up even without taking into account the cupids)

Anyway this is all the first spark stuff that leads straight to a date, to asking for a number, etc etc. So I’m guessing it’s a lot like the other 2 cases I mentioned - John and Mary living in the same town, seeing each other around, and fate having got them that far… they take one look at each other, and dismiss each other and breeze past each other in the street, if they even really looked at each other at all.  

(And the cupids, who love love and aren’t sinister at all because they’re too goofy to be in deep in Heaven’s twisted up stuff, watching like a rom com clutching their faces in horror like OH NO THEY HATE EACH OTHER. Seeing it as their duty to fix what is “obviously” an incredible love story waiting to happen despite the fact it wouldn’t happen if they didn’t do it…)

They could easily have never spoken, never known who the other was, and probably not even eyed each other up in the street casually, because John seemed fresh back from the war at that point (I mean I’ve seen meta trying to work out his timeline and he has to fit in a LOT before he meets Mary to the point where his life has no room to breathe, but in 4x03 he did at least seem to be acknowledged as just recently being back - with the PTSD and all, I wonder if he was really thinking of himself as on the market at all) and Mary could EASILY have agreed with Samuel about civilians and felt like finding someone “in the life” would be simpler, especially with the way they moved around a lot - the fact she wants to rebel and leave the life could have sprung from her change in situation when she met John and it’s fascinating me where this conflict came from in her - if she REALLY never wanted the life or if it was something “necessary” for her because of the way her entire life was one big manipulation - and how that affects the choices she makes now and how that reflects on Sam and Dean and the choices THEY make - after all they started discussing this a little last season as well…

Argh, there’s so much in here. :P I can’t wait to see what more we learn about this as the season goes on because it’s clear that at least that story Dean told her is lacking a lot of key information - and I’m wondering if Dean would EVER want to tell her that, or if he’s going to lie by omission and let her believe it for as long as possible… in which case, does something ELSE force Mary to find out about it all?