What I’ve Been Reading
SPN fanfic I’ve read this week:
The Crow on the Cradle by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kroki_refur (Gen, AU)
A long story, effectively an AU of the whole of SPN season one, though it focusses most vividly on the first few episodes. The simple premise is that Sam disappears in the middle of the night, a month before Jessica would have died. But that simple premise leads into an incredibly complex story. Jessica is wonderfully written, a far more rounded and real character than she ever was in canon and her point of view of Dean and John spot-on. They aren’t the good-guys to her: they’re scary guys keeping secrets from her. Normally I wouldn’t touch a long story written in present tense, but here it works: the Jess-pov sections are in present tense, the Dean-pov sections are in past tense and the transitions are so smooth I barely noticed once I got used to it.
“You never gave the police the phone,” she says. “That’s evidence. That could help them find Sam. They stopped fucking looking for him.”
Dean glances back at John, but John doesn’t move. “They were never going to find him,” he says.
“You don’t know that,” she says, and people are looking now, but she doesn’t care, because this bastard is standing there coolly telling her that his son, her Sam, is gone forever, and acting like he couldn’t give a shit. “No wonder he never talked about you,” she hisses, and Dean flinches. “He never wanted you here. I don’t want you here.”
Silence Cast to Night Skies by tahirire (Gen)
A fantastic John-POV story set shortly after Sam left for Stanford. What I love most about this story is the way John is thinking of all the mistakes Dean could make on the hunt, but it’s John who makes the mistakes, not Dean. Great characterisation of both men, and the tension and angst between them as they struggle to rebuild their family without Sam makes this story one that fits well into the gap in canon.
John knows he can’t handle losing Dean, too. Its bad enough how quiet Dean has become, he doesn’t want to see his own emptiness reflected in Dean’s hungry eyes. John shakes his head in wonder. Dean was always the noise, the constant chatter of his life. Sam was always the quiet one.
Funny how once the quiet one is gone you’ve never heard the silence so loud.
Scared by scoob2222 (Het, Jo/Ash)
Jo/Ash smut and an interesting take on why Jo left the Roadhouse after No Exit. (Shame it wasn’t spell-checked, but it’s worth a read just for the pairing.)
He presses her back against the bar and his mouth lowers to her ear, “I’m not afraid of any little boy with delusions of grandeur. And I wouldn’t be so proud of yourself, sweetheart, especially since he sent you back home without even a casual fuck. How does it feel knowigng that ass fucks anything that moves and he won’t fuck you?”
The Very Moment I’m Aware I’m Alive by free_pirate (Gen)
Dean is having nightmares - set between AHBL1 and AHBL2. Short, dark, and a realistic insight into Dean’s psyche right before he made that deadly deal.
He doesn’t know how long he kneels there on the muddy ground. The absence of the rise and fall of Sam’s breathing against him is a gaping hole, and Dean feels like he’s betraying Sam. Because Dean is still here, as much as he doesn’t, at this moment, want to be, and he’s still breathing when Sam isn’t.
In Desperate Times by buffyaddict13 and riverbella (Slash - non-Wincest)
The story pairs each of the Winchester men: Sam, Dean and John with a male stranger. Three short, unrelated vignettes that examine the reasons why each man made a difficult choice.
Once, when Sam was little, he thought there was a monster in his closet. He spent the night in that dark, enclosed space with a gun and his fear. The closet smelled like moth balls and dust and sweat. The motel room smells like dust and sweat and cigarette smoke. As Sam shuts the door behind him, he lets his body follow the man toward the sagging bed, but he sends his mind into a small black box.
He tells himself it’s the last time he’ll have to go into the dark.
Meatloaf by ficwriter1966 (Gen)
You know what’s really cool? When an author doesn’t feel the need to remind the reader of stuff that, as fans, we already know. Like in this short coda to Dream A Little Dream Of Me, something is bothering Dean. The brothers talk about it. We know that what they’re discussing isn’t what’s really troubling Dean but the author doesn’t try to beat us over the head with it. We just know. The result is a really nice insight into the way the brothers keep their secrets from each other, the cracks in their relationship just barely visible.
Sam peers across the table at his brother, sighs, rubs at his eyes with the flats of his fingers. Dean smiles at him, goofy and good-humored and entirely Dean, and for a moment that makes Sam feel even worse. It ends when Sam realizes Dean’s hiding something. Something that happened in the dream world.
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Crossposted from my blog at Devil's Trap. You can comment here or on the blog.
