the closer kin, the deeper in

fandom: Supernatural

pairing: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

word count: 11k

Is it explicit: no

Bottom line: how to annoy your brother into making out with you: a step-by-step guide

You can tell when a prose writer has a background in poetry because it informs their choices on so many levels. paxlux opens this fic with a Richard Siken epigraph which—sure i can’t throw a rock at ao3 dot org without hitting 10 fics titled after Siken poems—but what you gotta remember is that when one of Siken’s lines lands, you feel utterly seen. Peeled open like an orange. That’s how Dean (and the reader) feels in the climactic scene of this fic. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

It’s set during a nebulous early-season time period, and on the most surface level it’s a gleeful supercut of the boys needling each other, the way only two people who’ve known each other their entire lives can. They cruise around Anywhere, USA; they eat greasy food; they’re at most 30% awake; the content of their conversations approximates the nutritional content of iceberg lettuce. This is how Dean wakes Sam up in the morning:

“Sam. Sammy. Sammeh. Sammich. Samantha. Sammalammadingdong. DICKFACE.”

You know that feeling when you’ve been cooped up in the car too long with your sibling(s) and they’re infuriating like an itch under your skin? paxlux captures that feeling, and harnesses it as the motor of the story, which has zero plot elements to otherwise move it.

Sam describes it at one point as an “I’m-not-touching-you kind of fight,” and that’s exactly it. He also describes their routine as “they trade showers like other people trade umbrellas,” and for some reason that detail hit me very hard. The level of physical and psychic intimacy these boys have with each other is frightening—I slobber over UST as much as the next fan, but fundamentally Dean and Sam are on the same wavelength. They’re so simpatico that if they were girls their periods would be synced up. Here’s a highlight reel:

touching everything like he’s going to claim it stupidly: both beds, the lamp, the TV, the remote, the table, Sam’s laptop, Sam’s duffel, Sam’s toothbrush, the towels, and he leaves messes in his wake everywhere he goes.

muttering, “Dunno how you expect me to function without caffeine, why did I get such a crappy brother, wait ‘till you fall asleep I’ll just leave you in a truck stop, serve you right,”

“A plaque. On this spot, on this date, Sam Winchester killed his brother for being a jackass and saved us all a lot of trouble. He’s a real hero, that Sam Winchester.”

Dean flicks Sam’s hair and says, “Hey, watch this, Sam, watch, watch, lookit, you watching?” Then he proceeds to stuff his face, chipmunk-full, with Swiss Cake Rolls.

The thing is, Dean drives Sam insane even on a good day. He is, whatever, fill-in-the-blank, and that’s enough to push Sam over the edge most of the time, the absolute propulsion of Dean’s existence, it blows through Sam like a jet engine.

Fact: Dean’s mere existence is enough to drive Sam out of his mind. You heard it here first. It’s some strange alchemy generated by the boys’ proximity. What paxlux does here is harness that manic energy and channel it imperceptibly into physical attraction. They aren’t just brothers, the roles they fill for each other could fill the Yellow Pages of a phonebook (“well he’s my coworker my drinking buddy also my mom”).

It’s only logical that all this immaturity culminates in an impromptu field trip to the fairgrounds where they shoot for prizes with a nerf gun. I repeat, our fearsome deadly hunters who keep more firepower in the trunk of their car than some small countries can lay claim to in their entire national arsenal ….are shooting…. toy guns. I am absolutely losing it at the irony:

He’s shooting, knocking over the targets, easy as a breeze, until he gets to shot number five, then Sam leans in and whispers, “The biggest pair of tits just walked by,” and shit, Dean misses … He doesn’t know whether to blame the tits or Sam until he realizes it’s all Sam, the gigantic goofball telling lies through his teeth, and the vendor chooses that inopportune moment, when Dean has some choice words to say, to hand him a small green teddy bear, “Here ya go, mister, nice shootin’.” Sam rocks on his heels, hands in his pockets. “Yeah, nice shootin’, Tex. Too bad you missed that last one. Damn shame.”

Genre: straddles romance, literary, and thriller

Is it the main pairing: yes

Is it canon: yes

Is it explicit: no

Is it endgame: yes

Is it shippable: yes

Bottom line: I came for Big Feelings and this book delivered. Wuthering Heights but make them ice dancers: killer concept, flawless execution. Yes, I have expanded the remit of this blog to include spiritually incestuous relationships.

Just to recap, Wuthering Heights is a tale of extremely extra people who, not satisfied with making each other miserable their entire lives, insist on tormenting each other from beyond the grave. Elite figure skating is an extremely incestuous sport where competitors are constantly switching coaches and partners in pursuit of the gold medal. Nobody is allowed to sulk because Layne Fargo telegraphs to the reader where she is going with this: “Everyone thinks Heath Rocha was my first love. He wasn’t. My first love was figure skating.” The great tragedy of Katarina and Heath’s romance is that Kat wants to win and she wants Heath, whereas Heath has always just wanted all of Kat. They’re sixteen at the beginning so Kat’s like, of course these two goals will always be in alignment, but there comes a time when winning and Heath are in tension with each other, and that is when the story is at the height of its power. Anyone who’s been alive more than ten minutes could tell you that hate and hurt are forces just as powerful as than love.

If it’s been awhile since you’ve picked up a Brontë book it may have slipped your mind that Jane Eyre is first person POV but Wuthering Heights is entirely outsider POV: We get Lockwood who is an outsider to the neighborhood, and Nelly who is a servant in the household, but we are shut out of Cathy and Heathcliff’s internal monologue. Well, The Favorites is first-person from Kat’s POV, interspersed with transcripts from a new documentary about Katarina Shaw & Heath Rocha’s scandalous career. Imagine if I, Tonya was a straight documentary. Just the juiciest melodrama imaginable. I have never been so upset my brain cannot process audiobooks because in the audio version Johnny Weir (gay fashion icon and professional snark commentator) voices the character who is based on him. As the story drew on I found myself looking forward to the “documentary” interludes more and more, and this is because as Katarina grows older/wiser her narrative becomes less messy and less interesting. Which is not a problem with the original Wuthering Heights because Cathy Earnshaw dies absurdly young. The way The Favorites handles Shaw & Rocha’s legacy is so different from Wuthering Heights, and yet these are both books obsessed with intergenerational trauma.

The Favorites is enthrallingly, achingly American in the best and worst possible ways. American like Stephen King, American like Supernatural, that is the amplitude of Americanness. Katarina and Heath are two podunk kids from the Midwest who go west and reinvent themselves, learn to live their lives in the public eye, chase that green Gatsbyian light that is forever retreating. There is this yawning pit of ambition in Kat that is never satisfied, and if she’d been born a man nobody would have looked askance but for a woman with a public profile? Unacceptable:

When I was strong and self-assured, people recoiled from me. They told me I was too competitive, too ambitious, too much. But when I was brought low, bruised and bleeding, a princess in need of rescue instead of a queen, they loved me.

But they’re also American in the anodyne sense they’re from the USA. An American dance team did not win a world title until Davis & White in 2011. At that point Russia had taken home three Olympic golds to the USA’s zero. It wasn’t until 2014 that Davis & White finally earned the USA’s first Olympic gold in ice dance (Americans have always been stronger in the ladies’ and mens’ singles disciplines). Sorry for being a pedantic skating fan, and I wouldn’t go as far as to say this book is Russia bashing but it’s certainly minimizing Russia’s contributions to the sport (and Japan! where are the Japanese skaters). It’s a story that could only take place in America because it’s built on the American dream of reinvention, of rising above your station, of “making” it. Even if it’s a mirage it’s still the motor that drives the story. Heath is the only nonwhite, non-Asian skater we meet. Thank you, Layne Fargo, for working that in. There’s been maybe 20 film adaptations of Wuthering Heights and 19 of them have whitewashed Heathcliff. Heath spent his first 13 years in foster care before Kat’s dad adopted him, so we’re not sure what kind of “nonwhite” he is but he stands out. Kat also stands out for being not-willowy-thin and for being white trash. Shaw & Rocha’s biggest rivals, Lin & Lin, are the mixed-race children of legendary Chinese-American ice dancer Sheila Lin. Sheila is the coach who launches Shaw & Rocha onto the international stage, but as a mentor she’s less than ideal. She’s too busy girlbossing her way to the top to tend to her relationships, including her relationship with her own children, who at different times will partner Katarina and Heath. Sheila is an ice-cold bitch and she’s awful to Kat and Heath but she’s also a product of American institutions (which doesn’t excuse her behavior! just means you don’t have to be the perfect victim for racism/misogyny to be real).

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

On the eve of joining Sheila Lin’s elite training academy, when they’re just two broke kids who can’t afford to pay their small-town coach, Katarina sells her mom’s engagement ring. This is the last thing she has left of her mother. Heath is more gutted than she is. It’s a portent of things to come, because Kat has zero qualms about throwing away something super important and meaningful if it brings her one step closer to the podium. Heath—and the reader—are put on notice that Kat’s ruthless ambition will be be the undoing of both of them. The entire arc of Shaw & Rocha climbing the competitive ranks is Kat putting in 120% and Heath being like “where did my soulmate go.” It all culminates in a rip-your-heart-out-of-your-ribcage breakup scene. Afterward Kat reflects, “I had no idea what breakup felt like; I’d never experienced one.” Because she’s been with Heath forever. They’ve always been everything to each other, romantic partner just another role they slipped seamlessly into. Early in the book there is a scene where their coach stumbles on them having an “intimate moment” and at first she’s like “are these thirteen-year-olds making out” and then she’s like “did somebody die” but actually what’s happened is Heath’s being transferred to another foster family and can’t skate with Kat anymore. To Kat and Heath this is indistinguishable from the end of the world.

Let’s talk about revenge. Heath disappears for two years, comes back hotter and madder. His skating is orders of magnitudes better. An aghast Katarina watches him take the ice:

His love for me hadn’t been motivation enough to reach his full potential. His hatred, though? That made him capable of anything.

He’s here to rub her face in exactly what she’s thrown away. His new partner? Isabella Lin, of course. Kat has been skating with Isabella’s brother Garrett the past two seasons. That was one of the reasons she and Heath broke up. To Heath, even entertaining the notion of another skating partner was tantamount to cheating on him romantically.

I was impressed by the characterization of Isabella and Garrett, whom I found insipid in the original Wuthering Heights but in this version their existence doesn’t just propel the plot, you actually understand why Katarina and Heath might be drawn to them as partners. Bella and Kat in particular share this yearning pit of emptiness: “But it was never enough for her. That’s why we were friends: nothing was ever enough for either of us.”

We have now entered the “make my ex madly jealous” phase of the story. Predictably it ends in Kat pushing herself too hard and bleeding all over center ice at the Olympics, and Heath rushes to her side and that’s the end of them partnering other people lol.

“I want to go home,” she tells him from her hospital bed, and at first he thinks she means the hotel but she repeats, “I want to go home.” They retreat to the Midwest, to the house they grew up in, all the good memories and the bitter ones. This is the house Kat’s father died in; the house Kat’s brother kicked Heath out of before their father’s body was even cold in the ground:

In our little stone house by the lake…Some days, I was content too. Other days, I felt trapped in a purgatory of my own making. Every day the same as the next, not working toward anything, not improving, not striving. Simply existing. Heath might be able to live like that, but I couldn’t.

So much of Wuthering Heights is about place—it’s right there in the damn title—and while The Favorites isn’t about property ownership in the same way, the image of the house by the lake is thematically central. Kat moves back into her childhood home and finds that she cannot escape her roots, but she also cannot be wholly contained by them. She and Heath return to competition. There is, eventually, another breakup. The melodrama quotient is so high that I felt chemically unbalanced by the time I finished this book:

”This is exactly what I’m talking about! I tell you I love you, and you throw it back in my face. I suffer for years to get back to you, and—“ “You wanted to get back at me. You wanted me to suffer too. That’s not love, Heath.” “My love isn’t good enough for you either. Got it.”

that the cornerstone of internet success is not intelligence or novelty or outrageousness or even speed, but regularity

fandom: Supernatural

pairing: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

word count: 40k

Is it explicit: no

Bottom line: when they say “go hard gencest or go home” they are referring to this fic, which went so hard that it ground up my insides and fed them back to me in a tube

In this early-season AU, Sam is beset by visions and the boys are keeping it from John. Who knows what John would do if he knew, right? That’s present-day 2006. In 1997, fourteen-year-old Sam and eighteen-year-old Dean tangle with some hunters who turn out to be bad hombres. I think either plot thread could have stood on its own—the 1997 story is entirely self-contained—but when ulexite braids them together the impact is like an airplane landing. This fic is about Sam defending Dean, and Dean defending Sam, against all comers. “All comers” unfortunately includes John. There is some violence done to John’s canon characterization but in service, I think, of a good cause. If you’re familiar with ulexite’s other work it’s probably If Gold Rusts…, which is a fantastic fic. It’s also 130k long lol which is why I wandered away before finishing. Luckily this one’s more digestible.

In 1997, while John is off on a case, the boys have been left to rusticate in a motel in Nowheresville, USA. John deliberately leaves Dean behind to punish him for fucking up on a recent hunt. We are told baldly the nature of Dean’s fuckup: his actions proved that Sam’s safety—not killing monsters—was his top priority. As a consequence his father is putting him in the equivalent of kiddie timeout. In the aftermath, there’s a lot of discourse between the boys about who John’s favorite is. From Dean’s perspective:

“Look after your brother,” Dad had said, “since that’s what you’d rather be doing.”

And from Sam’s perspective:

Might as well have said: “Look after this burden of mine so I don’t have to.”

This is classic they each think the other is John’s favorite, and it’s just as aggravating to me, the reader, as it’s intended to be. So this whole ball of recriminations is sitting between them at the beginning of the 1997 arc. Sam and Dean are not on the easiest of terms with each other.

Enter the bad hombres.

They’re hunters. They’ve worked with John before. They’re looking for backup on a werewolf hunt, and since John is unavailable, they’ll take the next-best thing, his teenage sons. Yeah you heard right these guys just press-ganged a fourteen-year-old into forced labor, all the while relentlessly belittling him. It’s frightening how simple it is for a pack of complete strangers to drive a wedge between Dean and Sam at this fragile moment. All they’ve got to do is treat Dean like one of the guys—like a grownup—and ice Sam out by treating him like a useless hanger-on kid. Here is Dean defending his unilateral decision to 1) join these randos on a hunt and 2) lie to John about it:

“Yes, Sam, I lied to him, and you better not even think about calling him again to tell him we’re going on a hunt. You’re still my little brother, and I’m still in charge until Dad gets back, so do as you’re told for once.” He doesn’t feel like pointing out how infrequently he doesn’t do as he’s told. Everyone’s always accusing him like he makes a habit out of disobedience.

This is grossly unfair! The charge is that Sam has a “disobedient” temperament rather than that he has done xyz “disobedient” thing…which makes it impossible to refute. Again and again canon shows us Sam being punished for what he is rather than what he does—“freak” is an epithet that targets his nature which he cannot control rather than his behavior which he can—and it hurts extra coming from Dean, the person whose opinion he values highest. Sam is gravely wounded by Dean’s betrayal. Still, even hurting as he is, when the chips are down you will never find Sam anywhere but in Dean’s corner:

Outside, Donovan lines up empty beer cans along the stack of firewood and tells Dean: “Time to prove you ain’t all bark, Winchester.”

He’s both proud of Dean for making every shot even with his eyes bleary from the early morning and his hangover, and also wondering why he couldn’t just tell this man “I don’t gotta prove shit to you” and walk away. But then he understands it when the gun’s put in his hands, and the cans are lined up again, and he’s being told to give it a go.

As soon as Dean says “Show ‘em what you got, Sammy,” the need to impress makes all the sense in the world. Just that Dean’s the only one here whose opinion matters to him, and letting his brother down, especially now when he needs Sam on his side the most, even if he doesn’t know that? He makes damn certain he doesn’t miss a single shot.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in this section of the fic Dean is 18, the age of majority, the age at which he might assume legal guardianship of Sam were the worst to befall John (an eventuality he has definitely contemplated more often than is healthy). It’s not clear to Dean what Sam’s role is—is Sam his charge or his peer—and that flare of pride he gets every time Sammy does something well? Some skill Dean taught him? Muddies the waters even more. But we’re not done with this scene yet! We have to see with our own eyes exactly why these bad hombres are bad news:

Sam holds out the gun, but before Dean can make a step to start setting the cans back up, Donovan takes the gun and turns the opposite way from their makeshift targets, aims his gun over top of their heads, and shoots a starling right out of a tree overhanging the driveway. “That’s what it means not to hesitate,” Donovan tells them, sickly pleased that Sam can’t even bring himself to look at the felled bird wherever it landed. “You’ll learn, kid. Or you’ll die. One or the other.”

This dude just shot a living creature dead for NO REASON wtf?!

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Ok so long story short our boys get separated, the bad hombres stake Sam out for werewolf bait without even bothering to arm him with a weapon, Dean shows up to clean up the werewolves but is obviously livid about the way they deemed Sam expendable. Dean feels an obligation to stay and finish the hunt, but he won’t countenance Sam remaining if it will endanger Sam (which it will, since these dudes are psychos). So Dean deliberately picks a fight. He says the only thing he can to get Sam voluntarily onto the first bus to wherever-the-hell-John-went.

“Sam… I’m staying, alright? I’ve gotta see this through. I can’t keep fucking up and getting people killed, and you’re a distraction for me. Dad’s right about that.”

“…I’m a distraction?”

“You are.”

His eyes are burning, white-hot emotion, sadness disguised as fury. “So I’m just in your way, is that it? You want me to leave?”

“This entire time you’ve been nagging and nagging at me that you wanna go home, Sam. I’m saying if you wanna go then go. But I’m needed here, and they’re right. You’re not a little kid anymore, you don’t need me to protect you like you used to.”

I am a kid, Sam thinks, enraged, and so are you!

“I want you to come with me, Dean! I don’t trust these people, I haven’t trusted them from the minute we met them!”

Sam leaves. Then he changes his mind and returns, because Dean sent him packing with their only gun, and Sam can’t bear the thought that he left Dean alone without a weapon. Thank god he does, too, because the scene Sam walks in on is one of these psycho hombres murdering Dean. It’s the real unhinged one, Donovan. Donovan is hurting Dean for fun, just like he shot that bird for fun. Dean is badly injured and unarmed but still fighting back because the son of a gun has said he will go after Dean’s little brother next, and THAT threat never fails to make Dean see red. Of course he’s losing badly until Sam shows up and shoots Donovan cleanly in the back. Aaaaand scene.

What stands out to me about this episode is not that fourteen-year-old Sam killed someone, but that the two of them tacitly agreed to let Dean take the rap for it (Sam was after all not supposed to be there). They let the victim’s relatives believe for nine years that that’s what happened, that Dean killed Donovan. When the inevitable reencounter occurs in 2006, John is entirely in the dark—the boys never told him what happened back in 1997—so John is caught off guard when Donovan’s brother and nephew draw their guns on Dean, and Sam gleefully claims credit for Donovan’s murder (“you’re pointing those at the wrong guy”), and then uses telekinesis to turn the guns on the other two. It’s hard to tell if John’s madder that he’s been kept out of the “Sam is manifesting psychic powers” loop, or madder that two dudes just tried to murder his son. One of these things is maybe a slightly bigger priority, John! It seems worth noting that Sam’s psychic powers are triggered, as usual, by a bodily threat to Dean’s life or limb. Also that John seems to assume that if people are trying to kill Sam, they probably have a good reason (instead of that people are fucking psychos). It’s this unwarranted presumption of guilt that steams my beans. There is not a shred of evidence that Sam is endowed with an evil nature or doomed to walk an evil path, and yet John’s conviction is nigh unshakeable. The visions that Sam was having at the beginning of the fic? Those were premonitions of his own death at John’s hands. He’s been seeing visions of plenty of people getting murdered, he just didn’t realize it was himself he was seeing. Omg when the dashboard read 3am I should have known I should knownnnn. ulexite is good at a lot of things but this descriptive passage stood out to me because it is BUSSIN:

Trees. He sees trees. A grey morning, barely out of the pitch of night, only knows it’s morning and not evening because of the dew clinging to the earth, the sense memory for a thing that hasn't happened yet telling him he shouldn't be awake. Dirt and mud, rotting leaf litter, new blood. He can smell it all, iron and loam. Yet, as soon as he tries to turn his head to look around, that’s when the pain hits, a needle from one temple to the other, straight through the cortex like his premonitions are killing him.

Dw John does not put a bullet in Sam because Dean shows up at the last second and he puts a bullet in John instead. And that’s our story all tied up with a bow.

Now, do I think ulexite’s characterization of John is true to canon? No, I think this is a very selective and unsympathetic reading of John. I think in this fic the boys are conflicted in their feelings for John, but John is never shown to be conflicted, up to and including when he’s about to put Sam in the ground he’s certain that he’s doing the right thing. Canon!John would never. That’s fine though, as long as the fic’s John characterization is internally consistent I’ll buy it. What really sits at the core of it though, the thing that sank a grappling hook into my heart, is the evolving relationship between Sam and Dean and the different roles they occupy for each other as they grow up:

The weight of his amulet, a constant reminder that Sam loves him the most, feels like a noose around his neck all day long, until finally he gets the courage to apologize to Sam

and

It’s not Sam’s fault Dean conspired to keep him young forever and has just now changed his mind. It’s really not. But sometimes Sam grates on him and it’s not because of any real discernible reason other than that Dean thinks sometimes he was made into a parent at four years old and that just kinda sucks

Idk this may just be my own hobbyhorse, maybe y’all don’t care and it’s just me on my soapbox watching these boys agonize about whether I’m parent or peer of what. But I mean:

“Do you hate me?” he asks, not even meaning to, it slips out insecure and irrational, unchecked.

Dean is quiet for a few beats too long for comfort, but he wraps an arm around Sam’s shoulders and he’s pretty sure Dean kisses the top of his head, and he says “You’re my little brother, you know I love you.”

He wishes that answered his question, but in this one instance, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t.

I was wondering if you’d read a fic (wincest) if I rec’d it?? It’s not a request to review it (unless you want to ofc) but I’d just like to know your thoughts on it?? I absolutely loved the review you did on Another Brick in the Wall. I was soooo excited when I saw it because it’s an amazing fic and imo roadie’s fics aren’t talked about enough and I love reading your reviews because they make me look closer at my own analyses and I just like the way you dissect them and your pov. I was literally squealing and had to put down my phone several times while reading your review 😅

All of this to say that I really loved your interpretations and observations and I would love to hear more of them. Only if it’s okay with you. I really hope that I haven’t come across as uhhhh idk rude or demanding or anything of the like, I just really feel like our tastes(??) or maybe interpretations regarding samdean are similar and I just want to talk to you about it. Hope that’s okay 🥺🙏

fandom: Supernatural

pairing: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

word count: 171k

Is it explicit: no

Bottom line: the best casefic i have ever read in all my born days

Alright lads let’s start by calibrating our expectations: road_rhythm is not for everyone. I do not think I would have put myself through the emotional wringer of this fic if I didn’t already at least have Gnaw and The Operative Word under my belt. This fic is not the fic I would reach for were I at 20% brain capacity. But I trust roadie. I trust them to give me, not a happy ending—you’re barking up the wrong tree for that—but a satisfying answer to the questions raised by the story, and it is in this sense that roadie always, always delivers. The question this fic asks is: How does Sam reconcile his need for independence with his need for Dean?

That’s not the only question—it’s a really dense story—but it’s the one I’m most interested in. Sam is abducted and wakes up in a sewer. That’s how it opens. He waits and waits for Dean to rescue him. Spoiler alert: He rescues himself. Which is not to say he doesn’t still need Dean—the reason he had the physical and psychological resources to escape was due to a sacrificial ritual Dean performed on his behalf. It was not an easy ritual; Dean went on a whole hero’s quest and in the end Sam saved himself. But what Dean did for Sam still matters. That’s the crux of it. In an author’s note that made me tear up, roadie returns from a two-year hiatus to confess she had doubts that the fic was too long, too plotty, too boring …and then kept writing anyway. Thank you for caring about this dumb show about dumb brothers doing dumb shit, roadie. Thank you for reassuring us that they matter, and that our investment in them matters.

In the hands of a lesser author, a casefic might be merely an opportunity to refract some aspect of the Winchesters’ relationship back at them. Another Brick in the Wall does this too, but the scope of its vision is staggering. There are themes that you see in roadie’s earlier work that come to fruition here: Sam and bodily autonomy, Sam and faith, Dean and food-as-caretaking, the-city-as-character (the number of maps of Providence, Rhode Island she must’ve pored over to write the car chase scene alone).

roadie’s take on brotherfucking is: It is a thing that has fucked them both up but it is also nowhere close to being the most fucked-up thing about them. Half the time you’re reading a roadie fic you don’t even realize it’s established relationship until they have sex and then you’re like whoah whoah roll back the tape, what?! This fic is no exception. There’s no pining, no dancing around the line, no guilt—I mean there’s plenty of guilt but very little of it on account of gay incest. Again: The point of the sex is it’s not the most fucked-up thing about them. In a lot of mutual pining stories the stakes are “does he want me back” but in THIS fic the stakes are “does he need me (in every sense of the word need, including but not limited to sexually) as much as I need him” and the answer is, obviously, both of you idiots need to find a dictionary and look up the word ‘codependent.’

I think it’s so telling that while the boys are reunited by the end of the fic, it doesn’t solve any of their underlying issues, and the only time they actually know peace is in their fantasies. Not sexual fantasies, either—the fantasy is about being together being enough for both of them. I legit wept. No one has ever accused roadie of over-romanticizing samdean lol but the thing that gets me about her writing is that it’s so layered, there’s always 5-8 bowling pins in the air at once, one of which is invariably the impulse to reach for an ideal love. An unobtainable ideal given who and what the Winchesters are, but they keep reaching for it. It’s a theme that crops up throughout roadie’s work: the gulf between what they want and what they are allowed to have (see especially Finding Harmony and This is All Very Meta ).

Finally before we get started I just want to register my admiration for roadie’s command of canon. I have never seen its equal. The fic is not constructed so that you can’t understand it without the canon background—I confess the first time I read it I had not seen Season 6—but I am floored by the amount of care and thought that went into situating it chronologically within canon so that events could unfold to their inevitable conclusion. It’s set in Season 6 which means Castiel is too busy waging a heavenly civil war to heed Dean’s prayers. It’s set after 06x16 “And Then There Were None” which means that Bobby’s too busy mourning Rufus to answer Dean’s calls. It’s set in Season 6 which means Ellen, Jo and Ash are gone but we don’t have access to Jody, Garth, Charlie, and a host of other allies that might have been available in later seasons. All in all roadie has done an airtight job of isolating our boys; of ushering every potential outside resource offstage. It’s just Sam and Dean, and the two of them aren’t reunited until the 80% mark. Which lets you see just how dysfunctional they both are without the other. The real payoff of the “isolate the crap out of samdean” strategy, though, comes later, in the Lisa scene: Crucially, this fic is set before 06x21 “Let It Bleed,” the episode where Crowley kidnaps Ben and Lisa. roadie apparently looked at the way Dean lost Lisa in canon and went “Nope, not painful enough, how about I twist the knife in harder.” In canon, Lisa and Ben were vulnerable to Crowley because Dean wasn’t with them, because Dean had chosen to hunt with Sam rather than settle down with Lisa. And that choice had passively endangered Lisa and Ben. In this fic, however, Dean is faced with a much starker choice: In order to save Sam he has to actively endanger Lisa by recruiting her as his confederate in a scheme that has a nonzero chance of resulting in a felony conviction. But Dean’s got no one else. There is literally no one else he can turn to whom he can trust, and as much as it pains him he does not hesitate to burn this final bridge because when it comes to Sam he will cross every line and burn every bridge.

Ok guys let’s do a close reading!

fandom: Supernatural

pairing: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

word count: 12k

Is it explicit: yes

Bottom line: absolute masterclass in how to write the “xyz cursed object made them do it” genre

This is a bunker-era story in which Sam is compelled to suck on a cursed pacifier and in the process of racing to unravel the curse, Feelings are unlocked! Idk how Edwardina takes the most outlandish premises and makes the sex not just hot but tenderhot, but they do and they deserves all the accolades for it. It’s because they unfailingly seize upon the precise detail that shows why this sex scene can only be happening between Sam and Dean, because they’re samanddean not just any two generic hot dudes.

So this pacficier. Sam can’t take it out of his mouth for more than a few seconds at a time. Not to eat, not to drink, not to talk, not to sleep. Dean’s initial big-brother instinct is to rib Sam relentlessly about it the way he would if Sam did anything else mildly embarrassing—and being Dean, he comes up with some real creative ways to make fun of Sam. I was holding my stomach I was laughing so hard. Dean’s second instinct, however, is to take care of Sam—and he does it not so much consciously (the way all the jokes he cracks at Sam’s expense are conscious) as because it’s hardwired into him. Because there is a lot of stuff Sam can’t do in this compromised state. For example: Dean drives him to the park so he can go for a run. Since runners get dehydrated really fast Sam literally needs Dean to hold the pacifier out of his grasp so he can gulp down water. This scene made me u n b e l i e v a b l y delicate, and the reason is that Dean 100% does not realize that he is getting off on being Sam’s caretaker but we the readers 100% do and the tension is enough to make me combust. Same with the scenes of Dean feeding Sam soup or spaghetti-o’s—it’s a deliberate callback to a bygone era when Dean did inhabit that caretaker role, but the reason these scenes hit so hard is because they are grown ass men and Sam no longer needs Dean to take care of him as he once did. Except now, apparently, temporarily, he does. See what I mean about the presence of the pacifier unlocking feelings?

Sorry to be a broken record about this but Edwardina is a fucking genius. This paragraph literally made me stop reading and scream YAHTZEE out loud:

They went to the park, just as Dean had pitched, and Sam started jogging in place the instant he was out of the car. A medical mask hid his pacifier from the prying eyes of other preschoolers and their guardians. Dean kind of got a kick out of knowing it was just underneath the mask, though. It was kind of like when Lisa had worn crotchless panties under her little black dress.

So the thing about sex toys—and the pacifier is not a sex toy but hear me out here—is that it’s not the toy itself that makes the sex hot. It’s the cognizance that your partner is wearing/using the toy for you. Maybe it’s a butt plug or maybe it’s panties (Edwardina has written wincest featuring both), doesn’t matter what it is, the point is that Dean’s the only one in the know, Dean’s the only one who knows about Sam and his perverted relationship to this object.

So Castiel calls Dean out and the penny begins to drop for Dean, that he is enjoying Sam’s reliance on him maybe a little more than is healthy:

"Then I suggest you give working with Sergei on this some serious thought," said Castiel. "Or would you damn your brother? Force him to rely on you for every bite of food? Every sip of water? Would you rather consign him to this life, and yourself along with him? Or would you actually like to help him?"

Later on, in the leadup to the sex scene:

”God. I'm actually gonna miss this," Dean said, and blustered through a contrite laugh. His throat felt thick.

The sucking paused. "Hm?"

Whatever Sam was asking, Dean said, "It's been rough on you, I know. But, uh... we got kind of a good routine going, here. Like old times. You. Me. Cinnamon Toast Crunch for dinner. I Dream of Jeannie on our stolen cable."

This!!! This is why we had all those earlier scenes of Dean feeding Sam grilled cheese and making him drink out of a sippy cup! Consciously he may have chosen the sippy cup to escalate his one-sided prank war on Sam, but subconsciously it was to reinforce his position as Sam’s caretaker. The subtext of Dean’s actions here is very you need something, you get it from ME. Okay back to the sex scene:

"Don't you worry. No matter how this plays out, I'm gonna take care of you," Dean told him. "You're my baby brother. Don't care how old we get. You're my baby. My baby boy. Always gonna be."

and that’s the line of dialogue that induces a tent in Sam’s pants. Cue reciprocal blow jobs because of COURSE this ends in blowjobs, how else could a fic that is so preoccupied with Sam’s oral fixation logically conclude???

I do not think I can overstate the significance of Sam choosing to take the pacifier out of his mouth long enough to blow Dean. It’s the most difficult thing he can possibly do right now, to stop sucking that thing and suck Dean instead, and Sam applies the same grim determination to it as he does everything else he undertakes in his life, and Dean sees and appreciates it so much:

Staring down at him, Dean could see the effort it was taking not to go back to the paci in the pull of Sam's brow. But he was the opposite of offended about that. If anything, that only made it obvious what Sam wanted, because if left to his own devices, Sam wouldn't even eat, wouldn't drink, wouldn't voluntarily do anything that took the pacifier from his mouth.

And this:

Not the most expert head Dean had ever been given. But easily, so fucking easily, it was the best of his entire life, just because Sam was the one giving it. There wasn't even any competition. Dean was close to losing it then and there. He didn't want to. Not yet. But he also couldn't handle what was happening. He was inside Sammy's mouth, and Sam was slurping at his cockhead, lapping at it –

But then it all stopped, and Sam yammered, "Wait, please wait," and stuffed the pacifier back into his mouth with a pained cry. Distress marred his forehead.

Dean's dick was disappointed. But the rest of him ached with tenderness. He could totally ignore the almost painful knife of arousal in his gut if Sam could ignore fucking soul-powered magic in favor of blowing him for even a few seconds.

fandom: Supernatural

pairing: Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester

word count: 11k

Is it explicit: no

Bottom line: what if the S8 opener was a coffeeshop au

I don’t think we as a fandom (spn generally, and samdean specifically) are really built for coffeeshop AUs but goddamn does glovered deliver. It’s mostly down to the ensemble cast—Castiel and Meg don’t have a ton of scenes but what lines they have are high-impact, and then there’s Kevin. Kevin has 1) the worst case of imposter syndrome an Asian-American overachiever has ever come down with and 2) a mega-crush on Sam. Dean is fresh out of Purgatory and here to help. It’s not toothrotting fluff but it’s not not toothrotting fluff iykwim.

This fic was like a pump of caramel syrup injected directly into my veins. I wouldn’t want, like, five pumps of it in a single latte, but the S8 rift between Dean and Sam really hurt me and this story was a balm. On a basic canon-divergent plot level Sam didn’t quit hunting and therefore Dean, when he returns, doesn’t take Sam’s rejection of the lifestyle as a rejection of Dean. On a meta level it eases my heart to see that the Winchesters are not radioactive to absolutely everyone they care about: Kevin’s most pressing concern right now? Passing macroeconomics. Castiel is not, thank fuck, auditioning to be the next Winter Soldier. Meg and her smart mouth are the light of my life.

Sam is a barista because Kevin is attending Princeton, and Kevin is Sam’s responsibility. Sam isn’t carrying around all this baggage of “I hung Kevin out to dry—yet another way I let Dean down, ugh,” and that allows Dean to come at being in love with Sam circuitously rather than devouringly (the way he does in canon). Dean comes at being in love with Sam through Kevin’s attraction to Sam:

”Does he seem..." Dean looks back to his paper. "No, you know what? Never mind." He's reading about some football game he didn't used to care about, when Kevin speaks up. ”No." ”Huh?" ”No, he doesn't seem." ”Really?" ”Really." Kevin screws up his mouth, watching Sam, too. "Of course not. He was worried sick."

In fact we learn that Sam went slightly berserker. I think “I went at the remaining Leviathans with the machete you gave me for my twenty-third birthday” is just as believable a reaction to losing Dean as “I quit hunting cold-turkey and clung to my grief like a liferaft.” I mean, just because it’s fluff doesn’t mean it’s weak on characterization:

”You didn't even tell anyone you had a brother," Dean says. The thought comes out of nowhere. Sam stills and then finally lies down again, but he rolls into Dean's side a second later so his face is close, breathing Dean's breath. "I couldn't even talk for three months. Let alone talk about you."

Dean is just so nakedly relieved to have his brother back:

Sam follows close behind him down the stairs and falls into step once they're on the street. They don't talk because talking before five in the morning has never been their thing, but Dean does look over once, three times, when they're not under streetlights, and Sam catches him at it. There's a lot of eye rolling, and it makes everything in Dean hurt that hurt of hope, of being alive and back and wondering where they're going to go now. He knows if Sam doesn't want to go he's going to have to stay here, learn to deal. They'll be together either way, no matter what.

Looking at S8 through the soft-focus filter of a coffeeshop au makes me wonder how much of Dean’s disappointment in Sam is disapproval he’s left the life, and how much is anxiety that he left (will leave) Dean. Dean’s never been able to separate his self-self and his hunter-self. He also—hilariously and very much in-character—has this pathological drive to ensure Sam’s physical safety that is in no way equalled by insight into the inside of Sam’s noggin. What I mean is: Dean thinks Sam wants to settle down in suburban New Jersey, when actually Sam gave his two weeks’ notice the minute Dean reappeared. Dean thinks Sam doesn’t know how Dean feels about him, when actually Sam probably knew before Dean did. Dean is an idiot.

This is Dean being blindingly jealous of some girl Sam casually dated at some point:

Kevin glares at the girl as she passes with a free drink. "She seems great and all. I just...don't like her."

Dean remembers that Kevin's the victim here. He feels a sudden, uncanny sort of compassion for him. Imagine being in love with a dude, only to watch him fall for some caffeine junky.

”You and me both," he says, and watches Sam go about his business like nothing out of the ordinary just happened. "Kevin, I got your back."

We all know Dean Winchester is the king of repression and denial but glovered’s light touch here is just. Everything.

They go on a vision-quest in the desert:

"Chill," Sam tells him, stopping to examine another plaque-style map on a wall.

”Don't tell me to chill, I spend months navigating the stump swamps of Purgatory to come back here and get lost in a—" Sam turns and puts a hand over his mouth.

”What's a stump swamp?" Meg asks.

”It's a swamp with many stumps," Cas tells her.

”I’m not dismissing your PTSD," Sam tells Dean in low tones, and doesn't let his hand up when Dean tries to deny it. "But I'm letting you know that you're overreacting."

”Mmph."

”Okay?" Sam asks.

Dean licks Sam's palm, but Sam remains unmoved.

”Cute," Meg says. "Are you going to give him a kiss or—?"

Lmfaoo

Did I mention that Kevin’s ex-girlfriend is alive and well and not attending her safety school??

”She broke up with me," Kevin says. "After the whole, you know. Kidnapping and mental break and stuff. She went to Stanford, anyway. But yeah, it bugged her sometimes."

”But you were into her?"

Kevin shrugs.

Dean's aware he's being a dick. He's just trying to figure out if the kid knows he's gay for Sam. "Probably wasn't First Lady material, anyway."

And like. Kevin’s ex not being dead or possessed, Kevin’s mom likewise being alive and not-possessed—it opens the door for Kevin to want things for himself beyond bare survival. The throughline of this fic is Kevin’s dream deferred to be president of the United States. Kevin thinks he got into Princeton because Dick Roman pulled some strings for him. Team Free Will has to hack into his admissions records to prove that this is not the case. I’m…not crazy about the meritocracy-is-not-fundamentally-broken assumptions embedded in this maneuver, but as a storytelling choice it’s A+

”I know how you feel about him," Kevin says, and actually has the balls to look sympathetic, like it's anything Dean regrets.

Dean glances at Meg and Cas, but they're having some random conversation, so he looks back to Kevin. Kevin leans back under the force of Dean's frown, but still says, "I mean, I guess with the way you two grew up, it makes sense. And I get it, believe me, I do."

”You know what," Dean sneers. "It's cute you have a crush on my brother. But you're already a prophet. If you want to be president, you can't be a prophet and gay. You have to choose one."

”It's probably true," Meg says.

”Only historically," Cas tells him.

Sam, who seems to selectively notice when Dean calls people out, shouts over, "Don't listen to him, Kevin. You can be whatever you want."

Kevin freezes. "What?"

”You can do it," Sam says, and then goes back to frothing milk to pour into a paper cup.

”I know," Kevin says quietly, getting all mouth-breathey.

”No, but, you're already a prophet," Dean tells him, just in case Kevin missed his point. "You can't have Sam, he's mine."