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New fandom means adding endless numbers of words to my Word dictionary: pretty much every name in DS9 gets an angry little red underline. Plus I'm still retraining my new laptop to recognize all the words from my previous writing. Did you know that it doesn't even recognize "multiverse?" That makes me so sad.
On to the recs!
For the Dean/Castiel recs, I've put three asterisks next to the ones that are (to the best of my memory, which is not exactly infallible) season-four-spoilers only, for
summerskin and anyone else who hasn't seen S5 yet. The Sam/Gabriel section should be avoided entirely, for obvious reasons.
Dean/Castiel
All Souls and Angels, and In Your Head, In Your Mouth, Forgetting the Divine, The Skies Cannot Ignore Us
--> A series of four in-between scenes, quiet and gentle and sweet. There's a sense of newness, of wonder, and sincerity to all of their interactions, losing some of the shard edges they never quite shed on the show.
*** AngelTV
--> Post-apocalypse, the angels haave all discovered new things: like, for example, television. Except Heaven gets really crappy reception. And they end up sneaking into Castiel's head at an, ahem, intimate moment, and then they stay because live-action porn is much more interesting than a Smallville marathon. Hilarious!
*** Anything Worth Dying For
--> This is one of my favorites. AU post-4x22, Dean as the new kind-of-messiah. Long and serious and well-developed, nothing like the direction the show went and with a really great biblical narrative structure. I want to call this gen slash, because the Dean/Castiel is awesome but not really the point, but the fact is that the pairing is so awesome that it definitely belongs here.
***Asunder
--> Okay, so this is a story where Dean is a social worker and Castiel is a pediatric surgeon and Sam is a recovering drug addict that Dean hasn't spoken to in years, and while I know that you are looking at this review like I am a crazy person, you have to read it. You just have to. It's tied for top re-readability of this pairing alongside Peanut Butter Pumpking Wedding Cake, because it is a beautiful, hilarious, silly, profound and intelligent piece of writing. It skims along the surface, busy being perfectly ridiculous, until it will veer, momentarily, into something deep and meaningful before dancing back into laugh-out-loud hilarity, and the thing is, the thing that makes Pru one of the best there is, is that without all the comedy, the depths wouldn't be so deep. I go from laughing about Dean's manpain and his failtastic search for a wedding gift to sucking in my breath, hit as if to the solar plexus, at some brief aside that's so fucking important I can't even take it. This is a Dean that has all the desperate love and dependence of Dean in canon, but this is one who has the strength to break away: and because of that, he has the strength to walk back. To make the choice. And every single scene with Castiel in it made me want to weep rainbows and shit, but it's really the Dean-and-Sam that sold this story for me; much as in the show, they are the heart in every way that matters.
*** A Wincest Story
--> A human Cas needs a human name, and of course Dean offers up his own surname. The three of them manage to settle down somewhere, living like three brothers, which goes hilariously wrong when Dean and Castiel get their act together.
A Yellow Wood
--> Oh god, this story hurts so good. Dean and Castiel are on a hunt, after everything, of people going missing in the woods, and discover a tear between two universes, and what they see on the other side is... different. It's a slow reveal, and so sneaky that I almost didn't notice something was wrong until they saw the mirror. I liked the way the two of them fit together, a little jagged in places, but compatibly broken, if that makes sense. They smooth over each other's cracks.
*** Bad Things With You, Voluntary Offerings, and Earth to Heaven Replies (also with Dean/Castiel's vessel, pre-Jimmy)
--> This was started back before we knew for certain that Castiel was an angel, and before we knew just how dangerous Ruby was, but it's brilliant and I keep going back even though it's so thoroughly Jossed. Dean and Sam end up going their separate ways, Sam with Ruby and Dean (sometimes) with Castiel, and it's just mystical and sharp and awesome. I love it.
***Being Human
--> Pre-slash. It's not that Castiel isn't grateful for having a human host, it's just that he hates it. Dean gives him a few lessons in the finer pleasures of humanity. It's a sweet, funny little story, bookended by a fascinating, slightly darker twist about Sam, like a tasty angst sandwich.
*** Below Skyscrapers
--> Oh, but this story is fantastic. It's a cop AU, but it's still urban fantasy, and it's so much grittier and realistic and engrossing than I ever could have imagined. It reminds me a little of the Detective Inspector Chen books, where Heaven and Hell are places people enter and leave, and sometimes you need to call in a specialist. Dean's working a serial killer case with demonic origins, and the specialist called in is, of course, Castiel. This is one of the bookmarks that was lost in the Giant Laptop Disaster, and I just spent an hour tracking it down again; that's how amazing this story is.
Beneath the Sheets of Paper
--> S5, established relationship. Castiel suddenly finds himself unable to teleport, and so he stays with Dean, doing ordinary things like sleeping and brushing his teeth and shopping for new clothes and hunting and maybe going on a date. It's a quiet, ordinary story, one week in their lives, and a good look at what it might be like for them, someday, if they survive the rest.
Better the Devil
--> THIS is the story that I wanted after Meg's comment about Castiel being the new Public Enemy Number One. Castiel takes over the position of the Devil, and he's hilariously good at it. Michael keeps trying to pimp Dean out to be the new first seal so that they can stop Castiel from fucking with them. John and Mary bicker a lot. It all goes horribly, hilariously wrong, and the reasons behind Castiel's Great Plan are kind of heart-wrenching, but it all works out in the end.
Bing Crosby's Pennies From Heaven (implied Sam/Gabriel)
--> Post 5x19 epic fixit with plot. Castiel comes back, and slowly they piece together the rings and the plan to defeat the Devil, while Dean and Castiel get their act together and Sam is forced to witness all of their emotional milestones. And along the way, good things keep happening, things that Sam is very sure are coming from Gabriel, for all that no one else believes he's not dead. And there's a happy ending. It's just perfect.
***Brother Lover
--> Dean thinks that Castiel and Sam have a Thing, and nobly tries to step aside. Dean is kind of thick sometimes.
Creature of Habit
--> Castiel's increasing humanity, and all of the very human habits he picks up, and how Dean doesn't mind as much as he thinks he does.
*** Daughter of Man and Whomever They Chose
--> girl!Dean, post-"It's a Terrible Life." Deanna teases Castiel a little further than she would normally think is wise, because she's so sick of it all, and Castiel... is not as immune as God's laws would probably like. The atmosphere between them is burning, the same edgy tension from the show with a sexual thrill, and then there's the sequel in which the tension shifts into something flirting, sweet, waiting, until one day they stop waiting. A lot of fun.
Fire of Heaven
--> This is a twist that a lot of people were waiting for on the show, and reading this I'm a little regretful they didn't go this way in canon. Dean does become the host for Michael, but not in the way you might think. I like Castiel's thoughts on Michael in the beginning of the piece, and Mary being awesome, and the last few lines are just killer.
*** I love the bones of you
--> Dean gets possessed and Castiel saves him, but that's just the beginning. This is about Dean who can't face grief, for whom the worst thing in the world is to have hurt his little brother, even if someone else was riding him when it happened. And it's about Castiel's patience, about how love can grow and expand to fill the little cracks, and how you don't have to fuck someone to be intimate. And Dean's choice, as regards to Castiel, is brilliantly managed, and I fully understand Castiel's grateful response. That's knowing someone, knowing what they'd want even if it isn't what you want.
Immigrant Song
--> This is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, a BigBang story that's structured into episode format following the start of a hypothetical season six where Castiel is fallen and Anna and Gabriel are both brought back. It's a look at a premise offered, briefly, in Hammer of the Gods: there are other pantheons out there, waned but still powerful, and now that Heaven and Hell have both retreated, they're staging a comeback. There are parts that don't hang as well together as I would have liked, but I think that's more the format, the way the episodic stuff works better as weekly visual medium and doesn't hold up quite as well read in one chunk, but I loved everything she did enough that I genuinely didn't care. Dean has a crisis of sexuality (oddly absent from most SPN fanfic) and Castiel isn't as patient as he appears, and Sam just wants to get on with their lives and for everything, for once, to work out for them. The plot of the last chapter just killed me, because I caught the hints going on but I TOTALLY didn't see where she was going with it, and it was so, so worth the ride. The ending was just a perfect circle for the entire story, and I am a sucker for stories that tie themselves together like that. Just, so much love.
***I Think I Know Where You Belong and the sequels, Everything Comes Naturally and Gotta Be From Out of Town
--> High school au! This is just hilarious and awesome and everything that is good in the world, like kittens adn rainbows. Dean's the actually very nice popular jock and Castiel's the boy next door.
***Must Have Been The Way
--> girl!Dean, PICNIC DATE OF CUTE AND AWESOME
*** Like Wile E. Coyote
--> I really like the spare, dialogue-focused style of this, very neat and cutting with its repeated themes of falling, living, and cartoons. Castiel is very slow, and Dean is very patient, and Anna is the slash ex machina, and it all comes together in the end.
Of All Possible Futures
--> Fascinating look at gender and how it does and doesn't relate to angels. It's a story that's only about Dean's sexuality on the surface, and underneath it's about Dean's inability to see how things can ever be good. I really enjoyed this.
*** Overthrown, Made New
--> This takes an offhand joke (about Dean being re-virginized) and fucking runs with it. It's a look at what it's like to be a virgin, all shiny-new and every touch something monumental, seen through the lens of someone who has had an actually kind of ridiculous amount of sex.
*** Peanut Butter Pumpkin Wedding Cake
--> human au, with awesome rom-com cliches done right. Really believable and charming versions of Dean and Castiel. This is honestly one of my favorite Dean/Castiel stories, and definitely the one I re-read the most, alongside Asunder. This is the one I want to send to my mom to explain why slash fanfic is awesome. The sex scene at the end is one of my top five because it feels like real people, including negotiation of yes-like-that or no-try-this-instead, and it is honestly just good.
Praise the Lord (And Pass the Ammunition)
--> DEAN BECOMES THE ANGEL OF STD'S. Seriously, there is nothing about this story that I didn't enjoy. Dean dies, gets made into an angel, and when he refuses to pick a vocation, ends up picking "std's" just to get them off his back. Also he keeps putting his face on hamburgers.
*** Quarters (with Sam/Ruby)
-->This is my favorite story from S4, when Sam and Ruby were still a thing and Dean and Cas hadn't yet found their groove. It's Dean being embarassed by not having his shit together in regards to Cas, it's Cas being patient, it's Ruby being, reluctantly, someone that Dean might actually like. Totally Jossed by later events, of course, but I still really enjoy it (and its sequels, linked through at the bottom.)
*** She Taught Every Angel To Rearrange the Sky
--> Castiel shows up at Ellen's bar looking for advice dealing with Dean, and when he doesn't find what he's looking for, he keeps returning, with Anna this time. As much as I enjoy the idea of Castiel (and Anna) getting drunk on girly drinks, it's the serious things that get me with this story, the bits about Anna and Ellen and why Anna fell, and Castiel and Dean and their epic love story.
*** Simply Irresistible
--> Ahahaha, Dean gets laid and gets infected with sex pheromones or something, and Castiel has to fix him. The pairing aside, it was Sam who had me cracking up in this, and I felt so sorry for him but it was HILARIOUS.
*** Spilt Milk
--> and also sort of Sam/Castiel on the side, but... not really. It's more Sam failing to be clever at matchmaking. And lots of Dean and Sam gen of awesome.
The Assumption of the Winchesters (Plus Bobby)
--> Okay, so this was pretty much jossed by Dark Side of the Moon? But I don't even care, and neither should you, because this is the most delicious piece of crack I've ever read. I was in stitches the entire way through the story, and every time I thought it couldn't get more awesome, IT DID. Let's just say that it starts with God putting all the angels in time-out, and it only gets better from there.
The Girlfriend Experience
--> Dean has to teach Castiel about sex, and then that shit gets out of hand, and then Dean's issues emerge, and it's harsh and hilarious all the way through. I think the line that sums up the entire story for me was Sex is easier if you just give it to people; wanting it for yourself is a fucking nightmare at best, because holy shit, Dean. There's so much underneath, and I like re-reading this because I was so busy laughing the first time that I missed a lot of the more serious shit, and I'm glad every time I find something new.
*** The Request
--> A really charmingly constructed AU in which angels actually exist to answer prayers, in person, and Sam prays for someone to find Dean a relationship. Castiel is given the assignment for the first time in existence, and Dean isn't particularly fond of angels, but he gives in anyway, possibly because Castiel is so ridiculously charming and goofy. And of course Castiel ends up falling for his charge, because hello, and it all works out in the end. Weirdly enough, Michael was almost my favorite thing about this.
The Ten Commandments Don't Apply to Angels
--> Castiel is finding out what it's like to be human, and not just a human but a hunter, one of the Winchesters, all the little sins that go into the service of the greater good. He's surprisingly happy about it, is the thing, except for this one piece of his life that he wants, craves, but thinks he can't have. Except, of course, he just hasn't figured out the right way to ask.
When All Is Said And Done
--> After everything, God makes it clear to Michael that the angels have to make it up to Cas, and they decide that the best way to do that is to make him and Dean have sex. Neither one of them will listen to anything they have to say, natch, so they try out the internet for answers, and decide to write a romance novel. A ROMANCE NOVEL. Cas is... shall we say less than appreciative. This is just absolutely hilarious, with lots of killer lines, and a cast of angels that are endearingly dim.
Sam/Gabriel (most of these have some background Dean/Castiel because the, "your angel, my angel" symmetry seems to be irresistible.)
Allowances, Experimentation, and Touching
--> Gabriel reveals a secret about angel erogenous zones, Sam is comfortable with that, Dean not so much. This is one of the first stories I read for this pairing and it's STILL a big favorite.
Baby, It's Cold Outside
--> Sam's internal whining in this is EPIC.
Black Swans
--> roadtripping after an alternate apocalypse. I have to admit, as awesome as I tend to find Gabriel, this is one of the few stories that really, truly sells me on how Sam could forgive him enough to feel serious affection, not just friendly lust.
Cash Out, Get the Hell Out of Town
--> inspired by The Hangover, which should be a warning in and of itself. I laughed so hard at this I actually, literally cried.
Envy
--> Gabriel decides to mark Sam as a way of pointing out to Castiel that he does, in fact, want more from Dean. Sam is sort of confused when Castiel starts to go all guidance counselor on him. HILARIOUS.
Follow Me Down and Dead Space
--> dubcon, sex whammy. Gabriel takes the brunt of a massive lust spell, Sam tries to help him out, and then they both have to deal with the aftermath. (While, of course, both of them were assuming they'd assaulted the other. Sometimes cliches work for me, okay?)
Happy Families Are All Alike
--> AU where Sam is an archangel and the Trickster is actually a Trickster and Sam runs away from his family and into a new relationship. It's hilarious, especially after God takes off and Dean goes off to find him, and I have no idea how the author managed to echo the actual show so well with such wildly different backgrounds, but it was brilliant. It actually made the whole, "angel family a metaphor for the Winchester family," thing, work so much better than it did on the show. Just, yay.
Important Angel Business
--> This is the very first story I read on this pairing, and the reason that I kept reading till this pairing got its own category. It's STILL MY FAVORITE, that's how awesome it is. Basically Gabriel gets ahold of Sam's phone number and then there are text messages. It's a sort of slow, sneaky build, and leaves a smile on my face every single time.
I Think I'm In Love (but it kinda makes me nervous to say so)
--> Castiel, having doubts about his feelings for Dean, asks Gabriel and Sam what it's like to be in love- because he assumes they're together. This is a really cute, sweet story, and I like the click feeling I got from Sam and Gabe, near the end where, as Gabriel says, they're on the same wavelength.
Like Glass
--> This is kind of surreal and a little disturbing. Sam is deeply wounded and messed in the head for most of the story, and Gabriel goes a lot further than possibly he should in order to save them, and they both end up a little fucked up together. Fascinating, intense, very immersive-head-space kind of story.
Old Gods and Old Rules
--> Sam gets himself in trouble with some pagan gods, and Gabriel has to go a little old-school to get him out. There are consequences. Castiel is concerned.
Our Mornings
--> After they save the world, Sam wakes up with a hangover, in bed with Gabriel (and promising himself that he will find some better excuses for this thing any day now) and listening to his brother have sex with Castiel on the other side of the wall, because God hates him. The morning precedes apace, with lots of wackiness and banter, as Sam slowly comes to the realization that out of the remaining Winchester's he's the one that is failing at being in a relationship, which is just goddamn wrong.
Tall and Tan and Young and Lovely (The Girl from Ipanema Goes Walking)
--> Sam and Gabriel get trapped in an elevator, and there is Truth Or Strip. Gabriel's POV in this story is something I love more than cheeseburgers, okay, and I really fucking love cheeseburgers. It's just, I don't think I can imagine the inside of Gabriel's head as anything other than this. Ever.
What I Need Is A Good Defense
--> girl!Sam, basically this is some awesome, awesome porn. That is all you need to know.
As always, I'm hoping there's at least something for everyone to enjoy!
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On to the recs!
For the Dean/Castiel recs, I've put three asterisks next to the ones that are (to the best of my memory, which is not exactly infallible) season-four-spoilers only, for
summerskin and anyone else who hasn't seen S5 yet. The Sam/Gabriel section should be avoided entirely, for obvious reasons.
Dean/Castiel
All Souls and Angels, and In Your Head, In Your Mouth, Forgetting the Divine, The Skies Cannot Ignore Us
--> A series of four in-between scenes, quiet and gentle and sweet. There's a sense of newness, of wonder, and sincerity to all of their interactions, losing some of the shard edges they never quite shed on the show.
*** AngelTV
--> Post-apocalypse, the angels haave all discovered new things: like, for example, television. Except Heaven gets really crappy reception. And they end up sneaking into Castiel's head at an, ahem, intimate moment, and then they stay because live-action porn is much more interesting than a Smallville marathon. Hilarious!
*** Anything Worth Dying For
--> This is one of my favorites. AU post-4x22, Dean as the new kind-of-messiah. Long and serious and well-developed, nothing like the direction the show went and with a really great biblical narrative structure. I want to call this gen slash, because the Dean/Castiel is awesome but not really the point, but the fact is that the pairing is so awesome that it definitely belongs here.
***Asunder
--> Okay, so this is a story where Dean is a social worker and Castiel is a pediatric surgeon and Sam is a recovering drug addict that Dean hasn't spoken to in years, and while I know that you are looking at this review like I am a crazy person, you have to read it. You just have to. It's tied for top re-readability of this pairing alongside Peanut Butter Pumpking Wedding Cake, because it is a beautiful, hilarious, silly, profound and intelligent piece of writing. It skims along the surface, busy being perfectly ridiculous, until it will veer, momentarily, into something deep and meaningful before dancing back into laugh-out-loud hilarity, and the thing is, the thing that makes Pru one of the best there is, is that without all the comedy, the depths wouldn't be so deep. I go from laughing about Dean's manpain and his failtastic search for a wedding gift to sucking in my breath, hit as if to the solar plexus, at some brief aside that's so fucking important I can't even take it. This is a Dean that has all the desperate love and dependence of Dean in canon, but this is one who has the strength to break away: and because of that, he has the strength to walk back. To make the choice. And every single scene with Castiel in it made me want to weep rainbows and shit, but it's really the Dean-and-Sam that sold this story for me; much as in the show, they are the heart in every way that matters.
*** A Wincest Story
--> A human Cas needs a human name, and of course Dean offers up his own surname. The three of them manage to settle down somewhere, living like three brothers, which goes hilariously wrong when Dean and Castiel get their act together.
A Yellow Wood
--> Oh god, this story hurts so good. Dean and Castiel are on a hunt, after everything, of people going missing in the woods, and discover a tear between two universes, and what they see on the other side is... different. It's a slow reveal, and so sneaky that I almost didn't notice something was wrong until they saw the mirror. I liked the way the two of them fit together, a little jagged in places, but compatibly broken, if that makes sense. They smooth over each other's cracks.
*** Bad Things With You, Voluntary Offerings, and Earth to Heaven Replies (also with Dean/Castiel's vessel, pre-Jimmy)
--> This was started back before we knew for certain that Castiel was an angel, and before we knew just how dangerous Ruby was, but it's brilliant and I keep going back even though it's so thoroughly Jossed. Dean and Sam end up going their separate ways, Sam with Ruby and Dean (sometimes) with Castiel, and it's just mystical and sharp and awesome. I love it.
***Being Human
--> Pre-slash. It's not that Castiel isn't grateful for having a human host, it's just that he hates it. Dean gives him a few lessons in the finer pleasures of humanity. It's a sweet, funny little story, bookended by a fascinating, slightly darker twist about Sam, like a tasty angst sandwich.
*** Below Skyscrapers
--> Oh, but this story is fantastic. It's a cop AU, but it's still urban fantasy, and it's so much grittier and realistic and engrossing than I ever could have imagined. It reminds me a little of the Detective Inspector Chen books, where Heaven and Hell are places people enter and leave, and sometimes you need to call in a specialist. Dean's working a serial killer case with demonic origins, and the specialist called in is, of course, Castiel. This is one of the bookmarks that was lost in the Giant Laptop Disaster, and I just spent an hour tracking it down again; that's how amazing this story is.
Beneath the Sheets of Paper
--> S5, established relationship. Castiel suddenly finds himself unable to teleport, and so he stays with Dean, doing ordinary things like sleeping and brushing his teeth and shopping for new clothes and hunting and maybe going on a date. It's a quiet, ordinary story, one week in their lives, and a good look at what it might be like for them, someday, if they survive the rest.
Better the Devil
--> THIS is the story that I wanted after Meg's comment about Castiel being the new Public Enemy Number One. Castiel takes over the position of the Devil, and he's hilariously good at it. Michael keeps trying to pimp Dean out to be the new first seal so that they can stop Castiel from fucking with them. John and Mary bicker a lot. It all goes horribly, hilariously wrong, and the reasons behind Castiel's Great Plan are kind of heart-wrenching, but it all works out in the end.
Bing Crosby's Pennies From Heaven (implied Sam/Gabriel)
--> Post 5x19 epic fixit with plot. Castiel comes back, and slowly they piece together the rings and the plan to defeat the Devil, while Dean and Castiel get their act together and Sam is forced to witness all of their emotional milestones. And along the way, good things keep happening, things that Sam is very sure are coming from Gabriel, for all that no one else believes he's not dead. And there's a happy ending. It's just perfect.
***Brother Lover
--> Dean thinks that Castiel and Sam have a Thing, and nobly tries to step aside. Dean is kind of thick sometimes.
Creature of Habit
--> Castiel's increasing humanity, and all of the very human habits he picks up, and how Dean doesn't mind as much as he thinks he does.
*** Daughter of Man and Whomever They Chose
--> girl!Dean, post-"It's a Terrible Life." Deanna teases Castiel a little further than she would normally think is wise, because she's so sick of it all, and Castiel... is not as immune as God's laws would probably like. The atmosphere between them is burning, the same edgy tension from the show with a sexual thrill, and then there's the sequel in which the tension shifts into something flirting, sweet, waiting, until one day they stop waiting. A lot of fun.
Fire of Heaven
--> This is a twist that a lot of people were waiting for on the show, and reading this I'm a little regretful they didn't go this way in canon. Dean does become the host for Michael, but not in the way you might think. I like Castiel's thoughts on Michael in the beginning of the piece, and Mary being awesome, and the last few lines are just killer.
*** I love the bones of you
--> Dean gets possessed and Castiel saves him, but that's just the beginning. This is about Dean who can't face grief, for whom the worst thing in the world is to have hurt his little brother, even if someone else was riding him when it happened. And it's about Castiel's patience, about how love can grow and expand to fill the little cracks, and how you don't have to fuck someone to be intimate. And Dean's choice, as regards to Castiel, is brilliantly managed, and I fully understand Castiel's grateful response. That's knowing someone, knowing what they'd want even if it isn't what you want.
Immigrant Song
--> This is an absolutely brilliant piece of work, a BigBang story that's structured into episode format following the start of a hypothetical season six where Castiel is fallen and Anna and Gabriel are both brought back. It's a look at a premise offered, briefly, in Hammer of the Gods: there are other pantheons out there, waned but still powerful, and now that Heaven and Hell have both retreated, they're staging a comeback. There are parts that don't hang as well together as I would have liked, but I think that's more the format, the way the episodic stuff works better as weekly visual medium and doesn't hold up quite as well read in one chunk, but I loved everything she did enough that I genuinely didn't care. Dean has a crisis of sexuality (oddly absent from most SPN fanfic) and Castiel isn't as patient as he appears, and Sam just wants to get on with their lives and for everything, for once, to work out for them. The plot of the last chapter just killed me, because I caught the hints going on but I TOTALLY didn't see where she was going with it, and it was so, so worth the ride. The ending was just a perfect circle for the entire story, and I am a sucker for stories that tie themselves together like that. Just, so much love.
***I Think I Know Where You Belong and the sequels, Everything Comes Naturally and Gotta Be From Out of Town
--> High school au! This is just hilarious and awesome and everything that is good in the world, like kittens adn rainbows. Dean's the actually very nice popular jock and Castiel's the boy next door.
***Must Have Been The Way
--> girl!Dean, PICNIC DATE OF CUTE AND AWESOME
*** Like Wile E. Coyote
--> I really like the spare, dialogue-focused style of this, very neat and cutting with its repeated themes of falling, living, and cartoons. Castiel is very slow, and Dean is very patient, and Anna is the slash ex machina, and it all comes together in the end.
Of All Possible Futures
--> Fascinating look at gender and how it does and doesn't relate to angels. It's a story that's only about Dean's sexuality on the surface, and underneath it's about Dean's inability to see how things can ever be good. I really enjoyed this.
*** Overthrown, Made New
--> This takes an offhand joke (about Dean being re-virginized) and fucking runs with it. It's a look at what it's like to be a virgin, all shiny-new and every touch something monumental, seen through the lens of someone who has had an actually kind of ridiculous amount of sex.
*** Peanut Butter Pumpkin Wedding Cake
--> human au, with awesome rom-com cliches done right. Really believable and charming versions of Dean and Castiel. This is honestly one of my favorite Dean/Castiel stories, and definitely the one I re-read the most, alongside Asunder. This is the one I want to send to my mom to explain why slash fanfic is awesome. The sex scene at the end is one of my top five because it feels like real people, including negotiation of yes-like-that or no-try-this-instead, and it is honestly just good.
Praise the Lord (And Pass the Ammunition)
--> DEAN BECOMES THE ANGEL OF STD'S. Seriously, there is nothing about this story that I didn't enjoy. Dean dies, gets made into an angel, and when he refuses to pick a vocation, ends up picking "std's" just to get them off his back. Also he keeps putting his face on hamburgers.
*** Quarters (with Sam/Ruby)
-->This is my favorite story from S4, when Sam and Ruby were still a thing and Dean and Cas hadn't yet found their groove. It's Dean being embarassed by not having his shit together in regards to Cas, it's Cas being patient, it's Ruby being, reluctantly, someone that Dean might actually like. Totally Jossed by later events, of course, but I still really enjoy it (and its sequels, linked through at the bottom.)
*** She Taught Every Angel To Rearrange the Sky
--> Castiel shows up at Ellen's bar looking for advice dealing with Dean, and when he doesn't find what he's looking for, he keeps returning, with Anna this time. As much as I enjoy the idea of Castiel (and Anna) getting drunk on girly drinks, it's the serious things that get me with this story, the bits about Anna and Ellen and why Anna fell, and Castiel and Dean and their epic love story.
*** Simply Irresistible
--> Ahahaha, Dean gets laid and gets infected with sex pheromones or something, and Castiel has to fix him. The pairing aside, it was Sam who had me cracking up in this, and I felt so sorry for him but it was HILARIOUS.
*** Spilt Milk
--> and also sort of Sam/Castiel on the side, but... not really. It's more Sam failing to be clever at matchmaking. And lots of Dean and Sam gen of awesome.
The Assumption of the Winchesters (Plus Bobby)
--> Okay, so this was pretty much jossed by Dark Side of the Moon? But I don't even care, and neither should you, because this is the most delicious piece of crack I've ever read. I was in stitches the entire way through the story, and every time I thought it couldn't get more awesome, IT DID. Let's just say that it starts with God putting all the angels in time-out, and it only gets better from there.
The Girlfriend Experience
--> Dean has to teach Castiel about sex, and then that shit gets out of hand, and then Dean's issues emerge, and it's harsh and hilarious all the way through. I think the line that sums up the entire story for me was Sex is easier if you just give it to people; wanting it for yourself is a fucking nightmare at best, because holy shit, Dean. There's so much underneath, and I like re-reading this because I was so busy laughing the first time that I missed a lot of the more serious shit, and I'm glad every time I find something new.
*** The Request
--> A really charmingly constructed AU in which angels actually exist to answer prayers, in person, and Sam prays for someone to find Dean a relationship. Castiel is given the assignment for the first time in existence, and Dean isn't particularly fond of angels, but he gives in anyway, possibly because Castiel is so ridiculously charming and goofy. And of course Castiel ends up falling for his charge, because hello, and it all works out in the end. Weirdly enough, Michael was almost my favorite thing about this.
The Ten Commandments Don't Apply to Angels
--> Castiel is finding out what it's like to be human, and not just a human but a hunter, one of the Winchesters, all the little sins that go into the service of the greater good. He's surprisingly happy about it, is the thing, except for this one piece of his life that he wants, craves, but thinks he can't have. Except, of course, he just hasn't figured out the right way to ask.
When All Is Said And Done
--> After everything, God makes it clear to Michael that the angels have to make it up to Cas, and they decide that the best way to do that is to make him and Dean have sex. Neither one of them will listen to anything they have to say, natch, so they try out the internet for answers, and decide to write a romance novel. A ROMANCE NOVEL. Cas is... shall we say less than appreciative. This is just absolutely hilarious, with lots of killer lines, and a cast of angels that are endearingly dim.
Sam/Gabriel (most of these have some background Dean/Castiel because the, "your angel, my angel" symmetry seems to be irresistible.)
Allowances, Experimentation, and Touching
--> Gabriel reveals a secret about angel erogenous zones, Sam is comfortable with that, Dean not so much. This is one of the first stories I read for this pairing and it's STILL a big favorite.
Baby, It's Cold Outside
--> Sam's internal whining in this is EPIC.
Black Swans
--> roadtripping after an alternate apocalypse. I have to admit, as awesome as I tend to find Gabriel, this is one of the few stories that really, truly sells me on how Sam could forgive him enough to feel serious affection, not just friendly lust.
Cash Out, Get the Hell Out of Town
--> inspired by The Hangover, which should be a warning in and of itself. I laughed so hard at this I actually, literally cried.
Envy
--> Gabriel decides to mark Sam as a way of pointing out to Castiel that he does, in fact, want more from Dean. Sam is sort of confused when Castiel starts to go all guidance counselor on him. HILARIOUS.
Follow Me Down and Dead Space
--> dubcon, sex whammy. Gabriel takes the brunt of a massive lust spell, Sam tries to help him out, and then they both have to deal with the aftermath. (While, of course, both of them were assuming they'd assaulted the other. Sometimes cliches work for me, okay?)
Happy Families Are All Alike
--> AU where Sam is an archangel and the Trickster is actually a Trickster and Sam runs away from his family and into a new relationship. It's hilarious, especially after God takes off and Dean goes off to find him, and I have no idea how the author managed to echo the actual show so well with such wildly different backgrounds, but it was brilliant. It actually made the whole, "angel family a metaphor for the Winchester family," thing, work so much better than it did on the show. Just, yay.
Important Angel Business
--> This is the very first story I read on this pairing, and the reason that I kept reading till this pairing got its own category. It's STILL MY FAVORITE, that's how awesome it is. Basically Gabriel gets ahold of Sam's phone number and then there are text messages. It's a sort of slow, sneaky build, and leaves a smile on my face every single time.
I Think I'm In Love (but it kinda makes me nervous to say so)
--> Castiel, having doubts about his feelings for Dean, asks Gabriel and Sam what it's like to be in love- because he assumes they're together. This is a really cute, sweet story, and I like the click feeling I got from Sam and Gabe, near the end where, as Gabriel says, they're on the same wavelength.
Like Glass
--> This is kind of surreal and a little disturbing. Sam is deeply wounded and messed in the head for most of the story, and Gabriel goes a lot further than possibly he should in order to save them, and they both end up a little fucked up together. Fascinating, intense, very immersive-head-space kind of story.
Old Gods and Old Rules
--> Sam gets himself in trouble with some pagan gods, and Gabriel has to go a little old-school to get him out. There are consequences. Castiel is concerned.
Our Mornings
--> After they save the world, Sam wakes up with a hangover, in bed with Gabriel (and promising himself that he will find some better excuses for this thing any day now) and listening to his brother have sex with Castiel on the other side of the wall, because God hates him. The morning precedes apace, with lots of wackiness and banter, as Sam slowly comes to the realization that out of the remaining Winchester's he's the one that is failing at being in a relationship, which is just goddamn wrong.
Tall and Tan and Young and Lovely (The Girl from Ipanema Goes Walking)
--> Sam and Gabriel get trapped in an elevator, and there is Truth Or Strip. Gabriel's POV in this story is something I love more than cheeseburgers, okay, and I really fucking love cheeseburgers. It's just, I don't think I can imagine the inside of Gabriel's head as anything other than this. Ever.
What I Need Is A Good Defense
--> girl!Sam, basically this is some awesome, awesome porn. That is all you need to know.
As always, I'm hoping there's at least something for everyone to enjoy!
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