Dec 5, 2021
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from South Korea
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Azerbaijan
seen from China
seen from India
seen from China
seen from Singapore
seen from Maldives
seen from China
seen from Sri Lanka
seen from China
seen from Maldives
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Day 18: Dark and Stormy Night
Suptober20
Tags: destiel, casefic, ghosts, cursed object
Dean was driving, so Sam held the phone. “You’re on speakerphone, Cas. Say hi, Sammy.”
“Hey, Cas. What did you find?”
“I can’t be sure, but it seems that your spirit might be the ghost of Edward Bulwer-Lytton.”
Sam pulled a face and shook his head, but Dean vaguely recognized the name. “Isn’t that the guy who wrote, ‘It was a dark and stormy night?’” He watched Sam’s face change from confusion to disbelief. “Hey, I read.” To Cas, “A famous ghost, huh? Neat. So what’s Lord Purple Prose doing in Nebraska?”
“His spirit must be tied to a cursed object. Given his notoriety, it might be a pen or a writing desk, something related to the writer’s craft. Perhaps even a signet.”
“The ring!” exclaimed both brothers at once.
“There was this ring on display, just arrived from Queensland, Australia,” Sam hastened to explain, while Dean spun the car around, heading back to the museum. “The docent told us it had an ‘interesting’ history.”
“Hmm. Yes, very interesting,” Cas replied, reading snippets of a text: “The Queensland Signet ... forged in the mid-nineteenth-century ... in use for barely a decade ... lost, presumed stolen ... discovered by opal miners? Nowhere near its last known whereabouts. It has been moved a dozen times in the past fifty years, and everywhere it goes, strange deaths follow.”
“So, destroy or neutralize?”
The sound of pages turning and Cas hemming softly to himself.
“Cas?”
“I’m looking, Dean.” Another silence, then: “We don’t have the tools we need to destroy it without obliterating the soul within. Lock it up for now, and I’ll make a note to track down the appropriate devices. I assume you have a curse box available.”
Dean scoffed. “Obviously.”
“Good. Remember not to touch it with your bare hands...”
“Duh.”
“...and burn anything that has had contact with it.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Burn anything..? That seems excessive.”
Cas sighed, and Dean could feel the exasperated eyeroll that went with that sound. “I’ll be happy to show you all of the literature on this particular cursed object when you get back to the bunker. In the meantime, you’ll just have to trust me.”
“You got it,” Dean grinned.
“Dean, Sam. Be careful.”
“We will- thanks, Cas,” Sam replied.
“Thanks, Cas. If all goes well, we’ll be home tonight. Don’t start watching the new episode without me.”
“I won’t, Dean. Keep me apprised.”
Dean made a clicking sound with his mouth and a finger-gun gesture that Cas couldn’t see, and Sam hung up.
I must gush over 3 spn gen casefics I just read in a row. authoressjean, aka authoressnebula, has this incredible series on AO3 called The Haunted Hotels, https://archiveofourown.org/series/1425697 I’ll go one by one with its story details, the full URL after the summary, then my commentary in italics. Here we go! 🤗❤️️
Requiem of the Forsaken, gen, 34k. Summary: The Ocean House Hotel is supposed to be a regular haunting, perfect to get the brothers used to hunting together again. All they can find, however, are half-truths and hidden secrets. And, as Dean knows too well, sometimes the truth, even more than the lies, can be the thing that gets you killed. https://archiveofourown.org/works/19852027 What a fantastic horror fest of a fic. I see so often how fans suggest we’re fatigued by threatening death to the boys but this story made me realize just how real and raw the fear can be even for Sam & Dean still when you write it well and plausibly, like when you steal their most important tools to fight & defeat even such seemingly low-hanging fruit as ghosts or poltergeists.
And the Guilty Soldiers Fall, gen 33k. Summary: Sequel to Requiem of the Forsaken. Another haunted hotel appears on the Winchesters' radar, and the boys reluctantly take the case. When they find themselves locked in with a frightened group of civilians, and bodies begin to drop one by one, the brothers fight not only to find their ghost and guess the next victim, but to also keep each other alive until sunrise. https://archiveofourown.org/works/20020174 This fic was probably the most ambitious one of the three for a couple reasons: one, it went full intertextual with Agatha Christie’s thrilling & haunting novel And Then There Were None and it was pure brilliance. Second, she told a story with such a large ‘cast’ of OCs for Sam+Dean to deal with. More people is always challenging: so many people to keep track of during a dialogue-heavy scene, so many people exhibiting relevant movements/blocking, and straddling that ineffable line between giving enough characterization to each OC but not too much. Legit, authoressnebula wrote all these things expertly. I completely adored the adrenaline-fueled ending too (no spoilers!) The House of the Lost, gen, 35k. Summary: Sequel to And the Guilty Soldiers Fall. Focusing on hunting something simple to get back into the swing of things after Purgatory and Amelia, Dean and Sam stumble across the Hollins House, a simple haunting where people disappear for good. Yet nothing is ever simple, and as people begin to vanish one by one, their only way out is to find the truth before they lose one another again - for good. https://archiveofourown.org/works/21152936 The last fic of the series and my favorite for the brotherly angst, the Sam whump, and the hurt/comfort (which edges a bit into hard gen where the others don’t as much). This fic also features the death I found most horrifying in this series bc it was prefaced with so much relief and hope to see the person alive at first. That little horror trope always gets me, hahaha.
Seriously, what a fan-fucking-tastic series of Sam & Dean gen casefics. This spn fangirl’s sated 😊
Read on AO3 or LJ Art Master post
Title: Subjugation Is Its Own Reward Author: smalltrolven Artist: sketchydean Rating: Explicit Length: 11,500 Pairings: Sam/Dean Warnings: Spoilers for episode 12.07 “Rock Never Dies”
After surviving their confrontation with Lucifer in Los Angeles, the brothers stick around for a hunt that Dean has always wanted to look into at a historic downtown hotel.
My fave fix I wrote in 2016
Title and author name: “But I’ve become what I can’t be” by Caranfindel Fic link: But I’ve become what I can’t be Relationships: gen Word count: about 21k Rating: R Warnings and key tags: show-level violence, case fic, language Summary: A season 2 casefic that takes place immediately after “Playthings.” Still reeling from John’s revelation that Dean might have to kill his brother, the Winchesters find themselves in Nashville. They’re investigating a case in which people are being brutally murdered by their loved ones, which cuts just a little too close to home, considering that Sam is trying to get Dean to accept that he might have to kill his own loved one. Written for the 2016 spn_j2_bigbang with art by stargazingchola. This is my fave because: It was my first case fic, so it was a new experience for me. I worked with great beta readers who really helped whip it into shape, and I think it ended up being just what I aimed for: a plot that could have easily happened on the show, and one where the MotW tied into what was happening in the brothers’ lives at the time. Also, since it was a Big Bang, I got to work with a lovely artist and was so very pleased with the results!
Which was your fave fic to write in 2016?
Day 8: Heartless
Suptober20
Tags: Sam POV, OFC, original MOTW, casefic
Sam looked puzzled. “Whatever this is, it’s not a werewolf,” he mused.
“I mean, it’s a textbook werewolf attack, right?” Dean seemed out-of-sorts; physically, he was here, but ever since they arrived in town, he’d had his head buried in his phone.
“But check out the chest wound.”
Dean peered at the corpse on the table. “There. Isn’t one.”
“Right? The coroner’s report clearly states that the guy had been mauled, so when she said he was heartless, I just assumed... This is something else.”
“Yep, something else,” Dean muttered.
Sam was officially past wondering about his brother’s level of disengagement and was now pushing into perturbed territory. “Listen, Dean, I don’t know what is so fascinating about your phone, but can you at least try to pay attention? This thing, whatever it is, is still out there!”
Dean jerked his head up. “Huh? Whatever.” He drifted out the door, back to the coroner’s office, Sam presumed.
Until he heard a shout. A struggle. A gruff snarling growl and higher pitched pleading.
“Dr Colby?” Sam raced to the outer offices, looking for the source of the sound. “Dean? Where are you?” He pulled up short at the door to the lobby. A woman lay panting on the floor, deep claw marks on her arms, torso, face. Just like the body now lying in the morgue.
“You’re the receptionist, right?” The woman nodded, feebly. “Who did this to you? Did you see your attackers?”
“Attacker. One attacker.” She struggled to sit upright. Sam extended a hand; she took it. Then she looked him dead in the eyes. “It was the other agent. Agent DeYoung. He went that way,” she rasped, pointing out towards the street.
He hated to leave her alone like this but what choice did he have? Either Dean was possessed or something was wearing his face. He had to catch up to him.
“I’ll send help. Promise.”
He got to the car without seeing any trace of Dean. He tried shouting for him; no answer. His phone went to voicemail. Sam checked for his location.
He stopped cold.
Dean was still in the building!
He ran back inside, suddenly aware that the once-bustling lobby was deserted. No one waiting to speak to a clerk, and no clerks either. He felt a chill, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t a cold spot. Something was very wrong here.
“Dean!” He passed the place where he’d left the coroner’s receptionist, but she was gone, not so much as a bloodstain to indicate that she’d ever been there. “Dean!” He shoved open every door in the hallway and found nothing but uninhabited offices. Like everyone had simply gone home for the day. At two in the afternoon on a very ordinary Thursday. “Dean!”
He returned to the morgue. The body was gone! Again, no trace of blood.
Sam had to stop, had to collect himself. He propped himself against an unoccupied desk and squeezed his eyes shut. What did he know? Dean was being weird, an entire office building of regular government employees had seemingly fucked off to who-knows-where, and two deeply wounded persons, one of whom was actually dead, had vanished.
The hearts.
He reached deep into his memory. Hadn’t there been some saint that had been fatally mauled by wolves, only to rise from the dead and proclaim that he’d been resurrected by God himself? Yes. He died many years later of old age, and his body was miraculously preserved as a relic. Just a few years ago, the Church had ordered a restoration of his remains, and the preservation experts performed a CT scan. Turns out, the sainted mummy had no heart. No chest wounds (his body was otherwise intact), nor could the scientists point to any intentional mummification processes to explain the absence.
Shortly thereafter, the remains were lost. Supposedly, the hospital where they ran the tests sent him off for cremation, but there was no paper trail to corroborate the story. Folks chalked it up to general ineptitude and didn’t think to follow up.
What if the mummy wasn’t dead, though? What if it had escaped and was now stalking St Louis, turning people, making them disappear.
No. Making them not care.
The monster inflicted apathy on bystanders. Then it- what? Shredded the victims? Stole their hearts out of their ribcages, without ever breaking the skin?
A thought occurred to him, and he suddenly understood what was happening.
He had to find Dean.
In the employee parking lot behind the building, Sam hit the jackpot. At least twenty drivers sitting in their cars, all engrossed in their phones or staring quietly into space, all with looks of barely simmering frustration. Among them, lounging against a dumpster (gross) was Dean. He was still unharmed! But still glued to his screen.
Sam didn’t bother to attract his attention. Somewhere, one of these zombies was actually a centuries-old mummy. Kill the sire, break the spell? He could only hope. But how to pick him out?
He spotted the receptionist in a late-model sedan, one that struck him as just a bit pricier than a municipal staffer might typically afford. She and three passengers had the same posture as everyone else in the parking lot: head down, eyes glazed, empty.
He knocked on her window, and she jumped, startled. None of the other people in the car moved a muscle. He recognized Dr Colby among them. He motioned for her to roll down the window. “Sandy, right?” He asked. “Glad to see you recovered so quickly.” She squinted up at him but said nothing. “Listen, Sandy, I wonder if you have a key to the morgue. I think I left my wallet in there.”
“How careless,” came a deep voice, spoken by her and not at all.
He tried not to grimace. He forced a smile instead. “Yeah, I’d lose my own head if it wasn’t attached. So can you let me in?”
“One moment please,” the voice rumbled. A receptionist’s words in the voice of an ancient malevolent evil.
Sam smiled again.
The receptionist unfolded herself from the car and stepped briskly to the employee entrance. She tapped a key card from the lanyard around her neck.
As the door chirped its welcome, Sam plunged a red-tinged knife into the hollow at the base of her skull. “Heartless One, I name you false saint. With the blood of an unbled victim, you die.”
The monster gave one last scream, rising suddenly to the scream of the human receptionist, Sandy, before both voices were caught on the wind and carried away. The knife slipped from the flesh as the figure crumpled. Sam’s chest heaved once. Was that enough?
“Sam?”
He turned. “Dean?”
“What’s going on? I thought we were going on a hunt. Why are we at - what, the DMV?”
Sam grabbed him up in a bear hug. The back of Dean’s neck was still bleeding where Sam had christened the blade, but he hadn’t yet noticed the injury.
“We were, we did. It was a blood wight. It infected your heart. That’s why the hearts were missing. It infects the heart with apathy, and when the flesh of the heart has been devoured, the victim becomes a blood wight in turn. They normally only create one or two offspring in a century, but this one...” He gestured at the stunned professional types, staggering away from their vehicles and blinking in the sunshine. “Hello, Dr Colby,” he said, greeting a middle-aged woman in a white coat; the woman just glared as she hurried past him.
Dean screwed up his face. “Man, either I started drinking way too early, or you did. What?”
Sam laughed, his heart feeling remarkably light. Buoyant. “I’ll catch you up on the way home. I’m driving.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I know where the Impala is, and you don’t.”
Dean scowled. He dug into his pocket for the keys and plunked them onto Sam’s open palm. “Okay, but you owe me.”
“We’ll stop for burgers before we get on the highway.”
“Don’t judge me, but I can’t even think of meat right now. I could murder a Caesar salad, though.”
Sam grinned. This kind of Dean weirdness felt very normal.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
THE FINAL CHAPTER IS UP, GUYS!
Chapters: 15/15 Fandom: Supernatural (TV 2005) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer (Supernatural) Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Omega Dean Winchester/Alpha Sam Winchester, Omega Dean Winchester, Alpha Sam Winchester, Case Fic, Fake/Pretend Relationship, slight dubcon, Knotting, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Caring Sam Winchester, Slow Burn, Eventual Smut, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Alternate Universe, AU but with potential spoilers up to season 6, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Attempted Sexual Assault, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, POV Dean Winchester, Unreliable Narrator, Dom/sub Undertones, no beta we die like men, Not to be scraped by ChatGPT, Bottom Dean Winchester/Top Sam Winchester, Bottom Dean Winchester, Top Sam Winchester, Light Angst, Infertility, Referenced Drowning, Self-Esteem Issues, Medical Assault, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon up to season 6 (but A/B/O), Past Sexual Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending Summary:
Dean has always set aside his needs, repressing his instincts for the sake of Sam. Sometimes he thinks he doesn’t even know how to be an Omega any more. When the brothers pose as a couple to investigate a spate of drowned Alphas, Dean starts to get back in touch with his Omega self. But when the heat is on, will Dean still be able to protect Sam?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Sunday klaxon! WARNING: This chapter is NSFW.
Chapters: 14/15 Fandom: Supernatural (TV 2005) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer (Supernatural) Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Omega Dean Winchester/Alpha Sam Winchester, Omega Dean Winchester, Alpha Sam Winchester, Case Fic, Fake/Pretend Relationship, slight dubcon, Knotting, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Caring Sam Winchester, Slow Burn, Eventual Smut, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Alternate Universe, AU but with potential spoilers up to season 6, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Attempted Sexual Assault, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, POV Dean Winchester, Unreliable Narrator, Dom/sub Undertones, no beta we die like men, Not to be scraped by ChatGPT, Bottom Dean Winchester/Top Sam Winchester, Bottom Dean Winchester, Top Sam Winchester, Light Angst, Infertility, Referenced Drowning, Self-Esteem Issues, Medical Assault, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon up to season 6 (but A/B/O), Past Sexual Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending Summary:
Dean has always set aside his needs, repressing his instincts for the sake of Sam. Sometimes he thinks he doesn’t even know how to be an Omega any more. When the brothers pose as a couple to investigate a spate of drowned Alphas, Dean starts to get back in touch with his Omega self. But when the heat is on, will Dean still be able to protect Sam?