the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be a part of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
Yep. I’m the mom in her 40s that writes through the night with little bodies pressed in close, when the rest of the house is fast asleep. I brainstorm and/or write at the playground while the kids run and play, while waiting in the car in pick up line, at the library during storytime, in the shower, while making dinner, on walks, at the grocery store… it never stops.
I think it’s funny and sad when a younger person learns about how many older folks are in the same fandom spaces as them. Funny because they’re so innocently taken aback by it, and sad because they thought that there was some magical age where they’d have to ‘grow up’ and couldn’t participate anymore.
You don’t have to give it up.
You can still love your shows, your ships, and the stories. You don’t have to give any of it up unless you want to let it go.
It’s a terrible life AU. In addition to his job at Sandover, Dean is a company dom, available to employees who need certain stress relief. New IT worker Cas has turned up for his first session.
Word Count: 3k PWP
The Office – castielrisingabove Ao3
It’s a terrible life AU. His new assistant looks like an unprofessional mess, but that doesn’t stop Dean shaping him up and fighting against feelings that could probably get him fired.
Word Count: 3k No Sex
Ties that Bind Us – TheTwistedWillow Ao3
It’s a terrible life AU & S13. What starts out a fling, becomes a full-fledged relationship between Dean Smith and Cas Novak over the course of 2 years at Sandover.
Word Count: 14k Graphic Sexual Acts
90% Angel – bethmints Ao3
It’s a terrible life AU. Y2K is looming but the last thing Dean Smith was expecting was for his computer to start being his enemy. Even more than his ex-colleague Sam Wesson turning back up talking about monsters with his associate Castiel.
Word Count: 14k Graphic Sexual Acts
Come Into My Office - MaggieMaybe160 Ao3
It’s a terrible life AU. Infiltrating Sandover to try and locate the Winchesters, Cas finds a much less repressed Dean and they engage in a series of sexual encounters until Cas gets caught by Zachariah.
Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Paramedic Dean Winchester, Paramedic Sam Winchester, Injured Castiel, Stranded, Love Triangle, Domestic Fluff, Homesickness, Angst with Happy Ending, Set in Season 6
Summary: Dean is a medic with a heart of gold, always ready to lend a helping hand, but when a stranger crash lands in his life and insists that he’s an angel from an alternate universe, Dean learns to take a leap of faith.
Castiel is an angel who struggles with self-doubt while torn between two worlds and two men.
Dean has one goal and one goal only when Castiel goes missing: find his angel and bring him home.
Welcome to the first round of the Destiel Over-40 Bang!
This bang is exactly what it sounds like - We want to see your version of Destiel that's middle-aged or more!
You can check out the rules and schedule here. The schedule for this bang will run from January to August/September (depending on posting needs)
Your mods for this event will be @tea-or-die, @farenmaddox, and @krexhatespushups-blog. @onowey will also be joining us to get some experience behind the scenes.
All due dates end at 11:59pm Eastern time, unless otherwise noted.
January 3rd - Sign-ups open for all participants
April 13th - Writer Signups close
May 1 - First Writer Check in (no word count requirements)
May 30th - Writer 50% check-in + claims details due. Last day for writers to drop without penalty. Last day for artists to sign up.
June 3rd - Fic summaries available for artists to read
June 6th - Claims open at 12pm Eastern. The first round will be open to participants only. Subsequent rounds, if needed, may be opened to the public.
June 9th - Teams announced (at the very latest)
June 19th - Teams check-in 1 (writers AND artists required to respond)
July 1 - Team check-in 2: writers 80% draft + promo details due. Artists’ final banners due. We will also be asking about posting date availability at this check-in.
July 11th - Posting schedule announced
July 25th - Promo posting begins
Aug 15th - Team check-in 3: Writers’ final fic drafts are due. Artists’ final art piece due.
Aug 22nd - Posting begins!
If you'd like to join us, you can do so here! Please make sure you also join our Discord, as this is how we will communicate with you.
‘you’ve just met yourself. i’ve known you for years’ is still the most romantic thing i’ve ever heard and they let my favorite little cornfed closetcase say it on live television to another man. incredible.
Are you a lover of Destiel art, fic, and the spirit of collaboration in fandom?
Then be sure to read the rules and schedule thoroughly here, then sign-up and join us for the 2026 round of the DCRB!
Pairings: Castiel/Dean, Sam/Eileen (background), mention of past Dean/others, mentions of past Cas/others
Length: 98400
Warnings: Dubious Consent, Canon Typical Violence, Graphic M/F Sexual Content, Graphic Childbirth, Pregnancy Complications, Near Death Experiences, Canon Typical Use of Human Vessels
Tags: Miscommunication, Female Castiel (Temporary), Cas Still Uses He/Him Pronouns, Angel/Human Pregnancy, Dean Wants to be a Dad, Some Angst, Domestic Fluff, Love Confessions, Sam Ships It, Town of Lebanon Ships It
Summary: Cas is firmly placed into the ‘friend zone’ by Dean after his possession. With no home in heaven, nor a consistently reliable one on earth, the rejection is one more torment to bear. To ease the ache of unrequited love, he decides to take a page out of the ‘Dean Winchester Playbook’. There must be something to these ‘one night stands’ that he’s only ever read about. After taking painstaking measures to find a willing partner, Cas doesn’t expect Dean to be the one to sit beside him at the bar, and he most certainly doesn’t expect a proposition…but why not him for once?
Dean got scared, okay? He couldn’t tell Cas how he really felt. But Cas going AWOL yet again, especially after a harrowing half-year of trying to save him from Lucifer, sends Dean over the edge. He goes out for a drink (or two, or ten) and meets a young woman who seems vaguely familiar. They talk, they commiserate, and even though his heart isn’t really in it, he offers to sleep with her. What’s the harm? It’s only one night and he doesn’t expect to see her ever again. So why has she just walked into the bunker two weeks after they did ‘the do’?
I started this story in 2018. When I brushed it off for this bang, I only had about 10k words in a jumbled mess. It kinda blew up into a big thing at almost 100k words and I’m sad that it’s over. I honestly don’t know what to do with myself after pouring so much into it these last few months, losing sleep, becoming a hermit, lol.
A lot of my heart is in this story. There are so many pieces from my life experience woven throughout.
I do want to write a time stamp/epilogue so be sure to subscribe on AO3 if you enjoy the story.
It was a pleasure and honor to team up with @colorlessjay. I am blown away with the artwork. It is beyond what I expected, truly.
My beta, Rachel, was with me for weeks helping to proofread and cheer me on. I don’t think I would’ve had the confidence to post without her suggestions and encouragement. Phew, girl, we made it!
2025 hot destiel take: I've always believed that Castiel saying "the one thing I want, it's something I know I can't have" isn't some bleak "because Dean doesn't wanna dick Cas down" admission, it's "because, by confessing, the empty will take Cas, there's literally nothing for him to 'have' afterwards." His punishment isn't unrequited love, it's unfinished love. This is why happiness isn't in the having, it's in just saying it. Because it's all he gets. Cas doesn't get sucked into the empty thinking Dean could never love him back, he goes peacefully knowing that he does - that it doesn't matter that they don't get to experience the other side of the confession because confessing was fulfilling enough :')
Pairings: Castiel/Dean, Sam/Eileen (background), mention of past Dean/others, mentions of past Cas/others
Length: 45000
Warnings: Dubious Consent, Canon Typical Violence, Graphic M/F Sexual Content, Graphic Childbirth, Pregnancy Complications, Near Death Experiences, Canon Typical Use of Human Vessels
Tags: Miscommunication, Female Castiel (Temporary), Cas Still Uses He/Him Pronouns, Angel/Human Pregnancy, Dean Wants to be a Dad, Some Angst, Domestic Fluff, Love Confessions, Sam Ships It, Town of Lebanon Shits It
Posting Date: November 13, 2025
Summary: Cas is firmly placed into the ‘friend zone’ by Dean after his possession. With no home in heaven, nor a consistently reliable one on earth, the rejection is one more torment to bear. To ease the ache of unrequited love, he decides to take a page out of the ‘Dean Winchester Playbook’. There must be something to these ‘one night stands’ that he’s only ever read about. After taking painstaking measures to find a willing partner, Cas doesn’t expect Dean to be the one to sit beside him at the bar, and he most certainly doesn’t expect a proposition…but why not him for once?
Dean got scared, okay? He couldn’t tell Cas how he really felt. But Cas going AWOL yet again, especially after a harrowing half-year of trying to save him from Lucifer, sends Dean over the edge. He goes out for a drink (or two, or ten) and meets a young woman who seems vaguely familiar. They talk, they commiserate, and even though his heart isn’t really in it, he offers to sleep with her. What’s the harm? It’s only one night and he doesn’t expect to see her ever again. So why has she just walked into the bunker two weeks after they did the do?
An Alternate S12 Story (without Mary and BMOL).
Excerpt: “Dean, there’s more,” Cas says, interrupting his wretched thoughts. More? Dean doesn’t think he can handle more. It's bad enough they slept together.
“I think you should go, Cas,” he says, hating that his voice breaks. “Put your regular meat-suit back on ’cause we got real work to do, so let’s just pretend this never happened.” He swallows. “‘This kind of distraction, it’s–” He huffs humorlessly. Simply put, this is something that can’t happen again.
“I can’t do that,” Cas’ soft but stern tone cuts Dean off.
“You can’t what? Put on your meat-suit, or pretend it didn’t happen?”
“Both.”
“Are you telling me you’re stuck in that?” Dean’s heart can’t take much more of this. This isn’t Cas.
“It would appear I’m stuck, yes. Temporarily.” Cas gently clears his throat and bows his head slightly, loose hair falling over slender shoulders, eyes glancing away to focus on some dust bunny across the floor. “For about nine months. Well, to be more accurate, less than that at this point.”
“Why? You waiting on a power-up to make the change?” Dean asks suspiciously and despite everything, with a degree of concern. He is so blindingly angry that he didn’t even think that something could be wrong. “You cursed or under some spell?”
“Dean,” Cas says forcefully, looking up at him, unfamiliar hazel eyes boring insistently into his own green ones like it'll make Dean understand the meaning behind the words better. “Nine. Months.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Dean wracks his brain trying to figure out what kind of curse has a time restriction on it like that.
Cas takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and murmurs, “I’m pregnant.”
The room falls silent. Everything goes still. All Dean can hear is his own shuddery breathing, and then the floor shifts beneath his feet and his vision goes fuzzy around the edges. Before he can fall, small hands cup his elbows to help keep him upright. The unexpected touch shocks him back to the present.
It figures that just when his life was on a trajectory toward something a bit more normal, where there were no more eldritch monstrosities and apocalypses to thwart, when he might've been able to finally admit out loud how he truly feels about one very misguided, but beautifully faithful fallen angel… it all falls apart with two words.
“Well, mazel tov,” he says, yanking his arms away and taking a step back. Bitterness, jealousy, anger, and all of these other ugly feelings begin a riot in his gut. “You even know whose it is, huh? I mean, it’s been a couple months.” He doesn’t think he can stand on his own two feet anymore so he sits down heavily on the edge of his bed, sinking into the memory foam a little. “How many guys..? Forget it. I don't think I wanna know.”
Cas moves closer and scoffs indignantly. “I only had the one night, with one person,” he asserts. “You."
Breaking my usual fandom content. I have so much more to say, so many questions, so many ideas. Alas, I am only going to touch on one thought thread.
K-pop Demon Hunters spoilers below.
Where darkness meets the light: Rumi in white/gold and Jinu in black.
So I don’t believe Jinu’s soul is solely confined to Rumi’s sword, which is the general consensus that I’m seeing on various posts.
My thing is that I believe he plays a much larger role than that. I believe he is a part of the new Honmoon itself. Her sword is formed out of the Honmoon, of course, and he was integral in forging the new one that powered her up, helping her to defeat the monster that controlled him for almost his entire existence.
But he isn’t just ‘in a sword’. He is woven into the shield, the Honmoon, an extension of her, of everyone. They’re all interconnected.
I think that him lighting up the Honmoon in ‘Free’ as he got his soul back was the foreshadowing of him becoming a part of it in the end (of movie 1, anyway, because my baby is coming back in a sequel or else we’re going to have some big problems).
This is so important for his redemption arc and character development. Where he failed to protect his family centuries ago, he now protects everyone. 🥲
It's really the unseen that gets you in destiel. First time you see them meet is NOT the first time. Camera panning out to leave them staring at each other in an alley. Prayer every night in purgatory but you don't hear it. Heaven Can't Wait fanfic gap. Everyone knowing so much about Cas but you never see Dean talk about him. Cas' phone screen blown up with calls&texts you can't read. Mentioning the Tombstone watch in the Dean cave that only Cas knows about. Gossiping offscreen about the cardigan. etc
The excruciatingly long stretches of looking at Dean raking leaves, carrying the trenchcoat from car to car. Of waiting for the other to come back from the heavenly war, from captivity. Man, they had so much. So much domesticity, so much yearning, longing to be in contact, to just be with each other, to be safe. To love.
Like, holy hell, I still can’t believe they had THIS scene where they showed that Cas kept a homemade ‘Dean Winchester Mixtape’ in his coat right over his heart. And when he tried to return it because he felt unworthy and a bit of an outlier, he unwittingly broke Dean’s bruised heart a little bit.
But never once were we shown the entire process. Never shown the hours it would’ve taken for Dean to carefully record each song.
Or, how he penned the label with his tongue caught between his lips so he would take his time not to smudge the ink, all neat and tidy.
Or how he might’ve kept it in his pocket for days, waiting for the right time to give it over, and finally, hastily, chucking it over to Cas with sweaty palms and a pretty blush, his sour stomach twisted from nerves…
Or Cas’ bafflement over the unexpected gift because angels don’t just get gifts, at least not impractical, sentimental ones. (I don’t think he’d be surprised that a hardened hunter like Dean made it in the first place because he knows Dean to be the most loving and caring human on earth… he would just be bewildered that Dean chose HIM to receive it.)
And never were we shown WHEN. How long had Cas had it? By the time we were made aware of its existence, Cas had been AWOL for a while because we had been watching Dean pace the hallways and bite his nails, waiting for replies to texts and voicemails that were going unanswered. Somewhere in the quiet past, between hunts and apocalypses and fights and separations, Dean missed Cas so much that he lovingly created for him a token of his affections. And Cas just tucked it into his trench coat and carried it with him, a constant reminder of who he was fighting for, the cogs gently clacking inside the plastic housing loud enough for his ears only each time that he moved.
The writers just—POOF—dropped the echoes of it into the show and let us dream up how it might’ve happened. They didn’t have to, they could’ve omitted the mixtape detail completely without otherwise changing the rest of the scene, but they did do it.
I love the negative spaces and the unsaid on this show so much, especially regarding Destiel. It’s like being an archeologist and uncovering a new artifact, trying to guess what it was used for and by who and how because we don’t have videos or diaries from those eras, only the remains and our best guesses.
There are a lot of Casless episodes where his presence is loudest because Dean’s heart bleeds from where it hangs on his sleeve, invisibly tethered to wherever his angel is, to whatever he’s doing, always worrying and pining.
Take a gander at our wonderful gallery of fics up for grabs, then register with us in order to make your claim! Our next round of claims begins officially at 3PM ET!
but why does dean's voice actually get 100 times softer every time he asks about cas or calls him or talks to him?? i thought i was imagining it but now i didn't watch spn for a few days and today i watched some episodes of s11 and cas is back in the bunker because of the spell rowena put on him. and each time dean checks on him or just asks sam how cas is doing his voice goes teddy bear quality
This is very, very true. He uses such a tender tone with Cas much of the time, and it carries throughout their entire history together. Not only that, but the way Dean bodily protects Cas (who doesn’t need protecting), and finds reasons to touch or caress him ... 🥹
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