like a fever that just won't break.

1. On a Steel Horse
Author: glorious_spoon

Genre: gen, post-canon (S9)
Characters: Dean, the Impala
Tags: death (temporary), demon!Dean
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1600
Summary: It’s already too late by the time I rise up through the layers of twilight to the crossroads that called me. The big car is little more than a twisted heap of scrap metal, the smell of burning antifreeze overpowering the fading scent of lilies on the evening breeze.
Reccer's Notes: This is the perfect ghost story. This is a perfect story. And you have to read this. For more detailed, but slightly spoilery, praise of this fic, here's the comment I wrote in response to it.

2. Fight Club
Author: beesandbrews

Genre: gen, pre-series, character study, hurt/comfort
Characters: Dean, Sam
Tags: bruising/internal damage, injuries (misc.), pain, caretaker!Dean, wound tending
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2800
Summary: The brothers are left to their own devices while John is working a job in a neighboring town. They're short on cash and Sam is a growing boy with a hollow leg. Dean remembers what's that's like, so when he finds a way to pad his wallet that doesn't involve fifteen minutes in a back alley with a stranger, he goes for it.
Reccer's Notes: There's this hard-hitting, glorious, masculine sensation to this. The piece (and its subject) are wild, but practiced, and mediated by a certain sort of care that I find very distinctive of the piece, relative to others with a similar subject matter, and to Dean as a character. This is one of those fics that takes a mere 3k and nails something vital yet underexplored about Dean--past and present--and doesn't flinch.

3. Kin & Keeper
Author: steeplechasers

Genre: slash, memory play; romance; hurt/comfort; canon AU (post-s5—Sam is not raised from Hell)
Characters: Dean, Lisa, Ben, Castiel, Sam
Pairings: Sam/Dean; Dean/Lisa
Tags: grief, alcoholism, depression, post-traumatic stress, hallucinations, abandonment issues, dissociation, whatever the opposite of repressed memories is
Rating: R
Word Count: ~107k
Warnings: discussion of canon character death; child abuse and neglect; sexual content
Summary: On May 5th, 1983, an infant boy is carried for the first time through the doorway of a house in Lawrence, Kansas.

This is Dean’s first memory of his brother. There are others. They are vivid, angry, and relentless—and now, six months after Sam’s leap into Hell, they are coming to him with alarming frequency. He’s trying his best to live the easy apple-pie life he swore himself to, but the more he remembers, the harder it gets to ignore Sam’s shadow filling up the corners of Lisa Braeden’s house. What’s worse, he has no idea what the onslaught of these memories portend—or in what ways they will change him.

Reccer's Notes: This is the first fic I've read that was over 60k or so--I tend not to read fic I can't finish in a single sitting--but if you're like me, and hesitant about the long stuff, you should read this one anyway. It's brilliantly moody and atmospheric, but never in ways that detach the reader from the characters and situations at hand. It's a picture of mourning in adulthood as much as it is one of living in childhood, and both present (that is, post-S5) and pre-series storylines wend together toward a climax that's really just masterful. I didn't want it to ever end, and I'd definitely read it again. For more detailed, but slightly spoilery, praise of this fic, here's the comment I wrote in response to it.