hoodie_time | Podfic rec: "Crush" Sam/Dean NC-17

After SPN 5.4, fans are conditioned to steel ourselves whenever we find a fic set in 2012 or after, expecting to get bleak moving inexorably to bleaker. That makes "Crush" a fic that subverts expectation from the very beginning.

Crush by

sonofabiscuit77 Sam/Dean, OMC/Dean unrequited UST, NC17. Read by

crinklysolution. 7 hrs.

The first segment is first-person original character point of view, which may put off some people who don't like first-person or OC POV. But the point of view alternates between our first narrator, 19-year-old Derek Ancona, and Sam. This gives us both the insiders' and outsider's views of the small-town life Sam and Dean have made for themselves.

Sam and Dean have, in fact, settled down into something approaching normal life, known and respected in their small town. Sam teaches at a nearby college, Dean owns an auto repair shop, and pretty much everyone knows they're a couple. They still hunt occasionally, brief trips away from their home base. Derek enters their lives when, six months after his high school graduation, his mom decides he needs some real-world work experience to help him figure out what he's going to do with his life.

Despite the sunniness of this picture (for the Winchesters, especially), there's something mysteriously wrong with Dean. Derek gets the word from another coworker never to touch him, even a fleeting touch by accident. There's also the matter of the matching scars that Dean and Sam have on their hands.... This introduction immediately sets up a mystery that compels the listener into the story.

As the story goes on, Derek learns more about Dean, who becomes an obsession for him -- and he learns more about himself as well. The listener, through flashbacks, slowly learns what caused those scars and the effect on Sam as well as Dean. As I said, this is a fic that confounds your expectations left and right -- I was convinced I knew what circumstances were the source of the scars, and found I was wrong.

And though the story isn't a dark, post-apocalyptic look at 2013, Winchester-style, there are things looming on the horizon that threaten the life they've built, stemming from Sam's enormous capacity for guilt and Derek's growing crush on Dean.

Oh, and one of the best ways this fic turns expectation on its head, for me, was the flashback to the point at which Sam and Dean stop fighting their mutual attraction. Their first kisses are messy and amateur, their sexual exploits fumbly and sweet and taken one step at a time. Awkward sex has never been this hot.

crinklysolution does a wonderful job with the reading, weaving in some musical interludes from

sonofabiscuit77's playlist. This fic is a great companion for a week's commute or a long trip.