I Dunno Third Base by Vehemently (pg)

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Fandom: SUPERNATURAL
Pairing: none
Length: ~14K words
Author on LJ: vee_fic
Author Website: fanfic category in LJ memories
Why this must be read:

This is another amazing story that came out of this year's spn_summergen challenge. It lays bare the hearts and needs and fears of all three Winchesters, and does so with the kind of razor sharpness that cuts deep and true.

When John hits his head and comes up with amnesia, Sam likes this new version of his father, and Dean just wants things to go back to what passes for normal in their family. Dean tries to keep things together the only way he knows how, and John wonders what kind of father he is, and what kind he'd like to be.

Here are two boys: both in jeans, a-straddle an aging railroad tie at the edge of the woods. They are of a height at the shoulder, peering together at a bug as it crawls over the rough surface between them. It is a beetle, small and iridescent, trundling over the open fissures in the wood grain with little clicks of its insect-feet against the blackened wood. The boys hold their open hands in the sunlight over the beetle's back, to deprive themselves of the shine and then bring it back again.

Their hands are not the same size. The larger hand is long, bony, strange on a narrow childish wrist, hovering over the smaller hand's stubby fingers and dimpled knuckles in the sun. Dean Winchester is fourteen and small, with that hollow starveling look of his body still gathering itself for adolescent growth; but Sam is only nine, and a strapping, pudgy nine at that. It is a constant source of friction between them that they might be mistaken by the casual viewer for fraternal twins. Dean has become territorial, lately, about the laundry, and sorts out his own clothes from his brother's with a fury that Sam does not understand. Sam has always worn hand-me-downs. He doesn't see the shame in being caught wearing his brother's shirts.

Heartbreaking and evocative, full of palpable detail and emotion, with a really fantastic use of an omniscient narrator, and a clear-eyed understanding of the kinds of desperate cruelties people are willing to commit against the ones they love. Highly recommended. And if you enjoy it, please let the author know.

I Dunno Third Base by vee_fic

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