I wrote this up really quickly so it’s not proofread or anything. But that pic of Sam sitting at Jack’s bedside from 14.08 really motivated me to write something for once, so… here you go?
–
“So, what can we do?”
“Watch over him. Stay by his side. As he dies.”
The last three days have been like something out of a nightmare, Sam thinks. It’d started the second Dean had called him, and Sam could barely hear him over the panicked yells of “Jack’s sick, Sam! He’s coughing up blood and he’s passed out and – I don’t know what to do. I need you here. Jack needs you here!”
Sam barely remembers getting back home at all, just running down the bunker stairs two at a time with his heart in his throat to Jack’s room. He’d been in a daze, seeing Jack’s prone form, his white shirt still stained with droplets of blood. Cas arrived a few moments later, and Sam had reluctantly followed Dean out to let Cas try and do what he could.
But it hadn’t been enough. None of it had. Angelic healing, the hospital, the Archangel grace from Gabriel, Rowena… nothing. There was no quick fix it, no miraculous solution.
Summary: An outbreak of violent murder-suicides. Death echoes. A centuries-old djinn. It’s a formidable combination on a good day. And on a bad day? Well, on a particularly bad day, it all culminates in Dean burying his brother. Alive.
Uuuuh remember a million years ago when I asked for prompts and never filled them? Better late than never! I love SamMax but kinda suck at shippy stuff so I hope this is suitable for you, king of all things SamMax.
This is set before 12×20 (or we can pretend that episode never happened)
Sam tangles his fingers in Max’s. The bedside lamplight catches the silver of the ring on his pinky. Sam twists it gently, observes the tiny carvings and the tiny white stone embedded at the centre.
“What does this mean?” he asks, tapping the gem.
Max shifts his head from where it has been resting on Sam’s chest for the past hour, peeling open on sleepy eye. “Hm? Oh, that’s a moonstone. It’s a stone of strength. Supposed to bring calm and emotional stability and some other stuff I don’t remember.”
He drops his head back down and Sam feels his warm breath stir the hairs on his chest.
“Does it really bring calm?” he asks, sceptical.
“Maybe? Dunno,” Max answers lazily. “My grandma gave it to me when I was ten. Used to wear it on my thumb, then.” He’s quiet for a moment, still enough that Sam wonders if he fell back to sleep, but he stirs and props himself up on is elbow. “You don’t wear jewellery,” he says.
“Uh, no. I don’t.”
“I mean,” Max says, face scrunching as he thinks. “Well, you never drive your car. You always wear the same three shirts, all plaid, I might add.” A glances around the room. “Your bedroom is neater than a five-star hotel.”
“Yes?” Sam isn’t sure where he’s going with this.
“Do you own anything… special?” Max asks. “Something that’s really yours, that makes you happy.”
Sam thinks. He likes his laptop a lot, sure, but he didn’t acquire it by the most honest means. He remembers one shirt when he was younger that was his favourite, but it got stained beyond repair a long time ago. There’s the box of keepsakes under his bed… but not every memory in there is a happy one.
Sam settles on, “Why does it matter?”
Max gives him a small peck on the lips. “You deserve nice things, is all.” He unfastens one of the leather bands from his wrists and holds it out.
Sam blinks at him.
“Gimme your wrist, dummy,” Max prods, and fastens the bracelet around Sam’s wrist. It’s plaited tan leather, with a small silver bead in the middle. Max smiles, “Now you have something special.”
Sam doesn’t know what to say. He chuckles awkwardly. “Special because it’s from you?”
Max curls a strand of Sam’s hair around his finger. “Every time you look at it you’ll be reminded of the best sex you’ve ever had.”
Summary: Sam and Dean seek solitude miles from civilisation, far from pursuing hunters and the FBI. As Sam’s visions become more frequent and new abilities rise to the surface, there’s nothing Dean won’t do to keep his brother safe. But there’s something in the woods, and it’s waiting for Sam. There is nothing Dean won’t do to keep him safe.
RoboSam was
relatively courteous about the fact that he didn’t sleep. He tried not to keep Dean awake. Dean tried to think of him as Sam
sometimes. Now that he knew Sam’s soul
was in Hell, he couldn’t. It was like
living with a shifter. But for whatever
reason, RoboSam seemed to have latched on to Dean as a kind of compass. He asked questions and his questions always
backed Dean into explanations that sounded stupid even to Dean. Like the night some very drunk guy was making
a ruckus in a bar about what pansy asses the Bengals were. The game wasn’t local and nobody seemed to be
particularly for or against either Bengals or the Packers. The bartender suggested the guy keep it down
but Mr. Cincinnati-Hasn’t-Had-A-Real-Team-Since-The-Freezer-Bowl was on a
roll. Until Sam got up, put a big hand
on the guy’s shoulder and said, “You’re stupid, you’re drunk, you’re loud and
you should shut up now because nobody thinks your comments are insightful.”
The guy was
too drunk to care that RoboSam was 6’4” and 230 pounds with less than 10% body
fat.
It didn’t
help that the bar was clearly on RoboSam’s side, although Dean wasn’t sure that
RoboSam much tracked that kind of thing.
Spite is a really motivating emotion. Sometime last summer I was telling my friend Laura about how I wanted to start a story-rec blog based on things other than genre or pairing. That was probably a year after I started thinking about doing so. But it took a full year after for me to do anything about it. And the key catalyst was how wrong another rec list on tumblr was.
See, in this post an asker was asking for recommendations similar to The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee. And the answerer had nothing similar to recommend. There were no other m/m, YA, Georgian historical books. That might technically be true. I don’t remember what they rec’d instead.
But I read The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian and The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue back-to-back. The reading order was a total coincidence. They are incredibly similar books. And so, YA readers, let me introduce you to romance novels.
My first similar recommendation is The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian. It’s got: Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Bi Character, Asshole gets Redeemed, Terrible Father, Awesome Sister. On top of that, things that are close but note quite are that one of the main characters has an illness he collapses from, and the awesome sister has a non-white husband. There is no traveling in this book, but both characters have traveled and lived outside of England in their past. It goes without saying that I liked this book.
Also, check out Brothers Sinister Series by Courtney Milan. These books are primarily M/F, Olde Time Historical England romance novels. The Countess Conspiracy has Best Friends to Lovers and Asshole gets Redeemed. And The Suffragette Scandal has an F/F B-plot. But the one I think will tick the most similar boxes TGGTVAV is The Heiress Effect. It’s got Kidnapping & Rescue, an Awesome Sister, an Epileptic Character, and a Character of Color love-interest. It’s my favorite of the series, because while the main couple are off dealing with marriage-plot and kidnapping shenanigans, the awesome little sister saves herself.
The hardest tag to match from TGGTVAV is “Adventure.” Most of the similar romance novels take place in London with some jaunts to country estates. They don’t tend span cities. But while I wouldn’t necessarily tag these books “Adventure,” there are plenty of romance novels with high-stakes, tension filled plots. And there’s one undisputed queen of historical M/M romance: K.J. Charles.
The Charm of Magpie Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Surprise, Magic Exists!, Terrible Father, The Question of Inheritance
TGGTVAV doesn’t really have magic, per se, but the cure-all that everyone’s on the hunt for veers towards it. And in the Magpie books adventure takes the form of Stephen, a sort of magic police, saving the world, or at least Lord Crane, from evil warlocks. It should go without saying that they fall in love, and it is delightful.
Society of Gentlemen Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Politics Specific books in the series also contain: BDSM, Awesome Sister (in Law)
Society of Gentleman goes the opposite direction of Charm of Magpies. The high-stakes here are shockingly real. These characters are falling in love and making lives for themselves in a world where they are all expected to get married and produce heirs, and being caught with each other could be a hanging offense. That is to say nothing of publishing seditious pamphlets and plotting murder. The stakes in two of the three books here are life-or-death and the machinations required to give everyone their happy ending are amazing.
Think of England by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England
A spy and injured war hero solve a mystery while guests at a country estate.
Sins of the Cities Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Character of Color, Terrible Father
These books are ‘The Question of Inheritance’ brought to a several attempted murders extreme. There’s still one more book coming out in October before this trilogy is complete, so I don’t want to or know enough to say too much. But I loved the second on in the series.
And lastly for something slightly different:
The Whyborne and Griffin Series by Jordan L. Hawke Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time America, Surprise! Magic Exists, Terrible Father, Low Fantasy, Detective, The Question of Inheritance, Kidnapping & Rescue Specific books in the series also contain Awesome Sister, F/F B-Plot, M/F B-plot, Character of Color, Monsters
These books take place in America, rather than England, in a later time (the very first electric lights come to town!). But they have the travel missing in all my other recs. Home for Whyborne and Griffin is a creepy Massachusetts town, but when they get wind of suspicious magical disasters around the world, they travel to them. These books are delightfully formulaic: Let’s split up to cover more ground! Oh no, my partner has been kidnapped! Time to mount a rescue mission! And my favorite is when they live this out around the world in Kansas and Alaska and Egypt.
ALSO My Girl Courtney Milan is starting a new series and i think It May Have Some Gay Soon. ( The Worth Saga – still WIP but 2 books out already, with a tiny reference to the prequel The Pursuit Of… ) it HAS already had a main bisexual character so that’s GR8!!! GO COURTNEY. YOU CAN DO IT I BELIEVE IN U!!!
anyway.
can you tell i have nothing else to read now and am DESPERATELY awaiting more books????
still MAD!!! that Think of England is a one off and there hasn’t been any more since Spectred Isleeven thought it says book one (*wail*)
and just in case anyone didn’t know, there IS a sequel to Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue coming out, starring Felicity!!! (October 2nd! that’s close!)
A VERY IMPORTANT ADDITION TO THIS TALK, thank you sweetie! I’ve only dipped my toe into Milan’s work so far, but she’s done a good job with background gays and neuroatypical peeps in what I’ve read, so I’m happy to hear she might be getting more diverse with her leads.
I suspect the second Green Man book has been delayed due to extensive re-writes, because the original teaser description from the back of Spectred Isle is QUITE DIFFERENT than the one KJ Charles sent out a few months ago to the mailing list:
I don’t have any more historical gay romance recs under my belt, but there’s Peter Darling by Austin Chant, if you’re interested in trans Peter Pan/Captain Hook? I don’t always rec it because I DID spend the first section of the book wanting to punch Peter for being a dumbass, but there’s a reason for that and the writing is excellent. I bought but haven’t read Caroline’s Heart, which looks intriguing.
One that was decent but not great: The Gentleman and the Rogue by Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon. Read like fanfic, basically, and I enjoyed myself. (TW for torture?) I tried some of the authors’ other work but was disappointed – too overwhelmingly sweet and not enough plot for my taste.
And if you’re just craving queer romance and don’t mind modern BDSM spy shenanigans, Joanna Chambers wrote Enemies Like You which was very much my jam. The first chapter is free as a separate ebook, if anyone wants to trial read.
Hi Friends! ( @cactusspatz and @chicago-bluebonnet , you’re my friends now, I don’t make the rules)
I don’t remember why I didn’t rec The Soldier’s Scoundrel and The Lawrence Browne Affair when I first wrote this post. Possibly I hadn’t read them yet. Possibly I just thought The Ruin of a Rake had a more similar feel to TGGTVAV to it, which I stand by, although the other two are great in their own right.
Funny story about The Enlightenment Series is that I read the three original books back to back on a 13 hour flight and by the end I had been awake for roughly 24 hours. I know I read them because I dutifully recorded them in GoodReads. But I have little to no recollection of what happened in them. I got an automated email when the fourth one came out and I didn’t recognize a single character name.
I also loved Caroline’s Heart, but I don’t know that is’t similar to TGGTVAV. To me that feels more like a rec for people who loved Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle.
(I am going to check out Enemies Like You because I am totally into modern BDSM spy shenanigans. I am all over modern BDSM recs.)
[As much for my convenience as anyone’s. At some point I might decide on a format and post these to AO3, and I’d like to write up some more plotty and ficlike parts of this ‘verse that have more Patrick focus. But arc-made-of-fragments has become the actual form of this part, which is thematically grouped around Sam’s issues. I will keep this post on hand and add to it when I add to the ‘verse.
What strikes me, looking over these, is how many of them are set in pubs. This is largely because they were written in pubs. I lack invention.
This is in rough in-story chronological order, though not all the fragments have a settled timeline place in my head. I’ve given brief content warnings where applicable and noted whether each fragment is a relationship scene or a therapy scene.]
pub drabble that’s probably fairly early (relationship; this was the first written of the bits I’ve posted, and looking back it’s got some inconsistencies in the voices)
Mary hears it as she walks past the library, a flat factual statement in her youngest son’s quiet tones. She doesn’t think about it too much, then.
The days go past, another week, two, and there is still no sign of Dean. The tension strung through Sam is evident, though he’s still so outwardly, effortfully calm. More than calm. He’s kind to everyone; looks out for Jack, spends time with Nick. But his beard gets thicker and his hair becomes shaggy, unwashed. The skin under his eyes is papery, translucent like a bruise.
Dean would be raging. Mary knows them well enough to know that. Sam holds everything so closely in.
Then suddenly one morning he’s vivid, alive again. “Got another lead.” He’s already half-up the steps towards the door. “I’ll be a few days. Call you when I’m on the way back.” His face shines with a confidence she hasn’t seen from him in weeks. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” she says.
Three days later, she’s up late and by herself when the door creaks open and a long-legged figure lopes lopsided down the stairs.
“Mom,” he says, and he’s smiling but his voice is shaking, just a hint of it, a waver at the back of his throat. “Got a location on him. Could you be ready to head out tomorrow?”
“Of course,” she says, and, “That’s wonderful, Sam.” And then he reaches the bottom of the stairs and her mind catches for a second on the dissonance as she sees it– or doesn’t see it– sees the stump where Sam’s hand should be. It’s bandaged and the bandages are red, soaked through.
“Sam!” she says, horrified. He’s still talking, trying to tell her where they need to go. But at her exclamation he pauses, blinks, looks down at his arm.
“Oh,” he says apologetically. “Trade off. Information. It’s okay.”
She stares at him, unable to formulate the right response.
“Really,” says Sam. He swings his bag onto the table, winces as he nudges his wound against it. It leaves a streak of blood across the map. He frowns, mops at it with the same wet bandage, makes it worse.
“Sam,” Mary says again, more urgent.
He smiles at her, reassuring. “It’s fine. Mom. I think this could be it. We could find him tomorrow. Tomorrow!”
“That’s great, sweetheart,” Mary says. Her own voice sounds distant. Pieces of the past few weeks rearrange in her head. Sam coping. Sam falling apart.
“I’ll go tell Bobby.”
“Wait!” she says. “Sam, wait. You’re pale.” He is. He’s paper-white. “Take a seat. Take a minute.”
“Sure,” he says, and does. That ready compliance makes everything somehow worse. I’m so reasonable, it seems to say. And yet.
(Mary patches up her son as best she can. The next morning, she’s the one who drives.)
(Sam’s informant was either lying or mistaken. The lead’s a bust. When Sam realises, he starts laughing and he does not stop.)
(it feels a little silly to write an au episode tag after the following episode already aired but i saw another gifset of this moment earlier today and realised that that was the fic i’d wanted to write about this ep; that casual, quiet little statement of sam’s and the possibility inherent within it) (sam copes with things very very well, until he doesn’t)
artherra 