American Myth by candle_beck.

Slash.

Reading this story was like a slap in the face as to how far I have to go as a writer. Not to mention that this writer has multiple fandoms being written about and SPN seems to be a recent, low-key, walk in the park. La la la. Yet there I was, reading it, my brow furrowing, mouth dropping open, going Oh no! This is SO good! Now I’ll never be a teen model! (Not that I was ever going to be, but you see what I mean. Can’t compete, so why even try. I know, I know, we don’t compete with others, we compete with ourselves, yadda, yadda, yadda.)

Back to the story. I have to read it (yet) again, so wait a sec….Yep. It’s still good. Very good. Very very damn good. Meets all the criteria. End of story.

But wait. Must discuss. Must discuss Endlessly. Sam and Dean on a roadtrip. Fights occur. More fights occur. Endless descriptions of passing countryside, of grotty diners, and the, oh man, the Impala gets stolen. Boys must overcome bitchiness to join together, which they do, to recover said stolen Impala. La da! 

Think that’s it? Think again. I did.

The story is overall brilliant and shiny, with the most believable fights, the most neverending roads, the writer has Oklahoma driving down SOLID, and the slow buildup to the inevitable you-know-what scene, takes its own sweet time. Sashaying along with a twinkle in its eye saying, I’ll get there, don’t you worry.

Lines like this suck me in right away: “…and Dean, coming back from the store with an armful of Red Bull and beef jerky, says sharply across the bleached cement, “Sam, will you get your ass off my car when you’ve got a goddamn knife in your back pocket,” and Sam bitches back at him on autopilot, and suddenly they’re knee fucking deep into another fight. ”

Seven paragraphs along, I get this little gem: “Dean exhales shortly, and sniffs hard. Sam can hear the faint sound of his fingers rattling on the wheel, the more substantial thwack of his ring. A green highway sign leaps past, twelve miles to gas food lodging, and Sam imagines that they will stop to eat and Dean will take the pickle off Sam’s plate without asking, that shit-eater grin of his, and Sam will want to stab the fork through his hand. Sam doesn’t even like pickles; it’s the principle of the thing.”

It’s at this point that I settle back comfortably, knowing I’m in for a bit of five star treatment. Nothing to worry about, the writer is not going to jerk me around. The boys, on the other hand, are snotty to each other, with old scores and unanswered remarks. Sam is so pissed off at one point, that he leaves the hotel room and marches to an all night diner. Soon Dean, who cannot bear to leave Sam out of his sight, follows to said diner, and there, takes a seat in the booth next to Sam’s, in the bench seat facing Sam, so that they are now facing each other across rows and rows of seats. Don’t mind me, says Dean, I’m just here ordering coffee.

Oh, there’s an imaginary Dean, too, living in Sam’s head, at whom he can say anything and get away with it. Except sometimes the imaginary Dean has a mind of it’s oooooooooown, and the internal arguments are as unsettling as the external ones. Poor Sammy. As for slash, it’s something Sam does not want. Like this:

“…his shirts are crumpled at the corner, revealing a taut wedge of his stomach, skinny ribbon of gray shorts showing over the top of his jeans. A spur of arousal in Sam at the sight of it, but that only irritates him more, one more hold Dean has on him.”

The development of that aspect of this story is sloooooooooow. Like good things should be. The Impala, also, is a character on its own, something Sam recognizes by the purr of the engine, the click of the door, the shape and glow of the headlights. It comes across as almost being alive, like a brilliant black charger or something.

I could go on and on and on, but then I’d end up quoting the whole damn thing and you might as well just go read it. Go ahead. You won’t be sorry. Best damn thing I’ve read in YEARS. 

Okay, one more quote. If this doesn’t get you, nothing will:

“So cars say ‘home’ to Sam a little bit, and this car in particular, this car that Dean wears like a favorite shirt, broken in around his form with the lovely night-black sleek and warming quickly in the sun. Sam recognized the Impala the second he first saw it, dented all to hell with mismatched side panels and a spiderwebbed back windshield: Dean’s. Dean fixed it up and baptized it in Metallica and rigged it for their outlaw side, treated it better than he’d ever treated a girl, and sometimes when Sam was in high school and being in the same house as their dad made him want to set himself on fire, he would go out and sleep in Dean’s car, comforted by the prayer card strung on a dogtag chain around the rearview mirror, which preceded the rosary by several years.”