To Live and Die in Las Vegas by stormheller.

Slash

Definately a guilty pleasure since it didn’t meet all my criteria in that it was AU and postulated the “last days of Dean’s year” (which hasn’t been written in canon yet) and then, the boys are lovers before the story starts, and I really rather prefer first time scenarios. Plus the POV noodles around a little bit. Needless to say, hours after I read this one I was still chuckling and mulling it over. 

Dean’s got 9 days or so to live and he’s gonna live it up. They decide to go to Las Vegas (having stopped at the Grand Canyon along the way) and oddly enough, Sam knew that this was the location Dean would have picked, so he’s bought tickets to EVERYTHING. With his own money, so the cops wouldn’t be on them like ducks on a junebug. Then the demon comes and they try to outsmart her at the last minute. Risky, right? Yeah. But totally fun to read. And well written, going at a fast, fun clip, and totally enjoyable. It reads somewhat like an Ocean’s Eleven movie watches, you don’t know how they’re gonna pull it off, you just know they are.

There’s lots of funny stuff here, like, the boys see a Penn and Teller show and Dean decides that Penn and Teller are demons but since they’re not hurting anyone, they can live. Or the commentary about Celine Dion…now, I like Celine Dion but I can understand how people don’t. The boys have tickets and offer one up to the crossroads demon, who responds, thanks but no thanks, she’s already been to hell.

Underneath the funny stuff, though, was the love, love, love between the brothers, summed up in a line like this:

“Sometimes Sam wondered if he shouldn’t be trying to do some last bit of research, try and find some tiny bit of intel he’d missed. But he couldn’t. Not anymore. For 11 months and 22 days he’d researched demons and deals until his eyes bled. Now he just wanted to spend every second with his brother. Every last second.”

See? Nice stuff here. Only problem is, now I want to go read everything else she’s written for more nuggets like this one.