Living Among the Dead by fleshflutter.

Slash

Oh, I so never saw this coming. I mean, I saw the ep this story is based off of, freaking wrote it up, for crying out loud, and all the time, oblivous to the slashy overtones that apparently every other slash fan in the entire universe saw. But me. Yeah. Evidently, the bite that Gordon landed on Dean has taken on a life of its own. First evidence, this story. Didn’t want to read it, uh-uh. Dean/Gordon slash pairing, no way, no how. Wanted to crawl off in the opposite direction and hope it didn’t see me. But it did.

Alas, the story was on Amalthia’s rec list and I have made a vow to read everything she’s rec’d, unless it fell so far out of my widest parameters that I wouldn’t be able to stomach any of it. For example, Sam/Jo, or Sam/Ruby. This one said Dean/Gordon and Dean/Sam. So in I went.

Well, I saw no evidence of Dean/Sam except for an undying love, and a bit of Dean/Gordon. What else I saw there was, well, pretty cool. Story starts. Gordon is in hell. The poor guy never had a chance, did he. One of SPN’s best villians, because he believes in his moral code, and he earnestly feels that he is doing right. He’s not even crazy. Just misled, and hurt by the death of his sister, and somehow got twisted into this dark path. But to his credit, he’s taken responsibiilty for his own actions, and frankly, I think, allowed himself to be killed by Sam, once he saw he couldn’t best Sam, even though he knew he would be going to hell.

So there he is. In hell. Suffering, on a regular basis. Hell here is filled with warm blood in the air, the shouts of the suffering, black figures doing horrible things. Hell. Enter Dean, who, as we know, has sold his soul for the life of his brother. He’s in hell, too. Gets torn up and mangled every day, and each day Gordon creeps out and holds Dean while hell puts him back together so that hell can have another go at Dean in the morning.

Dean is so matter of fact about the whole thing, as is Gordon, and between rippings and tearings by hell, they discuss movies. And Gordon wonders what on earth Dean did to deserve being in hell? Finally, suffering through a ripping and tearing, as Gordon holds him, Dean tells him and Gordon is amazed. Between the conversations and the rippings, there is sex, but it is low key enough not to be the point. The point here is comfort between comrades, which, at this point, Dean and Gordon Are.

I like the thought of this because I always felt that Gordon rather liked Dean, in a brotherly way, that he respected him, and wanted Dean to like him. But Dean of course, would never like Gordon, because in Hunted (I think), Gordon hurt Sammy! Tsk tsk that will NEVER do. But here, in hell, the two join together out of a sense of shared history and current shared suffering. Rather a sophisticated way of looking at a simple, slashy premise, and what I think might have been a knee jerk desire to have Gordon and Dean go down on each other. What is produced is, instead, a simple, well-constructed three-act story. Gordon in hell, Dean and Gordon in hell (having sex, of a sort) and then, act three. Enter Sammy.

Sammy is now the anti-christ and has come to rescue Dean. Which Dean, being Dean, always knew he would. Maybe this part is where Amalthia got her Dean/Sammy designation, I don’t know. I do know that Sammy’s entrance is spectacular spectacular! He turns hell inside OUT, and whisks Dean away with him. Because to Sam, Dean is worth it all.  

Short, stark little story, coming out much stronger than I would have guessed.