#in every iteration of sam winchester i find a steel spine

[zmediaoutlet]

happy wincest wednesday z! what are your favorite AU versions of sam and dean to think about (whether it’s ones we’ve seen in the show or a particular canon divergence you like to imagine). Do you have any headcanons about how their relationship with each other developed and/or fell apart?

eeeeeeeeeeeeve happy wincest wednesday and indeed happy wincest THURSDAY when you will be reading this, every day is wincest, etc --

Tricky tricky! I think there are two that most appeal to me: Steve Jobs!Sam/wanted!Dean, and the Frillies. For super different reasons, lol. And also pretty surprising for me, bc they're both from Dabb era, but in my thinking about this I think I realized that it's precisely because they're from Dabb era that they offer so much ficcy possibility -- that is, they're so poorly thought out and tossed away as a joke that you can/have to think of HUGE amounts of backstory to make either of them possible.

I already basically talked about Jobs/Wanted in that one fic, so let's talk about the Frillies instead, and oh my GOD, the FRILLIES.

My favorite thing about AU!thems is to think about how they were created, and for the Frilly AU to exist you actually have to go back further and think about who Frilly John was, and Frilly John is a Weird Creature. I always like to keep AUs as tight to real canon as possible, so here's my best guess: Henry Winchester disappeared off to the future like he always did, and then when Millie Winchester got remarried, instead of meeting a mechanic she met an educated/rich/bougie dude, and wee John was raised all business-minded fancy instead of blue-collar sturdy. From there, maybe he still went to Vietnam but he did so as an officer and not a grunt -- from there, he still met Mary, but he swept her off her feet with the thought that he could take her far away from all that grime -- from there, when she died and the supernatural world was revealed to him, John thought I have to get revenge but he also thought I can't do it without resources, and money, and by creating a system in which to work. Canon!John is an outsider, more or less; Frilly!John files for corporation status to make sure his search is well-funded. Like. Fuck.

So! His boys are raised in that environment. Not a gas-guzzler muscle car but a Lexus or something; a private plane and private accommodations, not seedy motels. Even with all that, though, from the very brief glimpse we see -- it still seems to be a world of two. Their daddy is still alive (and has the key to Dean's cock cage), but Sam and Dean are still hunting and working and living together, at age 40ish and 36ish, and that's STRANGE for people who had the resources to not be conjoined at the hip and heart. So -- what happened? Easy to imagine that even with all the extra resources, John was concerned for their safety, and made sure that their internal unit of CEO + two sons was isolated from too many external concerns. I'm sure he vetted any girlfriend (or boyfriend) and constantly reinforced the company. Of course, we know Dean would fold to that; that Sam folded to it is interesting, and whatever rebellion he had must have been crushed under layers of comfort and coddling, and I guess the apocalypse just couldn't happen because he's a feckless fashion boy who couldn't get together the stugats to break the world. Too bad, so sad.

So: rich bitch frilly!chesters, who still call their dad Daddy, who can't relate to anyone outside of the weird-ass family unit. Maybe they have FHoW threesomes, but they're definitely boinking each other between shareholder meetings and when they're flown out to Milan to model and/or destroy an Italian ghost. As long as Dean can make sure Sam's manicure isn't mussed. He'd have to call his girl, Dean. :/ Be careful.