Your daily SPN recs

[norwich36]

Palace of the Brine is a sequel to memphis86's bigbang from last year, The Seahorse, in which Jared was pregnant and Jensen was his OB. This is set five year's later; Jared and Jensen are a couple, but Jared wants to have a baby that's theirs. (Chad is the father of his daughter Eve). If you liked The Seahorse, you'll like this story; lots of fun, with a dysfunctional but very sweet Chad and a really interesting role played by Misha Collins.

Caught Inside by t_fic. (Jensen/Steve, Chris/Steve, Jensen/JDM, Jared/JDM, Jensen/Steve/Chris)

Mostly I only like reading Jensen/Jared or Jensen/Jeff, so I went into this story quite skeptically, thinking I'd give it about a page before I bailed. But it ended up being one of my favorite bigbang stories so far. Jensen and Steve Carlson used to be together, before Steve moved to Hawaii, and Jensen has an open invitation to visit there, so one day when his failing career as an actor gets to be too much, he impulsively hops a plane. But he hasn't talked to Steve for a while, and Steve is now with Chris Kane. At loose ends romantically and existentially, Jensen slowly makes a place for himself on the island. Ok, that's a lame summary, but this story is more about texture and a sense of place and community than it is about plot. As I said to the author in my comment is that what I loved most about this story as I was reading it was that it felt like life; in other words, unlike in the typical romance you can't really tell in advance who's going to end up with who, or what the trajectory of the story actually is, and I loved that about it. It's really a lot more about Jensen's quest to find himself than it is about the relationships, though the relationships are fascinating. Guest-starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the owner of a local surfer bar, Sandy and Danneel as two of his waitresses, and Danneel and Jared as two up-and-coming surfers.