take a look, it's in a book.... *hums*

I'm somehow always surprised by my ability to lose myself in a really good story. I should know it's going to happen, but I start reading and then I finish and it's dark outside and I forgot to eat dinner or go to the bathroom or even spit out my gum.

Which is to say, you should all go read The Accompanist (SPN).

The premise of the story is that Mary taught Dean to play piano and he's kept playing secretly ever since, until he befriends an interesting old man in his senior year of high school. Piano-playing is the LAST thing I would have imagined working in a Dean fic but the author does an incredible job with Dean's POV that quickly erased any disbelief I might have had, maintaining his outer Dean-ness while still exploring all the vulnerable, contradictory things that we love him for. She's marked the story AU, but she integrates canon and Dean's future characterization so well that it wasn't really. It's a painful, beautiful coming-of-age story that had me in tears and hopeful at the same time.

But - to quote a master story-reccer - you don't have to take *my* word for it.