FIC: And No One Sings Me Lullabies
Story Title: And No One Sings Me Lullabies
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language. Underage drinking and drug use (sort of). De-aged!Dean and Soulless!Sam (that seems to merit some warning all on its own, yes?). It might also be kind of disgusting, as in AWWW, not EW; or maybe a little of both, depending on your perspective.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place at some vague point in early S6.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit. Title from the song Echoes by Pink Floyd.
Word Count: ~4,382
Summary: Sam has his eyes narrowed on the pool tables like he's thinking of dissecting them, and Dean's head doesn't even clear the bar-top. He wants a goddamn beer.
A/N: WIPs and overdue challenge-fics are giving me the hairy eyeball, I know. I'm working through my writing funk with baby steps. Actually didn't rewrite this one fifty times before posting, so there's that.
Written for this prompt at the 5th Dean-focused h/c comment-fic meme at hoodie_time. Unbetaed. It's maybe less traumatizing than it should be, but I'm bad at angst.
He's in another rundown bar somewhere between the Children Of The Corn fields of Nebraska and there's-no-place-like-home-thank-fuck-for-that Kansas. It's a semi-rowdy Friday night in a small town, haggard faces with too many shots under their belts, slumping and staggering and slurping to the beat of Seger's Old Time Rock And Roll, and there's a guy in the corner grinding a lit cigarette into another guy's cheek for not coughing up the cash on a money game. This is well-worn turf: nothing he wouldn't be able to handle any other day.
Today's special, though, for all the wrong reasons. Sam has his eyes narrowed on the pool tables like he's thinking of dissecting them, and Dean's head doesn't even clear the bar-top. He wants a goddamn beer.
"I want a goddamn beer," Dean says, voice high and mortifying and a little scratchy. The blue haze of cigarette smoke is irritating his throat more than it normally would. He kicks Sam's leg under the table for good measure, because the asshole's not even paying attention. Dean could be screaming bloody murder and halfway inside the pedophile van before Sam would even blink, and then it'd probably take him a few more minutes to decide whether or not going after him would be the logical course of action in his logical-like-a-serial-killer brain.
Sam flaps a dismissive hand at him.
"Sam," Dean hisses, ready to jump up on the table and stomp his feet around; his size is getting to him, maybe.
"What?" Dean slumps down in his seat at that flat stare, reminded of how much larger Sam is right now. "I'm working, Dean. You wanna stay a midget forever?"
"I'm your conscience," Dean mutters, like that's an argument.
"About the size of a cricket," Sam agrees, then goes back to scoping out the competition. Dean looks at Sam's hand curled loosely around his beer, bottle all golden and sweaty and forbidden, and Sam reminds him absently, "This was your idea."
It's true. It was Dean's idea. Some asshole with a grudge (demon, hunter, monster-the bitch wouldn't say) apparently took out a curse-contract on Dean's head. Something cruel but amusing, the witch had quoted back at them once they'd tracked her down. She wasn't unreasonable, she'd told them, just a businesswoman. She could be swayed. Dean wanted to sway her brains right out of her head with some buckshot, but he was officially up the beanstalk and life's unfair and it was Sam that got to do all the shooting. She was too old, though, too powerful, and Sam started to see things her way after spending a couple hours as a statue. With Cas answering prayers so sporadically lately, Sam agreed to buy back the contract, along with the original buyer's name. But then he'd also gone on to decide dropping Dean at Bobby's while he went off to rob a bank would be the quickest means to his end, and Dean had vetoed that nonsense flat out.
Dean grumbles, "Yeah, but you're taking too long," and scans the tables. There's a guy there, all whiskey-inspired grins and loose swagger, even looser with his money, twirling his cue like a baton after every shot. Dean points him out. "Cocky, drunk off his ass, easy pickin's. I mean, are you lookin' to write a book on this shit, or what?"
Sam slides his gaze to the mark, and it's then that Dean sees he wasn't assessing the players so much as ogling a barfly's leather-clad ass. It's a nice ass, definitely distracting, Dean can admit, but mixing work and play is a fine art. Sam clearly doesn't have it down, in any incarnation.
"Right. Good." Sam clears his throat and rubs his hands together, shoulders rolling like he's getting ready to do warm-up stretches.
Dean rolls his eyes at least three times before Sam gets up and leaves him to fend for himself in the gigantic corner booth that's all tucked away in the dark, without so much as a behave yourself, or else. Dean straightens and does his best to look street-tough, even if none of the roughnecks in here seem to care about the CPS investigation waiting to happen. If Sam was actually Sam he would have found a way to strap Dean to his back by now, but that's not anything to be dwelling on at the moment.
His sour mood lifts a little when he notices Sam left his half-finished beer. Glancing around quickly, he snatches it across the table and gulps it down. It's a fucking tease.
He looks around again.
Doesn't take long for Dean to discover just how little attention people pay their drinks.
-:-
A half hour at this ninja-boozehound business and he gets caught.
He's creeping up on a table near the kicked-to-hell-and-back jukebox, hand wrapped around a lipstick-smudged glass of something amber-colored, when the glass's owner turns and spots him. She's got teased black hair that's grown silver at the roots, though she doesn't look quite old enough to have gone gray, smiles down at him.
"Well, hey there," she says, all slurring joviality, doesn't seem to notice Dean's hand retreating oh-so-innocently to his pocket or the guilty flush he can feel burning his cheeks. "Aren't you just the cutest thing?"
The charming smirk Dean had all ready falls hard, because he is. He saw a mirror when this whole thing started and it's obscene how cute he is: freckles and sunny hedgehog hair and eyes too big for his head. He feels his face go hotter, and it gets her squealing at him like he's some lost puppy. It's annoying but he plays up the bashful angle and it works out. She doesn't ask him who he belongs to or threaten to call the cops on his asshole parents like any sane person should. What she does do is give him a handful of quarters for the jukebox.
Dean accepts them and moves on.
He's maybe a little bit unsteady on his feet by the time he clambers his way back up into the booth. Body weight is obviously a thing he's taking into account too late; the room is whirling all around, his whole mouth is on fire and his gut feels like Jello. He lifts his head with some effort and spots Sam, all blurred, colorful edges under the lamps and circling his latest opponent like a shark. Intimidation is clearly the best method, because Dean's been sneaking glances all night and Sam sucks at reading people but he sucks even worse at fooling people. Probably hasn't made even half of what they need yet, the hopeless automaton.
Sam keeps playing just this side of forever. Dean's eyelids weigh a thousand pounds and his bladder's not too happy with him, either. He wiggles around, hooded gaze flitting from Sam to the dark rectangle of hallway that leads to bathrooms straight out of Trainspotting. It's too dark to see very far down because the busted lightbulb back there probably hasn't seen hide nor hair of a replacement since it crapped out in the eighties, and maybe it's his booze-addled imagination, but that hallway looks shifty.
Dean startles when a gnarled hand pushes a mug of something muddy-brown in front of him. "Ain't got no hot chocolate, but I figured a dash of coffee and about twenty flavored creamers'd do the trick."
Dean looks up, face twisted in disgust. It's the bartender he'd dismissed as too crotchety to hand out liquor to babies at first glance. The guy's got a hound-dog face, white tee with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one sleeve, and hole-worn jeans, like he thinks he's James Dean, if he'd lived long enough to develop Alzheimer's.
He flashes a toothless grin, shrugs. "Grandkids seem to get a kick out of it, anyway."
"Beer would do the trick even better," Dean slurs moodily.
The guy outright hee-haws, knee-slapping and everything, like that's the funniest thing he's heard all century. Being short is bullshit.
"You'll do alright," he says, and slaps a soggy card down. It's a menu. "Know you're probably bored outta your skull over here. Sometimes the folks gotta do what they gotta do, though, right? Babysitters these days'd rather have your right arm than sympathize with a budget." He nods, face gone sour, and if he starts in on one of those back in my day lectures, Dean will sock him in the nose, he swears it. He's tired and small and not nearly drunk enough for this crap. "I understand it, and you're behavin' yourself better'n most, so you get hungry just pick out somethin' and I'll serve it up. No charge."
"Thank you," Dean manages. Weird concoctions aside, it's actually a decent gesture. No way is he actually eating anything in this dump, though.
"Ah, don't mention it." The guy gives Dean a considering look and reaches into his pocket for something, slaps a five down next. "There's a couple of games might interest you." He points to the end of the bar, at a battered row of bar-top slot machines and arcade games. "Need anything else, just holler."
When he finally turns to leave he runs smack-dab into a wall of Sam. A little mystified and just as startled, Dean glances up.
"Problem?" Sam asks. He hits that note of deceptive boredom right on the mark, looming there and oozing quiet danger, and for a second he looks like Sam, all unreasonably overprotective with his puffed-out chest and clenched fists-and kind of wavy, but that last part's probably the liquor. Dean feels this barbed thing slamming up behind his ribs. He told the asshole to cut that pretending shit out.
"Oh, no problem," the bartender says easily, grins and gives Sam a hearty smack on the back. Sam scowls. "Was just rewardin' your boy for good behavior, that's all." He winks at Dean and walks off.
Sam watches him go for a second, and Dean swears he looks confused, Or maybe pissed. Hard to tell if Sam's actually managing the edge of an emotion or if his robo-wires are just crossed. He turns that look on Dean.
"What?" Dean snaps. His bladder is staging a full-out mutiny and he can't sit still.
Sam twists his mouth up like he needs to put this tiny version of his brother under a microscope. "That guy just gave you money."
"Well, yeah. Kids are needy. 'Specially when their guardian leaves 'em alone in the middle of a seedy bar." Then, with marked disdain: "Doesn't hurt that I'm fuckin' adorable."
Sam visibly files this information away, frowns at Dean's little dance. "What's wrong with you?"
Dean doesn't want to say, but. "Gotta take a piss," he grumbles, looking away.
"So, go piss."
"I can hold it."
"I don't think you can." That's when Sam notes the way Dean's listing a little too far to the left, and the absence of his beer. "Are you drunk?"
Dean shrugs, wiggles around some more. "Maybe."
"Huh." Sam sits down, eyeballing the five-dollar-bill and pile of quarters again. "Kids shouldn't talk to strangers," he says.
Dean's scoff turns into a hiccup. "Right, like you care."
"Well, no," he admits, plucks the menu up and sprawls back with one arm stretched across the back of the booth. "But you're no good to me dead."
No good to him dead. No good to him shrunken. Dean has not forgotten that Sam thinks he's some animated weapon that needs more upkeep than most, and not a real person, but he could do without the verbal reminders. "How much we-hiccup-got?" he deflects.
"Not enough."
"And you're sitting here why?"
Sam waves the menu slowly, like Dean's brain has shrunken right along with the rest of him. "Food break."
"Jesus Christ," Dean huffs, and he can't take it anymore. He's going to explode. "Take me to the freakin' bathroom."
"What, you need me to hold your hand?"
"No, just." Dean squirms, and hiccups. "Watch the door."
"Scared, baby brother?"
"Shut the fuck up." Dean feels that barbed thing all in a frenzy behind his ribcage again. "Don't call me that. I'm not scared, I'm-hiccup-small. I mean, have you seen me?" He throws his tiny stick-arms in the air for emphasis. "I could slip and drown in a puddle like this!"
Sam smirks, tosses the menu down and gets up, offering Dean his hand.
"Don't push me, asshat." Dean slaps the hand away, thoughts of a few soon-to-be-relevant scenes from Chucky dancing through his head as he carefully navigates the tilting floor. "I might be little but I can still stab you in your ugly face."
Sam laughs like he'd welcome the challenge, and follows after him.
-:-
Sam is like some Pleasantville reject. The puppy eyes are too round, his smile too aw shucks, mister, shoulders too slumped. No one's buying the naive good-old-boy act he's trying to pull to speed things up.
Dean is fucking beat, can't take much more of this being upright thing, and he doesn't look forward to falling asleep again still trapped in this too-tight, too-soft shell. They spent two days tracking the source of the curse, and all of last night driving the fuck away from the bitch. Sleeping hasn't gone smoothly for a long while, but especially since his downsizing. He's still a grown-up in his head, for the most part, but his body's all unfamiliar and vulnerable and sometimes his emotions don't seem to fit right, like he's not as equipped as his larger self to handle the onslaught of... things. Quicker to anger, quicker to shriek in terror, stuff like that. Sooner he gets back to the car and his stash of uppers, the better.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Dean huffs when Sam misses another mark by a mile. The guy has his hands out trying to fend the over-earnest giant off, backing away slowly, so Dean hops down from his seat and stalks over to the tables. "I can't even believe how hard you suck at this," he says, and Sam scowls down at him. Jesus, he's really high up there.
"What the hell do you want from me?" Sam actually seems kind of exasperated, gripping his cue so hard it's sure to snap. "It's not like you could do better."
Dean scoffs. He's laid off on the drinking but he's still plenty buzzed, wouldn't even be allowed on any cool rollercoasters right now, and he could still do better than this. He snatches the pool stick out of Sam's hand. "Make yourself useful and get me somethin' to stand on."
-:-
Dean draws a crowd. They all think he's a hoot and a holler, dragging a wooden chair twice his size all around the table and talking all kinds of shit in that high-pitched, scratchy voice of his. They line up and he knocks 'em down, so eager to throw their money at him because, not only is it outrageously adorable that he wants to play with the big boys, he's actually backing up his smacktalk and then some. Best of all, no one wants to kick his ass for winning.
It started out with people chuckling and messing up his hair in that condescending, dismissive way adults have, until an indulgent trucker took him up on it. He'd only go as high as fifty cents, threw the game so blatantly Dean had been insulted. It helped him warm up, though, he won't lie. His limbs are stubby and balance is a little trickier but he got the hang of it.
Then Sam, standing off to the side and rubbing his chin thoughtfully, said, "Bet you five bucks he'd wipe the floor with you if you were actually trying."
"Oh yeah?" the guy said, beaming like Dean was the most awesome thing he'd ever seen, and a little more willing to make an effort since it was Sam's money. "You're on then, kid."
It snowballed from there. Some of the players are visibly miffed at being outdone by a foul-mouthed six-year-old, but it's not like they can do much more than lose good-naturedly with all these smitten witnesses. And it works in Dean's favor, because their pride won't let them stop challenging him.
He should've done this from the beginning, he thinks, while Sam stands there overdoing the proud papa bullshit and stuffing his pockets full of cash.
-:-
The night is packed tight with bug chatter and the kind of humidity that sits on your lungs, and the world's gone grainy and dull. Sam walks across the dark lot with his head down, fists full of money and counting it all happily, not even slowing his stilt legs so Dean can keep up.
Sam looks back, sighs, and pockets their winnings. "We're ready to deal and then some," he says, plucks Dean off the ground and tosses him over his shoulder to move things along.
Dean squeaks and flails for a few seconds but it's so much effort, so he settles for a mumbled, "Jackass," and goes limp. Sam kept him playing long after Dean was ready to call it quits and now his arms are leaden and throbbing, his throat aches and his head feels like a balloon. "There's child labor laws, ya know. You're lucky we're in Bad Parent Central or you'd be coolin' your heels in the clink, you slave-driving bastard," Dean grumbles when Sam shoves him in the backseat, tries to climb right back out.
"Speaking of laws." Sam pushes him in again. "Don't need to get pulled over. Stay."
"M'not a dog."
"Good boy," Sam says when Dean does as he's told, ruffles his hair and slams the door.
Dean climbs over the seats and greets Sam with a cold smirk as soon as he drops behind the wheel. Sam shakes his head and starts the car, and Dean pops open the glovebox, rifles around inside before settling back with his plastic baggies to sort through them.
"You're kind of a gold mine like this," Sam decides after a few minutes.
"Forget it. M'not stayin' a kid." He does his best to identify what he's holding in the dark, open road all blackness and smog, too close to the city for any stars or much moonlight, not close enough for artificial light. Sam is quiet for far too long, so Dean squints up at him. "Forget it, Sam. I'll go rabid chihuahua on your ass and chew your fucking neck open. Can't take it with you."
"Anyone ever tell you you're kind of a kill-joy?"
"Your face is kind of a kill-joy," Dean mutters, finds what he's looking for and stuffs the rest back into its hidey hole.
Sam looks over meaningfully, and Dean rolls his eyes and crawls into the back again, hunkers down in the nest he's made. They've got a long drive ahead; Sam doesn't sleep and Dean is small enough to not be cramped and uncomfortable using the backseat for a bed, so they've been going like this for a while. Not that Dean will be sleeping. He plans to stare at the roof and think shallow, trippy thoughts, because pretending to zonk out keeps Sam from talking to him any more than is necessary.
Sam glances in the rear view. "What're you taking?"
"Not your business," Dean growls, and Sam shrugs it off like Dean knew he would. Can't help but feel disappointed that he hasn't been smothered in ten layers of bubble wrap and thrown in a kid-proofed bunker already, though.
He takes his pills and lays down.
-:-
The world is vibrating.
It's the most amazing thing Dean has ever experienced and the way his heart's bouncing around in his chest like a ping-pong ball on super-fast-forward is kind of thrilling like-like-like Dean is super and there's nothing in all the universe that can bring him down because he's got sonic heart powers or maybe something that sounds less Care Bear and more Batman but anyway he is glorious and unstoppable and he doesn't care what Sam says about heart attacks and pulling over in the grass and the open sky and star-light star-bright wind on his face and Sam can't even catch him and he doesn't want Sam catching him because Sam is not-Sammy and Dean is fine Dean is awesome and.
Oh.
He's gonna puke.
-:-
"You're a disgusting little creature, you know that?"
Life is mean and unfair, and guts are cruel, unnecessary things, because Dean is still functioning after vomiting all his insides up, but somehow they're still tormenting him from the floor of the car.
"I should sell you on the Black Market."
That won't work because Dean is damaged goods. His brain is melting. "What a world," he croaks, and passes out.
-:-
He wakes up choking on a scream, and then just choking. Blinks fast, wet eyes and sawed-open skin and shrieks and red film that all fades to blurry yellows and decrepit grays and cool, moldy air. He's shaking, burning up. An ass-flavored porcupine has made itself at home in his windpipe, and refuses to heed his eviction notices.
"S-Sam," he splutters pathetically. "M'dyin'."
"Close, but no cigar," comes the unsympathetic answer, and Dean remembers and almost wants the nightmares back.
His eyeballs feel like pools of lava. He blinks some more. The blur becomes a dented, water-stained ceiling that he can't quite make sense of yet. "Where are we?"
"Motel."
"Why?"
"Because you were acting like a maniac. A tiny, crack-smoking maniac," Sam says. There's a rustle, something soggy-warm and rough peeling itself off of Dean's forehead. Sam's holding a washcloth and looking down, entirely unimpressed with the specimen before him. "I couldn't drive with you ricocheting around the car, and I wasn't gonna sit there watching you streak across fields all night." Sam walks off, and then there's the sound of running water from some distant land. "You're lucky you didn't go tumbling off a cliff before I caught you."
Dean frowns, tries to move but he's heavy, stomach rolling and twisting. "Guess I misjudged the dosage," he mutters, gives up and coughs again.
"Guess you did," Sam says, back with that same washcloth dripping water down his arm before he slaps it on Dean's head again. "Guess you also managed to contract the plague while you were at it."
Dean's whole body jolts with the unwelcome shock, "Jesus, that's fucking cold!"
"You re-decorated the Impala with your internal organs, by the way," Sam goes on, unmoved. "I tried to clean it but now it smells like lemon-scented puke, so I'm letting it air out." He shuffles around the room, shoves more pills in Dean's face. Dean feels bile crawling up his throat and looks away. "You're gross like this. Soon as you can stand upright I'm leaving you on Bobby's doorstep in a basket while I deal with the witch. Take this."
"No," Dean says. "M'cleanin' up my act."
"Sure you are. Until next time. Anyway, it's just Tylenol."
"Don't wannit."
"Fine. Slow-bake your brain, have a seizure, die and render all my hard work pointless." Sam sets the pills and a glass of water in plain view on the nightstand, like he thinks Dean's a skittish stray and the medicine's a bowl of milk. "You could use a bath. Think you can handle it?"
Dean feels downright disgusting, hot and gritty and stinky, but moving is not on his list of things to attempt again in the immediate future, so: "M'good here."
Sam flips off the lamp over Dean's bed, moves back to his own, where a book is laid open on his bedspread. He picks it up and sprawls back to read. Dean turns his back on the whole thing, tries not to give in to the weight of sore, overheated eyelids and razor-wire thoughts. But he's little and everything else is too big and he stands no chance at all, so he sleeps.
Hell isn't waiting for him. This time it's power lines and wheat fields and the highway, Sam slumped awkwardly in the passenger's seat and his drool-slick mouth gaping like his jaw's come unhinged. There's a plastic spoon dangling from his nose and a camera phone in Dean's hand. The sky opens up and pours out bloody fire, the Devil comes to play in a boneyard that falls away into an abyss, and then it's just Dean bolting upright with a fierce, irreparable ache in his stupid little-kid chest, and gunk rattling around in his lungs with every pant.
"What're you doing?" Sam says, looking up from his book and watching Dean's pitiful approach suspiciously.
Dean sniffs and wipes at his snot-clogged nose, smacks Sam's knee. "Just move over."
"No."
"Why?" Dean whines, and he knows he's whining but he's not in the mood to be logical or even all that argumentative. He just wants, and Sam can damn well cater to him just this once. "It's not like I take up that much space."
Sam eyes him like he's grown two heads and lost both of them. "You're slimy and it's my bed and you'd be... invading it. Like a baby alien."
"Just. Pretend you give a shit." Dean clambers and grunts his way up, out of breath again by the time he makes it. He shoves at Sam some more, and Sam makes annoyed faces but goes, letting Dean burrow under the bedclothes and cling to his side.
"You told me not to pretend," Sam points out once all that hullabaloo is done with, arms raised like he doesn't know what to do with them.
"M'liftin' the ban." Dean coughs into the sheets, wishes Sam would stop talking and ruining his delusions. "Temporarily."
"Fine. You want me to sing you a lullaby?"
"Pretend you give a shit quietly."
Sam shuts up, and Dean closes his eyes. No giant hands fall on his back to rub circles, no one's watching him not-sleep like a creepy stalker, and Sam doesn't even make that much of an effort to not knock Dean off the bed with all his uncomfortable shifting.
Dean's too old for make-believe but he's not too big, not tonight, so he does his damnedest to pretend for the both of them.
END
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language. Underage drinking and drug use (sort of). De-aged!Dean and Soulless!Sam (that seems to merit some warning all on its own, yes?). It might also be kind of disgusting, as in AWWW, not EW; or maybe a little of both, depending on your perspective.
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes place at some vague point in early S6.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit. Title from the song Echoes by Pink Floyd.
Word Count: ~4,382
Summary: Sam has his eyes narrowed on the pool tables like he's thinking of dissecting them, and Dean's head doesn't even clear the bar-top. He wants a goddamn beer.
A/N: WIPs and overdue challenge-fics are giving me the hairy eyeball, I know. I'm working through my writing funk with baby steps. Actually didn't rewrite this one fifty times before posting, so there's that.
Written for this prompt at the 5th Dean-focused h/c comment-fic meme at hoodie_time. Unbetaed. It's maybe less traumatizing than it should be, but I'm bad at angst.
He's in another rundown bar somewhere between the Children Of The Corn fields of Nebraska and there's-no-place-like-home-thank-fuck-for-that Kansas. It's a semi-rowdy Friday night in a small town, haggard faces with too many shots under their belts, slumping and staggering and slurping to the beat of Seger's Old Time Rock And Roll, and there's a guy in the corner grinding a lit cigarette into another guy's cheek for not coughing up the cash on a money game. This is well-worn turf: nothing he wouldn't be able to handle any other day.
Today's special, though, for all the wrong reasons. Sam has his eyes narrowed on the pool tables like he's thinking of dissecting them, and Dean's head doesn't even clear the bar-top. He wants a goddamn beer.
"I want a goddamn beer," Dean says, voice high and mortifying and a little scratchy. The blue haze of cigarette smoke is irritating his throat more than it normally would. He kicks Sam's leg under the table for good measure, because the asshole's not even paying attention. Dean could be screaming bloody murder and halfway inside the pedophile van before Sam would even blink, and then it'd probably take him a few more minutes to decide whether or not going after him would be the logical course of action in his logical-like-a-serial-killer brain.
Sam flaps a dismissive hand at him.
"Sam," Dean hisses, ready to jump up on the table and stomp his feet around; his size is getting to him, maybe.
"What?" Dean slumps down in his seat at that flat stare, reminded of how much larger Sam is right now. "I'm working, Dean. You wanna stay a midget forever?"
"I'm your conscience," Dean mutters, like that's an argument.
"About the size of a cricket," Sam agrees, then goes back to scoping out the competition. Dean looks at Sam's hand curled loosely around his beer, bottle all golden and sweaty and forbidden, and Sam reminds him absently, "This was your idea."
It's true. It was Dean's idea. Some asshole with a grudge (demon, hunter, monster-the bitch wouldn't say) apparently took out a curse-contract on Dean's head. Something cruel but amusing, the witch had quoted back at them once they'd tracked her down. She wasn't unreasonable, she'd told them, just a businesswoman. She could be swayed. Dean wanted to sway her brains right out of her head with some buckshot, but he was officially up the beanstalk and life's unfair and it was Sam that got to do all the shooting. She was too old, though, too powerful, and Sam started to see things her way after spending a couple hours as a statue. With Cas answering prayers so sporadically lately, Sam agreed to buy back the contract, along with the original buyer's name. But then he'd also gone on to decide dropping Dean at Bobby's while he went off to rob a bank would be the quickest means to his end, and Dean had vetoed that nonsense flat out.
Dean grumbles, "Yeah, but you're taking too long," and scans the tables. There's a guy there, all whiskey-inspired grins and loose swagger, even looser with his money, twirling his cue like a baton after every shot. Dean points him out. "Cocky, drunk off his ass, easy pickin's. I mean, are you lookin' to write a book on this shit, or what?"
Sam slides his gaze to the mark, and it's then that Dean sees he wasn't assessing the players so much as ogling a barfly's leather-clad ass. It's a nice ass, definitely distracting, Dean can admit, but mixing work and play is a fine art. Sam clearly doesn't have it down, in any incarnation.
"Right. Good." Sam clears his throat and rubs his hands together, shoulders rolling like he's getting ready to do warm-up stretches.
Dean rolls his eyes at least three times before Sam gets up and leaves him to fend for himself in the gigantic corner booth that's all tucked away in the dark, without so much as a behave yourself, or else. Dean straightens and does his best to look street-tough, even if none of the roughnecks in here seem to care about the CPS investigation waiting to happen. If Sam was actually Sam he would have found a way to strap Dean to his back by now, but that's not anything to be dwelling on at the moment.
His sour mood lifts a little when he notices Sam left his half-finished beer. Glancing around quickly, he snatches it across the table and gulps it down. It's a fucking tease.
He looks around again.
Doesn't take long for Dean to discover just how little attention people pay their drinks.
-:-
A half hour at this ninja-boozehound business and he gets caught.
He's creeping up on a table near the kicked-to-hell-and-back jukebox, hand wrapped around a lipstick-smudged glass of something amber-colored, when the glass's owner turns and spots him. She's got teased black hair that's grown silver at the roots, though she doesn't look quite old enough to have gone gray, smiles down at him.
"Well, hey there," she says, all slurring joviality, doesn't seem to notice Dean's hand retreating oh-so-innocently to his pocket or the guilty flush he can feel burning his cheeks. "Aren't you just the cutest thing?"
The charming smirk Dean had all ready falls hard, because he is. He saw a mirror when this whole thing started and it's obscene how cute he is: freckles and sunny hedgehog hair and eyes too big for his head. He feels his face go hotter, and it gets her squealing at him like he's some lost puppy. It's annoying but he plays up the bashful angle and it works out. She doesn't ask him who he belongs to or threaten to call the cops on his asshole parents like any sane person should. What she does do is give him a handful of quarters for the jukebox.
Dean accepts them and moves on.
He's maybe a little bit unsteady on his feet by the time he clambers his way back up into the booth. Body weight is obviously a thing he's taking into account too late; the room is whirling all around, his whole mouth is on fire and his gut feels like Jello. He lifts his head with some effort and spots Sam, all blurred, colorful edges under the lamps and circling his latest opponent like a shark. Intimidation is clearly the best method, because Dean's been sneaking glances all night and Sam sucks at reading people but he sucks even worse at fooling people. Probably hasn't made even half of what they need yet, the hopeless automaton.
Sam keeps playing just this side of forever. Dean's eyelids weigh a thousand pounds and his bladder's not too happy with him, either. He wiggles around, hooded gaze flitting from Sam to the dark rectangle of hallway that leads to bathrooms straight out of Trainspotting. It's too dark to see very far down because the busted lightbulb back there probably hasn't seen hide nor hair of a replacement since it crapped out in the eighties, and maybe it's his booze-addled imagination, but that hallway looks shifty.
Dean startles when a gnarled hand pushes a mug of something muddy-brown in front of him. "Ain't got no hot chocolate, but I figured a dash of coffee and about twenty flavored creamers'd do the trick."
Dean looks up, face twisted in disgust. It's the bartender he'd dismissed as too crotchety to hand out liquor to babies at first glance. The guy's got a hound-dog face, white tee with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one sleeve, and hole-worn jeans, like he thinks he's James Dean, if he'd lived long enough to develop Alzheimer's.
He flashes a toothless grin, shrugs. "Grandkids seem to get a kick out of it, anyway."
"Beer would do the trick even better," Dean slurs moodily.
The guy outright hee-haws, knee-slapping and everything, like that's the funniest thing he's heard all century. Being short is bullshit.
"You'll do alright," he says, and slaps a soggy card down. It's a menu. "Know you're probably bored outta your skull over here. Sometimes the folks gotta do what they gotta do, though, right? Babysitters these days'd rather have your right arm than sympathize with a budget." He nods, face gone sour, and if he starts in on one of those back in my day lectures, Dean will sock him in the nose, he swears it. He's tired and small and not nearly drunk enough for this crap. "I understand it, and you're behavin' yourself better'n most, so you get hungry just pick out somethin' and I'll serve it up. No charge."
"Thank you," Dean manages. Weird concoctions aside, it's actually a decent gesture. No way is he actually eating anything in this dump, though.
"Ah, don't mention it." The guy gives Dean a considering look and reaches into his pocket for something, slaps a five down next. "There's a couple of games might interest you." He points to the end of the bar, at a battered row of bar-top slot machines and arcade games. "Need anything else, just holler."
When he finally turns to leave he runs smack-dab into a wall of Sam. A little mystified and just as startled, Dean glances up.
"Problem?" Sam asks. He hits that note of deceptive boredom right on the mark, looming there and oozing quiet danger, and for a second he looks like Sam, all unreasonably overprotective with his puffed-out chest and clenched fists-and kind of wavy, but that last part's probably the liquor. Dean feels this barbed thing slamming up behind his ribs. He told the asshole to cut that pretending shit out.
"Oh, no problem," the bartender says easily, grins and gives Sam a hearty smack on the back. Sam scowls. "Was just rewardin' your boy for good behavior, that's all." He winks at Dean and walks off.
Sam watches him go for a second, and Dean swears he looks confused, Or maybe pissed. Hard to tell if Sam's actually managing the edge of an emotion or if his robo-wires are just crossed. He turns that look on Dean.
"What?" Dean snaps. His bladder is staging a full-out mutiny and he can't sit still.
Sam twists his mouth up like he needs to put this tiny version of his brother under a microscope. "That guy just gave you money."
"Well, yeah. Kids are needy. 'Specially when their guardian leaves 'em alone in the middle of a seedy bar." Then, with marked disdain: "Doesn't hurt that I'm fuckin' adorable."
Sam visibly files this information away, frowns at Dean's little dance. "What's wrong with you?"
Dean doesn't want to say, but. "Gotta take a piss," he grumbles, looking away.
"So, go piss."
"I can hold it."
"I don't think you can." That's when Sam notes the way Dean's listing a little too far to the left, and the absence of his beer. "Are you drunk?"
Dean shrugs, wiggles around some more. "Maybe."
"Huh." Sam sits down, eyeballing the five-dollar-bill and pile of quarters again. "Kids shouldn't talk to strangers," he says.
Dean's scoff turns into a hiccup. "Right, like you care."
"Well, no," he admits, plucks the menu up and sprawls back with one arm stretched across the back of the booth. "But you're no good to me dead."
No good to him dead. No good to him shrunken. Dean has not forgotten that Sam thinks he's some animated weapon that needs more upkeep than most, and not a real person, but he could do without the verbal reminders. "How much we-hiccup-got?" he deflects.
"Not enough."
"And you're sitting here why?"
Sam waves the menu slowly, like Dean's brain has shrunken right along with the rest of him. "Food break."
"Jesus Christ," Dean huffs, and he can't take it anymore. He's going to explode. "Take me to the freakin' bathroom."
"What, you need me to hold your hand?"
"No, just." Dean squirms, and hiccups. "Watch the door."
"Scared, baby brother?"
"Shut the fuck up." Dean feels that barbed thing all in a frenzy behind his ribcage again. "Don't call me that. I'm not scared, I'm-hiccup-small. I mean, have you seen me?" He throws his tiny stick-arms in the air for emphasis. "I could slip and drown in a puddle like this!"
Sam smirks, tosses the menu down and gets up, offering Dean his hand.
"Don't push me, asshat." Dean slaps the hand away, thoughts of a few soon-to-be-relevant scenes from Chucky dancing through his head as he carefully navigates the tilting floor. "I might be little but I can still stab you in your ugly face."
Sam laughs like he'd welcome the challenge, and follows after him.
-:-
Sam is like some Pleasantville reject. The puppy eyes are too round, his smile too aw shucks, mister, shoulders too slumped. No one's buying the naive good-old-boy act he's trying to pull to speed things up.
Dean is fucking beat, can't take much more of this being upright thing, and he doesn't look forward to falling asleep again still trapped in this too-tight, too-soft shell. They spent two days tracking the source of the curse, and all of last night driving the fuck away from the bitch. Sleeping hasn't gone smoothly for a long while, but especially since his downsizing. He's still a grown-up in his head, for the most part, but his body's all unfamiliar and vulnerable and sometimes his emotions don't seem to fit right, like he's not as equipped as his larger self to handle the onslaught of... things. Quicker to anger, quicker to shriek in terror, stuff like that. Sooner he gets back to the car and his stash of uppers, the better.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Dean huffs when Sam misses another mark by a mile. The guy has his hands out trying to fend the over-earnest giant off, backing away slowly, so Dean hops down from his seat and stalks over to the tables. "I can't even believe how hard you suck at this," he says, and Sam scowls down at him. Jesus, he's really high up there.
"What the hell do you want from me?" Sam actually seems kind of exasperated, gripping his cue so hard it's sure to snap. "It's not like you could do better."
Dean scoffs. He's laid off on the drinking but he's still plenty buzzed, wouldn't even be allowed on any cool rollercoasters right now, and he could still do better than this. He snatches the pool stick out of Sam's hand. "Make yourself useful and get me somethin' to stand on."
-:-
Dean draws a crowd. They all think he's a hoot and a holler, dragging a wooden chair twice his size all around the table and talking all kinds of shit in that high-pitched, scratchy voice of his. They line up and he knocks 'em down, so eager to throw their money at him because, not only is it outrageously adorable that he wants to play with the big boys, he's actually backing up his smacktalk and then some. Best of all, no one wants to kick his ass for winning.
It started out with people chuckling and messing up his hair in that condescending, dismissive way adults have, until an indulgent trucker took him up on it. He'd only go as high as fifty cents, threw the game so blatantly Dean had been insulted. It helped him warm up, though, he won't lie. His limbs are stubby and balance is a little trickier but he got the hang of it.
Then Sam, standing off to the side and rubbing his chin thoughtfully, said, "Bet you five bucks he'd wipe the floor with you if you were actually trying."
"Oh yeah?" the guy said, beaming like Dean was the most awesome thing he'd ever seen, and a little more willing to make an effort since it was Sam's money. "You're on then, kid."
It snowballed from there. Some of the players are visibly miffed at being outdone by a foul-mouthed six-year-old, but it's not like they can do much more than lose good-naturedly with all these smitten witnesses. And it works in Dean's favor, because their pride won't let them stop challenging him.
He should've done this from the beginning, he thinks, while Sam stands there overdoing the proud papa bullshit and stuffing his pockets full of cash.
-:-
The night is packed tight with bug chatter and the kind of humidity that sits on your lungs, and the world's gone grainy and dull. Sam walks across the dark lot with his head down, fists full of money and counting it all happily, not even slowing his stilt legs so Dean can keep up.
Sam looks back, sighs, and pockets their winnings. "We're ready to deal and then some," he says, plucks Dean off the ground and tosses him over his shoulder to move things along.
Dean squeaks and flails for a few seconds but it's so much effort, so he settles for a mumbled, "Jackass," and goes limp. Sam kept him playing long after Dean was ready to call it quits and now his arms are leaden and throbbing, his throat aches and his head feels like a balloon. "There's child labor laws, ya know. You're lucky we're in Bad Parent Central or you'd be coolin' your heels in the clink, you slave-driving bastard," Dean grumbles when Sam shoves him in the backseat, tries to climb right back out.
"Speaking of laws." Sam pushes him in again. "Don't need to get pulled over. Stay."
"M'not a dog."
"Good boy," Sam says when Dean does as he's told, ruffles his hair and slams the door.
Dean climbs over the seats and greets Sam with a cold smirk as soon as he drops behind the wheel. Sam shakes his head and starts the car, and Dean pops open the glovebox, rifles around inside before settling back with his plastic baggies to sort through them.
"You're kind of a gold mine like this," Sam decides after a few minutes.
"Forget it. M'not stayin' a kid." He does his best to identify what he's holding in the dark, open road all blackness and smog, too close to the city for any stars or much moonlight, not close enough for artificial light. Sam is quiet for far too long, so Dean squints up at him. "Forget it, Sam. I'll go rabid chihuahua on your ass and chew your fucking neck open. Can't take it with you."
"Anyone ever tell you you're kind of a kill-joy?"
"Your face is kind of a kill-joy," Dean mutters, finds what he's looking for and stuffs the rest back into its hidey hole.
Sam looks over meaningfully, and Dean rolls his eyes and crawls into the back again, hunkers down in the nest he's made. They've got a long drive ahead; Sam doesn't sleep and Dean is small enough to not be cramped and uncomfortable using the backseat for a bed, so they've been going like this for a while. Not that Dean will be sleeping. He plans to stare at the roof and think shallow, trippy thoughts, because pretending to zonk out keeps Sam from talking to him any more than is necessary.
Sam glances in the rear view. "What're you taking?"
"Not your business," Dean growls, and Sam shrugs it off like Dean knew he would. Can't help but feel disappointed that he hasn't been smothered in ten layers of bubble wrap and thrown in a kid-proofed bunker already, though.
He takes his pills and lays down.
-:-
The world is vibrating.
It's the most amazing thing Dean has ever experienced and the way his heart's bouncing around in his chest like a ping-pong ball on super-fast-forward is kind of thrilling like-like-like Dean is super and there's nothing in all the universe that can bring him down because he's got sonic heart powers or maybe something that sounds less Care Bear and more Batman but anyway he is glorious and unstoppable and he doesn't care what Sam says about heart attacks and pulling over in the grass and the open sky and star-light star-bright wind on his face and Sam can't even catch him and he doesn't want Sam catching him because Sam is not-Sammy and Dean is fine Dean is awesome and.
Oh.
He's gonna puke.
-:-
"You're a disgusting little creature, you know that?"
Life is mean and unfair, and guts are cruel, unnecessary things, because Dean is still functioning after vomiting all his insides up, but somehow they're still tormenting him from the floor of the car.
"I should sell you on the Black Market."
That won't work because Dean is damaged goods. His brain is melting. "What a world," he croaks, and passes out.
-:-
He wakes up choking on a scream, and then just choking. Blinks fast, wet eyes and sawed-open skin and shrieks and red film that all fades to blurry yellows and decrepit grays and cool, moldy air. He's shaking, burning up. An ass-flavored porcupine has made itself at home in his windpipe, and refuses to heed his eviction notices.
"S-Sam," he splutters pathetically. "M'dyin'."
"Close, but no cigar," comes the unsympathetic answer, and Dean remembers and almost wants the nightmares back.
His eyeballs feel like pools of lava. He blinks some more. The blur becomes a dented, water-stained ceiling that he can't quite make sense of yet. "Where are we?"
"Motel."
"Why?"
"Because you were acting like a maniac. A tiny, crack-smoking maniac," Sam says. There's a rustle, something soggy-warm and rough peeling itself off of Dean's forehead. Sam's holding a washcloth and looking down, entirely unimpressed with the specimen before him. "I couldn't drive with you ricocheting around the car, and I wasn't gonna sit there watching you streak across fields all night." Sam walks off, and then there's the sound of running water from some distant land. "You're lucky you didn't go tumbling off a cliff before I caught you."
Dean frowns, tries to move but he's heavy, stomach rolling and twisting. "Guess I misjudged the dosage," he mutters, gives up and coughs again.
"Guess you did," Sam says, back with that same washcloth dripping water down his arm before he slaps it on Dean's head again. "Guess you also managed to contract the plague while you were at it."
Dean's whole body jolts with the unwelcome shock, "Jesus, that's fucking cold!"
"You re-decorated the Impala with your internal organs, by the way," Sam goes on, unmoved. "I tried to clean it but now it smells like lemon-scented puke, so I'm letting it air out." He shuffles around the room, shoves more pills in Dean's face. Dean feels bile crawling up his throat and looks away. "You're gross like this. Soon as you can stand upright I'm leaving you on Bobby's doorstep in a basket while I deal with the witch. Take this."
"No," Dean says. "M'cleanin' up my act."
"Sure you are. Until next time. Anyway, it's just Tylenol."
"Don't wannit."
"Fine. Slow-bake your brain, have a seizure, die and render all my hard work pointless." Sam sets the pills and a glass of water in plain view on the nightstand, like he thinks Dean's a skittish stray and the medicine's a bowl of milk. "You could use a bath. Think you can handle it?"
Dean feels downright disgusting, hot and gritty and stinky, but moving is not on his list of things to attempt again in the immediate future, so: "M'good here."
Sam flips off the lamp over Dean's bed, moves back to his own, where a book is laid open on his bedspread. He picks it up and sprawls back to read. Dean turns his back on the whole thing, tries not to give in to the weight of sore, overheated eyelids and razor-wire thoughts. But he's little and everything else is too big and he stands no chance at all, so he sleeps.
Hell isn't waiting for him. This time it's power lines and wheat fields and the highway, Sam slumped awkwardly in the passenger's seat and his drool-slick mouth gaping like his jaw's come unhinged. There's a plastic spoon dangling from his nose and a camera phone in Dean's hand. The sky opens up and pours out bloody fire, the Devil comes to play in a boneyard that falls away into an abyss, and then it's just Dean bolting upright with a fierce, irreparable ache in his stupid little-kid chest, and gunk rattling around in his lungs with every pant.
"What're you doing?" Sam says, looking up from his book and watching Dean's pitiful approach suspiciously.
Dean sniffs and wipes at his snot-clogged nose, smacks Sam's knee. "Just move over."
"No."
"Why?" Dean whines, and he knows he's whining but he's not in the mood to be logical or even all that argumentative. He just wants, and Sam can damn well cater to him just this once. "It's not like I take up that much space."
Sam eyes him like he's grown two heads and lost both of them. "You're slimy and it's my bed and you'd be... invading it. Like a baby alien."
"Just. Pretend you give a shit." Dean clambers and grunts his way up, out of breath again by the time he makes it. He shoves at Sam some more, and Sam makes annoyed faces but goes, letting Dean burrow under the bedclothes and cling to his side.
"You told me not to pretend," Sam points out once all that hullabaloo is done with, arms raised like he doesn't know what to do with them.
"M'liftin' the ban." Dean coughs into the sheets, wishes Sam would stop talking and ruining his delusions. "Temporarily."
"Fine. You want me to sing you a lullaby?"
"Pretend you give a shit quietly."
Sam shuts up, and Dean closes his eyes. No giant hands fall on his back to rub circles, no one's watching him not-sleep like a creepy stalker, and Sam doesn't even make that much of an effort to not knock Dean off the bed with all his uncomfortable shifting.
Dean's too old for make-believe but he's not too big, not tonight, so he does his damnedest to pretend for the both of them.
END