How to Break a Curse in One Thousand Not So Easy Steps 2/2
Title: How to Break a Curse in One Thousand Not So Easy Steps
Author: tifaching
Recipient: cherry916
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: The prompt wanted 22 year old Sam hunting with John and getting cursed, so here is my version of what the Winchesters were doing between Dean Man's Blood and Salvation.
Summary: John annoys the wrong fairy and Sam ends up cursed. It's going to take some doing to get him back to himself again.
Twelve
“Ooooh, Sammy. Check that one out.”
“Leave me alone, Dean.” Sam resolutely stared at his slice of pizza and tried to ignore his brother.
“Come on, Francis. Just take a look, it’s not like you’re going to go blind.”
“Dean! No! Would you please just leave me alone?” The tips of Sam’s ears were turning red and he shot a glance at his father, who was apparently ignoring the two of them while marking something down on that stupid paper he carried around everywhere.
“That girl over there has a book. She must be your type. Don’t you want to go over and review it for her?”
Sam glanced at the girl two tables down and she was kind of cute. His age with short brown hair, freckles and a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone propped up in front of her. There was no way he was going over there to talk to her though. Girls were Dean’s thing; just something else he was sure he’d never be as good as his big brother at.
“Come on, Sam. Wizards, witches, evil beings, ghosts; you love all that stuff. You could give her an education, yes you could.” Dean waggled his eyebrows as his brother stared at him suspiciously.
“No, I don’t ‘love all that stuff’. You love all that stuff. Wait. How do you know what that book is about? Did you read it?”
“I didn’t have to read it. Everybody in the whole world knows what it’s about. What, you think I live in a hole?”
“I don’t know what it’s about. I’ve never even heard of it.”
Now Dean’s gaze was the one that was suspicious. “Yes you have.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have.”
“No, I haven’t.”
John pinched the bridge of his nose and fought the urge to tell Dean that he was way too old for this kind of back and forth with a twelve year old. From the looks they were getting from some of the adults surrounding them in the food court it might not be long before someone else did it for him and wouldn’t that just be the icing on the cake. He wasn’t going to interfere himself until the argument ran down, idiotic as it was. Popular culture wasn’t something John spent much time recognizing, but even he was pretty sure that Harry Potter had burst onto the scene well after Sam was twelve. He sighed and thought that if Dean would have this kind of stupid, pointless argument with Sam more often, his brother would already be back to himself.
“Excuse me.” A small voice interrupted Dean in the middle of his comeback and both he and his brother stared at the girl who was shyly smiling at Sam. Dean grinned and turned his attention back to his pizza while Sam’s cheeks pinked up to match his ears.
“Um, hi,” Sam said uncertainly, kicking Dean’s ankle under the table when his brother snickered.
“Hi,” the girl returned. “I heard you, um, talking and I just, um, here.” She held the book out to Sam.
“Oh,” Sam replied, startled. “No. I mean, thanks, but I can’t take your book.”
“It’s okay,” she said, laying it on the table. “I’ve already read it a few times and I think it’s so awesome that everyone should read it.” She leaned in toward Sam and whispered like she was telling a secret. “It’s way better than the movie.”
“A girl after your own heart, Sammy,” Dean murmured, then grimaced as his brother’s foot connected with his ankle again.
“Well, if you’re sure,” Sam smiled back at the girl and it turned out she blushed just as adorably as he did. “I’d love to read it.”
“Great!” She took a deep breath and held out her hand. “I’m Allie.”
“Sam.”
John and Dean hid grins at the handshake, which lasted a fraction of a second and ended with the two pre-teens separating like they’d been scalded. Dean at twelve had been getting more than handshakes, but Sam had been a much slower bloomer.
“Well,” Allie looked wistfully back at her table, “I’ve got to go now. Maybe I’ll see you here again sometime.”
“Maybe,” Sam answered, his eyes following her until she disappeared down the hallway.
“So, loverboy.” This time Dean kicked Sam under the table. “Want to come back here tomorrow and see what else you can score off of the ladies?”
“No.” Sam picked up the book and tried to ignore his brother, but Dean wasn’t having it.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
John rolled his eyes and grabbed his tray. “All right, you two. We’re leaving before you get us thrown out.” He headed for the exit, Sam and Dean falling in behind him. He gritted his teeth, keeping both hands on the steering wheel and mentally keeping count as the argument continued all the way back to the motel.
Fourteen
Sam walked through the door with a face like his father’s after a bad hunt and threw himself onto the bed. “How come you never take me anywhere, Dean?” he asked with a scowl. “Why does Dad have to spend every second of every day following me around?”
And so it begins, Dean thought with a twinge of frustration. Sam still had hundreds of nos to get through and it was probably going to be a fight for every last one of them. “You didn’t have a good time?”
“No,” Sam replied, as his father slammed the door and tossed two plastic bags at him. He gave his brother a look like Dean had just asked if he enjoyed poking his eyeballs with red hot pokers. “We went clothes shopping.”
“And you’re pissed because Dad didn’t get you all the latest in geeky teen wear?”
“No,” Sam muttered, pulling a couple of balled up t-shirts and a pair of faded jeans out of one of the bags. “I’m pissed because he didn’t get me much that I could wear at all.” Sam shook out the jeans and held them in front of him. “You could fit two of me in here.”
Dean stared at the waist of the jeans and formed a mental picture of Sam inside of them. “Maybe one and a half,” he conceded. “That’s not too bad. We’ll get you a belt.”
“A belt?”
Dean hadn’t thought it was possible for his brother to look more angry, but apparently he was wrong. It had always been way too easy to push Sammy’s buttons. “You don’t think a belt will help?”
“No, I don’t think a belt will help. Look at the legs, Dean!”
Dean’s gaze followed Sam’s frown, from the waist of the jeans down the legs to Sam’s feet and beyond. The blue denim clashed with the mustard yellow carpet for a good twelve inches past where it should have ended at Sam’s ankles. Dean tried to keep his expression serious as he cocked an eyebrow at his father.
John just shrugged. “It’s not going to be long before we need those and they were the only pair in the whole place that was going to be long enough. Figured I might as well pick them up now. Given how much grief he already gave me at the store, I’m thinking that his arguing over them here will only make them useful that much more quickly.”
Dean winced as he pictured Sam and his father fighting over Sam’s wardrobe at the second hand store. “Sorry I missed it,” he said, turning his attention back to his brother. “It’s okay, shrimp,” he said earnestly, trying to look sincere. “We’ll just roll up the cuffs.”
“Roll up the cuffs?” Sam curled his lip at Dean. “They’d go all the way up to my knees!”
“So, you don’t want to roll up the cuffs, then?”
“No! Dean, this is stupid!”
“Come on, Sammy. Before you know it, you’ll be wearing them.” It was true, Dean thought. Given the time frame so far, Sam would be wearing those pants in anywhere from a week to ten days.
“No I won’t.” Sam’s face fell a little. “These jeans would even be too long for you. I’ll never fit into them.”
Dean was never quite sure what his brother saw when he looked at him. Did he see the nineteen year old that should be with him right now? Did he see the hardened hunter to whom he was the whole world? Whichever it was, Sammy still saw someone he could look up to. The time was coming, Dean remembered with a sinking feeling, when that would no longer be true in any sense.
“You’ll be as tall as me some day, Sammy. Maybe even taller. I bet you’ll even be taller than Dad.”
“No way.” Sam flashed a quick look at his father before looking back at Dean. His lips turned up as he grinned at the thought. “Taller than Dad? You really think so?”
“I know so, Sam.” Dean grabbed the jeans and tossed them onto the bed. “I have a feeling that before you’re done sprouting even those will be too short.”
“I doubt it,” Sam retorted, but his smile lifted Dean’s heart. Maybe all out warfare could be avoided after all.
Sixteen
“Dean! I said no! How many more times are you going to make me say it?”
Dean sighed wearily and shot a beleaguered glance his father’s way. “What’s the count now?”
“Thirty-three until sixteen is over and done with, thank Christ,” John muttered. “Two hundred and thirty-three until he’s back to normal.”
“Two hundred and thirty-three, Sammy.”
“Two hundred and thirty-three what, dumbass?”
“I’m going to make you say “no” two hundred and thirty-three more times, Princess.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.” Sam grabbed the reference book Dean had stolen from the library and stormed toward his bedroom.
“Want help with that research, Sammy?” Dean called after him.
“Not from you!” Sam yelled back.
“Could you be a little more specific?”
“No!” Sam punctuated the word with a slamming door and Dean turned to his father with a grin. There was no point in even trying to broker a detente now. Sam at sixteen had been a typical teenage nightmare of defiance and hormones and he was no different the second time around. “Two hundred and thirty-two.”
John buried his head in his hands. “Terrific.”
Eighteen
Less than two hundred to go, Dean kept telling himself. We can do this.
Eighteen was going to be like walking a tightrope, Dean thought. Sam could just pack up and leave if he wanted to. Would just pack up and leave. Had just packed up and left.
His brother was getting restless, getting ready; Dean recognized the signs. He hadn’t realized what he was seeing the first time, but with the benefit of hindsight, he knew. Sam had a ticket to everything he wanted out of life and he was just itching to be on his way.
He was also avoiding their father like the plague. Sam wasn’t a little kid anymore and it wasn’t possible for John to keep him in his back pocket all the time. That was ratcheting up the tension when they were together even more. At this rate, Sam was going to take off for Palo Alto before they got the requisite hundred out of him. And that wasn’t going to work out well for anyone.
John was getting just as restive as his son, unable to leave to hunt the fairy, both because missing any words from Sam would drag this out even longer and if the fairy managed to take him out, Sam might be stuck at eighteen forever. The demon was on his mind too. It hadn’t turned up on any of his searches yet, but John knew that it was just a matter of time and Sam had to be himself again before that hunt resumed.
Dean was in the middle, just like he’d been back in that last miserable summer together but this time he had surprise on his side. He knew Sam was going and Sam didn’t know he knew. Dean could work with that. He had to- there was nothing else up his sleeve. Well, there was one thing. He could give the truth one last try.
Sam had been quiet all day, moodily reading in a chair outside their motel room door. He didn’t look up as Dean dropped down beside him, only reacting when the bottle of beer his brother held out dripped a bead of condensation onto his book.
“Dean,” he hissed. “Watch you you’re doing. And the drinking age here is twenty-one. All I need is to get busted for underage drinking now.”
Dean looked around the seedy motel parking lot. No one was paying them any mind. “Don’t think anyone here is going to turn you in, Sammy. And you’re twenty-two, so you’re safe anyway.”
Sam shot him an aggrieved look. “Just because the fake i.d. you made for me says that doesn’t make it true, Dean.”
Dean sighed and dropped newspaper on top of his brother’s book. “What year was this published, Francis?”
“What, you forgot your numbers?” Sam grumbled, but he picked the paper up and glanced at the date. “2002.”
“I forgot my numbers?” Dean scoffed. “It says 2006, Sam.”
“No, it doesn’t! Did you hit your head or something? It says 2002! If it were 2006 I’d already...” He trailed off, giving his brother a sidelong glance.
“You’d already what?” Dean challenged. “Already have graduated from Stanford? Already be applying to law school in California? What would you have already done, Sam?”
Sam’s expression wavered between shock and anger. “How did you...?”
“How did I know you’re going to college? Because it’s freakin’ 2006 and Stanford’s been there, done that. I wish I could say this “normal life” thing is going to work out for you, I really do. But it’s not, so why don't you just plan on staying here,”
“God, Dean, could you sound any more crazy? Now tell me how you found out!”
“I found out four years ago when you told me. When you left us to go to college.”
“Does Dad know?” Sam asked, eyes narrowing.
“Yeah, he knows. What part of ‘all this has happened before’ aren’t you getting?”
“The part where it didn’t all happen before.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, Dean,” Sam snapped. “I don’t believe you. What you’re saying is nuts. How could all this have already happened?”
“Well,” Dean took a deep breath- this hadn’t ever worked when he’d tried it before, but hey, you never know, “you were cursed. You started out being a two-year old and we’ve been in a holding pattern for weeks waiting for you to grow all the way back up again by saying no to Dad.”
Sam shook his head in disgust. “I don’t know why I’m even listening to you.” He tossed his unopened beer bottle back into Dean’s lap. “And I’m too young to drink in public, no matter what crazy idea you’ve got.”
Dean opened Sam’s beer, grimacing as it foamed over his fingers. Well, that probably pushed him right out the door, he thought. His brother had gone back inside and he settled into his chair, sure that he could hear Sam’s upcoming conversation with their father through the open window as well as Dad had heard Sam’s with him.
“So,” Sam said hesitantly. “Dean says you know I’m planning on going to Stanford.”
“I do. I’ve known for a while.” John kept his voice matter of fact.
“How come you didn’t say anything?”
“Would anything I say keep you from going?”
“No.” Sam’s voice was quiet but determined.
“Would anything I do keep you from going?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the point of saying or doing anything?”
“To keep me from going? There isn’t one. But you could have said ‘congratulations, son. I’m proud of you.’ You could have talked to me about what my plans are or what I’m going to study. The point would have been to show you give a damn.”
“Congratulations, son.” Dean stood up and looked in the window in time to see his father shake Sam’s hand. “And I am proud of you. I always have been. How long before you have to leave?”
“About six weeks,” Sam answered, eyeing his father perplexedly.
“Great,” John said with a smile. “That should give us plenty of time to get everything said that we need to say.”
Dean sank back into his chair with a relieved sigh and chugged his beer. Six weeks. So far the longest Sam had stayed at one age was four days. They weren’t going to lose him again.
Twenty
The ramshackle cabin they were holed up in now was isolated far from the edge of town. John and Dean had no illusions at all about how Sam at twenty would react to being back with his family instead of at Stanford.
“What the hell,” Sam bellowed, sound carrying far into the surrounding countryside, “am I doing here?”
“Take it easy, Sammy,” Dean said cautiously holding up a hand. “Don’t you remember anything?”
“No!” Sam yelled. “What did you do? Roofie me and bring me to this dump to try an intervention? I’m not coming back, Dean!”
“He said take it easy, son,” John snapped. “And we didn’t bring you anywhere. We found you here.
“Found me,” Sam replied in disbelief. “What, I was lost?”
“More like taken against your will,” Dean answered, hoping his brother would buy the story they’d cooked up.
“Taken?” Sam eyed his brother suspiciously. “Taken by who? You?”
“Taken by whom, is more like it, Sam.” Dean fought a smile at his brother’s bitchface. “But in your case it was more of a what. You sure you don’t remember?”
“No,” Sam whispered. “I don’t. Why don’t I remember?”
“What’s the last thing you do remember?” John asked settling into a chair, his eyes never leaving his pacing son.
“I was having dinner with Jess.” Sam’s eyes widened in horror. “Jess! I’ve got to go.” He fumbled in his pocket as he headed for the door. “Where are my keys?”
John blocked the door as Dean slowly approached his brother. “You don’t have keys, Sammy. However you got here, you didn’t drive.”
“Then give me your keys.” Sam demanded. “I’ve got to get back there and make sure she’s okay.”
Any humor Dean had felt evaporated at his brother’s panic. He swallowed the lump of grief in his throat as he lied to Sam’s face. “She’s fine, Sam. We checked on her, don’t worry. But you’ve got to stay here until we figure out what took you and why. If you go back, it might just come after you again and this time she could get hurt.”
Sam nodded slowly, though his fists were clenched with the effort of holding himself still. “You’re sure she’s okay?”
John nodded, turning away before he met his son’s eyes. “Sit down Sam. We need to go over everything that happened before you lost your memory.”
Sam’s jaw tightened, but he sank onto one of the beds. “There was nothing,” he said angrily. “No strange people, no strange smells, no cold spots. I would have noticed.”
“Would you?” Dean hated himself at this moment. “You’ve been out of the game for a while now. You sure you’re not just a civilian now? Think maybe you lost your touch?”
“No,” Sam said, between gritted teeth. “No, I’m not a civilian like I wish the hell I was. And no, I haven’t lost my touch.”
“We’ll figure this out, son.” John’s voice was gentle, soothing, but Sam was having none of it.
“Damn right, we will,” he growled. “Because I am not staying here.”
“Let’s get started, then. Have you had any memory lapses before this?”
“No,” Sam answered tersely.
“No missing time, no blank spots?”
“No.”
John led Sam through every question he could think of, getting the same answer every time, until everyone involved was exhausted and aggravated. “Get some sleep, boys. We’ll pick this up again in the morning.” When neither moved, he added, “That’s an order.”
“No,” Sam argued, stifling a yawn. “I want to keep going.”
“Go to sleep, Sam. If you’re tired you might forget something and this will take even longer to figure out.”
Sam nodded and reluctantly stretched out on one of the beds. Within moments he was asleep.
“I’ll take first watch,” John told Dean. “He’ll try to take off if we’re not careful.”
Dean took the other bed and soon his deep breathing joined Sam’s. John watched them and made plans for tomorrow. This age had to be gotten over and done with quickly or there could be real trouble.
The next day passed the same as the first one had, with Sam getting angrier and more anxious about Jessica. They were just a few “nos” short of a hundred when Dean called a break. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife and it wouldn’t take much for everything to come to an incendiary head. A cooling off period was a necessity and a longstanding Winchester tradition. Unfortunately neither John nor Dean noticed that Sam had snagged Dean’s cell phone before they headed out to get some fresh air. By the time they came back inside it was too late.
“I tried calling her,” Sam said, staring blankly at the phone in his hand, “but there was someone else at her number. So I called her parents.”
Dean’s heart stopped, frozen in his chest at the rage flaring from his brother’s eyes. “Sam,” he started, then hesitated, not knowing what to say.
“You told me she was safe,” Sam said softly, a terrifying anger in his voice. “But she’s not, is she?”
Dean shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Did you know that her parents think I killed her,” Sam asked in that same low voice. “What did I do, Dean?”
“You didn’t do anything. You didn’t hurt Jessica.”
“Did whatever was possessing me do it?”
“No! Get that thought out of your head. You tried to save her; you would never have hurt her.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, burning into his brother. “How do you know what I did? Were you there when she died?”
“Dean,” John warned, but his son ignored him.
“I was there. And I saw you try to help her. But there was no way, Sammy. She died like mom, and there was no way to save her.”
“Like mom?” Sam scoffed. “You expect me to believe that? I don’t know what game you’re playing here, but you’ve been lying to me this whole time and I’m out of here.”
“You’re staying here, Sam,” John said firmly. “It’s not safe for you out there.”
“No way,” Sam replied. “Jess is dead and you’ve been lying to me about it since I got here. You can both go to hell.” He pushed past Dean and headed for the door, only to come around swinging when his father grabbed his arm.
“I said you’re staying here,” John growled, pinning his struggling son against the cabin wall.
“And I said no,” Sam shouted back, trying to break his father’s grip.
John shifted slightly and lost his grasp on Sam’s shirt as it stretched across the younger man’s chest so tightly that there was nothing left to hold onto. They’d learned to get Sam’s pants a size larger than he needed so, while the hem was suddenly an inch or two above his sneaker tops, the legs didn’t look like two sausages joined at the crotch.
John stepped back a few paces and exchanged a relieved glance with Dean, who had been blocking the door. “Finally,” they sighed in unison.
Twenty-two
Sam stood frozen against the sagging wall, gaze flicking nervously between his father and his brother. “Christo,” he muttered, his expression clearing as neither pair of eyes flashed black. “What happened,” he asked plaintively. “We were in the woods with the fairy...” he winced and rubbed his aching head. “Weren’t we?”
John nodded. “We were.”
“So how did we get here?” Sam took in the duffles spread across the room and the obvious signs of a struggle. “Wait...this isn’t where we were staying.” He stared at his father accusingly. “What the hell happened, Dad?”
“I should have listened to you, Sam,” John admitted, shocking both of his sons.
“About what?” Sam asked.
“About having a better plan. About having more backup.” John rubbed his mouth in chagrin. “You were right and I should have listened to you.”
“So what did happen?” Sam demanded.
John sighed and nodded at Dean. “Why don’t you fill your brother in while I do a little recon. There hasn’t been a peep out of the damned thing since it cursed Sam. Maybe it’s already gone.”
“Dad,” Dean said at the same time his brother said, “cursed?”
“Don’t worry, Dean. I’ll be careful.” He grinned as he headed out the door. “Sammy, have we got a story for you.”
Dean stared at the door until Sam punched him in the arm. “Dean! Tell me! What happened after Dad and I ran into the fairy.”
“Well,” Dean grinned, worry over his father sidelined for the moment, “apparently this fairy didn’t like Dad using the word “no” to it. So it cursed you back to a two year old who had to say “no” to Dad a thousand times before you’d be yourself again.”
“I was two years old?” Sam looked horrified. “How long did it take for me to be me again?”
“You were always you Sam, no matter what age you were. But you weren’t two the whole time, thank God. For every hundred “nos” you aged two years. So we got a kind of sampling of little, medium and large Sammy until we got back to extra large again.” Dean sat on the bed and patted the mattress beside him. “Have a seat Francis and I’ll tell you the story of Sam and the Thousand “Nos”.”
When John returned Dean was practically rolling on the floor with laughter and even Sam was grinning widely.
“Tell me about the last one, Dean. How did you get me all the way back?”
Dean’s smile died and he straightened up on the bed. “No, Sam. I don’t want to talk about that one. You were supposed to be at Stanford and...it wasn’t at all fun or funny and it won’t do any good to dredge it all up again.” He met his brother’s eyes seriously. “Okay?”
Sam nodded slowly, thought it was clear he wanted to know. “Okay, Dean.”
They both turned to their father with questioning looks as John shrugged and dropped into a chair. “It was gone,” he said angrily. “The retrieval spell I tried didn’t work. Unless the fairy returns them, I think those boys are gone for good.” John’s hand strayed to the back pocket of his jeans, fingering the envelope he’d tucked into it. The fairy had been gone, but it had left him a message.
In silver ink, on fine white paper, it had written in an elegant hand:
Mortal,
We will not meet again, you and I, but I have foreseen that on another day, your sons will cross my path. Think on that and despair.
John thought on that and managed not to despair. Any supernatural being that thought crossing paths with his sons was a good thing had a nasty surprise in store for it. Next time, they’d be ready for it. “All right, boys,” he said. “We’ve been stuck here long enough. Pack up, we’re moving out.”
“Where to?” Dean asked.
“Got a lead on a nice straightforward angry spirit we could check out,” John replied.
“No chance of Sammy here, getting himself cursed back to an itty bitty baby again?”
“Bite me,” Sam said with a grin. “I was an adorable kid.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Dean grabbed his duffle and raced his brother to the door. “But trust me, Sammy. Twice was enough.”
John followed more slowly, watching his boys roughhouse on the way to the car. For a moment he wished that he could make both of them small again; start all over, but only for a moment. The time for changing anything with his sons was long past. The demon hadn’t shown itself, but it was looming on the horizon, he could feel it. He closed his eyes and remembered Sammy’s wide eyed innocence and the happiness on Dean’s face as he played with his little brother. The fairy thought that it had cursed them, but actually it had given them a gift. Time enough to sit in one place and just be a family, if only for a little while. It was enough. It would have to be.
Author: tifaching
Recipient: cherry916
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: The prompt wanted 22 year old Sam hunting with John and getting cursed, so here is my version of what the Winchesters were doing between Dean Man's Blood and Salvation.
Summary: John annoys the wrong fairy and Sam ends up cursed. It's going to take some doing to get him back to himself again.
Twelve
“Ooooh, Sammy. Check that one out.”
“Leave me alone, Dean.” Sam resolutely stared at his slice of pizza and tried to ignore his brother.
“Come on, Francis. Just take a look, it’s not like you’re going to go blind.”
“Dean! No! Would you please just leave me alone?” The tips of Sam’s ears were turning red and he shot a glance at his father, who was apparently ignoring the two of them while marking something down on that stupid paper he carried around everywhere.
“That girl over there has a book. She must be your type. Don’t you want to go over and review it for her?”
Sam glanced at the girl two tables down and she was kind of cute. His age with short brown hair, freckles and a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone propped up in front of her. There was no way he was going over there to talk to her though. Girls were Dean’s thing; just something else he was sure he’d never be as good as his big brother at.
“Come on, Sam. Wizards, witches, evil beings, ghosts; you love all that stuff. You could give her an education, yes you could.” Dean waggled his eyebrows as his brother stared at him suspiciously.
“No, I don’t ‘love all that stuff’. You love all that stuff. Wait. How do you know what that book is about? Did you read it?”
“I didn’t have to read it. Everybody in the whole world knows what it’s about. What, you think I live in a hole?”
“I don’t know what it’s about. I’ve never even heard of it.”
Now Dean’s gaze was the one that was suspicious. “Yes you have.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have.”
“No, I haven’t.”
John pinched the bridge of his nose and fought the urge to tell Dean that he was way too old for this kind of back and forth with a twelve year old. From the looks they were getting from some of the adults surrounding them in the food court it might not be long before someone else did it for him and wouldn’t that just be the icing on the cake. He wasn’t going to interfere himself until the argument ran down, idiotic as it was. Popular culture wasn’t something John spent much time recognizing, but even he was pretty sure that Harry Potter had burst onto the scene well after Sam was twelve. He sighed and thought that if Dean would have this kind of stupid, pointless argument with Sam more often, his brother would already be back to himself.
“Excuse me.” A small voice interrupted Dean in the middle of his comeback and both he and his brother stared at the girl who was shyly smiling at Sam. Dean grinned and turned his attention back to his pizza while Sam’s cheeks pinked up to match his ears.
“Um, hi,” Sam said uncertainly, kicking Dean’s ankle under the table when his brother snickered.
“Hi,” the girl returned. “I heard you, um, talking and I just, um, here.” She held the book out to Sam.
“Oh,” Sam replied, startled. “No. I mean, thanks, but I can’t take your book.”
“It’s okay,” she said, laying it on the table. “I’ve already read it a few times and I think it’s so awesome that everyone should read it.” She leaned in toward Sam and whispered like she was telling a secret. “It’s way better than the movie.”
“A girl after your own heart, Sammy,” Dean murmured, then grimaced as his brother’s foot connected with his ankle again.
“Well, if you’re sure,” Sam smiled back at the girl and it turned out she blushed just as adorably as he did. “I’d love to read it.”
“Great!” She took a deep breath and held out her hand. “I’m Allie.”
“Sam.”
John and Dean hid grins at the handshake, which lasted a fraction of a second and ended with the two pre-teens separating like they’d been scalded. Dean at twelve had been getting more than handshakes, but Sam had been a much slower bloomer.
“Well,” Allie looked wistfully back at her table, “I’ve got to go now. Maybe I’ll see you here again sometime.”
“Maybe,” Sam answered, his eyes following her until she disappeared down the hallway.
“So, loverboy.” This time Dean kicked Sam under the table. “Want to come back here tomorrow and see what else you can score off of the ladies?”
“No.” Sam picked up the book and tried to ignore his brother, but Dean wasn’t having it.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
John rolled his eyes and grabbed his tray. “All right, you two. We’re leaving before you get us thrown out.” He headed for the exit, Sam and Dean falling in behind him. He gritted his teeth, keeping both hands on the steering wheel and mentally keeping count as the argument continued all the way back to the motel.
Fourteen
Sam walked through the door with a face like his father’s after a bad hunt and threw himself onto the bed. “How come you never take me anywhere, Dean?” he asked with a scowl. “Why does Dad have to spend every second of every day following me around?”
And so it begins, Dean thought with a twinge of frustration. Sam still had hundreds of nos to get through and it was probably going to be a fight for every last one of them. “You didn’t have a good time?”
“No,” Sam replied, as his father slammed the door and tossed two plastic bags at him. He gave his brother a look like Dean had just asked if he enjoyed poking his eyeballs with red hot pokers. “We went clothes shopping.”
“And you’re pissed because Dad didn’t get you all the latest in geeky teen wear?”
“No,” Sam muttered, pulling a couple of balled up t-shirts and a pair of faded jeans out of one of the bags. “I’m pissed because he didn’t get me much that I could wear at all.” Sam shook out the jeans and held them in front of him. “You could fit two of me in here.”
Dean stared at the waist of the jeans and formed a mental picture of Sam inside of them. “Maybe one and a half,” he conceded. “That’s not too bad. We’ll get you a belt.”
“A belt?”
Dean hadn’t thought it was possible for his brother to look more angry, but apparently he was wrong. It had always been way too easy to push Sammy’s buttons. “You don’t think a belt will help?”
“No, I don’t think a belt will help. Look at the legs, Dean!”
Dean’s gaze followed Sam’s frown, from the waist of the jeans down the legs to Sam’s feet and beyond. The blue denim clashed with the mustard yellow carpet for a good twelve inches past where it should have ended at Sam’s ankles. Dean tried to keep his expression serious as he cocked an eyebrow at his father.
John just shrugged. “It’s not going to be long before we need those and they were the only pair in the whole place that was going to be long enough. Figured I might as well pick them up now. Given how much grief he already gave me at the store, I’m thinking that his arguing over them here will only make them useful that much more quickly.”
Dean winced as he pictured Sam and his father fighting over Sam’s wardrobe at the second hand store. “Sorry I missed it,” he said, turning his attention back to his brother. “It’s okay, shrimp,” he said earnestly, trying to look sincere. “We’ll just roll up the cuffs.”
“Roll up the cuffs?” Sam curled his lip at Dean. “They’d go all the way up to my knees!”
“So, you don’t want to roll up the cuffs, then?”
“No! Dean, this is stupid!”
“Come on, Sammy. Before you know it, you’ll be wearing them.” It was true, Dean thought. Given the time frame so far, Sam would be wearing those pants in anywhere from a week to ten days.
“No I won’t.” Sam’s face fell a little. “These jeans would even be too long for you. I’ll never fit into them.”
Dean was never quite sure what his brother saw when he looked at him. Did he see the nineteen year old that should be with him right now? Did he see the hardened hunter to whom he was the whole world? Whichever it was, Sammy still saw someone he could look up to. The time was coming, Dean remembered with a sinking feeling, when that would no longer be true in any sense.
“You’ll be as tall as me some day, Sammy. Maybe even taller. I bet you’ll even be taller than Dad.”
“No way.” Sam flashed a quick look at his father before looking back at Dean. His lips turned up as he grinned at the thought. “Taller than Dad? You really think so?”
“I know so, Sam.” Dean grabbed the jeans and tossed them onto the bed. “I have a feeling that before you’re done sprouting even those will be too short.”
“I doubt it,” Sam retorted, but his smile lifted Dean’s heart. Maybe all out warfare could be avoided after all.
Sixteen
“Dean! I said no! How many more times are you going to make me say it?”
Dean sighed wearily and shot a beleaguered glance his father’s way. “What’s the count now?”
“Thirty-three until sixteen is over and done with, thank Christ,” John muttered. “Two hundred and thirty-three until he’s back to normal.”
“Two hundred and thirty-three, Sammy.”
“Two hundred and thirty-three what, dumbass?”
“I’m going to make you say “no” two hundred and thirty-three more times, Princess.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.” Sam grabbed the reference book Dean had stolen from the library and stormed toward his bedroom.
“Want help with that research, Sammy?” Dean called after him.
“Not from you!” Sam yelled back.
“Could you be a little more specific?”
“No!” Sam punctuated the word with a slamming door and Dean turned to his father with a grin. There was no point in even trying to broker a detente now. Sam at sixteen had been a typical teenage nightmare of defiance and hormones and he was no different the second time around. “Two hundred and thirty-two.”
John buried his head in his hands. “Terrific.”
Eighteen
Less than two hundred to go, Dean kept telling himself. We can do this.
Eighteen was going to be like walking a tightrope, Dean thought. Sam could just pack up and leave if he wanted to. Would just pack up and leave. Had just packed up and left.
His brother was getting restless, getting ready; Dean recognized the signs. He hadn’t realized what he was seeing the first time, but with the benefit of hindsight, he knew. Sam had a ticket to everything he wanted out of life and he was just itching to be on his way.
He was also avoiding their father like the plague. Sam wasn’t a little kid anymore and it wasn’t possible for John to keep him in his back pocket all the time. That was ratcheting up the tension when they were together even more. At this rate, Sam was going to take off for Palo Alto before they got the requisite hundred out of him. And that wasn’t going to work out well for anyone.
John was getting just as restive as his son, unable to leave to hunt the fairy, both because missing any words from Sam would drag this out even longer and if the fairy managed to take him out, Sam might be stuck at eighteen forever. The demon was on his mind too. It hadn’t turned up on any of his searches yet, but John knew that it was just a matter of time and Sam had to be himself again before that hunt resumed.
Dean was in the middle, just like he’d been back in that last miserable summer together but this time he had surprise on his side. He knew Sam was going and Sam didn’t know he knew. Dean could work with that. He had to- there was nothing else up his sleeve. Well, there was one thing. He could give the truth one last try.
Sam had been quiet all day, moodily reading in a chair outside their motel room door. He didn’t look up as Dean dropped down beside him, only reacting when the bottle of beer his brother held out dripped a bead of condensation onto his book.
“Dean,” he hissed. “Watch you you’re doing. And the drinking age here is twenty-one. All I need is to get busted for underage drinking now.”
Dean looked around the seedy motel parking lot. No one was paying them any mind. “Don’t think anyone here is going to turn you in, Sammy. And you’re twenty-two, so you’re safe anyway.”
Sam shot him an aggrieved look. “Just because the fake i.d. you made for me says that doesn’t make it true, Dean.”
Dean sighed and dropped newspaper on top of his brother’s book. “What year was this published, Francis?”
“What, you forgot your numbers?” Sam grumbled, but he picked the paper up and glanced at the date. “2002.”
“I forgot my numbers?” Dean scoffed. “It says 2006, Sam.”
“No, it doesn’t! Did you hit your head or something? It says 2002! If it were 2006 I’d already...” He trailed off, giving his brother a sidelong glance.
“You’d already what?” Dean challenged. “Already have graduated from Stanford? Already be applying to law school in California? What would you have already done, Sam?”
Sam’s expression wavered between shock and anger. “How did you...?”
“How did I know you’re going to college? Because it’s freakin’ 2006 and Stanford’s been there, done that. I wish I could say this “normal life” thing is going to work out for you, I really do. But it’s not, so why don't you just plan on staying here,”
“God, Dean, could you sound any more crazy? Now tell me how you found out!”
“I found out four years ago when you told me. When you left us to go to college.”
“Does Dad know?” Sam asked, eyes narrowing.
“Yeah, he knows. What part of ‘all this has happened before’ aren’t you getting?”
“The part where it didn’t all happen before.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, Dean,” Sam snapped. “I don’t believe you. What you’re saying is nuts. How could all this have already happened?”
“Well,” Dean took a deep breath- this hadn’t ever worked when he’d tried it before, but hey, you never know, “you were cursed. You started out being a two-year old and we’ve been in a holding pattern for weeks waiting for you to grow all the way back up again by saying no to Dad.”
Sam shook his head in disgust. “I don’t know why I’m even listening to you.” He tossed his unopened beer bottle back into Dean’s lap. “And I’m too young to drink in public, no matter what crazy idea you’ve got.”
Dean opened Sam’s beer, grimacing as it foamed over his fingers. Well, that probably pushed him right out the door, he thought. His brother had gone back inside and he settled into his chair, sure that he could hear Sam’s upcoming conversation with their father through the open window as well as Dad had heard Sam’s with him.
“So,” Sam said hesitantly. “Dean says you know I’m planning on going to Stanford.”
“I do. I’ve known for a while.” John kept his voice matter of fact.
“How come you didn’t say anything?”
“Would anything I say keep you from going?”
“No.” Sam’s voice was quiet but determined.
“Would anything I do keep you from going?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the point of saying or doing anything?”
“To keep me from going? There isn’t one. But you could have said ‘congratulations, son. I’m proud of you.’ You could have talked to me about what my plans are or what I’m going to study. The point would have been to show you give a damn.”
“Congratulations, son.” Dean stood up and looked in the window in time to see his father shake Sam’s hand. “And I am proud of you. I always have been. How long before you have to leave?”
“About six weeks,” Sam answered, eyeing his father perplexedly.
“Great,” John said with a smile. “That should give us plenty of time to get everything said that we need to say.”
Dean sank back into his chair with a relieved sigh and chugged his beer. Six weeks. So far the longest Sam had stayed at one age was four days. They weren’t going to lose him again.
Twenty
The ramshackle cabin they were holed up in now was isolated far from the edge of town. John and Dean had no illusions at all about how Sam at twenty would react to being back with his family instead of at Stanford.
“What the hell,” Sam bellowed, sound carrying far into the surrounding countryside, “am I doing here?”
“Take it easy, Sammy,” Dean said cautiously holding up a hand. “Don’t you remember anything?”
“No!” Sam yelled. “What did you do? Roofie me and bring me to this dump to try an intervention? I’m not coming back, Dean!”
“He said take it easy, son,” John snapped. “And we didn’t bring you anywhere. We found you here.
“Found me,” Sam replied in disbelief. “What, I was lost?”
“More like taken against your will,” Dean answered, hoping his brother would buy the story they’d cooked up.
“Taken?” Sam eyed his brother suspiciously. “Taken by who? You?”
“Taken by whom, is more like it, Sam.” Dean fought a smile at his brother’s bitchface. “But in your case it was more of a what. You sure you don’t remember?”
“No,” Sam whispered. “I don’t. Why don’t I remember?”
“What’s the last thing you do remember?” John asked settling into a chair, his eyes never leaving his pacing son.
“I was having dinner with Jess.” Sam’s eyes widened in horror. “Jess! I’ve got to go.” He fumbled in his pocket as he headed for the door. “Where are my keys?”
John blocked the door as Dean slowly approached his brother. “You don’t have keys, Sammy. However you got here, you didn’t drive.”
“Then give me your keys.” Sam demanded. “I’ve got to get back there and make sure she’s okay.”
Any humor Dean had felt evaporated at his brother’s panic. He swallowed the lump of grief in his throat as he lied to Sam’s face. “She’s fine, Sam. We checked on her, don’t worry. But you’ve got to stay here until we figure out what took you and why. If you go back, it might just come after you again and this time she could get hurt.”
Sam nodded slowly, though his fists were clenched with the effort of holding himself still. “You’re sure she’s okay?”
John nodded, turning away before he met his son’s eyes. “Sit down Sam. We need to go over everything that happened before you lost your memory.”
Sam’s jaw tightened, but he sank onto one of the beds. “There was nothing,” he said angrily. “No strange people, no strange smells, no cold spots. I would have noticed.”
“Would you?” Dean hated himself at this moment. “You’ve been out of the game for a while now. You sure you’re not just a civilian now? Think maybe you lost your touch?”
“No,” Sam said, between gritted teeth. “No, I’m not a civilian like I wish the hell I was. And no, I haven’t lost my touch.”
“We’ll figure this out, son.” John’s voice was gentle, soothing, but Sam was having none of it.
“Damn right, we will,” he growled. “Because I am not staying here.”
“Let’s get started, then. Have you had any memory lapses before this?”
“No,” Sam answered tersely.
“No missing time, no blank spots?”
“No.”
John led Sam through every question he could think of, getting the same answer every time, until everyone involved was exhausted and aggravated. “Get some sleep, boys. We’ll pick this up again in the morning.” When neither moved, he added, “That’s an order.”
“No,” Sam argued, stifling a yawn. “I want to keep going.”
“Go to sleep, Sam. If you’re tired you might forget something and this will take even longer to figure out.”
Sam nodded and reluctantly stretched out on one of the beds. Within moments he was asleep.
“I’ll take first watch,” John told Dean. “He’ll try to take off if we’re not careful.”
Dean took the other bed and soon his deep breathing joined Sam’s. John watched them and made plans for tomorrow. This age had to be gotten over and done with quickly or there could be real trouble.
The next day passed the same as the first one had, with Sam getting angrier and more anxious about Jessica. They were just a few “nos” short of a hundred when Dean called a break. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife and it wouldn’t take much for everything to come to an incendiary head. A cooling off period was a necessity and a longstanding Winchester tradition. Unfortunately neither John nor Dean noticed that Sam had snagged Dean’s cell phone before they headed out to get some fresh air. By the time they came back inside it was too late.
“I tried calling her,” Sam said, staring blankly at the phone in his hand, “but there was someone else at her number. So I called her parents.”
Dean’s heart stopped, frozen in his chest at the rage flaring from his brother’s eyes. “Sam,” he started, then hesitated, not knowing what to say.
“You told me she was safe,” Sam said softly, a terrifying anger in his voice. “But she’s not, is she?”
Dean shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Did you know that her parents think I killed her,” Sam asked in that same low voice. “What did I do, Dean?”
“You didn’t do anything. You didn’t hurt Jessica.”
“Did whatever was possessing me do it?”
“No! Get that thought out of your head. You tried to save her; you would never have hurt her.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, burning into his brother. “How do you know what I did? Were you there when she died?”
“Dean,” John warned, but his son ignored him.
“I was there. And I saw you try to help her. But there was no way, Sammy. She died like mom, and there was no way to save her.”
“Like mom?” Sam scoffed. “You expect me to believe that? I don’t know what game you’re playing here, but you’ve been lying to me this whole time and I’m out of here.”
“You’re staying here, Sam,” John said firmly. “It’s not safe for you out there.”
“No way,” Sam replied. “Jess is dead and you’ve been lying to me about it since I got here. You can both go to hell.” He pushed past Dean and headed for the door, only to come around swinging when his father grabbed his arm.
“I said you’re staying here,” John growled, pinning his struggling son against the cabin wall.
“And I said no,” Sam shouted back, trying to break his father’s grip.
John shifted slightly and lost his grasp on Sam’s shirt as it stretched across the younger man’s chest so tightly that there was nothing left to hold onto. They’d learned to get Sam’s pants a size larger than he needed so, while the hem was suddenly an inch or two above his sneaker tops, the legs didn’t look like two sausages joined at the crotch.
John stepped back a few paces and exchanged a relieved glance with Dean, who had been blocking the door. “Finally,” they sighed in unison.
Twenty-two
Sam stood frozen against the sagging wall, gaze flicking nervously between his father and his brother. “Christo,” he muttered, his expression clearing as neither pair of eyes flashed black. “What happened,” he asked plaintively. “We were in the woods with the fairy...” he winced and rubbed his aching head. “Weren’t we?”
John nodded. “We were.”
“So how did we get here?” Sam took in the duffles spread across the room and the obvious signs of a struggle. “Wait...this isn’t where we were staying.” He stared at his father accusingly. “What the hell happened, Dad?”
“I should have listened to you, Sam,” John admitted, shocking both of his sons.
“About what?” Sam asked.
“About having a better plan. About having more backup.” John rubbed his mouth in chagrin. “You were right and I should have listened to you.”
“So what did happen?” Sam demanded.
John sighed and nodded at Dean. “Why don’t you fill your brother in while I do a little recon. There hasn’t been a peep out of the damned thing since it cursed Sam. Maybe it’s already gone.”
“Dad,” Dean said at the same time his brother said, “cursed?”
“Don’t worry, Dean. I’ll be careful.” He grinned as he headed out the door. “Sammy, have we got a story for you.”
Dean stared at the door until Sam punched him in the arm. “Dean! Tell me! What happened after Dad and I ran into the fairy.”
“Well,” Dean grinned, worry over his father sidelined for the moment, “apparently this fairy didn’t like Dad using the word “no” to it. So it cursed you back to a two year old who had to say “no” to Dad a thousand times before you’d be yourself again.”
“I was two years old?” Sam looked horrified. “How long did it take for me to be me again?”
“You were always you Sam, no matter what age you were. But you weren’t two the whole time, thank God. For every hundred “nos” you aged two years. So we got a kind of sampling of little, medium and large Sammy until we got back to extra large again.” Dean sat on the bed and patted the mattress beside him. “Have a seat Francis and I’ll tell you the story of Sam and the Thousand “Nos”.”
When John returned Dean was practically rolling on the floor with laughter and even Sam was grinning widely.
“Tell me about the last one, Dean. How did you get me all the way back?”
Dean’s smile died and he straightened up on the bed. “No, Sam. I don’t want to talk about that one. You were supposed to be at Stanford and...it wasn’t at all fun or funny and it won’t do any good to dredge it all up again.” He met his brother’s eyes seriously. “Okay?”
Sam nodded slowly, thought it was clear he wanted to know. “Okay, Dean.”
They both turned to their father with questioning looks as John shrugged and dropped into a chair. “It was gone,” he said angrily. “The retrieval spell I tried didn’t work. Unless the fairy returns them, I think those boys are gone for good.” John’s hand strayed to the back pocket of his jeans, fingering the envelope he’d tucked into it. The fairy had been gone, but it had left him a message.
In silver ink, on fine white paper, it had written in an elegant hand:
Mortal,
We will not meet again, you and I, but I have foreseen that on another day, your sons will cross my path. Think on that and despair.
John thought on that and managed not to despair. Any supernatural being that thought crossing paths with his sons was a good thing had a nasty surprise in store for it. Next time, they’d be ready for it. “All right, boys,” he said. “We’ve been stuck here long enough. Pack up, we’re moving out.”
“Where to?” Dean asked.
“Got a lead on a nice straightforward angry spirit we could check out,” John replied.
“No chance of Sammy here, getting himself cursed back to an itty bitty baby again?”
“Bite me,” Sam said with a grin. “I was an adorable kid.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Dean grabbed his duffle and raced his brother to the door. “But trust me, Sammy. Twice was enough.”
John followed more slowly, watching his boys roughhouse on the way to the car. For a moment he wished that he could make both of them small again; start all over, but only for a moment. The time for changing anything with his sons was long past. The demon hadn’t shown itself, but it was looming on the horizon, he could feel it. He closed his eyes and remembered Sammy’s wide eyed innocence and the happiness on Dean’s face as he played with his little brother. The fairy thought that it had cursed them, but actually it had given them a gift. Time enough to sit in one place and just be a family, if only for a little while. It was enough. It would have to be.