kellifer | "Coming Up Short"

Title: Coming Up Short
Rating/Warning: PG (for language)
Wordcount: 2,656
Spoilers: None.
Fandom: SPN
By:

kellifer_fic
For:

spn_halloween
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Prompt: Grown-up Sam and Dean are physically (not mentally) age-regressed for the day and take the opportunity to go trick-or-treating
Notes: Thankyou to my beta

deathangelgw - all mistakes are mine.

“Son of a bitch.”

Dean wakes up to a high, sweet voice swearing like a trooper and he turns his head to see a shaggy-maned kid who looks to be between six and eight on the other bed. He slaps a hand to his face and rolls over, thinking that he must’ve been blind the night before to have bumbled into the wrong room. But then a pillow hits him in the back of the head.

“Dude, wake up,” the kid snaps, looking completely pissed off. Dean could swear…

“Sam?”

“Who else do you think it would be?” Sam demands, rolling across the queen bed and off the side to land on the floor in his socked feet. His jeans are comically large on his tiny frame and immediately fall off. He would’ve lost his boxers as well if he hadn’t grabbed at them. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway since his t-shirt comes down to his knees.

“Oh man, this is just too sweet,” Dean says as he envisions all of the wicked things he can do with a tiny Sammy. But then he realises something very important as he holds his hands up in front of his face and blinks at the small appendages with tiny pink nails, zero calluses, and all.

“Fuck me!”

000

“Chai latte, extra foam.”

Dean is trying not to stare at himself in the mirror that runs underneath the length of the counters in the little café they’ve found. What’s most troubling to him is that he and Sam look about the same age. Considering that they are wearing matching outfits because the only other kids in the motel complex were twins, it’s just a little too surreal on top of the whole being smaller thing. He hadn’t realised that age for age, he and Sam would’ve been matched in height right up until their sixteenth year. He’s wondering if maybe there was some hoodoo involved that had given Sam those extra few inches.

He wouldn’t put it past the little sneak.

The barista is looking at Sam with a raised eyebrow and Sam, ever the quick thinker, scuffs a shoe on the floor and holds up a twenty. “It’s for my dad. He’s just outside,” he says in his best aw shucks voice. The guy shrugs and moves off to make Sam’s coffee. Dean plucks dejectedly at his I’m with Robbie t-shirt. Sam’s wearing I’m with Pete.

Dean’s wondering just how much therapy those poor kids are going to need when they’re older.

Sam, coffee in hand, herds Dean back outside the café and pauses on the sidewalk to down half of it. Dean can’t help but grin at him when Sam wipes the big foam moustache from his face with the back of his hand and manages to get some on his temple.

“So, we should call Bobby and then make a list of likely suspects,” Sam says as they amble back towards the motel. Dean is fascinated with their feet. Sam’s are slightly larger and that’s just not fair.

“Why Bobby?” Dean asks and Sam rolls his eyes before tossing his drained coffee cup aside.

“How are you planning on driving?” Sam asks. “Gonna tie bits of wood to your feet like in one of those quaint old movies so you can reach the pedals?”

Dean halts mid-stride with his mouth dropping open. He hadn’t even thought of that. “Son of a bitch!” Dean grits out, echoing Sam’s first sentiment that morning.

000

Sam is practically vibrating when Dean tries Bobby for the fourth time with no success. “What is wrong with you?” Dean demands when Sam starts bouncing on one of the beds.

“Not sure,” Sam pants, so enthusiastic in his bouncing that he is getting steadily closer to the ceiling with each jump. “Can’t…stop… moving.”

Dean smacks a palm to his face and rubs down, wishing he could wipe this day clear of his memory just as easily. “You doofus,” he snaps. “You had a humungous coffee. I’m going to have to put up with you doing this for hours.”

Sam misjudges one jump and takes a header off the bed, luckily lands on the second, but unluckily bounces clear of that as well and goes straight into the wall. Dean grimaces when there’s a definite crunch and Sam comes to a halt on the carpet just underneath the window. Sam sits up while cradling his wrist against his chest and Dean frowns at him.

“You didn’t, did you?”

“I think I broke something,” Sam groans, flopping backwards.

000

“Where’re your folks?”

Dean can do this. Dean has done this hundreds of times.

My Dad’s away.

He’s just on night shift.

The babysitter left us but I’ve called my dad and he’s going to be here any second.

Dean makes excuses and the nurse doesn’t look like she believes them, but she leaves him alone in the waiting room to swing his legs and fret. Dean knows eventually that he’ll find a way to set things right but it’ll be harder if he and Sam are separated.

His heart stops thudding hard only when Sam appears through the swinging doors that lead into the emergency room holding a casted arm aloft. “Broken in three places,” he announces like it’s some kind of achievement and Dean can’t help but chuckle. There’s a female doctor following closely behind his brother with one hand resting on his shoulder.

Sam yanks a lollipop free from his mouth with a hearty smack and Dean knows he is never going to let Sam live it down...right up until a bright blue one is held in front of his nose. “Sam insisted you get one too,” the doctor says with a smile and Dean grudgingly takes the candy and unwraps it. He ushers Sam out with the promise that their dad is right outside circling because he couldn’t find a parking spot and practically yanks Sam off his feet as soon as they’re outside.

“Like that’s what you need,” Dean hisses while tossing his candy aside and making a grab for Sam’s, who darts out of his reach with a snort. “More sugar!”

“It’s fine,” Sam retorts after pulling the thing free again and sticking out a bright green tongue. “It’s one of those lame sugar-free ones.”

“C’mon,” Dean huffs before hooking an arm around Sam’s neck. “Let’s try Bobby again.”

000

Dean thinks he has the wrong number for a second until the eight year old on the other end of the line calls him a dumbass.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Dean looks across the room at Sam, who’s sitting on one of the motel chairs with his chin hooked over the back. Sam raises his eyebrows and Dean points at himself, points at the phone, and then holds out two hands and brings them together in a squishing motion. Sam stuffs a fist into his mouth as his eyes go wide with mirth.

“I’m working on it,” Bobby snaps and Dean would give his right arm to see just what a tiny Bobby Singer looks like.

“You think it’s a demon targeting hunters?” Dean asks.

“Could be. Pretty strange way to attack us though,” Bobby muses and the high-pitched voice is so incongruous with how Bobby usually sounds that Dean has trouble concentrating. “I know of seven others already. Called Missouri and thankfully she’s still… well, she’s still her. I’ll call you back soon as I know something.”

“Okay, thanks,” Dean says and flips his phone closed. Sam has moved over to the side of the room and is standing in front of a tattered calendar. He stabs a finger at the date and then looks at Dean.

“It’s Halloween,” he announces and Dean blinks at him.

“It’s what?”

“Tomorrow. It’s Halloween tomorrow.”

“So?”

“Pretty freaky timing, dont’cha think? We happen to get cursed on Halloween?”

“I guess so. Doesn’t help though.”

“It does actually,” Sam says, holding up an imperious finger while crossing the room to their dad’s journal. He flicks through it for a few minutes before letting out an, “Aha!” of triumph.

“What?” Dean prods as Sam flops on the bed with the journal pushed in front of him and his legs sticking up in the air. Sam has slid into this whole being a kid thing far too easily, Dean thinks.

“Minor imps and sprites target hunters on this, their holiest of holidays,” Sam reads. “Dad writes that it’s some kind of underworld competition. Who can mess up hunters the most.”

“You’re kidding. This is all just a game to some little pointy-eared fucker?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I mean, it fits. The timing and the number of hunters being targeted. Hitting multiple hunters is large scale but still not outside the realm of possibility. Might be they cursed a certain type of weapon or talisman we all carry. Pretty heavy duty to have magic that doesn’t require personal contact but it’s possible.”

“So...what? Dad have anything in there on how to break this?”

“We don’t really need to. Traditionally, the curse should break itself midnight of Halloween.”

“So we’re stuck like this for another day?”

Sam rolls over onto his back and flings out his arms and legs. “It’s better than having no idea when this is going to end and possibly being stuck like a kid for months,” he points out and Dean wonders what the hell is going on. Since when is it Sam that looks on the sunny side of things?

Sam’s cast clunks Dean on the belly when Dean drops himself on the bed next to Sam’s hip and then a Sharpie is thrust into Dean’s fingers. “My cast is too bare,” Sam complains and Dean snorts.

“Dude, you only look eight. You’re not a little kid up here,” Dean remarks while tapping his knuckles on Sam’s forehead. When Sam’s only response is to pout, an expression which is impressive on Sam at full mass but downright heartbreaking on the miniature version, Dean just rolls his eyes and uncaps the pen. “Fine,” he huffs.

The cast is ripped away at the last moment as Dean sticks his tongue between his teeth and bends to the task at hand and he looks sideways into Sam’s narrow-eyed gaze. “If you draw any part of the human anatomy on my arm of either sex, I will brain you with this thing, I swear,” Sam warns.

Dean blinks, hoping his own innocent-face is as convincing as it used to be. There’s gotta be at least one drawing of a dick and balls.

He’s only human.

000

“Not gonna happen.”

Sam pauses in the doorway with two comically cheerful plastic pumpkins with black handles cradled against his chest with his good arm. “Oh, c’mon,” Sam protests before letting the plastic buckets drop onto the table by the door. “The only good thing to come of this is the right to score free candy.”

“We didn’t trick or treat as kids and we’re certainly not starting now,” Dean states while eyeing the pumpkins balefully. Okay, maybe Dean had wanted to and the only times that he’d actually gone had been pre-four years old that he didn’t really remember but his dad had been right. No telling what you were getting yourself into knocking on stranger’s doors.

“You can stay here and be a complete killjoy but I’m going,” Sam declares with his chin jutting out and his mouth firmed down to a stubborn little line. “Don’t you feel it? I don’t know whether being this little has…condensed everything but I’m getting some pretty strong urges to run around and just be an idiot.”

“That’s different than normal how, exactly?” Dean asks with a smirk and then dodges the pumpkin that’s whipped at his head. “Okay, fine,” he concedes with a sigh because he really does know what Sam is talking about. It was taking all of his concentration and willpower to just sit still while Sam had been out procuring his candy-collecting paraphernalia. He’d had the strangest urge to work off some of his excess energy possibly at a park of some kind.

“Now, what are we going to do about costumes?” Sam asks while tugging at his bottom lip with his fingers and casting a glance about the room. They had little in the way of options other than maybe to dress as people who had shrunk.

“How about we tip a bottle of ketchup over you?”

“How is that a costume?” Sam asks with one eyebrow raised.

“It’s not. Just occurred to me that it might be something fun to do,” Dean answers with a grin. “C’mon super-dork. Use that big brain.”

Dean should’ve known that, with those few simple words, he was inviting disaster.

000

“I’m going to kick your ass.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to get your ass kicked first,” Sam responds while pointing out the trio of boys that look about their own current age. One is a vampire, one is a zombie, and one is something that looks vaguely manga-ish.

None of them are dressed like Barbie, as Dean currently is.

“How come you get to be Ken?” Dean complains while plucking at the sparkly skirt he’s been forced into.

Kill Sam.

Dead.

“Because you’re the pretty one,” Sam replies with a smirk and lifts a hand to knock on the sixteenth motel door they’ve been to. Dean grits his teeth and thinks about the piles of candy they’re going to be chowing down on and how it’s all free and tries to make Sam detonate just with his thoughts.

“My goodness, aren’t you pretty,” the woman in 12B says before leaning down to Dean’s eye-level. “Are you a fairy?”

Sam makes a choking noise and Dean sighs inwardly before turning up the smile. The double-handfuls of candy he gets deposited into his bucket makes Sam shut up quick. Mostly because all Sam gets is a toothbrush.

“We’re sharing,” Sam grumbles as they head to the next door.

“Nuh’uh,” Dean shoots back, shaking his head vigorously. “I’m keeping every single piece I get because I’m in a skirt!”

“We could swap?” Sam wheedles and Dean narrows his eyes. Even if they did swap now, Dean would still be dressed as a dude completely covered in glitter. Sam had gone a little nuts with the stuff.

“Not on yer life,” Dean snaps before carding through his current haul. He is kicking some major trick or treating ass.

000

At a few minutes to midnight, Dean is holding his belly and just hoping the candy won’t expand when he does.

He’s pretty sure he’s going to explode as it is.

Sam is sprawled inelegantly on the floor, curled around his own haul. Every now and again he reaches out to it, makes a horrible noise, and curls his hand back in to himself. “Candy is evil,” Sam announces and rolls so he has his back to it.

“Why do you think they give it out on Halloween?” Dean asks with a grin and then flails because his voice deepens mid sentence as his whole body gives a huge lurch. It’s not exactly painful, but it’s not entirely pleasant either and at the end of it he burps, long and loud. He thanks god for Sammy’s brain because he had suggested that they wrap themselves in towels before the inevitable change over. It was surprisingly sudden and Dean doesn’t think his groin would have ever recovered from being strangled by Underoos so horribly.

Dean looks over at Sam and sees that he is just a long line of curled back with one towel over his shoulder and the other mercifully still across his hips. His cast is split in two and lying on the floor beside him, which means they have another trip to the hospital in their near future.

“Urgh,” Sam groans and rolls onto his back.

Dean couldn’t agree more.

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Date: 2007-10-25 11:24 pm (UTC)

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