literature

The Comeback Kid || Chapter Five

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Despite how exhausted he was, Sam found it hard to settle into sleep. He drifted in and out of wakefulness over the course of the next few hours, often disrupted by Dean's loud movements on the bed. Dean seemed to be having just as hard a time settling down as Sam, constantly tossing and turning with all the subtlety of a landslide.

Eventually though, Dean settled down and Sam found himself drifting off into sleep at last. He sighed into the bag of clothes serving as his pillow, finally allowing himself to relax for the first time that night. Here, inside the metal body of the Impala, he felt safe.

Sam slipped into the realm of dreams, reliving the last few hours through a hazy fog and a strange angle.

He sees the Impala, parked in front of the motel in the darkness of night. Sam stands a few feet behind it, watching the back of his own head through the window with surprise. Dean climbs out, slamming the door shut behind him. His form faded away as he enters the motel lobby. Something near Sam laughs, giggling with glee as it reaches out to the car. The Impala starts to shrink...

What the hell is this? What's going on?

...until it stops, barely visible now from Sam's point of view outside the car. Barely reaching seven inches in length, something inside Sam clenches when he sees how small the car is, knowing he's inside it now and is even smaller. Dean comes back out of the lobby, walking over to the parking space the tiny car is in. Shock paints his face when he doesn't find the Impala where he left it. He walks away, not noticing the tiny car parked a few feet away from his boots.

Sam watches as Dean walks up and down the line of cars as though he's unsure of where he parked. Not finding his baby, he walks back over to the spot, pulling out his phone and holding out his arms as though he thinks the Impala might be invisible. Sam can almost see the second his tiny double wakes up and realizes what's happening. The tiny car blares its horn seconds before Dean's boot unknowingly lands on it. He realizes how close he truly came to being crushed by a careless step.

Is that really how small I am?

Dean stumbles, almost falling over as the tiny car screeched away. Sam relives the same fear and panic he felt when trying to escape. That sense of helplessness when all the Impala's horsepower did him no good against Dean himself.

And sure enough, Dean straightens up. He stares after the tiny car in disbelief before lunging forward, stopping Sam before he reaches the end of the parking spot. As fast as the car had been going, it meant nothing to a regular sized human. Dean closes a hand firmly around the tiny black body.

While Dean lunges for the car, Sam realizes something is standing near him. He twists around, the hairs on the back of his neck raising when he sees there is nothing there. The presence remains invisible, incorporeal.

Another laugh breaks through the night. I like you, it giggles without sound. I’m glad you didn’t get squished.

The dream shatters.


Sam woke up for a few seconds, confused. Seeing only the calm interior of the Impala, lit by the tiny blinking power light of his laptop, he collapsed back into his bench seat bed. That's right, he thought morosely. I'm tiny.

That was the only coherent thought to pass through his mind before his body gave into exhaustion. He sank gratefully back into sleep.

He was so exhausted, he never even realized the Impala wasn't on the nightstand anymore.



Dean was torn between a dream about a private stripper and a foggy memory of a past, less-sucky than usual, thanksgiving. The stripper one was a sequel to another he'd had last week. Thanksgiving he never really wanted to talk about... But reliving the memory in bits and pieces wasn't so bad.

He rolled onto his stomach, his arm landing carelessly on the pillow next to a certain shrunken car.

His fingers clumsily trailed over the hood of the Impala as his arm settled into place. He was too deeply invested in his dream to register the object, but his subconscious selfishly claimed her as his own all the same. His arm swept her close across the pillow, leaving the tiny car at a precarious angle as he let the side of his face rest against it. The rearview mirrors groaned under the titanic weight, threatening to snap off as he shifted again, his warm, relaxed breathing fogging up the windows.



Sam was forcibly yanked from an uneasy sleep when the Impala shifted unexpectedly around him. He blinked in the darkness, wide awake and staring around the dark car.

With a yelp, he found himself thrown from the seat when the front of the car suddenly dropped down, turning the Impala’s seats into a sharp slope. Sam tumbled into the passenger side footwell. His comparatively 6’4 body got stuck as the car rocked violently around him. Sam groaned as the sharp movement grinded his injured arm against the edge of the bench seat.

The movement quickly stopped, replaced with the sound of strained metal, groaning loudly. Sam tried to pull himself out of the corner, hampered by his arm and his size. He just wasn’t meant to be squashed in such a relatively small area. Even though he was only a few inches tall, he was still too big for some things.

Climbing out at last, he flinched away from the driver's side door, hearing the metal strain under a huge weight. A sudden gust of hot air filled the car through the still-open window, fogging up the windows in the dark.

Apprehensively, Sam climbed up the seats, digging through the duffel bag still perched on the back seat somehow. Dean always kept it packed with everything they might need for a hunt, including…

“Yes!” Sam hissed, pulling out a flashlight triumphantly.

Flicking it on, he shone it out the windows. Most of them were blocked, aside from the rear, which was sharply tilted up at a 45 degree angle, giving him a distant view of the ceiling of the motel room.

Good. Still in the room then.

The rest of the windows were surrounded by a combination of black, peach…

Skin.

He realized where he was the second the beam of the flashlight landed on an enormous mouth, leaning against the driver's side door. Whoever it was, they were clearly asleep. And now Sam had a good feeling he knew who was out there.

His fears were vindicated when the light of the flashlight played across a smattering of familiar freckles, dashed over an even larger nose. It was a helluva lot more detail than he was used to, but that didn’t change who it was.

Dean.

His brother was fucking cuddling the Impala.

If he hadn't been in danger of being crushed along with the tiny car, Sam would have laughed at the ridiculous sight. Dean had probably had dreams about snuggling his precious car. But Sam was in danger of being crushed, as a small shift from Dean tossed him down from the seat again. The driver’s side mirror screeched unhappily as the pressure against it increased.

Sam managed to pick himself up off the floor again, freezing as he expected the car to give way at any moment. With a deep exhalation and a muttered “Happy Thanksgiving,” that filled the car with hot, humid breath, Dean settled back down

Sam wrinkled his nose at the gust of air. So much for Dean not having bad breath. Chinese for dinner had taken care of that. Pushing away those thoughts, Sam focused. He had no idea how he and the car had got in this situation, but if he didn’t get himself out of it, Dean might crush them both without noticing until he woke up, which would do Sam and the Impala no good whatsoever. The air inside the car moved, swirling from each breath Dean took. Sam’s hair became an unhappy mess in the humidity, sweat dripping down his neck.

Dean! ” Sam shouted, hoping he could wake his brother up easily. “Dean, get your fat ass up!”

Nothing.

He shouted a few more times, hoping to break through the exhausted haze Dean was sleeping though, but it quickly became clear that Dean was lost to the world. Or Sam was too quiet. Either way.

The car shook again with Dean’s movements, the arm wrapped around the car pressing harder against the doors as he moved. Sam gulped. That arm was enormous, well-muscled and clearly outclassed even the metal of the Impala if Dean tightened his grip much more.

He didn’t have much time.

Sam went for the horn, determined to wake his brother up or else, but froze with his hand inches away. An unhappy realization came over him.

The last time he’d woken up Dean by popping a bag of chips in his ear as a joke, Dean had dove for his gun - or this case, the demon knife - under the pillow, leveling it at Sam from practiced experience before he’d even fully woken. If Sam honked the horn this close to Dean’s ear, the result would likely be the same. Dean would dive for the knife, and the car would either go flying or get pancaked before Dean realized what was actually going on. Such a violent wake up could crush them both instead of saving them.

Starting to panic, Sam dug through his pockets. Where the hell was his phone… when he remembered the phone going flying when he’d woken to almost being stepped on. Saying a brief prayer it hadn’t fallen out the car when Dean was handling the Impala earlier, Sam dug through the belongings strewn across the floor. His heart leapt when his hand closed on the familiar body of his phone.

He had Dean’s number up in a heartbeat and hit SEND.

Easy ignoring the stringent ringtone, Dean's violent cuddling continued. He jostled the Impala and its occupant as he adjusted his position on his stomach, a tightness welling up in him. He was back in the strip club dream now. A smokin' brunette with a red g-string was strutting down the empty hall to him. Pat Benatar played on repeat in the background. The hottie cut herself a piece of pie and dipped her finger in the gooey cherry filling. She brought the finger to her glossy scarlet lips and sucked it off, looking at Dean with a sultry glint. A crooked smile hung on his lips as he watched her amble closer, bringing another fingertip of pie filling for him to suck off. Before he knew it, they were locked in a passionate embrace, his hands wandering all over her perfect body.

I can’t wait to see the look on your face,” a strange little voice whispered loudly into his ear.

Dean broke away, looking around for the source of the voice. No one else was there.

"Hello?" he bellowed.

He only got a series of snickering laughter in reply.

Now a ringing, getting louder, louder and louder still...

An eerily deep groan escaped Dean's relaxed lips as he rolled onto his back, the Impala tucked in the crook of his arm. The prior weight was relieved off of the car as he stirred awake. He shot out an arm and groped for the phone.

"Hello?" he answered groggily, propping himself up in bed.

All he got in reply was brief shout of fear, right at the moment he realized something was rolling down his front.

"Holy shit!" Dean gasped.

His arm shot out and caught it on pure reflex, eyes ballooning when he saw he was holding the Impala in his hand. He shot an accusing look at the nightstand. Hadn't he left it there? Hadn't he specifically set it far enough away that this shit wouldn't happen?

"Sammy?" he croaked, clasping the car desperately between two hands and peered into the driver's side window. It was dark but he could see a tiny body picking itself up off the seat. "Shit, Sam. Say something."

The second Dean rolled over, Sam lost all sense of where he was. The Impala flipped over, tossing him against the ceiling with everything else in the car. He caught sight of a huge arm, far thicker around than the Impala, right outside the window. It was clutching them against an even larger chest, right when Dean sat up in bed, releasing the Impala without realizing what was in his arms as he went for the phone.

There wasn't any time to celebrate waking Dean up as the car, no longer held in place, started to roll down the increasingly steep slope of Dean's chest. Sam was tossed into the backseat as it rolled, the rest of the objects in the car flying around haphazardly. He heard a voice, echoing between the phone, which he somehow still had clutched in his hand, and a much louder version outside. As the car flipped around again, continuing its rapid descent and tossing Sam to the ceiling again, he couldn't get out more than a strangled shout.

The car jolted to a sudden halt seconds later, Sam slamming into the backseat again. He struggled to right himself, hampered by his inner ear balance being completely off. Dean's voice echoed around him as he recovered, and Sam couldn't help flinching away from the huge green eyes peering in the still-open driver's side window, far closer now than they'd been before. “Holy crap!” Sam gasped out. He hated this feeling of helplessness and vulnerability, which was only enhanced by the sight of the huge hands clutched around the car.

The hands unfolded into a steady platform beneath the car. Suddenly desperate to get into open air, and away from the walls closing in on him, Sam yanked the door open, not caring it was still dark in the room. He tumbled to the ground as his legs refused to hold him upright.

Laying there on Dean's palm, he took a few deep, steadying breaths in the fresh air, slowly focusing his mind again. Pain stabbed his lungs as he did, probably from being tossed around in the car like a rag doll.

Eyes finally adjusting to the darkness, Sam was able to meet Dean's eyes and see the guilt and anguish that filled them.

"Dean..." he managed to get out haltingly. "What the hell?" He finally managed to sit up, bracing his arms against the hot, leathery skin he was sitting on. "The Impala..." he coughed, his lungs burning from the movement. "...is not... your teddy bear!"

Dean looked about as shocked to hear this as he was mortified.

"What? Okay, I was not..." the rest of his protest withered in his throat as he received the death glare to end all death glares from his little brother. He settled for clearing his throat awkwardly.

His eyebrows knit together in concern as he felt Sam's tiny, heaving breaths against his palm. Carefully as he could, he closed his other hand around half the Impala and set it aside so both hands could be at Sam's disposal.

"Dammit, I can't even check you for a concussion," Dean growled under his breath. He cupped his hands close to his chest, keeping Sam's wavering balance in mind.

He was a friggin' useless mess. In the few hours since Sam had shrunk, he felt like he’d turned into a weapon of mass destruction with a faulty trigger. This was the second time he'd almost killed his brother in under 12 hours.

"I'm sorry, man. I dunno what happened-" Dean stopped short, his entire body tensing. He sniffed the air. Another deep whiff. It was faint, but he knew that scent anywhere.

"You smell that?" Dean lowered his chin to Sam. "Smells like sulfur."

Sam sniffed the air hesitantly. After being treated to Dean's morning breath up close and personal, he had a harder time separating out smells... but it was there. Faintly.

"Yeah..." he said. "I'd recognize that smell anywhere. And at least it smells better that your morning breath." He glanced up in time to catch a half-hearted glare shot down at him by his brother. Sam smirked in response, feeling a bit more like himself.

He tried to stand up, but his legs were still jelly from his early morning roller coaster ride in the Impala. Giving up, he settled for sitting up straight in the hands. He surreptitiously rubbed his ribs, hoping he hadn't bruised them too bad. "You want to take a look around for sulfur, see where it's coming from?" he called up to Dean, partly because it was the next thing they should do but mostly to keep Dean from worrying too much about how badly he’d been hurt. And it wasn't like he’d be any help searching the motel room.

Dean nodded distractedly. He twisted around in bed and lowered his hands to the warm creased indent left behind on his pillow. He managed to keep his cool this time as little Sam scooted off onto the fabric.

"Just... don't move," Dean told him, practically pleading in his gruff tone.

He got out of bed and sniffed the air again. The odor was so faint, it could easily be chalked up to paranoia. But he had a two and a half inch brother sitting behind him. Paranoia was their best asset right now. He walked over to the fridge anyway, checking the leftover Chinese to see if it had spoiled. They were fine.

He gave the rest of the room a thorough sweep, but the smell seemed to fade away. Dean was about to throw in the towel when he caught whiff of it again, closer to the bed. He dropped to his knees, smelling the sheets... the Impala! He picked it up and gingerly gave it a once over. A mild odor of sulfur clung to the seats. Dean's eyes drifted to Sam and stuck there.

"Sorry, Sammy,” he said, reaching out to pinch the back of his plaid shirt between a finger and thumb. "Have to be sure."

He plucked Sam up easily, hoping that the swiftness would make up for the rudeness. The rotten wisp of air hung around Sam in a way that reeked of things worse than bad breath. Dean drew back in surprise, plunking Sam down almost immediately in his free hand.

"It's you,” he said, eyebrows skyward.

"W-what?" Sam cried out, scrambling back on the massive hand. He tried to push away the feeling he'd gotten when Dean picked him up so easily between a finger and thumb, his movements so fast and so huge Sam hadn't had a chance of resisting.

And that was nothing next to how it felt to be sniffed. Held up to a nose and mouth bigger than he was, helpless to free himself. Brother or not, it wasn't a great feeling.

Sam didn't want to ever think about that again. Or the fact that Dean could pretty much do whatever he wanted to with Sam, even though Sam knew he wouldn’t.

He manage to stand up, slightly wobbling on the palm as he patted himself down, trying to find a reason for the smell of sulfur. Of course, nothing jumped out at him like he was hoping. He turned back to Dean, who still had the surprise covering his face. "How can I smell like sulfur? Or the Impala? We haven't been near any demons lately!"

"That we know of," Dean correctly darkly.

He frowned. He wasn't seeing any mustardy powder residue anywhere, which was strange. The smell and residue tended to go hand in hand. It worried him-- what kind of demon would have the juice for something of this magnitude? There had been no other omens; no drastic weather changes or livestock deaths. Nothing to indicate demonic activity at all.

Dean picked up the Impala again and shook his shrunken duffel bag to the front seat, pouring it out onto the foot of the bed. He gingerly set the car down, pushing the door closed with a thumb. The duffel bag had already been unzipped from Sam's search for the flashlight, and as it plunked onto the bedspread, many of its contents spilled out: clothes, weapons, and teeny tiny skin mags. Dean couldn't help but snag one of his favorite Led Zeppelin t-shirts between a finger and thumb, gaping at how this shirt had fit him perfectly just yesterday.

"Maybe you're infected. Like the Croatoan virus..." Dean caught the dubious look Sam was wearing and arched an eyebrow at him.  "You got any better ideas, I'm all ears."

He finally found what he was looking for. The massive hand retrieved a metal flask of holy water out of the miniature mess and dropped it in Sam's lap. It was worth a shot.
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Phoenix-FireMage's avatar
I can't believe I forgot about this part... Dean snuggling with the impala would be downright adorable if it wasn't also dangerous!