A special request from @gt-kindii!
They wanted a short story based on this picture, and I hope I did it justice!
AU:
Timeline: Sam is 10, Dean is 14; a month after Dean’s curse.
Word Count: 724
Warnings: None
“It’s so hot! ”
Sam looked up from where he was bent over a book, avidly reading his assigned summer lessons (only assigned because he’d asked the teacher for work to do over the summer). A slight smirk hit his face when he saw where Dean was, sprawled out on the most shadowed area of the table in an attempt to soak up what he could of the cool surface, avoiding the sun like he lived all his life in a cave.
“It’s summer,” Sam pointed out helpfully, nudging Dean in the side with a pencil. “In South Dakota.”
Dean groaned, comically loud as he tried to squirm away from the intruding eraser. “Doesn’t mean Bobby can’t invest in some air conditioning for once in his life!” he complained, pushing himself up so he was sitting. It made it easier to bat at the pencil.
Sam grinned, both for the complaints and for Dean’s relatively mellow reaction to the poke. Just a few weeks ago, his older brother, shrank by a curse to under four inches tall, had bolted from him, unable to cope with the sheer size of everything around him. Now, things were strained, especially between Dean and John, but between the brothers life was settling back down to normal.
“We’ve never had AC here before,” he reminded Dean. “And just last night you were complaining about how cold it was!”
Dean huffed in aggravation. “It was cold last night!” he insisted mulishly. “But now it’s so hot I can barely breathe in here.” He kicked out both legs, spreading himself out on the table again.
Sam frowned as Dean started ignoring him once more. As strange as it was to hear his cursed brother complain about the heat instead of a chill when there was none, Sam could understand it. Dean’s curse had hit while he was wearing his regular jeans and outfit. He didn’t have any shorts to strip down into. He could walk around in boxers, but being so vulnerable like that chafed at Dean. Small was bad enough, he would refuse to make himself more vulnerable.
“Be right back,” Sam said distractedly, pushing himself up from the table.
Dean was nearly a puddle on the table again, barely raising his hand off the surface to attempt a wave before flopping it back down. Sam smiled fondly at that, then left the room. He had a plan.
Ten minutes and three closet raids later, Sam was finally able to call his plan a success.
It wasn’t exactly what Dean was pining after, but considering that Sam, a ten-year-old kid with no current access to transportation or an adult, had to come up with it, he’d need to deal.
“Here we are!” Sam declared, plunking down a fan a few inches away from Dean and then setting up a second, larger fan for himself. He gathered up work and put that on the counter out of the way, and went searching for an outlet.
Dean sat up in a hurry at all the earthquakes, staring wide-eyed at what Sam had come up with. A small grin snuck its way onto his face.
“Where did you find those?” he asked, scrambling to his feet to look over the small fan that was nearly his size.
Sam’s head popped into view from the floor. “Bobby’s got all kinds of stuff like that hidden away in his cupboards,” he told Dean smugly. “Did you think I just sat around all day when you were playing around with the cars outside?”
Dean shook his head, bemused. “Figured you just read all day,” he responded.
Sam found an outlet, pulling out a plug for one of the lamps and taking over both sides with the fans. The one next to Dean sputtered to life, creating a cool breeze that ruffled his hair.
He barely noticed Sam returning to turn on his own fan, too busy positioning himself blissfully in front of the cool air. This new size might suck at times, but at least his little brother was just as reliable as he’d always been before.
“This is your best plan yet,” Dean said, stretching his arms up to get as much air as possible.
Brothers Apart 