( Original post )
He sure snatched something or someone that startled him! I think Dean’s gotten himself in over his head on this hunt.
That, and he’s pretty lost in the woods at that point. A little too hard-headed without a guide and going far past the marked campgrounds.
Ah, that would be telling!
This one we want to leave a little vague… For reasons XD
…. I got nothin.
As for your guess,
Ice cold.
For the borrowers, they have a 9 month term pregnancy, just like humans! Having a child is more dangerous, because instead of going to a hospital and getting help from a doctor, they have no pain medication and instead rely on a midwife, often a close friend that lives nearby, especially in America, where they’re spread out. In London, they do have more specialized trades, so there would be an actual midwife to help.
Wood sprites tend to have a slightly shorter term. Luckily, they have a strong community around them to help with the birth. In Wellwood, the new mother is usually led somewhere just outside the village when it’s time, and then once the baby is born and cleaned up they come back home. Mama rests and everyone holds the new baby sprout. Thank the Spirit that wood sprites are born with their wings all curled up!
It does sound adorable, but I have a few ideas of my own for Brothers Saved! This wouldn’t fit into my plans. Sam’s fight with John is already planned out, and it’s not going to all go down the same way this time because the circumstances are changed. Sam’s not fighting for his independence this time, he’s fighting for Dean’s. The older brother he looks up to, the person who taught him about hunting long before John considered it.
Domestic AUs are not my cup of tea. I encourage if anyone wants to write this out to go for it, but I’m here for action, adventure, horror, suspense. Feels and stress and angst. @neonthebright could tell you how antsy I get when the fluff scenes start to go on for chapters, because I’m itching to get back to the action. So this kind of thing will be in short supply over here.
We even have ideas thought up for Brothers Saved in multiple AUs, so it may get split into different AUs in the future.
As it is, I have given a lot of thought to Sam, Dean and John’s relationship, for better or worse, and as this probably won’t be finished for posting for some time, I’ll give you a peek:
Sam glared at John, breathing hard. He’d come home this afternoon from the store to find John back without warning from a case, talking fast and explaining exactly what he needed from Sam, where they needed to go, and how important it was that they get ready and stop dragging your damn heels.
All this was well and fine, about what the eighteen-year-old expected. Never mind that Sam was a few weeks from graduation, and they needed to study for an exam. Dean would want in on a hunt anytime he got the chance.
And then the real fight began.
John shot back that Dean needed to stay behind. He would just hold them back at his size. He went so far as to say he’d already explained such to Dean, they had no use for his ‘attempts to act normal’ getting in the way of a hunt.
“I can’t believe you said that to him!”
“Of course I said it to him! Someone has to tell him these things!”
“Dean knows what he’s doing,” Sam growled out. “You would know that if you ever bothered with him!” His voice rose higher with each word until he was shouting.
John was right in his face, spitting back. By all rights, they should have come to blows. “He needs to respect his limitations, Sam! All it takes is one second with your guard down, and he’ll be dead! ”
Supernatural tradition!
But really, most low end motels aren’t going to offer different room styles to choose from. It’s often ‘take what you can get,’ and two queen-sized beds is the most common format found at motels. If you want a room with a single bed, you’ll find that most of them are going to be king sized, and you have to pay extra for that, something Dean’s not gonna do.
Plus, a part of him is always saving that second bed for the possibility that Sam will be able to use it one day. Picking rooms with a single bed feel like he’s giving up.
AU: Brothers Apart
Timeline: After The Schism of Fire and Water
The tip of Dean’s tongue stuck out between his teeth as he concentrated all of his efforts down on the tiny ball of ground beef he was forming into the world’s smallest and most perfect hamburger patty.
It was the first opportunity he’d been able to get into the kitchen on his own, Bobby out to pick up more supplies for his crowded household, not used to entertaining guests at all, and certainly not sure what to do when one of those guests was smaller than a finger.
Sam was off exploring, and Dean hoped he stayed gone until he figured this thing out.
Tiny beef patties were harder than they looked.
His first attempt was too large. When Dean finished frying it, he’d realized that it was the size of Sam’s torso. No good. The entire point of this was making food Sam could eat like Bobby and Dean, not Sam-sized food. Dean had eaten it himself as he started his next attempt.
The next one had turned out smaller, but ended up looking like a tiny meatball. It wouldn’t sit on a bun. Another snack for Dean.
Now, he finally finished pressing the patty into shape and smirked. Perfect.
Dropping it onto one of Bobby’s smallest frying pans with the heat set on low, Dean went to turn his attention to the bun and fixings only to find Sam standing on the counter, curiously looking over the remains of Dean’s former attempts.
“Having some trouble?” Sam asked, his face open and innocent.
Caught in the act, Dean forced himself to unfreeze. Sam couldn’t see into the pan from where he was standing. There was still hope of it remaining a secret until it was ready. He reached for the fridge, leaning over to look inside while he talked. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you to not sneak up on a hunter?”
Sam took a few steps towards Dean, and away from the stovetop. “That same person once said he was always alert,” Sam joked, his grin widening. “So I guess this means you could work on those instincts of yours.”
Dean rolled his eyes, but there was no hiding the amusement in them. “And I know just the pint-size hunter who’s up to the challenge,” he snarked back.
“Do you?” Sam pretended like he had no idea what they were talking about. “You’ll have to introduce us. I could use some support the next time we go head to head.”
Dean snorted, sitting at the kitchen table with everything he needed. Tomato, onion, lettuce to shred and ketchup. He started to slice everything down to the size needed for Sam’s hamburger. The cherry tomato was perfect as soon as he had a slice, and he wondered why he hadn’t used that to judge how much ground meat for Sam’s burger.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked as Dean reached over to the pan, his arm long enough to reach the pan from his seat at the table and flipping over the mini patty to keep it from burning.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Dean said, trying to buy himself time and blinking away the fumes of the onion. There wasn’t much hope of hiding it from Sam much longer, but all he needed was a few more seconds.
The last part was the bun, and Dean only had the buns he and Bobby ate from. He flattened one, cutting it down to the same circular dimensions of the tomato. That was it, and now it was time to assemble.
With the tiny patty cooked, Dean placed that first on the bun, followed by the onion, tomato, shreds of lettuce and the smallest drop of ketchup before holding it out for Sam. “Hungry?” he asked, his eyes lighting up. The hamburger was small enough for Sam to hold between two hands, and actually take a bite of normally instead of picking it apart.
Sam looked dumbfounded, and a grin crept onto his face as he reached out for it. His tiny hands took the mini-burger from Dean, folding around the flattened bun. Then he smirked and looked up at Dean.
“What, no cheese?”
Dean froze again, thinking he’d done it wrong before spotting the smirk. Sam was kidding around with him. He flicked his fingers in Sam’s direction. “Special orders not accepted,” he said primly.
Sam took a bite, closing his eyes at the flavors, all together at once instead of separate like normal. “Thanks, Dean.”
One word prompts open for all three admins! Check out the list and drop us a word and a character!
Send some in for us to work on over the holiday break!
( Putting these together since the one without a character came in first and I had already planned to throw Jacob at that one )
AU: Giant Jacob AU
Timeline: Before the story begins
Twigs and leaves crunched under a heavy boot as Jacob hiked among the trees, staring around avidly. The pines, straight and tall, stretched high overhead, deep green needles hiding the darkening sky from sight. The air was filled with the fresh scent of those pines, as well as distant maples, and the crisp aroma of a mountain lake. Even as the day came to a close, birds and squirrels bustled about on the branches, chasing each other or holding conversations in their squeaks and chirps. There was a slant to the world that came as an unfamiliar obstacle to Jacob, a native of the flat lands of Iowa.
It was the perfect terrain for hiking. Despite Colorado coming with more chill than he was used to, and thinner air than he usually breathed, it was well worth the trip.
Back at the campsite, his friends were less enthusiastic about the wild outdoors themselves. Camping was a time of relaxation, they’d say. To Jacob, hiking in the trees was relaxing. A chance to get away, take it all in, and live in his own thoughts.
A faint twinge on his back, little more than an itch, prompted Jacob to stop in his tracks. He shifted his backpack around, and then glanced up once more. The evening was getting darker. Knowing his friends, they’d need help getting a fire started.
He turned back towards the campsite, using the slope of the earth and a natural sense of direction to point him in the right direction. He didn’t want to be caught out here when it grew too dark to find his way between the trees.
He didn’t make it three steps before a strange tugging sensation clenched in his middle. With a wince, Jacob stopped again and shut his eyes tight. The thin air around him became thinner and his heart pounded in his ears as though he was suddenly underwater. There was a prickling at his arms and chest, and the sound of more twigs breaking.
Did I fall down a hill?
He opened his eyes, and then closed them again in confusion. When he opened them once more, the scene before him was just as confusing. Jacob stared around him, with the waning sky a canopy overhead, ringed by the mountain range that created a wall across the country.
He could see the sky.
He was taller than the trees.
“What the fuck,” he muttered, his face a mask of shock. His voice, quiet to him, rumbled out of his now-massive chest and made the tips of the trees quiver. They didn’t rise past his shoulders.
The prickling on his arms came from the branches that now poked into him like twigs. Now, an entire pine branch felt like what a pine needle should feel like. He brushed a hand over one branch with his brow furrowed, and flinched when the spindly wood creaked and then snapped from his touch.
“I need help,” he murmured, and now bird and squirrels could be heard scolding him from safely below the tree level where he couldn’t see them. He looked straight down. Past a chest broader than a house and jean-clad legs that towered over some apartment buildings, his boots were planted on the ground, crushing undergrowth that moments ago he’d need to push aside or navigate around.
If Jacob were to guess with his severely-confused senses, he was over a hundred feet tall.
It wasn’t possible. He had to have hit his head on something. It was a hallucination, taking the sensations of the forest around and warping them. He could still smell the maple and the pine, and the mountain lake, he could still feel the chill in the air, but it all took a backseat.
Jacob’s heart did flips as the confusion grew, and he took a lurching, dizzy step. It was clumsy, and he nearly dropped down to his knees in the confusion and vertigo. He was up to high. Jacob had to blink lightheadedness away that could be from the thin air or from the soaring sensation that came with just one step.
People didn’t just grow like this all of a sudden.
He needed to find someone. He took another step with a grimace, and the strange height didn’t go away. If he could just get back to the others, he might be able to find out what had happened to make him grow.
Small dots of flickering orange led him back. Jacob didn’t need his sense of direction as much, now that he stood taller than the trees. He walked towards the campgrounds, glancing down with every step. If there was another hiker down there …
He didn’t want to think about that.
The trees shook as he walked, and many branches snapped against him before he even noticed he was brushing against them. He was too big, the fabric of his hoodie and jeans too thick.
As he walked, more lights flickered to life in the treeless patch that was the main campground park. Jacob could just make out the tiny squares of light that came out of RV windows, and the tiny stars that wavered to and fro near the campfires. Flashlights. He’d probably barely be able to hold one in his fingers if he really was big.
He just needed to find his friends and their tent. They’d get a park ranger to use a phone with signal on it and call for help or something. Then he’d be fine.
Since he was in a hurry and he could hear people talking ahead, Jacob took longer strides to get back. His boots crushed more saplings and left huge indents in the ground, and he didn’t realize until it was too late that a lot of those voices were screaming.
He reached out to push at one tall pine tree, leaning it aside with a prolonged creak, and found the campgrounds in chaos. The fires weren’t surrounded by happy people talking and laughing. The flashlight beams wavered because people were running, shouting to each other.
While he was so preoccupied with how confused he was, Jacob had never considered how frightened they’d be.
“Wait, wait,” he said, his voice booming over the campers that now stood no taller than his fingers. Fuck. I did this wrong. “Please!”
His words didn’t reach them. No one stopped their panic. Tents collapsed as people tore themselves out of them, and belongings were scattered in the pandemonium. Already, some of the fastest runners had reached their cars and the engines roared to life with an urgency that mimicked the shouts from the people.
“No, no, please,” Jacob said again. He let go of the tree and shuffled forward only a step, then lowered himself down. One hand reached for the ground to brace himself, and he hoped that making himself less towering might help.
A boom echoed over the chaos, a loud one, and suddenly a spray of stinging pain lit up in his arm. Jacob jerked his hand back and, in one fluid motion, pushed his sleeve up in surprise. His arm sported several tiny pinpricks of red.
Another shot rang out, and the spray of buckshot from the gun hit his other arm this time. “Ow!” Jacob yelped, falling backwards to a seat. The forest shook, pine needles fell, and more people screamed.
They’re terrified of me, he realized. There was another shot, and he flinched. This one missed him somehow. Despite being the size of one of the nearby hills, someone had missed him.
Because they were so scared they couldn’t see straight.
Jacob’s heart sank and he scrambled back with his hands until he could stumble to his feet. His backpack, now giant along with him, broke the top half off of a younger tree as he whirled around and ran. He couldn’t stay there while everyone was in a panic. Not while he could barely see the ground. Not while they were shooting at him.
He could try again later. Someone had to be able to help him.
I had to double check because I was certain I put Please on the list, but then it doesn’t really matter. I got an idea anyway.
AU: None of the current ones
A nightmare. This was a nightmare.
The sound of the worn plastic ice bucket slamming to the floor echoed in Oscar’s ears, and his eyes were wide with terror. A bruise was already forming on his forehead from slamming into a wall that hadn’t been there seconds before.
He was trapped. A human had spotted him while he ran desperately for cover in the motel room. They’d grabbed the ice bucket without a second thought, and in a few steps that covered distances Oscar would have to sprint for several seconds, stomped over to him.
The ground was still shaking. No, he realized, that’s just my knees.
Tears welled up in his eyes and raced down his cheeks. Oscar stood in carpet fibers that reached past his ankles, with almost no light leaking under the rim of the bucket. A circle of dim light ringed him in, an outline for how utterly trapped he was.
He hadn’t made it. After years of getting by on his own, keeping out of sight and collecting what he needed to survive, he hadn’t made it. It only took one failure to ruin everything, and the one failure had finally arrived.
Now, he was at the mercy of a human.
Light burst in from the opposite side of the container as it suddenly tilted upwards. Oscar whirled around, his cloth bag swinging with him and slamming into his side, heavy with the spoils he’d taken from the room. A breath caught in his throat and his shoulders hitched up with a new wave of adrenaline crashing through him like stormy waves on a rocky shore.
A hand with fingers bigger than his body slipped under the opening, blocking his escape route and inching towards him. Oscar could only watch, knees still shaking, as it came closer.
The first fingertip brushed against his chest and Oscar froze. Not an instant later, the hand lurched forward and that finger pressed into one side while a giant thumb closed in on the other, pinching around him and forcing the breath from his tiny, frail lungs. Oscar grimaced with pain.
More light washed over him now that he was secure in a pinch grip. The bucket was set aside and Oscar, stuck hopelessly in the casual strength of a single hand, shot into the air at the human’s whim. Air whipped at his messy brown hair and he closed his eyes, curling into himself as much as he could.
When he came to a stop, Oscar had his hands over his face. The human hummed thoughtfully, a deep, loud voice rumbling through his entire being. It was too much, too fast, too scary. Oscar sobbed and more tears came.
“Quit that,” the human ordered gruffly. Before Oscar could parse the words enough to understand that the order was for him, another pinch grip found him. Fingertips bigger than his head pinched roughly around one of his arms and tugged it away from his face.
He yelped in pain, and his other hand automatically braced against the pinch grip to try to free his arm. It was already bruising, he could tell. The human was too strong.
The human hummed again while Oscar sobbed, and then let go at last. Oscar held his hurt arm close to his chest, resisting the urge to cover his face again. Doing it once had gotten him hurt. He didn’t want to risk even worse consequences.
He dangled in the air like that for several seconds while the human looked him over, a cold and appraising look in those eyes. One fingertip nudged at one of his legs, propping it up to stare in disapproval at the cloth wraps he used for shoes. Then, it lifted up and mussed his mousey brown hair. Oscar squeaked in pain as it strained his neck.
“You’ll take some cleaning up,” the human noted, lifting Oscar higher. Oscar squealed with vertigo, finding himself now looking down at a huge human face, one that frowned at him like he was an interesting stone found on the ground.
Suddenly, a smirk appeared on the human’s lips. Oscar trembled at the sight of it and more tears coated his cheeks. He had never been seen by a human before, and now he understood why the idea scared him so much.
He was nothing to this man. He was just an object to pick up and observe, a toy. Nothing more.
Please …
A startled cry choked in his throat when the hand pinched around him dropped suddenly. Freefall wormed into his gut for a heartstopping second, and Oscar clung to the fingers around him despite the pain they caused in his ribs. His eyes shut tight for the brief moment.
Then it was over. The hand stopped moving, and then the grip around him relented.
Oscar landed in a heap on something hard and cold. The air escaped his lungs and he rolled over as motion assaulted him again. He looked upwards at a circular view of the ceiling, partially blocked by a human face peering in at him. The smell of cheap plastic surrounded him and he hiccuped.
He was in the ice bucket. Smooth sides that would resist any attempt to scramble up, the edge was over his head. With the human looking right at him, he wouldn’t have a chance to use his climbing thread to escape.
Not that it mattered. Once the human was finished walking, the bucket was dropped harshly onto what Oscar had to assume was the table. He jolted and then scrambled back, pressing against the wall of the container.
He didn’t know what the man had planned for him. It took him a second or two to find his voice.
“Please,” he managed to squeak out. Fear and despair coiled together in his tone, a hopeful appeal to the giant’s better nature.
All he got was another smirk. “Oh, you’ll be one of Mina’s favorites, I guarantee it,” he said, the cryptic words soaring over Oscar’s head.
Then, another circle loomed into view, and Oscar recognized the lid of the ice bucket just before it slammed into place overhead, echoing loudly in his ears and shutting him into total darkness.
Brothers Apart 