“Milk for growing bones!” the bartender announced, dropping two cups off at the tiny bar for the young Sam and Oscar where they stood.

“What’s your story, kid?” called the smaller Dean from his spot. He patted the seat next to him. “C’mon! Join us!”

Oscar looked up from his hands, where he was counting out how many people were at the bar now. Realizing that the Dean over there– a Dean at his scale!– was talking to him, he perked up in surprise. “O-okay,” he answered, glancing to his Sam curiously.

There sure were a lot of Sams and Deans to keep track of.

He started towards the bar and finally noticed the biggest person there was watching him. His head tilted back to meet Jacob’s curious but gentle gaze. Even from up on the bar, he was huge.

“Hey, bud,” Jacob greeted as quietly as he could. His deep voice still startled the absolutely minuscule child. Oz couldn’t be much more than two inches, even smaller than the young Sam walking with him.

“Um. Hi!” Oscar replied, before finally reaching the bar. Scrambling up onto the stool next to the small Dean, he had to grip the edge to keep from spinning around on the stool. As fun as that sounded, he had at least one thing to set straight.

He stared in awe at the Dean his size. Still a much taller man. “I’m Oscar, ” he said, making sure the guy at least knew his actual name before the nickname sank in.

“And he’s shortstop,” regular Dean put in from behind their seats, smirking as his tiny doppelgänger’s annoyed scowl.

“My name is not shortstop!” he snapped up at Dean. “At least my ass ain’t the size of Texas! ”

“Oh, I’m shaking in my boots,” Dean said dryly, a wry grin across his face as he needled his tiny double.

“Dean, chill,” his Sam sighed, pushing against the hand Dean had draped near the tiny bar.

Once the smaller Dean was sure Dean was done with his shit, and the second Sam sat down next to his young counterpart, waving for his own beer, to the annoyance of the teenager Dean (“Everyone gets a drink but me,” he mumbled in annoyance.), the smaller Dean was able to focus on Oscar.

“Oscar, eh?” he asked, skipping on the nickname after his own trouble escaping his. “You been keeping these two out of trouble?”

The young Sam sitting next to Oscar pulled his cup of milk closer and giggled. “Only Dean gets himself into trouble!”

Oscar grinned and nodded, following along with his Sam and answering Dean at the same time. After watching so many of the others bicker, with other versions of themselves, he was almost surprised to be addressed again. Normally he’d be more frightened in this situation, but for now he was simply nervous, and that was normal for him.

He took a curious sip of his own glass of milk. The first time he ever tried it.

“I showed Sam how ta climb! I showed my Sam, anyway,” he explained, looking to the smaller Dean again and hoping for his approval.

“An’ I showed him how to get in the walls and hide and stuff, since he was new to being our size and he needed a teacher. I never got to be a teacher before. It was real fun, I wish…. I wish I coulda done more.”

The small Dean smiled, as proud as Oscar hoped. “You did exactly what you should.” Oscar beamed with pride of his own.

“See Sam?” the regular Dean nudged his Sam, noticing that the two older Sams were sitting on the outside of the bar, guarding the others. “You coulda gotten by without Walt!”

Sam huffed, pushing Dean’s finger away. “Looks like you did a good job,” he complemented Oscar, ruffling his younger counterpart’s hair. “And there’s always hope for another chance.” After hearing the kid’s story earlier, his heart went out for the youngest and scrawniest there. Oscar would be alone when he left the Lounge, the only one on his own out of everyone there.

“So what about you two?” the regular Dean turned the question around on the pair of tiny Winchesters. “I have got to hear about how you two hooked up with Godzilla over here!”

That Sam smirked. “It all started with this pie we found…”

“Do not insult the pie!” tiny Dean bitched, sweeping his slice protectively off the bar and cradling it close. “That was the best pie I’ve ever had!”

Jacob laughed, keeping it quiet for the small, sensitive ears of the smaller occupants of the bar. The nickname that his own Dean had given him almost sounded strange coming from someone else. It was another Dean, with a story of his own, arriving at the same exact jab at Jacob’s size.

“It was kinda a rough start,” he admitted, watching as little Oscar eyed the slice of pie Dean was defending. Without even having to ask, the kid had his own tiny slice placed in front of him by that ever-amused bartender. It was like he pulled things out of thin air.

“I was between jobs and I stopped at a diner, left a slice of pie in a to go box on the table. Someone couldn’t resist.” He winked at his own Dean, getting their story going while the others listened in.

Above their heads, the television screen rippled until the words Chasing Family were proudly displayed.

Soon, the bartender knew, more would join them.

The fun was only just beginning.

---

Asks and prompts always open for the Lounge!

Follow The Lounge from the beginning!

Jacob took hesitant steps toward the bar. His eyes trailed on the ground, not knowing who Oscar was but certain he’d find out. In the meantime, he wouldn’t put the little guy at risk. 

He arrived at the bar and took a seat. There was a beat of hesitation before he settled his arms on the bar so his passengers had a way down. Leaving them to their short climb, he nodded at the much taller Dean.

“I’m Jacob Andris,” he greeted, looking bemused. “How … how’s it going?”

“Jacob?” Dean repeated, a grin blossoming on his face. He clapped the kid on the back, earning a look from the Dean perched close by on a shoulder. “Bowman told us all about ya!”

“Do you mind? ” Dean snipped from where he was sitting. No matter how much Jacob tried, he couldn’t completely stop the impact from jostling Dean and Sam a bit.

Dean poked at smaller-him in the side curiously. “Dude, since when am I bitty? ”

The much smaller Dean batted at the questing finger in aggravation. “Dude, quit it!”

They stared at each other, and the regular-sized Dean burst into a grin. “Awesome.”

Before Dean or Jacob could react, Dean had nabbed his smaller counterpart off the teenager’s shoulder, setting him down on the bar before he could get a swipe in with his tiny knife. “Bartender!” Dean called out, “we need a whiskey and apple pie over here, stat!”

“Coming right up!”

Sam stared at where his older brother was standing now, in just as much shock as Dean was down on the bar. “What in the world,” he said weakly, though he could feel the underlying current in the room that said they were safe. As boisterous and odd as this new Dean seemed, he wasn’t a danger.

Just excitable.

“Uh,” Jacob said, once again at a loss for what to say next. He didn’t have any clue who Bowman was. He had a strange feeling he might someday, but for now the name rang no bells. He decided to just let that one slide by.

Instead, he eyed Dean– the one he knew– down on the bar. The little guy wasn’t hurt at all, but he’d definitely never left Jacob’s shoulder behind so fast. The taller Dean was swift, and clearly had enough experience handling someone smaller than himself. Little Dean didn’t have a scratch on him.

In fact, he’d been set down next to a miniature version of the bar they sat at. Jacob grinned at the sight, and reached down to nudge one of the stools.

“Check it out, guys, you got front row seating,” he mused, giving the stool a light twirl. “Sam, you wanna order anything?”

“Maybe just a beer,” Sam said, his voice low.

That didn’t stop the bartender from overhearing. “One beer, comin’ up!”

Sam slowly climbed down Jacob’s arm, taking in the new, unfamiliar surroundings. The warm lighting overhead pushed away any shadows, and though Sam was shy as he saw the other Dean glance over at him, a telltale tingle going up his neck at the motion, he knew the man meant no harm.

Not that the smaller Dean would ever believe them.

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Asks and prompts always open for the Lounge!

Welcome to the AU lounge! A place of relaxation conceived and helped designed by all the readers and visitors to the world of Brothers Apart! Stay awhile, kick up your boots, and have some pie!

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Jacob paused and blinked deliberately. A sudden shift of his surroundings caught him off guard enough that he stiffened, taking in a sharp breath. They weren’t in the Impala anymore, shortly after he’d agreed to travel with the Winchesters. The key to the car, like precious metal, was nowhere to be found, along with any of their other possessions.

They were in … a bar? A diner?

He frowned around the room, noticing the arcade machines lined up against one wall. There was a kid by one of them, a teen only a handful of years younger than Jacob. He was intent on the screen, not even noticing Jacob’s sudden appearance there.

There were two others that he could see, both at the bar. One man stood behind it, and gave him a knowing smirk and a nod. Jacob was too bamboozled to return the greeting right away.

His plan to walk over there and find out what was going on stopped abruptly when he took a closer look at the other guy, leaning against the bar with a glass in one hand.

Tall, sporting a worn leather jacket and jeans, and with a spike of light-brown hair atop his head, the man was the spitting image of Dean, who was currently perched on Jacob’s shoulder, not quite four inches tall.

He stared for another beat of hesitation, and then realized that the guy didn’t just look like Dean. He was Dean. No curse on him, standing at full human size. Enjoying a drink at the bar while a tiny double of himself stood on someone’s shoulder several yards away.

“Uh. Okay,” he muttered, glancing to his shoulders without turning his head. “What’s …” he trailed off, finally noticing the tiny furniture resting on top of all other other furniture in the room. Perfect miniatures of each table, with their own chairs and some place settings here and there. A glance at one of the unoccupied arcade machines revealed a tiny Winchester-sized console on the panel.

“Yeah, so this is weird,” he finally managed a full sentence. “Guys, what do I do?”

They were interrupted before either of the tiny brothers with him could respond. “C’mon in!” called the Dean that loitered at the bar. “They have all you can eat pie.”

That certainly made the Dean with Jacob perk right up. “Pie?”

Sam rolled his eyes, though he couldn’t see Dean from where he sat. That tone of voice was easily recognizable. “Dude, you had an entire slice of pie to yourself a few weeks ago.”

“But pie.”

The Dean waiting for them at the bar gestured at the seats. “Just watch your step. I’m not sure where Oscar got off to. The others are playing Mario.”

Others. Jacob glanced at the arcade console and realized that there must be other people Sam and Dean’s– his Sam and Dean– size over there. He couldn’t see them past the teenager, but some notion popped into his head that they must be Sams. 

Plural Sams and Deans. Holy shit.

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Asks and prompts always open for the Lounge!