So, work has been a real pill for @nightmares06 and @neonthewrite both, with night especially taking on a lot of shenanigans that really suck the energy out of the entire day. It’s nuts, folks. We have the upcoming Zelda game coming out to look forward to, but in the meantime I (neon) decided to write a little fluff, and we’re gonna share it with you. Enjoy!
Dean walked briskly, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. So long as he didn’t dawdle on his way, people probably wouldn’t notice him. It was a tried-and-true method for sneaking around in plain sight. Dean was no stranger to that. He was no stranger to sneaking into places without paying the admission, either.
He’d never done anything like this before, though. The weight of the responsibility was a lot heavier than the small weight in his front pocket. He couldn’t mess this up.
He made his way to a secluded area that didn’t have many people around. A food vendor was the nearest sign of anyone else, and that guy was about ready to fall asleep under his shade umbrella. Amusement parks didn’t get as much business in the middle of the week during a school year. Kids who played hooky didn’t have anything new to see at the park, so they wandered elsewhere.
Not Dean. He didn’t care for the roller coasters stretching over the trees, but he just knew there would be something like this here if he managed to sneak in.
He found himself on a tidy stone path that wound its way through a miniature village, with tiny houses and miniature farmers tending their gardens. A little trickle of a stream wound around town halls and shops with hand painted signs, and under little bridges no bigger than his hand. Some of the paint was worn off the buildings in the little village, but somehow Dean doubted that would be a problem.
Once he was sure he was alone in the area, Dean found a place at the edge of the mini-village to sit himself down. Then, he finally nudged at his front pocket. “How’s it goin’, fellas?”
A quiet voice grumbled something, and then a teeny elbow jabbed into his chest. Dean watched a tiny shape in his pocket shift, and decided to help out by propping up the flap over it. He let himself grin at the sight.
Sam, not even three inches tall, was the first to climb up the side and grip the edge. His fluffy hair was sticking out at odd angles thanks to the static in the pocket, but it wasn’t nearly as messy as Oscar’s when he followed suit. The even smaller kid could look almost like a dandelion when he woke up in the morning sometimes.
Sam looked around them with wide eyes, while Oscar only barely peeked over the edge of the pocket. The little guy wasn’t quite tall enough to see out, and had to really hang on just to stay up there, but he looked around nervously anyway. Even when he was scared, he’d always tried to stick close to Sam.
“Dean, what’s all that?” Sam asked, looking up.
Dean almost shrugged, but remembered in time that it would jostle the tiny pair in his pocket. He was getting used to that. Somehow. “I figured I’d skip school today, just this once,” he began, heading off Sam’s scolding before it got started, “since it was so nice out. I knew they’d have something like this.”
“Wh-what is it?” Oscar asked, his voice shy and quiet. The kid had come a long way since his fearful glances and squeaks when interacting with Dean. Sometimes the teen wondered if the little guy was just scared as a baseline.
Dean offered him a smile anyway. “Oz, I think you might like checking this place out, if you wanna come out of the pocket,” he said. He pointed at the nearest miniature house. “It might be a little bit lame, but who knows until you look around?”
Sam was practically ready to climb out of the pocket on his own. “Yeah, Oscar, let’s check it out!”
Oscar’s eyes were wide and he glanced around them once more. No other people. It was just one teenager sitting on the ground with two tiny children keeping lookout from his pocket. “O-okay. Maybe just for a little bit.”
That was all the prompting they needed. Dean glanced around once more to make extra sure that no one was watching, and then lowered his hand into the pocket. Sam and Oscar let go of the edge so they could climb onto his curled fingers instead, clinging like the little climbing experts they were.
Dean lifted them out carefully. The contrast between the two kids was always stark when he took them out of hiding. Sam looked around with an innocent curiosity, putting his trust in his big brother to look after them even if he was still nervous about his new size. Oscar always tried to make sure he could hide behind Dean’s thumb or fingers. He wasn’t nervous about the size of everything. He was just nervous.
Dean lowered his hand towards the miniature house. He couldn’t help but smirk at the sight of the two kids scrambling onto the fake grass and standing near the front door. The miniature village was small enough that they almost looked like grown adults next to that house.
Sam bounded up the porch steps and pushed on the door. It swung into the little house, and Dean leaned down to peer into it with them.
“Oscar, let’s go in!” Sam said, turning back.
Oscar was still at the bottom of the steps, staring at the first one. “I-I never saw stairs that I could walk on!” he admitted.
Dean snickered and reached out to nudge Oscar’s shoulder. The little guy looked back at him, startled, but didn’t flinch away from the touch. Dean would count that as a win. “Just give it a try. There might be even more stairs inside.”
Oscar looked back at Sam, who waited eagerly for his friend to join him. Then, he watched his cloth-wrapped feet as they trekked up the few steps onto the porch. “Okay, let’s go see,” he said, letting Sam lead the way into the miniature house.
Dean leaned down further to watch them. He couldn’t hide a grin as Oscar paused in the doorway, swinging the door back and forth on its tiny hinges. The kid had never had anything like that. From what they’d gotten out of him, his door back home was little more than a block of wood he had to strain to push into place.
Oscar glanced out of the house at Dean and grinned. “W-we can go find more stairs and come see you out a window,” he suggested, before closing the door all the way.
Dean smirked, amused and relieved to see that the kids could still play around and be kids, despite everything. He’d make sure to take care of them, even if he looked lame just sitting around in a village of tiny dollhouses. “I’ll be waitin’.”
Brothers Apart 