Brothers Adopted has begun, and we’re going to let you all in on a secret! Remember this picture?
… That’s not from Brothers Adopted. It never happened in that series.
We just never bothered correcting anyone who thought big Dean and tiny Jake were from that series. It’s from an AU that was never guessed, yet has two stories written for it already! So, if anyone figures it out, we’ll let you in on the secret 😉
“You know,” Sam said, getting one last thought that made him smile, “if you’re the only one that knows camping, you’ll be in charge.”
“Ha,” Jacob scoffed, a grin on his face. He turned onto his side and pulled his own section of the shirt over himself for a blanket. “That’ll be something,” he replied. Jacob, the youngest of the three, in charge.
Jacob has actually already appeared in the Brothers Apart series, and he will be showing up again! His premier came in Calling John Bonham, when he didn’t believe Bowman’s story of fighting against the lich with the Winchesters, so he called up the number on the business card to see if it was all true.
(Sam must adopt his lil bro Jacob, right?)
In Brothers Together, we don’t know what Jacob’s up to or where he’s at, so only the future will tell! It’s always possible to have any of our characters (especially our main characters) in any of the AUs.
After seeing this adorable artwork, I absolutely had to make a story to go along with it. This isn’t really canon to Fairy Tales, but it was a lot of fun anyway. The art was made by the amazing @lamthetwickster and commissioned by @nightmares06. Thank you both, and Merry Christmas to all!
Approx. reading time ~5-10 minutes
After the hustle and bustle leading up to the holiday, nothing suited Jacob more than lounging on the couch.
The living room was kept tidy, with the rug vacuumed and the coffee table free of the usual craft magazines that adorned it. There was a low fire in the fireplace, behind a worn metal grate to keep any errant sparks at bay. The furniture, well worn from years of use, had been pushed aside from its usual arrangement to make room for a tall addition that glittered and glowed.
The Christmas tree was rumpled on one side, so they’d set it up with that part facing the wall. The rest was adorned with sparkling ornaments, and a string light that Jacob had been tasked with adding on. His mother was way too short to reach the top of the tree.
There was white felt wrapped around the base for fake snow, and a tidy little pile of wrapped gifts arranged around it. With the fireplace going and the soft light from the tree reflecting around the room, it made a typical Christmas setting.
The wood sprite fluttering around the room made things less typical.
I definitely cracked up at the image that popped into my head at this. Jacob would get splashed in the face if he did that too enthusiastically or too close. What dorks XD
Known Abilities: Jacob has grown up with a quiet patience that enables him to read a social situation very well. He doesn’t often see a need to push things in any direction, but he can see signs and trends through observation and is able to roll with almost anything. Part of it stems from his size. At his height and breadth, he can make other humans nervous just to be around him. He’d become an expert in toning down his intimidation factor the best he can in order to avoid making people feel threatened around him.
The size has its benefits, too. He is built for strength and stamina, and is essentially a wall of a person, more defensive in fights unless something really drives him to go on the offensive. It can make him seem like an unintelligent thug, but Jacob is decently smart, definitely enough to be perceptive (though not enough to pull off very convincing lies).
When Jacob is under the curse, his relative strength is even greater. He’s also just as perceptive as before, though in the isolation that comes with being small he can’t put it to use as well. He is diligent in learning the skills he needs to survive.
Jacob’s loyalty and gentleness are some of his greatest assets. Earning his respect is earning someone who will stand up for you no matter what. His level-headedness comes in handy quite often as well, especially when dealing with more excitable people.
Background: Jacob grew up and lives in Carlisle, Iowa, with his mother and father until his father lost a battle with cancer when Jacob was eight. His mother Mariana is second generation Greek-American, and his father Nicholas was first generation, and Jacob has many relatives overseas (with whom he occasionally talks on the phone, so he is proficient in Greek if not fluent).
His father’s illness and death resulted in a lot of medical bills and the loss of an income to the household, and Jacob and his mother spent a few years struggling financially. Since then, Mariana has found more stable work, and her second marriage to police officer Michael Ellison has helped take away some of the burden. Jacob has a decent relationship with his stepfather, though there will never be a replacement in his life for his dad, whom he tries to emulate in everything that he does.
Knack: Enhanced strength factor
Quote: You really wouldn’t mind hanging around Godzilla all the time?
You can’t do something like that to a person, no matter what the hell you think of him!
Bowman and Jacob, Mischief Managed (from a much older prompt list that I am far too lazy to go dig up)
Bowman flitted to and fro while Jacob walked along the forest floor, his heavy steps crushing twigs and leaves beneath his boots. The pair made an odd sight navigating the woods. Where one was only four inches tall and glided on wings mimicking the leaves all around them, the other stood over six feet tall and sported a worn out hoodie.
They were as different as they could be, but they’d managed to build an easy friendship over Jacob’s visits to the forest. Bowman, despite all of his complaints about human nonsense, never stopped coming up with more questions.
Up ahead, Bowman saw something glinting in the sun and grinned. He had an idea.
He drifted downward to fly in a circle around Jacob’s head. The human stopped to avoid bumping into him and raised his eyebrows. “Yes, Bowman?” he said, a smirk growing on his face. “You have my attention.”
Bowman hovered at Jacob’s eye level and pointed toward a pine tree with long, spindly branches and golden drops of sap glistening upon them. The sun filtering down through the leaves above cast light over the sap so that it almost glowed invitingly. “There’s some pine sap over there. You should try some!”
Jacob frowned critically. “Isn’t that, like, super bitter?” he asked. Even so, he resumed walking when Bowman led the way towards the tree.
Bowman scoffed. “It’s delicious,” he countered. “Figures you humans would know more about phone things than what’s good to eat.”
Jacob snickered as Bowman came to a landing on one of the branches. Where Bowman could deftly find a place to stand, Jacob had to stoop slightly to avoid being poked by the sharp green needles of the tree. He peered skeptically at a large glob of sap sitting on the branch.
Bowman rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a sprout about it,” he complained. “See?” he stooped to grab a flake of bark to scoop some of the sap up. With relish, he ate the sticky amber sap and gestured with a wing for Jacob to try it.
Jacob sighed and it ruffled Bowman’s hair, but then he shrugged. “I guess. You’ll know better than any wilderness guidebooks,” he reasoned aloud. He took a smear of the sap on his fingertip.
Any second now.
The minute Jacob tasted the sap, his face morphed into one of complete disgust. “Oh Jesus Christ,” he lamented, his mouth turned downward in a tight frown. The overwhelming bitter flavor, a favorite of Bowman’s, was stronger than he ever could have expected.
Bowman cackled. “Oh, Spirit, I can’t believe that worked.”
“Oh my God,” Jacob rolled his eyes, still with a note of disgust in his voice. The taste of the sap would linger with him for hours. “You’re such an ass.”
Bowman fluttered up from the branch. “And you’re such a giant. Congratulations, Jacob. You’ve been had by someone the size of your finger.” He held up his hand with his index finger extended for emphasis.
Jacob mimicked the motion, but before Bowman knew what he was up to, he poked at Bowman’s chest in midair. Bowman faltered and glared, and Jacob smirked. “I’ll put you in my pocket,” he warned.
Bowman narrowed his eyes. “You’ll have to catch me first.”
Definitely Fairy Tales canon. Definitely only happened once. Jacob learns quickly that Bowman is a stinker, and here you see he definitely employed the right technique. Just poke him.
The old house creaked and groaned, constantly settling as the wind outside tested its strength. Jacob crept through the main hall, his boots muffled by a dusty rug that had been traversed many times over the years. The house truly was old, so much so that its wiring was shaky at best, and anything electronic didn’t fit in with the decor.
Jacob kept his flashlight trained on the ground as he walked, and his eyes flickered from side to side. He normally had two small companions on either shoulder, giving him input on where he should go.
They’d led him to this house, this old old place, and that was as far as he’d gotten with their guidance. Old floorboards and walls meant lots of passages within the woodwork of the home to explore. As the only ones that could fit in there, Sam and Dean were the best choice. Sam was only four inches tall, and Dean was a little smaller, but that had yet to slow them down.
Sam and Dean Winchester were hunters, and it ran in the family. After so long thinking their lives had crashed into a dead end in a little motel in Kansas, they were back on the job with a determination to rival anyone. While helping them look for their dad, a hunter who had dropped of the map a couple years back, Jacob was learning the trade as well.
They would scope out the inside of the walls and see if they could find any evidence of what might be causing the strange activity reported from that house. Jacob, being much taller and bulkier, would venture the halls and rooms, scoping out what he could.
Despite knowing how capable they were and how fiercely the brothers defended their independence, Jacob couldn’t help but worry about them in the back of his mind. This was an entirely new place. He didn’t even know the normal dangers they might face in the walls, and this house would probably have new ones. Old, unstable framework would shift and crush them, or a resident rat, used to having the place to itself, could sneak up on them.
Jacob had to remind himself often of how long they’d been living at their size. They were cursed as kids, and he’d only known them for a month or so at the most. Of their group, he was the least experienced with hunting.
The thoughts quieted as he wandered into what looked like a living room. He needed to focus. They were there to find signs of a vengeful spirit or even a poltergeist.
A flicker of motion in one corner drew Jacob’s gaze like a beacon. Normally, he’d never notice something like that, but after hanging around with people the size of his fingers around, he could never be too careful. He had to keep his eyes open for them.
The risks if he didn’t were far too great.
“Sam? Dean?” he called, his voice low but still shattering the silence. He always felt huge and loud when he was dealing with them, and when they were all on a hunt. After the case with Melanie, he’d tried to learn better stealth, with Dean giving him pointers, but he didn’t think it was working very quickly.
Even so, he crossed the room to where he’d seen the motion, next to a heavy cabinet. He knelt down next to it and shone his flashlight in the corner, expecting to find one of the Winchesters snooping around. He could expect a scold or a harsh complaint if it was Dean.
Instead, there was a surprised little squeak.
Jacob’s eyebrows shot up and he gasped at the sight of a tiny mouse. It was curled up with its back to the corner, and a little pink tail wrapped around the tiny paws. Round ears and a whiskered nose quivered in time with the rapid breaths seen in the tiny curled up body.
“Oh,” Jacob muttered. He’d cornered a mouse. “Uh. Sorry, little guy.” He remembered thinking that the brothers were so close to mice in size when he first started hanging around them. Now, he was seeing, they were definitely bigger than a mouse, or this one was exceptionally small. It might be young.
Jacob didn’t have much time to think about the fact that he’d cornered a tiny little mouse in his search for his friends before a crash sounded elsewhere in the house. It sounded like it came from upstairs, and recognition lit in his eyes. The attic had been cited in the stories about the house several times.
“If you see my friends when you get back in the walls, let them know I went upstairs,” he murmured with a smirk, wondering if Sam and Dean could already hear what he said. Him, their so-called Godzilla, talking to a mouse.
Then, he stood back to his full height, letting his flashlight beam drift away from the mouse. He didn’t watch where its shadowy shape darted to next.
He had to find out what caused that noise. It’s what a good hunter would do.
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.
Brothers Apart 