This little story takes place when Oscar is around 14 years old. It is canon to the Brothers Together AU.
Oscar hadn’t had a very successful day. He managed to scrape together enough crumbs and bits of food for one meal, but that was no progress. His pantry would merely remain at the abysmally low levels it had been when he set out.
He shuffled quietly towards home, cloth shoes pushing dust around. He felt worn out to the core. Climbing furniture could wear on someone after doing it all evening and into the night. Especially someone who didn’t eat as much as they should, but in order to avoid running out, Oscar had to cut corners.
He always had to cut corners.
While he walked, Oscar was drawn inevitably into memories. Years ago, when he was just a young kid and his mom had only been gone a year, Oscar had been happy again. A bright spot in his bleak outlook may well have saved his life.
He’d had food and water and a place he could go for more warmth when even his pile of blankets was too cold. Oscar had more than one meal a day, of all kinds of foods, the memory of which still made his mouth water and his stomach pine for more sometimes. He’d had a glow of health in his cheeks and a shy smile in his eyes.
Oscar had had friends.
Now he was back to having no one. Oscar had stupidly wished for that month to last longer. He’d even let himself imagine going with them when they left. But a note written in quick handwriting, punctuated with a hasty SORRY OZ had brought him back to reality.
That had to be nearly half his lifetime ago. Oscar remembered them every day. He often wondered if they remembered him. It didn’t seem likely. They’d gone on to meet new people and make new connections.
Oscar was still there, clinging to the frayed edges of what was left of his connection. Just like he’d started to forget things about his mom, he’d begun to forget things about Sam and Dean. Their voices were gone. Their faces had become a little vague.
But he still remembered how happy he’d been to spend time with them. He’d even gone outside safely.
A familiar swell of music echoed into his passages from the room adjacent. Oscar felt his heart tighten and drifted to the edge of the wall. He leaned his ear against it and planted his hands on it as well. He knew that music anywhere. Someone must have left the TV on when they went to bed.
The music of Jurassic Park threw Oscar back six years. The taste of popcorn and soda, the rise and fall of the surface beneath him, the brightness of the enormous screen were crystal clear in his head. He blinked rapidly as he thought about that day in the park. He and Sam had explored the grass, outside, with the open sky above and the fresh air all around. Oscar was free of worry even knowing there were birds that could carry him away out there.
He wasn’t alone.
The music and the sound of people talking and dinosaurs grumbling reached his hearing, and Oscar sighed. He saw this movie in a big theater with his friends, though he’d had to cover his eyes for a lot of it. He remembered how Dean had placed a protective hand over Sam and Oscar.
After listening for a while, Oscar opened his eyes. He was back in the walls. It was dim and dusty and chilly. He hadn’t had anything to eat yet that day, and he didn’t have a promise of safety or more food tomorrow.
Oscar sighed and stepped away from the edge of the wall, making his way home once more.
I’ve got a few other blogs I follow, both Supernatural and gt or both! I don’t think any of them are exactly like mine, but they are enjoyable. (If I could draw my blog might be different, lol)
For blogs where you can find both Supernatural and gt, I recommend @ask-tinycas and @ask-tinysam. Both have some wonderful artwork on their sites, if you look back in time. Due to real life obligations, they tend to be slower blogs, but I know whenever I see a post from either, I get excited! (the tiny Cas blog is Destiel oriented, for any non-shippers, but it is absolutely adorable, so don’t let that put you off from some great artwork and storytelling)
For just gt, check out @borrowedtimeandspace! There’s a good deal of fun Doctor Who gt going on over there. @neonthewrite is another fun gt-oriented blog, and you’ll find prompts that feature characters you’ll recognize from my stories – namely, Jacob, Bowman, Oscar and the gang! And you can send in prompts of your own. Another similar blog, @alittleblogoftrust is also great for gt fun from one of our wonderful editors @creatorofuniverses, along with @neonthebright herself!
For just Supernatural, I highly recommend @asksamstuff. The blog has a ton of great story and artwork on it, and the girl that runs it did the amazing picture of Ilyana and Sam for me!
Hey, everyone. The general reaction to the ending of Hershey Kisses and Salt Lines was, understandably, very upset! Poor little Oscar was left behind in the wake of the Winchesters fleeing a monster, and had to resign himself to life on his own in the Knight’s Inn once more.
This story is an update on the little guy’s life in the motel.
Oscar took slow breaths. He had to focus. He was getting better at this all the time, but it still only took one mistake for everything to go wrong. Two years of surviving by himself, down the drain if he got caught. He couldn’t let that happen.
Most of the smaller folk wouldn’t risk hiding in an occupied room. The risk of humans spotting them was simply too great. Even Oscar felt his heart hammering as he huddled in his hiding spot under the bed, close to the wall. A large tangle of lint and dustbunnies provided a good barricade while he waited.
The motel was more packed than it had ever been. A glimpse outside had revealed a bus in the parking lot, and seven rooms were booked out with four humans to a room. Teenagers, a whole class of them, on a trip. Their presence made waves … mostly sound waves.
Oscar had tried to check all of the new faces for a familiar one, just in case. They were all the right age, but they confirmed his doubts.
Dean wouldn’t have come with a group like this anyway.
It was far from a total loss, though. Human teenagers, left mostly to their own devices, ate a lot of food. They didn’t clean up after themselves as much, either.
Oscar would never dream of venturing near the room where most of them had gone, calling it a “party room.” One closer to home was promising enough for him. Oscar instead staked out a room with four girls that had decided to watch TV and gab the evening away. He didn’t follow most of what they said, but he noticed every time they dropped some of their food. Several crumbs and even an entire potato chip lay just under the shadow of the beds, willfully ignored by the humans piled on top of the blankets.
Waiting in the room would work well. As soon as they were all asleep, Oscar could make his move. After watching each crumb fall, he wouldn’t even need to search, and he could grab all the food on his way back into the walls.
The risk of being caught was always there. Oscar huddled even smaller as he imagined one of those humans kneeling down and seeing him. With four of them, it’d be easy to herd him into a corner and catch him.
They might not be nice like Dean. In fact, it was very unlikely. Dean had been a rare human indeed, with his tiny brother Sam helping him realize that smaller folk were people. Not animals or pets or toys.
These girls might not be mean to Oscar, either. He’d figured out that a lot of humans liked small, cute things. Oscar was a tiny, ten-year-old boy. He would probably become a favorite living doll, or a pet that they loved to coo and make faces at through the bars of a cage. He drifted into thoughts of how well he might be fed in that scenario, the only light in such a bleak imagined existence.
Even for all the food he could ever want, Oscar wouldn’t want a cage.
He waited for a long time in that room. His stomach pined for the food within view. And still he waited. Oscar was very used to waiting. His patience kept him huddled safely out of sight of the humans. More crumbs fell from above. The TV droned on.
When the girls finally settled into their beds and switched off the lamps, Oscar was rubbing his eyes sleepily. He waited at least thirty minutes more before moving. He had to be sure they were all asleep.
Then, he was off.
Oscar collected every last scrap. The full potato chip he tucked under his arm, it was so big. His bag actually filled up. As he scurried back to his entrance into the walls with that reassuring weight bouncing along to the rhythm of his run, his heart lifted just a little. It was probably enough food to last him several days, if not a full week.
With a life like Oscar’s, every little silver lining counted.
When he brought everything home, after not once being noticed by the humans, Oscar enjoyed himself organizing the food on his pantry shelves. He still wasn’t tall enough to reach the highest ones, but the lower shelves he could fill with crumbs and the stacked shards of the potato chip.
Once everything was put away, he picked up the piece of chip that he’d set aside for his meal for the day. His stomach thanked him profusely as he wolfed down the salty, starchy snack. His brown eyes even fluttered closed for a second. He didn’t let any of the food go to waste. The oil and salt it left on his fingers was licked clean and then Oscar went about getting ready for bed.
He washed his hands and his face from his bottle cap of water. He made sure his door was closed tightly against any bugs, and made sure no bugs had already snuck in. He peeked into his pantry one more time, to reassure himself that everything was still there.
It was, and he smiled faintly. “Good,” he breathed.
Finally, Oscar crept into the partitioned off bedroom where his nest of blankets waited invitingly. He pretended they were proud of him for doing such a good job getting supplies that night, and snuggled up under the whole pile to keep warm.
“Goodnight,” he said to the empty home. He pretended that, wherever they were, his friends heard him.
Aww, that would be so cute ^-^. They could have swimming lessons for Sam and Oscar since the tub is the size of a pond. Dean would have to watch those two closely, they are very smol kiddos.
Oscar would probably only be convinced to try if they gave him something to float on like that rubber duck. Poor little guy would fit down the drain, and since he’s generally so nervous, they’d need to sweeten the deal. And then he might just stay on his ducky the whole time. XD
“This is something else,” Sam said, keeping his voice at a low level. It felt… eerie, inside the walls. Like he was in another world, almost. He didn’t want to disturb the surroundings, knowing that he was outsized by almost everything in their world.
Oscar smiled faintly. It was easier to see his face in the low light leaking in from a split in the wallpaper above. They were just on the edge of the illumination before it faded into murky darkness in either direction. “It’s not too bad,” he said, nudging a woodchip with his shoe. It, like some other debris, was left behind from when the building was made.
“The path to my house is a lot cleaner, though, ‘cause I don’t want too much dust,” he explained conversationally. Oscar looked in both directions before he nodded to himself, assured of which direction they’d need to go if they wanted to get to his home from here. That was a long walk.
He opened his mouth to say more, but paused, almost frozen, and listened. There was a distant sound in the dust, something moving in the darkness beyond the area they could see. Oscar listened with a look of concentration on his face and turned his eyes towards the source, watching the dark. If they needed to run, they at least had the air duct right there to scurry into.
Oscar could see farther into the dark. When he saw the source of the quiet shuffling, his face broke into a grin. “Oh!” he muttered excitedly, glancing aside to Sam to see if he’d noticed yet.
Sam gasped at the sound, and found himself coughing on some dust he’d inhaled. The sounds echoing in the walls around them didn’t sound like a person’s footsteps, and were far too lightweight to be a human nearby. He couldn’t put an image to what the source was, and worry filled him at the thought of not knowing what was out there.
“Wh-what is it?” Sam asked Oscar tremulously. His hand once again gripped the younger boy’s sleeve, seeking out security. The hilt of his knife brushed against his chest with the movement, reminding him that he may be small, but he had a way to defend himself if he needed it.
A whole batch of cute dorks! That’s what these AUs are, really.
And really, though Jacob is often a bit of a giant terror when he first meets smol people, he ends up becoming quite the cinnamon roll himself. He’s a teddy, I swear (And the other characters usually vouch for that)!
Oscar, of course, is a cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure, etc etc. Just imagine that timid little guy, all 3.25 inches of him, encountering Jacob at his fully grown 6′5″ height. He would be so so timid and nervous while Jacob would probably be accidentally scary before becoming the gentlest giant around.
The official Hershey Kisses and Salt Lines storyline has 6 chapters left, and a conclusion. In between the conclusion and the story will be a series of short stories, all from ideas that inspired us or prompted by you guys 🙂 Included in those will be A Day at the Park, with Oscar’s first trip to enjoy nature without being afraid!
Brothers Apart 