Hmm. I had a kind of a plot bunny, but then it ran away, leaving me with just a beginning and no clear idea of where the story is going. So I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to post it here and see what you reckon? (I'm thinking that although I like the idea in theory, in execution it's not particularly gripping. I need some perspective.)

* * *

Obviously, afterwards it was easy to see where Dean had gone wrong. But by then it was entirely too late.

* * *

Sam's late getting back from the library, and he's feeling pretty pissy about having to walk through the rain, even if it's only three blocks. He'd tried calling Dean, but the cellphone was just going to voice mail. Damn it. Which probably just means he's busy with some waitress, or that he's dropped his phone, but Sam's still relieved as hell to see the Impala in the parking lot as he splashes back to the motel. You never can tell.

He bangs on the door. “Dean?” The rain is still pounding down, grey and dreary and inescapable, and water is trickling down the back of Sam's neck. His bangs are sodden. This is not a great moment for Dean to be in the john. He hunkers closer to the door, the peeling blue paint inches from his nose, and tries to find a little shelter from the driving rain. “Dean? I don't have a key. Let me in already!”

“Sam?” And that - that doesn't actually sound anything like Dean. What the hell? “I've got – I've kind of got a problem.” And Dean's still not opening the door – if it even is Dean. Sam's getting a bad feeling about this.

“Okay,” he says evenly. “Well, why don't you just open the goddamn door and tell me about it? I'm getting drowned out here!

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” It's like Dean's doing some kind of joke voice or something. Or else – and this thought has Sam flexing his fingers and steadying his pulse, reaching for the calm and the stillness that he needs to control his powers – or else it just isn't Dean. “But – you've got to promise not to laugh, okay?”

And – huh. It might not sound a lot like Dean's voice, but that sure does sound like his brother. Weirdly. What the hell? “Oookay,” says Sam, warily.

“Promise?”

Sam pounds on the door. “I promise to kick your ass if you don't let me in out of this rain right now. Quit messing around, Dean!”

“Right. Yeah. Okay.”

Sam bites his lip. He can't sense anything demonic, and he's gotten pretty good at feeling for this stuff these days. Still – something is very definitely out of whack. He's actually starting to feel pretty worried when the door finally opens, and his muscles are tensing, ready for – oh. Actually, as it turns out, not ready for anything. Ready for a vampire, or a werewolf, or a demon or something, but not so much ready for the sight of a scowling nine year old boy peering out from under Dean's jacket, with Dean's t-shirt hanging almost to his pasty little knees and Dean's jeans and shoes in a crumpled heap on the carpet next to his feet. He's wearing a pair of socks that are about ten sizes too big. Sam's jaw drops. The kid glares up at him. For a tiny person, he's packing an impressive amount of irritation into a fairly small amount of space.

“How – what – who?” says Sam weakly, but he knows the answer to at least part of that perfectly well. Sure, in Sam's memory the face was bigger, but he looks just like all the photos.

“Shut the fuck up,” says the kid, and Sam is shocked afresh, because that's just wrong coming from a nine year old.

“Don't say the f wor...” he begins, scandalised, and then bites his tongue as the kid raises a fist and punches him in the solar plexus. It's quite a good punch, for a small kid, and Sam doubles over and makes wheezing noises for a moment.

“Shut the fucking fuck up, you fuckwit,” the kid snarls, like he's been raised by wolves on the set of Deadwood. Like he's got to make up for his lack of stature by shrinking his vocabulary to match.

Sam stands up straighter, raising his hands placatingly. “Dean?” he says, (continued...)

( continues...) weakly. “Really?”

The kid – Dean – shrugs, and kicks the floor with one bare foot. “It wasn't my fault,” he mutters. “How was I supposed to know?”

”Dean?” repeats Sam, shaking his head incredulously.

“That's my name, Sammy. Don't wear it out.” Dean sits down on the edge of the bed and his toes don't quite reach the carpet any more. He looks sideways at Sam, still glowering, and heaves a huge, irritated sigh. “Go on. You know you want to,” he says, giving Sam the stink eye.

“What happened?” Sam asks, sitting down hard on one of the wobbly wooden chairs and staring at his newly little brother. “This is – how – seriously, dude! What happened?”

“I found the shop,” says Dean, gruffly.

“You – that's great!” Sam says. Then his face falls. “Except – oh, crap. You mean you fell for it too? Dean!”

“Shut up!” snaps Dean, red-faced. “It wasn't my fault. The damn thing changes.” Sam blinks. “I mean, we were looking for a junk store, right? Something like that? Wacky antiques, secretly cursed objects, something with dark corners and some creepy old guy, right?”

“That's what Mrs Parker described,” agrees Sam slowly.

“Thank you!” And it's just so weird watching Dean's gestures and hearing his intonations coming from somebody who ought to be in third grade doing spelling tests. Sam's staring like an idiot, which is kind of rude but, man, he really can't be blamed for it, surely? This is pretty damn Twilight Zone, even for the Winchesters. “So I looked everywhere for this mysterious disappearing reappearing junk shop of doom. Everywhere. Every damn street, every alley, you name it. And maybe it kept popping out of existence as soon as I arrived and reappearing when I was gone, I don't know. But – no damn shop. So in the end I gave up.”

“You gave up? I thought you said you found it?”

“That was later.” He waves his arms for emphasis, but the effect is kind of ruined because Dean's hands are buried somewhere up inside the arms of his jacket, and it occurs to Sam quite suddenly that this is Dad's jacket, and that he can remember Dean pulling it around him just like this when they were little, and when Dad was off on another hunting trip. And – shit, man. Dean was as little as this – hell, littler – back in Sam's earliest memories, when it was Dean who made him breakfast and nagged him to brush his teeth and told him bedtime stories and cleaned up his spilled juice. It's kind of like a punch to the gut. Sam had always felt pretty safe in spite of everything, when he was little, had always known that Dean would look out for him, even if Dad wasn't there. But, Jesus – Dean was just a little kid himself, back then. How safe did he feel, stuck in a motel room with his baby brother, not knowing if their dad was going to come back alive? Jesus! What the hell had Dad been thinking, really, to leave them alone like that? To put all that on a kid's shoulders? That wasn't right.

“Are you even listening?” yells Dean, his voice shrill and furious. And it's funny, it should be funny, to see Dean reduced to this small red-faced bundle of anger and frustration with Dad's jacket draped over him like Batman's cape, but Sam feels kind of choked instead.

“Yes!” Sam feels weirdly guilty and protective at the same time.

Dean regards him narrowly. “Really? Then what did I just say?”

“That you were hungry,” says Sam, who is good at multitasking.

“Huh.” Dean nods grumpily. “Okay. So – there was this bakery, see. With this real hot chick behind the counter. And the sign said 'Grand Opening: Free Pie'.”

Sam groans. “Oh, Dean!”

Dean glowers at him. “”Well how was I supposed to know, Sammy? It was pie! A hot chick giving away free pie!”

“Free evil pie.”

“Pie, Sammy,” protests Dean, plaintively. “Pie!” he sounds like he's been betrayed by his one true love.

Sam looks him up and down. “So it didn't take effect straight away, then? 'Cause you clearly managed to drive back to the motel okay.”

Dean shrugs. “Only because I am a totally (continued...)

( continues...) awesome driver. By the time I got to the corner I had to choose between reaching the gas or seeing over the steering wheel.”

“Shit!”

“You said it.” He looks down at his hands. “Still, I think it's stopped now.” He bites his lip and his voice wobbles a bit. “I think.”

“Okay. Well, good.” Sam looks at his newly little brother and shakes his head. “I don't really want to start changing your daipers, Dean.”

“Dude!”

“I'm just saying,” says Sam, his mouth twitching; now that the initial astonishment has worn off he's starting to see the funny side. But then he sees the terrified expression that Dean's frantically trying to hide, and he stops thinking it's funny and feels like a jerk. Frightened kid right here, Sam. “Hey, it's okay. It's okay now,” he says in his most soothing voice. “We'll fix this.”

“I know,” says Dean, glaring ferociously up at him. “I'm not scared.”

“Okay, good,” Sam says helplessly.

There is a slightly tense moment, while Sam wishes he had a little more experience with kids, and then reminds himself that Dean isn't a kid, and then Dean pushes himself down off the bed and pads over to the fridge. “D'you wanna beer?” he asks as he opens the door.

Sam moves like lightning and slams the door shut. “No way.”

Dean stares up at him. “You're shitting me.”

“Dean, you are not drinking beer.”

“I'm older than you!”

“You can have Coke.”

“Sammy!”

“No.”

Dean takes a deep breath, and then another. “Sam, if there was ever a day when a person needed a stiff drink, then it would be the day when they are fed evil pie by some rogue trickster and end up looking like one of the Brady Bunch. I want a beer.”

“Sorry, not going to happen.” And it's not that Sam doesn't sympathise, but there's just no way that he's feeding beer to a kid. Not in this lifetime. Dean evidently reads the sincerity in his expression because he throws himself face down on the bed and yells into the pillow, then rolls over and scowls up at Sam. “You suck, you know that? I mean, seriously – you suck.”

“Deal with it,” says Sam, unmoved. “Dean, there is no way you would let a little kid drink beer.” Dean just looks at him, and Sam considers this assertion. “Well, there's no way that I'm letting a little kid drink beer, and that's that.”

“Loser.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

“Don't make me come over there and spank you.”

There is a slightly shocked silence.“You wouldn't dare.”

“Don't count on it.”

* * *

Oh, I love this, this is fun!

There have been a few regressed-child Dean fics (Em's Under the Haystack is a series), a couple of regressed-John fics, and even a child-Castiel fic. The Dean stories have been either cartoonish man in a child's body--like the cigar-smoking baby character in Roger Rabbit--or much younger, and didn't remember adulthood. The most poignant of these is a baby-fic, where Sam returns Dean from hell, but to hide him from Lillith he has a new soul, and there's no way to return him to adulthood and restore his memories.

I haven't seen a child-Dean fic with all his memories and personality intact. And of course, I haven't read one written by Fay--till now!

I think the trope of younger brother having to care for and protect the man who raised him, now regressed to childhood, is an attractive one, addressed to more and less success by various fics. This one's a keeper. Will there be more?

Oh, bless you!

I don't know if there will be more - it doesn't feel like it's going anywhere, and I was hoping the narrative would build up its own momentum and take me somewhere, but I don't know that it is - I just started out with the notion of Dean being betrayed by pie, which took a sort of Alice in Wonderland turn, but...hmm. Don't know. It needs a focus and a direction, rather than just wallowing around going "Look! Wee Dean! He is a woobie!" which is all I've got right now. Hmm.

scuffs floor grumpily.

C'mon, muse! You can't just ride a girl into the ground for two weeks and then walk off into the night! Who do you think you are, Faith?

Ah, it's okay if it ends there, Fay! It's just a bit of character study, which was spot on. Evil pie! I will spank you! Diapers! I was just about in tears laughing at it all.

Free evil pie!

Well, if you're looking for direction, obviously they have to get him embiggened again?

(Also, not to Britpick at this stage, but I think "straight away" should be "right away.")

I less than three all tiny!Dean stories.

The straight away didn't ping me, but that may be because I read enough Brit authored fic that it feels like second nature by now. Now, that you've pointed it out, yeah, an American would have said "right away."

Ooh, cheers for the Britpicking!

runs to fix

Surprisingly, I can haz ending!

* * *

Dean keeps on glaring at Sam as they drive around town, and offering a running critique on his driving skills. Sam is in and out of Target as fast as he can be, with pants and shoes and a t shirt that look more or less the right size, but when he gets back to the car with his purchases, he is unsurprised to find that Dean has clambered over into the driving seat, and is listening to Black Sabbath with his head back and his eyes closed.

“Clothes,” says Sam, and Dean jumps, opens his eyes, and scowls again.

“What took you so long?” he says, scrambling out of the car and grabbing the bag. He looks inside, mutters several unflattering things about Sam's taste in clothes, and then climbs into the back of the Impala and gets dressed in something more appropriate. But he keeps Dad's jacket on, and just dares Sam to say anything about it when he gets back into the front seat. “Okay, let's go find this son of a bitch,” he says, and Sam winces again. Dean's eyes narrow. “Don't even think about telling me to mind my language, Sammy, or so help me, I'll put superglue in your toothpaste.

Sam waves placating hands at him, and then turns the key in the ignition.

* * *

It's not the same Trickster, and Sam's kind of glad about that. Dean, on the other hand, is livid. Sam really wishes he'd managed to lock his brother in the car, but knowing Dean he'd probably have just scrambled out of a window or something.

“What kind of crap is this?” demands Dean, gesticulating down at his body wrathfully. Sam absolutely refused to let him have a gun, but he's brandishing a sharp pointy stick as long as his arm with a very purposeful expression on his small round face.

The Trickster, presently in the guise of a little old lady, just shrugs and grins. “I'm granting people's wishes, Dean. I'm a Fairy Godmother. Put the stake away, dear, it won't work on me.”

“You're a – you're – I – look, lady, do I look like Cinderella?”

She smiles at him rather dangerously. “Do you want to, sweetie?”

“No!” Dean yells. “And I don't want to be a goddamn kid either, so pull that wand out of your ass and fix it already, Tinkerbell!”

She tilts her head and looks at him in a way that suggests she can see considerably more than most people. “You wanted someone else to look after you,” she says, smiling, and Sam winces. “You know you did. You miss having your father around, having that nice, comfortable belief that someone else has all the answers, and that they know what to do.”

Dean's eyes are like saucers. “You – I – lady, you can keep your shitty pop psychology and stick it where the sun don't shine. I am a grown man, and I like it that way.”

She makes a tutting sound, and Sam has to reach out and grab Dean's shoulders and hold him still before the kid can start whaling on her. Dean's whole body is vibrating with indignation, and he feels shockingly small and fragile under Sam's hands. He glares at the old lady himself. “Please can you undo this?” Sam asks, as evenly as he can manage. “Ma'am?”

She smiles. “Manners. I like that.” Sam smiles his best good boy smile at her, and keeps a tight grip on Dean's leather jacket, feeling his brother still straining to get away. “It's a reward, you know,” she adds, looking down at Dean. “I tested you, just like I tested all the others, and you helped me. So this is your prize.”

Sam gapes. “You tested him? Us?”

She nods, reaches down into the lilac coloured purse and withdraws a big, blobby piece of yellow knitted something-or-other dangling off a needle, and starts to knit. “I tested all of them. Some people were good samaritans, some people were...bad samaritans. And then they got their just desserts.” She peers over her half-moon spectacles at Dean, and her wrinkly little apple cheeks plump up into a smile. “And you love dessert, don't you, dearie?”

“What test?” demands Dean. Her smile broadens, and for a moment the little old lady flickers out of view, and there's a small, (continued...)