( continues...) sad-faced kid perching on the chair and clutching the yellow knitting instead. “What, him?” Dean sounds incredulous.
“Dean?”
Dean looks up at Sam, shrugging. “Just some kid I met, this morning. While I was looking for the shop. He'd lost his dog.” Dean looks sheepish. “I kinda spent a while helping him look. He seemed real unhappy about it, y'know? I mean – c'mon. Who wouldn't help a little kid look for his puppy, for fuck's sakes?”
“Language!” reproves the fairy godmother, who is back to her sweet-old-grandmother form again, and Dean looks up to the heavens and groans.
“Lady, I am a grown man! I swear, I drink beer, I drive my car, I cheat at cards, I like to make sweet sweet love to beautiful ladies. I hunt demons for a living, for the love of God! I do not want to have to go through Junior High all over again! This is not a reward!”
“It really isn't a reward,” agrees Sam, nodding. “I mean, it's nice that you wanted to, ah, help him, but this? Isn't helping him. Or me. Really.”
“But this way Sammy gets to see what a pain in the ass it is, looking after a kid brother,” she says softly, looking right at Dean. “And this way you don't have to be responsible for everything. You can get to play. You can get some proper schooling – you're not stupid, you know, Dean. You just had other things on your mind, at school. But you could start over. Do it all right. The Yellow Eyed Demon is gone, now. You don't need to give everything up for your father's quest this time. Sam's all grown up, he's a trained soldier and he's got his psychic powers too. He doesn't need you to look out for him.” She smiles. “You could have friends, go to camp, do your homework, go to college, get a job. You could be normal, Dean.”
“Normal's Sammy's gig, not mine,” says Dean, shakily, after a surprisingly long pause.
“You could let somebody else take charge.”
Dean draws a deep breath, and squares his shoulders. He's no longer straining against Sam's hands – in fact he's actually leaning back against him now, looking up at the Fairy Godmother with his head tipped a little to one side. “I'm useless like this,” he says. “You've taken everything away. I can't protect myself. I can't protect Sam. I can't protect other people. I know what's out there, and you've made me into one of the victims. Again. This isn't a kindness, lady.”
She looks down at him, and whatever she sees in his face twists her smile into something rueful and a little sad. “No. No, I see that. Very well.” And then there is a wand, a slim strip of polished wood without any glitter or stars or anything else, and she swishes with a practiced ease that's mesmerising, and mutters something softly under her breath. “There you are, then. Give it half an hour or so to take.”
* * *
By the time they make it back to the motel, Dean has had to do some wild wriggling and jiggling to peel himself out of the tiny jeans, and the shoes have popped off his feet. The t-shirt has enough stretch to it that it's not actually torn yet, but it does look like it's been painted on. Happily he was still wearing his own underwear, and it's no longer too big. When they get to the motel, Dean runs through the puddles in his stockinged feet, his naked legs flashing pale and incongruous underneath the leather jacket. He's shivering outside the door when Sam catches up and unlocks it.
“Fucking witches,” mutters Dean, pulling off the jacket and then dragging the t-shirt up over his head with some difficulty.
“Fairies,” corrects Sam quietly.
“Yeah, well, whatever. Screw the lot of 'em,” says Dean, standing there in his underwear and his soggy socks, looking kind of lost. He shakes his head briskly, once, and then reaches down to scoop up the jeans he'd shrunk out of earlier. “I'm just glad it wasn't permanent.”
“Yeah,” agrees Sam, watching his brother pull his jeans back on, and then tug a sweater over his head like it's armour. “Yeah. Me too.” He tries to laugh, but his smile feels oddly wooden.
Dean shoots him a sideways (continued...)