Dean Winchester had nearly died that day. He had been thrown against a wall and banged against it repeatedly by a spirit several times, and then as he staggered from the house an elderly woman (one with poor eyesight at that) had assumed he was drunk and had sent him tumbling to the round with a blow to the forehead from a pink beaded purse. By that night, he had three broken ribs, a concussion, his right wrist was shattered, and he had a multitude of cuts, bruises, scraps, scratches, and sprains.
So as they checked into their hotel room for the night, some heavy duty pain killers were making their entrance into Dean's system. By the time Sam hustled his brother into the room, he was thoroughly convinced that he was batman.
"Think about it, Sammy," he said, sounding completely stoned. "I save people, drive a wicked awesome car, all the ladies love me, no one really knows who I am, and I'm freaking EPIC. I've got to be batman."
"Sure thing, Deano," Sam said. "How about you get your pajamas on and go to bed, so you can save more people in the morning?"
"Okay, Boy Wonder," Dean said absent mindedly.
But as he reached the bed and Sam reached for the duffel bag to hand Dean his sweats Dean flopped down on the mattress, face mashed against the comforter.
"Get up, Dean," Sam said, tossing a tee shirt and pair of sweat pants at his horizontal brother.
"Batman is resting," Dean responded shrilly. "Please leave a message at the sound of the bird. CCCCAAAAACCCCCKKKKKAAAAA!"
With that, his eyes closed and he began drooling slightly. Sam sighed, they had rented suits to impersonate the sons of a rich business man and Sam had intended on returning them to the shop across the street while Dean was asleep, but that couldn't happen if Dean was still wearing his. The younger Winchester sighed again and pulled of Dean's shoes and undid his tie. As he started pulling of the black jacket, Dean screamed and jolted awake.
"Holey crap, the Boy Wonder is defiling Batman!" he screamed before falling off the bed.
When Sam came back from returning the suits, Dean was no longer in his bed. Instead, he was plastered with his face a mere four inches from the television set and had the volume turned up.
"Dean, get in the bed!" Sam growled.
"No, Boy Wonder," he said, still thinking he was Batman. "Rule number twelve, never date a coworker."
"What?" Sam asked. Then he noticed the familiar theme song coming from the television. Lately, whenever they had an hour of downtime in a hotel Dean would insist on watching NCIS.
"We fight crime together," the doped up man said, shaking his head. "It could never be."
"Bobby?" Sam said into his cell, ducking to avoid a lamp that Dean just chucked at the wall. "When we were kids, did you ever have an experience with Dean throwing a tantrum?"
"No," Bobby responded. "When I met Dean, he still hadn't started talking after Mary's death. Even after that, he was always pretty calm. Why are you asking?"
"Dean's on pain meds," Sam said as he crawled under the bed. "He's convinced the room is trying to kill him and is throwing everything he can lift against the walls."
"Well stop him, you idjit!" Bobby responded. "Before he hurts himself!"
"Okay, I'll call you back," Sam crawled out from under the bed and just managed to keep his brother from sending the night stand crashing against the wall paper. "Let's not do that," he said as he set it back on the ground.
Dean looked up at Sam and his bottom lip jutted out. "I don't want the room to kill me," he said in a heartbreaking voice. "Why do you want the room to kill me?"
"I won't let the room kill you," Sam promised.
"Okay?" Dean sniffled. "Can I have a cookie?"
"Hey, Sam," Dean said, still sounding completely stoned, from where he was sitting on the bed. "You want to know what was one of the most miserable years of my childhood?"
"What was that?" Sam asked.
"The year I turned sixteen," he declared. "You were twelve, and you were already way taller than me!"
Sam chuckled. His brother's growth had been stunted by ADHD medication and natural shortness from being born premature and Sam had always been tall for his age. "Actually, I was taller than you before my eleventh birthday," Sam corrected.
"Gah!" Dean moaned and flopped onto his back. "Curse my shortness and your dandelion qualities." Sam chuckled again.
While Sam thought of it as an achievement, to a fifteen year old Dean, having a kids brother who could keep him in place by putting his hand on his forehead and pushing out was humiliating. Bobby tried to make him feel better by saying it was just because Sam grew like a weed so Dean took to calling Sam a dandelion.
"And remember what happened when you broke your leg while trying to get rid of the spirit, but you had to keep playing football while you did it so you wouldn't draw attention to yourself?" Sam brought up.
"Don't talk about it!" Dean shouted. "You were freakishly tall for an almost fourteen year old!"
"I carried you off of the field!" Sam laughed. "You were seventeen and I carried you!"
"GAH!" Dean said again, running into the bathroom.
Sam heard the door close and instantly felt bad about teasing his doped up brother. It wasn't his fault that he didn't break the five feet barrier until he was a week away from sixteen… Lucky for Sam, in his medicated state, Dean had forgotten to lock the door and Sam came into the bathroom to see Dean sitting in the bathtub.
"What are you doing there, buddy?" Sam asked gently.
"Dying inside," Dean muttered darkly. Sam sighed.
"Dean, it wasn't that bad," Sam said. "You were just kind of short."
"I was the ONLY kid in high school who got hand me downs from their kid brother or sister. I was always the one who had to sit Indian style in the front row in all of the class pictures," Dean reported.
"Well you're normal-ish height now," Sam said. "You caught up."
"Sam, when I turned sixteen I still had to sit on a stack of phone books to see over the dash!"
"Let's just go get some leftover pie from the fridge, Mr. Grumpy," Sam said. Dean stuck his tongue out at his brother before getting out of the bathtub.
"Boy Wonder, if I got turned into a small child, you would keep me, right?" Dean asked.
"Yeah," Sam answered. "Why do you ask?"
"I don't know," Dean shrugged. "But with our jobs, it could happen."
"Sammy?"
"Yeah, buddy?" Sam asked.
"It hurts," Dean whimpered.
"I'm sorry," Sam said sincerely, glancing at his watch to see how long it had been since his last dosage. "Let's take some more of your pain killers now." Sam would rather have a doped up Dean running around the hotel room and acting bizarrely than this whimpering, hurting Dean. Sam nursed the pills and water into Dean's mouth before helping Dean ease onto his back and pulling one of the blankets over his already sleeping brother.
"Good night, Batman."