If you recognize where the title came from, you might want to skip this story. I've been told it's a little... traumatising for people who loved those books.
Sam's seven and trying to sleep with a full bladder when he starts hearing voices. Being the sort of seven year old boy who grows up being told never to go out alone at night and to always report if he hears things wriggling around in the dark, he promptly rolls over in bed and whispers, "Dean?"
His brother kicks him. "Shut up, I'm not taking you to the bathroom," Dean says. "Stupid. I told you not to drink all that soda before bed. Go in the coke bottle."
"It's not that," Sam says, pouting. He really, really does have to pee, but he's not getting up and going over the floor when he can hear something talking down there. It sounds like mice speaking English. "I hear something."
"A monster isn't going to eat you," Dean says firmly. "They prefer little boys, not little girls. Go back to sleep."
"I'm not a girl!" Sam whispers back.
Dad stirs on the bed across from them and they both go still. Dad'd just gotten back from one of his salesmen trips to wherever he always went; Sam really didn't want to wake him up, but he would if Dean wasn't going to take care of whatever was under the bed.
For all Sam knows, it really is a monster. One that sings loudly and off-key.
Sam frowns to himself. He's pretty sure he just heard the I'm a Little Teapot song, only now someone's swearing and laughing at the same time. He prods at Dean while a tiny mouse voice says, "Holy shit, I'm a sugar bowl!"
"Come on, you heard that, right?" he asks warily.
Dean burrows his head under their pillow. "No, Sammy. Shut up. I don't hear anything singing."
Sam sniffs. "Liar."
Dean sighs loudly and pulls his head out from under the pillow to give Sam a flat look Sam can only see because of the nightlight Dad makes Dean keep on for him. "You're such a sissy," Dean mumbles. "Fine, you want me to look?"
Sam nods his head. "I gotta pee," he says, somewhat apologetically. He doesn't want Dean to get eaten by whatever monster's down there. He'll wake Dad up if Dean says so.
Dean grumbles some more and slides off the bed. There's another burst of tiny laughter from under the bed and this time Dean tilts his head to the side and gets this weird, scary look on his face before he pulls the gun Sam's not supposed to know he has out from under their shared pillow.
"Stay there," he says, and Sam rolls his eyes. Like he's going to get out of bed and go down there.
Instead, he scoots over to the edge, ready to look whenever Dean says he can.
Dean wriggles under the bed, gun out in front of him. It's quiet for a long moment, long enough that Sam starts panicking that something's eaten his brother. Something makes a small, whispery screamy noise that gets cut off with a muffled thump, and then Dean says, "Holy fuck," right before there's another thumping, squishy, swatty sound.
"Dad's gonna wash your mouth out when he wakes up," Sam says, because of course he's gonna tattle on Dean. Dean'd do it to him.
Dean makes a disbelieving noise under the bed and them there's another squishing sound. Sam's almost sure he heard screaming again, but he's not gonna say anything else so Dean can make fun of him for it. "Not if I show him this," Dean finally mutters.
Sam pokes his head under the bed, trying to make out his brother in the gloom. "What is it? Is it a rat?"
"Yeah, Sammy, a talking rat." Dean wiggles his way out of the bed, holding his palms out in front of him the entire way, frowning.
Dean's got a weird look on his face. He walks over to the nightlight and tilts his hands into the light before he makes a choking noise. Sam scrunches his forehead up and climbs out of bed after him; Dean's killed whatever was under the bed, because he's cool like that. He can walk on the floor now.
His brother lets him peek around his shoulder when he gets close enough. Sam plasters himself to Dean's back and looks at whatever it is that's all over Dean's hands.
For a second, Sam thinks that Dean's squished some of his dollhouse people flat to get back at him for waking him up. One of them even has brown hair just like the mom-doll does and Sam opens his mouth to start whining at Dean for doing it.
Then he realizes that there's streaks of blood on Dean's hands, a little bit of it at least, and he looks closer.
"Dean!" Sam says hysterically, "Those are people! You just squished little people!"
Dean hastily whips around to cover Sam's mouth with his arm. "They probably totally deserved it!" he whispers hotly. "Makin' noises at night and waking people up. Dad would have done it too!"
"Little people!" Sam counters. He wants to poke at the mess on Dean's hands, but that's dead people and Horton says people are people no matter how small and Sam was going to go to hell for waking Dean up so he could squish small people.
Dean wipes his hands off on a pile of clothes on the floor and climbs back into bed. "They must have been evil or something."
Sam pushes himself up on the bed too, crawling over Dean so he could huddle against the wall. "Horton would be so sad," Sam says mournfully. "What if you just killed some Whos?"
"Whos are smaller than those things were." Dean sighs and kicks him again. "Just... think of them as gremlins or something. Anything that small has gotta be evil."
Sam sniffles, thinking of it. "What if they weren't?"
"They were," Dean says. He sighs when Sam sniffles again, rolls over and throws an arm across Sam's belly, pulling him in and curling around him. Sam snuggles into him; Dean doesn't let him do this much anymore 'cause he says he's too big now and it's girlie and not for big boys.
They never do tell Dad. Sam doesn't know why Dean doesn't share, but he keeps his mouth shut because he thinks Dad won't believe him anyway. And then it turns out that Dad probably would have, because he'd been fighting monsters while he was away from them and Sam's so upset about it that he wants to keep his first brush with the supernatural just between him and Dean.
Serves Dad right to be left out too.
Sam's thirteen when he picks up a book in a haunted library and, completely and utterly bored out of his mind while he waits for Dad and Dean to finish the ghost, reads it. The first half of it is boring, but there's something about it that keeps tickling his mind, something weirdly familiar.
It's not until Dean stumbles back his way, grinning fiercely, that it clicks.
"Oh, my God," Sam says faintly.
Dean claps him on the back. "Yeah, me and Dad are pretty awesome."
"Not that," Sam says, horrified. He tilts the books so Dean can see the cover, then reads it out loud because at this point in time he's not even sure Dean can read. "The Borrowers."
"Not my type of reading material." Dean's leer tells him everything he never wanted to know about what his brother reads. He gives it a disinterested look before he ruffles Sam's hair. "Come on, Dad's ready to book it."
Sam flips the book and reads, solemnly, "Underneath the kitchen floor is the world of the Borrowers. In their tiny home, matchboxes doubles as roomy beds and postage stamps hang on the walls like paintings."
"Ooo-kay," Dean says slowly. He scratches at his neck and glances over towards the exit. "I'm sure that's real fascinating, Sammy, but, seriously man, we gotta go. Dad's waitin'."
"Dean." Sam shakes the book at his brother to get his attention back and then says, slowly, "Remember those people you squished when we were little?"
"You're still little," Dean says, resting his arm on the top of Sam's head to demonstrate.
Sam swats at the arm ineffectually. It's not fair that Dean's bigger than he is, because Dean always rubs it in. He's just a little short for his age. He'll grow. "Whatever, listen!" he says when he manages to displace Dean's arm. "I think they were, you know, Borrowers."
"Huh?" Dean blinks at him. "Not monsters?" he asks after a few seconds.
"No."
There's a beat of silence. "Sucks to be them," Dean says.
Yeah, it probably really, really had. Sam grimaces and puts the book back on the shelf while Dean slings an arm around his shoulders.
"I cannot believe you killed the Borrowers," Sam says on their way out.
"Shouldn't have been in our room, dude," Dean responds easily. He laughs and squeezes Sam affectionately. "Think I can get a book deal out of it?"
"You are so wrong."