"How the hell do you misplace a fifty-foot dragon?! "
Stalking angrily through the woods, trying to not think about them being lost, it wasn't until Sam heard a gravelly "Sam…" from behind that he realized he'd spoken his thoughts out loud.
Whirling around, a keen blue-eyed gaze met his frustrated hazels. "Dean will be fine," Cas said steadily. "He can handle himself alone for an hour. If there was anyone suspicious in the forest, Bobby and Balth would call us."
Sam took a deep breath. Exhaled. "Dream team, those two," he muttered, but couldn't hide a slight smirk. "I just… hate leaving him alone so long."
"He won't even know we were gone," Cas assured, resuming his walk and pushing past Sam to take the lead. "If anyone can handle himself, it's the full-grown dragon."
Sam huffed, shifting the bags full of meat in his arms and following behind.
"Besides," Cas continued, "we'll all feel better when Dean's been fed without alerting everyone in the forest that there's a hungry dragon about."
A large growl crackled through the air and for a second time in as many minutes, Sam found himself clinging to Dean's collar in an attempt to keep his seat and not be spilled into the ground during a confrontation between a giant and a titan.
The older hunter jolted at the sound, falling into a crouch and at the ready in a clear 'fight or flight' response.
The dragon looked equally surprised by the sound, only instead of acting defensive, he looked at his stomach, then back at the Winchesters.
Maybe it was something about the expression on the dragon's face. A face that was far larger than Sam's older brother, titanic and only comprehensible because of the distance between them. An expression on that massive face that mirrored Dean on the rare occasion that Sam managed to embarrass him.
Or maybe it was the way Dean was as stiff as a board, a cat bristled and ready to bolt.
Sam burst out laughing.
Two matching sets of green eyes, one pair the size of Sam's head and the other pair bigger than his entire body, both turned towards Dean's shoulder, the tension in the air marginally reduced by confusion.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean growled, but Sam's snickers didn't stop.
"You… should see your… faces!" Sam gasped out between peals of laughter. "He sounds… just like you... when you're staring at pie!"
If Sam could have made out Dean's expression, he would have seen offence painted over those gruff features. "You mean it's hungry?!"
Sam slapped Dean's neck before he could go for his gun in the hopes of calming him, and the dragon hop-skipped a step back with one leg in the air frantically cutting a negative, shaking his head at the same time to reinforce that fact. A few barked out chirps and several quick hand motions passed before he remembered they couldn't understand sign language.
Leaning forward, the dragon took a claw and hastily scratched out a word in the bare ground he'd been laying in previously.
NO.
"No?" Dean repeated. "No, he's not gonna eat us or no he's not hungry?"
"Does it matter?" Sam asked in aggravation, the dragon nodding emphatically along with his light voice.
Rubbing the word out with a curled fist, the dragon swiftly replaced it with a second, then pointed a claw at Dean's chest.
DEAN?
"How'd he…" Dean trailed off as the dragon immediately started scratching out a second word next to the first, then pointed at Dean's shoulder.
SAMMY?
Dean could only nod, fascination replacing the wary fear in his expression as the dragon started working again at the ground. It circled Dean's name, jabbing it with a claw, then pointed at itself.
"No, your name's not Dean, that's my name-"
Dean's attempt to educate the dragon on the meaning of names was cut off by the echoing of a familiar voice calling "Dean?"
"What?!" Dean snapped, the dragon echoing him in a series of chirps as it looked to the edge of a clearing.
Two men, having arrived only seconds before, stood there in shock staring at the three in the clearing. One was wearing a flannel shirt a lot like the majority of Dean's wardrobe, the other in a comfortable fitting trenchcoat, both with arms full of bags. Their eyes were widest when they saw Dean- the human Dean- staring back.
Then the taller of the two dropped the bags his arms were filled with, pre-packaged meat spilling out into the forest floor as he pulled a gun on them.
"Who the hell are you?!" he shouted as he advanced, his stance unwavering and his expression harsh.
Sam slapped his hands over his ears at the loud voice, not expecting it. Dean had his hands up, the silver knife loose in a fist. The dragon made that cutting motion again, much like when Dean thought it wanted to eat them, a series of chirps flowing from its mouth as it tried explaining things in its own language. Its wings rustled in agitation.
"Whoa! No one's getting hurt here!" Dean said, also speaking louder than Sam was comfortable with as he tried to talk down the taller man. "We were just talking, that's all!"
The man still standing at the edge of the clearing has his head cocked as though he was listening to a voice, then called out "Sam! Stop!"
The smaller Sam sitting on his older brother's shoulder looked up, blinking as the guy called his name. Before he could respond, the tallest human there looked over his shoulder in response.
"He says he wasn't hurting him," the blue-eyed man said firmly. "Let's hear them out."
The dragon chirped, then pointed again at Dean's shoulder, where Sam still cringed back from all the noise. A flow of nonsensical sounds proceeded, finished off with a tone of finality.
A tingle of new eyes on him burst across Sam's neck, and he looked up to find everyone's eyes on him except for his Dean (who continued to keep his hands in the air, unwilling to risk a fight with Sam so close and vulnerable).
"That's not possible," the tall man gasped at the same time as Dean exclaimed "You can understand him?!"
The tall man held up his hands, then made a show of disarming his gun and tucking it away. "Okay, let's talk. Dean says you didn't hurt him after you realized he was intelligent."
Dean blinked. "What…?" He looked at the tall man, then frowned. "Sammy? "
The dragon chirped an affirmative, then jabbed his thumb at himself.
"So that's Dean!" Sam exclaimed excitedly from Dean's shoulder, having recovered from the noise. The dragon nodded, adding several more chirps.
"And I'm Cas," said the last man in the clearing, stepping forward next to Sam. "I assume this is what you both looked like a few years ago?"
The human-sized Sam frowned, looking at his tiny counterpart. "I was a little taller back then…" he said hesitantly. "But Dean is spot on."
"Dude, you're ancient," Dean declared, and the dragon chuffed out a laugh, his jaw dropping in a draconic grin.
The older Sam glared. "It's not my fault you're barely out of diapers!" he snapped instinctively before reigning himself in. "Okay. Look. We clearly need to talk. Right? " He looked at everyone for confirmation, his eyes pausing on his tiny counterpart longer than the others. "Let's figure this out, because something clearly went wrong somewhere."
He gestured to the ground near his draconic older brother, then pointed at that Dean warningly. "Not another word about my age, grandpa."
Even the other Sam and Dean could hear the faked innocence in the next few chirps.
"Oh, he's definitely you," Sam sniggered into Dean's ear, where no one else could hear him.
"And so you've been fighting together like this… for two years?" the older Sam repeated, gesturing at his tiny counterpart.
Sam nodded. It was getting easier to talk to himself after they both shared their stories. "It's not as bad as you'd think," he said confidently. "Though I have to say, I wasn't ready for a dragon."
"Drauglin," Cas corrected, reinforced by a chirp from Dean. The dragon had snacked on the food brought to him by his mate and brother, calming the rumbling stomach. "Regular dragons are petty thieves. Drauglin are protectors of nature."
"I know a few sprites you might want to meet," Dean snickered, imagining Bowman's reaction to the new trio. Or the association dragons had with fire.
"Right…" the older Sam said. "Look. Maybe we can help you out. If Dean can follow your trail, we should be able to figure out how you got here."
"Trail?" Dean repeated in offence. "I'll have you know I'm an expert tracker, I don't leave a-"
The dragon chirped slyly, and Cas dutifully translated, "Your aftershave is so potent he can smell you from twenty feet away," sending the smaller Sam into stitches of laughter.
"It's so true!" Sam gasped out, rocking back against Dean's neck.
Dean poked at him in annoyance, frowning. "It is not," he complained at the dragon and Sam both.
"Either way," the older Sam said in an attempt to keep them on track, unable to hide a smirk of his own. "Dean can backtrack your trail."
A/N
wolfie180g commissioned a continuation of the first part! Please check the brothers apart tumblr if you're interested in commission of your own, or message me for details!
