A/N:

Thanks to Christine, stargazer100, goldacharmed, appletopine, ANerdWhoWrites and Owllover555! You make posting these stories worth it.

This is the chapter you've been waiting for.


Sam's mouth hung open, and he didn't notice. The scenery of the room, pushed to the back of his mind and only glimpsed through peripheral vision to be dismissed as just another motel, came rushing to the fore of his mind. The pictures of knights hanging on the walls and the tacky bedspreads combined with the sight of the grey cloth bag that rested on the little guy's side, a tattered twin to Sam's own bag.

With a dry swallow, Sam managed to close his mouth for a brief second to compose his thoughts. Of course he remembered. Those days back when he'd first been cursed stood out in his mind more than any others. Bright days spent with a friend his size. The time he'd learned to take his size, and Dean's size, for what they were instead of reasons to be afraid.

And all because of lessons from a certain eight year old boy they'd met in the motel.

Dean had snatched the little guy up the first time they'd seen the kid, much like he'd done this time around. Sam had needed to crawl into the huge hands to reassure the kid and let him know he was safe.

"Oscar," Sam said hoarsely. "My god. You're Oscar. We… we didn't…" He covered his own face with a hand, brushing his eyes as a wetness caught him off guard. "Of course I remember."

The smile finally showed on Oscar's face. "I'm ... really glad," he answered quietly. Sam remembered him. After all this time, and all their adventures, Sam still remembered being friends with Oscar for a month back when they were kids. When Sam first became small and Oscar was the first person their size he ever met.

He wiped at more tears that sprang up, but these weren't from the terror of not knowing what his captor would do. Oscar glanced down. The hand was a lot more callused than he remembered, and certainly a lot bigger, but he remembered it being safe for him once upon a time. He willed his nerves to diminish at the thought.

These were his friends.

"I, uh," he began, pausing to clear the lump in his throat. "I didn't think you guys would come back here," he admitted. Why would they? They traveled all over the place. The chances of them returning were slim to none. Yet somehow, they'd checked into the same room as last time, a twist in fate no one had ever seen coming.

Sam pushed himself to his feet, awed at the coincidence. "We, uh. We tried to look for you, but…" His eyes closed, remembering those days arguing with his dad about going back to a motel that a monster had tracked them to. The monster might be dead, but John had refused to let them know where it was. Too dangerous, he'd said. "We couldn't remember the name of the motel," Sam confessed. "We tried, but… there were so many other motels we stayed at. We could never find this one."

Now he'd never forget it, and neither would Dean, Sam knew. That was the last thought that made it through his mind before his feet pushed him forward. He swept Oscar up into a hug, and the tears in his eyes escaped at last. "We were so worried for you," he mumbled into Oscar's shoulder. "All that time… and we had no idea what would happen."

The sight of the small embrace drew Dean out of his own thoughts, and the edge of his lips turned up in a smile. "Oz…" he murmured, his voice kept low for their sake. That was all he got out. He tilted his hand, but the two on it weren't in any danger of falling. Instead, they found themselves cupped over his heart, and Dean rubbed a thumb against Oscar's arm for reassurance. "You are one tenacious son of a bitch."

Oscar was surrounded. He blinked rapidly as more tears came to his eyes, shocked, incredulous, and happy tears. He was engulfed in two separate hugs, from two people who had gotten a lot bigger since the last time he saw them. His feet had left Dean's hand when Sam swept him up, and now they were both secured over a huge chest.

The thumb brushing his arm gave him something to focus on, and Oscar took slow, measured breaths. It was really happening. He was really seeing his friends again for the first time in so many years that he almost hadn't recognized them. Their faces were older, not as carefree as last time, but there was no mistaking them now.

Dean's heartbeat was so close. His pulse surrounded Oscar and Sam both, and Sam's embrace was close around Oscar, too. He squirmed to move his thin arms to hug back. He felt so frail compared to how much Sam had bulked up.

He couldn't find it in him to answer. He didn't have the words. Nothing could precisely explain how happy he was to see them, how relieved he was that they still remembered him. Oscar had felt forgotten for so much of his life, but now he felt remembered.

After a few seconds of the warm group hug with Oscar enveloped by both brothers, he began to fidget. "Guys ..." he managed, trying to tilt his head up so he could address Dean, too. He couldn't see past the underside of his jaw. "Kinda squished."

Dean heard the soft voice drift up from his hand, and did a double take. "Sorry," he said with an embarrassed laugh, tilting his hand away from his chest to set them both free.

Sam expertly caught himself on the surface of the hand and avoided falling. Practice made perfect after years of living with a human. He did his own part and put Oscar down so he could stand on his own two feet. A laugh from Sam followed, and he couldn't believe how happy he was. Out of nowhere, Dean's unexpected grab had resulted in a reunion they had thought would never come. The guy Sam had to thank for everything he knew about surviving at his size without Dean around was finally there with them again.

"Oscar, you…" Sam tried to focus his thoughts. He had so many questions vying for his attention that he had a hard time deciding what to ask first. He settled on the thing he wanted to say more than anything to his best friend from childhood, something he should have been able to say a long time ago. "I just… I never really got to say thanks, for all your help. Without you, I don't think I woulda made it this long. And we're so, so sorry that we… had to leave. We tried, but…" The excuses died on his tongue and his face flushed. He felt so bad that they'd been dragged away like that. So many times he'd wanted to ask Oscar to come with them. Leave the damn motel behind and live a life where he didn't have to scrounge for scraps.

"We'd do anything to change it," Dean said in his familiar rumble, his own voice threatening to choke up on him.

Oscar fidgeted with the strap of his bag, running his thumb over the seam where it was sewn onto the rest. He'd had to repair that a couple times over the years. Repairing the bag was a lot easier than trying to make a new one from scratch. From the looks of things, Sam had taken better care of his bag, and hadn't needed to fix his much since way back then.

Oscar couldn't sugarcoat things. It was rough living on his own like he did, but it wasn't their fault. It wasn't anyone's fault.

He shrugged after the pause, his brow furrowing at the guilt that hung in heavy clouds over both Sam and Dean. "It's not ... it sounded like it was pretty urgent in your note." The note, faded and crumpled, was still in his home. It was the last reminder of the friends he'd managed to keep.

He smiled faintly. "I'm glad you're doing good after getting chased off by a monster."

"Well, we're back now," Dean affirmed. "And that monster's long dead. Dad tracked it down a few years later and took care of it. It won't be hunting any more kids in any more motels." He glanced around the room, feeling bad that he was holding them both so high up in the air on his hand. It didn't really give them many options for moving around, so he decided to go over to the table.

As Dean took the few steps to the table that rattled up through his body to slightly jar the two on his hand, Sam looked Oscar over. Their old friend was leaner and scrawnier than he should be. The familiar foot wraps brought a smile to Sam's face, remembering when Oscar had worn multiple sets to keep his feet dry in the snow.

Dean carefully lowered his hand down to the surface of the old, nicked up tabletop. Some things clearly never changed at the Knights Inn, and the sight of the table brought back even more memories. Measuring the two kids had been a high point, laughing at Sam's attempts to defiantly squirm away from the measuring tape a memory that he'd never lost. Even all the times he'd done the same in other motels, that first time had always stuck out. Oscar had been enamoured with the sight (at least until he'd discovered he was smaller than he'd thought).

Sam stepped down from Dean's hand, offering Oscar a hand of his own to help him down. Walking on a surface that had a mind of its own wasn't something that people like them were used to, aside from Sam himself.

The life Oscar lead meant he had to avoid anyone that might be dangerous, and for him, that was every human that wasn't Dean. He'd done his best to avoid Dean, too, but somehow Dean always caught Oscar in the nick of time.

"Oscar," Sam said. He had to clear his throat to get the next words out. "After we, uh, had to leave. What happened?" In all the years since they'd been dragged away from him, that had bothered Sam more than anything. The possibility that his best friend would suffer because they'd left, or worse, get captured with nobody out there to help him.

Oscar took Sam's outstretched hand, noting with some private dismay that his own was so much smaller. He felt like he'd hardly grown at all since last he saw them, while Sam had practically doubled in size. Dean had to have gained several inches, as well as growing broader.

He stepped shakily off the hand, amazed that in his life, he'd been captured twice. Both times by the same human, and it was a human that had worried about him all this time. Oscar believed them when they insisted they wanted to come back for him, and it was a nice thought to reassure himself.

He still wished he had been quicker that morning they left. He'd always wish he could have reached them before they were gone.

"Um, well," he answered, unable to resist a quick glance around the table and the room. He was so exposed up there, and he had to work to remind his instincts that it didn't matter with a human already looking right at him. "N-not much happened, really."

Oscar had cried his eyes dry for several nights after they went. Just like when his mother never came home, he mourned their leaving. To someone who couldn't leave, it was just as agonizing as a death. When his mouse friend visited, his buried his face in the fur on her neck and sobbed and she let him until he was tired out. He even took a few brave chances to peek at the parking lot to see if he could see Dean rushing back to that door. He scanned the expanse of asphalt from one of the external laundry vents, praying for a sign that he'd be okay.

But not much happened.

"I just kinda went back to my old routine," he admitted with a sheepish shrug. "I guess ... a few years back the people from the other side came to live in my house 'cause there was water damage over there and the repairs made 'em nervous. They went home when it was done."

"Sounds like you had your hands full," Sam grinned. He could remember the little home in the walls that Oscar had taken care of after his mother had vanished. The eight year old kid hadn't even been able to reach the highest shelves inside, and so had chosen to store his supplies on the lower shelves. It was quaint and homey, and Sam had loved it. It was such a change from the giant, sweeping rooms Dean lived in.

That was one reason Sam had been thrilled when Bobby decided to make him a place on the bottom shelf of the guest bedroom. It was an area he could go to just be himself. They'd found furniture his size, all from a craftsman in Sioux Falls that made the highest quality dollhouse furniture. He hadn't questioned the strange requests that poured in, and not even the demands from Dean that it be as true to scale as possible for a person four inches tall.

"Hell," Dean said as he settled on one of the chairs at the table, the wood creaking under his weight. "This is one case I'm glad we didn't skip. I can't believe we found the same motel after all those years."

Oscar chuckled quietly. The coincidence really was staggering. Sam and Dean had stayed in so many different motels that they hadn't even recognized one where they'd spent an entire month.

It struck him that, if he hadn't been in the room when Dean walked in, they probably would have left without him ever knowing. He wouldn't have gone up to the man sitting at the table on his own, that was for sure. Dean had gotten bigger and a lot stronger, and fought monsters. It was intimidating.

"I'm glad, too," he answered. "It's really good to see you guys again after such a long time. I guess you're probably just here 'til you take care of the monster?"

"Well…" Dean drawled, avoiding the thought of leaving their friend on his own again. Sam wasn't the only one to notice how thin Oscar's tiny arms were, beyond even just his size. Sam's arms weren't even close to that thin, and hadn't been since he was a kid. "However long we end up staying, you can bet we're not leaving like we did last time. This time, I'm the one driving, so whatever I say, goes."

Sam nodded, knowing that regardless of what Dean said, if he wanted to stay longer, the hunter wouldn't pack up and leave for anything. "We're here hunting a werewolf," he told Oscar. "I caught wind of it after we wrapped up a case a few states over."

Oscar's eyebrows went up. He was well past the point where he might not believe them. The brothers were unbelievable enough already, just from the size difference alone. Add in that Dean was a human that didn't want to trap or hurt anyone their size just because he could, and Oscar's friends were basically as impossible as werewolves were supposed to be. Yet here they were.

"Sounds pretty, um, scary," he admitted sheepishly. Oscar had always been timid. Even back when he was a kid and was a little more open-minded about the new things that came his way, he'd been nervous a lot. His first day going to school with Sam and Dean saw him hiding in Dean's hood the entire time.

Something came back to him from one of their conversations so many years ago, and he looked up at Dean. "So did you, uh, become the guy that monsters are scared of? It shouldn't be too hard for you to take care of it, right?"

Dean's grin was completely confident. "Not a problem. We already know how to take these suckers out, all we gotta do is find the son of a bitch, and Sam's the best when it comes to that." He put his arms on the table, leaning forward so he wasn't so far away from them. "Don't you worry 'bout a thing." With a smirk he reached out with a finger and ruffled Oscar's messy brown hair, making it stick out in all new directions.

Sam didn't react to the huge hand that intruded on the space between them, adjusted to Dean's impulsive nature. Oscar lifted his hands up to try and fix the mess his hair had become, and Sam picked up the explanation. "Once we find it, all it takes to kill a werewolf is a silver bullet to the heart. The last time we took one on, I distracted it long enough for Dean to grab his gun." The fact that he'd essentially faced down a skyscraper sized killing machine didn't faze Sam. Nor did the fact that if it lunged at him, it wouldn't even bother with his heart. He'd be killed in one move, too small to waste precious time over. Dean wouldn't let him down, and Sam would do the same.

Oscar paused with his hands still on his head. He never bothered with his hair much, and it was always a mess. He lowered his hands slowly, staring at Sam and blinking deliberately as he caught up with the scenario he described.

"You distracted a werewolf," he repeated, stuck between awe and wanting to tell Sam how damn crazy he was.

Oscar would probably have a heart attack if he tried that. He couldn't even stop himself from stiffening when Dean's hand came his way just to ruffle his hair, and Oscar knew he could trust that hand. Putting himself in front of a werewolf, an unnatural killing machine, would not go well. "You guys are a lot braver than me, that's for sure," he mumbled out. "I don't even like it when they hire a new maid here." Whenever that happened, Oscar would stay hidden for at least a week until he was sure of the new schedule. It was too nervewracking otherwise.

"You're braver than you think," Sam told Oscar. "You've been surviving in this motel since you were eight years old, all on your own. That's more than I ever had to do, and younger, too."

Sam didn't know what would have happened in those seconds after the curse had taken effect. He'd been completely knocked out into a comatose state for almost a week. Dean had spotted him at the last second, scooping his tiny, unconscious form up into a hand that from then on dwarfed his entire body.

If that hadn't happened… if Sam had been left on his own…

He might not be alive now. He certainly wouldn't be with Dean.


A/N:

All those years... Oscar's still there.

Next: July 26th 2017 at 9pm est

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