A/N:
Thanks to Christine and Owllover555 for the great reviews!
Sam softened as Oscar stared hopefully at him. He didn't know what was plaguing Oscar about the offer, but he knew that he could help make any transitions easier. At least he hoped he could, since they both owed Oscar far more than they'd given him.
Without Oscar, Sam might not have learned how to climb. He might have been trapped unless Dean or John helped him. He wouldn't have a reliable bag at his side.
With those thoughts in mind, Sam put his arm around Oscar's slim shoulders. It was his best way of offering support. He knew Dean would want to help, but it was a lot harder for the older hunter.
"Don't worry," Sam said with a gentle smile. "If you want to come with us, all we have to do is go back to your place. I can help you pack and carry things, and we'll come back together. If you want to say goodbye to the others, Dean can give us a ride to the other side of the motel. You can bring them some food, if you want."
"And then, after all that," Dean picked up the line of thought from Sam, "we'll leave. Together. Just like we shoulda all those years ago."
Oscar wondered if Sam could feel the tension in him. He was primed and unsettled by his own emotions, especially the way they seemed so much stronger than usual. He would blame the beer. He hadn't expected it to hit him this hard, but ... maybe it was a good thing. Without it, he probably would have simply shrugged and evaded Sam's suggestions.
"It's not that I really want to stay here forever," he answered quietly. "It's just. I've been here so long and I ... I always get left by myself. I- it's hard to picture anything different."
He sighed and looked down at his hands. "I packed a bag by myself last time. I guess ... it would be different. This time. If I had help."
Sam froze at the mention of packing a bag. He wanted to go with us! The comment brought on a dismaying amount of guilt for never realizing and never being able to figure out how to ask.
"Oscar, we're sorry for leaving without you last time," Sam reaffirmed, and Dean nodded along with his words. The tipsy feeling from the beer had washed away with that realization, and it likely had for Dean as well. If they'd known he wanted to come with them, they could have got him to pack up his stuff sooner. He could have stayed in their room, never had to trek down that dark path all alone to be left behind…
He would have been with them when John dragged them out of the room.
"This time, it'll be different," Sam said. A tiny spark of confidence came back to him. He could make it different now that he knew. "You don't have to go back there on your own again. You can stay here tonight after the movie, and tomorrow we'll go get your things. Together."
Oscar glanced back over at the computer screen, remembering the movie and realizing that he didn't have any idea what had happened in the last several minutes. It didn't seem to matter; he doubted it'd make that much more sense to him regardless. He mulled over Sam's offer for a while, staring down at the dregs of beer in his cup. It was almost too good to be true.
His heart fluttered at the thought. What if it was? What if he was dreaming? A thousand more what ifs crashed through his mind and he had to close his eyes for a second to stem the flow of worst-case scenarios.
"It's a good idea," he conceded. "But I should sleep in my bed tonight. I can ... I can come back here to get you." The words almost felt like they echoed around him. Even as he suggested it, Oscar wondered if he would merely be setting up a reenactment of last time.
"If that's what you want," Sam said, not about to push Oscar into doing anything he didn't want to. "Once the movie's over you can head back. If you can make it off the pillow." He tempered the challenge with a grin, remembering just how hard it was to stand up on such a plushy surface after a few drinks. Dean would never let him forget about it. He took a long, slow sip of his own beer.
They were on the right track. They just couldn't scare Oscar off.
Oscar didn't register Sam's challenge immediately, but when he did he frowned critically at him. While he finished off the last of his beer, he cast his gaze over the surface of the plushy pillow. He remembered it being tough to walk on, but it wasn't that hard.
He put his cup down beside him so he could cross his arms. "I can make it just fine," he insisted belligerently. "It's jus' a few steps."
"They you won't have anything to worry about," Sam assured him. He took Oscar's cup, sharing out the last drops that were in the bottlecap between the two of them. His own cup he braced between his knees so he wasn't trying to juggle three things at once while he worked. "We should watch the end of the movie." He grinned innocently as he held out the cup to Oscar again.
Dean slouched down in his own spot and reached over to grab the bottlecap back. "That's enough for you two," he shot down at them. "There'll be more the next time." Oscar watched the cap soar out of reach, blinking owlishly at it.
Sam rolled his eyes, but merely took a sip of his cup. Internally, he was glad that mere drops to Dean was an entire drink to him. It made it easy to get more to drink when Dean wasn't paying close attention to him.
Oscar settled in to actually watch the movie, his eyes glazed over from the drink and from the recent surge of emotions. The dinosaurs on the computer screen provided a worthy distraction for him, especially as the plot became more and more nerve wracking.
Oscar ended up taking a sip of his beer every time he needed to calm his nerves, and he was out before they reached the end. When that happened, he stared forlornly at his empty cup for a second before clumsily shoving it into his bag behind him. He drew up his knees to rest his chin on them to watch the rest, privately glad he'd hidden his face in the theater. He could have ended up growing up with nightmares about this stuff in between the nightmares of being left behind. Oscar didn't need any of that.
The familiar swell of music accompanying the credits reminded him of the promise that he'd be able to get himself home. Oscar stretched his arms over his head. "I guess I better go t'bed," he reasoned, still more than tipsy. Stretching only served to spread the alcohol around again. Oscar didn't realize until he went to push himself up to a stand, and instead wobbled and flopped over onto his side with a noise of confusion.
Dean hid a smirk at the sight of the two very small drunks on his pillow. "Lightweights," he joked down at them as he stood and gathered his bottles from the side of the bed. There wasn't any visible effect on him from the drinking, and he didn't have a problem standing. It made it easy for him to walk around and snap the laptop up, getting the room ready for sleep.
Sam held out a hand to help Oscar up. The room spun for him as he sat up, but not as much. It wasn't his first time drinking, so he knew what to expect and how to avoid embarrassing himself, for the most part. There were always unavoidable moments when his head was in a fog, and he was secretly glad he hadn't tumbled more when Dean stood up.
"Beer is great while you're drinking," Sam said dryly to Oscar. "S'long as you don't tumble into anyone's drinks. After drinking can be more interesting, if you remember it at all."
"I'm all wobbly," Oscar confirmed, an unfocused frown settling on his face. Getting off the pillow had become a much bigger task. He didn't even have the presence of mind to figure out how many steps it would take. He huffed.
"So I gotta sleep here," he mused quietly, looking straight up and around at the wide expanse of the room. With the ceiling and walls so far away, and the bed stretching out in all directions, Oscar couldn't help but feel extra small. He could even feel Dean's footsteps, though they were muffled by the pillow and the beer.
He ended up dragging his bag around in front of himself to hold it close while he looked around. The cloth container, heavily worn over the years and patched, had definitely seen better days. It was a good anchor for him, so he kept it around. "Growing up in the walls you kinda forget how much room humans need sometimes," he mumbled, rubbing at one of his eyes. "Giants."
Sam gave a half-shrug, more than used to his circumstances. "Just think of it from their point of view. They need the same amount of space as us, relatively. They just can't help that they're bigger than we are. There are humans that can't even go into spaces that are too tight. They get claustrophobic and might panic if it gets too bad."
"Good thing I'm not like that, right?" Dean asked as came back over. He dropped a flannel shirt on the pillow a few inches away from the other two. "Tomorrow we've got all the time we need to get things settled here if we want to head out." He crawled into bed on his side, getting under the covers. "Maybe I can even work on the Impala when we get to Bobby's," he mumbled drowsily to himself. "She could use a tune-up."
Oscar leaned clumsily to grab the edge of the shirt and pull it towards himself. It was thick cloth, and he could tell even as he tugged it over his legs that it would keep him warm enough with no issue, despite not having as many layers as his pile of blankets in his home. He nudged his bag so it sat beside him instead of on his lap.
"Think I like the little spaces better most of the time," Oscar mused, deciding that 'claustrophobic' was far from describing him. With that said, he pulled more of the shirt closer, preparing to lie down and curl up in the material.
" 't's really like the last time," he added in a quieter tone. His doubts still remained, the fears and worries he'd held onto for years. For a clear moment, Oscar was hopeful. "Except this time it's gonna end different. It's like I'm making it all up."
"It will end different," Sam promised as he snuggled down into his own corner of the thick flannel fabric. The fabric was too coarse for either him or Oscar to wear as clothing the way Dean did, but for a blanket it was warm and cozy. The perfect place to sleep when their beds were out of reach.
Not to mention, after years of being small, Sam had grown adjusted to using shirts like this for beds. Now he had his own bed that Dean had repurposed from a dollhouse, but Sam was never against the shirts. They were comfortable and cozy, and what's more, they reminded him of home. Once upon a time he'd use his own shirts to sleep in. Those shirts were long gone, discarded when it was obvious that even if he returned to normal, they'd be too small for him to wear. There wasn't enough room in the Impala to keep anything that didn't have a use.
Dean's shirts ended up being substituted for his own, and there was a slight scent that clung to them from the hunter. It made it less likely that any daring animals that might sneak into a motel room would come bother the smaller hunter as he slept, and after spending so many years sitting on Dean's shoulder, or in his pocket, it was a comfort. Oftentimes it was easier to sleep in a shirt or a pocket than in his own bed under a nightstand or on a bookshelf.
While the two on the pillow were settling down into the shirt, Dean collapsed against his own pillow, burying his face in it. One huge arm curled around Sam and Oscar's pillow, pulling it closer out of habit from long years of growing up with a little little brother to protect. Sam always accepted that as part of living with a giant for an older brother, and his eyelids didn't even flutter in surprise as the surface they were laying on was bunched up slightly under the control of an arm that was thicker than either of them were tall.
Oscar remembered this. When he used to sleep on a pillow as a kid, using a shirt as a blanket along with Sam, Dean would hold onto the pillow just like he did now, only back then his arm wasn't so thick and muscular. Oscar rubbed at his eyes and sighed, thinking that he might as well accept the hazy waves of nostalgia as they came.
"Alright," he mumbled absently, sure he was responding to something someone said even as he curled up on the pillow and pulled the shirt-blanket over himself securely. The thick fabric hid him from sight, and with as small as he made himself, he might have gone unnoticed if the brothers didn't already know he was there. It didn't take long for Oscar to drift off into an easy sleep occasionally punctuated with quiet mutters from whatever he dreamed about.
Oscar wasn't fully sure he was actually awake until a muffled pain throbbed in his head and he frowned. With his eyes still shut tight, he tried to shift himself further under his blankets. His bed was unusually comfortable. He hummed thoughtfully and peeked his eyes open.
Brighter light than he was used to turned that low ache into something much sharper before he groaned and shut his eyes tight once more. He pulled the flannel shirt over his head completely to hide from it while he gathered sluggish thoughts. He wasn't in his bed. He'd fallen asleep in a motel room instead.
Oscar's movements pulling the shirt around himself made it shift just enough to wake Sam. With a groan, the hunter curled inwards as he blinked blearily in the bright light of the sun. "Dean?" he mumbled, wondering who'd pulled the shirt.
Sam sat up and had to put a hand to his head with a groan. A headache throbbed, and he was once again jealous of Dean's ability to drink with fewer side effects. Especially with the few drinks he'd had the night before.
Dean continued to slumber on peacefully, his face buried against the side of Sam's pillow and all but the spike of his hair out of sight. Clearly, he hadn't moved the shirt. There was no way Dean could hide that much movement from Sam without being noticed.
The answer came as soon as he lifted up the edge of the thick flannel. "Oscar!" Sam said in surprise, memories of the night before flooding back. "You okay, bud?"
Oscar peeked his eyes open and blinked owlishly as Sam came into focus. He almost thought about grabbing the edge of the flannel and hiding himself again to get away from the light leaking around his friend, but resisted. Just barely.
"My head kinda hurts," he groaned with a halfhearted shrug before rubbing gingerly at his eyes. "Feels like it's full of lint." Oscar had heard humans complaining in the mornings after a night of drinking. He'd never realized this was the feeling they were moaning about. "Should I sleep it off? It'll go away eventually ..." His voice was already dipping into the cadence of one nodding off again, though he fought it with fluttering eyelids.
Sam pulled the edge of the flannel further off of Oscar. "You're probably thirsty," he supplied helpfully. "The alcohol dehydrates you. Sleeping it off won't be the best plan, especially if Dean gets up since he's not exactly 'quiet,' no matter how hard he tries."
Managing to stand on the uncertain surface, Sam grabbed his own bag. "There's some water under the nightstand, where I keep my stuff," he offered. "Dean leaves it in case I ever need it when he isn't around or he's asleep. Since tap water isn't the best."
Oscar grumbled something unintelligible, but water sounded like just the thing he needed. He pushed himself up, having some difficulty with the plush surface beneath him at first, and finished off Sam's work of getting the flannel off of him. He pulled the strap of his bag over his head and sighed once more, shutting his eyes against the light. It felt so much brighter with his head in this state.
"Okay, yeah," he muttered. "Water's a good idea." He got to his feet, very slowly, ready to follow Sam to the edge of the pillow.
He didn't make it three steps before the soft surface gave beneath his feet more than he could compensate for, and Oscar pitched forward with a gasp of surprise. He tumbled down the slope of the pillow as it became more and more prominent before coming to a sudden stop. He landed in a heap on Dean's arm, and huffed in frustration. He'd done the same thing many times when he was a kid, too.
Sam couldn't hide a snort of laughter as he peered off the edge of the pillow at Oscar, also remembering those times Oscar had done the same exact thing as a kid. Even with Dean asleep, the two smaller guys were perfectly safe around him after years of exposure to very small people at all hours.
Dean grumbled something unintelligible into the side of his pillow, the huge arm tightening around the pillow and causing Oscar to scoot forward so he wouldn't get pinned. Then, they could finally make out his grumbles. "C'mon, Sammy, it's too early… we've got all day. Few more minutes..." The hunter trailed off, probably slipping back into sleep. Sam gave a fond smile at that.
Some things never changed.
A/N:
Oscar certainly can't navigate pillows while he's drunk!
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