Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Well that didn’t go well,” Sam mutters.

Dean looks down. His brown boots are tight around too big feet. His faded jeans are about four inches too short and are showing his tatty socks, off-white from too many times in the wash, and the elastic frayed around the ankle. His eyes get wider and wider as he continues to look himself over. Just a little further up he sees perfectly straight legs, no bow. His shirt sleeves are half way up his forearm and his t-shirt is so tight it makes him feel like a cheap stripper.

Horrified, he swipes the hair back off his face and looks over, and down at Sam. He hasn’t looked down at Sam for at least fifteen years, ever since Sam had that growth spurt in his late teens. It’s disconcerting to say the least, looking at yourself through someone else’s eyes.

“Whoops?”

“Really? That’s all you have to say? ‘Whoops’?” Sam takes a step forward with a murderous expression, and trips on his over-sized shoes and too long jeans. Dean bites his lip to try and hold in the laugh, but it escapes anyway.

“Not funny, Dean.”

“Kinda funny,” he says, hobbling forward to one of the chairs by a small wooden table so that he can pull off his boots because they’re killing him, seriously. “But maybe I should have listened to Cas.”

“You think?” Sam says. He sounds pissed. “We should have brought him with us. After all, he’s the one that did all the research, and it’s not as if he didn’t want to come.”

“He’s busy,” Dean mutters. And tired, and supposed to be taking it easy. “Where is he now? North Dakota? Still looking up those runes? And anyway we didn’t need him.”

Sam huffs in disbelief, looking himself up and down, bow legs and all. “Didn’t need…?” He splutters a little but no more articulate words come out.

Dean ignores him and pulls off his boots, breathing a sigh of relief when his toes wriggle free. He pulls at his socks to give his toes more room to move.

Sam sighs, overly dramatic and heavy with accusation. Dean pretends not to notice and loosens his belt by one notch. After a pause which Dean assumes he’s supposed to fill with apologies but doesn’t, Sam sniffs, his body drooping a little. He shuffles over and plonks himself down in the chair next to Dean. The chair creaks ominously, but holds. Sam takes his shoes off and his socks hang baggy off the end of his feet. He stares at them morosely.

“So how long is this gonna last?” Dean asks, flapping a hand between them while he wriggles in his jeans to try and get comfortable. Sam is Dean and Dean is Sam, and as briefly entertaining as that is he knows it’s not going to last forever because the witch said so. And he might not have listened to all Cas’s research about the myriad of amusing trick spells she has up her sleeve but he does remember the bit about her being vaguely honest, for a witch. He actually thinks it’ll be quite amusing to be Sam for an hour. He’s going to cut his hair for a start. He swipes it back from where it’s fallen into his eyes again, and tucks it behind his ears.

Sam glares at him (okay, so still mad), turns and leans behind Dean to reach the table and pick up the small wooden box that started all this. Everything’s small and wooden in this house. Dean reckons the witch has been around since Hansel and Gretel and hasn’t upgraded the furnishings since. Which is undoubtedly how she managed to get the better of them, experienced witch-hunters that they are. It was nothing to do with Dean getting cocky, whatever Sam might think.

Sam reads the engraved lettering of the curse on the now-empty box, running his fingers along the worn surface. Dean undoes the buttons on his shirt cuffs so his forearms can breathe, and maybe holds his breath while he waits hopefully for news that they’ll be back to themselves, literally, in an hour. Or less. Sam’s body needs to pee and that is so something Dean’s not looking forward to having to deal with.

“It would serve you right if it was for ever,” Sam says eventually, scowling at Dean.

“Except the witch said it wasn’t, and you’d be a lot angrier right now if it was. And stop doing that thing you’re doing with my face or by the time I get my body back my eyebrow might be stuck up there.” If anything, Sam’s scowl deepens. Dean must remember to scowl less. It’s not an attractive look on him. “So how long?”

Sam drops the box at his feet. “Two days.”

Crap.

“We can do that, right. How hard can it be?” He doesn’t even convince himself.

----

Dean pees leaning against a tree being really careful not to look at anything or, God forbid, touch anything. They swap clothes which at least is more comfortable even if Sam is pulling a bitch-face at wearing Dean’s favorite shirt. Charlie calls it his bisexual plaid shirt, which, whatever.

Dean insists on driving but at first he can’t get used to the way his newly extra-long legs have to wrap around the steering wheel and are nearly touching the windshield. He practically knees himself in the face every time he has to move his foot from the gas to the brake. He nearly runs into a tree and then a parked pick-up before he gets the hang of it, but it’s still awkward as hell. His brother on the other hand looks positively blissful stretching out in the passenger seat.

“What?” Sam asks, smiling with fake innocence at Dean’s disapproving face. “I’ve got to get something out of this.” He curls back into the seat, closing his eyes and, with a frankly malicious expression, cracks Dean’s knuckles. Dean hates that. He didn’t even know his knuckles could do that.

“If I get arthritis, I’m going to blame you.”

“You think you’re going to live long enough to get arthritis?”

Dean narrows his eyes, staring flatly out of the window, puts his foot down on the gas, and grinds Sam’s teeth just to annoy him.

----

When they get back, Cas’s car is in the driveway.

“North Dakota, huh?” Sam says.

“Well, crap,” Dean mutters. Sam climbs out of the impala and stretches, looking across at the gold Lincoln parked out of the way and off to one side.

“What’ll we do?” Sam asks, leaning down and peering in through the side window.

Dean should be unhappy, but actually he’s not. Cas is home early - so what? They can deal, right. Just…

“Don’t tell him.”

“What? Why the hell not? Maybe he can help. You know two days isn’t that long I guess, but actually if it was one day I’d be a lot happier.”

“We told him we didn’t need him. He’ll gloat.”

“Just to clarify, you told him we didn’t need him. I would have been more than happy – ”

“You can wait out two days, dude.” Dean would be more than happy if he got his meat-suit back instead of this ungainly sasquatch he’s in right now a lot sooner than two days too, but he doesn’t want Cas taking the hit for something that’s his fault.

“Dean – ” Sam starts.

“Look – we’ll get all the gloating, and the ‘I told you so’, and then he’ll tell us we need to be more careful, it could have been worse, we could be dead. Then we’ll get him staying up all night trying to work out how to reverse it early, and maybe some blood-letting, or he’ll use up some of that grace he’s got too short a supply of these days. It’s just… it’s only two days, Sam.” Dean pulls a face that he thinks is Sam’s puppy dog look. Hey, if it works for Sam.

Sam stares at Dean in what looks like horror, then stands up so Dean can only see his center section, then leans down to the window again. “Cas doesn’t gloat.”

“Okay, conceded. But the rest is true. And what, you can’t pull off being me for two days? It’s only two days.”

“Please don’t pull that face.”

“You do,” Dean pouts.

“Do not.”

“Do.”

“Do n – y’know what, it doesn’t matter. But I’m doing this for Cas, not for you, just so we’re clear.”

“Fine.”

“And you’re not to drink coffee, you have to eat some salad or vegetables with your red meat. You’re not to drink too much booze. You do not abuse my body in any way… and that came out wrong.”

Dean shudders at the thought – at several unwelcome thoughts actually – and turns to stare out the windshield. Sam drives a hard bargain.

“Fine,” Dean huffs, and the deal is sealed just as the bunker door opens, and Cas sticks his head out.

Cas covers the ground between the bunker and Sam freakily fast and comes to a halt in front of Sam. Dean can only see a sliver of daylight between their two mid-sections and he smiles as he imagines Cas staring Sam down right now in that intense, familiar way of his.

“Are you alright, Dean? Why is Sam driving? What happened?”

Stuttering, Sam makes up some lame excuse about losing a bet to explain why ‘Sam’ is driving. Dean doesn’t stutter and he doesn’t make up lame excuses. Sam’s going to mess this up before they’re even five minutes in at this rate. Dean opens the driver’s door, tripping over his legs while he tries to disentangle them from the car. He stumbles to his feet to find Cas watching him with that curious tilt of his head that he has.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says.

“How did the witch hunt go?”

Dean rubs his hand over the roof of the car. She probably needs a wax. “Yeah, fine. No problems. Thanks for the research. It was spot on.”

Sam visibly swallows a comment that no doubt was going to be sarcastic and a dead giveaway, and takes the opportunity to back away and skirt around Cas, because Cas has Sam kind of blocked in.

Dean leans on the roof of the car. He’s expecting some kind of grilling about the case and it turns out that Sam’s extra few inches make leaning on the roof of the impala a lot more comfortable. Dean settles, arms on the roof, chin on his hands. He’s smiling. Then Cas abruptly turns away and follows Sam.

Dean shuffles upright, staring after him. Oh. Okay, then.

----

The afternoon drags. Sam and Cas are MIA, which is not unusual for Sam who likes some space and his own company, but it’s hella unusual for Cas who’s usually hanging around. Dean wanders the library, living and reading rooms, picking things up, then putting them back down again. He changes a light bulb he couldn’t reach before and wonders why Sam never did that, the lazy sod. He thinks about having a shower but nopes out of there so fast he’s sure he heard the boom as he broke the sound barrier. Sam can wash his own body in two days, Dean doesn’t have to do it for him.

His restlessness eventually leads him to the kitchen. It’s not too early to think about dinner. It’s always Dean who cooks when they’re home anyway and it’ll fill some time. Well, to be fair Sam can do a mean grilled cheese sandwich when he puts his mind to it. And salad, obviously, not that salad is really cooking. Of course, ‘cook’ is a subjective term anyway. Dean totally counts reheating things in a microwave and getting Pizza from that chain on the corner on the way through town.

Maybe he should stop rambling in his head. Maybe he would if someone was around for him to talk to.

Sometimes of course, Dean actually ‘cook’ cooks. He wouldn’t want to do it every night that’s for sure, but he enjoys it, especially with Cas sitting and watching him, always curious, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering, always offering conversation.

Now he’s thinking he should just have gone for pizza because tonight Dean’s adding frozen pastry to the top of some diced beef cooked in beer to make a savory pie, and he’s all on his own. It’s just not the same. He rattles the spoon in the saucepan loudly as he scoops out the pie filling into his dish, because maybe Cas didn’t hear him start dinner.

But he’s chopped the potatoes (loudly), put the pie in the oven (loudly), and emptied a can of green beans into a pan (loudly) before Cas finally appears, and when he does he has Sam in tow. Or rather it’s the other way around, Sam striding into the kitchen with a bemused looking Cas following behind.

Sam looks more than a little desperate. He pulls out a chair at one of the counters and sits down heavily, watching Cas watching him. Cas sits down next to him, barely an inch away. Sam squirms and shuffles his chair to the right a few inches, which only makes Cas watch him harder.

“Stop staring at me like that, man.”

Dean’s not sure either of them have even noticed he’s here yet. Admittedly he’s not moving very much as he watches Cas’s fingers brush powder off Sam’s shirt.

Cas looks distracted as he inspects the dusting on the pads of his fingertips. “I’m not looking at you any differently than how I usually look at you,” Cas says. “Is this powder from a curse?”

“Absolutely not,” Sam says, a shade too fast. Cas doesn’t look convinced and opens his mouth to say something else. Dean throws a few utensils into the sink with a heavy clatter and that seems to break whatever spell it is those two have going on at the moment, both Sam and Cas turning to look at him, Cas with sudden interest, Sam with brief relief. Very brief.

Sam’s eyes bulge. “What have you got on your head?” he asks. It’s fairly obvious Dean was right and neither of them were paying him any attention when they came in.

“You think I’m going to let any of this hair fall in our food?” Dean adjusts the bright yellow shower cap, tucking an errant strand under the elastic.

Sam glares at him, pulling his mouth into a tight line. “So what are you making?” he grumbles. At least that’s what his mouth says. His eyes say, ‘I hate you’.

Dean smirks. Getting Sam going is one of life’s little joys. “Pie. Potatoes. Beans,” he says waving a hand in the direction of the stove, then glancing at the clock on the wall and adding. “10 minutes. And you know what? I’ve got time to make desert after if you want to help out Cas?” Dean is not above bribery – Cas has developed quite a sweet tooth and Dean’s got some of that packaged crumble in the freezer somewhere.

But disappointingly, Cas shakes his head.

“No thanks, Sam. Dean and I have been searching the storerooms all afternoon for an artifact that matches the runes in my case. I’m sure I saw one there when we were looking for something else. But Dean thought we should check on dinner, as there was a lot of noise coming from the kitchen.”

Cas looks around, presumably checking for the source of the noise but seeing nothing particularly worthy of concern he goes back to watching Sam. “He was worried, so we came as fast as we could but everything seems fine.” Cas glances at Dean’s shower cap as if he’s still debating if that falls under the heading of ‘fine’, but then turns woeful eyes back on Sam instead. This is getting kind of ridiculous. Dean checks Sam over for signs of stray bogies, or drool, or things on his face, anything that could be attracting so much of Cas’s attention, but there’s nothing. “We really should get right back to it after you’ve eaten, Dean.”

Sam nods unhappily. If the dude’s so frigging unhappy spending time with Cas, he could send him Dean’s way.

----

“The thing is, Dean, I’m used to having time to myself, and I’m getting no time to myself. Cas is… um, attentive,” Sam says carefully, as if that’s the most politically correct description he can find in a bunch of words he’d rather have used, like ‘annoying’ for example. “He sits too close and he stares all the time.”

Dean closes his laptop lid on Buffy, the happy-ish place he’s been in, on his own, for the past three hours.

“I think he might suspect something,” Sam hisses.

“Nope, that’s just Cas,” Dean says, swiping crumbs off the table with his hand before using the same hand to sweep his hair back off his face. “I’m surprised you haven’t noticed before.” Dean peers behind Sam into the darkened corridor Sam appeared from. “Where is your new shadow by the way?” Does Dean sound bitter? He might sound bitter.

“He took some of the things we found to his room. I told him I was having an early night… and, oh my God, you’re jealous.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

----

Sometime around the middle of the next day, Dean decides to proactively seek out Cas instead of sulking in the kitchen which is essentially what he’s been doing for the last twenty-four hours. It’s absurd that Cas is actually here in the bunker but Dean’s hardly seen him. He’s not usually this hard to find.

He’s heading down the hall away from checking Cas’s bedroom when a panicked yell halts him mid-stride. Coming from behind him, a second yell echoes loudly down the hall, before there’s a loud thump, and the slamming of a door. Dean turns, rushing along the corridor, pushing open doors, gun drawn, finding nothing until he reaches the shower room, flings open the door, and finds Sam standing in a dripping towel, face like thunder.

Dean looks at the towel around Sam’s (his!) waist, and Sam’s soaped up torso. “You showered … naked… ?” Dean squeaks.

“I showered with the towel on,” Sam spits, “which is lucky because Cas came in and sat on the edge of the tub and started talking to me about how to change spark plugs!”

Dean coughs guiltily, and picks up the back scrubber that’s lying on the floor by the door. “Oh, yeah, well I’ve been teaching him how to look after his car, you know. Did you throw this at him?”

Sam stares at him like he’s talking Klingon or some shit, then snatches the back scrubber.

“Not. The. Point,” Sam says, voice louder and higher than usual, “Since when did it become okay for Cas to just waltz in and to sit and talk to you when you’re in the shower? Do you know how weird that is?”

Dean opens his mouth, shuts it again, opens it again. Now that Sam mentions it, maybe it is, just a little, not normal. “Well, I guess. But he doesn’t look.”

----

“I’ve done something to annoy Dean,” Cas sighs. He slides into the stool opposite Dean. “Everything I do at the moment seems to annoy him. I should go away for a while. I need to get back to North Dakota anyway now that I have more information.”

“No!” Dean says, perhaps more vehemently than the situation sensibly calls for, but the thought of Cas leaving before Dean is Dean again… it’s not fair, that’s what it’s not. “You haven’t annoyed him, he’s not annoyed.”

Cas levels him with a cynical glare. “He threw a back scrubber at me.”

“Yeah, but it was just a momentary lapse. Just… stay with me for a while. Everything’ll be fine tomorrow and I want you to stay here. You know, for when Dean’s feeling more himself. He’ll need you to be here. He’ll want you here.”

Cas looks at him skeptically.

“Cas, believe me,” Dean says, putting a hand on his shoulder that Cas stares at. “Dean wants you here.”

----

The curse wears off overnight, and Dean wakes up in Sam’s room as himself, short crew-cut hair and all, and thanks a God he knows isn’t listening.

Of course, all the clothes he’s wearing are now too fricking big but he rolls the pants up and just forgets about shoes. Then he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and sighs happily.

Dean meets Sam in the corridor while he makes his way to the kitchen and he grins at him. Sam is Sam, Dean is Dean. Dean’s happy, sue him. Sam doesn’t look quite so happy and peels off as they near the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Dean asks. “This calls for a celebration breakfast.”

Sam runs fingers through his hair and grimaces. “I’m going to wash my hair, Dean. And shower. Did you even shower? No, of course you didn’t shower. I don’t know whether to be pleased about that or not. Oh my God, this is gross. What is this? Ketchup?” Sam mutters as he disappears down the corridor to the shower-room.

Dean chuckles. He’s in a good mood. He heads to the kitchen and Cas has already brewed coffee. He’s in an even better mood.

Cas looks up as he comes in and keen eyes follow Dean around the kitchen, picking up cereal, and milk, and getting coffee. Dean missed this. He sits down, and he gazes openly and intently at Cas across the table. He takes in every detail. Every facet, every angle, every hair in place and out. Cas looks taken aback.

“What’s wrong?” Cas asks, looking himself up and down and wiping a hand over his face. “Do I have something on me?”

“No, man. I just missed you.”

Cas looks at him, eyebrow raised, face scrunched up in confusion. “I haven’t been anywhere, Dean.”

Dean ducks his head to hide more private smile. “I know. Let's just say I have a new appreciation.”