Title: 5 Times Sam Was a Teddy Bear and 1 Time Dean Was

Author: tarotgal
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13

Pairings: None

Disclaimer: Not my characters!
Summary: See title!
Notes: cowboyguy sent me this link and the ideas just started flowing: http://www.buddyballs.com/sam/

5 Times Sam Was a Teddy Bear and 1 Time Dean Was

1.

The night had been hard. Just when Dean had thought his hatred of witches couldn't grow any bigger, the witch they had been fighting had assaulted them with a flood of curses. It had been miraculous that they'd escaped unscathed. But they were the Winchesters; that's what they did.

They had crashed in their motel room just before midnight, after sharing Dean's flask to shake off their nerves and calm down for the night. The morning seemed like a better time to figure out what they were going to do about the witch.

“Dean?” Somewhere in Dean's brain, he hears his brother calling him, but he is reluctant to pull himself out of sleep just yet. “Hey, Dean. Wake up.”

Dean yanks the covers up over his head and grabs an armful of pillow. He nuzzles his face into it, hiding his eyes from the world.

“No, Dean, you've got to wake up. Something's... wrong.”

Reluctantly, Dean opens his eyes and finds that he isn't hugging a pillow after all but a big, brown, stuffed bear. Its fur is soft against Dean's cheek and against his palm as he pets its tan tummy. It has a cute face with big black eyes that look up at Dean. “Sammy, when did you go out and get me a teddy bear to sleep with?”

The bear's little mouth opens and out comes Sam's voice. “I didn't.”

Dean shouts in surprise and rolls off the bed, smacking his head against the front of the nightstand. He hears a scrambling and the bear's brown and pink ears appear over the edge of the bed, followed by the rest of its face. A brown paw comes next, waving miserably. Dean rubs his hand against his face. God, he hates witches.

2.

“This is all your fault, sneezy.”

Dean looks up from his handful of tissues. He pants, open-mouthed. Then he snaps forward. “hahhhhTChooo!” He blows his nose into the tissues and tugs the blanket tighter around his shoulders. “Sor... sorry Sah... hahhhTShuhhh! Sahbby-hahhUHTchhhhh!”

Sam's blue ceramic eyes roll in his purple plush head. “Sorry? Dean, your wish turned me into a teddy bear!”

“A sniff a brightly-colored teddy bear.”

“That doesn't make it any better.” He pokes himself in his hot pink tummy with a flat-ended paw. “I'm made of fluff! Why would you do this?”

“I didd't bead to. I was just tired of you teasig be.”

The eyes roll again. Dean hasn't stopped sneezing in days. It's all he seems to do any more. All day. All night. Sneezing and sniffling and blowing his nose and sneezing and starting the cycle all over again. Sam is exhausted. And a little frustrated. So what if he'd teased just a bit? A joke about Dean's red nose looking like Rudolph's. A jab at how he looks like a plaid igloo huddled under all the blankets. A mention about how Dean is as helpless as a little kitten because of this cold. Dean can take a lot more than what Sam had been giving him; he just got more sensitive than usual when sick. That didn't justify... this!

“I did't choose it od burbose. I was just feelig sick add so stuffed ub id the head add... add... add I hah... hahKTSchuhhh! Snffffffff! I sniff I just said that I wished you dew how it felt to be all stuffed add...”

“And then I turned into a stuffed teddy bear.”

Dean nods. “I said I was sorry.”

“I've had enough of your apologies. I've had enough of your sneezes. And I've had enough of all these crazy things happening to us. I want normal.”

“hahh-Huhtschhhhh!” Dean sneezes and sniffles and blows his nose and chuckles.

“What?”

“A head cold add a teddy bear. Those shout 'dorbal' to be.”

“A head cold that knocks my tough big brother on his ass and a teddy bear who was a human up until a run-in with a genie? We're as far from normal as it's possible to be.” 

Dean sniffs hard, tosses the tissues aside, and pushes off his blankets. “Well, thed, let's do what we do best.” He grabs his pink and purple brother, tucks him under his arm, and heads for the door, picking up his gun along the way.

3.

Seeing the light coming at them, they flatten themselves against the brick wall of the alleyway. Since their run-in with the trickster this morning, they had had every manner of demon after them. It was a nonstop game of hunting the hunters. And it looks like they might lose this round. It’s all right for Sam; he can pretend to be an inanimate object if they are found, but for Dean there is nowhere to hide. It isn't ideal, but they would have to make their stand here.

With a knife in one hand and his sawed-off in the other, Dean's heartbeat quickens. “You ready for this, Sammy?” He looks down at his brother who, until this morning, actually had looked like his brother. Now he looks like a floppy brown teddy bear with a playful beach ball embroidered on one foot. When this was over, the trickster was going to pay. Actually, he was going to have to turn Sam back into a human then he was going to pay.

Sam pulls a certain gun out from behind his back. Dean blinks down at him. "Where the hell were you keeping that?" It isn't like teddy bears came clothed with pockets in which to stash knives or belts win which to tuck guns. For that matter, teddy bears didn't come clothed at all. Sam is essentially naked beside him. Naked except for a lot of plush, brown fur and the colt.

The light comes closer. Footsteps race toward them.  “Don't ask," says Sam, his cute mouth made of thread now twists into a determined smile. “Let's do this.”

4.

“Sam! Damn it, I thought I told him to stay right here.”

“I am right here, you darling.”

Dean looks around again and finally spots his brother… his recently transformed brother. Sam is now a cuddly white polar bear stuffed animal and, against the bright white of the concrete and the snowdrift, Dean hadn’t noticed at first the button black eyes glaring up at him. Dean can’t help but laugh. “Sorry, man, didn’t see you… wait,darling?”

“That’s not the word I was trying to use,” Sam explains, his legs moving fast as he lumbers along on all fours, walking beside Dean down the sidewalk to where they’d parked the impala. “It was a word that rhymes with clerk. But that’s not how it came out.”

Dean opens the passenger side door for his teddy bear of a brother, watching Sam scramble in and then up onto the seat. He closes the door and walks around the car. By the time he slides in behind the wheel, Sam has already nestled into the blankets on the seat. They aren’t as safe as a seatbelt, but Sam’s just fur and fluff right now, so it’s not like he’s going to get hurt if they get rear ended.

“Can you crank up the heat?” Sam asks, just as he has been for the past two days. And then it happens. Sam takes in a sharp breath and out comes the most adorable “t’shew!” sneeze Dean has ever heard.

Though he covers his mouth, Dean can’t contain his laughter.

“It’s not funny,” the polar bear teddy that is now his sick younger brother says, sniffling.

“No,” Dean shakes his head, trying to pull back on the laughter. “No, you’re right. That sneeze wasn’t funny at all. It was precious.” Since Sam came down with his cold, all he’d done was sneeze. His sneezes had always been these giant, monstrous things—great for expelling irritants or passing colds onto other Winchesters he was sharing a car with, but not so great at allowing them to sneak past danger without it spotting them. When Sam had a cold, he was usually useless to take along on a hunt. This time, though, the case had been to track down a cursed object. That was something Sam could do even with a tickling nose and a sneeze so loud it made passersby jump. Or so Dean had thought before Sam went and sneezed and accidentally stumbled forward into the damn thing.

That was when it had changed him into a teddy bear. With teddy bear sneezes. “C’mon. Do it again. Give me another cute sneeze.”

Sam glares at his brother again. But his tiny black nose twitches and he buries his face in his paws. “h’tch!”

“Oh man. That one was even cuter than the first!”

“Cupcake you!”

Dean narrows his eyes, keeping them on the road as he drives back to the motel. “Excuse me?”

“Not what I was trying to say,” Sam growls, but even his growl sounds more like a cute, playful sound coming from him. “What the rainbows and lollipops is happening?”

“Dude,” Dean laughs. “You’re, like, swearing in Lisa Frank.”

“Ha ha. Glad you find my misery so amusing.”

Dean glances over to see the teddy beared Winchester half-burrowed beneath the blankets, sniffling. But his eyes are looking up at Dean. Giant, black buttons of eyes.

“Awww, you still have those puppy dog eyes of yours, even though you’re a bear. How’d you manage that?”

Sam sniffs again. His cold is a long way from gone. And Dean is pretty sure you can’t get Nyquil into a stuffed teddy.

“Okay, here’s the plan: I’m going to make you comfortable while I figure out how to break this curse. When we get back to the motel, I’m going to run a blanket through the dryer and wrap you up warm, just like I used to do when you were little.” He grins. “I guess you’re little again, aren’t you? Never thought I’d be able to say that again.”

“h’tchew!”

“And when we get to the motel, I don’t want you worrying about research. Just relax sneeze like the adorable little teddy bear you are.”

“Marshmallow!”

Dean laughs all the way back to the motel.

5.

The monster’s razor-sharp teeth come nearer and nearer and nearer to the little girl. Salivating uncontrollably, drool lands on her cheek. She screams louder than she thought possible and thrashes about, but it won't let her go.

Not until Sam's jagged knife sinks deep into its back. The demonic creature shrieks and goes stiff, and Sam manages so push it aside so the body doesn't fall on and crush the little girl. It narrowly misses her, and she screams again as its dead, red eyes stare back at her from the floor beside her.

“It's gone. You're okay now,” Sam says, holding out a hand to her. She grabs it like a life preserver and lets him pull her off the storeroom floor. Sam holds her against him, warm and clingy, as he walks through the storeroom. He presses his hand over her eyes so she can't see Dean, who is busy decapitating the two other creatures. He never did make it through all of Bobby’s books to figure out what these things were called.

Sam backs through the swinging double doors and feels the florescent lights of the toy store blaze down on him unnaturally for this time of the night. He hears the sirens far off in the distance and knows they can’t be found here with the girl. It would still be a while before the cops reached the store, though. He also hears the little girl sniffle and feels her shake in his arms. “Hey there, you're okay.” Sam looks around for somewhere safe he can put her and sees the toy store’s stuffed animal corner nearby. Perfect.

He bends down and tries to deposit her in a pile of big red dogs. But she won't let go of Sam. Her fists clench tight around bits of his flannel shirt. Sam looks around, helplessly, and grabs the first stuffed animal he sees. He eases it in-between the two of them and she instinctively latches on. Sam sets her down and this time it works. She hugs her new stuffed teddy, not willing to let it go even when Dean comes in and makes her jump.

“Hey,” Dean says, half to Sam and half to the little girl. He squats down in front of her. “Are you hurt at all?”

She shakes her little head, her blond braids swinging.

“You got yourself a new friend to keep you safe?”

She nods and hugs the teddy closer to her.

“Does he have a name?”

The little girl looks from Dean to Sam and then down at her teddy bear. “His name's Sam.”

1.

Dean grabs for the flask and his little brown paw slips against the smooth metal. He uses his other paw and presses the flash between the two of them. He lifts it, brings it to his permanently open mouth, and tips it. Whiskey flows out over the red felt mouth and tongue and drips down his brown fur.

Sam doesn't snicker. Instead, he looks as concerned as he has all day since Dean's transformation.

“Damn it!”

“Swearing isn't very teddy bear-like.” Neither is drinking for that matter. Sam's mind jumps straight to the depressed, giant teddy bear after that wish went bad. Worried that this might go the same way, Sam walks over to the bed and draws out the gun Dean always has under his pillow.

“Hey!” Dean protests. When Sam grabs the flask as well, he does more than protest. He paws at Sam, batting at him repeatedly. It kind of tickles, but Sam doesn't laugh. Instead, he holds the items up, far out of Dean's reach. “Sammy... what are you doing?”

“I'm not going to go take a shower and come back to find you've blown the fluff out of your head.”

Dean sighs. “That's not going to happen. I'm fine.”

“Fine? You’re a teddy bear.  Do you feel like having a picnic? Maybe a tea party?”

“Hell no.”

Sam nods decisively. “Then the guns and booze are going into the trunk until we hunt down that witch and break her curse.”

Dean's small body flops back onto the bed with a groan.  “I really hate witches.”