Arrested Development 1/1

[beth_summer]

Summary: An AU story where Dean is at Stanford with Sam, relying on his brother to take care of him. Told from multiple outsider perspectives. A different take on the de-aging trope.

Rating: PG-13

Author's Note: Thanks to my beta skylar_matthews for collecting all my extra commas and convincing me this story was fit for the public.

Comments

[honeylocusttree]

I love to see tropes subverted like this. This was a really fun read, and it raised a lot of questions in my mind--how would events unfold differently? Would de-aged!Dean still sell his soul for Sam (and would his soul look like his 12yo self)? Would he come back from Hell in an adult body? And of course it makes me wonder a lot about the earlier, pre-Stanford events too.I love how you created all these questions in such an indirect way. Really enjoyed this!

[beth_summer]

Thanks, and I'm glad I got you wondering. Your ideas on Dean's deal are especially interesting!

Arrested Development

[taylorariel]

Excellent job here. Loved the creative slant. So many de-aged stories Dean is just a normal little boy. This story had a more interesting twist to it because he was who he was just in a smaller frame.
I could see you keep this au going.
Thanks for sharing.

Re: Arrested Development

[beth_summer]

Thanks! I am thinking of writing a prequel for this, but we'll have to see where it goes. This story languished on my HD for a while before I figured out how to tell it in a way that I was happy with.

[katsheswims]

This was great. This was the first time I've read a fic quite like this.

So Dean said something about it being a decade and a half-so 15 years. Does that mean he was somehow cursed not to age instead of just deaging to about 12 and not aging up from there? Though if that's the case he definitely matured mentally. Though it would also mean he had never matured physically-ie puberty etc. But just the way he acts seems like he was deaged and hadn't just stopped aging at one point.

I would love to read more if you ever write it! Maybe figure out exactly how this got started and how their father reacted etc...

I loved the Peter Pan references at the end.

[beth_summer]

Thanks! To answer your question, yes, Dean as been stuck at the same age since he was around 12. He's grown up in many ways simply because he's lived that long and has that much life experience, but he's still just 12 on the outside. Sequel/prequel stories are currently knocking around in my head so we'll see how they come out.

I'm also glad you liked the Peter Pan stuff cause I was a little unsure about adding it in, thinking it didn't really fit with their typical pop culture references. Happy to see you enjoyed it.

[rince1wind]

Very cool, interesting idea, including how you didn't explain how the de-aging thing came about. You gave us exactly as much as we needed to know. Good story.

[beth_summer]

Thanks! So glad you enjoyed it.

[borgmama1of5]

Very intriguing twist on the boys' life. And I liked the outside POV you used to keep the mystery in place.

[beth_summer]

Thank you! I had to tinker with the outsider POV a bit, so I'm happy to see that it worked.