*muttermuttermutter* Bastard plot bunnies *muttermuttermutter* The Chocolate-Powered Update Inspiration Fairy has been on holidays (our elderly pussycat wandered away from home, too, presumably to die in private, which has put the damper on things chez moi), but this little bugger hopped out from under the desk on the weekend. Not exactly sure where this might go at the moment, but I'm sure another damned bunny will be along soon, what with Easter headed this way. I have a nasty suspicion that it was caused by reviewers, you evil bastards...
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any impossibly handsome man-sluts or mopers with a tendency to charge around ganking things that are not real. (I do have a dog, though. Considering how she behaved at obedience last week, I think she might be possessed.)
TITLE: Can You Dig It?
SUMMARY: Dean knows FOR A FACT that his pup Jimi is the BEST out of Rumsfeld's litter, and is TOTALLY ready for his first Hunt. Even if he has developed a habit of digging holes like no other dog has ever dug.
RATING: T. I could make Dean mime the entire story, but I keep having trouble with anything more complex than *waves arms around and makes rude faces*.
SETTING: The Prologue of this story picks up after 'Hot Stuff', when Jimi the half-Hellhound, at the age of thee months, has been on his first trip with the Winchesters, to meet up with a group of Ladies Of A Certain Age who call themselves the Fuckers, who are having trouble with their baked goods. They also have some interesting memories of Bobby, with regard to his ability to dance, and his posession of very attractive legs.
BLAME: Definitely the fault of the people who review my stories. Elf wanted the details of what happened when Jimi went out on his first serious Hunt with Dean and Sam, and got a bit confused as to how to deal with a revenant, and somebody else wanted to know a bit more about Jimi's litter-sister Joni, and why Dean couldn't stand her Hunter (sorry, can't remember who), so I thought, maybe I can strangle two plot bunnies with one stone. Er, squash two bunnies with one stone. Strangle two bunnies with one garrote. You know what I'm getting at. Don't be facetious.
CAN YOU DIG IT?
Prologue
Dean shivered a little; unfortunately, turning the car's heating up would not disperse the chill that had nothing to do with the weather. The icy atmosphere rolled down from the heights of Mount Sam, as he sat pondering his crossword.
"Are you still mad at me?" Dean asked his brother in a small voice.
"Annoyed," replied Sam, not taking his eyes off his crossword.
"Oh, hey, that's an improvement on mad at me, yeah?" asked Dean hopefully.
"It's seven down," Sam told him. "The clue is 'Any node goes bad when irked'. Annoyed. It's the answer." He filled in the puzzle.
"Oh." Dean lapsed back into silence. "Are you annoyed at me?"
"Immature," Sam said.
Dean had the decency to look just a little ashamed. "I didn't mean to be immature. I didn't think it would make you feel sick…"
"Nine across," mused Sam, filling it in, " 'A rum time renders him childish'. Immature."
"I'm sorry, Sam," Dean told his brother in a contrite voice, "But, well, it seemed, you know, like a good idea at the time."
"The Streaker's Defence," commented Sam, frowning at his crossword.
Dean looked sideways at his brother. "Is this another anagram?" he demanded suspiciously.
"No, you just used The Streaker's Defence," Sam replied. "To the charge of Putting A Hex Bag Under Shotgun To Stop Your Brother Farting In The Car – 'It seemed like a good idea at the time, Your Honour'. That's the best excuse you can come up with? Ha! The court's finding: It's Snail Guy."
Dean looked at him in confusion. "I'm Snail Guy? Who the hell is Snail Guy?"
"That is an anagram," Sam informed him. "For 'Guilty As Sin'."
"Well, it did seem like a good idea, okay?" Dean said defensively, "I told you I didn't mean to make you feel sick. If it was a harmless way to stop you from polluting my Baby, it would've been a good thing. It's all that fermentable vegetable matter you eat. You're like a human cow, contributing to climate change, and stinking up my car!"
"Why didn't you put one under the driver's seat, then?" Sam queried, "Because I don't know if you're just inured to your own emissions, but your diet of bacon cheeseburgers with double onions does not always render you the most pleasant and subtly fragranced travelling companion. Throw in your beer consumption, and holy trouser trumpets, Batman…"
"Yeah, well, it clings to you, did you know that?" Dean returned fire, "Sometimes I worry about lighting up a grave with you too close by, because if you can't control your gastrointestinal tract, there's a pretty good chance that you'll go up in a big blue flame, or worse, be launched into orbit, on a flaming pillar of ass gas, Satellite Sammy, rocketing Heavenward – say hello to Cas for me – and me and Jimi will sit outside on a clear evening to watch you streak across the sky, and if we listen really closely, we'll be able to hear the echo of your last words, 'Hey, I haven't finished that burritooooooooooooooo…'."
"Says he who could fumigate an aircraft hangar in his sleep," shot back Sam, "I've been driven to spend the night in the car before now, because the atmosphere in our room becomes unbreathable! And you are NOT subtle. Some nights, I dream that I'm about to be run over by a semi-trailer, and I'm frozen on the spot, hearing nothing but the air horns as the tractor bears down on me, then I wake up in a cold sweat and realise it's only you, playing the Farter Sonata in A major, scored for jerk and cheeseburgers! Seriously, an aircraft carrier could use you for a foghorn!"
Dean drew breath to protest at being accused of fortissimo flatulence, but choked on the scent of lavender instead. He gasped and spluttered – he despised the smell of lavender, it was disgusting, demonic, and utterly vile – then glared in the mirror. Jimi had finished gnawing his way through his cheesy chicken doggy treat, and was chewing contentedly on Oinker Stoinker the squeaky pig toy. Dean once more cursed the universe in general for letting the pup inherit his Hellhound father's peculiar trait of florally fragranced flatus.
"Oh, great, just great," he fumed, "See what all your talk about farting has done? Now Jimi is contaminating my car!"
Sam followed his line of sight, and grinned. "Whine, whine, whine," he said, leaning back to ruffle Jimi's ears. The pup broke into a happy puppy grin. "Enjoy the free aromatherapy. It might counteract the cheeseburger exhaust, jerk."
"Bitch".
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Bobby had been putting photos of Rumsfeld's three pups – the Winchesters' Jimi, and his sisters Janis and Joni – on his refrigerator since they were whelped. On some level, the arrival of Rumsfeld's half-Hellhound litter had triggered something grandparently in him; he figured that they were the closest he was ever likely to get to having grandkids. Or grandfurkids, as the case may be.
As the pups grew, like any grandparent, he couldn't take enough photos of them. There were photos of the pups the day they were born, photos of them with Rumsfeld, photos of them sleeping, photos of them eating, photos of them playing, wrestling, yapping, growling, running, and one particularly adorable one of them sitting forlornly in a tub of soapy water on The Day The Pups Discovered Rolling In Dead Stuff. However, at any one time, there would be three photos on the refrigerator. The Unholy Trinity, Bobby called them fondly. The pups grew, the pictures changed, but three photos were always on the refrigerator.
Dean claimed a headache by the time they made it to the salvage yard; he'd been anagramed by his brother, then lavenderised by his dog, and the Impala (and his jeans) had suffered the aftermath of another episode of rainbow-streaked half-Hellhound puppy carsickness by the time they arrived.
This probably primed him to be unreasonably annoyed by The Photo.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Bobby came out to meet them, with Rumsfeld and Jimi's sister Janis at his heels. This had been Jimi's first trip away from his mother's den, and Rumsfeld immediately took the opportunity to grab hold of him and start to wash him, while he yapped in outrage at being treated like he was still her denbound whelp.
"Seems like he enjoyed a taste of independence from Mom," grinned Bobby, as Jimi finally made good his escape and joined Janis in some rassling over a piece of shop rag.
"Where's Joni?" asked Sam, picking up his bag and looking around for Rumsfeld's third pup. Bobby smiled happily.
"Day after you left, she finally chose her Hunter!" he smiled, with a certain amount of relief.
"Bobby, that's great!" commented Sam. The Winchesters both knew that Bobby had been getting increasingly anxious about Joni – Bobby had introduced her to several Hunters he trusted, men with experience Hunting with dogs; they had all been keen to adopt her, but Joni had been politely aloof, and all of them had left disappointed.
"Yup," continued Bobby as they went inside, juggling boxes of baked goods from the grateful 'clients' of the Winchesters' last job, "The second they laid eyes on each other, I knew it was a match made, well, somewhere probably a bit south of Heaven, I guess..." He looked pensive. "It's good for Ronnie, too," he told them, a little sadly. "Lost Arko to a nest of vampires a few months ago. Magnificent animal. It's a hard thing, for a Hunter to lose a dog." Bobby shook himself. "Still, we got more cheerful things to think about," he declared, pulling a cookie from a bag, "Like how much grovelling you two idjits will have to do if you want to share my haul of delicious baked goodies."
"They were a very interesting bunch of ladies, Bobby," Dean said casually of the group they'd helped to get rid of a troublesome ghost, "And they certainly remember some interesting things about the last time you visited their town. Something about hiding in the library stacks with a young lady? After correcting the Japanese on a Poster for Victory In The Pacific Week, and arousing the wrath of the head librarian?"
Bobby stopped mid-munch on his cookie.
"Yeah, and wasn't there a date for a dance?" added Sam, "Apparently, thirty years ago you were considered to have very attractive legs."
Bobby frowned sternly. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the reddening of his cheeks.
"Yeah, well, nasty case, that," he mumbled, dropping crumbs, "The Chicken-Squashing Onion Bag Strangler. Seriously screwed up, even for an angry spirit."
"You were quite a dancer, too, we did hear tell," grinned Dean, heading to the refrigerator for a beer.
"And they insisted, no, they demanded that we persuade you to go visit them sometime," Sam picked up, "But it's okay, they wanted us to tell you that your batcherlorly virtue will be perfectly safe." He sighed and made appreciative noises as he bit into a cookie. "Even if your arteries are in mortal peril…"
"Bobby, what is that?" Dean suddenly asked, staring at the refrigerator.
"What's what?" asked Bobby, bewildered.
Sam answered for him. "It's called a 'refrigerator', Dean," he told his brother, "It's a machine, a kitchen appliance, used for the purpose of keeping perishable foodstuffs cold and thus prolonging their storage life. Most refrigerators use a vapour compression cycle in the heat pump, taking advantage of the properties of a refrigerant gas under varying pressure…"
"I know what a refrigerator is, Sam," Dean rolled his eyes, indicating a photograph on the front of the offending appliance, "What I want to know is, what is that?" His tone dripped with distaste, suggestive of a patron in a very expensive restaurant pointing to a mouse in the middle of his salmon mousse. Or, worse, half a mouse.
Sam peered at the refrigerator where Dean was pointing. "Er, it's a photograph, Dean," he tried again, "An image created by light falling onto a light-sensitive medium or I suspect in this case an electronic imager such as a digital camera, typically using a lens to focus the light from the scene being recorded onto…"
"I know what a photo is, Sam," Dean muttered between clenched teeth. "I know it is a photo. I can see it is a photo. The minute I saw it I said to myself, yep, that is a photo. I am totally capable of recognising a photo when I see one, thank you very much." He glared at his brother. "Never mind, I'll just fix it." He began rearranging the photos.
In a sudden flash of insight, Sam realised what the problem with The Photo was.
Since Rumsfeld's pups had been born, there were always those three photos on the refrigerator door: Janis, Jimi and Joni. The photo of Jimi was always of the pup with Dean and Sam. As a result, it was usually bigger than the others.
Bigger, and always in the middle.
Until now.
The photos now included The Photo, a picture of Joni in the arms of a woman with a scarred face. The woman was smiling at Joni, who gazed back at her with an adoring expression.
It was now the largest picture, in between the other two. Dean frowned at it as though it had just insulted his dignity, his marksmanship, his manhood, his haircut, his taste in music, his sexual prowess and his car.
"That's Joni, with the Hunter she adopted," Bobby informed them. "Never seen that pup so excited about anything. They both just looked so happy, I wanted a photo before they left." He beamed, a proud grandfather. "Ronnie rang just before you chuckleheads arrived. Joni's a happy traveller, and she lit up her first grave on command with the whole alien-blood firestarter pee thing yesterday! That pup always was the fearless one," he mused fondly, apparently unaware that Dean was glowering as he moved photos around on the refrigerator door, "They're gonna be a great team."
"Dean, it's just a picture of a woman and her dog," Sam said carefully. "It's kind of a nice picture."
"Yes, it is a nice picture," agreed Dean, "A nice, happy picture, a nice, happy, rather big picture…"
Oh God, thought Sam, mentally doing a face-palm, Is that what this is going to be about?
"I took it with Ronnie's camera," Bobby told them, still in Grandpa Mode, cheerfully oblivious to Dean's grumpy expression, "More bells and whistles on it than any car I've driven. She let me have a go. It's got so many dozen megapictures, or something…"
"Megapixels," corrected Sam automatically, "Eight or ten, I'd guess, from the clarity of this print at this size…"
"She messed with my printer, too," Bobby continued, "Showed me how to print out pictures so they look really good. That one of you boys and Jimi came out real nice."
"Yeah, real nice," echoed Dean, "I notice she didn't show you how to print that one out A4 size…"
"We tried, but there aren't enough 'idp's for the megathings…" replied Bobby dismissively.
"Dpi, dots per inch," Sam supplied absently, watching his brother.
"… She said she'd get me a camera with more megas, so I can take better pictures of them," Bobby went on happily, "Said she'd get me one that's just point-and-shoot, which sounds more like my style." He looked back at Dean. "What are you doing, boy?" he asked.
"Putting Jimi's picture back where it should be," grumped Dean, shuffling the photos around so that the Winchester pack were at the top of the refrigerator door, "Up here, where your favourite grandchild should be."
"Hey, I never said Jimi was my favourite!" Bobby protested.
"You don't have to say it," replied Dean smugly, having rearranged the pictures to his liking. "He's the biggest, brightest and best of the litter, so of course he's your favourite."
"Technically, since Janis adopted Bobby, shouldn't she be his favourite?" asked Sam, pointedly ignoring the death-ray glare Dean gave him.
"Okay, then, we'll ask him," said Dean, a bit snippily, "Bobby, which one of Rumsfeld's puppies is your favourite?"
"Grandparents don't play favourites amongst their grandchildren," stated Bobby firmly, "But if you absolutely must have an answer, then the answer is: Jimi."
"See?" declared Dean triumphantly to Sam, "Jimi is his favourite!"
"Yep," Bobby affirmed, leaning down to pat Jimi, "Whichever one is right in front of me at any given moment is my favourite just then, which right at this second, is Jimi."
"What if Joni came in with him?" asked Dean suspiciously.
"Then they'd both be equal favourite right then," Bobby told him.
"No!" squawked Dean, "You can't have equal favourites!"
"Dean, this is not a popularity contest," sighed Sam, with a shot of Bitchface #7™ (You Can Be Impossibly Unreasonable, You Know That, Dean?), "Joni has found a Hunter, and Bobby wanted a picture before she left the yard for good, because he'll hardly ever see her now."
"I guess that means she can hardly ever be his favourite, then," smirked Dean, reaching down to pick Jimi up. The pup yipped eagerly, squirming around to kiss Dean's nose, tail wagging furiously. "We know who the pick of the litter is, don't we?" he told the pup, scratching his ears as Jimi wiggled in delight. "We know who'll be the biggest, and smartest, and strongest, and fastest, and bravest, and bestest… AAAAAARGH!"
"…And most incontinentest," smiled Sam, carefully taking the excited pup from Dean, who batted at the scorch-mark on his shirt before it could burst out into flame. "Looks like I'm not the only one whose shirts he doesn't like."
"Sometimes, Dean," sighed Bobby, throwing a wet dishcloth at Dean, "You are so full of shit I wonder if you aint just a septic tank on legs."
With as much dignity as a man can retain after his half-Hellhound puppy has scorched his shirt by peeing on it, Dean dabbed delicately at the burn with the dishcloth. "He's just excitable," he told them, "He's the happiest one of all, too."
"It's encouraging if Joni's getting control of her, um, incendiary pee thing already," remarked Sam, "That means that Jimi will probably learn to control it too..."
"He can control it!" Dean declared loyally, "He's obviously just so happy, he doesn't want to."
"Right, a bit like you and your capacity for running off at the mouth," commented Bobby. "Why don't you go change your happy shirt for one that's less ecstatic, and we'll think about chow. You can tell me what the ladies of Fergus Falls have been up to..."
As Dean headed upstairs with Jimi trailing along behind him, Sam humphed.
"I don't believe it," he muttered to Bobby, "He's turning into a pushy stage parent. Just because one of the other pups is getting a handle on the firestarting pee thing already..."
"He'll get over it," said Bobby, waving a hand dismissively, "Jimi will grow into a fine dog. If he can just get through the first few months of his life without setting himself or humans on fire."
Dean didn't mention The Photo again. As an experiment, Sam shuffled the pictures around the next day, after breakfast.
By lunchtime, the picture of Joni and her Hunter had been demoted to bottom of the stack.
Sam shuffled them again.
Within the hour, the woman had a moustache drawn on her.
Bobby received an email that evening; after dinner, he printed out a new photo, showing Joni and her Hunter sitting on the hood of a truck.
Before bedtime, the woman had a pirate's patch over one eye.
And the truck had a Volvo decal drawn onto the grill.
That was when Sam realised, with an inward groan, that Dean had decided that disliking Joni and her new Hunter was going to be his new hobby.
Reviews are the happy snaps on the Refrigerator Of Life.