Poor Randolph - he's only a little plot bunny, and I think his big brother Nathaniel (who's dictating 'Child's Play') and Real Life have been bullying him. But he's not to be denied.
Chapter Nine
Sam was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when Dean returned the next morning, doing the Strut Of Smug Self-Satisfaction (because he had never done a Walk Of Shame in his life), and he bent to pat the puppies as they trotted to the door to meet him.
"Hi there, boys," he greeted them, their little tails wagging, "I hope Sam didn't keep you two awake all night – hey, Sam!" he enthused as Sam emerged, making a show of looking into the bathroom behind his little brother. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything..."
"No, you're not," Sam told him shortly. "And if you do that again, you'll sprain your eyebrows."
"Hey, how can a guy who got laid last night be so grumpy so quickly?" Dean enquired cheerfully.
"Dean," Sam turned a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean) on his older brother, "Kelly came over to help me sort out the list of people we need to talk to. That's all."
"Really?" leered Dean. "That's all you did?"
"Well, no," admitted Sam, "She has an interest in breeding..."
Dean suddenly looked panicked. "Sam," he began anxiously, "I think you'd better make it clear to her that you're only in it for the mutually consenting fun – seriously, bro, I know the type, one minute it's the dancing duvet, and then when you're putting your boots back on, the next thing you know, she'll be wanting you to meet her family, then she's talking about the reception venue, and whether you should name the first one after Great Uncle Marion or Grandma Ursula, if you have to, tell her that our family carries some dreadful genetic mutation and you'd never forgive yourself if it was born with Bongo-Whoopee Syndrome ..."
"Not breeding humans, you idiot!" snapped Sam, "Dogs! Studying the genetics of the Wildhunt bloodlines, and we talked about that. She's got some really interesting ideas about the supposed Hellhound heritage of those dogs – she doesn't know that it's real, but some of the stuff she's done research on might be really important for us, if it ever happens that we end up breeding from Lemmy or Lars. And I didn't get laid."
"Come on, Sam," wheedled Dean, smiling broadly, "I'm not angry; I'm proud! I'm not going to tear you a new one – I thoroughly approve! You don't have to play coy with me."
"You're right, I don't," Sam shot back, "Because there's nothing to be coy about. Research, and discussion about Hellhound lineages. End of story."
"End of story?" pressed Dean.
"Yeah, end of story."
"Ah, Sam," Dean smiled fondly, "I never did work out how a guy your size could be so shy." His eyebrows risked injuring themselves again. "Although I think women find that adorable. So, how many rounds? At least two, I hope, plus at least one complaint from the next room about the noise..."
"Dean!" Sam yapped in irritation, "There – was – no – sex!"
"My sources tell me otherwise," Dean said breezily, "Seriously, it's cool. I wish you'd do it more often. So, let's get breakfast, and I want details. Did you leave the lights on?"
"Even if we did anything, which we didn't, I wouldn't tell you, you prurient jerk," muttered Sam with a searing Bitchface #5™ (My Private Life Is SO None Of Your Business, Jerk). "Let's go eat, and we'll sort out who's going to talk to which disappeared person's contacts."
"Okay," Dean agreed amiably, "So, was she a screamer?"
"I hate you."
They took the pups and returned to a nearby diner where they bought a take-away breakfast, then sat on a park bench in the wan autumn sunshine, letting Lars and Lemmy explore and play while they discussed their assignments.
"Okaaaaay, I'll take the yoga teacher, the stripper, the bar tender, and the masseuse," decided Dean, glancing at the spreadsheet. "You and Kelly can do the rest. Then do each other again."
"Dean," Sam growled, "Shut up about it." He scanned the list. "Any reason you've picked them?"
"They sound like the hot women," Dean pointed out.
"I should've guessed," muttered Sam. "The only reason I ask is that, for a start, you'll see there that the masseuse has a day off; if you want to talk to her, she'll be at her Stitch & Bitch meeting today…"
"Okay, I won't take the masseuse," Dean amended, "I'll take… oh, the belly dancer," he grinned, "Sounds like somebody I'd really like to talk to."
"Uh, you sure about that?" Sam pressed, "Because…"
Before he could say anything else, a small fluffy maelstrom of rassling puppies rolled past, with Lemmy, Lars and Morgan all trying to chomp each others' tails, ears and paws.
"Hi guys," they heard Kelly behind them, "You got the list sorted out?"
"Hi there, Kelly," Dean's eyebrows went into overdrive, "Did you SLEEP well LAST NIGHT?"
"Hmmm, eventually," she smiled serenely, "I had a shaggy roommate who just wanted to play all night…"
Sam's mouth open and shut a couple of times, then he turned red and looked back to his laptop. "So," he began, "Dean's picked his interviewees, so if you can take over a few…"
She looked at the list. "No problem," she said, "I'll just take the next ones on the list. Remember, though, no Stitch & Bitch."
"Okay, okay, I'll do the Stitch & Bitch," sighed Sam.
"Well, you're halfway there," Dean suggested, "If you can get someone to teach you to stitch, you'll have it down pat in no time!"
"I really do hate you," muttered Sam.
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The Hunters spent the weekend inveigling interviews with the people they'd identified as having been contacts with the disappeared dog owners, and met up again late on Sunday, at an outdoor café where they could take the pups with them, to compare notes.
"What the hell are you doing?" hissed Dean malevolently.
"Ribbing," replied Sam, frowning in concentration.
"I can see what you're doing," Dean snarled, "What I want to know is, what the hell are you doing?"
"I just told you," Sam said with some exasperation. "Ribbing. Knit two, purl two. It gives a sort of ribbed effect, like vertical raised stripes."
"Sam," Dean asked in a dangerous tone, "Why are you knitting?"
"Well, you didn't want to do the Stitch & Bitch," Sam shrugged, "And neither did Kelly, so I went."
"You were supposed to talk to people who last saw one of the disappeared dog owners!" insisted Dean, "You weren't supposed to join in!"
"Well, it would've looked totally weird and possibly stalkerish if I'd just showed up and wanted to sit with a group of women I've never met before," Sam replied. "And they were really nice about it. Lars had a great time – I think if he had one more piece of cookie or pastry, he might've exploded." He glanced down at the pup, who was lying in a comfortable heap with his brother. Lars looked up, yawned, twitched the very end of his tail a few times, burped heartily. Lemmy stirred just enough to give him an accusing look. "There was one lady, a retiree, who's been teaching knitting her whole life, she was really good…"
"Sam," Dean intoned seriously, "I need you to listen to me, and I need you to listen carefully. Men. Do. Not. Knit."
"They totally do," Sam countered, "Knitting was actually a male-dominated activity for hundreds of years. In the Hebrides and parts of Scotland, you were deemed a sissy if you couldn't knit."
"Yeah, but that's coming from men who wore skirts, Sam," Dean protested.
"Look, it was a good cover to talk about the woman who vanished," Sam told his brother, "There was more than one person who thought she was acting weird – two other women heard her say she was suddenly going to throw in her corporate job and move to Wisconsin to do volunteer research into zebra mussel control in Lake Michigan."
"It can't be a djinn," Dean muttered, "Because nowhere in the strangest interpretation of what might constitute a happy 'normal' life for me is there a little brother who knits…"
"Shut up, jerk," snapped Sam, "Oh, look what you made me do, I lost count!"
"Hey guys," they heard Kelly's voice behind them. "So, what's up?"
"He made me drop a stitch," griped Sam, fishing for the offending loop with one needle.
"Sam here is experiencing a crisis of testosterone," Dean informed her. "Maybe you can help him out with that, later?" His eyebrows did their Olympic trampolining routine.
"Oh, I'd be happy to help him with that right now," she purred.
"What?" Sam yelped in astonishment.
"Go ahead," Dean told her breezily, "Just pretend I'm not here."
"Just leave this to me, Sam," she instructed in a sultry tone.
Carefully, she reached out and took the knitting from his unresisting hands, and expertly flicked the dropped stitch back onto the needle. "There you go," she handed it back, "If you're going to keep it up, you might want to get a small crochet hook, it's really handy for retrieving dropped stitches before they start to unravel it all."
"Oh. Er, thanks," Sam stammered, "Actually, yeah, that would be a good idea, maybe a size B or C would be appropriate…"
"Huh?" Dean gawped at his brother. "Sam, I don't want to know how you know about crochet hook sizes…"
"A couple of the women at Stitch & Bitch were doing crochet," Sam interrupted.
"Didn't I just tell you I didn't want to know how you know about crochet hooks?" Dean yapped irritably. "Seriously, Sam, men should not need to know about stuff like that! The only thing you should know about that comes in sizes B and C is cup size!"
"Is he always this grumpy?" asked Kelly.
"I am NOT grumpy!" grumped Dean grumpily.
"Well, a lot of the time, he's cheerfully annoying," Sam told her, "But sometimes, he's crankily annoying instead. For instance, when recon for a job goes, uh, unexpected." He tried to contain his smirk, but failed.
"Yeah, yeah, laught it up, bitch," Dean scowled. "I totally blame you and your stupid list."
"Dean, all the info was there," Sam shot back, "I told you to check it carefully – it's not my fault if you couldn't see past the words 'yoga teacher' or 'stripper' or 'bar tender'…"
"Interviews not go so well?" asked Kelly solicitously.
"Oh, they were just peachy," scowled Dean, "After I found out that Sam had sent me to a Try It Out yoga class, I could hardly move for the rest of the day! And the stripper turned out to be in her sixties, and working as a Fatagram lady!"
"Well, at least you got to go and drown your sorrows whilst talking to the bar tender," Kelly was clearly trying very hard to sound sympathetic and refrain from laughing.
"Oh, yeah, drowning my sorrows," Dean practically snarled, "At the bar where the bar tender works. The bar called the Rainbow Unicorn. I got my ass pinched! Twice!"
"Well, you're an attractive man, Dean," Sam pointed out.
"What about the belly dancer?" asked Kelly.
"Oh, very educational. Mirza is highly acclaimed, I found out," Dean replied, "And is widely known as one of the most talented exponents of raqs baladi this side of the States."
"Well, why the long face?" asked Kelly.
"Raqs baladi is a traditional style of Middle Eastern dance," Sam told her.
"Male Middle Eastern dance," grumbled Dean. "He had a gig at the Rainbow Unicorn." He glared at Sam, who was openly grinning. "And he pinched my ass, too! See, this is what happens when men start knitting," he complained.
"Of course, it does take a man secure in his own masculinity to knit," Kelly opined. "It's like, it's such a girly thing to do, only a really manly man could pull it off."
"You think?" chorused the Winchesters, both astonished.
"Definitely," she asserted, pulling out a seat at their table and sitting down.
"Well, I'm sure you've already made your mind up about Sam's… manliness," Dean's eyebrows resumed their demented dancing.
'It's an extremely manly manliness, for sure," Kelly assured him, "So, now that we've affirmed Sam's machismo, and established that Dean has had more education about traditional dance styles than he ever wanted to, what did you guys find out about our disappearing dog owners? Because I gotta tell you, what I was hearing was so out there, I don't think I could make it up."
They compared notes and discovered that all the disappeared dog owners had suddenly decided to make drastic lifestyle changes before vanishing. The bank executive who announced her intention to travel to Italy to research the history of pasta, the bus driver who discovered a passion for making cheddar cheese and intended to go to England to study, the sales assistant who experienced a sudden urge to build a boat entirely out of recycled plastic bottles and sail it to Hawaii, the chef who wanted to move to the Amazon and open a naturist croquet centre, the teacher who saw the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast and heard the Mother Of God instruct her to leave her job, migrate to French Polynesia where she should train to swim around Tahiti to draw attention to the plight of the endangered Tahiti Flycatcher.
"So, these people suddenly got these ideas about massive life changes, and apparently went for it," summarised Dean.
"The ones who wanted to move to the other side of the US, I haven't been able to trace," Sam added. "They never showed up where they said they were going. But they appear to have made the decision themselves – hence, never followed up as 'suspicious' by police agencies."
"Make an outlandish decision, then disappear," mused Kelly. "So, are we talking some sort of mind control? A coven laying a geis on victims?"
"Shapeshifter impersonating people, then killing them?" postulated Dean. "Siren messing with people for the fun of it?"
"Whatever it is, it's connected to the Canine Academy," Sam asserted. "We gotta look there for evidence of what it is. If it's a coven, we gotta find their altar. If we're sneaky, we can check the staff for fugliness, then figure out how to tackle them." He sighed. "Meanwhile, let's eat, I'm hungry."
"Sounds like a plan," grinned Dean. "Of course, if you kids would like me to head off and catch up with Mandy to get OUT OF YOUR WAY while you work out our NEXT MOVES…"
"Is there something wrong with your face?" asked Kelly.
"Yeah, it's attached to the front side of a jerk," griped Sam, flushing at his brother's words.
"So, I think we'll have some wings for the boys," Dean perused the menu, "And something with a lot of red meat in it for me – that visit to the Rainbow Unicorn drained my testosterone levels, and I don't want to disappoint Mandy." He paused thoughtfully, then took a small silvered blade out of his jacket. "Give me your arm, Sam," he commanded, taking hold of the required limb and making a small cut.
"Hey!" yelped Sam, pulling his arm away, to inspect the small cut, "What the fuck was that for?"
"Just checking," shrugged Dean. "A Winchester man suddenly starts knitting, that's seriously weird. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't the latest victim of the dog owner disappearer."
"Jerk."
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