SPN FIC - The Puppy Men
Should be a simple case -- get in, trap the thing, and get out. Dean's done it before, with a pretty good success rate.
All those other times, though, he didn't have an audience.
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam, OMCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1818 words
THE PUPPY MEN
By Carol Davis
A freaking AUDIENCE?
That's so the last thing he needs right now.
Well, all right. Not exactly true. The last thing he needs is for the thing he's got wrapped up in this bag to come rocketing back to life and give him a good solid chomp through the canvas. He can already feel it squirming, and any second now it's gonna start flailing like a dozen pissed-off cats.
The thing about cats is, they've only got four teeth that are worth worrying about, and not a whole lot of jaw power. Enough, but not like this thing's got. Whole friggin' mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth and the jaw power of a pit bull. You get a finger or a hand or a nose or an ear anywhere near the maw of one of these little sons of bitches, and you…
"Who're YOU?" his audience demands.
"Nobody," Dean hisses. "Go back to bed."
He leaves the you little rug-muncher part of that unsaid, and really, he might as well not have bothered to say anything, because the kid doesn't move, just stands there alongside what's probably his dad's favorite chair, wide-eyed and fascinated, dressed in a pair of Thomas the Tank Engine footie pajamas, hair sticking out all crazy, like he gelled it, then stood in front of a wind machine.
The thing in the bag lets out a bleat.
"Whoa," the kid breathes.
"Kid," Dean says. "Seriously. Back to bed."
And the thing in the bag does what feels like a triple somersault, with bonus points for spotting the landing. Yeah, that's not good. That's not at all good.
"Did you get it?" Sam calls, voice kept low, from the other side of the open window Dean climbed into this house through.
"Yeah. I got it."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
"I got -"
Dean's attention flips to the window. Sam's head is looming in the open space. He looks a little nervous.
This is a whole Cindy Lou Who situation, Dean thinks, this being interrupted at the worst possible time. What he'd love to do is drop the bag to the floor - this nice, gleaming hardwood floor - and set a boot down on the skull of the thing inside. That's the fine thing about gremlins: they're harder than a son of a bitch to catch, but they've got a skull like an egg. Little bit of pressure applied at the right angle, and that's all she wrote.
But he's got…
SHIT. Now there's TWO of them. And they match, right down to the crazy hair and the footie pj's.
"What's in the bag?" the new one asks. Or maybe it's the old one. It's hard to tell the difference - if there even is a difference.
"Dude," Sam grouses. "Are you coming? The damn Neighborhood Watch is gonna be back any minute now."
Yup.
That would be a problem.
The thing is, there's plenty of neighborhood watching going on in here, already, right now.
"You're not Santa."
"Yeah. I'm - no. I'm not."
Frick and Frack ponder that as a team, staring first at Dean, then at each other. Possibly exchanging chunks of telepathic conversation. Possibly working out a plan to wake their parents. Raise the alarm.
He could take a step, and they could start screaming.
And because his life has an awesome talent for handing him the last thing he needs at any given moment, the gremlin starts kicking and punching and yessir, it's figured out where the open end of the bag is, the end Dean twirled shut two minutes ago. He's got that end gripped nice and tight in his left fist - the Taser's still in his right hand - but all that little bastard's got to do is deliver a chomp through the canvas and an impressive chunk of hell's gonna break loose.
He pivots toward the window, intending to hand the bag off to Sam, but for some reason - possibly because it's on the list of last things Dean needs right now - Sam's no longer there.
When he turns back to the kids, there are three of them.
All of them match.
Trickster, he thinks, freaking damn TRICKSTER, but that can't be right; Gabriel's long gone.
"PUPPY!" one of them yelps.
Somehow, Sam's in the room now, wrapping a big fist around the twirled end of the bag, trying to wrestle it away from Dean.
"Are you the Puppy Man?" one of the kids whispers.
The what? The who? Dean thinks.
"No" would be the appropriate answer, but Sam steps right up with "Yes," and before Dean can object to that, Sam forges eagerly ahead. "The thing is, see, we made a mistake," Sam says. "We brought the wrong one, and we need to go back to the…um…puppy workshop and switch it out for the right one. Okay? Now, you guys need to go back to bed. No puppies for anybody who's not sound asleep."
These kids are three years old. Maybe just over the line into four.
They're apparently good at math, though.
"Puppies?" one of them squeals. "We get one for EACH?"
"You wake up your mommy and daddy, and nobody gets one," Sam says.
Another kid cranks his head side-to-side. "Mommy's in Shinago on her TRIP. An' Daddy sleeps HARD. He's not gumma wake up."
"What KINDA puppies?"
"Do they PEE?"
"I wanna WHITE ONE!"
The thing in the bag is blue. Pretty much. Basically. Dean got a good look at it - and its mouthful of teeth - in the moment before he Tased its furry little ass. He remembers being Tased all too well, although it's been almost six years now, and now and then he hesitates for a second before unleashing that kind of juice on anything that's breathing. But the little freak's been wreaking havoc in this neighborhood for almost a month: a reign of shattered and broken and hopelessly screwed-up stuff that the cops think merits a feature on The World's Dumbest Criminals. That, or it's simple teenage vandalism.
They stepped up the Neighborhood Watch, which has accomplished exactly nothing. Basically, they don't have a clue.
Dean looks at his brother. At the gyrating canvas bag dangling from Sam's big right hand.
Written in Sam's expression are the words We need to go.
They could get these kids a dog, Dean thinks. It would serve their father right, for sleeping through all this commotion. For not keeping his kids safe from a home invasion of the blue and furry and nasty-teethed kind.
But the dog would likely get the short end of that particular stick.
"You go on back to bed," he says softly.
"An' we can see the puppy at six-oh-oh?" the kid in the middle says. "Like on Kripmiss?"
They look hopeful. All three of them. It's a very short step from observing that to imagining the glee on their faces if they got out of bed at six a.m. to find a squirming, drooling puppy peeing on the hardwood in the middle of the living room.
Working a smile onto his face takes some serious effort.
"You go on to bed," Dean says.
He's something less than amazed when they disappear.
He and Sam are halfway to the car when Sam says quietly, "I'll take care of this," and Dean nods and walks on ahead. Though the car isn't his, though he and Sam only swiped it a day ago, it seems like a refuge, and even a little bit of that goes a long way with him these days. He sits slumped in the driver's seat, trying not to look in the rearview, but he catches a glimpse of Sam and the bag right before Sam flips up the trunk lid and dumps the bag inside.
It's not moving. The bag.
"Wish the damn things didn't bleed so much," Sam says as he slides into the shotgun seat. "I've got crap all over my shoe."
"Yeah," Dean says after a minute.
"They'll forget all about it," Sam says, eyes locked on Dean.
"No they won't. You didn't."
"I didn't - what?"
"You never forgot a damn thing. All of it. It'd come popping back up in a couple days, or a month."
"We can't get them a dog, man."
"I know that."
They're a few miles out of town when Sam says, "I get it now, you know. I mean - there was no way we could've had a dog. Obviously. It's just -"
He stops then. Runs his fingers along the sill of his window, fussing with a chip in the trim. Goes on doing that for a good couple of minutes. If they were riding in the Impala, Dean would tell him to knock that off; that he's just making things worse.
But they're not. And it's late.
There's a dead thing in the trunk.
"You never forgot, either," Sam says as they cross the county line. "Did you?"
There's not much light out here. Just the moon, and the spill from the headlights. That's just as well, because, really, the last thing Dean needs right now is to get going with a bunch of emo crap. A bunch of caring and sharing about stuff that was over and done with years ago.
Decades ago, for God's sake.
But he remembers, as the countryside rolls by on either side of the stolen car, something that Sam never saw - couldn't have, because Sam would have exploited it. Would have wrung it out for all it was worth, because it was proof that Sam was right, and that Dad agreed, for all that he said he didn't.
That they should have a dog.
Needed a damn dog.
He remembers Dad staring out the window of a dingy, unexceptional apartment on a night that was bright and mild. Early summer, maybe, a long time ago. The window was open - a rare occurrence - and the breeze was strong enough to flip the collar of Dad's shirt up and down, up and down. Because Dad seemed amenable to a little companionship, Dean went to stand beside him, to look out the window with him.
"I wish we could," Dean whispered after a while. Said it out into the mild breeze.
A minute went by, with no response from Dad. He was silent enough, still enough, that he might have been asleep.
Then he murmured, "So do I."
Maybe Dad thought he was alone. Maybe he thought he was simply talking to the night, but believing that has never been something Dean wanted to do.
Still isn't.
"We should eat," Sam says, and glances back over his shoulder toward the back of the car, as if there's something back there worth looking at. "We should stop somewhere and get something to eat."
That's not the last thing Dean wants right now, but it's close.
Not worth arguing over, though.
"Yeah," he tells his brother. "Next chance, we'll stop."
* * * * *
All those other times, though, he didn't have an audience.
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam, OMCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 1818 words
THE PUPPY MEN
By Carol Davis
A freaking AUDIENCE?
That's so the last thing he needs right now.
Well, all right. Not exactly true. The last thing he needs is for the thing he's got wrapped up in this bag to come rocketing back to life and give him a good solid chomp through the canvas. He can already feel it squirming, and any second now it's gonna start flailing like a dozen pissed-off cats.
The thing about cats is, they've only got four teeth that are worth worrying about, and not a whole lot of jaw power. Enough, but not like this thing's got. Whole friggin' mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth and the jaw power of a pit bull. You get a finger or a hand or a nose or an ear anywhere near the maw of one of these little sons of bitches, and you…
"Who're YOU?" his audience demands.
"Nobody," Dean hisses. "Go back to bed."
He leaves the you little rug-muncher part of that unsaid, and really, he might as well not have bothered to say anything, because the kid doesn't move, just stands there alongside what's probably his dad's favorite chair, wide-eyed and fascinated, dressed in a pair of Thomas the Tank Engine footie pajamas, hair sticking out all crazy, like he gelled it, then stood in front of a wind machine.
The thing in the bag lets out a bleat.
"Whoa," the kid breathes.
"Kid," Dean says. "Seriously. Back to bed."
And the thing in the bag does what feels like a triple somersault, with bonus points for spotting the landing. Yeah, that's not good. That's not at all good.
"Did you get it?" Sam calls, voice kept low, from the other side of the open window Dean climbed into this house through.
"Yeah. I got it."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
"I got -"
Dean's attention flips to the window. Sam's head is looming in the open space. He looks a little nervous.
This is a whole Cindy Lou Who situation, Dean thinks, this being interrupted at the worst possible time. What he'd love to do is drop the bag to the floor - this nice, gleaming hardwood floor - and set a boot down on the skull of the thing inside. That's the fine thing about gremlins: they're harder than a son of a bitch to catch, but they've got a skull like an egg. Little bit of pressure applied at the right angle, and that's all she wrote.
But he's got…
SHIT. Now there's TWO of them. And they match, right down to the crazy hair and the footie pj's.
"What's in the bag?" the new one asks. Or maybe it's the old one. It's hard to tell the difference - if there even is a difference.
"Dude," Sam grouses. "Are you coming? The damn Neighborhood Watch is gonna be back any minute now."
Yup.
That would be a problem.
The thing is, there's plenty of neighborhood watching going on in here, already, right now.
"You're not Santa."
"Yeah. I'm - no. I'm not."
Frick and Frack ponder that as a team, staring first at Dean, then at each other. Possibly exchanging chunks of telepathic conversation. Possibly working out a plan to wake their parents. Raise the alarm.
He could take a step, and they could start screaming.
And because his life has an awesome talent for handing him the last thing he needs at any given moment, the gremlin starts kicking and punching and yessir, it's figured out where the open end of the bag is, the end Dean twirled shut two minutes ago. He's got that end gripped nice and tight in his left fist - the Taser's still in his right hand - but all that little bastard's got to do is deliver a chomp through the canvas and an impressive chunk of hell's gonna break loose.
He pivots toward the window, intending to hand the bag off to Sam, but for some reason - possibly because it's on the list of last things Dean needs right now - Sam's no longer there.
When he turns back to the kids, there are three of them.
All of them match.
Trickster, he thinks, freaking damn TRICKSTER, but that can't be right; Gabriel's long gone.
"PUPPY!" one of them yelps.
Somehow, Sam's in the room now, wrapping a big fist around the twirled end of the bag, trying to wrestle it away from Dean.
"Are you the Puppy Man?" one of the kids whispers.
The what? The who? Dean thinks.
"No" would be the appropriate answer, but Sam steps right up with "Yes," and before Dean can object to that, Sam forges eagerly ahead. "The thing is, see, we made a mistake," Sam says. "We brought the wrong one, and we need to go back to the…um…puppy workshop and switch it out for the right one. Okay? Now, you guys need to go back to bed. No puppies for anybody who's not sound asleep."
These kids are three years old. Maybe just over the line into four.
They're apparently good at math, though.
"Puppies?" one of them squeals. "We get one for EACH?"
"You wake up your mommy and daddy, and nobody gets one," Sam says.
Another kid cranks his head side-to-side. "Mommy's in Shinago on her TRIP. An' Daddy sleeps HARD. He's not gumma wake up."
"What KINDA puppies?"
"Do they PEE?"
"I wanna WHITE ONE!"
The thing in the bag is blue. Pretty much. Basically. Dean got a good look at it - and its mouthful of teeth - in the moment before he Tased its furry little ass. He remembers being Tased all too well, although it's been almost six years now, and now and then he hesitates for a second before unleashing that kind of juice on anything that's breathing. But the little freak's been wreaking havoc in this neighborhood for almost a month: a reign of shattered and broken and hopelessly screwed-up stuff that the cops think merits a feature on The World's Dumbest Criminals. That, or it's simple teenage vandalism.
They stepped up the Neighborhood Watch, which has accomplished exactly nothing. Basically, they don't have a clue.
Dean looks at his brother. At the gyrating canvas bag dangling from Sam's big right hand.
Written in Sam's expression are the words We need to go.
They could get these kids a dog, Dean thinks. It would serve their father right, for sleeping through all this commotion. For not keeping his kids safe from a home invasion of the blue and furry and nasty-teethed kind.
But the dog would likely get the short end of that particular stick.
"You go on back to bed," he says softly.
"An' we can see the puppy at six-oh-oh?" the kid in the middle says. "Like on Kripmiss?"
They look hopeful. All three of them. It's a very short step from observing that to imagining the glee on their faces if they got out of bed at six a.m. to find a squirming, drooling puppy peeing on the hardwood in the middle of the living room.
Working a smile onto his face takes some serious effort.
"You go on to bed," Dean says.
He's something less than amazed when they disappear.
He and Sam are halfway to the car when Sam says quietly, "I'll take care of this," and Dean nods and walks on ahead. Though the car isn't his, though he and Sam only swiped it a day ago, it seems like a refuge, and even a little bit of that goes a long way with him these days. He sits slumped in the driver's seat, trying not to look in the rearview, but he catches a glimpse of Sam and the bag right before Sam flips up the trunk lid and dumps the bag inside.
It's not moving. The bag.
"Wish the damn things didn't bleed so much," Sam says as he slides into the shotgun seat. "I've got crap all over my shoe."
"Yeah," Dean says after a minute.
"They'll forget all about it," Sam says, eyes locked on Dean.
"No they won't. You didn't."
"I didn't - what?"
"You never forgot a damn thing. All of it. It'd come popping back up in a couple days, or a month."
"We can't get them a dog, man."
"I know that."
They're a few miles out of town when Sam says, "I get it now, you know. I mean - there was no way we could've had a dog. Obviously. It's just -"
He stops then. Runs his fingers along the sill of his window, fussing with a chip in the trim. Goes on doing that for a good couple of minutes. If they were riding in the Impala, Dean would tell him to knock that off; that he's just making things worse.
But they're not. And it's late.
There's a dead thing in the trunk.
"You never forgot, either," Sam says as they cross the county line. "Did you?"
There's not much light out here. Just the moon, and the spill from the headlights. That's just as well, because, really, the last thing Dean needs right now is to get going with a bunch of emo crap. A bunch of caring and sharing about stuff that was over and done with years ago.
Decades ago, for God's sake.
But he remembers, as the countryside rolls by on either side of the stolen car, something that Sam never saw - couldn't have, because Sam would have exploited it. Would have wrung it out for all it was worth, because it was proof that Sam was right, and that Dad agreed, for all that he said he didn't.
That they should have a dog.
Needed a damn dog.
He remembers Dad staring out the window of a dingy, unexceptional apartment on a night that was bright and mild. Early summer, maybe, a long time ago. The window was open - a rare occurrence - and the breeze was strong enough to flip the collar of Dad's shirt up and down, up and down. Because Dad seemed amenable to a little companionship, Dean went to stand beside him, to look out the window with him.
"I wish we could," Dean whispered after a while. Said it out into the mild breeze.
A minute went by, with no response from Dad. He was silent enough, still enough, that he might have been asleep.
Then he murmured, "So do I."
Maybe Dad thought he was alone. Maybe he thought he was simply talking to the night, but believing that has never been something Dean wanted to do.
Still isn't.
"We should eat," Sam says, and glances back over his shoulder toward the back of the car, as if there's something back there worth looking at. "We should stop somewhere and get something to eat."
That's not the last thing Dean wants right now, but it's close.
Not worth arguing over, though.
"Yeah," he tells his brother. "Next chance, we'll stop."
* * * * *