FIC: Hunting for Dummies, Part 2/3
Title: Hunting for Dummies
Fandom: BtVS/Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sid Hutchins, Dean, John and Sam Winchester.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, their characters and concepts belong to their creators and not to me.
Summary: Sid's hunting a demon and he need's Dean Winchester's help.
Part 1
“Dean, this is incredible,” said the teacher with genuine awe in her voice.
And it really was. With just a few hours, the better part of an Erector Set and a dissected remote-control car, Dean had managed to create a remotely controlled exoskeleton for Sid’s arm that allowed it to be moved up and down and in and out at the swivel of the controller’s joystick. It was a weird sensation, actually being used as a puppet for nearly the first time in his fifty odd years as one. It was worth it though, not only because it got him into the school, but also for the excellent view of the teacher’s cleavage he got as she leaned over to examined his arm.
While Sid tried to restrain himself from reaching out for a feel, Dean responded to her praise with a blush and awkward head-duck like he’d never gotten a compliment before and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “Um, yeah,” the boy agreed with a tepid smile. The teacher’s eyes narrowed slightly at that, but the smile she gave him before going to inspect the next project was warm.
“Um, um, good,” Sid murmured appreciatively to himself as the teacher moved on. Seemed her back end was just as shapely as her front.
“Dude,” Dean hissed, looking appalled, “did you just check out Ms. Jenkins’ ass?”
“So what if I did?” Sid turned to Dean in surprise. Considering her assets, what red-blooded man wouldn’t?
The expression on the boy’s face was moving from simply appalled to outright horrified. “But you’re a -”
“-Man who appreciates quality craftsmanship,” Sid interrupted before the kid could get too freaked out over the idea of dummies having a sex-life. “And seriously,” he continued, “what’s not to appreciate?” he asked, nodding slightly to where the lovely Ms. Jenkins was looking at some kid’s Chia Pet.
Dean stood, head cocked to the side, as the two of them took a moment to contemplated the way the tightness of Ms. Jenkins’ skirt hugged the curves of her butt as she leaned over the desk. “I don’t get it,” the boy said after a few minutes, confusion clear on his face.
Well, that was something Sid had never heard from any of his high-school age helpers, but he supposed eleven was a little young to be thinking about sex. It had been a long time since he’d been that young. He couldn’t remember; were boys even past the girls-have-cooties stage at that age? “You’ll understand when you’re older,” he assured the kid with a sigh.
“Class.” Ms. Jenkins’ voice drew their attention. “I’ll be announcing the winner in a moment, but first, I just wanted to say how proud I am,” she said in excessively cheerful tones. “Good job, everyone. Give yourselves a hand,” she added and began to clap.
Sid snorted quietly at that. Who was she kidding? Aside from Dean’s mechanical arm and one girl’s experiment with tin-can telephones and sound, the other students’ projects were pretty pathetic. There were actually three Chia Pets, two pet rocks and four baking-soda volcanos, for crying out loud.
Ms. Jenkins headed right over to Dean’s desk as soon as the class’s half-hearted applause died down. “Dean, I’m going to name you winner.” The look the boy shot Sid practically screamed I told you so, but his delighted grin slipped from his face as the teacher continued. “But there’s something I have to ask you first.”
“Um, what?” the boy asked, looking shifty and uncertain.
“I can’t help noticing that this is above and beyond the usual quality of your work,” She said pointedly. “It makes me wonder if you didn’t have a little bit of help.” It wasn’t quite an accusation, but her voice said confess none the less.
“Help?” Dean repeated nervously, his eyes shooting to Sid. Clearly the potential exposure of his talking puppet friend worried the boy, but somehow the dummy didn’t think that when the teacher said help she meant him.
“You said your father was a mechanic, right?” Ms. Jenkins elaborated. “Maybe he helped you with it,” she suggested, her patience clearly starting to wear thin. She’d made up her mind, Sid could tell. She just needed Dean to admit he had cheated so she could move on and pick someone else.
Of course, he hadn’t cheated at all. “My father?” Dean gave a little laugh of relief. “Lady,” he said in amusement, “he doesn’t even know there is a science fair. ‘Help me with it,’” he repeated her accusation with an eye roll and another laugh. “That’s a good one.”
Ms. Jenkins, however, didn’t seem to think it was a good one at all. The knowing expression had gone from her face and now she just looked sad. “Dean,” she said in a quiet, subdued voice, “I get he doesn’t know about the fair, but, considering what’s happened, don’t you think he should?”
****
It was late by the time Sam finally nodded off. For some reason, Sid’s watchful gaze from where he perched on the dresser made it hard for the kid to sleep. Dean waited a full twenty minutes after his brother’s snores started before grabbing Sid and going in search of his father. They found him seated at the kitchen, on the phone and with a notebook full of newspaper clippings and illegible handwriting open before him.
“-Doesn’t make any sense, Jim,” he was growling into the phone in low, frustrated tones as they approached. “There should be more bodies if it’s a ‘wolf, but what the hell else could it be?”
“Dad?” Dean’s voice was hesitant. Sid didn’t blame him. From the sound of things, the man was not a happy camper.
“Dean, I’m on the phone,” his father snapped. “Can’t this wait?” It was clearly a rhetorical question as he had already turned back to his telephone conversation. “Sorry, Jim,” he apologized to the man on the other end. “Where were we?”
“There’s gonna be a demon at the science fair on Saturday,” Dean blurted in a desperate bid to gain his father’s attention.
It worked too. The man’s basilisk-like gaze snapped up from his notes to his son. The sudden silence in the room seemed to stretch out for hours until the faint, tinny voice from the phone began to shout for attention. “I’ll call you back, Jim,” the man said distractedly and hung up the phone. There was another bout of silence, shorter this time, while he studied his increasingly nervous son. “What makes you think there’s a demon at the science fair?” he finally asked.
“Sid says so,” Dean said simply. As answers went, it wasn’t the best, but it was late and the kid hadn’t gotten too much sleep the night before, so Sid was willing to let it slide. They would have to explain who he was anyway. Might as well be sooner rather than later.
“Who’s Sid?”
Rather than answer aloud, Dean held out his arms to show what, or rather who, he was carrying.
His father’s eyes went first to the dummy and then to his son’s face. “Dean,”-he tiredly massaged his forehead - “aren’t you a little old for an imaginary friend?” he asked, exhaustion and disappointment clear in his voice.
The boy’s shoulders sunk at the rebuke, but Sid had had enough. He could understand the man’s causal dismissal of his existence. After all, talking dummies weren’t exactly common, but they really didn’t have time for this. “For crying out loud,” Sid snapped as he squirmed out of Dean’s arms. This was the kind of conversation he wanted to have on his own two feet. “Would it kill you to actually listen to your son?” he demanded, glaring up at the man from the floor.
The man’s eyes went wide for a split second before they narrowed again into dangerous slits. “Christos,” he snarled, eyes fixed on Sid’s face.
Sid swallowed a laugh. Boy, was this family predictable. “You don’t think the kid already tried that?” he asked with a roll of his eyes. “I’m not a demon,” he told the man. “I’m just a hunter on a long, long run of really bad luck.”
“Hunter, hu?” The man clearly still wasn’t buying it.
“That’s right. Sid Hutchins,” Sid introduced himself, extending his hand. "From San Francisco."
“John Winchester,” the man introduced himself but made no move to shake Sid’s hand. “Never heard of you.”
Well, Sid hadn’t heard of him either and he was getting pretty sick of Winchester’s attitude. He was about to tell him that when Dean, who they’d both managed to forgotten, brought them back to the real topic of their conversation. “Sid’s here hunting your werewolf,” he said. “Only, it’s really a demon.”
“A demon?” Winchester reacted like a dog with a scent. “Tell me about it,” he commanded.
So Sid did, everything he had told Dean and more. Unlike his son, the elder Winchester listened quietly, without comment, and actually took notes. “So,” he said when Sid was done, “there’s no way to spot them before the illusion goes?”
It was a good question and one Sid actually had to stop and think about. “Well, they’re preternaturally strong,” he explained, “but it’s not like they advertise that fact. Christos might work, but, to be honest, I’ve never tried it.” He shrugged at Winchester’s look of surprise. “It’s always been pretty obvious what they are when I hack their heads off.”
“And you need to take the head and heart?” Winchester confirmed, making another note at Sid’s nod. Writing done, the man laid his pen down with a sigh and scrubbed his face with his hands. “The school newsletter said the science fair is participating students and their families only. How the hell are we supposed to get in?”
“Good thing we have a participating student,” Sid said smugly.
“Who?” The confusion was clear on Winchester’s face in the moment before he figured it out. “Dean?” he asked incredulously, bursting into a wide grin at his son’s hesitant nod. “That’s great, son. What’s your project?”
“Is that really important?” Dean asked, clearly thrown by his father’s enthusiasm.
“It is to me,” Winchester told his son, his tone serious.
“It’s a remote control arm,” Dean said. “For Sid,” he elaborated in the face of his father’s obvious confusion. “He’s a puppet, see,” he explained, picking up speed, “but he can move himself and I thought; remote controlled puppet, how cool would that be?” Since Sid had met him, he’d seen Dean serious and sarcastic, laughing and angry, but this was the first time he’s seen the boy excited. It was sort of like Sam with a book, only with less bouncing. “So I made this arm with Sammy’s Erector Set and the servo from that broken remote-control car,” he went on. “It goes right over Sid’s arm and moves it around and stuff. And yeah...” he trailed off. “That’s my project.”
“That’s my boy,” said Winchester, real pride in his voice. “You get that mechanical genius from my side of the family.”
Dean was suddenly shy and uncomfortable again, like he had been with Ms. Jenkins. From his reaction, praise was probably a rare thing in the Winchester household. Sort of sad really. “I’d hate to break this up,” Sid interrupted the touching and increasingly awkward moment, “but we still have plans to make and someone has school tomorrow.”
“Right,” said Winchester getting back to business. He grabbed Sid around his waist and hoisted him up onto the table. “Take a seat, Dean,” he told his son. “We’ve got a hunt to plan.”
****
“Carry on my wayward son. There’ll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary-”
The radio shut off with the engine and Sid sighed with relief. It wasn’t that a long trip to the middle school from the Winchester’s apartment, but there was only so much of classic rock that Sid could take. He didn’t know how kids these days could listen to that shit. Give him Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington any day of the week.
“All right,” Winchester broke the silence the lack of radio had left behind. “Dean, you have your project?” He had already asked the boy that at least five times since they’d dropped Sam off at his friend’s, but Sid got the impression Winchester was thorough, or maybe just a tad obsessive.
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, patting the contraption on Sid’s arm.
“And the knife?” His voice was sharp. After all, he’d only asked about that twice.
“In my bag,” Dean replied calmly with a lot more patience than Sid had.
“You remember your job?” Of course the boy did. They’d gone over it a million times.
“I stay at my post and I stick with Sid,” Dean recited. “If I see anything suspicious, I say Christos and call for you. I got it, Dad,” he told his father with a smile. “We’re good.”
The man gave a swift, jerky nod and Sid couldn’t help needling him a little. “Got your machete, Winchester?” he asked, mimicking the man’s tone.
Dean got the joke if his grin and smothered laugh was anything to go by, but the elder Winchester missed it in his focus on the job. “Sports-bag in the trunk,” he told Sid as he got out of the car. Dean scrambled to follow, juggling Sid and his book-bag in his search for the door handle. By the time they made it out of the car, Winchester was already leaning against the fender with a battered blue sports-bag hanging from his shoulder. “You ready, Hutchins?” he asked, straightening up.
“Always.” It was difficult to sound tough while being carried into battle by an eleven-year-old, but Sid thought he pulled it off. “Let’s do this.”
1<<(2)>> 3
Fandom: BtVS/Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sid Hutchins, Dean, John and Sam Winchester.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, their characters and concepts belong to their creators and not to me.
Summary: Sid's hunting a demon and he need's Dean Winchester's help.
Part 1
“Dean, this is incredible,” said the teacher with genuine awe in her voice.
And it really was. With just a few hours, the better part of an Erector Set and a dissected remote-control car, Dean had managed to create a remotely controlled exoskeleton for Sid’s arm that allowed it to be moved up and down and in and out at the swivel of the controller’s joystick. It was a weird sensation, actually being used as a puppet for nearly the first time in his fifty odd years as one. It was worth it though, not only because it got him into the school, but also for the excellent view of the teacher’s cleavage he got as she leaned over to examined his arm.
While Sid tried to restrain himself from reaching out for a feel, Dean responded to her praise with a blush and awkward head-duck like he’d never gotten a compliment before and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “Um, yeah,” the boy agreed with a tepid smile. The teacher’s eyes narrowed slightly at that, but the smile she gave him before going to inspect the next project was warm.
“Um, um, good,” Sid murmured appreciatively to himself as the teacher moved on. Seemed her back end was just as shapely as her front.
“Dude,” Dean hissed, looking appalled, “did you just check out Ms. Jenkins’ ass?”
“So what if I did?” Sid turned to Dean in surprise. Considering her assets, what red-blooded man wouldn’t?
The expression on the boy’s face was moving from simply appalled to outright horrified. “But you’re a -”
“-Man who appreciates quality craftsmanship,” Sid interrupted before the kid could get too freaked out over the idea of dummies having a sex-life. “And seriously,” he continued, “what’s not to appreciate?” he asked, nodding slightly to where the lovely Ms. Jenkins was looking at some kid’s Chia Pet.
Dean stood, head cocked to the side, as the two of them took a moment to contemplated the way the tightness of Ms. Jenkins’ skirt hugged the curves of her butt as she leaned over the desk. “I don’t get it,” the boy said after a few minutes, confusion clear on his face.
Well, that was something Sid had never heard from any of his high-school age helpers, but he supposed eleven was a little young to be thinking about sex. It had been a long time since he’d been that young. He couldn’t remember; were boys even past the girls-have-cooties stage at that age? “You’ll understand when you’re older,” he assured the kid with a sigh.
“Class.” Ms. Jenkins’ voice drew their attention. “I’ll be announcing the winner in a moment, but first, I just wanted to say how proud I am,” she said in excessively cheerful tones. “Good job, everyone. Give yourselves a hand,” she added and began to clap.
Sid snorted quietly at that. Who was she kidding? Aside from Dean’s mechanical arm and one girl’s experiment with tin-can telephones and sound, the other students’ projects were pretty pathetic. There were actually three Chia Pets, two pet rocks and four baking-soda volcanos, for crying out loud.
Ms. Jenkins headed right over to Dean’s desk as soon as the class’s half-hearted applause died down. “Dean, I’m going to name you winner.” The look the boy shot Sid practically screamed I told you so, but his delighted grin slipped from his face as the teacher continued. “But there’s something I have to ask you first.”
“Um, what?” the boy asked, looking shifty and uncertain.
“I can’t help noticing that this is above and beyond the usual quality of your work,” She said pointedly. “It makes me wonder if you didn’t have a little bit of help.” It wasn’t quite an accusation, but her voice said confess none the less.
“Help?” Dean repeated nervously, his eyes shooting to Sid. Clearly the potential exposure of his talking puppet friend worried the boy, but somehow the dummy didn’t think that when the teacher said help she meant him.
“You said your father was a mechanic, right?” Ms. Jenkins elaborated. “Maybe he helped you with it,” she suggested, her patience clearly starting to wear thin. She’d made up her mind, Sid could tell. She just needed Dean to admit he had cheated so she could move on and pick someone else.
Of course, he hadn’t cheated at all. “My father?” Dean gave a little laugh of relief. “Lady,” he said in amusement, “he doesn’t even know there is a science fair. ‘Help me with it,’” he repeated her accusation with an eye roll and another laugh. “That’s a good one.”
Ms. Jenkins, however, didn’t seem to think it was a good one at all. The knowing expression had gone from her face and now she just looked sad. “Dean,” she said in a quiet, subdued voice, “I get he doesn’t know about the fair, but, considering what’s happened, don’t you think he should?”
****
It was late by the time Sam finally nodded off. For some reason, Sid’s watchful gaze from where he perched on the dresser made it hard for the kid to sleep. Dean waited a full twenty minutes after his brother’s snores started before grabbing Sid and going in search of his father. They found him seated at the kitchen, on the phone and with a notebook full of newspaper clippings and illegible handwriting open before him.
“-Doesn’t make any sense, Jim,” he was growling into the phone in low, frustrated tones as they approached. “There should be more bodies if it’s a ‘wolf, but what the hell else could it be?”
“Dad?” Dean’s voice was hesitant. Sid didn’t blame him. From the sound of things, the man was not a happy camper.
“Dean, I’m on the phone,” his father snapped. “Can’t this wait?” It was clearly a rhetorical question as he had already turned back to his telephone conversation. “Sorry, Jim,” he apologized to the man on the other end. “Where were we?”
“There’s gonna be a demon at the science fair on Saturday,” Dean blurted in a desperate bid to gain his father’s attention.
It worked too. The man’s basilisk-like gaze snapped up from his notes to his son. The sudden silence in the room seemed to stretch out for hours until the faint, tinny voice from the phone began to shout for attention. “I’ll call you back, Jim,” the man said distractedly and hung up the phone. There was another bout of silence, shorter this time, while he studied his increasingly nervous son. “What makes you think there’s a demon at the science fair?” he finally asked.
“Sid says so,” Dean said simply. As answers went, it wasn’t the best, but it was late and the kid hadn’t gotten too much sleep the night before, so Sid was willing to let it slide. They would have to explain who he was anyway. Might as well be sooner rather than later.
“Who’s Sid?”
Rather than answer aloud, Dean held out his arms to show what, or rather who, he was carrying.
His father’s eyes went first to the dummy and then to his son’s face. “Dean,”-he tiredly massaged his forehead - “aren’t you a little old for an imaginary friend?” he asked, exhaustion and disappointment clear in his voice.
The boy’s shoulders sunk at the rebuke, but Sid had had enough. He could understand the man’s causal dismissal of his existence. After all, talking dummies weren’t exactly common, but they really didn’t have time for this. “For crying out loud,” Sid snapped as he squirmed out of Dean’s arms. This was the kind of conversation he wanted to have on his own two feet. “Would it kill you to actually listen to your son?” he demanded, glaring up at the man from the floor.
The man’s eyes went wide for a split second before they narrowed again into dangerous slits. “Christos,” he snarled, eyes fixed on Sid’s face.
Sid swallowed a laugh. Boy, was this family predictable. “You don’t think the kid already tried that?” he asked with a roll of his eyes. “I’m not a demon,” he told the man. “I’m just a hunter on a long, long run of really bad luck.”
“Hunter, hu?” The man clearly still wasn’t buying it.
“That’s right. Sid Hutchins,” Sid introduced himself, extending his hand. "From San Francisco."
“John Winchester,” the man introduced himself but made no move to shake Sid’s hand. “Never heard of you.”
Well, Sid hadn’t heard of him either and he was getting pretty sick of Winchester’s attitude. He was about to tell him that when Dean, who they’d both managed to forgotten, brought them back to the real topic of their conversation. “Sid’s here hunting your werewolf,” he said. “Only, it’s really a demon.”
“A demon?” Winchester reacted like a dog with a scent. “Tell me about it,” he commanded.
So Sid did, everything he had told Dean and more. Unlike his son, the elder Winchester listened quietly, without comment, and actually took notes. “So,” he said when Sid was done, “there’s no way to spot them before the illusion goes?”
It was a good question and one Sid actually had to stop and think about. “Well, they’re preternaturally strong,” he explained, “but it’s not like they advertise that fact. Christos might work, but, to be honest, I’ve never tried it.” He shrugged at Winchester’s look of surprise. “It’s always been pretty obvious what they are when I hack their heads off.”
“And you need to take the head and heart?” Winchester confirmed, making another note at Sid’s nod. Writing done, the man laid his pen down with a sigh and scrubbed his face with his hands. “The school newsletter said the science fair is participating students and their families only. How the hell are we supposed to get in?”
“Good thing we have a participating student,” Sid said smugly.
“Who?” The confusion was clear on Winchester’s face in the moment before he figured it out. “Dean?” he asked incredulously, bursting into a wide grin at his son’s hesitant nod. “That’s great, son. What’s your project?”
“Is that really important?” Dean asked, clearly thrown by his father’s enthusiasm.
“It is to me,” Winchester told his son, his tone serious.
“It’s a remote control arm,” Dean said. “For Sid,” he elaborated in the face of his father’s obvious confusion. “He’s a puppet, see,” he explained, picking up speed, “but he can move himself and I thought; remote controlled puppet, how cool would that be?” Since Sid had met him, he’d seen Dean serious and sarcastic, laughing and angry, but this was the first time he’s seen the boy excited. It was sort of like Sam with a book, only with less bouncing. “So I made this arm with Sammy’s Erector Set and the servo from that broken remote-control car,” he went on. “It goes right over Sid’s arm and moves it around and stuff. And yeah...” he trailed off. “That’s my project.”
“That’s my boy,” said Winchester, real pride in his voice. “You get that mechanical genius from my side of the family.”
Dean was suddenly shy and uncomfortable again, like he had been with Ms. Jenkins. From his reaction, praise was probably a rare thing in the Winchester household. Sort of sad really. “I’d hate to break this up,” Sid interrupted the touching and increasingly awkward moment, “but we still have plans to make and someone has school tomorrow.”
“Right,” said Winchester getting back to business. He grabbed Sid around his waist and hoisted him up onto the table. “Take a seat, Dean,” he told his son. “We’ve got a hunt to plan.”
****
“Carry on my wayward son. There’ll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary-”
The radio shut off with the engine and Sid sighed with relief. It wasn’t that a long trip to the middle school from the Winchester’s apartment, but there was only so much of classic rock that Sid could take. He didn’t know how kids these days could listen to that shit. Give him Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington any day of the week.
“All right,” Winchester broke the silence the lack of radio had left behind. “Dean, you have your project?” He had already asked the boy that at least five times since they’d dropped Sam off at his friend’s, but Sid got the impression Winchester was thorough, or maybe just a tad obsessive.
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, patting the contraption on Sid’s arm.
“And the knife?” His voice was sharp. After all, he’d only asked about that twice.
“In my bag,” Dean replied calmly with a lot more patience than Sid had.
“You remember your job?” Of course the boy did. They’d gone over it a million times.
“I stay at my post and I stick with Sid,” Dean recited. “If I see anything suspicious, I say Christos and call for you. I got it, Dad,” he told his father with a smile. “We’re good.”
The man gave a swift, jerky nod and Sid couldn’t help needling him a little. “Got your machete, Winchester?” he asked, mimicking the man’s tone.
Dean got the joke if his grin and smothered laugh was anything to go by, but the elder Winchester missed it in his focus on the job. “Sports-bag in the trunk,” he told Sid as he got out of the car. Dean scrambled to follow, juggling Sid and his book-bag in his search for the door handle. By the time they made it out of the car, Winchester was already leaning against the fender with a battered blue sports-bag hanging from his shoulder. “You ready, Hutchins?” he asked, straightening up.
“Always.” It was difficult to sound tough while being carried into battle by an eleven-year-old, but Sid thought he pulled it off. “Let’s do this.”
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