rogueinladysclothing | Hunting 101 [Tagging Dean]

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Hunting 101 [Tagging Dean]

How she ended up deciding to go into hunting wasn't very interesting. Dead relatives and friends get most people who aren't born into the profession involved without any qualifications. Amelia came into with an extra set of skills, being of the cliche rogue-type even in a modern era, and that only made her more determined to get everything she was learning from the elder Winchester right the first time.

Which is, perhaps, why it frustrated her so much more when she didn't get it right and Dean got on her case about it. Sure, he was well meaning, but that didn't make his teasing and snarky attitude any better received.

Today they're at an abandoned shooting range in the Middle of Nowhere Tennessee. Amelia may have gotten the hang of handguns and the shotgun in the trunk of the Impala, but she always needed practice. And, if Dean would allow it, the chance to try her hand at other weapons that weren't her mostly useless knives and daggers.

"So, we starting light today?" she asks as Dean opens the trunk. A beat, and then she adds, "Better question: do we have enough ammunition to start light today?" The corner of her lips tug up into a smirk, but it's a decidedly important question.

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Oh. Loading.

...right.

"Yeah, I can do that." Or so she hopes. Shifting the gun in her arms, she grabs a handful of bullets, and attempts to load the magazine. There's a lot of cursing, a loss of most of the bullets to the ground, and eventually a frustrated huff as she throws the shotgun onto the table to pull off the magazine and load it properly. It takes a few minutes, but she eventually gets it right and shoves the magazine back onto the shotgun.

Shouldering the weapon, Amelia meets Dean's gaze with a (mostly) controlled grimace. "There. Done. Can I shoot things now?" Why does she have to learn to load anyway? If things go wrong on a hunt, it's not like they'll have time to reload and try again. That's why they have holy water and she upgraded to silver knives, right?

It takes everything in Dean's will power to not laugh at her as she tries to fill the clip with bullets. All of her fumbling, cursing and dropping of not only the bullets but the shotgun. He squinted at her when she huffed and eventually got the magazine loaded.

"Woah there, Princess" Dean licks his lips in thought, eyeing the way she had the shotgun shouldered. "Take a deep breath. Then shoot."

"I'm fine."

Without taking the breath Dean tells her to, Amelia raises the shotgun to her shoulder, aims at the nearest target, and fires. Unprepared for the recoil, she stumbles back after the shot and ends up tripping and falling hard onto her ass. There's another string of choice curses as she gets up and brushes herself off, before she looks up at him with a glare.

"...shut up." She feels like cutting off any possible laughter or 'pro tips' Dean may want to throw at her. "I'll get it this time." As if to prove her point, she turns to the target, raises the shotgun again, and this time takes a breath before she fires. She doesn't hit the whole target with her shot, but at least she didn't miss and fall on her ass this time.

Dean doesn't have the will power to stop the laughter that just roars out of him, he attempts to cover up his mouth to stifle it but he loses that battle. He remembers his Dad handing him the shotgun when he was knee high, and telling him to fire it. He , too, fell on his ass and was bruised for weeks. He could only imagine the wounded pride and tailbone she had right about now. Not to mention her pride.

"At least you clipped his shoulder. That's gonna hurt, and slow him down a little but you're dead."

The laughter makes her cheeks flush bright red. She's so flustered she can't look at him as she raises the shotgun again. "I slowed him down so you could get him for me, obviously."

Such bravado doesn't really help her here, but she's not going to just let him have that one. Jerk.

"But that's why we're here to practice, right? So I can get better at this." She doesn't wait for an answer before firing again. It's still a shit shot and she huffs a small, frustrated sound at the miss.

Dean always makes it look easy. True, he has years of practice, but that doesn't mean she's thinking about it right now. "Dreams, why is this so damn hard?" Another three shots in rapid succession to empty the clip, all with the same results as before. Amelia takes the gun in both hands and throws it to the ground angrily before taking a knife out of her boot and whipping it at the target. Without even aiming, she nails the center of it.

Fuck. Why is shooting so much harder than throwing her knives?!

"You've got me there."

Dean would most definitely step in and help her gank that one but what if he was otherwise occupied? Then she'd be super dead, especially if this was a big scary dead thing that was extra hard to kill; and those happened.

The shot doesn't even make Dean flinch, he actually finds it soothing. His life had meaning, it had purpose whenever he was out here shooting. The jolt of the gun in his shoulder, the dull ringing in his ears. This was the life.

"Jesus!" Dean exclaims, still surprised by her accuracy with knives. There was something to be said about hand-to-hand combat and fists only did so much. "You better pick up my baby and whisper sweet nothings to her for throwing her in the dirt." His tone serious, as that really was his gun baby.

What is it about men and their toys? Seriously. Amelia rolls her eyes as she retrieves her knife and slips it back into the built-in scabbard on her boot. "Then tell her to behave."

Dean is always like this and she can never tell if he's being serious. His tone says he is, but... really? "Whisper sweet nothings" to an inanimate object? Frowning at the gun as she walks back over to him, she picks it up and sets it down on the table again before holding a hand out to him. "More ammo. I need to try again."

What? Did he think she was really going to speak to the gun?

That shotgun, his pistol and the Impala were all he knew. They always stuck around when everything else disappeared, or died, or got lost. Those were his babies and she definitely didn't need to understand that. That was between him and them.

He winked in her direction when she held out a hand, taking about 5 seconds to fill the clip and hand it over to her. It had taken him years to get it down, when the ammo was ten times bigger than his little kid fingers.

"Go ahead."

Amelia appreciates the help with reloading, which she acknowledges with a terse nod. After sliding the clip into place, she shoulders the shotgun again and takes a deep breath. Only this time, she doesn't shoot. She's failed everything other try, so, maybe...

She hesitates for a moment before looking at Dean out of the corner of her eye. "Any pointers?"

Dean crossed his arms over his chest, turning his head to face her. He wasn't the best teacher in the world, he had a penchant for being unprofessional, maybe he yelled a little too much or used pet names but he did care about her and wanted her to be safe in all aspects.

"Steady breath, pull the trigger slowly as you let out your breath." He glanced down at her legs. "A stronger, wider stance might be better to absorb that kick.

"Wider stance. Breathing." Amelia nods a bit as she adjusts her feet. "Got it."

The first shot still misses. Hell, it's further off the target than every shot from the last clip. But she can't stop now - Dean is counting on her to have his back and to be able to take care of herself out there. She can't give in to her anger or frustration at her lack of progress, and so she tries again. And again. And again. Until finally, on the last bullet of the magazine, she gets it right. She stares at the target in disbelief for a few seconds before looking at him with the biggest, happiest smile he's likely to ever see on her face.

"I did it!"

The smile that spreads across Dean's face is part impressed and part amused by her reaction. He remembered hitting his first target and how his Dad treated him to a nice, juicy burger from a dive of a place in the nearest town. That's where Dean's love for weapons and food came together.

"Nice!" He said, "High five!" He holds up a hand.

"...do I have to?"

It's not him, really. It's the touching that gets her. Couldn't he just say 'nice job' and tell her to shoot again? That seems a lot more practical than this high five thing. She stares at him for a long moment as she debates turning around to take another few practice shots ...but he looks so pathetic with his hand in the air like that, so she can't not give him a high five, right?

She sighs heavily. "Fine." She sounds like a whiny teenager, but he's getting his high five with her free hand so he should be happy.

"Uh..."

Dean just stares at her, hand up in the air, frozen. Unsure of what to do. He knew she was a bit iffy on the whole touching thing, and certainly Dean didn't want to force her into any of it but...He sighed when she gave him a weak high five, eyes rolling just a bit.

"Thanks. Shoot again." Saying that, he picks up his own ivory handled pistol and fires 5 perfect rounds in the wooden painted targets 'head'.

Touching is such a strange thing. Where she's from, no one just touches another person without reason. There's affection or comfort or some kind of meaning behind it. It's a pragmatic world she's from and that's made Amelia into the pragmatic woman that stands next to him now. Dean may not understand it - or like it when it deflates his ego like this - but she's not about to stop being this way any time soon.

With a nod, she removes the magazine from the shotgun and reloads it as Dean fires off his rounds at the target. Although guns are still a relatively new thing to her, she's not one to be easily rattled by loud noises or things that could hurt her (she has many scars to prove that) and so she doesn't look up as he shoots. It's less of a struggle to reload this time and when she finishes, she tries to focus her energy and attention into hitting the target with her shots. They all have varying degrees of success, but are, for the most part, on point. It'll still be a while before she masters this, but the small step forward today will be a big help in the long run.

"So," she begins after firing off the last round, "what am I shooting next today?" A beat, and then she clarifies, "What other kind of gun am I shooting today?" No need for him to worry that she's about to turn and shoot him.

Overlooking where she is from, because honestly, that whole situation makes his brain hurt in so many different ways. He's pretty sure Sammy would totally get it, and you'd think after what Dean has been through, he would too. Watching her reload and fire, Dean is impressed. Wherever she's from, she's learned to learn quickly and efficiently.

Filling up his own handgun, Dean shrugs nonchalantly. "Uh. Go pick whatever you want to learn." He lines up his shot and pounds 5 rounds center mass into a target. "Just...not the explosives. Please." Last time he did that, he almost lost his eyebrows.

The fact that where she comes from is so damn complicated is one of the reasons she doesn't talk about it much. Not being able to go home is one thing, but not fully understanding the 'this is a completely different universe' thing has its own set of issues. Amelia can't go home and wherever she came from, she's adapting quickly to Dean's world and way of life. Did it really matter past that so long as she slept enough that the daily nightmares didn't distract from their work?

"We'll leave those for a day when I feel like risking my fingers," she agrees easily. She's heard enough stories about singed eyebrows and missing digits that she's been shying away from the explosives so far. If they really need them, they can find someone else to help, right?

After setting aside the shotgun, Amelia looks over the assorted handguns on the table and settles on the most practical looking one - a standard issue police 9 mm. It's not as useful as the Colt Dean offers her every time they're on a job, but it's something she doesn't know and it seems best to learn how to use it in a safe space like this. Loading it is much easier than loading the shotgun and she soon turns to the target and squeezes the trigger a few times in rapid succession to test it out.

...only nothing happens, because she doesn't know that this kind of gun has a safety on it. "Dreams, what now? Did I break it just by loading it?"

"Cute."

Dean cracks a joke when she returns with the small 9mm that he had lifted from a police station evidence locker almost a decade ago. He's pretty sure he only got away with it because they were such a small town department with a rookie handling the evidence locker. Either way, Dean just needed a new gun to add to his collection, something small and easy to conceal carry.

"The safety, genius." He scoffs, although playfully, as he leans over to flick the safety off. "Now shoot."

"Safe--" A beat as he flicks it off, her cheeks flushing a deep red in embarrassment. "...right."

Nope. Not thanking him. She would've figured it out eventually. Eventually might have come after another almost tantrum and more knife throwing, but details! She takes a breath and squares her shoulders at the target, holding the gun horribly with just her right hand as she aims and then squeezes the trigger. The entire clips hit the target, but the shots are all over. There's no grouping or pattern whatsoever.

Slowly, she lowers the gun and pops out the magazine. What a waste of bullets. "I'll get it next time," she says without prompt as she steps over to the table to grab a new clip. "It can't be that hard." Oh how little she still understands about guns.

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Hunting 101 [Tagging Dean]

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MY LAPTOP BROKE. Can I get a break.

Apparently not ;-;

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im so sorry <3

Don't even worry about it. <3