SPN FIC - Interlude in Mayfield
You're right: there are parts of Changing Channels we didn't see. Like this one, where Dean's wearing a dress, and serving pot roast to Wally and The Beav.
"Of course it's a problem, asshat," Dean said, wobbling dangerously in his high-heeled pumps. "I'm wearing a damn dress. And a string of freaking pearls. How is that not a problem?"
CHARACTERS: Sam, Dean, the Trickster, Beaver and Wally
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2268 words
INTERLUDE IN MAYFIELD
By Carol Davis
"You see this as a problem?" Sam groaned.
"Of course it's a problem, asshat," Dean said, wobbling dangerously in his high-heeled pumps. "I'm wearing a damn dress. And a string of freaking pearls. How is that not a problem?"
He might have been able to master walking (or at least standing) in the spindly-heeled shoes if he'd given it half a chance - but Dean was clearly in no mood to bother trying. Instead, he braced himself with a hand slapped against the wall. The added stability seemed to calm him a little, though not much; his entire face was pinched so tightly he looked like one of those dried-apple dolls Sam had seen at a long-ago county fair.
"I got my balls crushed," Sam pointed out. "And I had herpes."
"You didn't have herpes. You read a line of dialogue off a damn cue card."
"Come on, man. Suck it up. We need to -"
Dean reached down with his free hand, grabbed a handful of skirt, and flipped it up. "Stockings, Sam. I'm wearing stockings. And a bra."
Groaning, Sam seized his brother by the arm and perp-walked him over to the couch, a procedure that took less time than he'd anticipated. See? he thought. You can do it if you try, but Dean's expression warned him off saying it aloud. Wheezing in distress, Dean dropped onto the couch like a sack of cats and fumbled with the offending shoes until he got them off.
"I. Got. My. Balls. Crushed," Sam reminded him.
"Oh, zip it. For crying out loud."
But the reminder had worked; some of the steam had gone out of Dean's outrage, and there was a reasonable amount of regret in his eyes. That was enough of an apology for Sam, given the circumstances - the pain had gone away the moment the Trickster had zapped them on to the next TV universe, and there were larger things to worry about than a minute or two of … well, blinding agony.
Like, figuring out what to do next.
"Are we - is this that movie with the Spider-Man guy?" Dean fussed. "The one where everything's all black and white, but when they have sex, then they're in color?"
"TV," Sam murmured.
"What?"
"TV show. Not a movie."
It was odd, being in a black-and-white world, unlike anything Sam had ever experienced. Black, white, shades of gray. Dean's dress was a medium gray, so - blue? A light green? A glance down told Sam he was wearing a tweed sports coat, white shirt, a dark necktie, slacks that might have been gray or beige.
They'd been dumped into a suburban house, into a small living room with a fireplace. From where he was standing, Sam could see the entry foyer and the lower part of a flight of stairs, and a door he thought might lead into the dining room.
Familiar, all of it.
"You sure this isn't that movie?" Dean asked. "The douchebag just said 'play your roles'. He didn't say anything about it always being TV. Did he? It could be that movie."
Then his expression contracted again.
"What?" Sam asked.
"Not having sex with you so we can be in color. That is not happening."
Sam shook his head in startled agreement.
"Not having sex with anybody so we can be in color," Dean sputtered, then reconsidered. "Unless it's - Reese Witherspoon was in that movie, wasn't she? I could probably do Reese Witherspoon."
Before he could elaborate on that thought, the front door crashed open and a small boy burst in, called, "Hi Mom! Hi Dad!" and went clattering up the stairs. A door slammed a moment after he'd reached the top, though the front door still stood wide open.
"Was that -?" Dean asked.
Small, dark-haired boy with freckles. Jeans and sneakers. Light-colored windbreaker. Baseball cap.
"I think so," Sam said.
"'Hi Mom'? 'Hi Dad'? Dude. Am I freaking Beaver Cleaver's mother?"
"Looks like."
Dean sank back into the couch cushions. "That is just all kinds of wrong."
Sam had to give him that. True, it was less alarming than being shot, and certainly less painful than being smashed in the nuts. And the Trickster could have made worse choices; Sam had been fleetingly grateful neither one of them had been cast as the corpse in the CSI universe. But who knew what playing their roles in this particular situation would involve. Offering advice? Baking cupcakes? Cleaning out the garage?
"He didn't seem upset," he reminded Dean. "I guess that's a plus."
"Where's the other one? Wally? Where's he?"
Frowning, Sam went to the front door and peered out into the black-and-white world. He hadn't seen an episode of Leave It to Beaver in quite a while, but the Trickster's recreation of the Cleavers' quiet street did seem accurate, down to the assortment of mid-1950's cars parked in the driveways and along the curb.
Behind him, Dean - minus the pumps - was making his way up the stairs.
"Sam," he said from the top.
Sam turned to look. Dean was standing at the head of the stairs, in front of a closed door. The one Beaver had slammed, Sam guessed. Droopy and mournful, Dean came back down, one hand drifting listlessly along the railing as he descended.
"There's no master bedroom," he announced. "No closet. No different clothes. I was gonna change my clothes, and there's no clothes."
"How can there not be a master bedroom?"
"Do you see one up there?"
Sure enough, there was only one door at the top of the stairs, with a short stretch of vacant wall on either side of it. "I guess - huh," Sam said. "They never did show the parents in their room, did they? Just the kids' room. And the bathroom."
"With no toilet," Dean said.
"What? Yes, there was."
Dean shook his head. "No crapper. Just a tub and a sink. Don't drink anything. Don't eat anything. Man, this world sucks."
~~~~~~~~
Wally arrived home shortly before dark, as morose as Dean had been all afternoon. He greeted his "parents" with a barely audible "hi," then trudged up the stairs and disappeared into the second floor's lone bedroom.
Beaver came clattering down a minute later. "Hey, Mom!" he crowed at Dean. "We gonna have dinner soon?"
Dean's whole body twitched, as if someone had just jabbed him with a cattle prod.
"What's the matter with your brother?" Sam asked the boy.
"I dunno," Beaver shrugged.
"He didn't tell you?"
Another shrug, then Beaver plopped down into the living room's sole easy chair and began picking at the fabric on the arm. "Some dumb girl thing. Hey, Mom, how come I don't smell nothin'? Are we having dinner?"
"Where do you go to the bathroom?" Dean asked him.
Beaver pondered the question for a minute, chewing energetically on his lower lip, then heaved himself up out of the chair, trotted to the foot of the stairs and bellowed, "WALLLLEEEE! Mom and Dad said to come down here and tell 'em about your dumb girl thing!"
Had this been real life, Sam thought, Wally would either have ignored that, or told Beaver to go take a flying leap. But this being a sitcom - problems presented and resolved within half an hour, though he and Dean had already been there for more than three hours, according to the clock on the mantel - Wally came meandering down the stairs, his shirt disheveled, hair rumpled, one sneaker missing.
"There's no dinner?" he asked, his entire face a mask of tragedy.
"Why's everybody so freakin' obsessed with dinner?" Dean complained. "I mean, come ON."
"Maybe you should cook," Sam told him. "Maybe that's why we're still here. If you cook, we can get out of here."
"Cook," Dean said.
"How hard could it be?"
"They eat pot roast, Sam. You got any idea how to cook a freakin' pot roast?"
Sam didn't. He'd eaten pot roast any number of times, but it had been ordered off a menu. "Turn on the oven?" he suggested. "Wait till it gets hot, then put the meat in, and take it out when it's done?"
"Awesome," Dean said. "Have at it."
The two boys looked at each other and burst into fits of giggles. "Dads don't make dinner," Beaver announced. "Boy, wait'll I tell the guys!" He'd barely finished saying that when his amusement collapsed and he turned to his brother with a wide-eyed expression of horror.
"We're gonna be a laughing stock, Dad," Wally said sagely. "Boy, Dad. What if your boss finds out? They could sack you for doing stuff like that."
"You can't get sacked, Dad!" Beaver wailed.
"Why don't you wanna cook, Mom?" Wally asked Dean. "Are you sick? Do you want us to call somebody? Should we call Mrs. Rutherford or something? Do you want us to call the doctor? Gee whiz, Mom!"
Both boys were one good nudge away from bursting into tears.
"Reese Witherspoon," Dean groaned. "This couldn't have Reese Witherspoon in it?"
~~~~~~~~
They sat down to dinner at six p.m., according to the mantel clock, though by Sam's calculations he and Dean had been in this universe something like nine hours, and six p.m. had passed by once already, a good long while ago. Accompanied by a litany of complaints, Dean had managed to cook the roast he found in the refrigerator and served it up on a huge platter, surrounded by potatoes and carrots.
By the time he was able to sink onto a chair at the dining room table the armpits of his dress were drenched with sweat, his skirt was stained and his left hand was bleeding. How he'd managed to wound himself, Sam wasn't sure; Dean had banished him from the kitchen before the meat even went into the oven.
"Carve," Dean told him, then pointed to a big knife lying on the table alongside the platter of food. "I figure that's your job. And you kinda don't want me holding a knife right now."
No, Sam definitely did not.
Carving was harder than it looked.
"Boy, Dad," Wally observed. "You're all thumbs."
When the doorbell rang, Sam was more than willing to ignore it in favor of continuing to assault the gigantic chunk of meat, but Beaver sprang cheerfully up from his chair and raced out of the dining room to respond. He came back in the company of a boy Wally's age, dressed in a sport coat and tie.
"Good evening, Mr. Cleaver, sir," the boy beamed. "Mrs. Cleaver. My, you look exceptionally pretty tonight."
"Can it," Dean told him.
The boy was undaunted. "I know I've come at an inconvenient time, but my parents were called away on an emergency."
What he expected to happen was clear.
"Sit down, Eddie," Sam sighed.
"Thank you, Mr. Cleaver. Dinner smells delightful, Mrs. Cleaver."
This time, Dean said nothing, though his expression made clear what he was thinking.
The kid had the gaze of a raptor. He sat watching, practically unblinking, as Sam returned to his efforts to carve the roast. After Sam had managed to hack off a couple more slices of meat, the boy slid back to his feet and nudged himself into a position at Sam's left. "Perhaps I could be of help," he suggested. "I've observed my father carefully and at great length on occasions like this."
He beamed at Sam.
Dean began to mutter under his breath.
"Gee, Eddie," Wally said. "My dad knows how to carve a darn pot roast."
"Knock yourself out," Sam told their visitor, and held out the knife.
Things froze for a moment.
Then Eddie smirked at Sam. "You sure you want to do that?" he crooned. "Give up your only weapon? Might not be a good call, there, chucklehead."
An instant later, he'd shifted into his true form. Wally and Beaver seemed not to notice that anything had changed; Beaver had slipped back into his chair, and the two boys were energetically helping themselves to meat and potatoes. The Trickster watched them briefly, then turned to Dean and chuckled.
"Laugh it up," Dean told him. "You'll find out how much damage I can do with a teaspoon."
"Oh, boys, boys," the Trickster said. "I simplified things for you. Laid it all out in black and white. And you're still floundering?"
"Answer's still no," Dean said.
"You like TV Land, then."
"We'll make do."
"And you say that knowing what the TV universe is. What kind of situations I could drop-kick your asses into."
"Like I said. We'll make do."
"Feel like being a talking horse, Dean? Or a smoke monster? Or that hapless slob who was blown up handling hundred-year-old dynamite? It could go badly, you know. It could go really, really badly."
"How about you get the hell out?" Dean suggested. "I spent all day cooking this friggin' roast. We're having dinner right now. Don't recall inviting you."
The Trickster was silent and still for a moment. Then he blinked, and the wound in Dean's hand opened up and began to bleed onto the tablecloth.
It was bleeding red.
Dean said nothing. Did nothing. Neither did Sam.
"All right, then," the Trickster said. "Next stop -"
~~~~~~~~
The world was still black and white.
There was an odd tang in the air, one Sam recognized all too well as he struggled to his feet, grateful to find Dean - in a tattered suit and tie - sitting nearby, dazed but apparently healthy.
"Well," Dean said with a grimace. "This ain't good."
Smoke, Sam thought. And burning flesh.
"No," he told his brother. "It's definitely not."
* * * * *
"Of course it's a problem, asshat," Dean said, wobbling dangerously in his high-heeled pumps. "I'm wearing a damn dress. And a string of freaking pearls. How is that not a problem?"
CHARACTERS: Sam, Dean, the Trickster, Beaver and Wally
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2268 words
INTERLUDE IN MAYFIELD
By Carol Davis
"You see this as a problem?" Sam groaned.
"Of course it's a problem, asshat," Dean said, wobbling dangerously in his high-heeled pumps. "I'm wearing a damn dress. And a string of freaking pearls. How is that not a problem?"
He might have been able to master walking (or at least standing) in the spindly-heeled shoes if he'd given it half a chance - but Dean was clearly in no mood to bother trying. Instead, he braced himself with a hand slapped against the wall. The added stability seemed to calm him a little, though not much; his entire face was pinched so tightly he looked like one of those dried-apple dolls Sam had seen at a long-ago county fair.
"I got my balls crushed," Sam pointed out. "And I had herpes."
"You didn't have herpes. You read a line of dialogue off a damn cue card."
"Come on, man. Suck it up. We need to -"
Dean reached down with his free hand, grabbed a handful of skirt, and flipped it up. "Stockings, Sam. I'm wearing stockings. And a bra."
Groaning, Sam seized his brother by the arm and perp-walked him over to the couch, a procedure that took less time than he'd anticipated. See? he thought. You can do it if you try, but Dean's expression warned him off saying it aloud. Wheezing in distress, Dean dropped onto the couch like a sack of cats and fumbled with the offending shoes until he got them off.
"I. Got. My. Balls. Crushed," Sam reminded him.
"Oh, zip it. For crying out loud."
But the reminder had worked; some of the steam had gone out of Dean's outrage, and there was a reasonable amount of regret in his eyes. That was enough of an apology for Sam, given the circumstances - the pain had gone away the moment the Trickster had zapped them on to the next TV universe, and there were larger things to worry about than a minute or two of … well, blinding agony.
Like, figuring out what to do next.
"Are we - is this that movie with the Spider-Man guy?" Dean fussed. "The one where everything's all black and white, but when they have sex, then they're in color?"
"TV," Sam murmured.
"What?"
"TV show. Not a movie."
It was odd, being in a black-and-white world, unlike anything Sam had ever experienced. Black, white, shades of gray. Dean's dress was a medium gray, so - blue? A light green? A glance down told Sam he was wearing a tweed sports coat, white shirt, a dark necktie, slacks that might have been gray or beige.
They'd been dumped into a suburban house, into a small living room with a fireplace. From where he was standing, Sam could see the entry foyer and the lower part of a flight of stairs, and a door he thought might lead into the dining room.
Familiar, all of it.
"You sure this isn't that movie?" Dean asked. "The douchebag just said 'play your roles'. He didn't say anything about it always being TV. Did he? It could be that movie."
Then his expression contracted again.
"What?" Sam asked.
"Not having sex with you so we can be in color. That is not happening."
Sam shook his head in startled agreement.
"Not having sex with anybody so we can be in color," Dean sputtered, then reconsidered. "Unless it's - Reese Witherspoon was in that movie, wasn't she? I could probably do Reese Witherspoon."
Before he could elaborate on that thought, the front door crashed open and a small boy burst in, called, "Hi Mom! Hi Dad!" and went clattering up the stairs. A door slammed a moment after he'd reached the top, though the front door still stood wide open.
"Was that -?" Dean asked.
Small, dark-haired boy with freckles. Jeans and sneakers. Light-colored windbreaker. Baseball cap.
"I think so," Sam said.
"'Hi Mom'? 'Hi Dad'? Dude. Am I freaking Beaver Cleaver's mother?"
"Looks like."
Dean sank back into the couch cushions. "That is just all kinds of wrong."
Sam had to give him that. True, it was less alarming than being shot, and certainly less painful than being smashed in the nuts. And the Trickster could have made worse choices; Sam had been fleetingly grateful neither one of them had been cast as the corpse in the CSI universe. But who knew what playing their roles in this particular situation would involve. Offering advice? Baking cupcakes? Cleaning out the garage?
"He didn't seem upset," he reminded Dean. "I guess that's a plus."
"Where's the other one? Wally? Where's he?"
Frowning, Sam went to the front door and peered out into the black-and-white world. He hadn't seen an episode of Leave It to Beaver in quite a while, but the Trickster's recreation of the Cleavers' quiet street did seem accurate, down to the assortment of mid-1950's cars parked in the driveways and along the curb.
Behind him, Dean - minus the pumps - was making his way up the stairs.
"Sam," he said from the top.
Sam turned to look. Dean was standing at the head of the stairs, in front of a closed door. The one Beaver had slammed, Sam guessed. Droopy and mournful, Dean came back down, one hand drifting listlessly along the railing as he descended.
"There's no master bedroom," he announced. "No closet. No different clothes. I was gonna change my clothes, and there's no clothes."
"How can there not be a master bedroom?"
"Do you see one up there?"
Sure enough, there was only one door at the top of the stairs, with a short stretch of vacant wall on either side of it. "I guess - huh," Sam said. "They never did show the parents in their room, did they? Just the kids' room. And the bathroom."
"With no toilet," Dean said.
"What? Yes, there was."
Dean shook his head. "No crapper. Just a tub and a sink. Don't drink anything. Don't eat anything. Man, this world sucks."
~~~~~~~~
Wally arrived home shortly before dark, as morose as Dean had been all afternoon. He greeted his "parents" with a barely audible "hi," then trudged up the stairs and disappeared into the second floor's lone bedroom.
Beaver came clattering down a minute later. "Hey, Mom!" he crowed at Dean. "We gonna have dinner soon?"
Dean's whole body twitched, as if someone had just jabbed him with a cattle prod.
"What's the matter with your brother?" Sam asked the boy.
"I dunno," Beaver shrugged.
"He didn't tell you?"
Another shrug, then Beaver plopped down into the living room's sole easy chair and began picking at the fabric on the arm. "Some dumb girl thing. Hey, Mom, how come I don't smell nothin'? Are we having dinner?"
"Where do you go to the bathroom?" Dean asked him.
Beaver pondered the question for a minute, chewing energetically on his lower lip, then heaved himself up out of the chair, trotted to the foot of the stairs and bellowed, "WALLLLEEEE! Mom and Dad said to come down here and tell 'em about your dumb girl thing!"
Had this been real life, Sam thought, Wally would either have ignored that, or told Beaver to go take a flying leap. But this being a sitcom - problems presented and resolved within half an hour, though he and Dean had already been there for more than three hours, according to the clock on the mantel - Wally came meandering down the stairs, his shirt disheveled, hair rumpled, one sneaker missing.
"There's no dinner?" he asked, his entire face a mask of tragedy.
"Why's everybody so freakin' obsessed with dinner?" Dean complained. "I mean, come ON."
"Maybe you should cook," Sam told him. "Maybe that's why we're still here. If you cook, we can get out of here."
"Cook," Dean said.
"How hard could it be?"
"They eat pot roast, Sam. You got any idea how to cook a freakin' pot roast?"
Sam didn't. He'd eaten pot roast any number of times, but it had been ordered off a menu. "Turn on the oven?" he suggested. "Wait till it gets hot, then put the meat in, and take it out when it's done?"
"Awesome," Dean said. "Have at it."
The two boys looked at each other and burst into fits of giggles. "Dads don't make dinner," Beaver announced. "Boy, wait'll I tell the guys!" He'd barely finished saying that when his amusement collapsed and he turned to his brother with a wide-eyed expression of horror.
"We're gonna be a laughing stock, Dad," Wally said sagely. "Boy, Dad. What if your boss finds out? They could sack you for doing stuff like that."
"You can't get sacked, Dad!" Beaver wailed.
"Why don't you wanna cook, Mom?" Wally asked Dean. "Are you sick? Do you want us to call somebody? Should we call Mrs. Rutherford or something? Do you want us to call the doctor? Gee whiz, Mom!"
Both boys were one good nudge away from bursting into tears.
"Reese Witherspoon," Dean groaned. "This couldn't have Reese Witherspoon in it?"
~~~~~~~~
They sat down to dinner at six p.m., according to the mantel clock, though by Sam's calculations he and Dean had been in this universe something like nine hours, and six p.m. had passed by once already, a good long while ago. Accompanied by a litany of complaints, Dean had managed to cook the roast he found in the refrigerator and served it up on a huge platter, surrounded by potatoes and carrots.
By the time he was able to sink onto a chair at the dining room table the armpits of his dress were drenched with sweat, his skirt was stained and his left hand was bleeding. How he'd managed to wound himself, Sam wasn't sure; Dean had banished him from the kitchen before the meat even went into the oven.
"Carve," Dean told him, then pointed to a big knife lying on the table alongside the platter of food. "I figure that's your job. And you kinda don't want me holding a knife right now."
No, Sam definitely did not.
Carving was harder than it looked.
"Boy, Dad," Wally observed. "You're all thumbs."
When the doorbell rang, Sam was more than willing to ignore it in favor of continuing to assault the gigantic chunk of meat, but Beaver sprang cheerfully up from his chair and raced out of the dining room to respond. He came back in the company of a boy Wally's age, dressed in a sport coat and tie.
"Good evening, Mr. Cleaver, sir," the boy beamed. "Mrs. Cleaver. My, you look exceptionally pretty tonight."
"Can it," Dean told him.
The boy was undaunted. "I know I've come at an inconvenient time, but my parents were called away on an emergency."
What he expected to happen was clear.
"Sit down, Eddie," Sam sighed.
"Thank you, Mr. Cleaver. Dinner smells delightful, Mrs. Cleaver."
This time, Dean said nothing, though his expression made clear what he was thinking.
The kid had the gaze of a raptor. He sat watching, practically unblinking, as Sam returned to his efforts to carve the roast. After Sam had managed to hack off a couple more slices of meat, the boy slid back to his feet and nudged himself into a position at Sam's left. "Perhaps I could be of help," he suggested. "I've observed my father carefully and at great length on occasions like this."
He beamed at Sam.
Dean began to mutter under his breath.
"Gee, Eddie," Wally said. "My dad knows how to carve a darn pot roast."
"Knock yourself out," Sam told their visitor, and held out the knife.
Things froze for a moment.
Then Eddie smirked at Sam. "You sure you want to do that?" he crooned. "Give up your only weapon? Might not be a good call, there, chucklehead."
An instant later, he'd shifted into his true form. Wally and Beaver seemed not to notice that anything had changed; Beaver had slipped back into his chair, and the two boys were energetically helping themselves to meat and potatoes. The Trickster watched them briefly, then turned to Dean and chuckled.
"Laugh it up," Dean told him. "You'll find out how much damage I can do with a teaspoon."
"Oh, boys, boys," the Trickster said. "I simplified things for you. Laid it all out in black and white. And you're still floundering?"
"Answer's still no," Dean said.
"You like TV Land, then."
"We'll make do."
"And you say that knowing what the TV universe is. What kind of situations I could drop-kick your asses into."
"Like I said. We'll make do."
"Feel like being a talking horse, Dean? Or a smoke monster? Or that hapless slob who was blown up handling hundred-year-old dynamite? It could go badly, you know. It could go really, really badly."
"How about you get the hell out?" Dean suggested. "I spent all day cooking this friggin' roast. We're having dinner right now. Don't recall inviting you."
The Trickster was silent and still for a moment. Then he blinked, and the wound in Dean's hand opened up and began to bleed onto the tablecloth.
It was bleeding red.
Dean said nothing. Did nothing. Neither did Sam.
"All right, then," the Trickster said. "Next stop -"
~~~~~~~~
The world was still black and white.
There was an odd tang in the air, one Sam recognized all too well as he struggled to his feet, grateful to find Dean - in a tattered suit and tie - sitting nearby, dazed but apparently healthy.
"Well," Dean said with a grimace. "This ain't good."
Smoke, Sam thought. And burning flesh.
"No," he told his brother. "It's definitely not."
* * * * *