fic: What Kind of Day Has It Been? (SPN/Muppets; Sam, Dean, ensemble; pg)
What Kind of Day Has It Been?
Supernatural/The Muppets; Sam, Dean, Kermit, ensemble; pg; 3,300 words
Dean thinks this is the strangest job they've ever worked.
Thanks to luzdeestrellas for betaing, and to everyone who let me spam them with bits of this on AIM. Written for the West Wing title project.
~*~
What Kind of Day Has It Been?
Dean thinks this is the strangest job they've ever worked, and that includes that one time with the aardvark and the elves.
"Have you noticed anything...odd about the manager?" Sam asks as they're checking the dressing rooms for EMF.
Dean shoots him an incredulous glance. "Like the fact that he's a frog?"
"I didn't know you were prejudiced against frogs, Dean."
"I'm not! I mean, I just never met one who could talk before!" Dean runs a hand over his chin. "And that pig was checking out my ass."
Sam bursts into laughter. "Dude--" he starts, but is cut off by the appearance of a bear wearing a fedora. Dean hopes it's not a relative of the Snuggles bear. He doesn't think he could take that.
"You guys are the ghost hunters?"
"Yeah," Dean says warily. The bear doesn't look hungry, but Dean steps in front of Sam anyway.
"What's a ghost's favorite fruit?"
"What?"
"What's a ghost's favorite fruit?"
Dean stares at him like he's crazy. "What?"
"Boo-berries," Sam says.
Dean turns to look at him like he's crazy. "Don't piss off the talking bear," he whispers.
Sam shrugs and grins. Dean had forgotten that Sam had shared his fondness for bad jokes when they were kids. He'd never grown out of it, but Sam had. Or so Dean had thought.
"Okay, how 'bout this one?" the bear says. "Why are ghosts bad at telling lies?"
"I don't know." Sam replies, still grinning like this is, well, no, it wouldn't be a trip to the circus, given how Sam feels about clowns. A day at the park, maybe. "Why are ghosts bad at telling lies?"
"Because you can see right through them. Wocka wocka!" The bear does jazz hands and opens his mouth wide. Even though it doesn't have any teeth, Dean forces a laugh, and elbows Sam to do the same, but Sam's already laughing of his own free will.
"Fozzie!" yells the stage manager--still a frog, and Dean wonders if it's some kind of curse--and the bear jumps.
"Gotta go." He looks up at Sam. "We should talk. You might have a future in comedy."
"Oh yeah, he's a real laugh riot," Dean mutters.
Sam answers with a slap to the back of Dean's head.
The EMF is buzzing pretty constantly, but that could just be all the electricity. Or the talking animals.
"If that Snuggles bear shows up," he says, making a finger pistol and shooting it at Sam, "it is going down."
Sam rolls his eyes and opens the next door.
The room is full of fur, felt, and teeth. One of the monsters (seriously, Dean thinks, there's no other word for it) rises up off the floor like some kind of scary, hairy thing. It's as tall as Sam and has at least four times as much hair. It says, "We're on strike," and then slams the door in their faces.
Dean glances at Sam, who's looking back at him, eyes wide and surprised.
"Dude," Dean says, a little awed, "I think we finally met someone with stupider hair than you."
"Shut up."
Dean would like to make a really smart remark about Sam's inability to come up with a good comeback, but the frog comes hopping over, looking stressed. "Well?" he asks.
"You've got a bunch of monsters in your green room," Dean says.
"They're on strike," Sam adds helpfully.
"I know!" The frog flails its skinny arms at them and Dean makes a mental note to check with Sam later, because he didn't think frogs had arms. "That's why we need you!"
Dean glances at Sam, who looks just as confused as he feels. "What?"
"They're staging a sit-in!" the frog says, and Dean can hear the exclamation points in his voice. "You're supposed to figure out why and how to get them back to work before the show starts tonight at seven."
"We kill monsters," Dean says slowly. "We don't negotiate with them." Which isn't strictly the truth, of course, but Dean's not about to spill his entire life story to a talking frog.
"Oh no, you can't kill them! We need them for the show! You're not from the National Labor Relations Board?"
Dean glances at Sam again, and Sam shakes his head, still confused. "Uh, no?"
The frog rushes away yelling, "Scooter! I told you to call the National Labor Relations Board. Not Monster Killers R Us."
He's gone before Dean can correct him.
"Who told us about this job, anyway?" Dean asks, looking at Sam.
"Bobby said he owed somebody a favor, and since we were in the area, and it was time sensitive..." Sam shrugs.
"You don't think Bobby and the lady pig..."
"Dean."
"He does wear that hat with a pig on it. Maybe it's a memento of a youthful indiscretion."
"Dean." Sam's voice rises in warning.
"And she's not bad looking, if you don't mind the whole pig thing."
Sam's face is all pinched, like he's just sucked a lemon. "I hate you."
Dean grins. "I know you do." He's thinking of all the ways he can use this to torment Sam but stops, because he has to stare at the--he doesn't even know what it is. Some kind of mutant fuzzy blue thing with a nose that curves almost like a question mark--that's just shown up. It's wearing a shiny white cape with red and blue stars embroidered on it.
"Have you ever been shot out of a cannon?" it asks.
Dean looks around, but there's no one else in the vicinity, so the thing must be talking to him. He scratches the back of his head. "Uh, no."
"Would you like to be?" The whatever-it-is has a maniacal glint in its eye, like Sam gets when he's figured something out about a job, or found new free lesbian porn to watch on the internet.
The pig comes sweeping past, long blonde hair swinging in time with her hips, and Dean scoots out of the way. She seems intent on Sam this time, and for once, he figures Sam can protect himself.
"You could be part of my act."
"Your act?"
"I am Gonzo the Great. Surely you've heard of me?"
"I can't say that I have," Dean says. "And don't call me 'Shirley.'"
Gonzo gives a full on belly laugh. "You'd fit right in. I might even have a helmet in your size." He looks like he wants to say more, but he's interrupted by an indignant squeak that sounds like--
"Sam?" Dean swings around, concerned. "You okay?"
Sam's face is a mask of shock and outrage. He points at the pig. "She pinched my ass."
"Moi?" the pig says, putting a hand over her heart, trying--and failing--to look innocent. "Moi would never do something so déclassé. Hmph." She tosses her head and stomps up the stairs to the dressing room with the star on the door.
Gonzo shakes his head. "After the act, you should hang out with me and the chicks."
"What act?" Sam asks.
"What chicks?"
"Dean's gonna let me shoot him out of a cannon. It's going to be great!"
"No," Sam says.
"What?" Dean and Gonzo ask in unison.
"You're not getting shot out of a cannon, Dean. We're here for a job, not for you to get yourself killed living out your random Evel Knievel fantasies."
"Oh," Gonzo says. "You're here about Sweetums?"
"I guess?" Dean says. After the talking frog and the amorous pig, a monster named Sweetums isn't a shock.
"He and the other monsters are staging a sit-in in the green room."
"Yeah, we got that. We just don't know why."
"They're tired of being treated like monsters."
"But they are monsters."
"Okay, sure, but they're not very scary monsters."
"I don't know," Dean says. "You could get lost in their hair and never be seen again."
A flock of chickens clucks past them, loud and full of feathers, being chased by a blond dude in a chef's hat. He's waving a meat cleaver and yelling in a foreign language, so Dean can't really blame the chickens as he steps out of the chef's way and pushes Sam behind him.
Gonzo yells, "Camilla," and goes rushing after the chickens, fear in his eyes.
Sam drags Dean down the corridor in the opposite direction and says, "I can't believe you left me with that crazy pig lady. She tried to cop a feel, Dean."
Dean snickers. "That's the most action you've gotten in ages, Sammy. What are you complaining about?"
Sam doesn't get a chance to answer because the frog comes back. "You," he says, pointing long froggy fingers at Sam. "You're tall enough."
"What?"
"Big Bird is stuck in traffic. He's supposed to be guest hosting tonight, since Allison Janney dropped out." He looks at Dean, mouth crumpled in consternation. "She was afraid of the monsters."
Sam puts a hand on his chest. "You want me to fill in for Big Bird?"
"Just in rehearsal. The rats need to know what they're doing."
"Rats?" Sam says, but the frog is already leading him to the stage.
Dean would rather be shot out of a cannon, thanks.
He moves to the side of the stage to watch as the rats dance around Sam, singing "Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In" in high-pitched rat-like voices that make the hair on the back of Dean's neck stand up. For the first verse, Sam's wearing his best deer in the headlights expression, but when the chorus kicks in, he starts smiling and rocking jerkily back and forth in what Dean guesses is supposed to be dancing. Dean snorts and shakes his head. Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein was smoother. Then Sam starts singing along, loud and off-key. There's so much joy on his face that Dean can't help but stand and watch for a minute or two, before the singing rats start freaking him out again, and he has to leave.
He walks back to the dressing room where the monsters are holed up, wondering why he's even bothering. This isn't their kind of job.
There's a small frog sitting in front of the door when Dean gets there. "You can't go in," it--he--says.
"What?"
"Uncle Kermit says you're a monster killer and the monsters are my friends," he says, voice shaking a little. "I won't let you hurt them."
"Oh, hey, no," Dean says, crouching down to look the kid--frog, whatever--in the eye. "I just wanted to talk to, um, Sweetums. Try and figure out what this is all about." He sticks out a hand. "I'm Dean."
The frog holds out a flipper. "Robin."
Dean shakes it gently. "Nice to meet you, Robin. Now let's see if you and I can't work this whole thing out." He lifts Robin up onto his shoulder and pushes the door open and shoves his way inside before the monsters can stop him. The monsters all rise to their feet. There are blue ones and green ones and brown ones, with a large variety of teeth and claws on display, but none of them are frothing or growling, so Dean lets the door close behind him and holds his hands out to show he's not looking for a fight.
"I don't care what Gonzo says, you look pretty scary to me."
"We're actors," the biggest, hairiest one--who turns out to be Sweetums, of course--says. "It's part of the job to act scary. We just look the part better than most."
"But we can do more than look scary," one of the blue monsters says. "We used to get to sing and dance, but ever since that incident with Lindsay Lohan and the green Frackle--"
"That could have happened to anybody," says a green bird-like thing that must be the green Frackle. "A shot of penicillin cleared everything right up."
The blue monster keeps talking as if it hasn't been interrupted. "We haven't been allowed to do more than stand around and glower in some of the fairy tale sketches. No more singing or dancing with the stars."
"Cookie Monster gets interviewed by NPR," Sweetums says. "The Count is a vampire, but he gets to do skits with Jimmy Kimmel on reality shows."
"The shrimp gets more work than we do, these days," the green Frackle says.
"The shrimp?" Dean asks.
A shrimp in a Hawaiian shirt pops up on the dressing table. "I am a king prawn, okay? Pepe, the king prawn. I'm very famous, okay? Chicks dig me."
"Breaded and fried with butter and lemon, maybe," one of the other monsters mutters. Dean bites back a laugh.
"We just want to be allowed to work in non-monster parts," Sweetums says. "We want people to stop being scared of us just because we're monsters."
"Well," Dean says, thinking, "I can't really do anything about what other people think, but I can talk to the head frog and see about getting you guys in on the action more often."
The monsters huddle up and chat for a minute or two, and then Sweetums holds out a giant paw and says, "Deal. How about a drink?"
"Oh, God, yes." Dean lets his hand be enveloped in the furry paw, and if his palm is a little sweaty, well, nobody but Sweetums is going to know. "This has been one crazy day."
He doesn't even complain when the frosty mugs the green feathery monster passes out are full of root beer.
Ten minutes later, Sam comes bursting in. "Dean! Are you okay?"
Dean leans back in his chair and hoists his mug, taking a long drink of soda and leaving himself with a foamy moustache he licks off his upper lip with delight. "I'm great, Sammy. How are you?"
"I think I promised Rizzo a ride in the Impala."
"Rizzo? Like the chick in Grease? Is she cute?"
A rat pops out of Sam's pocket. "I like to think I am."
"Gah!" Dean's chair tips over as he loses his balance, but Sweetums catches him before he can crack his skull open on the floor. He's not quick enough to save Dean's root beer, though, which splashes all over his shirt. "Son of a bitch."
"Dude, not in front of the tadpole." Sam jerks his head at Robin, and Dean gives the kid an apologetic smile.
"Gonzo and Camilla will come, too. We can hook you guys up with some chicks, too, if you want," Rizzo says. Sam looks a little freaked out, but not as freaked out as Dean feels.
"Chicks?" he asks faintly, trying to remember who Camilla is.
"Okay, they're hens. I don't want you to think they're underage or anything. We ain't that kind of theatre."
"Hens? What the hell?" Dean rubs a hand over his face. "You know what, I don't even want to know."
"Come on," Robin says. "We should tell Uncle Kermit you fixed the problem."
Uncle Kermit turns out to be the stage manager, and he's so grateful that he invites them to stay and watch that night's show from backstage. Fozzie does him one better, asks them to appear in his act, "Since Sam knows all the good jokes."
Dean snorts but Sam ducks his head and beams through his too-long bangs, so Dean can't say no. He doesn't count on the makeup artists, though, some of the hens Rizzo was talking about, the ones who were being chased earlier with a meat cleaver, and he sneezes through the whole process, ruining the first two coats of foundation they spackle him with.
"Ladies, I am pretty enough as God made me," he says, shoving his way out of the chair and toweling his face off. They cluck and titter, preening their feathers. "Sam could use some work, though."
When their backs are turned, Sam makes a face and flips him off. Dean just laughs.
After the opening number and Big Bird's monologue, Fozzie goes out on stage, flanked by Sam and Dean.
The lights are bright and hot and there are hundreds of people out there watching them, and Dean thinks he might puke. Sam doesn't seem to be affected--he's trading crappy jokes with Fozzie just like they discussed, and the audience is laughing and groaning while Dean stands there frozen until Sam nudges him in the ribs and tilts his head, as if to say, your turn.
Dean licks his lips and clears his dry throat. "It's a little known fact that there were actually four Alou brothers," he says, voice rough but gaining strength as he continues, looking at Sam instead of at the crowd whose faces he can't make out, "but the commissioner made the fourth one change his last name, because Boog Alou was too funky for major league baseball."
Sam groans, because he's heard this joke a hundred times if he's heard it once, but there's scattered laughter in the crowd, drowned out by the two old guys in the balcony.
"They're saying Boog, right?" Dean asks as Sam hustles him offstage.
Sam pats Dean's shoulder comfortingly. "If that's what you need to believe."
The show goes pretty smoothly--Gonzo blows some stuff up but doesn't set anything (or anyone) on fire (including himself), Big Bird's big number knocks 'em dead, though Dean thinks he'll be having nightmares of rats singing Let the sun shine in for years to come.
Then Robin takes the stage and tells the story of what happened earlier, that the monsters were tired of being treated badly because people thought they were scary, when it was their job to be scary, and they were good at it.
Kermit joins his nephew, puts an arm (or is it a flipper, Dean wonders) around the tadpole's shoulders, and says, "I hope you were all as moved by that as I was."
"I was moved, all right," one of the old guys catcalls. "Moved right out of my seat."
The other one laughs loudly, clapping his hands, and then they high five.
He turns to Sam, who's frowning. "It would be wrong to blow them up," Sam reminds him.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
Dean sighs. "You're ruining all my fun, Sammy."
"Hey, you're the one who told the Boog Alou joke. It's your own fault you got booed."
"Oh, like your amazing array of knock-knock jokes dazzled the crowd."
"Boys, boys," Miss Piggy says, taking each of them by the elbow. "You're both pretty." She tosses her head, and Dean has to bite back at sneeze from the smell of her flowery perfume. "Don't forget to tell Bobby hi from me," she says as they reach Kermit. "Now there was a real man." She seems to be waiting for some kind of reaction from the frog, but Dean's too busy trying to keep a straight face when Sam makes a choking sound that could be laughter or disgust, or some combination of the two, to pay much attention.
"Thanks again," Kermit says, shaking their hands. "I guess Piggy knew what she was doing when she told Scooter to call you two." He reaches out and takes hold of Miss Piggy's hand. "Come on. We all have to get on stage now for the finale."
A big mirrored disco ball descends from the ceiling and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem burst out with the opening chords of "Back in Black," and Dean can't help smiling. It might be the weirdest job they've ever done, but it's been one of the most fun, too.
Sam reminds him of that later, when they discover Rizzo and Pepe stowed away in the backseat of the Impala, and have to turn around to deliver them back to the theatre.
The End
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
Supernatural/The Muppets; Sam, Dean, Kermit, ensemble; pg; 3,300 words
Dean thinks this is the strangest job they've ever worked.
Thanks to luzdeestrellas for betaing, and to everyone who let me spam them with bits of this on AIM. Written for the West Wing title project.
~*~
What Kind of Day Has It Been?
Dean thinks this is the strangest job they've ever worked, and that includes that one time with the aardvark and the elves.
"Have you noticed anything...odd about the manager?" Sam asks as they're checking the dressing rooms for EMF.
Dean shoots him an incredulous glance. "Like the fact that he's a frog?"
"I didn't know you were prejudiced against frogs, Dean."
"I'm not! I mean, I just never met one who could talk before!" Dean runs a hand over his chin. "And that pig was checking out my ass."
Sam bursts into laughter. "Dude--" he starts, but is cut off by the appearance of a bear wearing a fedora. Dean hopes it's not a relative of the Snuggles bear. He doesn't think he could take that.
"You guys are the ghost hunters?"
"Yeah," Dean says warily. The bear doesn't look hungry, but Dean steps in front of Sam anyway.
"What's a ghost's favorite fruit?"
"What?"
"What's a ghost's favorite fruit?"
Dean stares at him like he's crazy. "What?"
"Boo-berries," Sam says.
Dean turns to look at him like he's crazy. "Don't piss off the talking bear," he whispers.
Sam shrugs and grins. Dean had forgotten that Sam had shared his fondness for bad jokes when they were kids. He'd never grown out of it, but Sam had. Or so Dean had thought.
"Okay, how 'bout this one?" the bear says. "Why are ghosts bad at telling lies?"
"I don't know." Sam replies, still grinning like this is, well, no, it wouldn't be a trip to the circus, given how Sam feels about clowns. A day at the park, maybe. "Why are ghosts bad at telling lies?"
"Because you can see right through them. Wocka wocka!" The bear does jazz hands and opens his mouth wide. Even though it doesn't have any teeth, Dean forces a laugh, and elbows Sam to do the same, but Sam's already laughing of his own free will.
"Fozzie!" yells the stage manager--still a frog, and Dean wonders if it's some kind of curse--and the bear jumps.
"Gotta go." He looks up at Sam. "We should talk. You might have a future in comedy."
"Oh yeah, he's a real laugh riot," Dean mutters.
Sam answers with a slap to the back of Dean's head.
The EMF is buzzing pretty constantly, but that could just be all the electricity. Or the talking animals.
"If that Snuggles bear shows up," he says, making a finger pistol and shooting it at Sam, "it is going down."
Sam rolls his eyes and opens the next door.
The room is full of fur, felt, and teeth. One of the monsters (seriously, Dean thinks, there's no other word for it) rises up off the floor like some kind of scary, hairy thing. It's as tall as Sam and has at least four times as much hair. It says, "We're on strike," and then slams the door in their faces.
Dean glances at Sam, who's looking back at him, eyes wide and surprised.
"Dude," Dean says, a little awed, "I think we finally met someone with stupider hair than you."
"Shut up."
Dean would like to make a really smart remark about Sam's inability to come up with a good comeback, but the frog comes hopping over, looking stressed. "Well?" he asks.
"You've got a bunch of monsters in your green room," Dean says.
"They're on strike," Sam adds helpfully.
"I know!" The frog flails its skinny arms at them and Dean makes a mental note to check with Sam later, because he didn't think frogs had arms. "That's why we need you!"
Dean glances at Sam, who looks just as confused as he feels. "What?"
"They're staging a sit-in!" the frog says, and Dean can hear the exclamation points in his voice. "You're supposed to figure out why and how to get them back to work before the show starts tonight at seven."
"We kill monsters," Dean says slowly. "We don't negotiate with them." Which isn't strictly the truth, of course, but Dean's not about to spill his entire life story to a talking frog.
"Oh no, you can't kill them! We need them for the show! You're not from the National Labor Relations Board?"
Dean glances at Sam again, and Sam shakes his head, still confused. "Uh, no?"
The frog rushes away yelling, "Scooter! I told you to call the National Labor Relations Board. Not Monster Killers R Us."
He's gone before Dean can correct him.
"Who told us about this job, anyway?" Dean asks, looking at Sam.
"Bobby said he owed somebody a favor, and since we were in the area, and it was time sensitive..." Sam shrugs.
"You don't think Bobby and the lady pig..."
"Dean."
"He does wear that hat with a pig on it. Maybe it's a memento of a youthful indiscretion."
"Dean." Sam's voice rises in warning.
"And she's not bad looking, if you don't mind the whole pig thing."
Sam's face is all pinched, like he's just sucked a lemon. "I hate you."
Dean grins. "I know you do." He's thinking of all the ways he can use this to torment Sam but stops, because he has to stare at the--he doesn't even know what it is. Some kind of mutant fuzzy blue thing with a nose that curves almost like a question mark--that's just shown up. It's wearing a shiny white cape with red and blue stars embroidered on it.
"Have you ever been shot out of a cannon?" it asks.
Dean looks around, but there's no one else in the vicinity, so the thing must be talking to him. He scratches the back of his head. "Uh, no."
"Would you like to be?" The whatever-it-is has a maniacal glint in its eye, like Sam gets when he's figured something out about a job, or found new free lesbian porn to watch on the internet.
The pig comes sweeping past, long blonde hair swinging in time with her hips, and Dean scoots out of the way. She seems intent on Sam this time, and for once, he figures Sam can protect himself.
"You could be part of my act."
"Your act?"
"I am Gonzo the Great. Surely you've heard of me?"
"I can't say that I have," Dean says. "And don't call me 'Shirley.'"
Gonzo gives a full on belly laugh. "You'd fit right in. I might even have a helmet in your size." He looks like he wants to say more, but he's interrupted by an indignant squeak that sounds like--
"Sam?" Dean swings around, concerned. "You okay?"
Sam's face is a mask of shock and outrage. He points at the pig. "She pinched my ass."
"Moi?" the pig says, putting a hand over her heart, trying--and failing--to look innocent. "Moi would never do something so déclassé. Hmph." She tosses her head and stomps up the stairs to the dressing room with the star on the door.
Gonzo shakes his head. "After the act, you should hang out with me and the chicks."
"What act?" Sam asks.
"What chicks?"
"Dean's gonna let me shoot him out of a cannon. It's going to be great!"
"No," Sam says.
"What?" Dean and Gonzo ask in unison.
"You're not getting shot out of a cannon, Dean. We're here for a job, not for you to get yourself killed living out your random Evel Knievel fantasies."
"Oh," Gonzo says. "You're here about Sweetums?"
"I guess?" Dean says. After the talking frog and the amorous pig, a monster named Sweetums isn't a shock.
"He and the other monsters are staging a sit-in in the green room."
"Yeah, we got that. We just don't know why."
"They're tired of being treated like monsters."
"But they are monsters."
"Okay, sure, but they're not very scary monsters."
"I don't know," Dean says. "You could get lost in their hair and never be seen again."
A flock of chickens clucks past them, loud and full of feathers, being chased by a blond dude in a chef's hat. He's waving a meat cleaver and yelling in a foreign language, so Dean can't really blame the chickens as he steps out of the chef's way and pushes Sam behind him.
Gonzo yells, "Camilla," and goes rushing after the chickens, fear in his eyes.
Sam drags Dean down the corridor in the opposite direction and says, "I can't believe you left me with that crazy pig lady. She tried to cop a feel, Dean."
Dean snickers. "That's the most action you've gotten in ages, Sammy. What are you complaining about?"
Sam doesn't get a chance to answer because the frog comes back. "You," he says, pointing long froggy fingers at Sam. "You're tall enough."
"What?"
"Big Bird is stuck in traffic. He's supposed to be guest hosting tonight, since Allison Janney dropped out." He looks at Dean, mouth crumpled in consternation. "She was afraid of the monsters."
Sam puts a hand on his chest. "You want me to fill in for Big Bird?"
"Just in rehearsal. The rats need to know what they're doing."
"Rats?" Sam says, but the frog is already leading him to the stage.
Dean would rather be shot out of a cannon, thanks.
He moves to the side of the stage to watch as the rats dance around Sam, singing "Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In" in high-pitched rat-like voices that make the hair on the back of Dean's neck stand up. For the first verse, Sam's wearing his best deer in the headlights expression, but when the chorus kicks in, he starts smiling and rocking jerkily back and forth in what Dean guesses is supposed to be dancing. Dean snorts and shakes his head. Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein was smoother. Then Sam starts singing along, loud and off-key. There's so much joy on his face that Dean can't help but stand and watch for a minute or two, before the singing rats start freaking him out again, and he has to leave.
He walks back to the dressing room where the monsters are holed up, wondering why he's even bothering. This isn't their kind of job.
There's a small frog sitting in front of the door when Dean gets there. "You can't go in," it--he--says.
"What?"
"Uncle Kermit says you're a monster killer and the monsters are my friends," he says, voice shaking a little. "I won't let you hurt them."
"Oh, hey, no," Dean says, crouching down to look the kid--frog, whatever--in the eye. "I just wanted to talk to, um, Sweetums. Try and figure out what this is all about." He sticks out a hand. "I'm Dean."
The frog holds out a flipper. "Robin."
Dean shakes it gently. "Nice to meet you, Robin. Now let's see if you and I can't work this whole thing out." He lifts Robin up onto his shoulder and pushes the door open and shoves his way inside before the monsters can stop him. The monsters all rise to their feet. There are blue ones and green ones and brown ones, with a large variety of teeth and claws on display, but none of them are frothing or growling, so Dean lets the door close behind him and holds his hands out to show he's not looking for a fight.
"I don't care what Gonzo says, you look pretty scary to me."
"We're actors," the biggest, hairiest one--who turns out to be Sweetums, of course--says. "It's part of the job to act scary. We just look the part better than most."
"But we can do more than look scary," one of the blue monsters says. "We used to get to sing and dance, but ever since that incident with Lindsay Lohan and the green Frackle--"
"That could have happened to anybody," says a green bird-like thing that must be the green Frackle. "A shot of penicillin cleared everything right up."
The blue monster keeps talking as if it hasn't been interrupted. "We haven't been allowed to do more than stand around and glower in some of the fairy tale sketches. No more singing or dancing with the stars."
"Cookie Monster gets interviewed by NPR," Sweetums says. "The Count is a vampire, but he gets to do skits with Jimmy Kimmel on reality shows."
"The shrimp gets more work than we do, these days," the green Frackle says.
"The shrimp?" Dean asks.
A shrimp in a Hawaiian shirt pops up on the dressing table. "I am a king prawn, okay? Pepe, the king prawn. I'm very famous, okay? Chicks dig me."
"Breaded and fried with butter and lemon, maybe," one of the other monsters mutters. Dean bites back a laugh.
"We just want to be allowed to work in non-monster parts," Sweetums says. "We want people to stop being scared of us just because we're monsters."
"Well," Dean says, thinking, "I can't really do anything about what other people think, but I can talk to the head frog and see about getting you guys in on the action more often."
The monsters huddle up and chat for a minute or two, and then Sweetums holds out a giant paw and says, "Deal. How about a drink?"
"Oh, God, yes." Dean lets his hand be enveloped in the furry paw, and if his palm is a little sweaty, well, nobody but Sweetums is going to know. "This has been one crazy day."
He doesn't even complain when the frosty mugs the green feathery monster passes out are full of root beer.
Ten minutes later, Sam comes bursting in. "Dean! Are you okay?"
Dean leans back in his chair and hoists his mug, taking a long drink of soda and leaving himself with a foamy moustache he licks off his upper lip with delight. "I'm great, Sammy. How are you?"
"I think I promised Rizzo a ride in the Impala."
"Rizzo? Like the chick in Grease? Is she cute?"
A rat pops out of Sam's pocket. "I like to think I am."
"Gah!" Dean's chair tips over as he loses his balance, but Sweetums catches him before he can crack his skull open on the floor. He's not quick enough to save Dean's root beer, though, which splashes all over his shirt. "Son of a bitch."
"Dude, not in front of the tadpole." Sam jerks his head at Robin, and Dean gives the kid an apologetic smile.
"Gonzo and Camilla will come, too. We can hook you guys up with some chicks, too, if you want," Rizzo says. Sam looks a little freaked out, but not as freaked out as Dean feels.
"Chicks?" he asks faintly, trying to remember who Camilla is.
"Okay, they're hens. I don't want you to think they're underage or anything. We ain't that kind of theatre."
"Hens? What the hell?" Dean rubs a hand over his face. "You know what, I don't even want to know."
"Come on," Robin says. "We should tell Uncle Kermit you fixed the problem."
Uncle Kermit turns out to be the stage manager, and he's so grateful that he invites them to stay and watch that night's show from backstage. Fozzie does him one better, asks them to appear in his act, "Since Sam knows all the good jokes."
Dean snorts but Sam ducks his head and beams through his too-long bangs, so Dean can't say no. He doesn't count on the makeup artists, though, some of the hens Rizzo was talking about, the ones who were being chased earlier with a meat cleaver, and he sneezes through the whole process, ruining the first two coats of foundation they spackle him with.
"Ladies, I am pretty enough as God made me," he says, shoving his way out of the chair and toweling his face off. They cluck and titter, preening their feathers. "Sam could use some work, though."
When their backs are turned, Sam makes a face and flips him off. Dean just laughs.
After the opening number and Big Bird's monologue, Fozzie goes out on stage, flanked by Sam and Dean.
The lights are bright and hot and there are hundreds of people out there watching them, and Dean thinks he might puke. Sam doesn't seem to be affected--he's trading crappy jokes with Fozzie just like they discussed, and the audience is laughing and groaning while Dean stands there frozen until Sam nudges him in the ribs and tilts his head, as if to say, your turn.
Dean licks his lips and clears his dry throat. "It's a little known fact that there were actually four Alou brothers," he says, voice rough but gaining strength as he continues, looking at Sam instead of at the crowd whose faces he can't make out, "but the commissioner made the fourth one change his last name, because Boog Alou was too funky for major league baseball."
Sam groans, because he's heard this joke a hundred times if he's heard it once, but there's scattered laughter in the crowd, drowned out by the two old guys in the balcony.
"They're saying Boog, right?" Dean asks as Sam hustles him offstage.
Sam pats Dean's shoulder comfortingly. "If that's what you need to believe."
The show goes pretty smoothly--Gonzo blows some stuff up but doesn't set anything (or anyone) on fire (including himself), Big Bird's big number knocks 'em dead, though Dean thinks he'll be having nightmares of rats singing Let the sun shine in for years to come.
Then Robin takes the stage and tells the story of what happened earlier, that the monsters were tired of being treated badly because people thought they were scary, when it was their job to be scary, and they were good at it.
Kermit joins his nephew, puts an arm (or is it a flipper, Dean wonders) around the tadpole's shoulders, and says, "I hope you were all as moved by that as I was."
"I was moved, all right," one of the old guys catcalls. "Moved right out of my seat."
The other one laughs loudly, clapping his hands, and then they high five.
He turns to Sam, who's frowning. "It would be wrong to blow them up," Sam reminds him.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
Dean sighs. "You're ruining all my fun, Sammy."
"Hey, you're the one who told the Boog Alou joke. It's your own fault you got booed."
"Oh, like your amazing array of knock-knock jokes dazzled the crowd."
"Boys, boys," Miss Piggy says, taking each of them by the elbow. "You're both pretty." She tosses her head, and Dean has to bite back at sneeze from the smell of her flowery perfume. "Don't forget to tell Bobby hi from me," she says as they reach Kermit. "Now there was a real man." She seems to be waiting for some kind of reaction from the frog, but Dean's too busy trying to keep a straight face when Sam makes a choking sound that could be laughter or disgust, or some combination of the two, to pay much attention.
"Thanks again," Kermit says, shaking their hands. "I guess Piggy knew what she was doing when she told Scooter to call you two." He reaches out and takes hold of Miss Piggy's hand. "Come on. We all have to get on stage now for the finale."
A big mirrored disco ball descends from the ceiling and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem burst out with the opening chords of "Back in Black," and Dean can't help smiling. It might be the weirdest job they've ever done, but it's been one of the most fun, too.
Sam reminds him of that later, when they discover Rizzo and Pepe stowed away in the backseat of the Impala, and have to turn around to deliver them back to the theatre.
The End
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