Looking For Elephant; Be Right Back.
Who wants to listen to the delightfully bouncy Italian Pokémon theme? I know you do.
I'm in one of those frustrating moods in which I would very much like to update my journal but feel utterly incapable of coming up with anything interesting to say. What I typically do in this situation is resort to posting things I already have hanging around on my computer or in notebooks, so that's what I'm going to do here!
Here are some of the ficlets I have written in comments over the years: not for actual 'prompt me and I'll write you a ficlet' entries, but spontaneously, or in response to challenges on other journals. Whilst a few of you have seen some of these before, I imagine they'll probably be new to most of you. Nothing rated above PG-13.
Team Top Gear form a branch of Torchwood. Originally posted at tg_crack.
"Protecting the planet from alien invasion," Jeremy says. "How hard can it be?"
-
As it turns out, it can be quite hard.
"Jeremy!" Richard shouts, rummaging through one of the many cardboard boxes labelled 'ALIEN RUBBISH' in biro. "Where's the thing?"
"I thought you had it," Jeremy bellows back.
"Well, it's not in here!"
James, who does not quite understand why his fellow members of Torchwood feel the need to be quite so loud when they are mere feet away from each other, or indeed how they can possibly know what they are talking about, politely enquires as to what exactly the 'thing' is.
"The alien ray gun thing," Richard explains, emerging from the box with a quintuple-cupped bra in one hand. He frowns. "That's not it."
"And why," James asks, "do you need the disintegrator ray?"
Richard suddenly looks extremely shifty. His eyes flick for half a second towards James' beloved collection of spanners, arranged in size order on the wall as a reminder that some things can still make sense in a hostile universe.
James surreptitiously edges the disintegrator ray a little farther under his desk with his foot.
-
"I've seen the Cardiff offices," Jeremy announces, "and they have sex all the time."
James stares. This is probably in part because this announcement has come without any sort of leadup, but he has a vague feeling that no amount of leadup to that particular statement could possibly have achieved a non-staring outcome.
"That's what we've been doing wrong," Jeremy says. "We have caught exactly no aliens, James. No aliens. That is a zero per cent success rate."
"And you think that sex is the solution?" James asks, feeling rather dazed.
"Well, it can't make us any worse."
"I'm not sure that sweeps away all of the arguments against it," James says, "but no, I don't think it can make us worse."
-
"Well, how was I supposed to know it was an alien condom?"
"Jeremy," James says, managing, with a great effort, to resist the siren call of the disintegrator ray. "Did you get it out of one of the alien boxes?"
There is a pause.
"Perhaps I keep my things in the boxes sometimes," Jeremy says. "And maybe, perhaps, I got a tiny bit mixed up."
"I am going to kill you," James says. "Not now, but soon. You will be thinking about something else, and I will run you over with a Volvo towing a caravan."
"Hammond keeps all his toothbrushes in the boxes!" Jeremy protests. "Kill him!"
"Hammond didn't turn me into a woman."
-
The next week, barely a day after they find the cure for the unfortunate effect of the alien condom, Richard, in a combination of curiosity and utter common sense failure, prods an alien fungus with a stick.
It releases a cloud of suspicious-looking spores.
James turns into a woman again.
-
James is not going to disintegrate his teammates.
He is not going to disintegrate his teammates.
He's not.
Torchwood: Ianto and Rhys. Set post-'Meat'. Originally posted at apiphile's journal.
When they are back at the Hub after what Ianto thinks they may be able to class tentatively as a victory, he notices that Rhys is shaking. Understandable, he thinks. Gwen is off somewhere - probably with Jack - and he can't really see Owen spontaneously deciding to offer comfort, so Ianto takes it upon himself to make their visitor a cup of tea and sit down with him for a while.
Rhys takes the tea with, Ianto is pleased to note, a 'thank you'. "And this is the sort of thing you do every day, is it?" he asks, when he's settled a little.
"Well," Ianto says, "this is the first whale from another dimension we've had."
Rhys laughs, shaking his head. "I don't know how you survive." He pauses. "Gwen is in a lot of danger, isn't she?"
Ianto diplomatically sips his coffee and says nothing.
-
Ianto fully expects to be pressed against a wall at some point during the aftermath; when they fail, when things die, Jack always comes to him. Down in the holding area with Janet looking on is perhaps not the most romantic location, but it is the most private; the other members of the team tend not to go there when they can help it.
Of course, it is easy to forget that not everyone in the Hub is a member of the team.
When Rhys pushes open the door, Ianto's instinct is to scramble away and attempt to make himself look presentable, but as Jack just rolls his eyes and carries on kissing him he supposes he may as well keep going.
Rhys stares at them for a moment, then mutters "Thank God for that" and closes the door again.
-
"You know," Rhys says, conversationally, "I was worried that your boyfriend might have been stealing my Gwen."
"To be honest," Ianto says, "so was I."
They are leaning side-by-side against a wall, waiting for Gwen. Jack is probably giving her a Retcon pill, Ianto thinks. Tomorrow morning, Rhys won't remember a thing.
"Do you want to go out for a drink some time?" Rhys asks. "It must get pretty exhausting, always saving the world."
"The meat industry and the world are fairly different things," Ianto points out.
Rhys grins. "I'm sure you save the world sometimes. Do you want a drink anyway?"
It has been a long time since anything approaching a normal life has extended a hand to Ianto. There are times when he wishes they had never discovered Retcon. "It'd be nice," he murmurs, not looking at Rhys.
Supernatural RPF: slightly daft Jared/Jensen. Originally posted at tzzzz's journal.
So they'd slipped into being friends, and Jensen had kind of somehow moved in when neither of them were paying attention, and it seemed that the next logical step was to get married.
"That's not the next logical step," Jensen said, raising an eyebrow. "That's not even close to the next logical step."
"What's wrong with it?" Jared protested.
"I don't know, maybe the fact that we're not actually in a relationship?"
Right. Jared knew he'd been forgetting something.
-
"You want to get married yet?"
"Jared," Jensen said, "you know we're not in front of any cameras, right? If you're trying to blow up the Internet, wait until the next convention. Or, on second thoughts, don't, because I can probably do without the fans hearing you ask me that."
"It's just - we're already in Canada," Jared said. "It seems like a waste."
Jensen nodded. "Okay, you're insane."
-
"Okay, seriously," Jared said. He'd been shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot for about half an hour now, and his shoes were beginning to chafe. "What's going to make you think about it?"
Jensen raised his head to give him a strange look. "By 'seriously', you mean 'not seriously in any way', right?"
Jared just looked at him.
"Jared," Jensen said. "I swear, you make so many jokes about this I don't even know what to think right now."
"I just... think it could work, you know? We get on well, we're already living together..."
"...we're not romantically involved in any way..."
"But we have to overcome these obstacles!" Jared argued. "You think Romeo and Juliet didn't have obstacles they had to overcome?"
"Romeo and Juliet killed themselves," Jensen said, his eyes following Jared's hand gestures, which Jared liked to think made his argument more persuasive even when he wasn't speaking. "And they would’ve made a terrible couple."
"So there's no way I can make you even consider it?"
Jensen rolled his eyes. "Well, a kiss would be a start."
"You're a genius," Jared said, after a moment. "This is exactly why I'm going to marry you."
Supernatural AU: Sam tells Jess about his visions. Originally posted at medie's journal.
When Sam tells her about his nightmare, she thinks at first that he's just shaken, looking for comfort. She thinks it's sweet that he'd get that upset by a dream.
When he looks at her, completely earnestly, and says, "We have to get out of here," she starts to realise something's wrong.
"It was just a dream," she says, stroking his arm. "Nightmares don't come true, and people don't get pinned to the ceiling."
His expression becomes tighter, like he doesn't believe her, and Jess is starting to worry. She thought her days of crazy boyfriends had been over when she met Sam. Still, he's always been a little superstitious.
"Look," she says. "I'm here, okay? I'm fine. You can't just drop your studies because a dream freaked you out."
"You're right," he says after a moment, with an awkward laugh. "I'm being stupid. Sorry."
"Go back to sleep," Jess murmurs, snuggling into his side.
The next day, Sam gives her a crude pentacle necklace made of twisted silver wire. She can tell he wants her to wear it all the time but is hesitant about imposing, so she promises to before he can ask.
-
He wakes two nights later in a panic, and it takes her almost a minute to convince him that she's still alive.
"It doesn't feel like a dream," he says, when he's a little calmer.
"You were asleep," she says, frowning. "What else could it have been?"
"It's like - " He presses the heels of his hands over his eyes. "I don't know, a vision or a premonition or something. I don't know."
"But it's a premonition of something impossible," she points out. "You probably don't need to worry about that."
Sam is silent for a moment, and then he brings his hands away. "I need to tell you something crazy."
It turns out that when Sam says 'something crazy' he's not kidding. He says he's never lied to her, but as he tells her about his past it becomes pretty clear he's never told her the whole truth, either. After all, he's obviously completely insane, and he never mentioned that.
"I just want you to be safe," he says, pleading.
Jess is spared from having to tell him that she thinks she's in more danger from her own taste in men than from any kind of spontaneous combustion when they hear someone moving around downstairs.
-
It's pretty obvious to Jess that Sam's brother doesn't want her around, but Sam won't send her away. Eventually, Dean rolls his eyes and turns to her.
"He told you about the family business?"
"The ghost-hunting thing?" she asks, half-hoping that Dean will laugh and tell her Sam's playing some kind of weird joke, but apparently he's just as delusional as his brother.
"Yeah, well, it's dangerous. You don't want to get mixed up in that stuff." He seems to relax now that he knows she's aware that her boyfriend is a lunatic, though, and he begins telling Sam about disappearances and plays creepy messages on his phone and Jess has no idea what's going on.
Gradually, though, she starts to wonder. These two actually think they've fought these things. They can't both be hallucinating the same thing. They also can't have fought ghosts together, though, so she has no idea what to believe.
Well, she thinks, there's one way to find out.
-
It turns out they're not crazy.
As Jess now has severe doubts about her boyfriend's fidelity and her future combustion is looking considerably more likely, that doesn't make her feel much better.
-
The demon comes for her when they've barely been back for two minutes. She's not expecting it, exactly, but she's tense after the events of the weekend, aware of everything, and the moment she sees the eyes she throws herself at him and fights like - well, like a woman possessed. She can tell that he isn't expecting it, and the tiny startled delay before he pins her to the wall is enough for Sam to burst in from the shower and Dean to kick down the bedroom door. The demon apparently decides it's not worth it and departs.
And okay, now it's personal, because no son-of-a-bitch demon is going to try to kill her and get away with it.
She looks up at the boys. Sam is staring at her, wide-eyed and almost hyperventilating; Dean is watching his brother, carefully.
They've got work to do.
Supernatural/Enchanted: Giselle has a novel idea for fighting demons. Originally posted at fandomsecrets.
It's not like they've never had chicks tagging along on a hunt before. It's not even like Dean doesn't have to put up with Sam telling him that maybe they should just try hugging the restless spirits or whatever every day. It's just that they've never had a chick tagging along in a giant freakin' ballgown, and this particular chick is one million times worse than Sammy. A million.
"Are you possessed?"
"But why can't we just talk to the demon?"
"You've got to be possessed."
"I'm sure it will leave Robert alone if we ask it nicely."
Dean stares at her, then surreptitiously flicks a few drops of holy water onto her arm. She beams at him for no apparent reason. Apparently, she's not possessed.
"It's evil," Dean says. "You can't reason with evil."
"It was quite rude to me," she concedes, frowning. "But I think it was just unhappy. Perhaps a song would cheer it up."
Dean's dealt with a hell of a lot of weird things in this line of work, but this girl has got to be the weirdest. "You can't fight demons with song."
"Have you ever tried?"
Dean stares at her. "No! Because it's stupid!"
-
"Instead of possessing, let's all make a dressing!" Ballgown Girl sings, twirlingly, and the clouds of demon smoke swoosh obligingly through the kitchen, tossing the salad in their wake.
Dean feels like he's trapped in someone else's dream.
Derren Brown/Supernatural: Derren encounters the Winchesters. Originally posted at wanttobeatree's journal.
Derren looks around the location and nods approvingly. It is abandoned, bleak, with a touch of the sinister about it; it is, in short, the perfect place in which to make innocent members of the public hallucinate that they are being pursued by monsters.
Not that 'the perfect place in which to make innocent members of the public hallucinate that they are being pursued by monsters' is actually any shorter than 'abandoned, bleak, with a touch of the sinister about it', but Derren has just noticed two figures disappearing into one of the dilapidated buildings and so has more immediate concerns than questioning his mental phrasing. Having people unaware of the trick around could be dangerous; the subjects may become violent, which is understandable if they are to be perceiving everyone as a lurching, skinless, blood-covered creature.
Derren sometimes suspects that he should perhaps not enjoy his job as much as he does. He further suspect that he does not care in the slightest.
He slips inside the building.
When he eventually manages to find the people who have strayed into their filming location, he discovers that they are two men, both extremely handsome, one ridiculously tall and the other even more ridiculously tall. Derren dislikes them immediately and intensely.
His opinion of them does not improve when, half a second after they catch sight of him, he finds himself looking at what is very much his less preferred end of a shotgun.
"Er," he says, which isn't quite as articulate as he would like.
"He's not the spirit," Ridiculously Tall says, lowering the gun. "Get him out of here."
Derren does not wish to be 'got out of here'. Derren was, in fact, under the impression that any out-of-here-getting was to be on Ridiculously Tall and Ridiculously Taller's part.
"Come with me," Ridiculously Taller says, quietly and urgently.
Derren takes a step back. "I'd really rather not."
"Please. You're in danger."
"I'm in no doubt of that. Your friend did just try to shoot me."
The dim lights in the corners of the disused room flicker and dim even further, with a low buzz.
"Shit," Ridiculously Tall mutters.
Suddenly, a woman in a torn and bloodstained dress is standing in the middle of the room. Derren was slightly distracted by the shotgun business, admittedly, but he is sure that he would have noticed her had she been there before.
For one thing, she is flickering.
For another, she looks very, very like the newspaper photographs of the woman who was stabbed here seven years ago.
Derren is not a great believer in karma, but he is starting to feel that perhaps he should reconsider his stance.
Derren Brown as David Tennant's Nobody. Originally posted in my journal; inspired by th_esaurus.
He's dreaming again.
It's a new room of the castle: white and grey, like every other, but one wall is made entirely of clear glass. He can see the heart-shape of the moon high above.
When he turns around, Derren, of course, is sitting on one of the white sofas in his black coat, one leg crossed over the other, smirking up at him. David doesn't know whether he just appeared or whether he's always been there. He wasn't reflected in the glass.
"This is a dream," David says.
"So you always say," Derren says, "but if I'm a figment of your imagination I can't imagine why you feel the need to inform me."
"Why do I keep coming here?"
"If this is a dream, I'd have to conclude you have some sort of fixation with me," Derren says. "If it's not, well." He stands and walks slowly towards David, obviously enjoying the performance. David can't move away (because this is a dream). "I suppose I must have some sort of fixation with you."
He smiles into David's face, and puts his fingertips on David's shoulders, and easily pushes him back against the glass. It's very cold; David can feel it through the back of his shirt. Derren, too-close in front of him, isn't much warmer.
The glass could break, David thinks, and he tries to move away but his legs won't work. His feet are stuck to the floor.
"The Organization would have us believe that with our hearts we lost all traces of emotion," Derren says. "But in that case, of course, we'd hardly feel the loss. We must at least be able to feel desire. I want things." He puts his right hand on David's chest, and smiles. "Specifically, you."
Last night, I dreamt that I was riding a Chocobo. I became quite attached to it. Now that I am awake, I want a Chocobo of my own, but this scheme is somewhat hampered by the fact that they are fictional. Blast.
I'm in one of those frustrating moods in which I would very much like to update my journal but feel utterly incapable of coming up with anything interesting to say. What I typically do in this situation is resort to posting things I already have hanging around on my computer or in notebooks, so that's what I'm going to do here!
Here are some of the ficlets I have written in comments over the years: not for actual 'prompt me and I'll write you a ficlet' entries, but spontaneously, or in response to challenges on other journals. Whilst a few of you have seen some of these before, I imagine they'll probably be new to most of you. Nothing rated above PG-13.
Team Top Gear form a branch of Torchwood. Originally posted at tg_crack.
"Protecting the planet from alien invasion," Jeremy says. "How hard can it be?"
-
As it turns out, it can be quite hard.
"Jeremy!" Richard shouts, rummaging through one of the many cardboard boxes labelled 'ALIEN RUBBISH' in biro. "Where's the thing?"
"I thought you had it," Jeremy bellows back.
"Well, it's not in here!"
James, who does not quite understand why his fellow members of Torchwood feel the need to be quite so loud when they are mere feet away from each other, or indeed how they can possibly know what they are talking about, politely enquires as to what exactly the 'thing' is.
"The alien ray gun thing," Richard explains, emerging from the box with a quintuple-cupped bra in one hand. He frowns. "That's not it."
"And why," James asks, "do you need the disintegrator ray?"
Richard suddenly looks extremely shifty. His eyes flick for half a second towards James' beloved collection of spanners, arranged in size order on the wall as a reminder that some things can still make sense in a hostile universe.
James surreptitiously edges the disintegrator ray a little farther under his desk with his foot.
-
"I've seen the Cardiff offices," Jeremy announces, "and they have sex all the time."
James stares. This is probably in part because this announcement has come without any sort of leadup, but he has a vague feeling that no amount of leadup to that particular statement could possibly have achieved a non-staring outcome.
"That's what we've been doing wrong," Jeremy says. "We have caught exactly no aliens, James. No aliens. That is a zero per cent success rate."
"And you think that sex is the solution?" James asks, feeling rather dazed.
"Well, it can't make us any worse."
"I'm not sure that sweeps away all of the arguments against it," James says, "but no, I don't think it can make us worse."
-
"Well, how was I supposed to know it was an alien condom?"
"Jeremy," James says, managing, with a great effort, to resist the siren call of the disintegrator ray. "Did you get it out of one of the alien boxes?"
There is a pause.
"Perhaps I keep my things in the boxes sometimes," Jeremy says. "And maybe, perhaps, I got a tiny bit mixed up."
"I am going to kill you," James says. "Not now, but soon. You will be thinking about something else, and I will run you over with a Volvo towing a caravan."
"Hammond keeps all his toothbrushes in the boxes!" Jeremy protests. "Kill him!"
"Hammond didn't turn me into a woman."
-
The next week, barely a day after they find the cure for the unfortunate effect of the alien condom, Richard, in a combination of curiosity and utter common sense failure, prods an alien fungus with a stick.
It releases a cloud of suspicious-looking spores.
James turns into a woman again.
-
James is not going to disintegrate his teammates.
He is not going to disintegrate his teammates.
He's not.
Torchwood: Ianto and Rhys. Set post-'Meat'. Originally posted at apiphile's journal.
When they are back at the Hub after what Ianto thinks they may be able to class tentatively as a victory, he notices that Rhys is shaking. Understandable, he thinks. Gwen is off somewhere - probably with Jack - and he can't really see Owen spontaneously deciding to offer comfort, so Ianto takes it upon himself to make their visitor a cup of tea and sit down with him for a while.
Rhys takes the tea with, Ianto is pleased to note, a 'thank you'. "And this is the sort of thing you do every day, is it?" he asks, when he's settled a little.
"Well," Ianto says, "this is the first whale from another dimension we've had."
Rhys laughs, shaking his head. "I don't know how you survive." He pauses. "Gwen is in a lot of danger, isn't she?"
Ianto diplomatically sips his coffee and says nothing.
-
Ianto fully expects to be pressed against a wall at some point during the aftermath; when they fail, when things die, Jack always comes to him. Down in the holding area with Janet looking on is perhaps not the most romantic location, but it is the most private; the other members of the team tend not to go there when they can help it.
Of course, it is easy to forget that not everyone in the Hub is a member of the team.
When Rhys pushes open the door, Ianto's instinct is to scramble away and attempt to make himself look presentable, but as Jack just rolls his eyes and carries on kissing him he supposes he may as well keep going.
Rhys stares at them for a moment, then mutters "Thank God for that" and closes the door again.
-
"You know," Rhys says, conversationally, "I was worried that your boyfriend might have been stealing my Gwen."
"To be honest," Ianto says, "so was I."
They are leaning side-by-side against a wall, waiting for Gwen. Jack is probably giving her a Retcon pill, Ianto thinks. Tomorrow morning, Rhys won't remember a thing.
"Do you want to go out for a drink some time?" Rhys asks. "It must get pretty exhausting, always saving the world."
"The meat industry and the world are fairly different things," Ianto points out.
Rhys grins. "I'm sure you save the world sometimes. Do you want a drink anyway?"
It has been a long time since anything approaching a normal life has extended a hand to Ianto. There are times when he wishes they had never discovered Retcon. "It'd be nice," he murmurs, not looking at Rhys.
Supernatural RPF: slightly daft Jared/Jensen. Originally posted at tzzzz's journal.
So they'd slipped into being friends, and Jensen had kind of somehow moved in when neither of them were paying attention, and it seemed that the next logical step was to get married.
"That's not the next logical step," Jensen said, raising an eyebrow. "That's not even close to the next logical step."
"What's wrong with it?" Jared protested.
"I don't know, maybe the fact that we're not actually in a relationship?"
Right. Jared knew he'd been forgetting something.
-
"You want to get married yet?"
"Jared," Jensen said, "you know we're not in front of any cameras, right? If you're trying to blow up the Internet, wait until the next convention. Or, on second thoughts, don't, because I can probably do without the fans hearing you ask me that."
"It's just - we're already in Canada," Jared said. "It seems like a waste."
Jensen nodded. "Okay, you're insane."
-
"Okay, seriously," Jared said. He'd been shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot for about half an hour now, and his shoes were beginning to chafe. "What's going to make you think about it?"
Jensen raised his head to give him a strange look. "By 'seriously', you mean 'not seriously in any way', right?"
Jared just looked at him.
"Jared," Jensen said. "I swear, you make so many jokes about this I don't even know what to think right now."
"I just... think it could work, you know? We get on well, we're already living together..."
"...we're not romantically involved in any way..."
"But we have to overcome these obstacles!" Jared argued. "You think Romeo and Juliet didn't have obstacles they had to overcome?"
"Romeo and Juliet killed themselves," Jensen said, his eyes following Jared's hand gestures, which Jared liked to think made his argument more persuasive even when he wasn't speaking. "And they would’ve made a terrible couple."
"So there's no way I can make you even consider it?"
Jensen rolled his eyes. "Well, a kiss would be a start."
"You're a genius," Jared said, after a moment. "This is exactly why I'm going to marry you."
Supernatural AU: Sam tells Jess about his visions. Originally posted at medie's journal.
When Sam tells her about his nightmare, she thinks at first that he's just shaken, looking for comfort. She thinks it's sweet that he'd get that upset by a dream.
When he looks at her, completely earnestly, and says, "We have to get out of here," she starts to realise something's wrong.
"It was just a dream," she says, stroking his arm. "Nightmares don't come true, and people don't get pinned to the ceiling."
His expression becomes tighter, like he doesn't believe her, and Jess is starting to worry. She thought her days of crazy boyfriends had been over when she met Sam. Still, he's always been a little superstitious.
"Look," she says. "I'm here, okay? I'm fine. You can't just drop your studies because a dream freaked you out."
"You're right," he says after a moment, with an awkward laugh. "I'm being stupid. Sorry."
"Go back to sleep," Jess murmurs, snuggling into his side.
The next day, Sam gives her a crude pentacle necklace made of twisted silver wire. She can tell he wants her to wear it all the time but is hesitant about imposing, so she promises to before he can ask.
-
He wakes two nights later in a panic, and it takes her almost a minute to convince him that she's still alive.
"It doesn't feel like a dream," he says, when he's a little calmer.
"You were asleep," she says, frowning. "What else could it have been?"
"It's like - " He presses the heels of his hands over his eyes. "I don't know, a vision or a premonition or something. I don't know."
"But it's a premonition of something impossible," she points out. "You probably don't need to worry about that."
Sam is silent for a moment, and then he brings his hands away. "I need to tell you something crazy."
It turns out that when Sam says 'something crazy' he's not kidding. He says he's never lied to her, but as he tells her about his past it becomes pretty clear he's never told her the whole truth, either. After all, he's obviously completely insane, and he never mentioned that.
"I just want you to be safe," he says, pleading.
Jess is spared from having to tell him that she thinks she's in more danger from her own taste in men than from any kind of spontaneous combustion when they hear someone moving around downstairs.
-
It's pretty obvious to Jess that Sam's brother doesn't want her around, but Sam won't send her away. Eventually, Dean rolls his eyes and turns to her.
"He told you about the family business?"
"The ghost-hunting thing?" she asks, half-hoping that Dean will laugh and tell her Sam's playing some kind of weird joke, but apparently he's just as delusional as his brother.
"Yeah, well, it's dangerous. You don't want to get mixed up in that stuff." He seems to relax now that he knows she's aware that her boyfriend is a lunatic, though, and he begins telling Sam about disappearances and plays creepy messages on his phone and Jess has no idea what's going on.
Gradually, though, she starts to wonder. These two actually think they've fought these things. They can't both be hallucinating the same thing. They also can't have fought ghosts together, though, so she has no idea what to believe.
Well, she thinks, there's one way to find out.
-
It turns out they're not crazy.
As Jess now has severe doubts about her boyfriend's fidelity and her future combustion is looking considerably more likely, that doesn't make her feel much better.
-
The demon comes for her when they've barely been back for two minutes. She's not expecting it, exactly, but she's tense after the events of the weekend, aware of everything, and the moment she sees the eyes she throws herself at him and fights like - well, like a woman possessed. She can tell that he isn't expecting it, and the tiny startled delay before he pins her to the wall is enough for Sam to burst in from the shower and Dean to kick down the bedroom door. The demon apparently decides it's not worth it and departs.
And okay, now it's personal, because no son-of-a-bitch demon is going to try to kill her and get away with it.
She looks up at the boys. Sam is staring at her, wide-eyed and almost hyperventilating; Dean is watching his brother, carefully.
They've got work to do.
Supernatural/Enchanted: Giselle has a novel idea for fighting demons. Originally posted at fandomsecrets.
It's not like they've never had chicks tagging along on a hunt before. It's not even like Dean doesn't have to put up with Sam telling him that maybe they should just try hugging the restless spirits or whatever every day. It's just that they've never had a chick tagging along in a giant freakin' ballgown, and this particular chick is one million times worse than Sammy. A million.
"Are you possessed?"
"But why can't we just talk to the demon?"
"You've got to be possessed."
"I'm sure it will leave Robert alone if we ask it nicely."
Dean stares at her, then surreptitiously flicks a few drops of holy water onto her arm. She beams at him for no apparent reason. Apparently, she's not possessed.
"It's evil," Dean says. "You can't reason with evil."
"It was quite rude to me," she concedes, frowning. "But I think it was just unhappy. Perhaps a song would cheer it up."
Dean's dealt with a hell of a lot of weird things in this line of work, but this girl has got to be the weirdest. "You can't fight demons with song."
"Have you ever tried?"
Dean stares at her. "No! Because it's stupid!"
-
"Instead of possessing, let's all make a dressing!" Ballgown Girl sings, twirlingly, and the clouds of demon smoke swoosh obligingly through the kitchen, tossing the salad in their wake.
Dean feels like he's trapped in someone else's dream.
Derren Brown/Supernatural: Derren encounters the Winchesters. Originally posted at wanttobeatree's journal.
Derren looks around the location and nods approvingly. It is abandoned, bleak, with a touch of the sinister about it; it is, in short, the perfect place in which to make innocent members of the public hallucinate that they are being pursued by monsters.
Not that 'the perfect place in which to make innocent members of the public hallucinate that they are being pursued by monsters' is actually any shorter than 'abandoned, bleak, with a touch of the sinister about it', but Derren has just noticed two figures disappearing into one of the dilapidated buildings and so has more immediate concerns than questioning his mental phrasing. Having people unaware of the trick around could be dangerous; the subjects may become violent, which is understandable if they are to be perceiving everyone as a lurching, skinless, blood-covered creature.
Derren sometimes suspects that he should perhaps not enjoy his job as much as he does. He further suspect that he does not care in the slightest.
He slips inside the building.
When he eventually manages to find the people who have strayed into their filming location, he discovers that they are two men, both extremely handsome, one ridiculously tall and the other even more ridiculously tall. Derren dislikes them immediately and intensely.
His opinion of them does not improve when, half a second after they catch sight of him, he finds himself looking at what is very much his less preferred end of a shotgun.
"Er," he says, which isn't quite as articulate as he would like.
"He's not the spirit," Ridiculously Tall says, lowering the gun. "Get him out of here."
Derren does not wish to be 'got out of here'. Derren was, in fact, under the impression that any out-of-here-getting was to be on Ridiculously Tall and Ridiculously Taller's part.
"Come with me," Ridiculously Taller says, quietly and urgently.
Derren takes a step back. "I'd really rather not."
"Please. You're in danger."
"I'm in no doubt of that. Your friend did just try to shoot me."
The dim lights in the corners of the disused room flicker and dim even further, with a low buzz.
"Shit," Ridiculously Tall mutters.
Suddenly, a woman in a torn and bloodstained dress is standing in the middle of the room. Derren was slightly distracted by the shotgun business, admittedly, but he is sure that he would have noticed her had she been there before.
For one thing, she is flickering.
For another, she looks very, very like the newspaper photographs of the woman who was stabbed here seven years ago.
Derren is not a great believer in karma, but he is starting to feel that perhaps he should reconsider his stance.
Derren Brown as David Tennant's Nobody. Originally posted in my journal; inspired by th_esaurus.
He's dreaming again.
It's a new room of the castle: white and grey, like every other, but one wall is made entirely of clear glass. He can see the heart-shape of the moon high above.
When he turns around, Derren, of course, is sitting on one of the white sofas in his black coat, one leg crossed over the other, smirking up at him. David doesn't know whether he just appeared or whether he's always been there. He wasn't reflected in the glass.
"This is a dream," David says.
"So you always say," Derren says, "but if I'm a figment of your imagination I can't imagine why you feel the need to inform me."
"Why do I keep coming here?"
"If this is a dream, I'd have to conclude you have some sort of fixation with me," Derren says. "If it's not, well." He stands and walks slowly towards David, obviously enjoying the performance. David can't move away (because this is a dream). "I suppose I must have some sort of fixation with you."
He smiles into David's face, and puts his fingertips on David's shoulders, and easily pushes him back against the glass. It's very cold; David can feel it through the back of his shirt. Derren, too-close in front of him, isn't much warmer.
The glass could break, David thinks, and he tries to move away but his legs won't work. His feet are stuck to the floor.
"The Organization would have us believe that with our hearts we lost all traces of emotion," Derren says. "But in that case, of course, we'd hardly feel the loss. We must at least be able to feel desire. I want things." He puts his right hand on David's chest, and smiles. "Specifically, you."
Last night, I dreamt that I was riding a Chocobo. I became quite attached to it. Now that I am awake, I want a Chocobo of my own, but this scheme is somewhat hampered by the fact that they are fictional. Blast.