Spring Fic Exchange: Fashion Hunters

Jun 14, 2014 22:00

Title: Fashion Hunters
Author: sylvia_locust
Artist: nicole_sill
Recipient: antrazi
Rating: PG
Pairings: None
Word Count: ~2,500
Notes: Written for antrazi, who requested a preseries crossover with Daria, for the spn-bigpretzel Spring Fic Exchange. I’m sorry this is so terribly late. Art to be added soon. Thanks to daniomalley22 and jalu2 for the beta.

Summary: John takes the boys to Lawndale to deal with a haunted goalpost, but it looks like Sam might be their next case instead.

“Dean?” his father asks, rubbing a hand across his tired eyes.

“Sir?”

“What’s your brother wearing on his feet?”

Dean looks up from his bowl of Frost-ee Flakes to see Sam exiting the bathroom of their rental. He looks like the same old Sammy-worn jeans, a hand-me-down t-shirt of Dean’s, and thrift store flannel-except for the way he’s tucking his hair behind his ears, trying to smooth out his curls.

That, and the pale blue shoes on his oversized feet.

“Sam?” Dean asks. “What the hell are those shoes?”

Sam glances down and wriggles his toes experimentally. “They’re flats, ob-viously. I wanted to get heels but San-di says they’re too ‘hooker-y,’ or something like that, whatever. I think she just wants to make sure she’s the tallest member of the Fashion Club. But Quinn said Sandi actually pulled out a tape measure one day when Quinn was wearing the cut-est little kitten heels, and she made Quinn go home and change, can you believe that?!”

Dean and John stare at Sam in stunned silence.

“So, like, can we go, Dean? There’s an emergency meeting of the Fashion Club before school so I don’t have to wear this all day.” He pinches the fabric of Dean’s old Sabbath shirt as he speaks, eyeing it with distaste.

John reaches into the pocket of his jacket, pulls out a flask, and begins liberally splashing Sam in the face with holy water.

“Dad! Eww! Now my hair will never lay flat, what is wrong with you?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Dean deadpans. “What is wrong with you?”

John sighs. “Take your brother to school, Dean. I’ll do some research.”

* * *

“Daria, you’re morbid and stuff, do you have, like, a knife or something I can borrow?” Quinn asks as she fluffs her hair.

“Excuse me?”

“It has to be silver, but you know, I don’t want anything too big. Something cute and tiny. A cute, tiny knife. That can kill, ob-viously.”

“Sorry, Quinn. I leant my cutest knife to a passing Knights Templar last week.” Daria pulls on her boots and finishes stuffing her books into her bag. When she turns around, her eyes widen in disbelief.

“Quinn, are you wearing flannel?”

“I know, right? Like, grunge is so five years ago. But Sam says it’s good to wear layers when you’re hunting for ghosts and stuff, and I’d hate for my perfect skin to get all sliced up. When you’re born with skin as soft and smooth as mine, it’s like a duty or something to keep it that way. There’s no way I’m getting, like, scars, eww. Even if there is evil that needs to be vanquished, or whatever.”

Daria tries to parse her sister’s blathering for a moment, then gives up and reaches a hand out, resting it against Quinn’s forehead.

“You don’t feel feverish,” she says. “How long have you been hallucinating?”

“Ugh, Daria, nevermind.” She turns and flounces from the room. Daria follows her down the stairs, wondering what the hell her sister’s gotten mixed up in this time.

“Mom?” she tries when she enters the kitchen to grab a piece of toast. Not that she’s worried about her sister exactly, but she does feel some strange compulsion to tip off her parents that Quinn’s gone crazy. Again.

“No, Eric, that is completely unacceptable,” her mom says into the phone, giving Daria a distracted wave and pushing a pop tart into her hands.

“Dad?” she tries again. “Have you noticed Quinn acting a little off?”

“You’d think John would just quit making lasagna,” her dad mutters aloud from behind the Sun-Herald. “It’s not like Garfield knows how to cook.”

Daria gives herself B- for effort-the most she’s willing to put forth in any Quinn-related matter-and escapes with her breakfast into the warm September sun.

* * *

Dean keeps side-eyeing Sam as they walk the half mile to Lawndale High. Sam is obsessively checking his hair in a small pocket mirror he’s pulled from his back pocket.

They’ve only been in town a week while Dad investigates a possible haunted goalpost, of all things, and Sam had seemed totally normal up until this morning. Well, normal for Sam, so there was still lots of pouting and grumbling and picking fights with Dad.

“So,” Dean tries casually. “What’d you do last night after school?”

“Fashion Club meeting at Quinn’s,” Sam says. He glances over at Dean and raises an eyebrow. “We’re giving charitable make-overs after school, if you want to update that,” Sam adds with a dismissive flap of his hand. “You know James Dean has been dead for like, 40 years, right?”

Dean blinks. “Since when do you care what I wear?”

Sam snorts. “Never mind. See you tonight.” He breaks away from Dean in the main foyer when a cluster of haughty looking girls wave him over, muttering something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like ‘lost cause.’

“What the fuck is going on around here?” Dean wonders aloud.

“I ask myself that question every morning,” says a voice beside him. “So far, nobody’s answered.”

Dean looks away from where his brother is showing off his new shoes to see a brunette in a green jacket watching the same spectacle he is. “Hey. Daria, right?”

She looks surprised that he knows her name, and since Dean can’t exactly explain that she’s on his list of people to interview about the haunted football field, he just offers her one of his dazzling smiles designed to make the ladies forget their own names.

She seems immune to it though, just narrows her eyes at him suspiciously.

“I’m Dean. I’m new.”

“Sam’s brother, right?”

Now it’s his turn to look surprised. “You know Sam?”

“I know that when he came to my house last night to drop off some notes for my sister, he wasn’t acting like one of the pod-people.”

Huh. So sometime between last night and this morning, Sam had, what? Been turned into a teenaged girl?

The potential for teasing Sam about this for years to come is a gold mine Dean can’t wait to explore. Just as soon as he gets his brother back.

“Right, so you’re Quinn’s...cousin?”

“Something like that.”

“So, uh, did anything strange happen last night?” he asks, but Daria’s already gone, sauntering down the hall to her home room.

* * *

“And we’re positive he’s not a shapeshifter?” Dean asks again through a mouthful of pepperoni pizza.

“All the lore, all the shifters I’ve ever come across-they try to mimic their mark. Not do...whatever the hell Sam is doing.”

They’re silent for several minutes, chewing, thinking. Finally, John runs a hand through his hair and coughs. “Dean...are we sure this isn’t... how Sam wants to be?”

“What?!”

John looks miserable. “He’s been so combative recently. Maybe it’s not just the hunting. Maybe he’s going through... other issues.”

Dean rocks back in his chair. “You’re saying Sammy’s actually...?” he asks, and then blows out a breath. “Uh, I mean, not that there’s anything wro-”

John gives him a look and he shuts up. “I just want to make sure we’re actually dealing with something supernatural here.”

Dean is rescued from his contemplations of Sam hunting down a werewolf in heels and a skirt when the phone rings.

“Is this Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Dean Winchester?”

“Who’s this?”

“Daria. We talked at school today.”

“What’s going on?” he asks. Across the room, John watches him with raised eyebrows.

“I was hoping you could tell me. Your brother and Quinn and all her creepy friends are getting ready to go burn down the football field.”

* * *

Lawndale isn’t a very large suburb, and within six minutes John’s steering the old Chevy into the driveway of a large red brick house on the nicer side of town. Once he cuts the engine Dean can hear the sounds of raised voices coming from inside.

“Over my dead body, Quinn Morgendorffer!”

“But Mo-o-om!”

Dean knocks and the door is immediately opened by a tall skinny girl with black hair and piercing blue eyes.

“Popcorn?” she asks, thrusting a bowl into Dean’s hands. “You’re just in time for tonight’s entertainment.”

John ignores her and pushes into the house, calling for Sammy in his best ‘don’t fuck with me’ voice.

“So, you’re the ghost hunter?” the girl asks Dean.

“Uh, no...what?”

“Right. Well, c’mon in. I’m Jane.”

“You live here too?”

“No, just an interested bystander. I love a good arson, especially if it involves burning down school property.”

He follows Jane to the corner of the living room, where Daria is watching the drama play out with something on her face that almost resembles interest.

On the couch, Sam is seated in the middle of the four teenage girls Dean noticed this morning. A woman in a red business suit is pacing up and down, and yelling that no daughter of hers is going to become a ghost hunter.

“At least not until you graduate from college, young lady!”

“You’re going to college, Quinn?” asks one of the girls in a bored voice.

“What? Of course not, Tiffany,” Quinn says, looking shifty.

“Oh yes you are!” Mrs. Morgendorffer yells.

Dean notices with some alarm that since he last saw Sam, his old concert shirt has been replaced by a tiny blue t-shirt that shows off his belly button, and a pale blue barrette is clipped to his hair, holding it back from his face.

John orders Sam to get in the car, but Sam crosses his arms defiantly across his chest.

“And another thing!” Mrs. Morgendorffer says.

“Sam Winchester!” John yells.

“HEY!” Dean shouts as loud as he can, causing everyone to stop talking and stare at him.

He hands Jane back her popcorn and moves towards the center of the room. “I think instead of all this yelling, we need to figure out why the, uh, Fashion Club is suddenly so interested in ghosts,” he tells Mrs. Morgendorffer. “And why Sammy is suddenly so interested in fashion,” he adds, glaring at his dad as if challenging him to disagree.

John turns back to Sam. “Well? What the hell happened here last night?” he asks.

Sam shrugs. “I dunno. I just stopped by after school to give Quinn some notes she asked about for DeMartino’s class.”

“So you are going to college,” Tiffany sniffs.

“Am not!” Quinn protests.

“Girls!” John shouts. That’s when the girl on the end with the braids bursts into tears.

“I didn’t muh-muh-mean to do it,” she cries.

John sighs. “Who are you?”

“St-St-Stacy,” she chokes out around her tears. “Please don’t hu-hu-hunt me, I didn’t know!”

The story that they get from Stacy, between hysterical sobs and hiccups, is that Stacy had been afraid of Sandi was going to kick her out of the Fashion Club.

“It’s not my fault you were caught shopping at an outlet mall,” Sandi interjects.

So, when she came across an old book in her grandma’s basement that promised to help her cast a friendship spell, she decided to try it out at last night’s meeting.

“Holy shit, they mind-melded!” Dean says.

“But then Sa-Sa-Sam showed up,” Stacy wails, “and everything got messed up! And now there’s ghosts and witches and you’re going to ki-ki-kill me!”

“Nobody is killing anybody in this house, young lady,” Mrs. Morgendorffer says, giving John an icy stare.

“No,” John agrees. “No killing. But Stacy, I need to see this book of yours.”

She sniffles as she digs the grimy, battered book out of her backpack.

“Ewww,” Sam, Sandi, Tiffany, and Quinn say in unison as a cloud of dust is released from the book.

* * *

Helen Morgendorffer is not pleased to learn that a sigil needs to be drawn onto her carpet for the counter-spell, but when Dean suggests they move outside to the driveway, her eyes dart around and she reluctantly agrees.

Suburbanites, Dean thinks with an eyeroll. It’s okay if you’re kid’s been cursed by witchcraft as long as the neighbors don’t know.

After John painstakingly copies out the symbol shown in the book onto the fuzzy, pale carpeting, the Fashion Club plus Sam enters the circle, holds hands, and waits while John chants a simple reversal spell.

“How do we know if it works?” Daria wonders aloud.

Before Dean can formulate a reply, the girls begin shrieking and pulling off their hunter-wear, while Sam stands in their midst blushing so hard Dean thinks his face might actually catch on fire.

“Never mind,” Daria says.

“I can’t believe I didn’t film this,” Jane mutters.

“We need to clear out, Dean,” John says. Dean nods. Usually once the crazy settles, civilians start looking at the Winchesters with furrowed brows or start asking unanswerable questions. Better if they’re a state away by tomorrow morning.

“And you,” John tells Stacy. “No more spells!”

She bursts into tears again, which Dean guesses is as good a ‘yes’ as they’re going to get, though John confiscates her grandmother’s book for good measure.

They hurry Sam into the car while the girls are still freaking out, but not before Daria asks for Dean’s number.

“Just, um, in case Sick, Sad World comes to town again,” she adds. He smiles and slips Bobby Singer’s number to her. Just in case.

Later, as they’re packing up the car to make their getaway, Dean wonders what they’re supposed to do about the ghost of the dead football player.

John grunts. “So far, he hasn’t caused much harm. I’ll call Jim in the morning, he can take care of it.”

“Also, we should cancel Sam’s manicure before we leave.”

Sam has been hunched in the backseat of the Impala all this time, mortified. Dean is gratified to hear a small voice mutter “Fuck you, Dean.”

“I hear glitter is all the rage for nail polish these days,” Dean adds.

“Fuck you so much,” Sam swears at him. Dean expects his dad to admonish him, but John stays silent as he steers the car out of Pennsylvania.

Several miles pass in silence before Dean asks, “So, what’s a kitten heel anyway, Fashion Boy?”

When Sam bounces a full can of soda off of Dean’s head, causing Dean to jump and rub his head angrily for the next several miles, John doesn’t say a word.

spn-bigpretzel, humor, fic exchange, pre-series, fic

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