FIC: Less Logical Than a Lot of Things (J2/CW RPF, PG-13, 1860 words)
Title: Less Logical Than a Lot of Things
Fandom: J2/CW RPF (Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble)
Rating: PG-13ish for strong language?
Summary: This is exactly what they mean when they say not to bring work home with you.
Written for: The inaugural prompt, the body swap.
Many thanks to: layangabi for her awesome on-the-fly beta.
* * *
Jared was a sprawler, not a faceplanter: he should have known something was up when he came to on his stomach.
The alarm bells really should have gone off when his hair wasn’t in his face, but it took scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes to notice that the hands he was using weren’t actually his hands. He startled so badly he toppled right off the bed, sheets and all. Wedged between the mattress and the wall, he stared in increasing horror at not his forearms, not his boxers, not his knees, not his feet. His hair was shorter than it had been since high school. He was shorter than he’d been since high school. Terror-stricken, Jared stumbled into the bathroom, gaped at his new reflection and screamed.
A phone rang. Jared stopped screaming. He recognized that ring tone: he’d snuck in and reprogrammed it only yesterday morning. The tune continued, oblivious to his mounting horror. He rifled frantically through heaps of unfamiliar clothes and personal effects: “Under the Sea” blared shrilly and mercilessly on. “Come on!” he snapped, and that freaked him out even more, until he realized the cell had vibrated off a dresser and onto a nearby pile of jeans. Jared dove, fumbled it, and barely emerged triumphant before the voicemail picked up. “OhmygodJensenwhatthefuckingfuck, man, pleasetellmethisisn’tjusthappeningtomeIhavenofuckingideawhat’sgoingonandit’sreallyfreakingmeout, man-hello?” He frowned. “That is you, right?”
He stood listening to the sound of his own heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
“Dude,” said Jensen, “that was disturbing. I never want to hear my voice do that ever again.”
*
Objectively, Jared knew he was capable of filling a doorway. In the course of his life plenty of people had informed him that he did. It took seeing himself slouching there glaring down at him to fully appreciate the truth in those words.
“I need my toothbrush,” Jensen announced, shouldering inside with his hands jammed deep in his pockets.
“What?”
“My toothbrush! My mouth tastes like ass and I’m not gonna use yours, Jumbo. By the way, what were you eating last night?”
“Whoa, whoa whoa, hang on.” Jared inserted himself between Jensen and the bathroom. “That’s really the first thing you want to address here?”
Jared twitched as his face did Jensen’s angry-snarky ducky lips. “Considering your dogs wouldn’t let me within ten feet of, let’s see, anything and I only barely escaped your place with my life, yeah, I’d say let’s just start small and work our way up to the bigger what-the-fucks.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. Harley and Sadie love you!”
“Yeah? Not when I’m freaking skinwalking you, they don’t!”
Jared wrinkled his nose. “Okay, I was less grossed out before you put it like that.”
Jensen seemed to have forgotten about his pressing need to brush his teeth in the face of his more pressing need to pace. “Obviously someone thinks this is real funny. This didn’t just happen, these things don’t just happen.”
Jared blinked. “Somebody did this to us?”
“It’s not like getting a boner, dude. It can’t be! It’s not logical.”
“Boners aren’t always logical-”
“Stop.” Jensen held up a hand. Jared continued to be completely disoriented by looking up at himself. “Okay,” said Jensen. “Okay, let’s think. Who would benefit from seeing us bodyswapped?”
“How is it that you’re going all Sherlock Holmes on this?”
Jensen glared briefly. “It’s a coping mechanism. And we do it for a living. You gonna make me do all the work here or are you gonna help?”
“We don’t do it for a living, we act it for a living.”
“Good enough for me.”
Jared furrowed his brow, eyes drifting to the empty spot just beyond Jensen’s elbow. “Is there a writer that keeps floating a bodyswap episode?”
“Kripke keeps saying he won’t. He doesn’t like it.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“You’re-doing the Dean voice.”
“I am not, I’m just tired! I get gravelly.”
“It’s freaking me out.”
“Oh, is that all that’s the matter?”
“I just wish you weren’t taking this so well, that’s all.”
Jensen scowled. “Why’d you ask about the writers? They’re not in Vancouver.”
“I don’t know. Should that matter? Makes more sense than some random passerby.”
Jensen spread his hands. “There are weird people on the internet.”
“Do you really want to consider all the possibilities, if that’s what it is?”
“Point.” Jensen began pacing again. “You know what we need? We need to talk to Kripke. You got a webcam?”
Jared felt himself flush a little. “Uh…” He did, in fact, have a webcam. So did Sandy. They were built in on their monitors. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen the new laptop in the first place.
Jensen stood there, making a perfect Jensen face with the wrong set of features. “Come on, eyes up front. You want to end this or not?”
Jared considered his options and hustled to go unearth the computer.
*
“Come on, come on, be there,” Jensen muttered, missing keys as he typed too fast. Jared hovered over his shoulder, knitting his brows together. The chat window flickered onscreen, for a moment dim and slow-moving, then resolved itself into a video image.
“Jared!” said Kripke, much too chipper for this hour of the morning. “Hey, Jensen, what’s up? It’s your day off, what’re you doing?”
Jensen leaned close to the camera. “Eric, we got a problem.”
Jared shouldered him aside. “Yeah, man, we both woke up not ourselves. I mean like really, not ourselves. You gotta believe us, I’m Jared, that’s Jensen, and even though he’s taking this better than me, which I’m not even going to ask about, this is really freaking us both out a hell of a lot, so - can you do anything about it?”
Kripke stared, vaguely slack-jawed, out of the computer screen. “Whoa. Don’t stop there, guys, that was actually pretty good.”
“No! It’s not-” Jensen pressed his fingers against his temple. “You think we’re gonna prank you at 9 on a Saturday? This is real!”
Kripke searched blindly for a button somewhere on his end. “You mind if I record this? Someone in the room’s always trying to pitch the bodyswap, but you just might be selling me here.”
“Look.” Jared reached out and turned the laptop toward himself. “What do we have to do to convince you we’re not making this up?”
“Is this a network thing?” Jensen asked, utterly serious. Both Jared and Kripke fixed him with identical puzzled looks.
“The hell does that mean?” said Kripke.
“I did a year on Smallville, man. You do not want to know what they get up to with those guys.”
“What are you talking about?” Jared asked in an undertone.
Jensen glanced sideways for a moment. “They made us sign nondisclosure agreements. Suffice it to say they put a lot of FX guys out of work over there.”
“Are you telling me out of all the people in the world, Tom Welling is the one they give superpowers to?”
“That’s crazy,” said Kripke. “Interesting crazy, but maybe too X-Files for us. We want to keep the storylines simple.”
Jared resisted the urge to shake the computer. “Who’s pitching you a bodyswap episode?”
“Yeah, and how soon can we get this fixed? I’m already covered in bruises from running into things. Jared, your body sucks.”
“Can we focus here?”
“Fine.” Jensen leaned forward. “I swear to God, Kripke, if you know anything about this, you should tell us now, or Sam really will be bald when we go back to film.”
Kripke rubs his chin. “Can we go back a second, actually? I’m liking this dynamic more than it was in my head. Can you do that bickering again as Sam and Dean?”
Jared and Jensen exchanged looks. “I don’t think he knows,” said Jared.
Jensen thinned his lips. “Great. Fine. We’ll just go figure it out ourselves.”
“Wait, guys-!”
Jensen closed out the chat window and shut the laptop. He pressed a knuckle to his mouth briefly, then looked over at Jared. “What the hell are we gonna do?”
Jared shifted uncomfortably where he was slouching. “Whatever it is, I am not running full tilt into you like Freaky Friday.”
“Yeah, that definitely would have ended well.” Jensen pushed back the masses of unruly brown hair falling over his eyes. “Man, this sucks out loud.”
“Do we even know what that means?”
“We do now.”
Jared snorted.
Then: “Were you actually threatening him with shaving my head?”
“Why, Rapunzel, would that be inconvenient for you?”
“Oh, bite me.”
Jensen examines his arm. “I could, you know.”
“Dude! You’re not going to actually-!”
“Calm down! Of course not. When I find out how this happened, though…” He trailed off with a fist in his palm. Jared couldn’t tell if he was just channeling Dean or what, but the whole proposition made him distinctly uneasy.
“You think maybe whatever did it happened on set?” he tried.
“If we’re going by fucked-up logic, then yeah, I don’t see why not. Man.” His expression became pained. “It’s our day off!”
“Come on.” Jared stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “The sooner we figure this one out, the sooner we can plot revenge.”
Jensen blinked. “You think maybe it was Kim?”
“Executive producer? I wouldn’t put it past him.”
If the casting director could have seen the identical looks of determination molding their faces, he would have wept for joy and poured himself a victory Scotch.
*
“Sera! Are you getting the same calls I’m getting?”
Sera pressed the phone against her shoulder so she could yawn and rub the sleep from her eyes. “Hey, Eric. What calls?”
“Dude! Jared and Jensen are on the set doing this total method thing, and everybody says it’s amazing! Granted, they’re also saying they spend way too much time together, to get each other that right without breaking, but you know, that would be a good thing for us, right?”
She stood in her kitchen, staring down at the remains of last night’s dishes. “Eric, what the hell are you talking about?”
“The bodyswap thing. You’ve been trying to get me onboard with that forever. We know the fans want it - maybe it would be a good idea.”
“Wait a minute… Are you telling me they’re on set, acting like each other?”
“Well, they’re claiming that they are each other, but you know those guys, they’re jokers. They had me going for a minute, though. I’ve got video of it too! Great stuff. Hey, listen, I know you’ve got stuff lying around. You want to show me a treatment Monday morning for something next season?”
Sera didn’t smirk. She didn’t quite grin either. “I can do that.”
“Awesome! I-oh, hey, hang on.” Kripke paused. “Uh, I think I may have to take this call. Apparently Props has been freaking out a little. Kim told me the guys keep trying to break in.”
“No worries,” she said blithely, and flipped the phone shut.
It really shouldn’t have been that easy. Looked like she owed her Smallville mole a round next time she was in Vancouver. Who knew?
Fandom: J2/CW RPF (Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble)
Rating: PG-13ish for strong language?
Summary: This is exactly what they mean when they say not to bring work home with you.
Written for: The inaugural prompt, the body swap.
Many thanks to: layangabi for her awesome on-the-fly beta.
* * *
Jared was a sprawler, not a faceplanter: he should have known something was up when he came to on his stomach.
The alarm bells really should have gone off when his hair wasn’t in his face, but it took scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes to notice that the hands he was using weren’t actually his hands. He startled so badly he toppled right off the bed, sheets and all. Wedged between the mattress and the wall, he stared in increasing horror at not his forearms, not his boxers, not his knees, not his feet. His hair was shorter than it had been since high school. He was shorter than he’d been since high school. Terror-stricken, Jared stumbled into the bathroom, gaped at his new reflection and screamed.
A phone rang. Jared stopped screaming. He recognized that ring tone: he’d snuck in and reprogrammed it only yesterday morning. The tune continued, oblivious to his mounting horror. He rifled frantically through heaps of unfamiliar clothes and personal effects: “Under the Sea” blared shrilly and mercilessly on. “Come on!” he snapped, and that freaked him out even more, until he realized the cell had vibrated off a dresser and onto a nearby pile of jeans. Jared dove, fumbled it, and barely emerged triumphant before the voicemail picked up. “OhmygodJensenwhatthefuckingfuck, man, pleasetellmethisisn’tjusthappeningtomeIhavenofuckingideawhat’sgoingonandit’sreallyfreakingmeout, man-hello?” He frowned. “That is you, right?”
He stood listening to the sound of his own heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
“Dude,” said Jensen, “that was disturbing. I never want to hear my voice do that ever again.”
*
Objectively, Jared knew he was capable of filling a doorway. In the course of his life plenty of people had informed him that he did. It took seeing himself slouching there glaring down at him to fully appreciate the truth in those words.
“I need my toothbrush,” Jensen announced, shouldering inside with his hands jammed deep in his pockets.
“What?”
“My toothbrush! My mouth tastes like ass and I’m not gonna use yours, Jumbo. By the way, what were you eating last night?”
“Whoa, whoa whoa, hang on.” Jared inserted himself between Jensen and the bathroom. “That’s really the first thing you want to address here?”
Jared twitched as his face did Jensen’s angry-snarky ducky lips. “Considering your dogs wouldn’t let me within ten feet of, let’s see, anything and I only barely escaped your place with my life, yeah, I’d say let’s just start small and work our way up to the bigger what-the-fucks.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. Harley and Sadie love you!”
“Yeah? Not when I’m freaking skinwalking you, they don’t!”
Jared wrinkled his nose. “Okay, I was less grossed out before you put it like that.”
Jensen seemed to have forgotten about his pressing need to brush his teeth in the face of his more pressing need to pace. “Obviously someone thinks this is real funny. This didn’t just happen, these things don’t just happen.”
Jared blinked. “Somebody did this to us?”
“It’s not like getting a boner, dude. It can’t be! It’s not logical.”
“Boners aren’t always logical-”
“Stop.” Jensen held up a hand. Jared continued to be completely disoriented by looking up at himself. “Okay,” said Jensen. “Okay, let’s think. Who would benefit from seeing us bodyswapped?”
“How is it that you’re going all Sherlock Holmes on this?”
Jensen glared briefly. “It’s a coping mechanism. And we do it for a living. You gonna make me do all the work here or are you gonna help?”
“We don’t do it for a living, we act it for a living.”
“Good enough for me.”
Jared furrowed his brow, eyes drifting to the empty spot just beyond Jensen’s elbow. “Is there a writer that keeps floating a bodyswap episode?”
“Kripke keeps saying he won’t. He doesn’t like it.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“You’re-doing the Dean voice.”
“I am not, I’m just tired! I get gravelly.”
“It’s freaking me out.”
“Oh, is that all that’s the matter?”
“I just wish you weren’t taking this so well, that’s all.”
Jensen scowled. “Why’d you ask about the writers? They’re not in Vancouver.”
“I don’t know. Should that matter? Makes more sense than some random passerby.”
Jensen spread his hands. “There are weird people on the internet.”
“Do you really want to consider all the possibilities, if that’s what it is?”
“Point.” Jensen began pacing again. “You know what we need? We need to talk to Kripke. You got a webcam?”
Jared felt himself flush a little. “Uh…” He did, in fact, have a webcam. So did Sandy. They were built in on their monitors. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen the new laptop in the first place.
Jensen stood there, making a perfect Jensen face with the wrong set of features. “Come on, eyes up front. You want to end this or not?”
Jared considered his options and hustled to go unearth the computer.
*
“Come on, come on, be there,” Jensen muttered, missing keys as he typed too fast. Jared hovered over his shoulder, knitting his brows together. The chat window flickered onscreen, for a moment dim and slow-moving, then resolved itself into a video image.
“Jared!” said Kripke, much too chipper for this hour of the morning. “Hey, Jensen, what’s up? It’s your day off, what’re you doing?”
Jensen leaned close to the camera. “Eric, we got a problem.”
Jared shouldered him aside. “Yeah, man, we both woke up not ourselves. I mean like really, not ourselves. You gotta believe us, I’m Jared, that’s Jensen, and even though he’s taking this better than me, which I’m not even going to ask about, this is really freaking us both out a hell of a lot, so - can you do anything about it?”
Kripke stared, vaguely slack-jawed, out of the computer screen. “Whoa. Don’t stop there, guys, that was actually pretty good.”
“No! It’s not-” Jensen pressed his fingers against his temple. “You think we’re gonna prank you at 9 on a Saturday? This is real!”
Kripke searched blindly for a button somewhere on his end. “You mind if I record this? Someone in the room’s always trying to pitch the bodyswap, but you just might be selling me here.”
“Look.” Jared reached out and turned the laptop toward himself. “What do we have to do to convince you we’re not making this up?”
“Is this a network thing?” Jensen asked, utterly serious. Both Jared and Kripke fixed him with identical puzzled looks.
“The hell does that mean?” said Kripke.
“I did a year on Smallville, man. You do not want to know what they get up to with those guys.”
“What are you talking about?” Jared asked in an undertone.
Jensen glanced sideways for a moment. “They made us sign nondisclosure agreements. Suffice it to say they put a lot of FX guys out of work over there.”
“Are you telling me out of all the people in the world, Tom Welling is the one they give superpowers to?”
“That’s crazy,” said Kripke. “Interesting crazy, but maybe too X-Files for us. We want to keep the storylines simple.”
Jared resisted the urge to shake the computer. “Who’s pitching you a bodyswap episode?”
“Yeah, and how soon can we get this fixed? I’m already covered in bruises from running into things. Jared, your body sucks.”
“Can we focus here?”
“Fine.” Jensen leaned forward. “I swear to God, Kripke, if you know anything about this, you should tell us now, or Sam really will be bald when we go back to film.”
Kripke rubs his chin. “Can we go back a second, actually? I’m liking this dynamic more than it was in my head. Can you do that bickering again as Sam and Dean?”
Jared and Jensen exchanged looks. “I don’t think he knows,” said Jared.
Jensen thinned his lips. “Great. Fine. We’ll just go figure it out ourselves.”
“Wait, guys-!”
Jensen closed out the chat window and shut the laptop. He pressed a knuckle to his mouth briefly, then looked over at Jared. “What the hell are we gonna do?”
Jared shifted uncomfortably where he was slouching. “Whatever it is, I am not running full tilt into you like Freaky Friday.”
“Yeah, that definitely would have ended well.” Jensen pushed back the masses of unruly brown hair falling over his eyes. “Man, this sucks out loud.”
“Do we even know what that means?”
“We do now.”
Jared snorted.
Then: “Were you actually threatening him with shaving my head?”
“Why, Rapunzel, would that be inconvenient for you?”
“Oh, bite me.”
Jensen examines his arm. “I could, you know.”
“Dude! You’re not going to actually-!”
“Calm down! Of course not. When I find out how this happened, though…” He trailed off with a fist in his palm. Jared couldn’t tell if he was just channeling Dean or what, but the whole proposition made him distinctly uneasy.
“You think maybe whatever did it happened on set?” he tried.
“If we’re going by fucked-up logic, then yeah, I don’t see why not. Man.” His expression became pained. “It’s our day off!”
“Come on.” Jared stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “The sooner we figure this one out, the sooner we can plot revenge.”
Jensen blinked. “You think maybe it was Kim?”
“Executive producer? I wouldn’t put it past him.”
If the casting director could have seen the identical looks of determination molding their faces, he would have wept for joy and poured himself a victory Scotch.
*
“Sera! Are you getting the same calls I’m getting?”
Sera pressed the phone against her shoulder so she could yawn and rub the sleep from her eyes. “Hey, Eric. What calls?”
“Dude! Jared and Jensen are on the set doing this total method thing, and everybody says it’s amazing! Granted, they’re also saying they spend way too much time together, to get each other that right without breaking, but you know, that would be a good thing for us, right?”
She stood in her kitchen, staring down at the remains of last night’s dishes. “Eric, what the hell are you talking about?”
“The bodyswap thing. You’ve been trying to get me onboard with that forever. We know the fans want it - maybe it would be a good idea.”
“Wait a minute… Are you telling me they’re on set, acting like each other?”
“Well, they’re claiming that they are each other, but you know those guys, they’re jokers. They had me going for a minute, though. I’ve got video of it too! Great stuff. Hey, listen, I know you’ve got stuff lying around. You want to show me a treatment Monday morning for something next season?”
Sera didn’t smirk. She didn’t quite grin either. “I can do that.”
“Awesome! I-oh, hey, hang on.” Kripke paused. “Uh, I think I may have to take this call. Apparently Props has been freaking out a little. Kim told me the guys keep trying to break in.”
“No worries,” she said blithely, and flipped the phone shut.
It really shouldn’t have been that easy. Looked like she owed her Smallville mole a round next time she was in Vancouver. Who knew?