Next day – the open road

Betsy Fortnoy had never been above 45mph in her whole life. Each Sunday, at 10am, she would leave her little bungalow and drive the twenty-three miles to the neighbouring town to attend the yard sales they held there. She did this in her '98 Fiat Multipla, which shook and rattled and made her teeth ache. The car hadn't gotten to fourth gear since Bill Clinton ruined Monica's dress.

"Move!" Betsy cried, mashing the horn. "Move, for the love o'Pete!"

The car ahead stubbornly refused to accelerate. Finally, about four miles later, Betsy was able to get the mile or so she needed to coax the Multipla to actually overtake another vehicle, which it did with the air of a fourteen-year-old dog trying to jump up on a couch.

"Asshole!" she screamed as she passed.

Behind the wheel of the Impala, Jensen watched her pull away from them and settle back into her lane. He shook his head sadly. "What was her problem?" he asked. "And what is that damn rattle?"

Jared didn't look up from the map he was studying. "I think the car wants to go faster," he said absently.

"We're going plenty fast."

Jared snorted. "Disco just overtook us."

"What is the obsession with speed everyone has now?" Jensen asked rhetorically. The Impala seemed to rattle an angry response. The two men glanced at each other uneasily. The show had always intimated that the car was the third lead character, but so far as they knew, that was as far as it had gone. Then again, up until recently neither man had ever found themselves in a fictional universe…

"Maybe put on some tunes. That'll quiet her down?"

"Good idea," Jensen muttered. He reached for the radio.

"GET YO' MOTOR RUNNIN'…HEAD OUT ON THE HIGHWAY…LOOKIN' FOR ADVENTURE…" the radio instantly leapt into life.

"Ick," Jensen made a face. "I hate that mullet rock crap."

He twisted the dial.

"THE ACE OF SPADES! THE ACE OF SPADES!"

He twisted the dial again.

"HERE I AM! ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE!"

Another twist.

"I CAN'T DRIVE, 55…"

"Oh come on," Jensen said.

"What are you looking for?" Jared asked.

"I don't know, a little Adele. Maybe some Coldplay?"

The Impala spluttered and chugged below them, kangaroo-jumping like the car was running on fumes. A glance at the dial was all it took to reassure both men that, yes, the car was full of gas. Jared cleared his throat. "Y'know," he said, "Crowley did say he wanted us to be convincing, Jensen."

"Yeah, and as soon as we got an audience, you watch me go," Jensen shot back, still searching fruitlessly through the frequencies. "In the meantime, I wanna get my Ariana Grande on."

"See that's it. I've been thinking. I think we do have an audience."

"What, that crazy old bird driving the lemon?"

"No!" Jared slapped the dashboard, half in frustration and half to illustrate what he meant.

"The car?" Jensen said, looking at Jared like he was certifiable. "You think Crowley meant we have to convince the damn car?"

"Maybe," Jared shrugged, "but think about it: Sam and Dean never saw cameras and sound technicians and all the stuff we associated with the set, did they? Not in this world. Everything to them was real."

"So?"

"So maybe we're being filmed right now. We just can't see it. And if that's the case, maybe it's not just the Impala we have to convince. Maybe it's the…" and Jared waved a hand, "…the audience, I guess."

Jensen considered this. "If that's so, why didn't Crowley say any of that?"

"Because he's Crowley! He's a sneaky little Limey bastard trying to trip us up! I don't know, Jensen, it's just a damn theory! But do you really want to take the chance?"

Jensen sighed. He twisted the dial again. Mullet rock filled the car. The Impala leapt forward on the road.

"Yeah, nice touch speeding up," Jared nodded. "Much more in character."

"Uh…that…uh, that wasn't me," Jensen said, his eyes wide. He patted the dashboard experimentally, as if stroking a pet dog he wasn't completely sure wouldn't suddenly bite a few fingers off.

"I think we take the next turnoff," Jared announced eventually, folding the map in half and examining it like a gold prospector would turn over a nugget.

"You think?"

"Hey, I spend like two months a year in America. Gimme a break, would you?"

They took the next turnoff. The car was now hovering at a respectable 52mph; all of the bumps and clatters from the engine had now settled into a dull roar that, if you were feeling particularly silly, you might have said almost sounded like the contented purr of a cat.

There was an impressive amount of silence. It wasn't comfortable-being-silent-with-each-other silence, too. It was oppressive, every-tick-of-the-clock silence. The roads were so straight that barely any steering was required, so Jensen had almost as much free time as his passenger. There was a lot of clearing of throats.

"This is weird, huh," Jensen said eventually.

"Yeah."

"Being out on location like this…without about thirty crew members wandering around doing…" he shrugged, "…whatever it is most of their little jobs were. Y'know something?" he added quickly, suddenly feeling the urge to confess.

"What?"

"When we walked to the car, when we were about set off, I was looking down at my feet as I did and I couldn't think why and then I realised."

"The mark," Jared said. A tiny mark, sometimes a literal 'X', was usually placed on the set or piece of ground where the director and crew had figured out the best lighting conditions and angles for cameras existed. Part of the actor's job was to walk to the mark and stop directly on it without making it obvious they were doing so.

"Right. I was looking for my mark and I couldn't see it and it felt…weird, man. I didn't even know that's what I was looking for until it dawned on me. Then I felt like an idiot."

"I still don't think you get it," Jared said. "We're not on location, Jensen. We're actually here. This isn't some episode of the show where we ask have we any leads on the Big Bad, no we got bupkis, oh well I'm going crazy staring at these walls, let's work a case, hey I got something, hmm could just be a suicide, oh well let's check it out, driving scene, turns out to be a case after all, case turns out to have some thematic crossover with our seasonal arc, we gank the monster, sit on the hood and lie to each other about some big secret that won't be revealed until Sweeps or May, roll credits. We're not dealing with actors here. When we saw Castiel at Bobby's, that was an actual friggin' Angel of the Lord, man, not Misha Collins doing his best Christian Bale Batman voice. We can't try to make Castiel corpse on camera by fondling his balls out of shot. We are in this. We are in this up to our asses, do you understand that?"

"Alright, Jeez, I get it, I get it!" Jensen snapped. He was way more annoyed than he should have been, which only told Jared one thing: he knew he was right.

Then, something unexpected happened. Jensen chuckled, just for a moment.

"What?"

"Nothing. Nothing."

"Obviously something amused you."

"Well, I just…" Jensen wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "I dunno, I just thought, when Castiel or whoever appeared at Bobby's, were you tempted to…?"

"Let me get this straight. Are you asking if I was tempted to fondle an angel's balls?"

"No!" Jensen protested. He paused. "Okay, kinda."

"Well, no," Jared responded. He paused. "Okay, a little."

Both men laughed. The moment was gone as quickly as it had arrived, though, and the silence when it descended hit even harder than it had before.

"What happened to us?" Jensen said.

Jared had been waiting for this. He took a deep breath and let go. "Before or after you became a massive dick? Before or after you started negotiating your own convention appearance fees separately from mine? Before or after you threatened to walk unless the network reversed the order of our names on the opening credits? Before or after you tried to tell Genevieve that I had gonorrhoea and that when I did the Young McGuyver pilot I'd done so many mushrooms that the real reason the show never went to series is that I'd been fired for taking a dump in Ron Canada's shoes?"

Jensen chuckled to himself. "Ron Canada's shoes. That one was my favourite."

"Go screw yourself, Ackles."

"Oh come on, man. My agent at the time, he did the convention fee thing. When I found out I hired another guy to fire that asshat. Scout's honour. The next agent was the one pressured the network on the order of the names thing."

"So you fired him too?"

"Her. And no. Didn't have to," Jensen said bitterly, "JDM stole her right out from under me. One whiff of Watchmen and she was up his smiley badge like a rat up a drainpipe."

"Dick," Jared said, with genuine sympathy.

"I know, right?"

Jared seemed slightly mollified by this. "And the gonorrhoea and the doing mushrooms thing?" he asked. "Those your agent too?"

There was an awkward silence.

"You know," Jensen said eventually, as Cinderella reverberated through the Impala, "this mullet rock kinda grows on ya…"