Harrisburg Sheriff's Office, 30 mins later

It wasn't often that people walked through the doors of the station as happily as Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki did late that afternoon, but after the performance at the supplies shop, hell if they weren't both on Cloud Nine.

"Did you see his face?!" Jensen bubbled. "I honestly thought he was gonna have a heart attack when I grabbed him. Which, ouch by the way. Kinda hurt my thumb. Totally worth it though."

"You were great," Jared said, and was surprised to find he genuinely meant it. "Honestly. Pure Dean all the way."

"You know what's kinda weird?" Jensen said suddenly, as a thought occurred to him. "We drove the whole way over here from the shop, took like a half hour, and we waited until we walked through the doors before we freaked out and started talking about it. I mean, logically, you'd think we'd have said all this on our way to the Impala or something."

Jared considered this. "Maybe it's because that's how the show works?" he said, and off Jensen's puzzled look, he explained. "Think about it. How many times do we see Sam and Dean discover something in one place, drive across town to the next location, and then start discussing it?"

"So why are we doing it?"

Jared shrugged. "Their world, their rules, I guess?

"That's comforting," Jensen muttered darkly. He took a look at the front desk, where a female officer was beginning to eye him suspiciously. Inhaling sharply, he set his shoulders and began to walk over-

"Wait."

"Huh?"

"Let me do this one," Jared begged.

Jensen blinked. His mouth opened and closed. "Uh," he said. "You, uh, you sure?"

"Yeah. C'mon. It's no different to the store, right?"

Jensen looked at the front desk, and at Jared, and back again. "I don't know, man," he said, a kindly tone in his voice. "I mean, it's a little different, right? Back there I was just putting on a deep voice and grabbing some poor sap by his collar. This is…this is pretending to be federal officers. This is a felony, right here, acting or no acting."

"But that's just it!" Jared said triumphantly. "This isn't shooting at cans or fighting vamps or casting spells. This is acting. All I have to do is go over there and act!"

There was a pause.

"Yeahhhhhhhh," said Jensen. "You sure you don't want me to take this-?"

Jared laughed. He patted Jensen on the shoulder. "Would you relax?" he said. "I got this."

Harrisburg Sheriff's Office Jail Cell, an hour later

"Yup," Jensen said, lying on his back in the cot. "You got this."

"Hey, it happened again," Jared said weakly, from his position on the floor of the cell. "I mean, shouldn't you have said that like an hour ag-"

"Oh shut up!" Jensen snapped. He turned his back on his cellmate in disgust.

"I don't know what happened…"

"Oh you don't?! Really?!" Jensen turned back, sheer incredulity written all over his face. "At one point you were actually weeping for God's sake!"

Jared crossed his arms defensively, unable to meet the accusing glare sizzling his way from the other side of the cell. "It was part of my FBI agent's tragic backstory," he explained testily. "I was channelling my acclaimed performance from Thomas Kincaid's Christmas Cottage. You know not many people know this, Jensen-"

Jensen groaned, and covered his face with his hands. "Dear God," he said, his voice muffled. "Not the Peter O'Toole story-"

"-but Peter O'Toole actually had to tell me to stop crying after one take. Peter O'Toole, Jensen. He said to me: Jared, my boy, those tears you're crying are Thomas Kincaid's tears, not yours. He said-"

"I'm like to cry myself in a minute," Jensen muttered.

Whatever the rest of the anecdote would have been, it would have to wait: a shadow fell across the cell at that moment. Both men looked up into the darkly amused eyes of the Harrisburg Sheriff.

"Agent Bullcrap," he said, inclining his head. "Agent Ham. You're being transferred to County. Up and at 'em. C'mon. Let's go."

As he opened the cell door, Jared got to his feet. "We don't have time for this," he hissed to Jensen. "Our window to go home is shrinking. We've got to get that fang."

"Just do as the man says," Jensen snapped, clearly still irritated.

The two men were placed in handcuffs and led through the corridors of the station until they found themselves in the rear car park. The Impala was still parked where they'd left it. The Sheriff motioned toward a prisoner transport van. His Deputy was currently jumping out of the back. Despite Jensen's advice, Jared began to struggle to get loose.

"You have to listen to us!" he said. "I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother Dean! There are vampires loose in this town! We need to stop them! We…" and there was an almost audible sound as he gave up on the pretence entirely, "we don't have time for this! I have to get home to my wife! Please! I don't belong here!"

Jensen, until now silent, finally spoke up. "You're wasting your time," he said quietly.

Jared, pinned by one of the Deputy against the hood of a nearby car, looked at him with disbelief. "How can you just give up like this?" he asked. "By the time we're done rotting in County-"

"Jared, did you ever actually watch the damn show?"

"What? What do you-?"

"We're not going to County," Jensen said. He looked from the Sheriff to the Deputy. "Are we, boys?"

Vampire teeth slid into view from the two lawmen. The Sheriff was grinning widely behind those chompers. "Well," he said, shrugging, "County Nest, if it's any consolation. Hell, we already got us an Elementary School class full o'kids stashed in there, but you two are welcome to be the cherry on top. We'll be chowing down on you folks til Hanukkah."

"Eve wants us alive!" Jared burst out.

"Oh, fan-friggin'-tastic, Sam," Jensen spat. "Attract the Big Bad's attention. This could have been a standalone filler vamp episode and you just made it part of the arc plot."

"What the hell are you two talkin' about?" the Sheriff demanded. He spun Jensen around to face him as he fired the questions. "Episode? Arc plot? And what's this show you keep bringin' up?"

Jensen faced him. "It's a little show called Supernatural," he said. "Started out as not much more than two unfeasibly handsome dudes battling urban legends in a cool car to some rockin' tunes. But that little show, it beat the odds, and it grew. Got some kickass fans who just wouldn't let it die, so those two brothers, they went on to battle demons and angels. They even slammed the Devil himself back to Hell and saved the world. It's a show where blood don't necessarily mean family, but family don't necessarily stop with blood, where you can count on good winning – sort of, eventually, at a cost sure, but it wins. It's a show where when people are being taken to County, they're never really being taken to County. And it's a show where it's this easy-"

And he held up his hands, currently free and unencumbered.

"-to slip a pair of handcuffs."

The Sheriff's eyes widened as he took this in, and just for a moment, everyone seemed to freeze in place. Everyone, that is, except Jensen 'Mad Dog' Ackles, who barrelled full-tilt into the Sheriff and Deputy, knocking them flying to the ground. Grabbing a set of keys off the now-prone Sheriff's belt, Jensen stopped for a second to unlock Jared's handcuffs.

By that stage both vamps had gotten over their shock and were already advancing. "The Impala!" Jared shouted. Before they could get to it the Sheriff and Deputy lunged at them but, somehow, they managed to avoid the flying bodies and reach the car.

"Keys?!"

"In there!" Jared said helplessly, pointing to the Sheriff's office.

The vamps were closing.

"Dammit!" Jensen pounded his fist on the trunk…which obligingly, and against all good sense and logic, popped upon. He spared a second to shoot a disbelieving look at his co-star, and then both men grabbed for the machetes stored with the rest of the weapons. Turning with a machete in hand apiece, they faced the two approaching vamps side-by-side.

"I'm sorry, man," Jensen said. "For the credits thing, for the conventions, for the mushrooms story. For everything. It's all been my fault."

"No, it hasn't-"

"Yes it has."

"I bribed the judges so you wouldn't get the Teen Choice Award," Jared admitted.

"We're gonna talk about that after," Jensen promised, and then he was fighting for his life.

He'd been hoping that some of that weird osmosis this universe seemed to possess would carry over into the fight. In six seasons of Supernatural he'd lost count of the amount of fights he'd been in; at least a hundred, at a conservative estimate. Yeah, his stunt doubles handled a decent percentage of the rough stuff but he pitched in, kept himself in shape, threw himself around. That had to count for something, right? That had to give him a chance?

Turns out, no.

Sheriff Vamp was strong. And fast. Even as he was losing the fight, his mind flashed to the old rule about monsters on long-staying shows and how in their first appearance they'd generally be quite powerful and then, as time wore on, they'd slowly lose that power and new monsters would have to be invented. He'd seen it with demons, with angels, with vamps and werewolves on the show; the writer's room was already talking about bringing in some entirely new strain of monster for season seven.

This guy seemed not to have gotten the memo.

He ducked under Jensen's clumsy swings with ease. He was enjoying himself, Jensen realised. He was toying with him. Oh God, I'm going to die. How's that for convincing, Crowley?

Jared wasn't doing any better. He was sprawled on the deck, flat on his back, the Deputy kneeling on his chest painfully. "You? You're meant to be Sam Winchester?" the deputy snarled, and Jared realised with a rolling swell of nausea that he could smell the blood on the vamp's breath from his last meal. "The famous Hunter? The guy who stopped Lucifer? The legend? I'm supposed to believe that's you?"

The vamp laughed. "You were more convincing when you were sobbin' at the front desk about your dead grandma," he said.

Jared's eyes flashed. And just like that, the vampire's effortless control of his quarry started to wobble a little. The man below him seemed to draw reserves of strength from hitherto unknown quarters. The vamp found his hands getting pushed back.

"PETER…O…TOOLE!" Jared Padalecki roared, throwing the vampire off of him. He grabbed the machete that had fallen beside him. The vampire had sprung to its feet. It hissed, ready to put this momentary setback behind it and finish the job of feeding on this annoying meat until it had nothing left to give.

It sprang.

The machete moved through the night.

There was a spray of blood, and as the vampire hit the ground, it felt a strange sensation spreading downward from its neck; gravity, in point of fact. The severed vampire head hit the deck, dead before impact, both pieces falling to either side of Jared, standing perfectly framed in the moonlight with a bloodied machete.

"Thomas Kincaid says hello, bitch!"

Unaware of what was happening behind him, the Sheriff was advancing on Jensen, who he'd disarmed with a quick combination of punches that had rocked the actor-slash-Hunter back on his heels. "Before I gut you," he said conversationally, "I gotta know: how'd you figure it out that we weren't taking you to County?"

"I told you," Jensen said woozily, trying to stay on his feet, "it's all in the show."

"Right, right," the Sheriff nodded. "Any other tips, Truman?"

Jensen managed to smile. "Just that when you're a run-of-the-mill, villain-of-the-week like you, and you got one of the Winchester brothers cornered, it's best to take your shot early, before-"

Swish.

The Sheriff's surprised, dead head came to a rolling stop at Jensen's feet.

"-that happens," Jensen finished, and then with the requisite badassery of the one-liner put to bed, he seemed to clock what he was actually seeing, and he promptly threw up.

Covered in sweat and vampire blood, Jared stood over the body of his second dead vampire, panting with exertion and exhilaration in equal measure. "Not bad, huh?" he asked proudly.

Jensen responded by throwing up some more.

Jared sighed. "Everyone's a critic."