britomart_is | Fic: Such A Clean Machine, gen, PG-13

Title: Such A Clean Machine
Author:

britomart_is
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~600 of crack.
Notes: This is just me having fun. Been a while since I wrote crack, and then I had this IM conversation with my friend A. today ... and I COULD NOT RESIST. (As reassurance: this is variant A on the idea. Variant B is forthcoming, is pornier, and does not feature the same character.) This was another one of those ideas where I wondered "has anyone written that fic?" and then I couldn't find anyone who had, so I did.
So: this is NOT a fic about Dean hooking up with the hot-chick!Impala. Sorry. This is something else.

Throughout their lives, Sam's made plenty of cracks about Dean and the Impala getting a room, and really sometimes feels that Dean's love for the car is borderline inappropriate. There are these stains on the seats, see ... but that's not important.

What's important is that Sam always figured that if the Impala were a person, she'd be a really hot chick. Totally Dean's type, and looking just like the car, long and lean, glossy dark hair, enough attitude to take Dean down a peg, maybe some tattoos and leather.

So Earl is a surprise to everyone.

"Flipping heck," Earl says, blinking in disbelief.

"What the fuck?" Dean's face is tragic. Sam figures he was hoping for the hot chick, too.

Unfortunately, when they cast the spell over the macguffin to reveal its true nature, it also revealed to them that Dean's baby, his beloved, the one woman assured of his loyalty, was actually a cursed steelworker from Detroit.

Earl pats his beer gut and scratches his receding hairline as he tries to retrace his steps. The last thing he remembers, it was 1967 and he was working on the assembly line (Sam makes a note to check for Indian burial grounds beneath the factory; there's always a burial ground). Dean is appalled to realize that Earl hasn't been consciously trying to help them survive hunts. "But you drove faster! You sped up right when that fucker was about to catch us!"

"I'm not a goshdarn car," Earl says indignantly, probably still pissed that Sam said his wife was a senior citizen by now. Earl doesn't swear. He's a family man, he says.

While Earl is digging into a sloppy joe at the diner, Sam and Dean conference in the bathroom.

"Maybe we could just turn him back into the car," Dean says under his breath. The guy washing his hands a few feet away hears him anyway and gives him a look as he leaves.

"Wouldn't it be weird riding around in—uh, in him, now that we know?" Sam wants to enjoy Dean's dismay, really he does, but he's feeling a little violated himself. Because the car. The car where Sam lost his virginity. Is Earl. Sam shakes his head to clear his thoughts. "I mean, that would be morally wrong."

Dean visibly wrestles with the issue. "Maybe we could erase our memories of this?"

The question becomes moot when they hear the splintering of wood and shattering of glass, followed by the waitress starting to scream, and run out of the bathroom to find the Impala, in all her—his—gleaming glory, in the midst of the wreckage of the diner booth. The remnants of Earl's sloppy joe decorate the hood.

Dean looks at Sam. Sam looks at Dean.

For months after that, Dean catches himself when he starts to stroke the steering wheel a little too suggestively, and Sam notices that Dean isn't taking girls out to the back seat anymore. So it's not quite the same, not by a longshot. Sam could probably find a way to change Earl back permanently, but then he'd have to find Dean a new car, and they'd have to put up with Earl blustering over how in the flipping heck he got from Detroit to Arkansas, and anyway, whoever said Sam always did the morally right thing wasn't paying attention.

Still, Dean slips sometimes, if they've just gotten out of a tight spot, gunned it out of there just in time. "That's my baby," he'll purr, stroking the rooftop or the leather of the seat. "That's my girl."

Sam doesn't have the heart to remind him.