Chapter Text
(inspired by this post)
The lights flickered, flickered again, went out. Around the table, there was a ragged chorus of swearing, and then the lights came back on, flaring white enough to make everyone shield their eyes for a moment. It was actually a little nauseating. When the lights were finally back to normal (if anything that went on in this writers room could be called normal), the air over the table rippled like a heat mirage. Singer blinked once, slowly, but the ripple was gone when he opened his eyes.
He looked around the table. Everybody had a sort of stunned look, which, what had he been saying to warrant that? He couldn’t really remember. Unease tickled at the back of his neck.
“Okay,” he said, “Where were we?” Robbie blinked a couple of times.
“Uh. Dean and Cas trapped in a Canadian shack while a blizzard rages, I think.” That was Berens. It was his script.
“Oh, right, right,” Singer mumbled. “I’m not sure about that, actually,” he said. And waited, because he knew what was coming.
“The No Homo Intern said it was fine!” Jeremy said, perfectly on cue. Heads bobbed up and down all around the table, accompanied by wide-eyed, earnest looks. Singer sighed. Every damn time, seriously?
There was a perfunctory tap on the door and Janet, Carver’s assistant, stuck her head in the room. “Boss,” she said, “Whoa, when did you get here?”
Singer tried to remember if he was Boss and Jeremy was Chief, or if it was the other way around. Jeremy didn’t say anything, just lifted his eyebrows at Singer. So, Boss.
“I’ve been here the whole time,” he said. “What’s up?”
Janet’s fingernails drummed on the doorknob a couple of times, and then she shook her head. “Musta been at lunch,” she mumbled, eyes closed. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
“There’s a... discussion on set and they need an opinion,” she said.
Singer sighed. Again.
“Fine,” he said, pushing back from the table. So did Jeremy. “Come on, Adam,” Singer said. It’s your episode.” Glass grumbled a bit and got up. As he gathered the pens and paperclips and rubber bands that somehow always ended up on the table in front of him, Singer turned back to Janet.
“Studio or location?” he said.
“Studio.”
“All right, tell them we’ll be on the set in ten minutes.”
Janet’s eyebrows flew up into her bangs, and the unease from before crawled down between Singer’s shoulderblades.
“Boss, you just got here,” she said. “And ten minutes, that’s a good one, because I can’t even get tickets to Vancouver arranged in ten minutes.” Her voice sounded a little too careful, her eyes looked a little too wide.
“Van... couver?” Jeremy said, cutting a wall-eyed look at Singer. “Why would we be going to Vancouver?”
“Because that’s where they’re filming?” Janet said, even more carefully.
Everybody in the room sucked in an audible breath. Pencils and paperclips pattered as they hit the floor, and somebody’s coffee cup clunked on the table. Robbie’s, judging from the creative swearing that followed.
Singer turned back to the table. They all had the same gobsmacked expression he felt on his own face.
“Ohhhhhhh, boy,” Robbie said softly. “Chief, I have a feeling we are very, very fucked.”
Singer walked, stiff-legged, over to the window and pulled up the blind. He saw, not the little park across the street from the office, but what seemed to be the main Warner Brothers campus in Burbank.
“Well, shit,” he said.