i'm in emotional purgatory...

The queens engaged in some polite applause for the sergeant, causing the newcomer to smile widely at them revealing endearing little forehead wrinkles and crinkles at the corners of his eyes that gave away the fact that the drill instructor probably smiled quite a lot.

“Ladies,” The guest acknowledged, not even faltering with the title or blinking at the little sigh that came out of Kim when the queen on Holly’s other side heard the legitimate deep Southern drawl of the judge’s voice. “I’m here today to make you sweat.”

“Yes, please,” Tasha said loud enough to earn a bark of laughter turned cough from Sam who was standing with Zeke off to the side.

“Sergeant Lafitte,” Gabby began, putting a hand on the other man’s bicep only to pause for a moment to squeeze the muscle with an appreciative little moue. “May I call you The Bear?”

“You can call me Benny, sugar,” the drill instructor replied with a wink, earning a laugh/cough from Zeke this time and a scowl from Sam.

“Ooh, well Benny then,” Gabby continued, fanning himself dramatically with his free hand as he turned back to the queens. “Will be putting you through your paces at booty camp and the rules for this challenge are simple, last queen standing wins a special advantage for this week’s runway.”

There were excited titters amongst the queens, again all for the cameras because by this point all of the contestants knew what the stakes of the mini-challenges were, but half of drag was acting so they made it look good.

“Well, alrighty-then,” Gabby bubbled for the camera. “Have at ‘em, Benny-Bear.”

The sergeant smiled again at the host before doing a crisp turn on his heel to face the contestants. Gabby started to swan over towards Sam and Zeke, off camera but close enough to get reaction shots should something outrageous happen.

“Ten-Hut, ladies!” Benny shouted, crossing his arms over his chest as he inspected the queens in front of him for a long moment. “We’re starting with jumping jacks girls, assume the position.”

“I’ll assume your position,” Dianne offered with a flirty wink at the drill sergeant.

“You’d probably assume right,” Benny fired back with a wink of his own as he paced in front of the row of contestants. “Now start jumping.”

Now Holly had a lot of experience dancing and struttin’ and shaking her ass off in heels, but she’d never bothered trying to do a jumping jack and it was honestly much harder than she’d thought it would be. Within a minute she was sweating and desperately wishing she had swiped some anti-perspirant across her hairline before starting.

“I don’t know but I been told,” Benny sing-songed in time to the queens’ measured pace, gesturing for them to repeat it when they just kept jumping and panting. “But drag queen shade is mighty cold.”

Kim laughed as they all repeated the sergeant's words and Holly resented the younger queen for having caught her breath enough to do that.

“Okay, now switch to push ups,” Benny instructed, stopping to demonstrate the exercise when Dianne claimed to not know what it was. Holly took the opportunity to mop up her face with the neckline of her tank top while the other queens admired Benny’s….*ahem* form.

“Got it, sweetheart?” Benny asked Dianne who was fanning herself as she watched the other man get back on his feet and earning an enthusiastic nod in reply. “Great, now drop and give me fifty!”

“Fucking fifty?” Holly heard Tasha mutter under her breath and Holly really couldn’t agree more.

They were about twenty push ups in when Benny’s combat boots stomped quickly out of Holly’s eyeline to the other end of the workroom.

“Eva Destruction, you’re out,” Benny’s voice declared to the room at large.

“Whatever,” Holly heard Eva reply bitterly. “I’m too old for this shit.”

Pull ups knocked out Tasha Salad (“I ain’t winning nothing with these skinny chicken arms, baby.”) and Dianne Tawank kicked off her heels during high-knee running in place (“I’d rather just watch the show, darling.”) which just left Holly Cummunion and Kim Chi battling it out once Benny instructed the queens to start doing sit ups.

“Alright ladies,” Gabby called from across the workroom. “This will decide who gets this week’s special advantage so you better werk!”

Holly let out a sigh of relief as her overheated skin hit the cool surface of the workroom’s concrete floor; in fact she was pretty sure she had never been more satisfied with being on her back than at that very moment.

“We're doing sit ups till one of you cries uncle, ladies,” Benny declared, planting himself firmly in front of the spot that Holly and Kim had lain down to do their sit ups. Which was conveniently right where the cameras could get a wide shot of almost the entire workroom.

“Well I’d prefer to call you daddy, but uncle works too I guess,” Kim quipped brightly, surprising a laugh out of Holly even as they started in on their sit ups with Benny counting them off. The younger queen really had the whole pretty and charmingly dumb act down pat.

It didn’t take long before Holly’s abs started burning. Like, she’d already been sweaty and out of breath before she and Kim had started their showdown, but now her arms were trembling and she was genuinely struggling to keep pace with the other queen as she plowed through sit ups like it was nothing. Holly started making what she was sure were supremely unattractive little grunts every time she reached the apex of a sit up and her sweat band wasn’t doing much to keep her eyes from burning; probably melting her eyeliner right off her face.

Holly could feel herself starting to slow down even before she saw Benny’s focus shift towards her faltering sit ups and it wasn’t less than five reps later that the drill sergeant was barking out that Kim Chi was the winner of the week’s mini-challenge.

“I’d say ‘fuck me’,” Holly drawled as one of the cameras zoomed in to catch the panting puddle she had collapsed back into on the floor while Kim popped up and did a little victory shimmy. “But I don’t think I’d survive it at this point.”

Holly heard a familiar chuckle above her and looked up to see Sam offering her a hand up off the floor while the cameras trickled away to get shots from the other queens as they mopped themselves up before Gabby gave them further instructions for tomorrow’s runway challenge.

“You did good, man,” Sam said quietly, giving Holly a slap on the back once the queen had been hauled to her feet by the taller man. “I probably couldn’t have done all of that in heels.”

“Sure you could’ve,” Holly replied, taking a hand towel offered to her by one of the PAs, Naomi. (Christ, she must look a sight if Naomi was being nice.) “We just would’ve had to glue them to your feet, it's the only way to learn.”

Sam laughed again and shook a finger at Holly before starting back to his spot next to Gabby that the Pit Crew usually occupied anytime the host was in the workroom. “You remember you said that, Cas.”

Holly frowned in confusion, but shrugged off Sam’s comment quickly; she had to, Gabby was gently shooing the other queens into a straight line and Holly had to rush over to join them.

“Okay, my lovelies,” Gabby said, smiling beatifically as he addressed the assembled queens. “Now that you’ve all thoroughly stretched, it's time to talk about this week’s runway challenge. And Kimmie dear since you won this week's mini-challenge you get an extra scrumptious advantage.”

Kim gave an excited little bounce from her place in line and even Holly’s heart melted a little bit. America was going to love that brilliant little twit when this shit aired.

“Now, Sergeant Lafitte--oh! I’m sorry, Benny,” Gabby continued, winking slyly at the sergeant who was standing at his side in parade rest. “Has brought some friends with him to help you girls with the runway challenge this week. You want to call them in, Benny-bear?”

“Sure, darling,” Benny replied with a dazzling grin at the host that caused Sam to roll his eyes; Holly was pretty sure the cameras didn’t catch that little drama though. The drill sergeant raised his voice and directed it towards the workroom’s double door. “Gentlemen! Forward march!”

The queens all jumped at Benny’s first barked order and Tasha even started to take a hesitant step forward before the double doors swung open to admit a line of five men marching sharply in sync to stand in a mirroring line across from the queens. The men were all wearing t-shirts that sported the names of the different branches of the military, camouflage pants, and combat boots.

And honestly, in Holly’s opinion, they were a pretty tragic looking bunch.

Two of them were at least her age if not older, one looked like he had just come down out of the mountains for the first time in years, and the remaining two looked like they were barely out of high school. The former three men had severe expressions on their faces and the latter two looked disgustingly eager to please. Holly did know which would be worse to work with.

She also had the slightly disturbing thought that if these men really were military like Gabby was obviously hinting then America was in trouble for sure.

However, she couldn’t dwell on it for too long because Gabby was addressing the room again and if she didn’t want to be in the bottom three again this week then she better pay attention.

“Ladies, our guests this week are all either former or current members of the United States Armed Forces. As you can see from their shirts they represent every branch of military service and they also represent the LGBTQ+ community.” Gabby explained. “That’s right, all of these men are hella gay and this week you will be transforming them into the fabulous, kick-ass drag queens they never knew they were meant to be.”

Holly felt her stomach drop. They were supposed to turn these burly, boot-stepping bros in to drag queens? No. No way. The beardy one probably had more hair on his face than all of the competing queens had on their entire bodies! There was not enough NAIR or enough Ms. Manners lessons in the world to smooth out the rough edges on these soldiers. These men had actively volunteered to go to war, hell, they might have even killed people. You could not make a light-hearted, campy drag queen out of an army grunt. It was just impossible.

God, maybe she should have tried a little harder to win the advantage this week.

“Ms. Kim Chi,” Gabby continued, oblivious to Holly’s inner turmoil. “Since you kicked ass at drag booty camp you get to assign which soulja boy will work with each of your fellow queens.”

Kim gave a little squeal of delight before immediately darting over to the youngest of the soldiers and doing a dramatic jump into his arms; forcing the poor boy to catch her to keep them both from falling over.

“Dibs on the cute one!” Kim cried, earning laughter from the Pit Crew and Gabby while the rest of the queens forced smiles and panicked on the inside.

This week’s runway was essentially in the hands of an excitable 20-year old manic-pixie-ladyboy with an addiction to Red Bulls and candy necklaces. Holly wasn’t totally freaking out because Kim generally liked her so she’d probably give her the next youngest soldier even if that kid was a bit of a bean pole, but Tasha Salad...yea, that bitch should be worried. The other queen had been ragging on Kim about being the youngest contestant since day one and Holly knew for a fact that Kim was very very over it.

“Today, dumpling,” Gabby prompted once the laughter had died down.

“Wellllll,” Kim drawled, getting her feet back under her so that she could meander through the line of soldiers; reaching out to squeeze a bicep or ruffle some hair here and there. “I think the only fair way to do this is to pair you boys up with a girl you might have something in common with, some shared life experience. So uh….get in order of oldest to youngest. Girls, you too.”

Holly raised an eyebrow as the queens and soldiers exchanged doubtful looks before everyone began rearranging themselves per Kim’s instructions and oh...oh, tiny infant Jesus, no.

Across from her stood the hairiest, most disheveled soldier (his grey shirt proclaimed him a Marine) that Holly had ever seen in her life. She was pretty sure there were regulations for things like facial hair and stuff in the military, right? Benny and all of the other soldiers were clean shaven except for a few very neat mustaches. Was this guy undercover or something? Trying to infiltrate a particularly militant bunch of Appalachian mountain men?

If so, then this dude’s cover was going to be seriously blown when this episode aired.

“Uh…” Kim said, eyeing the line up, biting her lip before casting an apologetic look in Holly’s direction. “This’ll work. Cute one, you’re with me.”

The young, blonde guy at the end of the row of soldiers smiled winningly at Kim as she bounded back over to the line of drag queens revealing deep set dimples because of course. Holly could only be thankful that she wasn’t Eva because her Navy guy looked like he had never seen a bottle of moisturizer in his life.

“Fantastic,” Gabby gushed. “Now that that is settled, what we’re looking for this week, ladies, is for you to turn your individual star-spangled man with a plan into an all-American beauty queen. The judges are going to be looking for a strong family resemblance and we would also like each duo to perform a patriotic baton routine to honor this wonderful country. You’ve got a lot to do this week ladies so start your engines. And may the best woman win!”

Holly bared her teeth in a smile as Gabby swanned out of the workroom, taking Sam and Zeke with him as he went.

“And we’re clear!” Dorothy, one of the production assistants, shouted once the workroom door had shut behind the show’s name sake. “Gentlemen, feel free to borrow from the vault for your army guy’s runway routine. Baton routine outfits will be provided. You will have two days to prepare for your runway walk and baton routine. Each pair will get one hour of consultation with the choreographer to get their input on your routine, but you are each responsible for creating a unique baton routine on your own. Any questions?”

The vague af instructions were par for the course for the queens so none of the remaining contestants raised their hands, but the tall, lanky boy that Raphael had been paired with raised his hand innocently.

Dorothy just raised her eyebrow and suppressed a sigh, “Yes, you in the camo?”

There were barely concealed giggles and barks of laughter from the rest of the assorted men as the boy (because he was a boy, really how old was this kid?) blushed beet red before he managed to stammer out an answer for Dorothy.

“Are we going to get a break for lunch?” the boy forced out, earning another round of laughter from the queens and a quickly stifled grin from Dorothy as well.

“Maybe this was a good pairing after all,” Raphael announced pointedly in Kevin’s direction, looping his arm through the boy’s before he started pulling him out of the workroom. “C’mon baby, let momma show you where craft services are.”

“Any other questions?” the production assistant prompted again, earning a bevy of head shakes from the remaining men. “Great, well you can use the rest of today to get to know your partner. Your two days of preparation officially starts tomorrow.”

Meaning they could unofficially start prepping today, wonderful. Castiel sighed in relief at being given even an extra half day to try to whip and wax his partner into shape. And with that…