#so i was scared of the muppets up until i was eleven

[avocado-frog]

Last line tag

Tagged a while ago by @the-stray-storyteller how goes it my friend

I'm finally working on chapter seven today. turns out all I needed was to put in my dylan and elliot agenda

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Dylan wasn't afraid of much, other than flying squirrels. And The Muppets.

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Tags: (no pressure still) @briannaswords

@elizaellwrites

@moonandris

[mwolf0epsilon]

Story about something crashing on little Sammy parents farm. Maybe the government comes and forces them out for a while to collect it?👽

Warning for disturbing imagery and dead animals!

Summary: Joey Drew Studio is snowed in, so while everyone tries to keep warm for the night they end up reminiscing about the oddest things they had ever experienced. Sammy ends up recalling a rather bizarre event from his childhood.

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[[MORE]]

"I'm sorry to impose so much Mrs. Harrison. I trust Abigail will behave, she's a little angel I assure you." Sammy fidgeted with the phone chord nervously as he listened to his elderly neighbor. "Yes, yes thank you... Oh certainly! Let her on so I can wish her a good night..."

Susie watched as the tired look on the music director's face melted away to welcome a gentler smile. She could sort of hear a child's voice on the line (his little sister that he'd mentioned a few times). It was quite endearing to see Sammy with such a calm and content expression instead of the usual grumpy scrawl that scared half the band into submission.

"Good night Abby, be good to Mrs. Harrison." The call was coming to a close. "I love you too."

Susie smiled at him and nodded, taking her turn to call home now that he was finished.

"Wally is heating up soup in the break room. The stove's thankfully working." She called after him as she dialed the number.

"Everyone camping out there?" He asked as he looked back at the voice actress.

"Everyone but Joey, that devil of a man actually has an insulated office... The rest of us are sleeping by the stove." She sighed "Thankfully Norman and Grant thought ahead and brought a few blankets to stay warm."

Clever thinking and also a necessity, as Grant's office was very drafty, and Norman's booth got cold from the pipework frosting over a bit (since the music department had been a repurposed bathroom) in cold weather. Mr. Cohen also knew the likelyhood of Joey having paid the heating bill. Slim to none.

"Great... Just what I wanted, to sleep in a stuffy room full of people and the smell of that rancid soup..." A soup he'd enjoyed at first (due to it reminding him of his father's cauliflower soup which had little bits of bacon in it), but which had lost its luster on the third week of being asked to take a few cans home. Abby hated the stuff so he'd had to eat it himself. "Don't you just love getting snowed in?"

"Only when I was a child. The snow usually meant no classes." Susie finished dialing and waited for her mother to answer.

He left her alone to go back into the break room where Wally and Norman were passing around bowls of soup. Grant greeted him with a blanket, which he graciously took. The damn studio was absolutely freezing in November. The freak snowstorm hadn't helped.

Honestly he'd loved the look of a snowy New York when he'd first moved here with his father. It had looked beautiful and new, almost magical, unlike the ranch he'd grown up in until he was 11. Looking back now, he missed the expanse of snowy fields instead of the cold streets. He also missed watching a few of the animals play in the snow.

Getting stuck in the studio made him a little nostalgic.

"Here ya go Sammy!" Wally passed him a bowl of soup, which he nearly dropped in surprise, and grinned "It ain't my ma's beef stew and it definitely lacks a spoon since we don't got that many of those to begin with, but at least it'll keep you warm from the inside!"

"I, yes at least that." He sniffed it and grimaced. Pork grease and chunky bits that definitely were less bacon and more cartilage. "You ever wonder how they made this slop?"

"I'd rather not think about it. It's like hot dogs ya know... The less you know about it, the better they are!" The janitor shrugged and went to sit on one of the chairs closer to the stove. Everyone was very much huddled close by, swaddled in shared blankets, rubbing their hands together to keep them warm, or drinking soup.

Norman nodded at the music director once he sat down to join the group. Not too long after Susie was sitting beside him, and he offered to share his blanket with her.

"So, what do we do now?" Wally asked as he looked around. The issue would be sorted in the morning but it was still only a quarter to eleven and no one was particularly keen on sleeping just yet.

"I'll tell ya what we could do!" Shawn called out from his spot, voice slightly muffled by his big red scarf. "I say we pass t'time by indulging in the ye old grand art that is story tellin'!"

"Story telling? What, like a sleepover?" Jack questioned. Sammy found it amusing that he'd swaddled himself in his blanket in a way that pressed his hair tight against his skull, to the point where it looked like a makeshift scarf and ear mitts. "Like when we were little kids?"

"Well we're all sleepin' here t'night aren't we? And ya don't need t'be wee little ankle biters t'go tellin' stories." Shawn huffed "Besides, what better way t'know yer co-workers than share some harrowin' tales? I sure got a few that'll intrigue you folks I'm sure."

"Is it about potatoes?" One of the art department workers asked, only to get a slap on the back of the head and an elbow to the ribs.

"Very funny, that muppet over there's a real comedian coddin like that..." The Irishman rolled his eyes. "Right, you folk ever hear 'bout the legend o'the banshee?"

Everyone gave him a peculiar look, which Shawn took as permission to carry on.

"The tale varies some dependin' on t'person who tells ya. But the way me ma told it to me was somethin' like this: The banshee is a sweet singin' virgin, pretty as a button, a real feek." He tapped his chin thoughtfully as he recalled his mother's words. "Sometimes she has long black hair, other times it's a bright red like fire. Always pale... But don't be thinkin' she's just some little lady, oh no. The banshee is a spirit, one that heralds death in the family. Her ghastly cries precede the death o'loved ones and fill ya with a mighty chill o'dread... And I saw one when I was just a wee lad."

"Ya saw... A ghost?" Lacie wrinkled her nose. "And ya sure it wasn't some regular girl you just saw?"

"Couldn't o'been. She was right outside the window Lacie. And me room was on the second floor..." Shawn shook his head "And I knew it had to o'been a banshee. She looked just like me cousin, who died o'the shakes a few months prior. My pa always did say she might come back as the household haunt, she wasn't ready t'leave just yet."

"So, that's it? You saw some apparitions at your window and think it was some folklore horror?" Sammy rolled his eyes.

"Yep. An' then in the morning me grandpa was dead. Dreadful song she went and had t'sing. I was just 5 too! T'damn beour coulda gone bother me brother instead... He was t'one that used to scare us wee lads with these tales o'ghosts n' ghoulies..."

Well, that wasn't a very nice story. And it likely had a reasonable explanation behind it too. Just a small child frightened by tales and likely still coming to terms with losing a cousin.

"Oh, that's nothin'!" Wally grinned. "Ghost stories aren't anythin' compared to what I found in a ditch when I was 8!"

"Oh yeah? Then enlighten us, oh scare Meister!" Shawn barked back, glaring slightly. "What coulda been worse than a banshee?"

"How about a maneater?" The janitor offered.

Shawn fell quiet and others began to whisper among each other at the claim, before Norman began to hush everyone.

"Go on then... Yous can't just say that an' not tell us."

"Oh man, it was the dang scariest thing I'd seen as a kid!" Wally grinned. "Us tykes from Brooklyn? We didn't grow up with monster stories and such. Our mas and pas told us about kidnappers and murderers instead, cuzz those are like, real dangers you know?"

He took a sip from his cooling bowl of soup, before clearing his throat.

"But you know what kids are like. They like adventure and don't really listen too much cuzz, you only believe it when you see it!" He carried on. "Me? I was with a couple a pals exploring this old ditch that had some neat stuff people used to throw in there. Busted watches, trinkets, sometimes a lost wallet with a little bit of cash in it...Well that day there wasn't just goodies."

Sammy sipped his own soup and felt Susie's arm brush up against his as she got on the edge of her seat. She was excited to hear wherever Wally's story was going.

"Local news had like, been going on about this one loon that had run off from the big house or somethin'. Some big mug who was a pervert or whatever. Adult stuff we kids didn't care for." Wally looked around as he spoke. "Only he wasn't no pervert, just really messed in the head. A cannibal. A cannibal that liked eating little tots. You know, stories like Little Johnny went pokin' around where he shouldn't and now there was no Little Johnny no more? Yeah that nearly was us."

"You found the guy in the ditch?" Sammy guessed.

"Nope! Found my neighbor, Sally, partially eaten and all kinds o' messed up." Wally replied "I figured we were in trouble so we ran like our butts were on fire and screamed the whole way back. Coppers caught the fucker and his picture on the paper still gives me nightmares. If we'd found him instead, we woulda ended up like Sally!"

Everyone looked extremely disturbed at the thought of a couple of 8 year olds finding another child's partially eaten corpse.

"Shite... No wonder yer such a mog. Brooklyn's fucked up!" Shawn winced.

"Hey!" Wally pouted.

"Also your story was misleading. You didn't actually encounter the "maneater"." Sammy pointed out. "That's not how you should advertise a tale you twit."

"Would ya rather I have found the creep that did it?"

"No, next time just don't make it sound like an actual encounter when it's an anecdote about another outcome entirely."

"Don't go bein' an ass Lawrence." Norman called out. "I thought the story was good. Messed up, but good... Granted it don't top what I experienced when I was still in the cradle."

"Oh, this ought to be good." The blond smirked. "Word of mouth?"

"My Nanna never told no lie. Yous won't find a more honest lady." Norman smirked back.

At this point everyone had finished their soup and was practically laying or leaning against one another for warmth. It helped that the story telling atmosphere had all but made everyone forget about the cold.

Norman being so tall and obscuring the stove ever so slightly, cast strange shadows on the wall.

"Now, this happened a few months after I was born. My Nanna was lookin' after me while my mama and memaw was helpin' my pops and pepaw out in the cotton fields. My brother and sister wasn't that much older either, not yet ready to go pickin', so they was in their room playin' together." He leaned back in his chair, a content smile on his face "Nanna was just preparin' lunch while I was layin' in this big ol' basket full o' pillows and blankets, just sleepin' away like babies do. She turned 'round to chop up some carrots when she had this weird feelin' all of a sudden."

Sammy put an arm around Susie as he listened. Norman was a pretty good story teller. Had this voice that just pulled you in. He could almost imagine a little chubby baby in a basket while an old lady prepared food in the kitchen.

"Nanna Polk always had a feel for when things were no good all of a sudden. She'd known when Poppop weren't doing well in the head, and she knew how to pop a shot into a big gator when it got too close to the house. She wasn't afraid o'nothin'." Norman carried on. "But she was afraid. She was afraid when the blade o'her knife caught the reflection o'this big brute pullin' my basket out the window."

Sammy winces and Susie tightened her grip on his arm. The others were quite aghast as well, at the thought of an innocent little babe getting snatched away by some stranger.

"Nanna didn't scream. She didn't wanna scare my siblings you see... Instead she tiptoed towards the backdoor, knife in hand, and kept outta sight o'the man that was tryin' to take me away." Norman hummed as he thought back on what Nanna had told him. "You know, they often tell ya 'bout southern hospitality. If yous is friendly and respectful, yous always got a friend. They don't tell yous about Louisiana ladies like my sweet Nanna tho... They is forged of iron and grief. Strong and protective o'their youngins... She knew what that man wanted from me, an' she wasn't bout to let it happen."

"What did she do?" Wally asked, bitting his knuckles as he put his legs up to his chest.

"Put the knife through his back. She pushed him so he wouldn't go an' fall on me, oh 'course, and that basket well about saved my life cuzz it was damn well padded and didn't so much as wake me when it hit the ground."

"Holy shit..."

"Now, that might sound a little extreme to yous, but I trust Nanna's judgement." Norman began once he noticed the horrified looks on his coworker's faces. "That man woulda taken me somewhere no one could'a gotten me from, an' she wasn't 'bout to lose anyone else to them creeps. Nanna was smart, and Nanna was hard workin'. She buried the bastard where he fell, an' planted a tree t'remember it too. I got to put a swing on it when it grew big enough to support the weight."

"Where were they going to take you?" Sammy finally asked, once he realized no one would do so. "The man?"

"Hm, well I don't know exactly. But she did say it was where my Poppop grew up, so I know it wasn't a good place." Norman frowned. "They did bad things to him, made him messed up in the head an' dangerous. Nanna saved me from endin' up the same way... Don't care if it wasn't the right way t'do it, them folks don't deserve no pity if they go stealin' babies from their cribs t'do god only knows what."

"Well... For what is worth, we're glad your nanna saved you Norman. You're a gem." Susie smiled which got the much larger man to chuckle.

"How's that for a story then? Anyone steppin' up to top it off?"

No one seemed to have anything that quite matched the energy of this... What should he call it? Cultist kidnapping story? It certainly sounded that the man was some underground cultist if he was taking babies to indoctrinate, or whatever...

The blond watched, saw no one step up to the challenge, and then remembered.

"Well, it may not be as bad as getting snatched away. But I do recall a rather peculiar set of events from before I moved to New York with my father." He began, the band members snorting and whispering among themselves that it was probably something stupid. He glared their way before looking at Norman who gestured for him to go on.

"Floor's all yours Sammy."

"Right." He thought back, way back when he was 10. Just a year prior to his mother's death. It was all a little foggy but the more he concentrated on what his father had told him about that night, the less his explanation made sense once correlated with his own memories. "I didn't exactly grow up in the city. Not until I was 11 that is... I actually lived in a cattle ranch for a while."

"That explains why you call us sheep." Johnny laughed.

"No, I call you sheep because your job is to follow me, you damn goat." Sammy snarled back at the interrupting organist.

"Ouch." Jack winced.

"Either way, as a child living with a father who raised cattle for a living, one can expect that I was often tasked to help with a few of the animals. Mainly cleaning the pens and, if I was particularly lucky, shearing the sheep." The sheep, he confesses, had been his favourite. They were dumb and cute. "My father usually dealt with the larger animals. When this event occured, he'd just bought a big healthy heifer. His ornery old bull had covered our best breeding cow but she'd not been having calves."

"Was she called Bessie?" Wally grinned.

"The name of the cow isn't of importance!" Sammy rolled his eyes. "It was Felicity by the way."

"My mistake."

"Either way, my father was a breeder, so his breeding female not producing offsprings was a big deal. I was a kid so I wasn't particularly interested if Felicity had issues, I just liked watching her when she had little calves. They were the cutest thing right after the baby lambs." Sammy carried on "The new heifer, Clarabelle, arrived that day and immediately the bull was put to working. My father thought That'd be the end of his problems... An easy fix. Except it wasn't..."

"She sterile?" Norman asked.

"Oh I wish that had been it. I was 10, had seen animals in plenty of states from sickness or wild animal attacks. But never had I seen a cow turned inside out, other than in a damn butcher's..." Sammy shuddered. He could still remember it... Going outside to get the eggs like his father had asked, and just finding this massive dead heifer with no skin on her body. His mother had said he'd screamed like the devil himself had been before him.

"Oh god..." Susie gagged slightly. "That couldn't have been nice..."

"It wasn't. I was freaked out and my father was furious. Clarabelle had been an expensive purchase. And she wasn't the only casualty." Sammy shook his head. "The pen was wrecked, the bull was in better state but no less dead, and poor Felicity must have run into whatever butchered them both because she had a massive wound on her hind. Every animal was spooked out of their minds and even our sheepdog wouldn't come out of the house. Peed himself when we tried coaxing him."

"Did ya find what did it?" Shawn asked.

"No, we couldn't find anything that explained it." Sammy carried on. "No tracks, no trails of blood, nothing. The pen was just ruined, like it had been splintered apart, and Clarabelle looked to have just... I don't know how to explain it. Pop? Like a balloon?"

"I figure your father wasn't too keen on going' about business after that?"

"He wanted compensation, but you can't exactly put the blame on anything if you can't even find a cause." The music director sighed "We eventually just decided to call it quits on figuring out what the hell happened and went on with our lives. But then things just got... Weird."

Strange lights at night, bizarre noises, and horrific night terrors. Sammy's father had lost his patience when he'd found their dog's remains and called the authorities.

"We were all on edge, unsure what was going on at the ranch, and losing animals every night. My father called the cops, saying someone must be playing some seriously messed up joke to terrorize us. He'd made a lot of enemies with his attitude over the years, so I wouldn't have been surprised..." He trailed of, beginning to feel goosebumps as he recalled the final night of these strange occurances. "And then one night I saw something strange out of my window. Stranger than anything else."

Everyone was eager for the conclusion, he could tell. Taking a deep breath, he recounted what he'd been a witness to.

"I wasn't sleeping well, no one was, but I just couldn't settle in bed that night. It felt too warm in my room so I got up to open a window." His 10 year old self had always struggled with the latch on his window, but not that night. That night it opened without a fuss. "I saw... A figure. Out in the fields. Cast in weird green light that I couldn't put a source to. They were tall, and I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, but I assumed man because there wasn't a hair on its head... I just stared, and it looked to be staring back. Next thing I know, I'm outside in my pajamas, staring up at this pitch black figure... Taller, imposing, faceless. No eyes, no nose, no mouth... And yet it felt like it was glaring hatefully at me. Frustrated, angry... It pointed at the woods and I don't... I don't know what it wanted and I was just a scared kid."

He gulped heavily as he recalled how oppressive everything had felt.

"Again I blacked out, but this time awoke inside to my mother fanning me. My dad was yelling at the cops and it was morning." Sammy frowns "Yelling at them to get that damn thing off his property, and to fuck right off since they were so useless at their damn job."

A soft amen from a member of the writer's department. Followed by a chuckle from another one.

"My throat was raw, and when I tried to ask what happened, my mom told me they'd found me outside at the edge of the woods, screaming until my voice went. Screaming about wanting out of the woods. Screaming about wanting to go home... Screaming that nothing here was good to eat and that I was going to die... I don't recall doing it, and my father said I'd probably had a nightmare of some kind. A fever dream even, since mom had been trying to cool me down for a good reason." He bit his lip "It's odd, I'd just fallen ill overnight and everything was fuzzy... I asked why the cops were here, and my father said when he'd gone to get me he'd spotted a weather balloon of some kind in the woods. The cops were there to take it away."

Everyone stared, confused and trying to figure out how these events connected. He gave them a shrug.

"I have no idea what was going on, so don't ask. I was 10, animals were dying weirdly, and I got so sick all of a sudden that I started sleep walking and hallucinating demonic figures. No one ever said anything about the weather balloon in the local paper either, so I don't even know what to think of that." He leaned against Susie "It was weird, but it stopped. Still that thing kept appearing in my nightmares for a while... It faded with time but it bothered me while it was still fresh in my mind."

"Sounds like aliens." Wally pips up.

"No such thing." Bertrum laughed at the suggestion. "Just a bunch of vandalism, fallen governament property, animal attacks, and a child's overactive imagination."

"No, I'm serious! Stuff like that happens in farms all the time! Stuff no one can explain..."

"Wally, there's tons o' things none can explain in this world already." Norman pointed out. "I'm not sure what sorta thing Sammy might o' stumbled upon as a kid... But little green men don't sound plausible."

"Oh come on, ain't it obvious? Cows gettin' killed, the strange damages? The fallen thing in the woods? The spooky figure? The one person who no one would believe being chosen to see the alien? Then the cops just swoopin' in and covering it up? Happened just the same to my uncle Paul!"

"What I saw wasn't little or green. Don't make it another one of your outlandish tall tales." Sammy grinned, enjoying how much Wally was puffing up.

"Bite your tongue! It ain't a tall tale!"

"Sure it's not."

"Boys don't fight... Because I've got one heck of a story that'll make Norman's and Sammy's feel like child's play!" Susie cut in, with a devilish grin of her own.

And so the night carried on, with more stories to be shared. All the while Sammy laughed and listened, content with the situation.

Although... He did still wonder what he'd seen out in the field. Surely it couldn't have been extraterrestrial.

Hm... Yes, surely not. Just a bad dream and some sick prank. Had to have been.

[scoopsohboi]

s’okay if you like her

pairing: robin buckley/reader

wc: 1627

summary: you’re hanging out with robin and steve as they close the family video. you’re secretly in love with robin and your best friend steve helps hint it to her.

a/n: repost from my ao3 (scoopydoo). feel free to send me requests if you’d like! 

-more robin readers-

-st readers-

“God, I���m so bored,” you breathed as you lay out on the floor of Family Video. It was nearly eight o’clock and Keith had gone home about an hour ago, leaving Steve and Robin to close the shop. You arrived twenty minutes later with slurpees for your two friends. Steve complained about Robin’s overflowing while his drink sat safely in his cup without threat of spillage and you just shrugged. It definitely wasn’t because you had a crush on Robin. Steve knew, though, and gave you a wink when he thought Robin wasn’t paying attention.

You’d started spending time with Steve when the Byers kid first went missing a while back, and the easy friendship had surprised you. Steve was funny, and caring, and although he wasn’t the smartest, he definitely had a strong moral compass that strongly pointed north when needed. He’d saved you from demogorgons, demodogs, and eventually even a Flayed Billy.

When Steve had first gotten his job at Scoops and you met Robin, you had an instant crush on her. She was pretty, smart, snarky, and hilarious. You’d laughed more since meeting her than you had in years. As the three of you spent time translating the Russian communication, along with Dustin, you’d fallen rather hard for her. It had been hard to keep your feelings hidden from Robin, not knowing if she was straight or not, but you’d done everything in your power to keep that shit locked up tight. You didn’t want to do anything to make her uncomfortable, even if every time your hands brushed it felt like an electric shock webbing through your veins to your shoulder.

Of course, Steve knew. You had alluded it to him one night in his living room as he’d been trying to convince you to call the guy who’d wrote his number on a napkin at Benny’s Diner and given it to you with a shy smile.

“He’s just really not my type, Steve,” you’d said, stomach in knots and feeling like you were going to throw up your entire club sandwich on Steve’s mom’s new white rug.

“What, a guy? You don’t know anything about him!” Steve had argued, exasperatedly trying to figure out why you always turned down guys’ advances.

“Steve,” you pressed, letting his name hang in the air as Steve’s brows knit together, staring at you like Eleven staring at a door and you could tell he was trying to read your mind. You raised your brows, the actual words caught in your throat with the bile that threatened to rise. I’m gay.

“What?” he asked, clearly confused until- oh, now he got it. “Oh-oh,” he blinked, leaning back against the couch and staring at nothing. It was quiet for a moment, then he began almost yelling at you for not telling him sooner. The rest of the night the two of you spent hours gushing about girls you thought were cute, at school, from films, anything. It felt amazing.

Since then, you’d been very comfortable about being gay, at least in front of Steve. But then Robin entered the picture and it was a whole new dynamic. You felt awkward, clumsy, like it was the first crush you’d ever had. Which it wasn’t, but it was the first time you were close enough to a girl you liked that you felt like any wrong step would scare her off. But it never did. Even when she’d look over and catch you staring at her, she’d just smile and start engaging you in conversation.

Then she and Steve had been interrogated by Russians and you’d sat with them during Back to the Future, chasing your drugged friends as they ran out to the water fountain and eventually to the bathroom to puke up everything in their systems. That’s when it happened. Robin came out to you and Steve. She looked horrified, as if she was a monster. You wanted to tell her that you were gay, too, but you didn’t want to ruin her moment. You also couldn’t tell her how you felt after Steve had just confessed his love for her. So the two of you sat and listened, and joked about how her high school crush Tammy Thompson sang like a Muppet.

Once everything had died down, you told Steve how you felt about Robin after having a few shots at Steve’s, an attempt to forgo nightmares in favor of being too drunk to have them.

“Isn’t that Rob’s?” he’d asked, gesturing a shot glass at your jacket before tipping his head back and gulping down its contents. You’d blushed and shoved your own glass at him, silently telling him you needed a refill. Steve obliged, but kept your glass from you when you moved to grab it.

“Jesus, what, you want to wear it next?” Your words were slurring, face heated, body swaying slightly as you both sat at the dining table. Steve watched you for a moment before sliding your shot glass to you and picking up his own. You grabbed yours and clinked it to his.

“Y’know,” he slurred as he tossed his drink back and let out a low hiss at the burn. “S’okay if you like her.” Your hand froze as the glass touched your lips, pausing briefly before following Steve’s actions.

“I dunno, Steve,” you said quietly, wishing the alcohol would do more to numb your brain so you wouldn’t have to think anymore. You were just exhausted of being a living person these days, the battles with the Upside Down were really taking a toll on you. The days were okay, but you were reliving yourself and all your friends almost dying every night and you didn’t know how long you would last.

“Trust me, she likes you,” Steve continued and you rolled your eyes. “She does. She talks about you all the time, it’s getting annoying.” You blushed then, not fully trusting Steve but the thought was nice. “I can’t go to work without hearing her gush about some book you lent her, or-or some conversation you guys had about that 2000s movie.”

“It’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you really need to see it already,” you argued, but couldn’t help the butterflies you felt at the thought of Robin talking to Steve about you. You spent the rest of the night drinking and talking about your crush until you could barely keep your eyes open. The two of you passed out in Steve’s room, thankfully too out of it for the night terrors.

You rolled over onto your stomach, still splayed out on the rough, old carpet of the video store as Steve and Robin restocked the shelves before calling it a night. “At least you’re not working,” Steve grumbled, reading the sleeve of a new film he hadn’t heard of and Robin scoffed.

“Neither are you, dingus,” she said, kicking his shoe with hers and grabbing the VHS from his hands before placing it on the shelf. He sighed and placed a film next to it before turning to you with a devilish smile.

“Y/N, truth or dare?” You narrowed your eyes at him, feeling a trap. You didn’t want to embarrass yourself doing whatever Steve may choose as a dare, but you were also anxious to pick truth. After contemplating telling him to fuck off altogether, you heard yourself say, “truth.” Steve grined, wheels clearly spinning in his brain. Steve humed loudly and you watched Robin continue to stock tapes, an amused grin tugging at the corners of her lips. Steve grinned then, too, and you had a bad feeling about that. “Who would you rather: Phoebe Cates or Michael J. Fox?” You blushed profusely as Robin froze, hand resting on a tape with her back to you though you could tell she was waiting to hear your answer. You let out a shaky breath. Dammit, Harrington.

“You know it’s Phoebe,” you answered before punching him lightly in the arm. He rubbed his shoulder and mouthed an exaggerated ‘ow.’ You knew your face was beet red and you were glad Robin wasn’t looking at you. “If I ever say Michael, lock me up immediately.”

“Really?” Robin asked, voice shocked and you glanced at her. She was looking at you surprised, like she’d never seen you before. She almost looked, hopeful.

“Yeah,” you said shyly. You heard Steve say something about grabbing an item from the back, but he already sounded miles away, as if it were only you and Robin.

“How am I just learning this now?” she asked and you sat up, crossing your legs as she turned her attention solely on you.

“I don’t know,” you said honestly. “I mean, I wanted to tell you, I just- it never seemed like the right time.” Robin laughed softly.

“Because drugged in a movie theater bathroom was so perfect.” You giggled a little.

“Exactly. And I couldn’t really say, ‘hey, Robin, I’m in love with you,’ when Dingus already stole that thunder.” Robin’s brows flew up and after a beat she started to smile softly.

“Well,” she breathed, “too bad you didn’t get to go first.” You reached out and brushed her hair behind her ear. You bit your lip as her blue eyes gazed into yours.

“You think I would’ve had a better shot?”

“I think you’re the only one who had one in the first place.” You didn’t know who moved first, but a moment later your eyes were closed and Robin’s lips were pressed against yours. Your hand cupped her jaw as hers went to your waist and your mouths moved perfectly in sync. It wasn’t a long kiss, but it was the first of many. Gentle and warm and perfect.

[weirdlet]

I wrote a dissertation on wrestling because the alternative was laundry

There is nothing I hate more than wasted potential.

Roman Reigns has the look, has the in-ring skills- lacks the mic personality.  That last part is what makes everything else lukewarm, and it’s the part where his support network in back is utterly failing him.  

Yes, a wrestler must learn the skills needed- but every wrestler learns differently, and the best promoters and writing teams learn how to get the best out of their talent based on that individual’s personality and versatility.  So far, all they’ve done is give him shit lines to read off a teleprompter, or try to remember, and those shit lines are all based in the premise that Roman is Generic Rage Guy #5.

Roman isn’t Generic Rage Guy #5.  Roman is happy.  More- Roman is shy.

But you can’t be that, and be in the ring.  More about that later.

See- what we look for in a wrestler, is not true viciousness- but verisimilitude.  We want to see something just real enough that we can turn up the knob to eleven, enjoy a rousing show, and then put back the curtain at the end of the night and be able to say ‘thank you’ in the arena parking lot, old-school Southern heel heat notwithstanding.  What Roman is being directed to do goes against his actual personality, and he’s not a good enough actor to fake it under something so uncomfortable- and the guys in back aren’t getting that, and keep doubling down on all the stuff that isn’t working.

And because Roman is a Good Corporate Boy, he keeps listening.  If you stick to the script and it doesn’t fly, well, you at least did what you were supposed to do.  If you go off script and it goes over, you’ll be congratulated.  But if you go off script and it falls flat… man.  You’re in the shit.  And Roman does not have the confidence to tell corporate to go screw, the same as he lacks the confidence to tell the audience to go screw.  He’s trying to be good.

You can see it when he goes back and hugs Cena after their big throw-down.  He’s trying to be respectful, even though it’s completely at odds with the brief feud they set up and resolved moments before.

He will never have his ‘Die, Rocky, die’ moment, until he either gets so mad it causes a meltdown, or the schmucks in back figure out what to do with him and how to communicate that with him.  Roman isn’t a failure as a wrestler, he is under-utilized.

And more.  He.  Is.  Afraid.

Watch his eyes as he walks out the night after Taker retired.  Listen to the crowd.  I seriously thought they were going to lynch him, and I do not use those words lightly. He knew it too.  He knew they hated him, and he could not embrace it, because he was genuinely scared of our hatred.  He had the moment in hand where he could have cemented himself as a heel forever, and as usual, he gave us the words we wanted, but not the emotional reaction- too little, too slow, and too late.  Because he was afraid.

He doesn’t know how to embrace our dislike.  He can’t win us over, and he can’t ride our rage.  And so because he is lukewarm, we spew him out of our mouths, and everyone just ends up frustrated.

There are a number of different routes that could be taken, in order to make the best use of him and to get the audience to buy in once again.  Two are dependent on the people in back teaching Roman how to relax and embrace and improvise.  One depends on emotional honesty.

The first two:  Roman needs to either get mad, or get smug.  I’m more inclined towards the smug at this point, because I sense that by the time you make Roman genuinely angry enough to snap, it will literally destroy any desire he has to wrestle.  He feels like an introvert that’s gone into the family business because it’s the only path laid out for him, but the fishbowl is wearing on him.  You can hear it in the way he talks about the audience.  

He is physically skilled, ridiculously pretty, and it’s too bad Bobby Roode is managing to do Ravishing Rick better than Roman could ever, because that could have been a workable angle for him.  He is just that good looking, girls want him and guys are jealous and uncomfortable because they can see why they do.

(I have said before, that Roman would be better served wearing a kilt and an open shirt and posing for romance-novel covers.  He’s too sweet for the persona they’re trying to push him as, and I’ll be honest, I want to see him cry for entirely prurient reasons.)

So either: he gets so frustrated by the audience (and gets over his block about going by the script) that he tells us all, with real passion, to go screw- or he leans back and says “Yup.  I’m a corporate stooge.  You’re all right.  I AM the anointed one, and I’m here because I’m in tight with the McMahons, because I have the family connections, and no one can touch me.  I don’t have to lift a finger- boys.  Show them.”

And then the Usos come out as his Praetorian Guard, and beat the shit out of his problems for him. There are elements of his gimmick that are underutilized, and the Usos as his minions both pick up that thread (you can’t have an Empire of only one man) and are a callback to the ‘family’ element.  This also sets them up to betray him one day (Praetorian Guards were notorious for their instant elections when the Emperor misused them).

We could properly hate him for that.  Hate is the other side of love- you can’t hate someone without caring about them.  Smug is a grand old tradition in the heel trade.  

And Smug lets Roman smile more, lets him grin and laugh and be anything but fucking boring Generic Rage Guy #5.  When he’s smiling he’s being genuine, and when he’s being genuine, we can love and love to hate him both.  He’s not faking it when he’s smiling, and it’s the faking it and faking it badly that leaves us, as an audience, cold.

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Now neither of those are likely to happen, because of the older guys who knew how to finesse that out of a wrestler, to turn them into a real crowd-worker, Dusty Rhodes is gone and Paul Heyman will never be trusted in that role.  It’s like Vaudeville style humor- the old guys who knew how to do it are either dead or are not being consulted/listened to by the new generation, and it’s the reason the Muppets suck these days.

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The third option is- to get honest.  Book him against Strauman and Lesner.  Have him come out and say that he’s afraid.  Not of anything the other two could do to him- ass-kickings happen, that’s life.  But he is afraid of letting down the office.  His family.  Himself.  And all of us, the audience.

Let him be quiet.  Let him be honest.  Let him choke up a little.  He’s been busting his ass and he knows it’s not working, because we let him know that before, during and after every match.

And right after he opens up like that, the monsters come out and destroy him.  

Just, fucking.  Leave him in a battered, bloody, crying mess. Beat the everloving SHIT out of him.

Next Lesner event, Heyman says ‘The Beast, the Conqueror, the Destroyer of Empires.  Where is your Emperor now?  His reign is over.”

And after that, you start Roman on a series of promos.  I don’t care about the belt.  I want my goddamn *dignity* back.  Strauman and Lesner both get jumped backstage, sneak attacks, desperate beatdowns with Roman fighting like a wild man and then getting away.  

End it in your pay-per-view where it doesn’t matter if Roman gets the belt or not, DQ, wtf ever.  He gets to physically win over the two of them, after having been sympathetic underdog for so long, and let him be on all fours in the ring, crying in victory and relief because he’s whole again.

And that’s how you get Roman Reigns over.

 And then the Monday night after all that- you have The Miz start ragging on him.

“Oh, are we being honest about our feelings?  Are we gonna cry?”  And everyone can be like, fuck you Miz, nobody likes you.