Chapter Text
“This is absurd. We have tickets and everything! Besides, whatever happened to the freedom of the Press?”
“Sorry, sirs, but this here river cruise is for couples only.”
Brain huffed. Preposterous—his and Pinky’s disguises as news reporters should have worked! If Brain had known they needed to pose as a couple to board this ship, he would have made Pinky wear a dress; but their matching tweed jackets and fedoras had given the ticket man pause. It was growing darker by the second, and if they couldn’t get on, then they couldn’t commandeer the boat and use its engines to pollute the Mississippi River and take over the world!
“Excuse me, poit,” Pinky spoke up, “but we are a couple.” Without warning, he looped an arm around Brain’s waist and pulled him flush to his side.
“We’re what? ” Brain’s heart nearly stopped at the suggestion—and the proximity.
The man’s eyes went wide. “Oh, um...pardon my ignorance. Right this way, sirs.” Taking their tickets, he led them onto the Mississippian steamboat towards a table for two. Of course, Pinky refused to remove his arm from around Brain’s waist. Brain just knew his face had turned a bright red.
{cue Let Me Call You Sweetheart }
Walking onboard was like entering another era. The staff was all dressed in vintage costumes, and music from around the 1910s was being piped throughout the boat. The diminishing sunlight gave everything a warm, romantic glow.
Brain and Pinky’s table was surrounded by couples who were completely unabashed in their affection toward each other. The mice, albeit disguised, were still comically undersized in their seats. So the host, happy to accommodate them as an apology for his mistake, set up a pair of teacups and a matchbox as miniature seating. Like a true gentleman, Pinky pulled out the chair for his partner, which Brain sat in reluctantly.
When the man finally left, Pinky giggled. “Egad, that man sure was bumfuzzled, wasn’t he!”
“Pinky, why on Earth would you say that?” Brain whispered angrily.
“Cuz it’s so fun to say! Bumfuzzle. Bum-fuzzle. Bummy-bum-ba-bum, fuzzily-wuzzily—”
Bop! A silverware roll to the head effectively cut Pinky’s babbling short.
“No, you nimrod! Why did you tell that man that we’re..." Brain cleared his throat before his voice could break. "...together?"
Pinky shook away the stars that were orbiting his head. “Oh, cuz he wouldn’t let us on the boat otherwise—I thought that much was obvious. Narf! ”
Brain opened his mouth to argue but ended up closing it again when he realized that Pinky was right. Leaning back on his teacup stool, he scratched the back of his oversized head. “Still. I’m sure we could have found a far less...embarrassing solution.”
“We pose as a couple all the time, Brain. What’s different this time?” Pinky cocked his head in that way he often did when asking a particularly difficult question.
Brain felt his blush deepen. “Well, I suppose—it’s because we’re both...presenting masculine, this time, and...”
“And?”
What was Brain even supposed to say? “Why, Pinky, I’m nervous because I am completely In Love With You and being perceived as your significant other fills my stomach with butterflies”?
“It-it’s just that—”
Fortunately for Brain, he was saved by the belle.
The southern belle, rather.
“Good evenin’, sirs!” A costumed waitress with bouncy black hair and tawny skin had arrived at their table, wearing a big smile. “An’ what’ll the happy couple be orderin’ tonight?”
Oh, dear. Perhaps this was not salvation after all.
“For Archimedes sake, we are not— ”
“YES, we are a couple!” Pinky interrupted, tightly grabbing both of Brain’s hands in his own (the sudden action making Brain quite lightheaded). “And we are very happy! Ha-ha! We’ll be getting the mac-n-cheese for two, thanks!”
“Great! We’ll have that out right away.” The waitress jotted their order down on a pad of paper. She then gave the pair a soft, knowing look. “Y’know, I've always wanted to bring my girlfriend here, but I've never been sure it it'd be alright. But seein' the two of you, well...it warms my gay li'l heart.” She then left to go put in their order, a new skip in her step.
Though Pinky was deeply touched by the waitress's words, Brain only felt further mortified at the misconception. He yanked his hands away and buried his face in his arms. “Pinky, this is absolutely humiliating...”
“What’re you so worried about, Brain? Nobody suspects a thing!”
“That is not my current concern…” Brain willed the color to fade from his face.
“Then what is?”
Brain took a deep breath, forced all of his emotion aside, and jumped to his feet. “Why, the plan, of course! We must hurry to the bridge!”
“Right-o Brain!” exclaimed Pinky as stood up as well. “But, no. No, wait. How could they fit a whole bridge on a boat?!”
This prompted another bop to the head.
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Dot groaned, dragging the skin on her face down with both hands. “Those two have been at it for years. I’m so tired of this!”
“Of what?” Wakko, who was sitting beside her on the couch, turned their attention away from the mice on the TV. “Taking over the world and whatnot?”
“That too. Like, they could really use a new hobby...” Dot shook her head. “But no, I mean—I’m tired of them dancing around their feelings for each other, season after season of the show. They’re clearly in LOVE with each other!”
The two kids continued watching the show for another couple of moments. Well, mainly Dot, as Wakko had gotten lost in deep thought—you could tell by the way their face got all screwed up that they were really pondering hard.
Finally, a light bulb went off over Wakko’s head. “Ohhhhhh, I get it now! Pinky and The Brain are gay!”
Dot snorted with laughter. “As if that much wasn’t obvious.” She shoved her older sibling away from her playfully. “The only issue is, some executive nutjobs decided that being gay is too ‘adult’ for a kid’s show—so even if they did start a relationship, it wouldn’t be televised.”
Wakko sniffed in disdain. “Well, that’s just silly! If I was in charge, I’d change that right away.”
“Y’know, same-sex marriage was legalized in the ol’ US-of-A back in 2015, sibs.” The kids whirled around to find Yakko leaning forward on the sofa’s back. “And since then, lotsa cartoons have introduced characters with diverse relationships and identities.”
“Okay, Mr. ‘I-swallowed-an-expensive-electronic-device, so-now-I-get-to-be-even-more-of-a-know-it-all-than-usual’,” Dot rambled off, rolling her eyes.
“Oh dear, Yakko,” Wakko cringed. “You need to have your name changed. That’s even more of a mouthful than ‘Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa—’”
“What are you two going on about here, anyway?” Yakko asked, ignoring his siblings’ snide remarks.
Sighing, Dot flopped back dramatically on the sofa. “Lamenting our dear mice friends’ unfortunate lack of initiative in the romance department.”
“Yeeeeeah, that’s been buggin’ me for years,” groaned Yakko.
Suddenly Wakko leaped to their feet. “Wait a minute! If all of us want them to get together, then what’s stopping us from making it happen? We should give them a little nudge in the right direction!”
“I dunno, sib,” Yakko replied hesitantly. “It’s usually best for these kinds of things to play out on their own.”
Now Dot was standing too. “Wakko's got a point. At the rate they're going, they might DIE before they confess their feelings."
"Please, Yakko? Pleeeeeease?" begged Wakko. "Can't we just do a tiny, itty-bitty bit of matchmaker-ing?"
“Hmmm.” Yakko mulled it over. “We might estrange part of our demographic by doin' this...but y’know what? Good riddance.” He hopped the couch and plopped down on the middle cushion. “So, what’s the best way for us to help make a couple of emotionally-constipated lab mice to admit their deepest, darkest feelings for each other? Where do we even start?”
“Oh, I know! We’ll just have to do what all the best matchmakers do!” Dot cried, dashing over to a forgotten cabinet on the far end of the water tower. She threw it open, and countless dusty old VHS tapes tumbled out.
“We’ll watch a bunch of trashy rom-coms to research the best way to help them out, of course!”