Kermie's Girl (ushy-gushy fanfic)

[BeakerSqueedom]

*Sniffles*

That was beautiful Eddie.

*Cringes at the term life as well*

 

[Ruahnna]

I am, in fact, alive if not well. I came back into town after an extended visit with family and have been smitten with a nasty virus. I've been working on KG is fits and starts (this is truer than you realize!) and hope to post more soon--as soon as my head stops sloshing around! Thank you for all the kind words of encouragement! And I will post as soon as I can!

 

[Sensei Amatsu]

wowies! i know you wrote this was ur first and wrote it a few years ago...still it's so good! It was also my first fanfic read for the muppets *blush* I'm totally going to read more! I hope your head stops sloshing around soon LOL! Get well soon kk

 

[BeakerSqueedom]

:3 Sloshing...

reminds me of brains moving everywhere. O_O

 

[Alpha Centauri]

Hi, I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your fan fiction stories and I can't wait to find out what happens next!

 

[The Count]

Um... Catherine? Aunt Ru? If you have the next chapter ready, could you please post it?
*Pokes head through the curtain and checks he audience in the reading room. *Ducks back in.
We... They're getting restless... More please.

 

[BeakerSqueedom]

*Starts getting restless*
LOL!
Post more! Post more!
*Chants*

 

[Ruahnna]

Chapter 52: Reflections

Pepe stared at his reflection in the mirror with undisguised admiration, and slicked back the feathery strands of hair that resisted even the most determined mousse. He struck one of his Elvis poses experimentally, watching himself out of the corner of his eyes as he tried a couple of pelvis rolls. Thoughtfully, Pepe watched himself gyrate in the mirror, then attempted to suck in his stomach before attempting another roll.
“Whatcha doin’?” asked Rizzo mildly. He leaned in the doorway and watched the feisty king prawn with bemusement as Pepe startled and turned on him.
“Wha? Ju don’t know how to knock? Ju wanna to give me a h’eart attack?” he demanded, his tone accusatory. Rizzo shrugged and unfurled from the doorframe.
“This is my dressing room, too, bucko, so me knockin’ is about as likely as you sucking in your stomach.”
Pepe looked as though he had something to say, but he swallowed it with effort as Fozzie barreled into the room in full-scale panic mode.
“Oh, she’s here, she’s here!” he cried.
“Who? Who’s here?” Rizzo asked, trying to match Fozzie’s verbal speed.
“Her! Ms. Starr! Brenda Starr!” Fozzie panted.
“The hot womans that Clifford mentioned?” asked Pepe, brightening visibly. He tried again to suck in his stomach without success.
“Si! I mean, yes! I mean, she’s here! And I’m not ready for my interview!”
The small rat and small crustacean exchanged looks and shrugs.
“Fozzie,” Rizzo said carefully. “You knew she was here already because you went with Scooter and Sweetums to pick her up, right?”
“Sweetums is here?” Pepe asked. Rizzo nodded distractedly.
“I don’t mean she’s here as in here,” Fozzie wailed. “I mean she’s here as in here outside the door waiting for me! AND I’M NOT READY!”
Fozzie began to hurl items out of a large truck in the corner. A magician’s hat followed a ventriloquist’s dummy, which was preceded by a vase of dead flowers. Rizzo and Pepe exchanged looks again, slightly more alarmed as they dodged the items hurtling around the room.
“Can we, um, help you?” asked Rizzo.
“Si, si,” Pepe chimed in. “Let us help ju before you h’wreck the room.”
Fozzie looked up, momentarily distracted by an offer of help from the little prawn, and Rizzo took advantage of his distraction to put a hand under his elbow and propel him toward a chair.
“Just tell us what you’re digging for and we’ll ferret it out, okay?”
“Is that like a rodent thing?” asked Pepe, and Rizzo shot him a dirty look. He subsided reluctantly.
“My tie! I need my power tie?”
“Ju have a power tie?” asked Pepe skeptically.
“Not helping,” Rizzo muttered. He maneuvered so that his body was between Pepe and Fozzie.
“What does it look like?” asked Rizzo pragmatically.
Fozzie stopped panting and took a deep breath. “It’s white,” he said earnestly, “and has little pink polka dots on it.”
Behind Rizzo, Pepe coughed delicately but persistently, and Rizzo spun around and gave him a look that made it clear his patience was wearing thin.
“H’okay, like, he’s wearing it, h’okay?” Pepe said in a stage whisper—that is to say, a whisper that could have been heard at the back of any auditorium. Rizzo ignored him, and turned back to Fozzie.
“Um, hey Fozzie—you seem to be wearing a white tie with pink polka dots already. Is that the tie you’re looking for?”
Fozzie looked down in bewilderment at the bedraggled tie around his neck, then look up at Rizzo as though the little rat had lost his marbles.
“This tie?” he said. “No—no—I need my power tie. It doesn’t look anything like this one.”
Rizzo dared a look over his shoulder at Pepe, who was making a “he’s crazy man” face, but turned back when Fozzie began to hyperventilate again.
“If I can’t find my power tie, I won’t be confident when I talk to Ms. Starr, and if I’m not confident I’ll just say something stupid and then I’ll get nervous and start to babble and then—“
“Okay, okay, buddy,” Rizzo said hastily. “Just give m a sec and I’ll find your tie.” He busied himself looking through the racks of clothing hanging in various degrees of neatness on the bar. This seemed to calm Fozzie down a little bit, and buy Rizzo some time while he tore through the room with startling efficiency. Pepe wondered idly about letting Rizzo work on his wardrobe sometime.
Just when Rizzo was nearing the end of the rack of hanging cloths, he spied a crisp white corner and pounced on it. It was, in fact, a power tie—or, at least, it was as close to one as Fozzie was likely to come. What Rizzo had discovered was a slubbed-silk version of the white-with-pink-polka-dots necktie that Fozzie habitually wore. The little rodent threw it around his neck and tied it swiftly around the dumbfounded and grateful bear.
“There,” he said, turning Fozzie toward the door. “Go get ‘er, big guy!” With a sound that was half sigh, half whimper, the furry comedian headed out the door. Before the door closed behind him, Rizzo and Pepe heard, “Wocka wocka wocka! Have I got some stories for you!”
Pepe turned and looked at Rizzo, his little black eyes sparkling.
“Tha’ was mucho benéfico,” said Pepe with almost grudging admiration.
Rizzo brushed the praise aside as if it bothered him. “Yeah, yeah, well, we gotta watch each other’s backs, okay?”
Pepe gave a shrug that might have been acquiescence or disagreement, his eyes strayed involuntarily toward the mirror again. Rizzo nudged him impudently.
“And maybe you’d know that if you didn’t spend to much time watching your middle,” he said pointedly. Pepe only sniffed. With a sigh, Rizzo left him there, contemplating the potential effects of last night’s dinner on the white satin jumpsuit.

“Say there, my little blue dude,” said Dr. Teeth.
“There,” Gonzo responded, and they both laughed softly.
The musician and Gonzo engaged in a somewhat complicated handshake absently. Dr. Teeth had something on his mind, and Gonzo seemed more than usually preoccupied.
“Um, Gonzo my good man, I have a question to throw at you.”
Gonzo looked up and his eyes regained some of their focus.
“It won’t be the first thing that’s ever been thrown at me,” he said bluntly. “Fire away.”
Reflexively, unable to help themselves, they both looked over their shoulders for Crazy Harry, or his older cousin, Crazy Donald, but they were apparently too far away from their usual stomping ground to worry.
“Um, you are on good terms with the delectable cluckible Camilla—is that not so?”
“Yes,” Gonzo said with a sigh. “That it not so.”
Dr. Teeth’s eyebrows rose. “Beg your pardon?”
“She dumped me,” said Gonzo without malice, and his mood lightened just a little to think it was not oh-so-common knowledge.
Dr. Teeth’s mouth dropped open, revealing his trademark mandibles. “Oh—then I do beg your pardon,” he said hastily. “I did not mean to intrude on your personal conduction of business.”
Gonzo waved it away with his long curving nose--his hands were otherwise occupied. “Not a problem,” he said wearily. “We’re—well, Camilla and I aren’t dating right now. She, um, I—well, let’s just leave it at Camilla and I aren’t dating right now.”
“Seriously bummed to hear it,” said Dr. Teeth. His gold tooth glinted in the backstage light.
“Yeah—you and me both,” muttered Gonzo, “but, hey—what can I do you for? You had a question?”
Dr. Teeth hesitated, uncertain. He knew that Janice and Camilla were rooming together on this trip like on so many others. He had hoped to ask Gonzo to ask Camilla in a somewhat roundabout and mellow way if there was any obvious problems in the un-connubial bliss department that would explain Floyd Pepper’s earlier outburst and generally subdued mood of late. But if Gonzo and Camilla were having their own issues, it seemed untimely to ask. He opened his mouth, not certain what he would say, but Sal Minella’s flustered arrival backstage saved him the trouble.
“Gosh, oh, gosh-oh-gosh!” the troubled monkey cried. “Doc! Doc—you’re not going to believe this!”
Sal had crept back to the room to find Johnny in the shower and—grateful for once not to be noticed—had quietly deposited the pressed shirts and slipped away again. Like Dr. Teeth, he wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he needed someone else to help him carry this dreadful burden.
“Oh—it’s awful! It’s terrible! It’s—Gonzo? What the heck are you doing?”
Gonzo looked at him blankly. “Flossing my toes,” he said complacently. “Why?”
Sal shook his head to clear it, then the urgency of the problem reasserted itself. He grabbed the good doctor by his fringed lapels and panted up at him.
“Janice!” he blurted. “Janice and Clifford!”
Gonzo and Dr. Teeth looked at each other.
“What about them?”
“They were—they were, oh gosh, and then Floyd, and I dropped the shirts and then I took them up to Johnny cuz he’s got that big interview and he’s afraid his grey suit makes him look fat but I don’t think so, only—“
The weight of two sets of heavy-lidded eyes finally penetrated Sal’s babbling hysteria and he looked from one transfixed face to the other helplessly. Dr. Teeth stretched out one of his long arms and put it around Sal’s shoulder. His voice was kind.
“Slow down, Sal, and lay it out for us nice and easy.”
Haltingly, Sal tried. He was not strictly coherent, but he was able to communicate enough to make Dr. Teeth and Gonzo look at each other in equal parts disbelief and dismay.
“So—you saw Janice leaving the girls dressing room with Clifford.”
“Yeah—and they were whispering an’ all,” said Sal earnestly. “And then Floyd—oh, gosh, poor Floyd—he was there.”
“There where?” queried Dr. Teeth. “Did he leave with them?” He was sure that wasn’t what Sal has said, but he hoped he’d misunderstood. He hadn’t.
“No,” the distraught primate insisted. “He was—he was leaning against the wall and…” A thought struck Sal, and he stopped and got a distracted look on his face.
“What?” said Gonzo. “What are you…?”
“I don’t think he was spying,” Sal said slowly. “I think he was just hanging out waiting for Janice to, you know, come out.”
Dr. Teeth exchanged a quick look with Gonzo. Sal might not always put two and two together to get four, but he had a pretty good eye for specific details. Working with Johnny (or for him) sortof encouraged that type of attention.
“So, Floyd was waiting for Janice, but then Clifford came and Janice left with him—with Clifford.”
“Yeah,” said Sal softly. “That’s about it. But then Floyd said something about the person you care about not caring back….” Sal mumbled into silence, his cheeks flushing warm as he attributed his own comment to the mustachioed hipster. Compared to Floyd’s worries, Sal felt lucky. “And then he sort of slouched off with his head down.”
There was another quick look between Gonzo and the piano man, but Dr. Teeth slapped a toothy and presumably reassuring smile on his face and gave Sal’s shoulders a little shake.
“Look,” he said reasonably, his velvet-over-gravel voice compelling. “Maybe this was just a misunderstanding of some sort.”
Sal looked up, his beady eyes hopeful. “Really? You think?”
Gonzo jumped in to help the doctor’s discomfort. “Well, sure,” he said with false heartiness. “Look—we all know how things can get distorted, right?”
It seemed a safe bet that Sal knew what he meant. Lately, they all knew.
“So…you don’t think it’s, you know, what it looked like?” Sal said. Oh, how he wanted someone to reassure him.
“No—of course not. Janice and Clifford are probably just working on, um, dance moves or, musical stuff or, um, look—the important thing is that we don’t need to get all worked up until we know what’s going on.”
“But--how will we know what’s going on?” The primate’s eyes were full of trust.
“You leave that to me, my simian friend,” interjected Dr. Teeth. He patted Sal’s back and gave him an encouraging head tilt toward the door. “Just go on back and help Johnny and pretend nothing happened, okay? I’ll worry about everything else.”
With a great sigh, Sal relaxed and did what he was told. It wasn’t Johnny who said them, but somebody had finally said the magic words.

“—and then on my 15th album, It's a Bird, It's a Plane, it's a Crooner! I—“
Brenda Starr favored Johnny with a dazzling smile and crossed her long legs. For a moment, the crooner forgot what he’d be about to say, a slow, slightly-silly smile spreading over his mug. Brenda jumped into the conversational opening like the pro that she was.
“So, your career started before you worked with Kermit, but you’ve been working with him ever since.”
“Oh hey, yeah,” said Johnny immediately. “I mean, I been around, you know? When you see a good thing, you stick to it, right?”
Brenda gave a good imitation of a smitten little sigh and felt only mildly guilty for using the image of dear Basil’s face to give the sigh the right touch of wistfulness. Johnny didn’t know that the sigh wasn’t for him and his song stylings, Brenda thought firmly. If the truth were know, Johnny was just thrilled with the attention, and really, really tired of holding in his stomach. When Brenda made little regretful sounds and began to gather her things, he stood smoothly and walked her to the door.
“Thank you, Johnny,” said the star reporter. “I appreciate the time out of your schedule.” She offered her soft, well-manicured hand to him. He took it and pulled her in impulsively to place a kiss on first one soft cheek, then the other.
“Schedule-schmedule,” he murmured. “You do the little green guy proud, you hear?”
To his delight and surprise, he felt the firm return pressure of her cheek against his, the soft brush of her pursed lips near his ear.
“I’ll do my best,” she promised, and she meant it.
The result was a pleasantly befuddled crooner waving bye-bye as she walked down the hallway toward her room.
While she walked slowly—and with admirable style—to her own room, Brenda’s mind was racing ahead of itself. She was running over her afternoon of interviews, and thinking right this second about Johnny Fiama. Johnny’s own relationship myopia was something she wanted to explore more with Sal when she had the chance, but a man can be an excellent cobbler even if his children don’t have shoes. Proving it, Johnny had been a veritable font of information about, well, himself mostly, but he had a surprisingly good grasp of the interrelationships of everyone else. He had worked closely with Piggy during the filming of the Muppet Wizard of Oz, and while he could both aim and land a few choice comments about his diva co-star, it seemed the fond bickering of family, not the snarky jabs of someone who resented her. Kermit had received universal praise—a song that Brenda was beginning to suspect she’d know all the words to before long.
Brenda smiled, remembering Fozzie’s effusive praise of his boss and long-time friend. Though nervous at first, Fozzie had eventually settled into a very comfortable state and had talked both thoughtfully and earnestly about their many years together. Other than Rowlf and a few others, Fozzie was quick to lay proud claim to knowing Kermit perhaps the longest and (he insisted) the best. They had eased naturally into the changes that relationship had undergone once Miss Piggy became Mrs. The Frog. There was something appealingly childlike about Fozzie’s occasional naiveté, but he showed himself to be a bear of great heart.
“I don’t think Kermit wanted to fall in love with her,” Fozzie had said at one point. “But he just couldn’t help himself.” He was quiet for a moment, his face thoughtful, but when he looked up, his eyes were untroubled. “Things were loads better once Kermit finally gave up and gave in!” he blurted, then clamped both hands over his mouth and looked around nervously for any nearby aural organs.
But Brenda had burst out laughing at the comment, and Fozzie could never resist an audience.
“That maybe didn’t come out right,” he said sheepishly, “but it’s true.”
The lovely reporter inclined her head and looked through the notes she had compiled when she’d first agreed to take this assignment.
“So, they didn’t actually start dating until they began filming The Muppet Show?”
“Well,” Fozzie had mused. “They didn’t actually…well, I don’t know if you could call them dates,” he said. “Kermit would ask Piggy out to dinner after the show, but it seemed like he was always wearing his director’s hat.”
“How so?”
“Well, their relationship always seemed to center around work. At least, that was the official version.”
Brenda looked interested, but not certain, and Fozzie struggled to elaborate.
“Kermit was always, ‘Piggy, honey, you take the solo,’ and “Nice work there, Piggy dear,’ when they were on the set, but when it came down to just the two of them, well….Kermit had a hard time admitting he was in love.”
“And Piggy didn’t?”
Good lawyers always know the answer to a question before they ask it. Good reporters often don’t. But in this particular case, Brenda knew pretty well what the answer was.
Piggy had been decidedly vocal about her interest in Kermit. She had flaunted it, reveled in it, had even actually shouted it from the rooftops at one point, but her outward professions of passion had sometimes run afoul of her passion for her profession. If there had been third-party interference in their relationship, it had come from one entity—and it wasn’t the co-star of the week.
The show itself had operated much like a mistress to Kermit, and a master to Piggy. While Kermit might alternately ignore Piggy’s feminine wiles or prod her remorselessly, might give her “almost promised” song or skit to another actress, Piggy might, in her turn, negligently blow off a date with Kermit to practice with a co-star (admittedly, especially a male costar) or withstand yet another costume fitting. They had argued about, oh, EVERYTHING at some point or another, whether it was the co-star, or the skit or the budget or the costume. They argued loud and long and in front of anyone and anything that didn’t flee from the noise in terror, but the arguing had merely been another form of, well, foreplay or flirting or declaring the depth and breadth and height of their feelings for one another. And there had been a lot of feelings—on both sides—and not all of them pleasant, but Kermit and Piggy had seemed almost fused together by the sheer force of their emotion.
Brenda paused in front of her room and fished out her room key, remembering the way Kermit had looked to Piggy when uncertain—how he had reached for her hand when it came time to talk about emotional stuff. The reporter frowned for a second, trying to flash on all the things that she had ever seen Kermit in. Sesame Street, a passle of television specials, the early days with Jim. He had always been accessible—always been the nicest guy ever when it came to working on-screen, often playing the straight man to some inspired silliness by one or another of his monster friends, but Brenda realized with a start that Kermit had not developed his full emotional range until he began to work with Piggy. And Piggy’s early work—at least, the early work she did with Marty, which was the only stuff that really counted—had never come into freeze-frame focus until she began to work with Kermit.
Flipping on lights and checking messages (none) took all of 30 seconds, and Brenda shrugged out of her smart little suit and hung it neatly in the closet. She stepped out of her very high heels, thinking with pride that she could run down a city bus in them if she had to, and placed them neatly together on the closet floor. The red-headed reporter belted herself into a silk kimono and flopped with great satisfaction onto the bed.
She wasn’t hungry. Her timing was off because of the time shift, and if she consumed a meal before attending the show, she might have to fight off inertia later. She got up and brewed herself a cup of coffee in the little pot so thoughtfully provided and carried it back to her bedside. Now, to relax, and plan, and anticipate. This had been a good idea—a good assignment. She checked her watch reflexively. She had about two hours before the show started, so for another hour and a half, she would be the star reporter she was born to be. But when that time was up, she’d hang up her reporter hat and transform herself into…a fan, ma’am—just a fan.

Fortified with several minutes of power-snuggling with his wife and more than a few far-from-stolen kisses, Kermit had surprised himself with a hearty appetite, and he tucked into the vaguely Oriental-inspired food that Mabel had sent up to their room with relish. Robin joined him, using chopsticks to scoop up rice and vegetables and various forms of protein that Piggy did her determined best not to think about. While the boys ate and swigged iced tea, Piggy released Thoreau from his self-imprisonment in Foo Foo’s room, and he practically fell into her arms.
“Oh, darling!” he cried. “I almost fainted twice! You were absolutely marvelous.”
Kermit looked up from his plate of food and regarded the dressmaker levelly, and Thoreau managed to throw a gracious look in his direction.
“You weren’t half bad, yourself,” Thoreau said, and Piggy smiled at both of them indulgently. From Thoreau, that was positively glowing praise . After a few more, um, pleasantries (an odd word to be using in conjuction with the prickly dressmaker), Thoreau excused himself to go back to his room. He needed a cup of tea, a quick nap and to calm down after the excitement of the day.
Fondly, Piggy watched him go, then turned her benevolent gaze on the two green heads bent toward each other at the table. Robin was chattering with considerable animation about his afternoon with Scooter, and while she watched Kermit laughed and rested his hand lightly on the back of Robin’s neck in a move so parental and proud that it made her throat tighten spontaneously.
Seeing Kermit in that familiar role of trusted and trusty caretaker made Piggy feel—oh, so many things!—but most of all, she felt…safe. Safe and secure—as though nothing could touch them here so long as they were together. It was a good feeling—one that Piggy hoped might last. At the very least, she intended to make the most of it while it did.

Rowlf had agreed to take Animal out on his own afternoon constitutional, leaving Dr. Teeth on his own, but the good doctor did not intend to remain that way for long. The daunting task of finding Floyd Pepper in the mass of writhing humanity that was the Las Vegas strip proved surprisingly simple in the end. Dr. Teeth went to ask Mabel for suggestions on where to start looking for a down and down musician and found Floyd sitting slumped at little table. The remains of a huge wedge of cherry pie and what had been a full pot of coffee were within arm’s reach, but Floyd seemed not to have much of an appetite. He looked up when the door opened, but when his eyes met the gentle gaze of his musical mentor and friend, he looked away. Mabel gave Dr. Teeth a searching look, then nodded slightly.
“Mind if I sit?”
Floyd shrugged, and Mabel hovered for a moment. She produced a plate, a saucer and a mug and then managed to busy herself in the far corner, giving them enough privacy to talk.
Floyd waited until Dr. Teeth had lowered himself into the chair before he spoke.
“Hey man,” he said, with a feeble attempt at his usual hipness.
“You are the man,” said Dr. Teeth, but Floyd looked away again. When Sal had been distressed, the languid piano player had felt free to put and arm around his friend’s shoulders. Despite the fact that he had known Floyd for close to forever in musician’s years, Dr. Teeth was not sure a similar gesture would be welcome now. He put as much compassion into his voice as he thought Floyd could stand. “Why don’t you tell me.”
Floyd shrugged, striving for even a little bravado. “Looks like bad news travels fast,” he said. “But, hey—that’s the way it goes, right?”
Dr. Teeth played with the coffee cup in his hands, turning it over and over with agile fingers. “Not always,” he said, his voice slow and deliberate. “Look, sometimes Sal can be a little excitable….”
Floyd let out a sound that wanted very much to be a laugh but failed miserably. “Naw…I saw what I saw,” he said. “She…Janice deserves to be happy.”
“You are jumping to conclusions, Floyd. Did you even talk to her?”
Floyd recoiled, shaking his head firmly from side to side. “Naw, no—I…I wouldn’t do that to her, make her say it to my face. I’m gonna do the…the right thing.”
“And what would that be, my friend?”
Floyd took a deep breath, and his voice caught just a little on the edge of it. “I’m…I’m gonna let her go.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. Just like…that.”
The bushy eyebrows rose and fell several times, then Floyd reached out suddenly and clasped Dr. Teeth’s wrist, groping for contact like a drowning man.
So much for my instincts, thought the man with the golden tooth, and he took Floyd’s hand and held on tight.
“If you have to let go, Floyd, I promise I won’t. ‘kay? I got your back, man.”
Floyd nodded and let out a breath that he seemed to have been holding for a long time, then he sat up straighter and squared his shoulders.
“Thanks,” he muttered, wrapping himself in hipster machismo once again. “But as long as you’re here—let me lay some pastry on you. This pie is righteous.”
Dr. Teeth smiled in spite of himself. “Don’t mind if I do.”

 

[Java]

OH WOW, oh wow, oh wow!

What a wonderful update... and a painful one too! Poor Floyd...

Fozzie was great! And Rizzo helping him.

To think that Johnny has a somewhat observant side to him as well...

Thanks for the update Ruahnna!

 

[The Count]

Oh Ru... Thanks for the chapter. Will come back and see if I don't lay out some thoughts later... Guess it'll be one more chapter I'll have to wait for, and looks like one more week if you're planning on changing seasons when the calendar does.

Again, thanks and keep posting.