Chapter Text
weekday mornings started off with one of three things: singing, bickering, or both. whether dot was telling wakko off for finishing the cereal for the fourth day in a row, or wakko banging on the bathroom door because dot was taking too long, there was always something. the dinky little two bed one bath montebello apartment was never quiet. the warners were lucky they didn’t get any noise complaints.
yakko almost never had to intervene. the sibs could usually figure things out on their own and finish getting ready with time to spare. however, it was now seven twenty-five and they were supposed to be in the car at seven fifteen for everyone to make it on time, and yakko couldn’t afford to be late for work again.
“don’t make me come in there!” he called as he very much went in there.
the bathroom bickering did not falter, words that would have been censored by the execs were flying left and right. yakko had to dodge a few before entering the small space.
wakko and dot were fighting over the space in front of the sink. dot was shoving her red lipstick in wakko’s face to get him away, while wakko tried to shove his toothbrush up his sister’s nose. after failing to forcibly remove the other, both siblings dropped their items and bust out the mallets, ready to solve this matter in a way none of them had done in quite some time.
welp. now’s a good as time as any to step in.
yakko placed his hands on the heads of each mallet and tried to not only diffuse, but resolve the situation.
“wakko, don’t you have a sink in your gag bag?” he asked his younger brother. “you have a toilet in there, surely you have a working sink, right?”
as it turns out, it was the right thing to say to get wakko to back down, but it seemed to hit him in a way that made his ears droop noticeably. wakko shoved the mallet back in his hammerspace and looked down.
“i left it at the tower,” he mumbled as he stepped out of the bathroom, letting his sister take the win.
the interaction hit yakko in a funny place. his chest tightened a little as he watched his brother’s shoulders hunch while he finished getting ready for school. yakko was definitely going to have to talk to him later, but even then, he was glad that there weren’t any storm clouds brewing over anyone’s heads. that would not be good.
yakko turned to his sister.
“take the mirror with you.” he nodded to the medicine cabinet. “you can finish your makeup in the car. we have to go.”
“yeesh, when’d you get so…” dot folded her arms and tilted her head as she observed her older brother.
“serious?” yakko finished.
“i was gonna say boring. your age is finally showing! anyways-“ she reached for the medicine cabinet, pulled the door off its hinges, and easily slid it into her hammerspace.
yakko didn’t say anything because of the time crunch, but he had a feeling that comment would come back to him later.
nineteen isn’t old and boring, is it? then again, fourteen feels like it was only twenty something years ago. dot’s now the age you were when you all lived at the tower.
dot practically bounced outside, pink bookbag slung on her shoulder. wakko all but dragged his feet, holding the straps of his backpack. yakko felt like he could breathe now that the ball was rolling. they piled into the rundown corolla and sped off down the road.
whenever she was in the passenger seat (all the time), dot was in charge of the music. yakko figured that that was how she managed to be so energetic that early in the morning. she tried to set herself up for success everyday, it was admirable. her school teachers sure loved her for it.
dot went through phases with her music: first she and her brothers would make up their own songs and have a concert on the drive to school. then, she discovered spotify, and all she listened to was david bowie. then it was evanescence, then one direction, then ramones, and now it was taylor swift. yakko took note of the songs that piqued his interest and added them to his own playlist. he didn’t have a hold on spotify just yet, so his one playlist was miles long.
wakko did the same, not that he talked about much of any of it. he was still very much into rock music, that hadn’t changed over time. he was just quiet about… well, everything. he was always the quietest of the three, usually relying on his physical comedy skill to get his point across, but that wasn’t a necessity anymore. so he stayed quiet.
yakko thought about that a lot, he thought about everything a lot. he wanted to hear other thoughts, like wakko’s. it’s not that he didn’t speak at all, he just said enough to answer a question, or ask one. nothing more, nothing less.
“hey, wakko,” he said, peering at his brother through the rear view mirror. “i’m sorry about your gag bag. didn’t know you left it behind.”
“i thought we’d be going back,” wakko replied, staring out the window.
“we all left stuff behind,” said dot, who now had the large mirror sitting up on her lap. she looked at the lipstick in her hand, brows furrowed. “human makeup is weird. liquid catsuit? did michelle pfeiffer make this?”
“i will get a new gag bag and some new makeup, alright?” yakko told them.
that was when wakko met his gaze through the mirror. “where in this world are you gonna find a sack like mine?”
“ᵘᵘᵘᵘʰʰʰʰʰ goodnight everybody!”
wakko rolled his eyes and resumed looking out the window, in the true fashion of a sixteen year old. maybe his silence could be boiled down to that. human teenagers were an enigma, toons with human like aspects who were also teenagers were completely uncharted territory. well, to yakko at least, but don’t tell anyone.
the car was silent aside from miss swift’s dulcet tones. but it was never silent for long.
“i wanna make a movie,” dot mused when she finished with her face, “and have this song as the theme.”
“a romance thriller horror?” yakko guessed.
“exactly!” and she went on about how she would cast herself and one of the famous chris’s as the leading couple. they would get married for the movie publicity but then fall in love for real.
the warners’ time in the industry had been over for a very long time now, but if they had to pick at least one who still showed an interest in breaking back into it, it was dot. apparently, auditioning for the lead role in her school’s production wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t only because she didn’t get the part… or any part at all. last fall, yakko was driving dot to different auditions around town on the weekends. no matter what it was - a commercial, a modeling gig, an extra - if there was a role to be filled, dot took a shot at it.
at least one of the warners had proper goals, even if it was for a small period of time. breaking back into showbiz didn’t seem that far fetched at first, given the success all three of them had in the business way back when. but as it turns out, it was very hard to break back in if you didn’t have the right connections, which the warners did not have. not anymore.
nevertheless, dot persisted.
“they don’t know what they’re missing!” she would say when she didn’t get a callback for any of the auditions.
yakko and wakko would say the same when dot scrapped the whole ‘get back into the business’ plan. they don’t know what they’re missing. dot was determined to stay unbothered and simply moved on.
he didn’t know his brother’s reasoning behind staying out of show business, but yakko’s reason was that there was simply no time. if he wasn’t working during the day, he was helping his siblings with school work in the afternoon (their grades were not up to par), or doing the pink ride sharing job in the evening and on weekends because the landlord decided to raise the rent for some godforsaken reason.
yakko rarely had time to himself, you could say this was why he liked driving so much. sure, comically zooming around and spontaneously popping out of people’s pockets and desk drawers was endlessly fun, but there was something about driving (and the fact that he couldn’t zoom or pop anymore.) the solitude he would have hated a few years ago was peacefully prominent every time he dropped the siblings off at school, and he took his first heavy sigh of the day.
dot’s playlist was still playing through the speakers. yakko had made his own copy for his own listening needs and - between you and him - he also wanted to have something of his siblings for when they were gone.
that, and taylor swift was just… she was definitely someone who would have received many unwarranted kisses from yakko and wakko once upon a time.
“and when you are young they assume you know nothing…”
“hm, you got that right, swifty,” yakko said in response.
it was a little tune about lost love and thinking about the past. but yakko didn’t think about romance with very specific parts of this song. the events that led up to his current life started to play in his head, and he wasn’t exactly focused on driving anymore.
“i knew you’d haunt all of my what-if’s, the smell of smoke would hang around this long…”
putting toons in the human world changes those toons.
a prime example would be yakko warner. ever since the unveiling procedure, yakko didn't sing as much as he used to. if he does, it’s usually to the songs he hears at work, or whatever dot plays in the car. yakko used to be able to think up new songs on the fly, but in the last couple years it’s felt like his brain pushed out old skills to make room for new ones. (the siblings also lost interest in improvising songs - a sign that the human world was also taking away their zaniness.)
“...’cause i knew everything when i was young…”
putting toons in the human world with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their very last less-than-pleasant checks really pisses off said toons. they should have known.
yakko should have known. he had an eye for detecting a steaming pile of crap. but things were moving so fast. plotz had stepped down at the drop of a hat and his replacement was a dream. he gave the warners anything they wanted: extra snacks, a rollercoaster, diamonds, fresh puppies, you name it. he was making new changes on the lot, starting with the warners. then new guy talked about renovating the water tower and “temporarily” moving the warners into the real world while they made those renovations. the warners had to go through their own personal renovations too…
“i knew i’d curse you for the longest time”
those pesky execs and that new chairman. yakko had half a mind to visit that guy and introduce him to the mallet. his name is on the fucking company and all he gets is a hundred bucks plus some dirt and an irreversible procedure as a departure gift?
“chasing shadows in my grocery line, i knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired”
gee, this artist does not pull her punches! the lyrics and a memory dropped on yakko’s head like a fucking anvil.
wakko thought he saw doctor scratchansniff at the store. ever so kind as he was, he went to say hi, while yakko and dot looked the other way. thank god it wasn’t actually him.
“and you’d be standing on my front porch li-“
“yeah, no you lost me,” yakko said, waving her off like she was actually in the car with him.
no one was busting their butts to find yakko and his siblings and beg them to come back to the water tower. no one was missing them. he certainly wasn’t missing anyone over there.
the song was almost over but yakko changed it anyway. same artist, same melancholy atmosphere, different tune.
the last the warners heard was that their beloved tower had been demolished. instead of spending these last five years plotting revenge schemes like the yakko warner from animaniacs would, he had to really step up and make a new home from nothing. but this was the human world, and he couldn’t literally make something from nothing. now he was so busy trying to keep what he did make afloat that he couldn’t even think about sending an anvil to the folks at warner bros.
look at this idiot, who had to settle in a foster home in order to get a job in order to get a car in order to drive around in order to find a place to live in order to gain custody of the sibs. look at this idiot, who was now working at a green coffee shop inside a red circle store, having to let go of a substantial amount of his zaniness in order to keep said job, because if he let out even one of his snarky sarcastic thoughts to a customer, he loses. he can call it self defense, he can say the customer threatened him, but he will still lose his job and by extent, risk losing the little crumbs of life he put together. all because some fool in a business suit lied to him and made him, yakko, the fool.
the worst part was that ol scratchansniff was in on it too. yakko tightened his grip on the steering wheel, feeling his mind spiral.
“don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby, look at this godforsaken mess that you’ve made me, you showed me colors you know i can’t see with anyone else”
yakko knew that he and his siblings were difficult with scratchy, and damn near everyone else on the lot, but they’d never lie to him. they would never do what he did to them. never in a million years.
he thought about this at least once a week and at most once a day. he thought about it when he had a string of special friends at work, that he could still be living on the lot without worry of bills and aging if only he hadn’t been so naive. he thought about it when dot’s friend’s mother gave him a look of pity. oh to be so young and have to be a parent to your brother and sister. when he had to go to this “back to school night” nonsense and get the same looks from wakko’s and dot’s teachers.
“don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby, look at this idiotic fool that you’ve made me…”
he didn’t feel like a parent… most of the time. wakko and dot pretty much looked after themselves when he wasn’t around. they knew how to dress themselves, when to eat, and when to go to bed. they were still figuring out other ways of solving problems aside from arguing or using the mallet. other than that, the three of them function just fine as individuals. someone just had to bring the income and only yakko was legally allowed to do so for now.
he had to. he didn’t know what else to do. causing a drizzle of anvils on the warner bros lot wouldn’t pay the rent or the utilities. sending a bouquet of dynamite to the CEO wouldn’t relieve the frequent tightness in yakko’s chest. it wouldn’t get dot a new movie role. it might make wakko perk up a little but he still wouldn’t have his gag bag, much less talk about it. yakko just had to be okay with what he did make of this situation, even if he frequently wondered how the hell he managed to pull it off.
fourteen year old yakko would have known what to do in this situation, and it would have been fun and zany and there would be no fears of losing two very important people in his life.
he really did know everything when he was young.