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“I hated being a teenager.”
The words take Scooter by surprise. They’ve been sitting together and flicking through Walter’s family albums for the better part of an hour, mailed up from Smalltown just this morning. Scooter has been enjoying it, Walter’s explanations of every holiday snapshot, each inexplicable photo of Gary’s shoes against the kitchen tile. He’s especially been getting a kick out of the periodical baby photos where Walter can be no larger than a ball of unbaked cookie dough, lovingly wrapped in a ducky towel after his bath or playing on his mat on the floor while a toddly Gary tries to get his attention.
It’s surprising because of all these happy memories, but also because Scooter is yet to observe a picture where Walter hasn’t been grinning. And, sure, most families don’t preserve nasty memories in their precious albums, and it’s easy to fake a smile, but there aren’t even amusing images of some toddler tantrum, and Walter has always lacked that tell-tale glimmer of discontentment behind the eyes of someone putting on a front.
So he hated being a teenager?
“Oh, Walter, really?”
“Yeah.” Walter shrugs, turning the page for Scooter. This reveals a ream of pictures of him and Gary playing together in the backyard in which Gary gets progressively taller and huskier and Walter remains exactly the same. “It was just…it sucked.”
“‘Cause of the bullies?”
Scooter is familiar with this much, at least, the intimate particulars of all the horrible things Walter, and, truthfully, his brother heard while they were growing up.
“Well, I mean, yeah, but more…I dunno. I was so unhappy, Scooter. All the time. Just, y’know, hormones, and being dramatic, but…yeah.”
Scooter frowns, wordlessly opening his arm so Walter can snuggle against his side. He keeps flicking through the album, and some appropriately teenaged images crop up. Walter at the swimming pool. Gary, Mary and him at the soda shop. A picture taken from a doorway of Walter watching what’s presumably the Muppet Show, open-mouthed gaping at the screen. Scooter smiles a little, but it’s troubled, now.
“Why were you so unhappy?”
“I guess just hormones, like I said.” Walter curls a little tighter into Scooter’s side. “I mean, I had the changing brain and the changing body, but not on the outside. I never got acne, or whiskers, and I didn’t get any bigger or any taller. I was always angry, and upset, and I wasn’t even getting any reward for it. I just stayed little, and funny looking.”
Walter’s expression has morphed into a grimace as he recalls this, one that deepens as he turns the page to a prom photo Scooter hasn’t seen before. No Gary and Mary, just Walter and the poor, alarmed looking girl on his arm.
“I used to really love the part in Caper, y’know, where Kermit shaves without a blade? ‘Cause it made me feel a little less weird.” Walter continues, laughing. “I knew the whole Muppets thing was weird, so I got really awkward about it…and then I started feeling like I was letting my parents down, being all…not normal. It wasn’t enough that I looked odd. I had to be odd, as well.”
Scooter simply looks down at Walter as he explains, trying to ignore the vice-like squeezing in his chest. Part of him wants to go back in time and give Walter the tightest hug physically possible, and another part wants to go back in time and slap everybody who ever made Walter feel close to bad, and another part still just wants to stay right here and hold him close.
“Your parents love you, Walter. They’re so proud of you.”
“No sixteen year old believes that. For a while, I thought they’d’ve been better off without me.” Walter pauses, seeming to recognise the weight of what he’s just confessed. “But all teenagers think that, don’t they?”
“No.”
Scooter says it without thinking, immediately, because no. The majority of his teenage years were spent working out different ways to masturbate without the Mayhem realising and putting the fear of God in Kermit with frequent mentions of his uncle (who owns the theatre). He’s pretty sure skittish teenage angst only caught up to him in his twenties, and it might’ve skipped Skeeter entirely.
“Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m grown up, now. A grown up Muppet! I don’t feel that way anymore, Scooter. Honest.”
“Do you ever wish you could go back? Do it again?”
“Eugh. No. I love not being a teenager.”
“No. No, I mean,” Scooter can’t help laughing a little at Walter’s comically dramatic pout. “I mean, is there anything you wish you could do now, that you didn’t get to as a teenager?”
“Oh. I-I dunno. I think there’s stuff I had to skip that just can’t be repeated, like young love and all that, or underage drinking, which is actually probably a good thing. And some stuff I did I was too sad to enjoy. Anyway, I like being how I am now. I like myself, Scooter, and all the stuff I get to do.”
Scooter presses a kiss into the fuzz of Walter’s hair. They’re silent for a short while, cuddled together on the couch, until Walter speaks again, quieter this time.
“I guess prom would’ve been nice.”
“Hm?”
“I mean, I went, but it wasn’t everything they say in movies. I guess it never is. I felt so bad for Mary’s friend. She was so awkward.” Walter giggles at himself a little while Scooter frowns. Did she not have eyes? “And watching so many At the dance sketches really felt like false advertising.”
“I would’ve taken you to prom. I mean, if we’d known each other.”
Walter looks up at Scooter, his smile taking on a wistful, grateful edge as he leans in to give Scooter a proper kiss.
“You’re sweet. I would’ve blacked out.”
“I coulda picked you up.”
“Well, I’m not surprised.” Walter murmurs. “With your Adonis-like build.”
Scooter barks a laugh.
*
“Kermit,”
“I’m a little busy, Scooter.”
“Kermit, please. It’s really important.”
“Can it wait five minutes?”
“No.”
Sighing, Kermit dismisses Bunsen and Beaker and turns to fix Scooter with the sternest look he can manage. Not very, truth be told.
“What’s so important?”
“We need to do a prom.”
“What?”
Scooter wrings his hands, trying to remember all his excellent points. He’d had them all ordered so neatly this morning, but now his nerve is steadily crashing. Something about this feels too important to mess up.
“We have to put on a prom with the whole theatre invited. Like, a high school prom. And you and Piggy have to come, and there’s a has to be cheap decorations and spiked punch and bleachers people can make out under—“
“Scooter, Scooter, Scooter, stop, stop. Slow down. Now,” Kermit puts a steadying hand on his shoulder, encouraging Scooter to take some restorative breaths. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“A prom. I just said.”
“As a sketch?”
“No. A real prom.”
“Ah, I see. Absolutely not.”
Scooter gives a pitiful whine.
“But Kermit! It’s for Walter!”
“Scooter! You can’t go running errands for him. If he wants to ask something, he can come and get rejected himself.”
“I’m the gofer. I run errands for everybody.” Scooter huffs, immediately defensive on Walter’s behalf. “And besides! It’s not his idea! It’s mine. It’s for him.”
“That doesn’t change my answer. A whole prom? Good grief, Scooter, don’t you know how much those things cost?”
“Not much, if high schools have them. And Walter didn’t even get to go to his! I mean, he did, but not properly. And he was so sad. And he’s my boyfriend and I love him—“
Kermit waves his hands.
“Alright, alright. Look, Scooter, the sentiment is touching, but it’s just not possible.”
Scooter frantically tries to find some way to wheedle Kermit into seeing the genius of his plan, and, perhaps caught up in a teenage headspace with all this talk of proms, falls back on ol’ reliable.
“Well, gee, my uncle who owns the theatre—“
“Your dead uncle?” Kermit asks, and immediately seems surprised by his own bluntness. “Sorry.”
Rats. Scooter stares at his sneakers, then turns his most pathetic puppy-dog eyes on Kermit. Time to go nuclear.
“What about Piggy?”
“What?”
“What do you think she’d say, if she knew you had a chance to spend the whole night dancing with her, and you said no?” Scooter manages the best pout his face is capable of. “I bet she’d be real upset. Especially since her own teenage years were so fraught with adversity.”
Kermit’s expression morphs into a scrunch of defeat. Scooter fights back his grin. Bingo.
“Cheap decorations, you say?”
“The cheapest.”
*
The plan is in place. All Scooter has to do is ask. He’s been researching promposals online and getting lots of great ideas, but the thought of executing any of them fills him with a nameless kind of discomfort. He wants to give Walter every good experience he never got as a teenager, but at the same time, a promposal feels wrong, somehow. The only kind of -posal he wants to give Walter is one that’s serious, just when the time is right.
It’s while he’s sitting and stewing on the subject one evening that Scooter finds himself zoning out, not hearing any of Walter’s happy chatter from the kitchen. It takes his boyfriend emerging with a large wooden spoon in his hand for Scooter to even register his presence.
“—Uh, what, sorry?”
“I said, can you look after these onions for me. What’s the matter? You look worried.”
Scooter looks up at Walter from the couch, wooden spoon in hand, sleeves rolled up over his skinny arms, the front of his hair slightly wilted from steam while the rest of it sticks up in fuzzy little spikes, and finds his heart moving ahead of his brain.
“I wanna take you to prom.”
“What?”
Scooter swallows, cheeks heating up irrationally. He shares a house and a bed and a life with Walter, and somehow, asking him out like this is utterly terrifying.
“I-I got Kermit to put on a big dance in a couple weeks, so we could go together, and you could—y’know, get the whole experience.” Scooter twirls his thumbs. “Will you go to prom with me?”
There’s a long stretch of agonising silence. Walter stares at Scooter, expression unreadable, and disappears back into the kitchen. Scooter’s heart breaks into a million little bits. He’s misread the situation. The prom was all hypothetical. Walter doesn’t want to even approach anything like his lonely teenage years, and Scooter has just shoved all that misery back in his face—
This panicked spiralling is broken as Walter re-emerges and clambers squarely into Scooter’s lap, straddling him. He cups Scooter’s face and kisses him with the kind of passion surprising from so little a Muppet.
“I was turning my onions off.” Walter says, matter-of-fact. “Scooter, you‘ve made me the happiest Muppet in the world.”
“So—so you will go with me?”
Walter nods, face breaking into an ecstatic smile, one Scooter can’t help mirroring. He twines his arms around Walter’s waist, leaning up to kiss him again, and finds himself being pressed back into the couch.
Forty-four minutes later, Scooter lays on the floor, couch cushion under his head with Walter resting his temple against Scooter’s bare hip. He finds himself stroking those fuzzy spikes of hair down into some semblance of neatness.
“Wanna get takeout?”
Scooter asks, and Walter nods in a way that has Scooter giggling.
*
The day of the prom kind of creeps up on Scooter. There’s always so much to do in the theatre, and between all that and organising the little details and spreading the word around the rest of the players, he almost forgets the whole end goal of actually getting to dance with Walter, drinking cheap punch under cheaper paper streamers.
Still, he finds himself almost sick with nerves as he fiddles with his bow tie for the fifteenth time in as many minutes. He wants to look just perfect, and while he lacks the teenage acne and greasy hair, he thinks he’s got the awkwardness in spades to make up for it. His hands simply won’t stop shaking.
“Scooter?”
Walter surprises him to the point Scooter jolts, giving a little squeak. Walter approaches, gently turning Scooter to face him. He’s got his nice black tux on, the one that brings out the lovely lines of his painted on eyelashes, and a shimmery orange tie. His hair is brushed down so sweetly Scooter wants nothing more than to run his fingers through it and ruin the careful styling.
“You’re good—look good. You look good.”
Mercifully, Walter smiles at his awkward stammering. Scooter thinks he’ll probably still be occasionally disarmed by Walter’s beauty when they’re of heckling-from-balconies age. He reaches up to carefully adjust Scooter’s bow tie.
“Thanks. You’re looking pretty foxy yourself.”
“Foxy?”
“Well, radiant beyond all measure seems a little mushy.” Walter smiles so hard his felt dimples a bit. “I have something for you.”
“For—oh, Walter, I don’t think we have time.”
Walter laughs at that, then shakes his head. He produces a small box from the foot of the bed—did he have that when he came in? Scooter was nervous enough that he wouldn’t have noticed if Walter came in with a marching band behind him.
“I know you get girls corsages, ‘cause I did, and I know you’re not a girl, but I still wanted to get you something, so I got this.”
He opens the box and produces a small orange rose, little sprigs of green and white backing it. He reaches out, carefully tucking the arrangement into the buttonhole of Scooter’s suit jacket, before stepping back again. Scooter looks down at the flash of colour now pinned against his breast and swallows down about a hundred different things he’s suddenly aching to say.
“So it matches my tie, is the idea.”
Walter explains, after too long a stretch of quiet. Scooter, mindful of the flowers, ignores the urge to pull Walter into a crushing embrace and instead merely moves to hold him, head tucked into Walter’s shoulder. He smells of strange aftershave and felt. Scooter is the luckiest Muppet in the world.
*
The prom is exactly what Scooter planned. It’s cheap and cheerful, all grocery store balloons and string glitter curtains stretched across the stage and behind it. The theatre is hardly the ideal setting for such an event, but if Gonzo managed to hold a dance marathon—the point is, it works just fine.
The music comes in strange bursts, some oldies from the record player mixed with live performances from whoever feels like getting up to play. Rowlf seems glad of a rare opportunity to play with so few interruptions and so a lot of the dance music is interspersed with little instrumental flourishes on the keys.
Many of the Muppets stand around talking and laughing, or take turns adding liquors of increasingly questionable alcohol content to the punch, but one couple never moves off the dance floor, and that couple is Scooter and Walter.
Rowlf has moved into a sweet melody, something old and familiar even though Scooter doesn’t know what it’s called or what the words are, or even if it has words. He focuses solely on the Muppet in his arms, stepping slowly backwards and forwards together. Walter is a good dancer, a result of a childhood spent in a town perpetually trapped in the 1950s, but he gave up trying to teach Scooter the steps to anything about a half hour ago. He seems content to simply sway to the music, looking at Scooter like he hung the moon. And he did hang the big paper one up above them, to be fair. Fozzie helped.
“I’m so happy, Scooter.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Walter squeezes Scooter’s hand in his, resting his head on Scooter’s chest. “You have no idea how much this—how sweet this is.”
“I know. I’m a real babe.”
Walter laughs, more of a pleased hum than anything else, and turns Scooter in a lazy circle on the dance floor.
“It’s nice, not having any chaperones, isn’t it?”
“I dunno. Kermit’s got a pretty close eye on you.”
This is mostly teasing, although Scooter does think there’s a natural bit of the mother hen inbuilt into Kermit. Ironic, when Camilla is right there. But Walter’s right. It’s nice that he can hold him as close as he likes without fear of someone telling them to keep an arm’s length apart. Sam has really dropped the ball tonight.
“You know, Scooter, nobody ever took me to make out point after the dance, either, and had their wicked way with me in the back of a car.”
Walter flutters his lashes at this, so faux-innocent Scooter has to bite back a squawking laugh for fear of someone overhearing their conversation. He manages to compose himself.
“Well, I don’t think I’m gonna, either.”
A touch of concern creeps into Walter’s playful expression.
“I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s fine. It was just—“
“I think,” Scooter interrupts, “That one of the great things about not being a teenager is the maturity it provides. It means that I’m enough of a gentleman to escort you home once you’ve had enough dancing, with no thought of taking advantage of the situation. And then, once we’re safely retired for the night, I can have my wicked way with you in our nice, comfortable bed.”
“Nicer than the backseat.” Walter agrees, dimpling again. “Maybe being an adult isn’t so bad after all.”
“Better than being a teenager, then?”
Walter takes his hand from Scooter’s back to press a crooked finger to his lip, brow furrowing comically. He finally nods decidedly.
“Yeah. I think it just might beat it.”
*
Some several years later, Skeeter comes over to stay for a few nights, and Scooter takes the opportunity to show her some of their scrapbooks. This is probably of little interest to her, but she’s his sister and Scooter is thereby legally entitled to annoy her as much as he wants.
Towards the back of the scrapbook are some newer entires, some photos Scooter recognises and some he doesn’t. Skeeter leans over his shoulder and squawks a laugh.
“When did you do a fifties night?”
“Fifties—oh, no. We had a sort of dance thing. Walter let me take him.”
Scooter says this with a giddy kind of pride, the sort reserved for talking about your eighth grade crush and not your husband. Skeeter rolls her eyes.
“God knows why.”
She takes the scrapbook from Scooter to examine the photo more closely, and as she does so, a few scraps of some of those cheap paper streamers slip from between the pages and onto her lap.