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funeralroast · 3 months

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short-ish, kind of sort of unfinished shaynetommy thing. didn't know where else to go with it which is why it's not on AO3 but i like what i have here anyway. maybe something else will come of it later maybe not.

It’s just one set, they said. It’ll be fun. You have to try it at least once and who knows, they said, maybe you’ll be good at it.

This is, in fact, one of the worst mistakes that Shayne has ever made in his life and whether or not that’s hyperbole doesn’t matter. He’s drowning up here and trust him, he knows what that feels like. (That was a good joke actually and if he was smart and also not sweating buckets, he would have thought to say it.)

The club is tiny which should have made things easier, maybe less intimidating, but instead it just made things worse somehow. Everyone who’s sitting at the small tables—their two drink minimums collecting condensation in front of them—feel like they’re practically all directly on his shoulders instead of their chairs. Their eyes are boring holes into him and all his funny is leaking out onto the comically small stage. He’d chosen to wear his denim jacket because it was comfortable, it was safe, but with the lights pointed directly at him he was immediately regretting it.

Shayne shouldn’t have let this happen. He shouldn’t have but he’s a pushover and his friends were very good at convincing him something was a good idea even when it wasn’t. So he’d agreed and he’d put together a short set (rehearsing it in his room, in the shower, while he was at the gym) and then he had showed up with his name on the list, walked up here, and nobody was laughing. His friends, the ones who brought him to this precarious cliff-edge, were barely even spitting out a chuckle.

A couple of the jokes had landed but they were sandwiched in between many that didn’t. When he was workshopping what to do he brought up the idea of bringing in one of his characters and was immediately shot down. You will absolutely get booed off the stage, one of them had told him. He’d get laughed off and not in the good way. Right now he was wishing he’d gone through with it because getting tomatoes thrown at him until he ran away almost sounded better than standing here floundering in front of a bunch of crickets.

He forgot water. His mouth is parched. He still has a minute-and-a-half left and he’s considering how embarrassing it would be for him to just start hyperventilating, if panic attacks were considered hilarious these days. At one point a few seconds ago he was aware of someone walking into the venue and plopping themselves at the bar. Just another person to gawk at his failure. Videos of train wrecks were popular online and he wonders idly if someone was filming this.

Just power through—at this point he can’t do anything else. He decides to switch tactics, throws away everything and starts to tell a story from his childhood, figures it could carry him until the end. The person at the bar laughs at the appropriate times and laughs loud; as soon as Shayne hears it he knows who it is. Some other people join in but in a way that sounds like they’re only doing it because they’re worried that maybe this entire time the set had been too intelligent, too cerebral, and the guy at the bar is the only one who Gets It, capital letters and all. They don’t want to look stupid.

When Shayne finishes there’s scattered applause much to his surprise—likely from his traitorous friends—and he struggles with the mic stand just to add an extra layer of humiliation to everything. He walks off stage and loses himself in the dark and the collected crowd. The host is talking and Shayne knows he’s likely being made fun of but he tunes it out, his head too fuzzy and blood too noisy in his ears for him to understand any of it anyway. He startles, whole body jumping almost painfully when an arm wraps around his shoulders. He’s ready to fight if he has to because if this person thinks he’s an easy target or interested in anything after that they’re horribly mistaken but then he actually looks at who it is and feels like maybe he could melt. Like he’d already forgotten he was here.

He allows Tommy to guide him back towards the bar and sit him down at a stool with its wobbly legs and cracked leather. It’s quieter here but not as quiet as Shayne would have liked. The person who went up after him is killing it and he feels a swell of something that is a combination of embarrassment and jealousy. Tommy joins him instead of dropping him down and wandering off, gets the attention of the beleaguered bartender, and it isn’t until they both have a beer in front of them that he finally speaks.

“That was awful.”

“I know,” Shayne groans, burying his face in his hands. Shayne isn’t sure of the actual statistics but he thinks it’s probably rare to remain good friends and occasionally make out with your ex (but they don’t talk about that like nice, normal people do when they’re avoiding things); he and Tommy hadn’t been typical from the start so it made sense that the ‘after’ would be just as strange as the ‘beginning’ and ‘middle’ as well. He assumes that the others have either agreed to give him space or saw who had kidnapped him and didn’t want to interrupt.

“I’ve watched a lot of sets,” Tommy continues, “Because I’m pathetic and want to make this my career and that was maybe top of the list of The Worst I’ve Seen Someone Do and I once saw a guy piss himself halfway through. Right where you were standing.” Shayne makes an injured sound at that, hasn’t removed his hands from his face even though they smell funny and he’s starting to have some trouble breathing. He waits for Tommy to continue roasting him—he’s always been very good at it, Shayne just as good at giving it back—but instead there’s a brief silence from him before he says something again, his voice softer: “Hey. Talk to me.”

Hands are on Shayne’s wrists; he knows it would be very easy for him to resist but he decides not to, lets his own be pulled away and placed down on the counter. Tommy covers them with his own but it’s only for a moment.

“I feel like I’ve been kicked in the chest by a horse,” Shayne says.

“Well, that’s what tends to happen when you’re an anxious mess.” Can’t help but snark, even now, but it’s said with a sort of fondness as if to let Shayne know that he is still taking this seriously. “It sucked. It was really bad. But it’s over. It’ll be an amusing anecdote for the people who are sober enough to remember for like… a day and then everyone’ll forget.”

“I won’t forget.”

“Well no of course not,” Tommy says. “You’re probably going to hate yourself for this forever.”

“I thought you were supposed to be helping me,” Shayne laments. He leans forward, pressing his forehead into Tommy’s chest in a further attempt to hide. There’s someone new on the stage now, a young woman with a loud, raspy voice. She says what’s supposed to be a joke because there’s a clear cadence to it—the rise of tone to a punchline—but it only gets a couple small chuckles and then, clear as day because the universe hates him specifically, Shayne hears her say: Uh oh! I’m pulling a Shayne here and I’ve only just started. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of my set. That gets a bigger laugh and Shayne just hides himself more into Tommy as if he’s a baby that thinks if he can’t see anyone else they can’t see him.

“Believe it or not that’s an honor,” Tommy says into the top of Shayne’s head but Shayne doesn’t reply right away, lingers in his misery for a moment before finally mumbling out:

“I hate it here.”

“First time you’ve ever said that with your face there.” That gets a snort out of Shayne but it’s short-lived. “Listen. I didn’t actually know you were going to be here, that was a happy surprise. And while I love consoling you through your torment, I do actually have to go up there soon so you’re going to have to move.” Shayne sits up, his shoulders slumped, and Tommy smiles, reaches up to run a thumb down the bridge of his nose, a weird gesture that he used to do to throw Shayne off enough that it’d break him out of his bad mood. “Wait here for me?” The last place he wants is to be here in this place any longer which is why Shayne says that yeah, of course he will.

“Are you gonna make fun of me?” Shayne asks as Tommy gets up to go wait for his name to be announced.

“Yeah, probably,” Tommy replies and then wanders off.

#smosh fic #smoshblr #shaynetommy #idk!!!#not my best work but [shoves it at everyone and runs away]#got attached to the ''exes on good terms'' idea and then this AU #also how much shayne Suffers™️ during the open mic tntls

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