It was simply one of those days, the kind where Mickey's cousin Manfred came up with some wild idea, only this one was actually pretty mild.
Manfred decided to sit his cousin down to have a movie marathon, but there was a catch, much like any idea of Manfred's. The movies had to have Mickey in them in some way, be it an integral role or a simple cameo. Even if the cameo was extremely brief or a blink and you'll miss him sort of deal. The shorts wouldn't count because they've been seen a million times over the years already.
Still, Mickey himself actually agreed to this little idea, because at least they were exclusively watching movies he's been in that most people wouldn't know about, not even Minnie.
There were just some roles that he made sure that she never heard about, and that usually made him resort to telling Daisy and Clarabelle not to utter a word either and that usually involved some form of bribery.
One role in particular managed to slip through the cracks however, because of this movie marathon with Manfred.
Be it an act of fate, destiny, or something else in the universe that did not agree with Mickey and Manfred this day, it wasn't clear or certain. As luck would have it, Minnie came home from the Bowtique at the worst possible moment, during one of Mickey's death scenes, and a pretty emotional one at that. Even worse, the cousins didn't hear her come in so they couldn't stop it in time to save her from potentially having nightmares of Mickey dying in the worst way possible.
She came in just as the Mickey on screen was sliced into by a crazed looking child in a striped sweater, and not only did he bleed outright from his wound, but it was clear that it was quite the forceful blow as he coughed up blood as well, the red liquid life force trickled down his chin steadily. Only after the Mickey on screen coughed out his final lines about going to some kind of diner, by the sound of it, and asking another character that wasn't there if they wanted anything with a distant look, and an agonized smile on his face and poofed into a pile of dust, did Minnie shrill, "WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU WATHCING?!"
The cousins jumped in horror at the sound of her voice, Manfred scrambled to find the remote in the dark to turn it off, while Mickey scrambled over the couch to reach her, hug her, feebly explain it all to her, and otherwise reassure her that he was okay and that it was just a movie.
Manfred managed to turn it off just as a king was sliced into by the same child but did not bleed like Mickey's character had, and was finished off by a talking flower trying to prove its worth and show that it was never a traitor to the crazed child in a striped sweater.
"Your timing sucks, Minnie." Manfred groaned as he leaned his head back on the couch to relax his swiftly beating heart from the rush of adrenaline at being caught by one of the most innocent of all of their friends.
"What was that?" Minnie asked sharply, keeping her voice level, and patient sounding. Mickey stuttered too much to be understood in any way, so it was best if she sounded calmer to get a proper and understandable response from either of them.
"Uh, that, uh…" Mickey started again but Manfred cut him off to explain for him.
"A movie Mickey was in that he didn't tell you about because it's a role that his character dies in." Manfred explained, wisely leaving out the plot point of the movie being that Mickey's character was the very last line of defense against the little monster of a child. "Guess we have to narrow down the selection to no Mickey's character deaths, eh Mickers?"
"Obviously," Mickey shot back easily enough, turning away from Minnie because he couldn't bring himself to look at her again. "And put Magic Mic 3 down, we're saving that one for her birthday remember?"
"Aw, c'mon, Buttons. You were really good in this one, and at least its tasteful, the fact that you danced to Uptown Funk is so worth it, plus I liked the plot as much as the first one." Manfred tried to persuade, fully knowing the very existence of a Magic Mic 3 and Mickey being in it would pique Minnie's interest long before her birthday.
"Just please pick another one Manny, we don't need to mortify her in another way." Mickey retorted, and after Manfred made an affirmation noise and started digging around in his little pile of Movies that Mickey was in that he brought over, Mickey himself finally turned to Minnie. "I'm SO sorry that ya had ta walk in on that, dear. Are ya alright?"
"I'm fine, Mickey. But what are you two even doing?" Minnie asked bewilderedly.
"Mickey Movie Marathon!" Manfred replied in his cousin's stead again. "Shorts are being skipped because we've seen them millions of times, so main roles, support roles and cameos in feature length movies are what we're doing. You just happened to come in at the worst half of the two-in-one movie and his eventual character death."
Mickey smacked a hand to his face in embarrassment. Sure he may have gone along with Manfred's idea of this, but his humble nature was creeping back up now that Minnie was in the picture. He really didn't want to look narcissistic in front of her just because they were watching movies that had him in them.
"Oooh, how about a really old home movie of us and the rest of the original fab five, a.k.a the band?" Manfred chirruped excitedly.
"Depends if it's the one with mostly me crooning, then you know exactly what song we need to skip." Mickey replied without even looking up. Then he peeked out from in between his own fingers at Minnie and asked, "Wanna join us? Yer more than welcome to, since it's just things that I happen ta be in."
"Absolutely, if you're in Magic Mic 3 without even telling me what else are you in that you never mentioned?" Minnie replied eagerly while asking a rhetorical question that Mickey answered anyway.
"A lot, a good chunk of them are really simple cameos, and even some of those cameos my character dies in, generally off screen." The very last bit he had to add to not worry her.
All of their friends made bets already on who would die first out of the two of them. Mickey was the popular vote given how reckless he could be, but it was a well-known fact that Minnie hated the idea of him dying first if it ever really came to that. In fact she hated the idea of him dying period as she even occasionally had a nightmare of his death in some way, the interesting thing was how he dies was always different in her dreams.
Regardless, Minnie plopped herself on the ground next to Manfred just as he set the TV to the VHS setting and put in the tape.
"Welcome to my collection, as you can see, because you're his number one fan by default, I'm his second biggest fan because I have all these." Manfred greeted her as she sat down.
"Mickey was in all of these?" Minnie asked in wonder and awe.
"Yep, every one of 'em, from important roles, to semi important roles, to comedic relief sidekick, to clever cameos, to cameos where he 'dies' for whatever reason." Manfred replied cheerily, gesturing to each respective pile and air quoting Mickey's death scenes for obvious reasons.
Meanwhile the VHS tape came to life, and displayed five teenagers getting ready to practice a number. Two of these teenagers was obviously the mouse cousins, the rest were their friends from high school, a gecko, a chimpanzee, and a ram. Mac, Poindexter, and Rico respectively as Manfred pointed out for her sake.
"Good golly miss Molly, look how old this is, what're we wearing?" Manfred couldn't help but quip in astonishment. The whole band was wearing something gosh awful and gaudy, it was a wonder any of their mothers let them out of the house just to practice and hang out together.
"Zoot Suits obviously, thank goodness that means that THAT song is most likely first instead of that Cab Calloway song that we are not listening to." Mickey scoffed in relief, and felt need to emphasize a point to Manfred secretly for Minnie's sake. He sat himself down on Minnie's other side, so that they were all pretty much sitting on the floor, out of common courtesy at the very least.
"I wouldn't mind listening to it Mickey, it is just a song after all, and this is obviously way before you and I even met." Minnie quipped before Manfred had a chance to retort at him with the same argument, only harsher.
"A-a-are ya sure, Min?" Mickey stuttered, not really sure if he even heard her right. Of all the times she'd even want to hear that very specific Cab Calloway song that was pretty much forbidden to be sung in her presence just because her name's in it, though he himself was prone to humming it if they were in a tiff that was mutual.
"Of course. You know I can't get enough of your voice." She told him sweetly as she fluttered her eyelashes at him flirtatiously.
"All-alright." He relented, his resolve crumbled like a cookie as he could never resist her when she acted all cute like that.
"Oh, good, ya get to hear what he sounds like as a tenor, Minnie." Manfred said cheekily, and chuckled when she did a double take at him. "I kid you not. He doesn't sing like that very often anymore, because he knows that he'd have crazed fan girls swamping him for sure."
Sure enough, to prove his point, the teenagers on screen finished their warm up and got right into Zoot Suite Riot, with Mickey singing lead vocals in tenor. Really good tenor, one would never know how he usually sounded when speaking normally.
Minnie kept looking between the younger version of her husband on screen and the current one sitting next to her. He had his head tilted just enough to his other side that she couldn't make out his expression or see even the corner of his eyes, but his cheeks were bright red.
As Zoot Suite Riot ended, the band of teenagers transitioned right away into Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, and the younger Mickey on screen even got into character and danced in time with the music. Again he was singing in tenor, even the cooperative audience chorus parts, which the rest of the band mimicked as best they could while still focusing on what notes they had to do next to smoothly do the rest of the song.
Once the song ended both Mickey and Manfred were surprised by a third song being on this tape that they didn't remember being there, even worse for them, they knew the song all too well for another reason entirely and the irony was overwhelming.
"Oh, no. I don't remember this, why don't I remember this?" Mickey groaned as he had a bad feeling of what was to come.
"I don't remember this either, I don't even remember having more than just the two songs on this tape. You don't think we actually have the whole show that could've been on here do ya?" Manfred gaped with wide eyes, still bewildered that they actually had even this much of their musical past all this time. But he knew exactly what he was going to do with it at a much later date. It was the prefect blackmailing tool for April Fools' Day to get back at Mickey for what he did to Donald so many April Fools' Days ago.
"I honestly couldn't tell ya." Mickey said in exasperation.
Minnie kept looking between the two cousins and their younger selves on screen, wondering why they were bantering in panicked tones.
Meanwhile, on screen the younger Manfred joined his cousin for equal lead vocals as they did a harmonic duet of Fly Me to the Moon. They even danced in a sultry manner despite the tempo being a bit faster than was traditional.
The reason the boys of the present were so surprised at the irony of this song is because they both secretly took a pole dancing class, and they know how to pole dance to this song and this exact tempo to absolute perfection. That routine was another thing reserved for Minnie's birthday.
The rest of the tape did include the rest of the show that could've been though Mickey from then on was not the lead vocals, Manfred was, and in fact one of his numbers included him singing Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets, in drag. Of course even then, Manfred looked flawlessly like a woman, even without make up.
Other notable highlights included the entire band singing Bohemian Rhapsody as intensely as possible, Manfred belting out some Korean rock song that the cousins explained was titled Oasis, Mickey coming back out to do lead vocals for a song called Vince the Voodoo Doll, in tenor, and finishing off with a rousing finale of a Sonic the Hedgehog song, What I'm Made Of.
Minnie clapped rapidly as soon as the screen turned black. The cousins chuckled and golf clapped at their past performance, it had been a very long while since they had even seen the whole show of a gig that never was. They never could get gigs for some reason, and it was a crying shame that they didn't, they were pretty good for teenagers at the time.
"Manfred, you don't mind if I steal Mickey away for the remainder of the day do you?" Minnie asked innocently. Despite her innocent looks, Manfred knew all too well what she intended to do with his cousin, after all he himself did live just across the street. Everyone who lived within range of the Mr. and Mrs. Mouse residence had to adjust themselves to sleeping with some form of noise that was louder than whatever went on after dark at Mickey and Minnie's place.
"By all means, do what you will with him, in fact you can borrow the rest of the ones Mickey and I didn't get to, but I'll take the ones his character died in for your convenience." Manfred replied, gathering up all the movies that he promised to take to get that particular selection out of her way.
He shortly left with an all knowing cheeky grin shot in Mickey's direction, and as soon as Manfred was out of the house, Minnie dragged her husband upstairs to their bedroom. What they did when they got there, well, that was their business.
A.N: There is no Magic Mike 3 and it's spelled incorrectly on purpose for the sake of I don't wanna be sued.
Again, Manfred is my OC.
And I really like the idea that Mickey can indeed sing in tenor, just like in O Sole Minnie. I also like the idea of Mickey being in more roles than are most notable and not quite worthy of getting an Oscar for.
And Brownie points for whoever can guess what role Mickey is playing as he "dies". Though if you're my followers from my KH and Undertale crossover fan fic, you already know. I couldn't resist referencing it here too, so hopefully it's not too spoilery for those who don't know...Note: It's not a real movie its actually a videogame.