Kids Inc | You’re the One That I Want: I - I’ve Done Everything for You

[luxken27]

Title: You’re the One That I Want
Fandom: Kids Incorporated
Universe: Canon (Season 1 – 1984)
Genre: Friendship/Romance
Rating: T
Summary: Mickey didn’t realize just how much Gloria had come to mean to him until it was almost too late.

Links: DW | LJ | FF.net | AO3

Woohoo for getting another giftfic off my plate! This one is a (much belated) gift, intended for gloriafan's 2011 fandom_stocking. I promised him a Mickey/Gloria story, and boy, did my muse deliver.

I don't know what it is, but for some reason, all of the KI fic ideas I have manage to explode out of my control, and this story is no exception. What I'd originally intended to be a short oneshot (~5K) turned into a four chapter story by the outline (with an estimated word count around 10K), and ended up being nearly 16K words long by the time I finished. I suppose once I got started, it was hard to stop...

Considering where I ended up, it's rather amazing to retrace the path I took to get here. The very first kernel of an idea that I had for this pairing came after I watched Episode 1x13, thanks to a tiny part of an equally small scene:


the moment that started it all
Body language means EVERYTHING to shippers in this fandom, and oh boy at that closeness! I thought to myself, "What if it was Mickey & Gloria who thought of the idea for this episode, a birthday scavenger hunt for Renee? So many possibilities for cute interaction!"

That passing thought sat in my notebook for months. Cute interactions are not exactly my strong point, but it was a start, if nothing else. And what do you know - after finishing up Love Letters, I was in desperate need of some cuteness, LOL! So I decided it was time to tackle this idea.

Since Season 1 is out of my comfort zone, I decided to do a complete rewatch, including the pilot, to find some ground. About halfway through this process, the Kids' version of "Cruel Summer" got stuck in my head. A closer look at the lyrics only cemented the idea of a summer-set fic. I really latched onto the idea of Mickey's "cruel summer," when he found out he was moving - and all of the implications that might have, especially on his friendship with Gloria. Hmm...

I noticed a few nooks and crannies in the developing KI canon, a couple of places where a plot could develop, cementing the Kids' friendship in their early days. I ended up with four rough sketches of ideas, including Renee's birthday treasure hunt, and reconciled the fact that this was going to be a chapterfic with myself :P Then, finally, I sat down and started writing.

One of my favorite ways to dig into a new fandom/character/pairing is to expand on the canon. It gives me a feel for the characters and how they act and react to each other and their environment, and it gives me a chance to develop some headcanon, a personal take on the characters' backstories and motivations, all of those hidden variables that are brought to the table but never explicitly mentioned or discussed.

For KI, at least, that also meant constructing a pre-canon story that made some damn sense, LOL. A lot of changes were made between the pilot and the first episode, including, I suspect, the ultimate structure of the show. The pilot was definitely more of an ensemble musical, with a core of main characters that more or less disappeared by the time the show was picked up. It also has the distinct complication of new scenes added after the fact, shoe-horning in an important cast member who wasn't included in any form in the pilot itself.

The pilot itself wasn't broadcast, but released on VHS the year after the first season aired, recut and expanded with these "new" scenes with the Kid. The story of the pilot is that of Gloria joining Mickey's band, Kids Incorporated, and them landing a gig at the popular hangout, the Malt Shop. Renee & Stacy are also there, egging a shy Gloria on and bringing her to the attention of Mickey, the elusive leader of the band. We also get some history of the neighborhood (the upscale Coco Club is abandoned, for instance), as well as Gloria's home life.

By the end of the pilot, the Kid is invited to join the band, which now consists of Mickey, Gloria, Renee, and Stacy. There's only a throwaway line about what happened to the original members of the band, Danny & Chris, and no mention at all of how Renee and Stacy, dubbed "those pushy sisters" by the boys, managed to get in at all. Plus the fact that Kids Incorporated was the house band at the P*lace, which didn't exist in the pilot...

Yeah. It was a lot to wrap my brain around, LOL, but it gave me the perfect place to start the story: the day Gloria joined the band.

Rewatching her impromptu audition also gave me another earworm, one that became the chapter-naming motif. I fell in love with Mickey's covers of Rick Springfield's hits as I watched Season 1, and I couldn't resist bringing that into the story somehow. The Kids covered 4 Springfield songs in S1, and those became my chapter titles.

This first chapter fills in the gaps between the pilot episode (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4) and the first episode of the first season. I thought - instead of Chris and Danny moving away, as mentioned in passing at the end of the pilot - what if their objections to having a girl in the band continued? What if they just up and quit over it? There's a subplot in the pilot, of Danny liking Gloria and asking her to a school dance, which could add fuel to my fire: if she rejected his advances, that would only further spur him to quit the band, so that he could get away from her.

So, that's what happens. In the first scene, Danny and Chris confront Mickey, abruptly quitting the band they'd helped form. He tries to pry the reason out of them, but they won't give it up - not until TJ, the drummer, shows up does Mickey realize why his guy friends are abandoning him. (I figured out TJ was the heretofore unnamed drummer via process of elimination in the end credits of the pilot, LOL.) When Mickey dares to take Gloria's "side", TJ leaves, too, uncomfortable with the idea that Mickey would choose a girl over his best friends.

Mickey is reeling from the sudden loss of his band ("Face it, Mickey – Kids Incorporated is over") when Gloria appears, breathless after her sprint from her piano lesson. Mickey can't find it in himself to tell her that she's the reason why the others quit, so he lies to her and tells them that they're moving, instead. (A bit of irony that will come back to bite him in the end.) He's all despondent over losing his band, but Gloria is determined not to give up. They'll just form a new band, instead, under the Kids Incorporated moniker. Mickey is skeptical, but touched that she cares so much about a group she's only been a member of for a day.

With the loss of the original band, Mickey & Gloria also decide to give up their gig at the Malt Shop, which is just another blow to Mickey's ego. It doesn't get much better when Gloria suggests asking Renee & Stacy to join their new band, and she has to do some major-league coaxing to get him to go along with the idea. They turn out to be great, though, much to his surprise.

Renee references how nervous she was trying out for the band in the episode 4x1 "A Kid's Line," telling Connie about her audition for the group in order to reassure the shy girl that they'd give her a chance. I chose as her audition piece "Hey Mickey," which she performed in the pilot. I liked her performance because it was a wonderful example of her early direct, sarcastic, blunt attitude. It's just the sort of calculated move she'd make to get into the band, LOL.

For Stacy, who shared none of her sister's nervousness, I picked "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," which is a song she covered later in Season 1 with great aplomb. It's also one of my favorite Pat Benatar songs, and one that Gloria performed in the medley from the pilot, so I thought it would fit quite nicely =)

Even though he's not sold on the idea of being in a group with all girls, the "pushy sisters" join their group, and the four of them set to work, learning potential songs. Mickey & Gloria both know that they need an actual band to, well, be a band, and Gloria scouts out some kids at a local hangout, the P*lace. Again, she has to convince Mickey that it'd be worth their while to go over there and meet them, but she manages to convince him.

The Kids head over to the P*lace one afternoon, and meet the three musicians tooling around on stage. I just inserted the dancers from Season 1 into these roles, since they ended up playing them anyway, LOL. Mickey asks them to play a song with them, as sort of a group audition, and they agree, launching into the first song of the first season of the show:

It was a great cover to kick off the show, and I wanted to give it some importance in this story, too, hence using it as the song that united what was to become "version two" of Kids Inc =)

They're all excited about how good they sound together, and so is someone else: the oft-mentioned but never-seen owner of the P*lace. I gave him a name, Mr. Paulson, and a pivotal role in the development of the band: he offers them the afternoon gig at the P*lace, as well as the use of his equipment, which is what they've been playing with. Everyone begs Mickey to accept both the new members of the band AND the gig, which, of course, he does :D

Mostly, in this chapter, Mickey is characterized as being very hesitant and reluctant. This is a mix of the way he acted in the pilot, and how I'd imagine inexplicably losing his band would affect him. He and Gloria don't really know each other very well, but he's touched by her kindness, and her determination to resurrect the band. She's basically the backbone of the group, even if everyone defers to Mickey as the official "leader."

Gloria is definitely more pilot!Gloria than series!Gloria - a bit more timid, but still full of grace. She's loyal to her friends, and offers her sympathy easily when she first comes across Mickey, after the other boys quit. She doesn't buy his story about them moving, BTW; I excised a line about how she pointedly never says a word when she spots Danny and Chris in the halls at school, LOL. She's the sort of girl who'd keep that to herself anyway, to save a new friend some shame and embarrassment... :)

So, this is basically my headcanon for how the first 'official' iteration of the band came together. We're still missing a few key players - namely, the Kid and Riley - but they will be along soon enough :P Mickey & Gloria form something of a special bond as they work to put their group back together, which will serve as the basis for the friendship that will grow over the course of the story.

This is definitely a fic more about friendship than romance, but anybody who knows me knows I can't resist sprinkling in a bit of magic somewhere, LOL :P

I also used a prompt from my Summer Mini Challenge table to help me write this story. That prompt was "smooth" - I only intended to write one scene around it (which did happen), but I also found myself using the word as a nominal adjective in all of the chapters. So, win-win, no? :P

This story has been written in its entirety; I decided to space out the chapters a bit, not only because of their individual length, but also because this story is absolutely chock-full of canon references. I'll need four separate author's notes posts to get them all in, LOL - and keep them straight!