Disclaimer: Not at all.

Warnings: Homosexuality, fluff

Freak Show

By Cory

Chase Young glowered warily at the garishly colored poster that had been slapped down before him upon the table firmly enough to nearly offset his cup of tea. "The circus," he intoned warily (and with no small amount of disbelief) after a moment. He was still regarding the poster as if he was intending it to spontaneously combust.

Jack nodded, arms folded in front of his chest. "Don't pretend that you don't want to go."

"Rest assured, it's not as difficult as you'd imagine," Chase muttered, eyes trained on the apparently many attributes of the circus: Ride an Elephant! Feed a Camel! Chase wondered if any of the guests had ever been spit by one of the camels, and it brightened his mood minutely.

"Seriously, Chase. You gotta get out more. I don't know if you get the Crayola people to keep your face like that, but it's going to need Vitamin D sooner or later." Jack plunked himself in the chair beside the evil overlord. "Besides, I wanna go."

"Jack. No."

"It'll be fun, I swear! They have lions…"

"You just want to see the freak show, don't you." It wasn't much of a question.

"Well, yeah. That's pretty cool, too. I mean they have this bearded chick, and one time I swear that I saw a bug crawl in it. It was so gross. I wanna go again."

"You're a freak, Spicer," Chase pointed out.

"Yeah. But are going to go with me?" Jack asked. He attempted to look innocent, peeling his ruby eyes open wide to give Chase the—in his mind—ingenious puppy-dog pout.

Chase was unaffected. Really, his young man looked buggish more than someone he would have any desire to go anywhere with—much less to a circus with.

Chase sighed, and Jack clearly took that as a sign of assent, and leaped into his lap childishly (and that was really expected, at this point of being in the techie's company) to maul him with a hug. Chase took that as a sign of assent, and bent him over the table to plunder him remorselessly.

It was worse than the evil overlord had envisioned. Children ran about with mouths sticky and rimmed with caramel and apple bits. Mothers ran about helplessly, only contributing to the bedlam; they seemed to be determined on rounding the munchkins up into their cars, as the actual circus had ended to be dispersed into smaller tents—the animal tents, the performer tents (where one of the fire-breathers had reportedly scorched a little boy's eyebrows), and the freak show tent, naturally. Wrappers and papers littered the trodden, earthen ground, soiling it in cherry soda and crystalline sugar cubes. Dusk was falling, and the oily remainders of natural grayish light did nothing for the patchy scenery and outlandish makeup spoiling every performer.

"Greatest show on earth, my ass," Jack mentioned loudly, and one of the performers glanced over at them huffily. "Did you see that magician? Totally staged. 'And now I will pick a member from the audience.' Bull." He yanked a bite out of his hot dog.

Chase pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering how he was going to fetch a blowjob out of all this. He had earned it, he was certain; he had retained every snide comment and behaved himself wonderfully. Now he just wanted to get in and out of the freak show tent as quickly as possible, go home, force Spicer to brush his teeth thoroughly at least six times over, and then tie him down to chair and have his wicked way with the boy—to rid himself of the corniness of all things circus-y, if nothing else. When he ruled the world, the circuses would suffer, no matter what Jack had to say about it.

Jack gasped and Chase groaned as the fateful tent came into view. It was painted a striped pattern of green and orange that was probably meant to look vaguely vomit-like. There were loud gasps and womanly squeals of horror heard from within. Jack immediately turned to him, eyes bright. "Let's go!"

Chase allowed himself to be dragged within. He really didn't want to be there, but he really didn't want to go home alone, either. He watched Jack rather than the long line of so-called freaks passed by, observing every tilt of his mouth and crease of his eyes as he scrutinized the performers as they swallowed swords, displayed countless pircings, and hung themselves from hooks. Chase ignored the parade of humans about them. Jack was more interesting, anyway.

Chase felt a weird bubble of warmth as they emerged from the tent and Jack slipped his hand into Chase's; Chase almost pulled away, but he thought better of it, and let his hand dangle obligingly in Jack's.

Jack couldn't hear it, but Chase could; there was a young couple—possibly in high school or college—and the young man was whispering in the young woman's ear, "They belong in the freak show." The young man's eyes were centered on the back of his head, Chase knew, and hesitated in his step momentarily. Jack was babbling about one of the clowns, oblivious to it all. The young woman giggled.

Chase Young didn't confront the man. He knew that if he did decide to beat the man into a pulp, he would be sinking even lower. So he continued walking with Jack, and the memory of that man was easily dispersed into nothing; he forgot the comment minutes later, discarding it as inconsequential and worthless.

The little happy, satisfied beat in Jack's step contributed the most to that. We're freaks, the walk said. I'm a freak and I love it. He's a freak and I love him.

"So," Chase sighed. "You want to take an elephant for a joyride?"