Love Under the Big Top
Title: Love Under the Big Top
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Aiba Masaki/Becky, Arashi
Summary: “Face it, Aiba-chan. She doesn’t date clowns.”
Notes/Warnings: I love Aiba het and I will shout it from the mountaintops! Heck yes this is a CIRCUS AU. I think Katy asked me for Aiba and Becky looking for animals escaped from the zoo, but I guess my brain had other ideas. There are still animals involved! The original title was 'Cirque du Storm-ay' but that's cheesy even for me ;)
He frowned at the state of all of his grease paints. He hadn’t put them away properly, and with the big move from the fairgrounds in northern Honshu down here to Shimonoseki, they’d become way too runny. Okay, to be fair, Aiba was usually quite good at packing up his supplies, but this time he’d been a little preoccupied. Because SHE had talked to him. After all this time, his favorite trapeze goddess had spoken to him.
Sure, she’d just asked him to help carry her costume trunk, but it was something, wasn’t it?
Nino tapped him with the handle end of his whip. “Face it, Aiba-chan. She doesn’t date clowns.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” he replied huffily, dumping the ruined paints into the garbage barrels at the edge of the grounds.
“So when she told one of her girlfriends the other day on the road ‘I don’t date clowns’ that was just semantics? Like, ‘I don’t date immature guys’?”
Nino was a real jerk sometimes. One of these days, his smart mouth would land him in the jaws of one of his precious lions, and then Aiba would laugh. Okay, no, he wouldn’t laugh because then Nino would be hurt. Maybe one of the tigers could just bite him on the ass like they always bit Aiba during one of their acts.
“I’m not just a clown,” Aiba protested, his shoes squeaking as they moved from the grass and onto the pavement near the tents. “I’m a human being.”
Nino shrugged. “She’s had eyes for Jun and only Jun, mind you, ever since he joined up.” Nino looked wistful. “We can’t all be tightrope walkers, can we?”
Stupid Jun, Aiba thought. Showing off on the tightrope, shouting out dangerous things like “Take the net away, haha!” so the crowd would scream. And then he’d walk across perfectly and the crowd would cheer and later Aiba would get bitten in the ass by another of Nino’s animals and they’d just laugh at him. Nobody cheered for Aiba.
They entered the big top together, and they could already see Jun practicing. And there she was, Aiba discovered. Becky was up at the top, sitting on the platform opposite Jun and cheering him on.
“Give up,” Nino encouraged him, punching his arm. “She’s out of your league.”
Aiba frowned as Jun made it to the platform, and Becky gave him a big celebratory hug. “I could win her over. Don’t girls like funny guys too?”
“That’s just something they say,” Nino assured him. “Until a pretty boy comes along who can walk the tightrope without breaking a visible sweat.”
Jun stood behind Becky, grabbing the trapeze bar and holding it for her while she chalked up her hands. She thanked him with a smile and started her practice, moving gracefully and almost effortlessly through the air.
“I hear the bearded lady’s single though,” Nino said with a smirk, dodging out of the way before Aiba could smack him.
--
He hobbled back to the trailer he shared with Nino. Four hours, and he had nothing to show for it. It was a bigger fall than he’d thought from the tightrope to the net, and he’d landed kinda funny. Not ha ha funny like his usual routine, but twisty ankle funny.
Nino’s favorite lion, Lucca, had recently given birth to a cub, and they were keeping him as a pet in their trailer (and as long as Sho the ringmaster didn’t find out, it was totally okay). Aiba opened the cage and let the little lion cub hop onto his bed with him.
“It’s hopeless,” he complained to the animal, and the lion mewled in seeming sympathy. “I’m a clown. I’m always going to be a clown.”
The lion cocked its head, pawing at Aiba’s pants. He leaned back in bed, head landing on one of his horns and letting out a pathetic honk.
“She’s so pretty, and she never even looks at me,” he told the cub. “Well, to be fair, she’s usually thirty feet off the ground, so I should probably factor that in.”
The cub bit a hole through his pant leg.
“I can’t just...I can’t just go up to her. She’d be all ‘who are you?’ because I’m usually in my make-up so...”
The cub then started gnawing on the fabric he’d torn off.
“I just...I have to talk to her one-on-one. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do!” Aiba said, gaining some courage. If he could go out night after night and slip on banana peels in front of hundreds of people, talking to Becky couldn’t be that hard, could it?
He picked the lion up, ducking back as it tried to bite his nose. “I’m glad we had this talk.”
--
The guests were already filing out of the big top, and he caught Becky as she was climbing down from the trapeze and tightrope platform. He’d worn his tightest oversized clown pants and paid close attention to his make-up. He’d put a little extra around his mouth to make his smile look bigger like Jun’s, and he’d added some black grease paint around his eyebrows to enhance those too. It couldn’t hurt.
Her leotard was sparkly and pink, and she had glitter paint on her face in cute little sunshine designs. She was even lovelier up close. “Hi,” he said, holding out his hand.
She looked at him strangely, then held up her hand. It wasn’t as pretty as her face. Even with the chalk and the tape, there was oozing blood from broken blisters. “Sorry.”
Aiba took his hand back and smiled wider. “I’m Aiba. Aiba Masaki, although you might know me as...”
“Poopy!”
“Loopy,” he corrected her. Poopy, Loopy - either way, he had the worst clown name ever.
“Sorry,” she was looking around anxiously. “Can I help you, Loopy?”
“I...” Why did his tongue feel so heavy all of a sudden? Even in his costume and his face paint and his giant shoes, all his confidence was fading away. “I was um...I’m a big fan. Of your trapeze act. You and uh...well, you and the other guys are really great!”
Becky smiled, and it was prettier than the sun rays on her cheeks. “Really? Thank you!” The silence that followed was more than awkward though. Think, Masaki, think!
“I...you asked me to help you carry your trunk the other day?”
“Oh! That was you?”
Did he look so different with his make-up on? Maybe all that time she spent hanging upside down did things to her brain. He could see Nino across the ring urging his pumas back into their cage. He cracked his whip and gave Aiba a thumbs up.
“Yeah. That was me, so um...I was just wondering if we could uh...if we could...”
The moment was ruined then when Jun approached in his glimmering purple leotard, looking all handsome and athletic. “Hey Becky, good work tonight.”
Becky’s face changed immediately at Jun’s attention. “Oh! Jun-kun! Thank you so much!” Well, he’d tried, and he couldn’t even get the words out. Maybe it wasn’t too late to ask the bearded lady to dinner. He turned to walk away. “Jun-kun, have you met Loopy? He’s one of the clowns in the lion tamer act.”
He gulped, seeing the realization on Jun’s face. “Ah, the one the tiger always bites on the ass! Good work!”
Aiba almost felt like he’d put on the sad clown makeup that night. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“Really funny when it bites so the whole crowd sees your underpants. That’s dedication to your craft, man,” Jun continued, patting him on the shoulder. “Well, I’ve got an autograph session out by the parking lot. See you tomorrow, Becky!”
Jun walked off, all full of himself. Aiba didn’t get any autograph sessions, and if he did, he wouldn’t talk about it so casually. It was an honor, darn it.
Becky watched Jun walk off, his purple leotard all tight against his stupid tightrope walking butt. Aiba cleared his throat, and she looked back at him. “So uh...you like him huh?”
She was a little surprised by his direct question, blinking a few times and stumbling over her answer. “I...well, I...” He looked down at his floppy shoes. Yep. He was just wasting his time. “...I do but, well, I think he’s got someone...”
His spirits rose a fraction of a percent. “He does?”
Becky shrugged. “I don’t know who. You know those tightrope guys. They’re always getting girls.”
“That’s too bad,” he replied. She was looking pretty sad, and well, he couldn’t have that. It would be his fault for prying. And he was a rather crappy clown bringing her spirits down in the first place. “Here, check my lapel.”
He squeezed the trigger inside his coat, and the little flower squirted water in Becky’s face. It usually cheered people up, but she just sputtered. Okay, maybe that had been a bad plan.
She coughed, blinking water out of her eyes. “What...why did you do that?”
His mouth dropped open. Across the ring, Nino was standing with Ringmaster Sho, pointing and laughing at his failure. “I’ll see you later, Becky!” He scurried off, flower still dripping water down his coat, feeling like the biggest idiot the Sakurai Traveling Circus had ever seen.
--
He leaned his elbows on the table, not wanting to really eat the meal set in front of him. “You want that?” Satoshi asked him.
“It’s yours,” Aiba said glumly as the other man slid his tray aside to make room. “You that hungry?”
Satoshi really knew how to put food away, but he always ate a huge meal before his sword swallowing act. It apparently made it easier, not that Aiba ever really wanted to try something like that. He was pretty quiet, but he always got a lot of cheers from the crowd from the sword stuff, the fire eating, the fire breathing. But he didn’t have a big head about it, and that was what Aiba liked about him.
“Nino says you’re trying to date Flying Becky,” Satoshi said, munching on his sixth egg roll.
“Trying,” Aiba said, “Yeah. Trying being the operative word here. I think she’s got her eyes on Jun, the new tightrope walker.”
Satoshi nearly choked on his egg roll, rather amusing since his main act required ridiculous amounts of gag reflex control. Nino was always commenting on it, much as Aiba didn’t need those kind of details.
“What? Is my love life that funny?”
“No,” Satoshi said, “Oh, Aiba-chan, you don’t have anything to worry about there.”
“You’ve seen him in his leotard though, right?”
Egg roll number seven, and Satoshi was laughing. “I don’t think he’s into girls. You know Toma, right?”
“Toma? You mean Toma the human cannonball guy?” Satoshi just nodded, grinning from ear to ear. “Him and...him and Jun?”
This circus sure was about keeping things in house. And if Jun was fruitier than Masaki’s banana peels, then the only thing keeping him from romance with Becky were his own limitations. He’d try again, he vowed. He’d try and he’d definitely win her over this time!
“They’re both pretty flexible,” Satoshi commented before reaching for the jumbo shrimp on the tray of the person next to him. “You eating this?”
--
He noticed that Becky liked to hang around the big top late at night, practicing her routines. He went sans-makeup and definitely sans-squirty water flower, wearing some track pants and a t-shirt. He’d try the trapeze or maybe the tightrope again. He’d impress her with his persistence at least.
She wasn’t in any of her makeup or fancy clothes, but her regular workout clothes were bright and colorful just like the rest of her, and Aiba liked that just fine. She was hanging upside down, legs tucked around her trapeze bar as she moved back and forth. He stood next to the net so the light was catching him and he wasn’t just lurking in the shadows like a creep.
“Becky?”
She didn’t stop swinging, instead moving her body until she was sitting in the trapeze just like a swing. “Oh! Hi there, Loopy!”
“You can just call me Aiba-chan. I mean, if you want!” he called back up to her.
Her grin was ridiculously infectious. “My brain’s a little loopy right now! I’ve been upside down for a while, forgive me!”
“It’s okay!” He didn’t know what to say, fingers tightening around the edge of the net for lack of anything better to do with them.
“Why don’t you come up so we don’t have to shout?”
He did so, nearly bolting for the ladder and climbing as fast as he could. He kind of wanted to scream that Tightrope Jun liked boys, but that would just hurt Becky’s feelings, and if he really liked her, that would be stupid. The platform was just as small and fear-inducing as it had been before, but if a clown had to get into the air to win the trapeze girl’s heart, then damn it, he’d do it.
She swung back, landing right in front of him, so close that he backed up and nearly went flying off. But she grabbed hold of him with her chalky hands and kept him steady. There was a lot more strength in her hands than he had in his, despite her considerably smaller size. “You okay?”
She was touching him. Becky the trapeze girl was touching him! “Yeah,” he said sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just not used to the height.”
Becky nodded, pulling down one of the bars. “Well, the best way to get used to it is to just face your fear. Go swing out on this.”
“I...I don’t know...”
She shoved him onto the bar anyway. “Hold on tight, Aiba-chan!” The chalky hands were at his back, and all of a sudden the platform disappeared and he was on the highest swingset he’d ever been on. Even with the net below, it was pretty damn scary.
“Becky? Becky, I’d like to get down now! This is fun, but...”
He looked over his shoulder to see that she was hanging from her own trapeze bar with her legs again, her long hair swaying as she moved back and forth. “You just need practice!”
He’d fallen from the tightrope within seconds, and he had a death grip on the trapeze, shutting his eyes.
“Swing your legs a bit more, would ya?”
He did so, and she finally reached him, tugging him back onto the platform. He clung to her, never so happy for solid ground under him as he was at that moment. Her voice was muffled against his armpit. “Mmmfffha!”
“Oh,” he said, giving her some breathing room. “I’m sorry.”
She just laughed. “You’re funny, Loopy. I guess you really perform better on the ground, huh?” Her eyes widened. “I meant...I didn’t mean that in a...”
Dirty jokes and innuendo. Home turf! He reveled in her slip-up, nearly doubling over. “You’re funny, too,” he told her.
She poked him on the nose, and he almost expected to hear the usual squeak - except he hadn’t even worn his clown nose, had he? “You show me some of your tricks, I’ll show you some of mine,” she said teasingly. “Meet you after the show tomorrow night?”
Had she just...asked HIM out?! He nearly tripped and fell from the platform again, but she steadied him. “Yes. Yes, definitely! Yes!”
“Okay!” She hopped back on her trapeze, swinging upside down and blew him a kiss. “See you then!”
Things were starting to look up.
--
“She wants you to teach her pratfalls?” Nino asked him in disbelief, feeding the lion cub with a bottle. “How often does all her blood go to her head?”
Aiba just smiled, preparing a clowning crash course kit. A few balls to juggle, some fresh banana peels, and a shiny red nose so they’d match.
“Good luck,” Nino told him as he left the trailer. “Hey! Magus! You don’t bite me! You bite Masaki!”
--
Becky was waiting for him under the big top, all smiles. She was quicker with the juggling than with the falls. But every time she practiced a pratfall, it meant that he could hold out his hand for her, and with each attempt, it felt like their fingers were linking for a few seconds longer than necessary. This suited Aiba just fine.
They were scheduled for a few passes on the trapeze after Aiba’s clown training, but she took one of the banana peel slips pretty hard and shook her head. “Trapeze tomorrow,” she said, rubbing her backside in a way that made Aiba glad he’d worn his baggier clown pants.
“I’m sorry,” he said, packing up his things. “Can I walk you back to your trailer?”
She agreed, hobbling a bit kind of like Aiba had when he’d fallen from the tightrope. Maybe the both of them were best suited to their actual jobs. He walked slower to let her keep pace with him, and they reached her trailer at the edge of the fairgrounds. She immediately frowned, and her face almost looked wrong that way.
“What is it?” he asked her, taking off his clown nose and tossing it back in his bag.
She pointed to the colorful scarf tied to the trailer’s doorknob. “My roomie is so rude! She’s been doing this every night lately. Thinks she’s so great because she can breathe fire while riding a unicycle. I keep telling her guys just want her for her big you-know-whats.”
Aiba didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t let her stay with him and Nino - Magus was a bit rambunctious now that all his teeth had finally grown in, plus Nino didn’t like company. The light bulb went off.
“I know where you could stay. There’s more room than you’d think,” he said, tugging her hand. “I’ve got the key.”
“The key?”
He pulled her to the parking lot just south of Ringmaster Sho’s trailer. Aiba took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door to the clown car. “I can bring you a blanket?”
She hopped on her good foot, trying to settle into the back seat but ended up pulling Aiba in after her. He landed right on top of her with an embarrassing “oof!”
Their lips were inches apart, and Aiba felt like he should apologize. And then get off of the tiny girl with the extra strong hands before she smacked his face with one of them. But instead, his brain and mouth weren’t communicating at the right speed and he just blurted the first thing that came to mind.
“Jun. Tightrope Jun. He likes guys.”
“Aiba-chan...”
“He’s with Toma. The human cannonball. Toma. Pfeewwww! Through the air! Toma the cannonball guy.”
“Aiba-chan,” she said, a little more insistently.
His nose collided with the clown nose still attached to hers. “Yeah?” Her expert trapeze-gripping legs wrapped around his waist, and he finally caught her meaning. “Nino said that you said that you don’t date clowns.”
She pinched the clown nose between her thumb and forefinger and pulled it off. Her hands found the sides of his face, sliding back to grab hold of his hair. “Shut up and kiss me already!”
He leaned forward, dying to discover what she tasted like. There was a honking noise when their lips met, and he was apologetic, pulling the horn from his pocket. She just laughed and after that, it was better than anything Aiba could have ever imagined.
--
Nino was rather cross, shaking his head as Aiba waved and whistled at the trapeze platform when the spotlight hit Becky.
“I can’t believe you did it in the clown car,” Nino complained, tapping his whip handle against his arm. “You know how much upholstery cleaning costs? We need the money for Magus’ new cage, Masaki.”
“Have you ever done it on a trapeze, Nino?” Aiba asked, beaming from ear to ear as Becky took to the air in a colorful, glittery burst. “Because I’ve done it on a trapeze.”
The whip cracked him on the ass, and his resulting yelp earned wild applause from the audience nearby.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Aiba Masaki/Becky, Arashi
Summary: “Face it, Aiba-chan. She doesn’t date clowns.”
Notes/Warnings: I love Aiba het and I will shout it from the mountaintops! Heck yes this is a CIRCUS AU. I think Katy asked me for Aiba and Becky looking for animals escaped from the zoo, but I guess my brain had other ideas. There are still animals involved! The original title was 'Cirque du Storm-ay' but that's cheesy even for me ;)
He frowned at the state of all of his grease paints. He hadn’t put them away properly, and with the big move from the fairgrounds in northern Honshu down here to Shimonoseki, they’d become way too runny. Okay, to be fair, Aiba was usually quite good at packing up his supplies, but this time he’d been a little preoccupied. Because SHE had talked to him. After all this time, his favorite trapeze goddess had spoken to him.
Sure, she’d just asked him to help carry her costume trunk, but it was something, wasn’t it?
Nino tapped him with the handle end of his whip. “Face it, Aiba-chan. She doesn’t date clowns.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” he replied huffily, dumping the ruined paints into the garbage barrels at the edge of the grounds.
“So when she told one of her girlfriends the other day on the road ‘I don’t date clowns’ that was just semantics? Like, ‘I don’t date immature guys’?”
Nino was a real jerk sometimes. One of these days, his smart mouth would land him in the jaws of one of his precious lions, and then Aiba would laugh. Okay, no, he wouldn’t laugh because then Nino would be hurt. Maybe one of the tigers could just bite him on the ass like they always bit Aiba during one of their acts.
“I’m not just a clown,” Aiba protested, his shoes squeaking as they moved from the grass and onto the pavement near the tents. “I’m a human being.”
Nino shrugged. “She’s had eyes for Jun and only Jun, mind you, ever since he joined up.” Nino looked wistful. “We can’t all be tightrope walkers, can we?”
Stupid Jun, Aiba thought. Showing off on the tightrope, shouting out dangerous things like “Take the net away, haha!” so the crowd would scream. And then he’d walk across perfectly and the crowd would cheer and later Aiba would get bitten in the ass by another of Nino’s animals and they’d just laugh at him. Nobody cheered for Aiba.
They entered the big top together, and they could already see Jun practicing. And there she was, Aiba discovered. Becky was up at the top, sitting on the platform opposite Jun and cheering him on.
“Give up,” Nino encouraged him, punching his arm. “She’s out of your league.”
Aiba frowned as Jun made it to the platform, and Becky gave him a big celebratory hug. “I could win her over. Don’t girls like funny guys too?”
“That’s just something they say,” Nino assured him. “Until a pretty boy comes along who can walk the tightrope without breaking a visible sweat.”
Jun stood behind Becky, grabbing the trapeze bar and holding it for her while she chalked up her hands. She thanked him with a smile and started her practice, moving gracefully and almost effortlessly through the air.
“I hear the bearded lady’s single though,” Nino said with a smirk, dodging out of the way before Aiba could smack him.
--
He hobbled back to the trailer he shared with Nino. Four hours, and he had nothing to show for it. It was a bigger fall than he’d thought from the tightrope to the net, and he’d landed kinda funny. Not ha ha funny like his usual routine, but twisty ankle funny.
Nino’s favorite lion, Lucca, had recently given birth to a cub, and they were keeping him as a pet in their trailer (and as long as Sho the ringmaster didn’t find out, it was totally okay). Aiba opened the cage and let the little lion cub hop onto his bed with him.
“It’s hopeless,” he complained to the animal, and the lion mewled in seeming sympathy. “I’m a clown. I’m always going to be a clown.”
The lion cocked its head, pawing at Aiba’s pants. He leaned back in bed, head landing on one of his horns and letting out a pathetic honk.
“She’s so pretty, and she never even looks at me,” he told the cub. “Well, to be fair, she’s usually thirty feet off the ground, so I should probably factor that in.”
The cub bit a hole through his pant leg.
“I can’t just...I can’t just go up to her. She’d be all ‘who are you?’ because I’m usually in my make-up so...”
The cub then started gnawing on the fabric he’d torn off.
“I just...I have to talk to her one-on-one. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do!” Aiba said, gaining some courage. If he could go out night after night and slip on banana peels in front of hundreds of people, talking to Becky couldn’t be that hard, could it?
He picked the lion up, ducking back as it tried to bite his nose. “I’m glad we had this talk.”
--
The guests were already filing out of the big top, and he caught Becky as she was climbing down from the trapeze and tightrope platform. He’d worn his tightest oversized clown pants and paid close attention to his make-up. He’d put a little extra around his mouth to make his smile look bigger like Jun’s, and he’d added some black grease paint around his eyebrows to enhance those too. It couldn’t hurt.
Her leotard was sparkly and pink, and she had glitter paint on her face in cute little sunshine designs. She was even lovelier up close. “Hi,” he said, holding out his hand.
She looked at him strangely, then held up her hand. It wasn’t as pretty as her face. Even with the chalk and the tape, there was oozing blood from broken blisters. “Sorry.”
Aiba took his hand back and smiled wider. “I’m Aiba. Aiba Masaki, although you might know me as...”
“Poopy!”
“Loopy,” he corrected her. Poopy, Loopy - either way, he had the worst clown name ever.
“Sorry,” she was looking around anxiously. “Can I help you, Loopy?”
“I...” Why did his tongue feel so heavy all of a sudden? Even in his costume and his face paint and his giant shoes, all his confidence was fading away. “I was um...I’m a big fan. Of your trapeze act. You and uh...well, you and the other guys are really great!”
Becky smiled, and it was prettier than the sun rays on her cheeks. “Really? Thank you!” The silence that followed was more than awkward though. Think, Masaki, think!
“I...you asked me to help you carry your trunk the other day?”
“Oh! That was you?”
Did he look so different with his make-up on? Maybe all that time she spent hanging upside down did things to her brain. He could see Nino across the ring urging his pumas back into their cage. He cracked his whip and gave Aiba a thumbs up.
“Yeah. That was me, so um...I was just wondering if we could uh...if we could...”
The moment was ruined then when Jun approached in his glimmering purple leotard, looking all handsome and athletic. “Hey Becky, good work tonight.”
Becky’s face changed immediately at Jun’s attention. “Oh! Jun-kun! Thank you so much!” Well, he’d tried, and he couldn’t even get the words out. Maybe it wasn’t too late to ask the bearded lady to dinner. He turned to walk away. “Jun-kun, have you met Loopy? He’s one of the clowns in the lion tamer act.”
He gulped, seeing the realization on Jun’s face. “Ah, the one the tiger always bites on the ass! Good work!”
Aiba almost felt like he’d put on the sad clown makeup that night. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“Really funny when it bites so the whole crowd sees your underpants. That’s dedication to your craft, man,” Jun continued, patting him on the shoulder. “Well, I’ve got an autograph session out by the parking lot. See you tomorrow, Becky!”
Jun walked off, all full of himself. Aiba didn’t get any autograph sessions, and if he did, he wouldn’t talk about it so casually. It was an honor, darn it.
Becky watched Jun walk off, his purple leotard all tight against his stupid tightrope walking butt. Aiba cleared his throat, and she looked back at him. “So uh...you like him huh?”
She was a little surprised by his direct question, blinking a few times and stumbling over her answer. “I...well, I...” He looked down at his floppy shoes. Yep. He was just wasting his time. “...I do but, well, I think he’s got someone...”
His spirits rose a fraction of a percent. “He does?”
Becky shrugged. “I don’t know who. You know those tightrope guys. They’re always getting girls.”
“That’s too bad,” he replied. She was looking pretty sad, and well, he couldn’t have that. It would be his fault for prying. And he was a rather crappy clown bringing her spirits down in the first place. “Here, check my lapel.”
He squeezed the trigger inside his coat, and the little flower squirted water in Becky’s face. It usually cheered people up, but she just sputtered. Okay, maybe that had been a bad plan.
She coughed, blinking water out of her eyes. “What...why did you do that?”
His mouth dropped open. Across the ring, Nino was standing with Ringmaster Sho, pointing and laughing at his failure. “I’ll see you later, Becky!” He scurried off, flower still dripping water down his coat, feeling like the biggest idiot the Sakurai Traveling Circus had ever seen.
--
He leaned his elbows on the table, not wanting to really eat the meal set in front of him. “You want that?” Satoshi asked him.
“It’s yours,” Aiba said glumly as the other man slid his tray aside to make room. “You that hungry?”
Satoshi really knew how to put food away, but he always ate a huge meal before his sword swallowing act. It apparently made it easier, not that Aiba ever really wanted to try something like that. He was pretty quiet, but he always got a lot of cheers from the crowd from the sword stuff, the fire eating, the fire breathing. But he didn’t have a big head about it, and that was what Aiba liked about him.
“Nino says you’re trying to date Flying Becky,” Satoshi said, munching on his sixth egg roll.
“Trying,” Aiba said, “Yeah. Trying being the operative word here. I think she’s got her eyes on Jun, the new tightrope walker.”
Satoshi nearly choked on his egg roll, rather amusing since his main act required ridiculous amounts of gag reflex control. Nino was always commenting on it, much as Aiba didn’t need those kind of details.
“What? Is my love life that funny?”
“No,” Satoshi said, “Oh, Aiba-chan, you don’t have anything to worry about there.”
“You’ve seen him in his leotard though, right?”
Egg roll number seven, and Satoshi was laughing. “I don’t think he’s into girls. You know Toma, right?”
“Toma? You mean Toma the human cannonball guy?” Satoshi just nodded, grinning from ear to ear. “Him and...him and Jun?”
This circus sure was about keeping things in house. And if Jun was fruitier than Masaki’s banana peels, then the only thing keeping him from romance with Becky were his own limitations. He’d try again, he vowed. He’d try and he’d definitely win her over this time!
“They’re both pretty flexible,” Satoshi commented before reaching for the jumbo shrimp on the tray of the person next to him. “You eating this?”
--
He noticed that Becky liked to hang around the big top late at night, practicing her routines. He went sans-makeup and definitely sans-squirty water flower, wearing some track pants and a t-shirt. He’d try the trapeze or maybe the tightrope again. He’d impress her with his persistence at least.
She wasn’t in any of her makeup or fancy clothes, but her regular workout clothes were bright and colorful just like the rest of her, and Aiba liked that just fine. She was hanging upside down, legs tucked around her trapeze bar as she moved back and forth. He stood next to the net so the light was catching him and he wasn’t just lurking in the shadows like a creep.
“Becky?”
She didn’t stop swinging, instead moving her body until she was sitting in the trapeze just like a swing. “Oh! Hi there, Loopy!”
“You can just call me Aiba-chan. I mean, if you want!” he called back up to her.
Her grin was ridiculously infectious. “My brain’s a little loopy right now! I’ve been upside down for a while, forgive me!”
“It’s okay!” He didn’t know what to say, fingers tightening around the edge of the net for lack of anything better to do with them.
“Why don’t you come up so we don’t have to shout?”
He did so, nearly bolting for the ladder and climbing as fast as he could. He kind of wanted to scream that Tightrope Jun liked boys, but that would just hurt Becky’s feelings, and if he really liked her, that would be stupid. The platform was just as small and fear-inducing as it had been before, but if a clown had to get into the air to win the trapeze girl’s heart, then damn it, he’d do it.
She swung back, landing right in front of him, so close that he backed up and nearly went flying off. But she grabbed hold of him with her chalky hands and kept him steady. There was a lot more strength in her hands than he had in his, despite her considerably smaller size. “You okay?”
She was touching him. Becky the trapeze girl was touching him! “Yeah,” he said sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just not used to the height.”
Becky nodded, pulling down one of the bars. “Well, the best way to get used to it is to just face your fear. Go swing out on this.”
“I...I don’t know...”
She shoved him onto the bar anyway. “Hold on tight, Aiba-chan!” The chalky hands were at his back, and all of a sudden the platform disappeared and he was on the highest swingset he’d ever been on. Even with the net below, it was pretty damn scary.
“Becky? Becky, I’d like to get down now! This is fun, but...”
He looked over his shoulder to see that she was hanging from her own trapeze bar with her legs again, her long hair swaying as she moved back and forth. “You just need practice!”
He’d fallen from the tightrope within seconds, and he had a death grip on the trapeze, shutting his eyes.
“Swing your legs a bit more, would ya?”
He did so, and she finally reached him, tugging him back onto the platform. He clung to her, never so happy for solid ground under him as he was at that moment. Her voice was muffled against his armpit. “Mmmfffha!”
“Oh,” he said, giving her some breathing room. “I’m sorry.”
She just laughed. “You’re funny, Loopy. I guess you really perform better on the ground, huh?” Her eyes widened. “I meant...I didn’t mean that in a...”
Dirty jokes and innuendo. Home turf! He reveled in her slip-up, nearly doubling over. “You’re funny, too,” he told her.
She poked him on the nose, and he almost expected to hear the usual squeak - except he hadn’t even worn his clown nose, had he? “You show me some of your tricks, I’ll show you some of mine,” she said teasingly. “Meet you after the show tomorrow night?”
Had she just...asked HIM out?! He nearly tripped and fell from the platform again, but she steadied him. “Yes. Yes, definitely! Yes!”
“Okay!” She hopped back on her trapeze, swinging upside down and blew him a kiss. “See you then!”
Things were starting to look up.
--
“She wants you to teach her pratfalls?” Nino asked him in disbelief, feeding the lion cub with a bottle. “How often does all her blood go to her head?”
Aiba just smiled, preparing a clowning crash course kit. A few balls to juggle, some fresh banana peels, and a shiny red nose so they’d match.
“Good luck,” Nino told him as he left the trailer. “Hey! Magus! You don’t bite me! You bite Masaki!”
--
Becky was waiting for him under the big top, all smiles. She was quicker with the juggling than with the falls. But every time she practiced a pratfall, it meant that he could hold out his hand for her, and with each attempt, it felt like their fingers were linking for a few seconds longer than necessary. This suited Aiba just fine.
They were scheduled for a few passes on the trapeze after Aiba’s clown training, but she took one of the banana peel slips pretty hard and shook her head. “Trapeze tomorrow,” she said, rubbing her backside in a way that made Aiba glad he’d worn his baggier clown pants.
“I’m sorry,” he said, packing up his things. “Can I walk you back to your trailer?”
She agreed, hobbling a bit kind of like Aiba had when he’d fallen from the tightrope. Maybe the both of them were best suited to their actual jobs. He walked slower to let her keep pace with him, and they reached her trailer at the edge of the fairgrounds. She immediately frowned, and her face almost looked wrong that way.
“What is it?” he asked her, taking off his clown nose and tossing it back in his bag.
She pointed to the colorful scarf tied to the trailer’s doorknob. “My roomie is so rude! She’s been doing this every night lately. Thinks she’s so great because she can breathe fire while riding a unicycle. I keep telling her guys just want her for her big you-know-whats.”
Aiba didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t let her stay with him and Nino - Magus was a bit rambunctious now that all his teeth had finally grown in, plus Nino didn’t like company. The light bulb went off.
“I know where you could stay. There’s more room than you’d think,” he said, tugging her hand. “I’ve got the key.”
“The key?”
He pulled her to the parking lot just south of Ringmaster Sho’s trailer. Aiba took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door to the clown car. “I can bring you a blanket?”
She hopped on her good foot, trying to settle into the back seat but ended up pulling Aiba in after her. He landed right on top of her with an embarrassing “oof!”
Their lips were inches apart, and Aiba felt like he should apologize. And then get off of the tiny girl with the extra strong hands before she smacked his face with one of them. But instead, his brain and mouth weren’t communicating at the right speed and he just blurted the first thing that came to mind.
“Jun. Tightrope Jun. He likes guys.”
“Aiba-chan...”
“He’s with Toma. The human cannonball. Toma. Pfeewwww! Through the air! Toma the cannonball guy.”
“Aiba-chan,” she said, a little more insistently.
His nose collided with the clown nose still attached to hers. “Yeah?” Her expert trapeze-gripping legs wrapped around his waist, and he finally caught her meaning. “Nino said that you said that you don’t date clowns.”
She pinched the clown nose between her thumb and forefinger and pulled it off. Her hands found the sides of his face, sliding back to grab hold of his hair. “Shut up and kiss me already!”
He leaned forward, dying to discover what she tasted like. There was a honking noise when their lips met, and he was apologetic, pulling the horn from his pocket. She just laughed and after that, it was better than anything Aiba could have ever imagined.
--
Nino was rather cross, shaking his head as Aiba waved and whistled at the trapeze platform when the spotlight hit Becky.
“I can’t believe you did it in the clown car,” Nino complained, tapping his whip handle against his arm. “You know how much upholstery cleaning costs? We need the money for Magus’ new cage, Masaki.”
“Have you ever done it on a trapeze, Nino?” Aiba asked, beaming from ear to ear as Becky took to the air in a colorful, glittery burst. “Because I’ve done it on a trapeze.”
The whip cracked him on the ass, and his resulting yelp earned wild applause from the audience nearby.