[oneshot] Pierrot
Title: Pierrot
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: Taigayuta
Genre: Friendship/Fluff
Summary: The skinny acrobat at the visiting circus catches Yuta's eye.
~
He was at the circus again.
Sitting on a bench that smelled of sawdust and musty hay, Yuta’s dark eyes scanned the ring for the boy who had caught his attention the previous day.
The booming voice of the ringmaster rang out, and as he raised his head, he caught sight of the flash of purple. The skinny acrobat that had caught his eye during the show the day before stepped out onto the tightrope platform, the baggy sleeves of his purple costume fluttering as he moved.
A hush fell as the audience lights dimmed, and the only spotlight left on swiveled to illuminate the young acrobat standing high above the crowd.
A drumroll sounded, and everybody held their breaths as the skinny boy who looked only about Yuta’s edge closed his eyes and stretched out one pointed foot to gently rest on the thin wire…
And with a sudden movement, he launched into his breathtaking routine.
Yuta gazed at the acrobat, mesmerized by the routine even though he’d already seen it before. Just like the previous day, the routine seemed to end all too quickly, and by the time the lights returned to illuminate the ring the acrobat had already disappeared, and changed into another outfit as he stepped out behind the animal tamers.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” boomed the ringmaster, “would a brave soul like to come up to the ring to take part in this next segment?”
The crowd shuffled uneasily for a while, glancing at the huge lions pacing behind the liontamer. Of its own volition, Yuta found his hand rising up as his mouth opened unbidden to say, “Me.”
The ringmaster smiled to him, and beckoned. Slowly, he rose from his seat and walked down the wooden steps to the ring.
He’d seen this trick the previous day, and he knew it was perfectly safe. But he still could not help but feel slight terror as he was led nearer the lions.
“Put your head inside the lion’s mouth,” whispered the acrobat to him, as the liontamer brought the biggest lion over.
Yuta glanced up at the acrobat’s pale face and sunken cheeks for a moment, before gold fur obscured his vision. He bent down, preparing to do what he’d seen the volunteer do yesterday.
A thundering roar erupted from the lion’s maw, and he stumbled back in fright, as the lion swiped at him angrily. He ducked swiftly, but the open-clawed swipe still managed to score a deep line down his cheek before the liontamer yanked it back, brandishing his whip and placing it back under control.
The acrobat offered him a piece of cloth to press against the scratch.
“I’m terribly sorry,” the ringmaster apologized profusely, “this has never happened before, you have to understand. Never.”
Yuta could only nod, feeling the sticky blood already soaking through the thin scrap of cloth pressed to his cheek.
“Take him to Specs,” whispered the ringmaster to the acrobat, who nodded and beckoned for Yuta to follow him out of the ring through the performers’ exit.
Specs turned out to be a doctor-slash-vet who was looking over one of the dancing horses when the two of them burst in.
“Oh my,” he said, faintly shocked, “what happened?”
“The lion went berserk and tried to savage him during the volunteer segment.”
Specs frowned, but nevertheless took out some gauze and began cleaning up the scratch gently. In almost no time at all, the stinging scratch was patched up with gauze and medical tape, and Specs had turned back to the limping horse.
The acrobat tugged on his hand.
“Now that you’ve been treated, you’ve got to leave the performers’ area. You’re not actually supposed to be here,” he whispered in his hoarse voice.
For some reason, he seemed jumpy about something, as though every second longer Yuta spent in the performers’ area, the closer he would be to discovering something that was meant to be kept secret.
“Wait…what’s your name?”
The acrobat glanced at him.
“They…they call me Smile.”
With that, he left Yuta at the gate to the performers’ area, and disappeared back among the tents.
~
Curiosity overtook him, and the next day found him returning to the circus, and sneaking into the performers’ area when all of them were out at the opening performance.
There was something suspicious about the way Smile’s eyes looked so strangely haunted, how painfully skinny he seemed to be, how he didn’t ever roll up his sleeves even when not performing, despite the humid summer heat.
The cheering of the crowd drifted from the main tent, and as performers began drifting back into their rest area, Yuta slunk into the shadows behind a tent.
Footsteps neared the pale blue tent he was hiding behind, and Yuta tried to breathe as quietly as possible. It wouldn’t do to be found now.
The hubbub of the performers died away as they moved somewhere else, and he sagged in relief, before a quiet voice asked, “What are you doing there?”
He gave a guilty start, and reluctantly left his hiding spot, only to meet the surprised gaze of Smile the acrobat.
“You’re here?” Smile hissed. “You shouldn’t be here! It’s dangerous, especially with Viper’s snakes allowed free reign in this area!”
“Actually, I came to look for you,” replied Yuta as nonchalantly as he could.
“Well, you found me. Now, you better get out before someone else finds you.”
Yuta nodded, but then without warning, he suddenly shot out and grabbed hold of Smile’s bony wrist.
Smile yelped in pain, and wrenched his hand out of Yuta’s grip, in the process letting his sleeve slide back to reveal the pale white skin underneath.
Except it wasn’t pale white skin anymore, but a mess of purple and black and brown bruises, with cuts interspersed along the length of the forearm, and whipstings randomly dotted across it as well.
Smile quickly shook the sleeve down again to cover the horrifying mess, but it was too late. Yuta knew the signs of abuse when he saw them, and this definitely was one of the worst cases he’d seen, worse than the kind he usually saw at his part-time job at a home for abused children.
“Where did you get those? Was it from one of the circus performers?”
A flicker of fear flitted across Smile’s face, and he vehemently shook his head, long unkempt hair flying to and fro across his face.
“No! The Master and everybody treat me perfectly fine!”
“The Master did this to you?” asked Yuta, naming the individual Smile had singled out. “The ringmaster?”
“He treats me perfectly well!” insisted Smile, eyes wide with denial that only served to confirm Yuta’s misgivings.
“There’s no need to stick up for him if he’s abusing you, you know.”
“Don’t interfere, this has nothing to do with you!” In a smaller voice, he added, “it’s dangerous to meddle when you’re not involved.”
Smile obviously hadn’t meant for Yuta to hear the second part, but he did anyway. Frowning, he looked into Smile’s eyes.
“I’m going to get you out of here.”
Smile shook his head again.
“No! The circus is my home. I have no other family besides them, and no other home to go to.”
“You could live with me.”
But Smile shook his head. Sighing, Yuta began to walk towards the gate.
“Reconsider it,” he said quietly, before leaving Smile standing there with eyes filled with confusion.
~
Why am I so keen on helping this one acrobat? he wondered to himself. True, he’d never even met the young boy before the circus, and he didn’t know anything about his circumstances, but there was something about him that drew Yuta to him.
Something unexplainably curious.
Smile had stopped protesting violently after the fifth day, and started saying “I’m thinking about it,” instead.
Yuta began wondering why he didn’t feel as miserable when Smile had stopped rejecting him straight off the bat.
Tonight was the last night the circus would be here, the next morning they would be heading off for another town. Just like the previous nights, Yuta waited behind the same pastel blue tent. Soon enough, a familiar set of light footsteps approached the tent.
“Yuta?” Smile’s whispery voice drifted in. “You there?”
Yuta poked his face out from behind the tent and nodded, and the acrobat smiled a tiny relieved smile.
“I’ve given it great thought,” he said quietly.
“You have?”
“Yes. The circus caravan will be leaving tomorrow…”
Yuta suddenly felt his heart sink.
“Oh,” he said forlornly.
“So I decided if I escaped after tonight’s show it would be harder for them to track me.”
Yuta’s head snapped up.
“What?”
Smile shrugged.
“I guess I’m tired of hiding here, in this home-that-is-not-quite-a-home. If I sneak away tomorrow before dawn, they probably won’t notice.”
Yuta’s heart flooded with relief and - for some reason - joy, and he grinned at Smile.
“I’ll be waiting for you at the gate then.”
~
The sky of pre-dawn was a whirlpool of purple-blue, dotted with the last few stars of the night. Yuta stood, shivering slightly in the chill of the morning, and watched for Smile.
As the first streaks of light began to creep through the thick dark sky, Smile emerged out of the mist, looking extremely different with his hair down, makeup and costume off, and wearing a shirt and tattered jeans with a dirt-smudged beret.
Yuta smiled, and he smiled back, waving slightly. In his other hand, he clutched a small cloth pouch that must have contained his possessions.
“Ready to go?”
Smile nodded.
“Yeah…I left right before the caravan’s supposed to leave, so they won’t know I’m gone until they’ve reached the next town.”
“Awesome, “said Yuta, beginning to walk towards the direction of his apartment. “So now, you’re going to be my new roommate, Smile. How does that sound?”
Smile was silent for a while.
“Don’t call me Smile anymore,” he said finally, “I’m free of the circus. Even though I hate my real name because it reminds me of my mother who sold me into the circus, the name Smile carries memories of the circus itself. They gave us code names so that the ones who were kidnap victims wouldn’t be found by police.”
“Then what do I call you?”
“…I guess you can call me Taiga.”
~
Yuta figured he was lucky he was old enough to be allowed to live on his own in an apartment near his university. He didn’t think his parents would take very well to a complete stranger coming into their home to live.
Within days, Taiga had gotten a job teaching gymnastics at a nearby school, a five-minute walk away from Yuta’s university and two bus stops away from the flat and Yuta’s workplace.
All went well for a while. Taiga healed slowly as the days passed, no longer flinching when touched. His bruises slowly faded away, leaving only faint lines where cuts once crisscrossed the pale skin.
Yuta had prevented Taiga from coming to his workplace, in fear that the skinny boy might experience the ghosts of the past haunting him.
But one day, a month or so after the escape from the circus, Yuta looked up as the bell attached to the door tinkled, and dropped his sandwich in surprise and shock as the face of Taiga peeked in.
“Yuta,” he said cheerfully, “there you are.”
He brushed his shoulder-length hair back behind his ears, and grinned good-naturedly at Yuta.
“Work finished early so I thought I’d drop by and bother you a bit-”
He was cut off abruptly as a sobbing boy ran out from one of the playrooms and attached himself to Yuta’s leg like a koala, eyes dilated in fear.
A taller girl with messy brown hair pulled roughly in two braids ran out soon after, looking very guilty.
“I’m sorry, Yuta-nii!” she wailed, upset, “I forgot Chino-kun was scared of broken glass and I accidentally dropped Shiki-nee’s cup and it broke near him-”
She broke off, nearly in hysterics, and began crying out apologies to the still-crying boy on Yuta’s leg.
“You need help?” asked Taiga, raising an eyebrow. Without waiting for an answer, he bent down and scooped Chino off Yuta’s leg, and lifted him up.
“I’ll talk to him, I think you need to calm down the girl.”
He walked out the door.
Yuta looked at the door, slightly worried. Chino was one of the more recent arrivals at the home, and still terrified of anything resembling broken glass after being injured repeatedly with glass shards by his abusive guardian. But then again, Taiga was another still-healing soul, and would probably do some good for the little boy.
He turned to the girl.
“Rika-chan,” he began, “I don’t think this is really your fault…”
~
“Thanks,” Yuta told Taiga later, as they walked slowly through a park on the way back to the apartment after a quick onigiri dinner. “For helping to calm Chino-kun down.”
Taiga shrugged.
“No problem. He was like me, I guess. Still healing from his emotional wounds. That’s probably why I could relate to him and calm him down so easily.”
“Still, I guess I owe you one.”
A tsk, and Taiga laughed quietly.
“You don’t. You saved me, after all. The least I can do is help you when you’ve got your hands full.”
“I guess.”
They stopped under a willow tree, and looked as the last vestiges of the setting sun disappeared into the darkening sky. Gently, Taiga tilted his head and let it rest on Yuta’s shoulder.
“Thanks once again, for letting me start my life anew.”
Yuta smiled.
“Any time, Taiga, any time.”
“Mm.”
They stood in silence as a streak of white shot across the sky. Taiga’s eyelids fluttered closed as he quickly made a wish.
Yuta glanced at Taiga’s peaceful face.
I don’t need to make wishes, he decided.
After all, I couldn’t wish for anything more than this.