“Hey! Hey!  Get away from my fish!  Dammit, can’t you read? Don’t feed them !”  Donghae stormed over to the dinky tank that housed his sullen animals, muttering under his breath.  “Jesus,  these drunk clowns are getting annoying.  No wonder they need to fit forty into one car with a DD.”

But the clown, disheveled as he was, looked pretty sober, as Donghae realized when he drew near.  It was the acrobat  – not quite graceful or handsome enough to be the star of the show, Hyukjae had been assigned the task of keeping the crowd lively with his monkeylike antics.  Jump off a trapeze and you’re a glamorous in a sequined bodysuit.  Do it in a clown nose and big shoes,  and you get  -- well, you get stuck next to a smelly tank of dolphins, looking like you want to drown yourself, apparently.

Hyukjae didn’t even flinch.  “Do you really keep these poor things locked up in this kiddie pool of death?” he asked, eyes still following the lazy rolling of Polly, who looked like she could get beat up by the runt of any litter. 

“It’s not really up to me,” snapped Donghae.  This was rich. Criticism coming from a clown.  Literally.  “I get hired for this show and I come here and find this.  Can’t say I was happy, but I can’t exactly quit.”

“Why not?”  Hyukjae turned and actually smiled at him.  It was a little lopsided, like smiling wasn’t something he did too often.  A little weird for a clown, Donghae mused, but  then again, he got a fresh grin painted on every morning in the makeup tent.  “What are you getting out of staying?”

This had all gotten really weird, really fast.  Donghae wasn’t even sure why he was talking to this goof.  Probably pity.  Or maybe boredom.  “Um.. .job security?”  Hyukjae cackled in his face, sounding more than a little crazy.  “Okay, fine, I just...you know that if I leave them here without anyone to take care of them, they’ll die in their own .  That’s not... I can’t...”

He was such a wimp.  It was true that he felt a certain, sad connection with his trained dolphins.  Maybe it was the sense of being trapped in a never ending cycle of shows, a constantly churning pool of motion.  Or maybe they were all just sick of stale popcorn and freaks like  --

Hyukjae nudged him in the side.  “You wanna get out of here?”

Donghae rolled his eyes.  “Uh, we’ve got a show in 2 hours.  Sorry, lush, but I’m not really interested to see what moonshine they live off in the countryside.  Half the men in this town are missing teeth already.  Not my style.”

The clown’s eyes darkened a little, shining brighter against the fading white paint on his cheeks.  “So we’ve got two hours to pack and find a home for these poor bastards.”

Donghae gaped at Hyukjae.  “You’re bat crazy, you know that?”

The lanky clown smiled, stretching his arms over his head.  Letting his spread fingertips towards the red and yellow striped sky above them.  “Sure I am.  So I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”  He straightened up and cracked the joints in his back, his whole mouth smiling now.

Donghae’s fingertips trailed in the water, skimming over the little scars on Polly’s back.  “I just...uh...”

“Close your mouth, Donghae-ssi.  You look like a flopping fish.  By the way, you know dolphins are mammals, right?”

“ you, dude.   Have fun on your escape mission, freak.”

------------------------------

On the night of Saturday the 22^nd, nobody in the audience really noticed that the pony show lasted twice as long as usual, or that the muttering behind the tents was swelling into a constant buzz.  The drunken fools and the sticky, candy-coated children clamored for flashes and bangs, oohs and aahs.  Nobody missed a few crummy dolphins and a tight-lipped clown in the chaos.

But somebody up in management did notice a missing trailer and a pick-up truck, and for some reason, gallons and gallons of purified water.  If it was on the inventory, that means it was on the bill, and nobody in charge of the cheapskate circus would miss that.  And that’s how they noticed that a little chunk of their show was missing, along with three “world-famous, classically trained, marine acrobats”      – at least, that’s what the sign on the dolphin trailer used to say.  Or something like that.  Nobody quite remembered, to tell you the truth.  it, they said.  Maybe the insurance can get us a new elephant.

--------------------------

Donghae looked back worriedly at the source of the sloshing noise, then over at Hyukjae’s knuckles laying loose on top of the wheel.  “Is this safe?”  he asked for the fifth time, sighing before Hyukjae could.

“Donghae-ssi, I haven’t driven in a while, so forgive me if I swerve a little while trying to strangle you with my spare hand.” Hyukjae’s voice was calm as ever and his face was cleaner than ever, scrubbed free of red and white and black and all the dust of the fairgrounds that collected on him every day.

“This is the same trailer we’ve been lugging the tremendous trio in –  which, frankly, is more like a dynamic duo and a half if anything, judging by the size of that one – for our whole...career.”

“Which makes it about as safe as this deathtrap you nabbed for us,” Donghae complained, kicking his feet up on the dashboard.  He sneaked another glance at Hyukjae’s face, oddly surprised by the smooth skin that he’d never quite seen before and the curling of his plump lips that he’d never quite noticed before.  Donghae felt a little hot, even as he watched Hyukjae’s long, bruised fingers flick open the AC vent.  He looked out the window quickly and then felt a little sick.  Distractions, he told himself. I think I need a distraction. Just for now.  I’ll think about it all later.

“Listen, clown, once we get to the zoo, I’m driving.”

“I’ll let you swim back across the Han River before you  drive this thing, fishsticks.”

“I hate you already.  How much longer?”

Hyukjae just laughed and flicked the tip of Donghae’s nose with a finger, humming along to something scratchy on the radio.  His voice rumbled in his throat, which, Donghae noticed, had a very nice expanse of skin.  Just saying.

Donghae settled for just looking down.  But when he was staring at his toes, he caught sight of a little flash of red and leaned over to get a better look.

Hyukjae’s giant clown shoes flopping on the gas pedal were the single most ridiculous thing Donghae had seen all day.

“You are completely, undeniably, insane. You know that?”