Chapter Text
Pierrot knows a great many things.
He knows how to move like candlelight, to shift and bend in ways that mesmerise even the most hardened audience member. He knows how to throw knives with such precision that he can split a hair of any willing (or unwilling) stage assistant from ten metres away. He even knows how to climb the tree outside your apartment in such a way that he can see what you’re doing inside even during daytime without being spotted.
What Pierrot does not know, however, is the intricacies of human interaction. How could he, when he has spent most of his existence within the circus, his only connections being the other monsters? Not that this has ever bothered him before. He has never needed to know how normal people act, only how best to lead them to his tent and enchant them with his knives.
The night you go home after his circus performance, he of course follows behind, and he is delighted to find you asleep at a far earlier hour than the night before. Not just because he can sneak into your room sooner (though that is certainly a bonus) but also because it seems a sign that whatever strange melancholy surrounds you must have eased. His delight, though, is short lived. When he doesn’t see you before noon, he checks up on you to find you still asleep in bed. That’s nothing particularly strange - perhaps you are tired and need a few extra hours of rest. No reason to worry, none at all. But when he checks on you again in the afternoon, you are still asleep. And when he checks again at six, you’ve hardly even changed your position, still under the covers. Now he is worried. Were it not for his superior eyesight, thanks to which he can see your figure breathing, he might think you were dead.
Pierrot has no idea what to do. He sits up in the tree, fiddling with the material of his gloves as worry consumes him. You had said you would see him today, but here you are, unmoving. You must be sick, but what ails you? He does not know medicine, not like the Doctor does, but even he knows it must be serious. He had seen glimpses of the burdens you carry when he first entered your apartment, but he does not know of how such things can linger, how they can stay and fester long after the inciting incient has passed. As far as he knows, what he found is in no way related to your sudden state. All he knows is that right now, something is wrong. Whatever it is, you’re dealing with the sickness alone, and he absolutely cannot have that. He steels his resolve, then, that he would visit you after his show and bring you something to help. He won’t climb in through the window, of course - that is not what humans do, and he does not wish to scare you. He will knock on your door like how people visit their friends and he will help treat whatever illness plagues you. Honestly, Pierrot can’t help but feel proud of his little plan. It is perfect.
Well, his heart is in the right place.
You’re woken around ten in the evening to a knocking at the door. All your limbs hurt from disuse, lethargy pulling you back down despite how much time you had slept that day. Maybe the knocker will leave. You hope the knocker will leave.
The knocker does not leave. They continue every couple of seconds, and you finally force yourself up with a groan, eyelids heavy. You’ll deal with whoever is at the door as quickly as possible then go right back to sleep.
To your surprise, the person you find is not a neighbour, nor the landlord, nor a door to door salesman. It’s a certain clown you’ve come to see surprisingly often the past couple days, holding a full plastic shopping bag.
“Pierrot?” you ask, the surprise evident in your voice. “What are you doing here?”
He looks to the sides of the corridor to check you’re alone then leans over, whispering. “I have come to see you, my dear. You did not come today. I came to help with what ails you.”
You struggle to find words, a more pressing matter coming to mind than your mess of emotions. “I- How do you know my address?”
His eyes widen for a moment, the golden irises avoiding yours as he’s momentarily stunned into silence. Then, he smiles confidently, whispering his answer. “I found it. On the internet.”
You blink. “On the internet?”
“Yes,” he says. “On… the websites.”
You blink again. “You have no idea how the internet works, do you?”
Pierrot’s smile falls and he drops his head, bells jingling sadly as he shakes his head. How can someone not know these days? Maybe he’s extremely sheltered. It crosses your mind that he may be Amish or something, but you push that out of your thoughts to think of what the hell you should do.
Now, this should be the moment that you close the door and call the police. After all, this man that you’ve known for two days is outside your door, somehow knowing exactly where you live. That’s a flag redder than his costume. You don’t do that, though, partly because you find you care little whether or not he murders you in your apartment (his face wouldn’t be a bad last sight), but also because he’s standing there like a kicked puppy and you find you can’t just turn him away. So, despite everything, you step aside and gesture for him to come in. His face instantly brightens and he enters so suddenly that he almost hits his head against the lights. Not that he seems to care.
You force yourself to open the window in your room, the air stuffy from a lack of ventilation the whole day, but you don’t turn on the lights. Pierrot doesn’t seem to mind, politely sitting down on a spinning chair, taking in your room.
“Look, Pierrot,” you sigh, sitting back on the edge of your bed, “if you want, I can tell Harlequin you’ve enraptured me or whatever you need to win your bet. There’s no need to be doing all of this.”
Now it’s his turn to look confused. His eyes flit over your face, grip tightening on the plastic bag. “What bet?” He asks, his voice small. “What has he led you to believe?”
“The bet,” you say, dropping eye contact. “The reason you’re being so nice, why he’s being so flirty. People don’t do that out of nowhere, especially not-” You cut yourself off, not wanting to fall into some self-pitying rant. “Hell, Harlequin even said that he’ll ‘take me from you’. It’s not hard to connect the dots.”
The sound of ripping plastic echoes in the room and you look to Pierrot to see him staring at you, the bag torn where his claws scratched through it. It takes him a few moments to finally speak, his voice pained when he does so.
“My dear,” he says. “I do not know Harlequin’s intentions, but my affection is genuine. Please- I beg, do not doubt that fact.”
Realistically, you don’t have much reason to believe him, but the way he speaks gets through to you despite the insecurity and you find yourself nodding. He beams again at that and walks over to you, dumping the contents of the now ruined bag on the messy bedsheets.
“I was not sure what was ailing you,” he starts, picking through what you now see to be boxes upon boxes of medication, “so I requested treatments for the most common afflictions.”
You pick up one after another, baffled. “Pierrot, I- Wait, is this for gonorrhea?”
The man blinks. “I am afraid I do not know who this Rhea is, nor where she’s gone, but perhaps I can help you look when you feel better.”
Yup, definitely Amish. Or raised in a cult. One of the two.
“Look, Pierrot,” you tell him, beginning to gather up the boxes, “I appreciate it. Really, I do. But I’m not ill.”
He watches you, thinly veiled concern on his face. “But you didn’t come today. You said you would.” He grips his thighs, eyes growing wider. “Did you not want to see me? Am I imposing on you? I-”
“No,” you interrupt, placing a hand over his before you can even overthink it. “It’s not that.”
He looks up to you, face awfully close, voice softer now. “Then what is it, my dear? I want to understand.” He places a trembling hand over yours, the gesture causing your mouth to go dry. “I want to understand what ails you.”
You don’t want to tell him. Not really. Speaking of it feels like failure, like acknowledgement of the parasite under your skin that you keep hoping you can ignore long enough for it to shrivel up and die. But you did break your word. You kept him waiting, you worried him. He’s owed an explanation.
“I’m depressed,” you put simply, the words like bile on your tongue. You don’t look at Pierrot’s face, but you can hear him shift.
“You… are upset, yes?”
“I mean, yeah, but like-” You exhale heavily, running your free hand through your hair. It’s completely tangled. You can’t believe you’re letting yourself be seen like this. You should be ashamed. You take another deep breath before continuing. “It’s a disorder. It’s not just a one off thing.”
You feel him squeeze your hand, his voice gentle when he speaks. “My dear, I- I don’t understand. You seemed happy when we spoke.”
A dry laugh escapes you despite yourself. “Yeah, that’s the shitty thing about it. Sometimes, there are small things that make me happy. But they’re fickle. When I don’t have anything like that, when I don’t have an obligation to leave the house, this is what it comes to.” You gesture to the dark room, the bed, the untouched water at your bedside. “This is the default.”
He is quiet at that for a long moment, and you want to be sick. This is why you don’t speak out. This is why it’s better to keep things to yourself. This-
“I cannot say I’ve heard of such a thing before,” you hear him say as he runs the pad of his thumb over the back of your hand. “I have seen darkness, felt it, but I had not known it could incapacitate one so.”
You swallow, throat dry. “Yeah, well, it sucks. Like a bone that broke and didn’t heal right.”
His voice is barely above a whisper when he responds. “You must be very strong to continue in spite of it, my dear.”
It’s only now that you gather the courage to meet his eyes, and you do not find in them the pity you feared. Instead, there is a strange type of melancholy, but over it something else you cannot name. “Is there any way I can aid you?” he asks, sincere in his words.
“It’s not your burden,” you tell him, trying to smile and digging the nails of your free hand into your thigh. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to feel pressured to do anything about it. I just… I don’t know. Wanted you to know why I didn’t show.”
At this, he takes your other hand in his own, enveloping them both in his grasp. “You didn’t have to help me when we met, my dear, but you did. I wish to do the same for you. Not because I must, but because I want to. Please, let me.”
You want to tell him that that was different, that your suffering is your own fault, but the way he looks at you has you forgetting words entirely. Before you can do anything stupid, you stand, your hands slipping from his as you straighten.
“If you want to, you can stay for tea. I would appreciate that.”
By the way he jumps up to join you as you go to the kitchen, you could think that he had just won the lottery. Even though you’re still so tired, and part of you is still telling you just how unworthy you are of all this, you push the voice down enough to stand with him in the kitchen, smiling as he insists on pouring the water and instead almost spills it all. You sit on your bed, drinking while he just watches you, the mug tiny in his hands. It’s when you’re telling him about a stupid video you saw the other day that you think of something.
“Hey, Pierrot,” you ask, placing your almost empty mug on your bedside, by the paper rose. “You don’t have a phone, do you?”
The man shakes his head. “No, I have had no need for such equipment. Why do you ask?”
“If you want,” you say, “I have an old Nokia I can give you. So I can let you know if something like this happens again. Then you won’t worry so much.”
He smiles widely, wordlessly nodding as you grab the old, brick-like thing from the depth of your drawer. It takes a good half hour to teach him how to use the buttons to type, his fingers too large to do so easily, but his eagerness to learn makes up for it all. He looks so proud when he sends you his first message, a simple ‘hello’, and God above your chest is warm with so much more than just tea. It’s silly, but you kind of hope he won’t leave, even if you know you have no right to ask that of him. Still, he stays right up until your eyes begin to close against your will, until you cannot hold back the yawns clawing out of you. When you say goodbye in the doorway, thanking him for everything, he just smiles, and maybe it's the lighting but his cheeks look as pink as yours feel.
Locking the door behind you, you don’t feel the need to turn on the television. You know the doubts will creep in when you wake, will try to sabotage the good that just happened and pull you away from the comfort you felt. But that is a problem for tomorrow. Right now, as you crawl back into bed, your chest is warm instead of tight. You can still feel the squeeze of his hand, can still hear the sweet cadence of his voice.
For the first time in months, you don’t have nightmares.
You simply sleep.