Stick with me, readers! There WILL be more dirty stuff, I promise! It will be on the regular. But not every chapter will be smut because that bores me. The characters messing around have to be part of a larger story, in my opinion, or else you might as well just watch porn.

Anyway, after last night I really wanted to write something about Meep's funeral. It also gave me a great excuse to write something teary, because if you couldn't tell by my username... that's kind of my thing. I'm afraid Dandy may be a little Draco In Leather Pants here (if you read my bio, I admit to being very guilty of this trope) but I tried to keep him somewhat in character. I think of them as Tate and Violet: one makes the other more human, but he'll always be a bit monster, too.

For the record, I am imagining here that Meep died under the same circumstances as on the show.

Also, I am sticking with the show's theme of using more modern songs in a 50's setting. Each of my chapters is "set" to the song it's named after. Okay, I'll shut up now! Please comment!

Children, wake up / Hold your mistake up / before they turn the summer into dust / If the children don't grow up / our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up / We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust / I guess we'll just have to adjust...

-Arcade Fire, "Wake Up"

When word of Meep's death reached the mansion, Jimmy wouldn't leave his room for several days. Dandy whined about how horribly bored he was, and Gloria complained that they'd purchased the creature for a handsome sum of money. The least he could do was perform his job.

On the day of the geek's funeral, Dandy kicked and screamed and shed tears until his mother permitted him and Jimmy to attend. Gloria called the family's chauffeur to take the young men, and the two rode in silence, pale and clad in black.

On the hill overlooking the circus camp, Ethel greeted her son with reddened eyes and an embrace. Jimmy leaned in stiffly and didn't hug back. All around his freak show brethren gathered, many of them in tears. Elsa, in floor length black, dabbed at her eyes and held a forlorn Ma Petite in one arm. The conjoined twins wore matching black birdcage veils; Bette wept while Dot stared straight ahead with a grim expression. Each one of them was a reminder to Jimmy of the life he'd abandoned, the people he'd left to go live in the lap of luxury as a glorified pet.

Salty and Pepper pulled Meep's coffin up the hill in a little wagon, beginning the funeral procession. One by one or two by two the performers stepped solemnly forward to take one last look at their fallen comrade or place a flower in his still hands.

"He looks just like a doll," Dandy observed quietly, peering alongside Jimmy into Meep's tiny coffin. Jimmy removed his black jacket and placed it over the dead boy's torso. "He was always cold," he said, the first words he'd spoken all day. Dandy could have sworn he heard a quiver in his companion's voice, but he chalked it up to nothing. Jimmy didn't cry; he'd said so himself.

The privileged boy felt a rush of cold, a switch he knew all too well being flipped behind his eyes. There it was again: that dark inner voice who longed for blood, to cut and stab and hurt. It thirsted when he thought of Dell Toledo.

"My family is very powerful," he said tensely, not looking at Jimmy. "Those who hurt us pay."

"Come along now," Elsa crowed, gently pushing the coffin shut. She handed Jimmy a small shovel and allowed him to place the first bit of dirt atop the box as Ethel and Eve lowered it into the ground. The men made their way to the back of the small crowd and watched as the music swelled and each performer took their turn covering the lowered casket in dirt.

Something filled up my heart with nothing / Someone told me not to cry...

Their simple procession brought tears to Dandy's eyes, which surprised him. It wasn't that he didn't cry. Quite the opposite: he shed tears often; but they were shallow, bored tears meant to manipulate his mother into giving him his way. They seemed to shed from the very surface of him, just beneath his skin where the frustration and ennui lived. These tears instead felt wrenched from somewhere else, some place of deep grief that the shallow boy was surprised he was capable of. It was partially selfish. Meep's tiny broken body, so wrong and vulnerable in its doll-casket, mirrored the tiny broken soul inside of Dandy Mott's tall, broad-shouldered body.

But now that I'm older / my heart's colder / and I can see that it's a lie...

He heard a sniffle beside him, and without looking-or thinking, even-reached for Jimmy's hand, taking the boy's malformed fingers in his own. It was odd: he'd let those hands touch him, tease him, bring him pleasure and pain, but he'd never touched them with his own hands before. He'd grown fond of Jimmy, sure; Jimmy was his plaything, the most splendid one he had. But Dandy had never thought of him before as someone fully human, someone who might need comfort or care. The new idea brought more tears.

"I'm sorry, pet," he whispered. "So awfully, terribly sorry."

Jimmy glanced sideways at him, his voice the lowest quiet. "You don't... you don't have an extra handkerchief... do you?"

Dandy pressed the one he was already holding into Jimmy's hand. "Here. We can share mine."

From far away behind a small clearing of trees, a silent, towering clown watched the scene, panting behind a blood-stained mask and plotting, too, for Dell Toledo.