LOVE: UNLIKELY PAIRINGS

Warnings: Insanity! Blatant pairings! OOCness!

Tala picked out his best tie from among his parents' joke ones. "MOM! DAD!" he bellowed. "WHY DID YOU PUT YOUR CLOWN TIES WITH MINE? GOD!"

Tala's parents, Bozo and Clarabel, sauntered into the tie room and frowned in despair. "Son, we thought that was one of our funny ties!" they said together.

"NO! It's plain black, WHY would that be funny? Why would that be at all suited to your stupid clown act at the stupid circus?" Tala was fast approaching the height of apoplexy.

"Well, sometimes we wear a plain black one for the show if we want to be ironic!"

"I HATE MY LIFE!" Tala shrieked, and then the doorbell rang.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, he's here, oh my God, mom, help me, oh my God!"

Alas, Clarabel's idea of "help" was to squirt Tala with the flower she wore on her lapel, and Bozo simply honked the horn around his waist a few times.

"ARGH!" Tala screamed as he fumbled for the doorknob, and his parents shouted together, "Good luck, son!"

Tala rearranged his features into a cool half-smile just as he opened the door, which found him face to face with Boris.

"Hi," said Boris coolly.

"Hi," was Tala's cool reply.

"So, shall we?" asked Boris coolly.

"Sure," said Tala in a cool sort of way.

They coolly got into Boris's large, black car and Boris coolly told the driver to go. They regarded each other coolly for a while before Boris said coolly, "So how are you?"

Tala said coolly, "I'm fine."

"Ah," said Boris coolly.

"Mm hmm," said Tala coolly.

Boris coolly adjusted his coat. Tala asked coolly, "Where are we going?"

"To Mama Frizzolita's Romantic Pizza Palace," was Boris's cool reply.

"Oh, I've heard that it's very romantic," said Tala in a way that can only be described as "cool."

"Yup," said Boris coolly.

They were on their main course, Romantic Pizza, when they spotted Tyson and Mariah sitting at a table nearby, feeding each other globs of mashed potato with their hands, forks discarded.

"Mariah, my dear, I have been searching far and wide for a maiden who is as much of a mashed potato connoisseur as I, and to think I would find her in a curvy pink quasi-feminist such as you!"

"Oh, Tyson!" Mariah sighed, mashed potato flying haphazardly out of her mouth. "You seemed like such an idiot. How could I have known of our mutual feelings toward the noble mashed potato?"

"That's odd," Tala commented in a cool way.

Boris stood and took his coat coolly. "Shall we move on?"

"Cool," Tala said coolly.

They walked into the cool limo and turned up the air conditioning. As they drove off to the beach, a distressed waiter came sprinting after them.

"You forgot to pay!" he shouted at the disappearing vehicle.

The limo drove into the ocean. Tala and Boris swam to shore and began to walk along the edge of the cool water.

"So how's being an evil mastermind?" Tala asked coolly.

"Cool," said Boris. "And how goes being a teenaged creep show?"

"Frosty," Tala replied. Boris nodded in a cool way.

The two were distracted from their coolness by the sound of loud giggling. They looked around coolly for the source of their interruption and found Kai and Kenny, hand in hand, sprinting along the beach, flinging sand into Tala's eyes.

"SWEET MOTHER OF ALL THAT IS CLOWNLIKE AND MYSTERIOUS!" Tala roared coolly.

"Are you okay?" asked Boris, checking his watch.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Tala sputtered. Oh great Circus Tent in the Sky, please let him not have heard that slip of the clown tongue! I don't want him to think that I'm creepier than Brooklyn! "Speaking of clowns, I mean, my parents, I mean, shit!"

Boris stopped in his tracks. "Whoa, whoa. Whoa. Tala. Whoa. Your cool. Where did it go?" he asked, leaning towards the grotesquely younger man.

"I'm so sorry!" Tala moaned. "I'm just so nervous! I really want this to work out! I mean, clown! I mean, no! Oh crispy floating Pennywise, I'm such a moron!"

"Oh. It's okay." Boris seemed slightly embarrassed. "It's cool."

"Cool," said Tala gratefully.

The beach ended and abruptly morphed into a grassy lawn lit by fluttering fireflies. In the romantic glow, three long shadows were disappearing around a corner of the tall hedges surrounding them.

"Let's sit down so you can regain your cool," Boris suggested, gesturing to a nearby bench.

They settled on the cool, hard surface of the boards by which the bench had been constructed many years ago by a gentleman named Frank's third cousin with the goatee and the weird sideburns.

The receding shadows' voices were still in earshot. "AJ, don't you think it's about time we took Hilary for a drink at that water fountain?"

"Sure Brad. And check out that massive rosebush, that would really hurt if I shoved you into it!"

"Yes it would, AJ. Which is why if you do, I'll tell Hilary about the time you-"

"Hey Brad, yo mama's so fat, she thought she was going backwards!"

"…What?" said Brad.

Tala looked at Boris. "So, purple hair, huh?"

"Yep," Boris said coolly. "It's been like this since I decided to become an evil villain back in '93."

"Hey, that's the year I learned to use the clown potty!"

"Whoa, check out that age difference, Brad!"

"Boris seems to have gotten an extremely obnoxious nose piercing to bridge the gap! Look at the size of that skull poking out of his nostril, AJ!"

"It's so huge, it's hard to not be looking at it! Right, Hilary?"

"Um…"

"That's right AJ."

"Tala doesn't seem to mind though, judging by the massive expanse of midriff he's showing." Tala gasped and pulled his shirt down over his stomach.

"What is it with you and young guys' midriffs, AJ?"

"Well Brad, I like to make vaguely inappropriate comments to release the sexual tension that builds up when I'm around you!"

"Um, should I leave?" Hilary asked.

"AJ, are you being – I mean – do you, uh?"

"Yes Brad, I'm in love with… your midriff."

"I should probably be getting home," Tala said regretfully.

"Just let me call another of my limos," Boris said, gesturing to the still sinking limo in the ocean.

As they walked hand in hand to the road to meet the limo, they passed Ray and Mr. Dickenson frolicking gaily in a ditch.

"What is going on with the world?" asked Dizzi, sitting abandoned where Kenny had stowed her during his romp with Kai.