Clownzy Oneshots

Wherever You Are Tonight

A/N: Motivation go brrr

Don't ask how many times I listened to this song, I don't even know. I had it on loop the entire time I wrote this oneshot... Josh Ritter is such a good songwriter it hurts--

Anyways, I said I was writing fluff. And I was. And then I rediscovered this song. And then I was no longer writing fluff. And now you get this instead.

Clown sat on the flat concrete roof of the supermarket, knees pulled up to his chest as he stared out over the nighttime parking lot with a faint smile behind his mask. There was a cool breeze that carried the smell of the rain that had just fallen, leaving the parking lot slick with moisture. The wetness reflected the changing traffic lights and steady street lamps that threw distorted streaks of color over the pavement. The cold, the lights, and the stars above put him at ease for the first time in a long time as he stared over the lot.

He took off his mask and jester horned hood, letting the breeze pull at his hair. The faint smile stayed with him, a result of the sanctuary that was the familiar rooftop, and for once he didn't feel like the bloodied killer he had been twisted into, but his former self, a teenager who would steal away to this roof for peace.

God, how long had it been since he had last been up here?

He hugged his legs tighter, because while he was content he was also cold, and watched the reflection of a red light turn to green, changing the asphalt painting slightly. He didn't mind the change because he had memorized the pattern of the changing lights all those years ago, and the knowledge came back to him easily.

Another light switched, this one from orange to red. Clown watched one of the few cars in the lot pull out and turn onto one of the cross streets, joining the flow of glowing yellow headlights and smoldering red taillights. It felt strange to be alone.

Clown felt younger in that small eternity on the roof, watching the lights and thinking about how things had once been. When he was in his mid teens he used to come up here and smoke fairly regularly, before Branzy had caught him and forced him to stop the self-destructive habit.

Branzy. Now there was a name he hadn't heard in years.

They had been dating when Clown had gotten all tangled up in the city's darkside, he recalled. His small smile grew a bit, but wistfully, because it had been so long since he had even seen the other man, and had no idea where he was now. Had Branzy ended up as an engineer, and gotten to play around with equations he had loved so much in school?

Clown could see that happening. Clown could see a lot of things happening, Branzy had a large amount of interests and virtues that could have gotten him far in many areas. All while he was stucking in the vicious thorns of the criminal underworld. Escaping was laughable after he had made that first phone call with Zam, but Clown still wished he could have seen where life would have taken him and Branzy in a different course of events.

He wished suddenly he could reconnect with Branzy, to know how the other was doing, but he wasn't sure he deserved to after the ugly things he had said all those years ago in order to get Branzy to leave. Even if they were so the underworld wouldn't get him too, the words had been awful.

It was all so long ago. Picking up the memories years later felt like dusting off a shelf of old possessions, the objects holding little value after so long but still bringing up a strange, subsided feeling of longing for simpler times.

He stared out over the parking lot, remembering how Branzy would join him on the roof sometimes, wrapping his arms around Clown and watching the headlights of cars go past, or staring at the few stars they could see with all the light pollution.

Thinking back made him realize how much he had forgotten. How Branzy laughed in little snorts, or sometimes forgot his purple contact lenses, or would sing little lullabies late at night when Clown would wake up with nightmares from the first time he killed someone. How Branzy would hold him close as he hummed, not caring that Clown wouldn't tell him about the dreams, only caring about calming him down.

How ugly he had cried when Clown shoved him away at the very end, not knowing that the barbed, scathing, lying words that were cutting him so deeply were also saving him from whoever Clown would get caught up with or eventually become.

In some ways, it was worth it. Clown wasn't the same person anymore, he wasn't deserving of such pure love. The nightmares were gone now, killing people just felt like a chore, and even though he knew how fucked up that was he couldn't really force himself to care for the people he had killed. Clown knew he was a terrible person, and looking back over the events he was glad that he had distanced himself.

Even if right now all he wanted were arms other than his own to hold the twisted wreck that had grown out of the teenage boy that had once loved so purely.

Clown stared out over the parking lot, focusing on the colored stains from the light of traffic lights across the rain-slick ground instead of the memories that had forced their way to the surface uninvited. His smile was gone now, replaced with a complicated expression hovering somewhere between regret and bittersweet remembrance.

He didn't cry, the memories felt too distant to cry over, but he did let out a pained sigh as he pulled his cloth horns back over his head. It made him much warmer, but Clown missed the feeling of the wind playing with the tufts of his hair.

Being up on the supermarket roof felt nostalgic, it had been a place of sanctuary from stressful drama and later more dangerous individuals as he had spiraled downwards all those years ago. It had been the two young lovers' secret place. Now it felt empty and cold all alone, but the cool air and the wetness of the recent rain make for a feeling almost like he was being cleaned. Revisiting old memories hurt, but it was okay.

It was a sort of closure.

Clown got up, securing the ginning mask that he had been hiding behind for so long over his face. It was time to go, he did have a hit to resolve tonight, despite how welcome the fleeting moment of serene reprieve had been. The man stared out over the parking lot, and thought briefly again of his past lover. Maybe he was feeling sentimental, maybe he was just tired, but for some reason Clown didn't care if he sounded stupid as addressed Branzy in the empty air, "I hope you're okay, wherever you are tonight."

Even if Branzy was to again be forgotten as a piece of the past, he still hoped that wherever the other was, it was a better place than where Clown had ended up.

A/N: It probably doesn't help that this was one of my favorite songs when I was four, because now it is going to forever simultaneously comfort me and make me sad. So that was the feeling I was going for in this oneshot, a mixture of comfort and sadness. How well did I capture that?

Oh yeah and this was beta read by Questionable_422, I speed wrote this right before I went to sleep last night so she was the one to catch the gazillion resulting grammar mistakes xp

Word Count: 1164 (without author notes)