Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When he opens the door to Tim carrying an overnight bag with his big metal-frame rucksack on his back, Danny almost slams it in his face. "No."

His older brother shoulders past him anyway, taking advantage of their relative strength to mow over his resistance. "Nice to see you, too!"

"It isn't a good time," Danny tries again.

"It never is, anymore. But!" Tim turns, closing the door behind him and grinning in Danny's face, "I promise that by the time I leave you'll feel better."

"You can't just invite yourself to stay over!" Danny yells after Tim as he turns on his heel and makes his way to the guest room. None of the people he'd most like to banish from his flat are subject to the usual rules. None of them!

"That's what family's for!" Tim yells back.

Danny bites his lip, then makes himself stop. He can't afford to lose any blood right now. He has a performance soon. He'll need all his strength for that. "Tim..."

"Don't worry, Dan," Tim says, leaning out the door. "I already made plans. You never get out anymore; we're going hiking. There's great hiking around here, you need to get out!"

That's a lie. At least, there isn't "great hiking" by normal Tim standards. No justification for the ridiculous bag he brought, either. He's sure Tim is trying to take his mind off of things, but maintaining the attitude and trappings of the days when they could go backpacking for an entire week through difficult terrain and come home laughing is actually a bit insulting. Like he thinks Danny is too stupid to realize what he's doing, to remember how drastically his own health has declined even aside from not being allowed to leave Yarmouth. 

-

The bus always arrives at 3PM sharp on performance days. Lila lives five minutes up the road from Danny, but the bus picks her up at 3PM sharp, too.

Nikola owns their homes, controls their healthcare and mobiles, provides their paltry salaries and half their groceries, acts as their only means of transportation aside from walking. All their front doors even have electric locks, so that every time someone goes in or out Nikola knows; that's part of why he let Tim stay. As soon as the door was shut behind him, they lost all chance of Nikola failing to notice he was here. If Tim opened the door again to leave and Nikola phoned to see what Danny was up to the way she always does when any of them opens the door so many times in succession, he wouldn't be able to lie to her, and Tim failing to come to the show would mean bad things for him as well as for Danny. They aren't allowed to lie to Nikola over the phone, and they have to answer every time it rings, no matter who it is. Nikola says it's in case she has to call from a payphone or a borrowed phone, but Danny thinks she just gets off on making them all waste their limited free time dealing with telemarketers.

So it seems less paranoid than it used to, when he was new, to think that Nikola probably did something to all their clocks so that they're kept on slightly different schedules and she can appear omnipotent, after years without getting to choose what doctor to visit. Lila agrees with him, or he with her; Lila has been with the circus longer than anyone but Nikola and Breekon and Hope, just over a decade. Danny hasn't been here anywhere near as long, but he's the next longest tenure after her.

The bus was purchased sometime in the 70s, by the look of it, an old decommissioned school bus. It's been painted and repainted, then wrapped when that got cheaper, over and over to properly advertise each iteration of the show. The woman who had been with the show the longest when Lila joined, just after the wraps started, told Lila that painting the bus used to be yet another task on the performers' plates.

Nikola bursts to her feet when she sees Tim coming down the aisle behind Danny. "Tim It has been a while!"

Tim smiles tightly. "It has."

"You look wonderful!" Nikola trills. "You've been taking care of yourself!" It sounds more like a threat than an observation.

"Of course." Tim is so much better at this than Danny. He knows he's being uncharitable toward himself, that he used to be better at handling Nikola until he had so much exposure to her, so constantly, that all his charm was worn through, but it's a relief to have Tim here. He'll stop feeling that way soon, but for the moment, everyone on the bus breathes easier. It's why family comes to the show over and over- having a buffer keeps the performers from making Nikola angry, keeps angry Nikola from taking her frustration out on them, keeps frustration from turning into accidents. It's also part of why the show has such high turnover.

For every Breekon or Hope, with the circus for so long it has the rest of them shuffling and muttering in odd moments about whether Nikola did something to her favorites to ensure they stayed her favorites, young and healthy until she was through with them, if she ever was, there's a Sarah. They don't even know what happened to Sarah. She's "with another show now," but there is no other show like theirs- as Nikola is fond of reminding them.

Tim holds Danny's hand as they rock and shake with the bus's ancient suspension on their bench seat. He'll have to be perfect today. He has to be perfect every day there's a performance, and most of the rehearsals, but it's more imperative when Tim is here.

-

"I can't." He really can't. "I- I have a performance Saturday." His voice dies down into a sad little thing. He doesn't want to see the look on Tim's face.

Tim sighs, and Danny feels terribly guilty. He said he was going to stop bothering Tim with Nikola stuff. He promised. "Then I'll stay until that's over. You could use someone to make sure you're alright, after."

He can't. "You can't." It's a toothless denial, but... Tim knows why he can't.

"Danny," Tim says, something raw and tearing Danny hasn't heard for a long time in his voice. "Please let me do this for you."

"You can't," he says again. "You promised you would stop this!"

"And I am!" Tim says, hands up and fingers spread. "All I want to do this time is take care of you. Please don't ask me to know that my little brother could be injured and do nothing."

"She'll want you to come," Danny croaks, because she will. Nikola loves to have family in the audience. It's part of why he made Tim promise to stop; eventually, Nikola would decide that the attempts on her life were more annoying than amusing, or that they showed a performer's spirit, or something else that would regardless end with Tim a new part of the act at best.

"I know," Tim says, solemn now. "Please."

He doesn't bring up all the other things he knows Tim knows. How Danny might be dropped off in front of his flat instead of followed up for a bit more, but Danny-and-Tim will be expected to allow Nikola to walk them to the door and then invite her in for whatever refreshments Danny can scrounge. How much he hates knowing that, whatever happens during the show, Tim will see. How it sometimes makes his hands shake, the knowledge that shaky hands could spell ruin a self-fulfilling prophecy when there's Tim in the audience to worry about.

"You promise you won't try to do anything?" He never could stop Tim from doing anything he really wanted. He knows he's already lost the fight. It'll be good, he tries to convince himself. Lila's mum is always here, Tim being here means the old woman can have a bit of a break. Tim's the hot new ticket in town; Nikola will just have to catch up with him instead of Mrs. Dean.

"On my life," Tim says. "No funny business. I won't do anything to make Nikola angry. I promise, Dan."

"Fine," he says, chest tight. "Fine."

-

Sometimes they have a four o'clock show, and sometimes they have a four o'clock dress rehearsal. It varies from show to show depending on Nikola's mood.

A four o'clock dress rehearsal is wonderful. The only audience is whatever family is in town and the mice in the stands growing fat off dropped popcorn. For their last show they had a dress rehearsal, their most exciting in living memory. A couple of ravens slipped in behind someone, and they spent the rehearsal hunting around for the mice.

Lila nearly fell. It's hard not to see ravens as an omen of death, under the circumstances.

A four o'clock show means a handful of families trying to wear the kids out before bedtime with some excitement, a couple pensioners, and any tourists who noticed the signs. Family too, in the section of the front row set aside for them. Mrs. Dean is always there; she was already living with Lila when Nikola snatched Lila up, and Lila's first instinctive protest to the "offer" to move out to Yarmouth and join the Circus was to say that she couldn't, as she had to take care of her mother. If she'd known better, she would've let her mum go to any care home that would take her rather than give Nikola the chance to decide that the thing to do was to move Mrs. Dean out to Yarmouth alongside Lila.

It's part of why Lila has been with the show so long. She realized fast that, more than anyone else, she needed to be the best. Nikola doesn't accept anything but the best, but failing meant more than Lila's life on the line. Danny's pretty sure that the moment Mrs. Dean dies is the moment Lila has a stress-induced heart attack and goes with her, without that threat binding her stubbornly to life.

So Mrs. Dean attends every rehearsal and performance, because any family in town is expected to. Tim is there to keep her company today, which is good. Lila is quietly resigned to the knowledge that her mum won't live as long as she could have no matter what Lila does; the stress is just as bad for her as it is for Lila, but having someone there helps. 

Inviting family is a fashion that ebbs and flows with the cast. Sometimes the going advice is that family in the audience is the one sure thing that'll keep your nose to the grindstone enough to exceed Nikola's absurdly high standards, with Lila as the example. Sometimes it's that you have to keep your family as far away from the show as humanly possible. Lila's the example for that one, too, but so is Danny. Nikola brings it up sometimes, implicitly calling out how harshly he ran Tim off. It helps keeps the newbies in line; most of Nikola's Tim stories are unsuccessful murder attempt stories.

Right now, the fashion is for estrangement. They had a set of twins when the oldest of this crop was onboarded. Brian and Betsy were brilliant and shining and Danny was sure, when Nikola brought Brian on, that he was going to last.

But Nikola can't resist a matched set. Betsy came to watch Brian, and Nikola set her behavioral standards sky high in the face of the temptation of twins. They limped along for a while after adding Betsy to the act, but it broke Brian's heart to have failed at protecting his sister and when his hands slipped off the bar Betsy took a swan-dive off the trapeze platform before he'd even hit the ground.

-

"Why now?" he asks Tim. It's been ages; he thought he finally ran Tim off for good, and here he is right before a performance. If Nikola had any sort of internet presence for the show, he'd suspect foul play, but the only way to know there's a performance coming up without being told is to be in Great Yarmouth, preferably in Nikola's neighborhood, and see the posters or the bus.

Tim's mouth presses and tightens at the corners for a moment before he manages to speak. It's calm and steady, but the phantom of tears is stark and neon to Danny's eyes. "Some things at work."

Danny raises his eyebrows, ready to ream Tim out. Tim's work is trying to figure out how to get rid of Nikola. He had a good career in publishing; he didn't go into the ghost story business until he met a vampire.

Tim shakes his head. "Not like that. Just a thing with one of my coworkers- made me think about the people I want in my life, think about how I needed to appreciate them more."

Danny mentally fills in his own name into all the "people" spots, because the only life he knows better than Tim's is his own, and there is no one else. "Is this your way of telling me that you're dating that constable again?"

Tim smiles and shakes his head and the tension breaks for the moment.

-

Estrangement is a slightly more popular strategy than inviting family, because "I'm running away from my life to join the circus" is already such an absurd and alienating thing to say that it seems pointless to try to explain any more. Half the time, people end up alone no matter what they try to do, because families lay down ultimatums about "treating your mental illness" the second vampires enter the conversation. Even if they were mentally ill in addition, Nikola doesn't give them the option of treatment. You either figure out how to cope well enough to help the show go on or it undermines you enough to cause an accident. 

Self-medication is rampant, but it's a quicker road to ruin than doing nothing would be for most people. He and Lila stopped trying to convince newcomers of that, though. It makes the last days of those who die during or before their first show additionally unpleasant, and by the time it's clear that someone is likely to last, whatever their substance of choice is usually has its hooks in deep enough for the conversation to be frustrating for him and Lila and actively distressing for whoever they're trying to talk to. If anyone asks what he does, he makes it clear that he hasn't touched alcohol or anything else since coming on, but without a way to find the perfect moment to cut off substance abuse after it'd be robbing minor comforts in someone's last weeks of life but before they're in so deep that the moment they're told the precedent they realize that they can't stop in time to save themselves, it's better left alone.

The Letter is a part of the show culture just as deeply ingrained as self-medication, though Nikola and her favorites never acknowledge that they must know about both. Finding The Letter and figuring out where to send it is a vital part of cleaning out the latest landlord-white house or flat to lose its resident which, like most of Nikola's petty chores, falls on the performers to do. They all have them, and since Nikola's properties use about three floor plans in total the location is heavily traditional, too. Taped on the inside of the cupboard door closest to the refrigerator, the same on the door to the coat closet, or, for those feeling spiteful about family abandoning them, the underside of the toilet lid are the most common. Danny's is less boilerplate, on the back of the family picture hanging in his lounge, but it'll have to come down regardless when he's gone and Lila knows where it is if she outlives him.

It isn't always one Letter, which makes things harder. He and Lila are usually primarily responsible for making sure newcomers write their own, in case they don't make it to the end of their first show, but they focus on just having it over the finer details. Anyone else with the show long enough to have seen them lose a performer makes an enthusiastic aid in that goal, but they're usually too new to think of sharing those details.

Their own, as they encourage anyone who makes it long enough for the shock to wear off to do, are in addressed, sealed envelopes, just add stamps. Often they have best friends, exes, parents, siblings to all track down addresses for. But most people don't think initially to put them in envelopes, or don't seal them, and it's best to be sure the contents won't give any bad ideas to recipients who hopefully have a shot at a long, happy life with a minor but unremarkable personal tragedy and nary a vampire in sight.

Most of The Letters he's read get the memo on that count. They usually read as strictly truthful, in broad strokes. The impression tends to be that the writer got involved with organized crime, human trafficking, drugs, something unsavory along those lines. There have been a few investigations over the years, one in Danny's tenure and two in Lila's, but Nikola is a demanding director with an eye for detail and actors who have to enact her direction precisely, and it never comes to anything.

He and Lila write new ones together every year; Danny has one, for Tim, and Lila has one for her mum and one for her ex-husband. The old ones to Tim and Mrs. Dean go in boxes in their possession, though he knows neither has opened any of them so far. It's the only time he deliberately calls Tim down, though he still tries to space it between shows. Lila's ex will probably have a bit of a surprise when he gets his, as so far as Lila knows he thinks it was the usual sort of losing touch that happens when you've been divorced for years. A bit sad, since it was an amicable split and they were close, but not unexpected or unusual. Her mum and Tim won't have anything new to learn, though, just the last memento they can offer them. He's promised to do what he can for Mrs. Dean if the worst happens.

-

The one thing Danny didn't miss about Tim's visits was the cooking.

Tim's a great cook, he is! Danny likes eating Tim's cooking and he likes cooking with Tim. But Tim always comes to Yarmouth armed with a new scheme for cramming as much iron and protein into Danny as humanly possible. Absence seems only to have allowed him to perfect his art.

"What, are we expecting someone?" he laughs when he sees Tim putting dinner out.

Tim looks up like he didn't quite catch what he was saying. "Hm?"

"You've cooked enough for six people!" Tim usually aims for four, because Lila is Danny's best friend in the show and Tim always makes sure to cook enough to take her and her mum leftovers even when they can't have the Deans over for dinner while he's visiting. By the same token, Danny expects to find half a dozen casseroles in his freezer, even though he has no idea where Tim finds the time.

Maybe Tim meal-preps while Danny sleeps. Tim's just as aware of the injury to Danny's pride as he is the fact that Danny needs that help more than he used to, and as Danny.'s trying to drift off Friday night he thinks he can hear someone in the kitchen.

-

The four o'clock show goes off brilliantly; it always does. They're fresh, full of the nerves of performing but without the real pressure yet. The evening show starts at seven, though, only an hour after the four finishes. That break in between is when Nikola starts finding fault with the cast, death by a thousand nitpicks.

Danny lounges around ostentatiously. He wasn't planning to, but Lila laddered her tights during the four. They're replaceable, easier to replace than the leotard would be, but costume malfunctions are a guaranteed spark for Nikola's temper. She probably won't kill Lila flat-out over rent hosiery, but she'll take her dangerously close to the point where she'll stop being able to perform correctly. And anyone else who caught Nikola's eye after that would be almost certainly doomed. On a bad night, costume malfunction means they'll end up starting the show a performer short, and there's no way to know it's a bad night until it's too late.

Danny and Lila stand out from the crowd, though. They aren't Nikola's favorites, that's the strongmen, but they're the next best thing. It keeps them separate from the limited camaraderie of the other performers, but it also means they can get away with more. Nikola thinks twice about whether whatever she's upset about really warrants losing them, whereas the procession of people recruited from nearby various universities who walked home drunk past the wrong dark alley are almost entirely disposable. Nikola hasn't even stopped calling Megan by Sarah's name yet, and Megan's made it longer than most.

Nikola can't stand loitering when even if they aren't assigned to go run concessions or a game for the four's parting audience they should be buzzing around checking their makeup and telling each other to break a leg, so Danny loiters like a pro. He'd wanted to avoid Nikola today, since Tim being here means it's guaranteed that after the show Nikola will follow him home and shift her definition of refreshment as soon as she gets bored of pretending to sip tea and make Tim watch her sip Danny's blood instead, but he can handle it. For Lila and the others and Tim in the audience, he can handle it. Nikola doesn't look for people hiding costume malfunctions until just before lights up. If it can be fixed with a sewing kit or the hot glue gun he has a squiggly scar on his shoulder from, you get to try.

Lila should be screwed, because there's a category of things that are automatic crimes in Nikola's book, and this is one of them. They aren't supposed to be able to fix something like Lila's tights in time, they're too far from town to buy replacements and Nikola's vicious about rooting out contraband hidden spares. But Tim helped them hide a bike nearby years ago and everyone keeps cash in their bags because if Nikola decides they've done well enough to earn something to eat to keep their energy up for the seven the only option is buying from concessions the same as anyone else. If Lila's fast, she can bike to town and buy replacements. If she's careful about where she changes and dumps the ruined set in a bin subtly enough, Nikola will never know what happened. And Lila hasn't lived this long by lacking the ability to be fast and stealthy.

"Danny!" Nikola says, loud enough that he wonders if the people slowly filling the stands can hear. "What on earth do you think you're doing?"

"Hm?" he says, straightening and pretending not to have noticed her approach. "Did you need something, Nikola?"

"Come here!" she says, and his body obeys. "Apologize."

"Sorry, Nikola." He doesn't bother to hide the stress in his voice as she bends over him and latches on.

-

Danny wakes to find Tim in the kitchen with breakfast already made, an impressive spread clearly aimed at making sure that Danny has enough energy to last the show. "Oh, good," Tim says when he comes out of his room. "Come get yours so I can box the rest up and run it to Lila."

Sitting in his flat alone feels eerie. His brain is convinced Tim should still be here, and the combination of here and not-here makes him anxious. 

There's no reason for him to run into Nikola. He's fine. Tim's safe.

-

Nikola drills them relentlessly leading up to a show. Every rehearsal is a full run through, and they spend days running it slowly, two-hour shows dragging out to four as everyone learns their choreography and builds up the familiarity to tackle the most dangerous bits with the minimal safety measures removed, barely enough time to sleep in between. Nikola Orders them through every single step at the first one, and slowly builds to bundling bits together into sets, then routines, then the whole show. It means that when the moment comes, when Nikola walks out to warm up the audience, all she has to do to set them off is let her voice ring out through the speaker system, every performer's back straightening at "Let the show begin!" and preparing to run it through like clockwork.

Danny isn't part of the first group, so he's left standing straight with a brilliant smile he won't be able to drop until it's over. Nikola leaves the people backstage with just enough autonomy to wander about and quietly check their own and each others' costumes and the like. Someone hands Danny a wet cloth to wipe at his neck.

Most of the audience won't find the sight of the bite noteworthy no matter how obvious it is, but Nikola doesn't like it and with Tim in the audience neither does Danny. Knowing that Danny is working with blood loss already this early in the evening will just worry him unnecessarily. His vision will stop spinning any second now.

Once the opener is over it's Danny's turn.

Every act is risky, but Danny's allows less room for error than many. Being locked into the path of a misfired arrow might be recoverable- both for the performer and the act- but it's also a fairly limited range of ways for things to go wrong.

Danny rides out into the ring standing barefoot on a horse's back, juggling flaming torches. The price of a long tenure, having time to build up skills Nikola can spin into something thoroughly inadvisable. He tenses his core to keep his balance, and knows that the audience can tell, the neckline of his costume a broad, deep V that leaves his chest and stomach mostly bare, bordered by strips of red satin and gold sequins that make him look flayed open at the sides when moving at high speeds. The big danger is the blood loss affecting his vision, but it has mostly evened out; the horse, Bibi, is usually responsive enough to rote motion that he can take his mind off of the steering, but the torches are too variable to leave to chance.

He catches each torch until all five are held in his hands like a bouquet, tosses them into the drum of water in the center of the ring, and moves through the next part of the act. He didn't get a look at Tim trying to keep his eyes on the torches, and he doesn't get the chance during the handstand either. When his right hand rises at a right angle, his thoughts are consumed with the careful swivel of his left wrist that keeps his balance and the long knives a pair of newer performers are juggling to each other from halfway across the ring as he passes through the center and snatches one out of the air with his free hand.

Having the knife in hand means he gets to pump his elbow and push himself up into the leap that brings him upright and off the horse. His heels hit the the ground hard enough for it to hurt, but that's alright, as long as he bends his knees he probably won't hurt anything. He uses his knife to gesture dramatically to one of the jugglers while the other sinks a hand into the horse's mane and leads it backstage.

The spotlight follows his gesture up to Lila in an unmarred costume, so far unnoticed in the center of the tightrope. She's holding a wide wooden target, thankfully wide and thick enough that the knife-thrower's performance reflects only on himself, unlikely to hit her. The knives land at the four points of the second ring they're supposed to, but the last misses the bullseye and lands between the top and left-side knife. That's bad; the pattern means it's an obvious flaw in the show, and Nikola doesn't like flaws.

Danny turns and bows to the knife-thrower, bending his knees as he does so to get as much height on his toss as he can when he springs up. The knife spins up into the air, and Lila has to lean forward slightly to catch it. His heart clenches for a moment before he remembers that she's supposed to lean forward like that, so she can drop the target to swing down, anchored by ropes from the same points as the tightrope. Her hand takes the knife behind her back, sliding it into a sheath invisible to those on the ground, and comes back out with a bouquet of roses, the audience oohing at the trick.

He catches the roses when she tosses them down, and clasps his free hand to his heart, stumbling around drunkenly like he's going to faint until he comes up against the drum his torches when into and a boost up onto his toes sends him tipping backward into the water. He kicks his feet limply and then falls still, glad that all the torches extinguished successfully and none of the wood splintered into him on the way down. It's easier to stay still and hold his breath when there's nothing dangerous inside to avoid. The drum is tipped onto its wheels and hauled off with him inside while the audience reacts appreciatively.

When he's helped out of the water, he can't breathe as deeply as he'd like; properly catching his breath would be loud, and no one backstage is supposed to disrupt the show like that. The pair who pulled him back cartwheel back out, and someone else throws him a towel to scrub through his hair.

He jogs over, movements mostly his own again, to scale the bit of scaffold that's the only place the tightrope and family seats can be seen from backstage. Lila looks good when he glances up, the target already cut mostly down by the pair that cartwheeled out, so he focuses on Tim and Mrs. Dean. The sign still dangles dangerously, and everyone who gets close to it will have to figure out a way to try to snatch it down safely in a way that will contribute to their act, the only kind of on-the-fly alteration Nikola allows. That same unlucky knife-thrower must be getting nervous if he's had two failures in a show, but he didn't manage to hit the tightrope, and that's what Danny really cares about.

Tim's holding Mrs. Dean's hand, both looking serious and a bit anxious but not particularly afraid. Tim looks a bit odd, like he saw something worrying, but he isn't looking nervously to Lila or backstage so Danny can't think of what could have caused it.

-

"Did you still want to go for a walk?" he asks Tim when he returns and they've cleared the breakfast dishes away.

Tim shakes his head. "Not today." It's a weightier and more meaningful denial than the plain words show, more properly not on a day I know you have to perform.

"What, then?" He lets himself smile at Tim, lets himself enjoy his brother's company for just a moment without worrying about anything.

"Anything you've been meaning to watch?" Tim heads to the lounge and flops onto the sofa before Danny can answer, making a show of stretching and smacking his lips with false tiredness before grabbing the remote, suddenly lightning-fast in the face of Danny's attempt to get to it first.

-

The audience is there to keep the performers in line, and the performers are there to keep the audience in line.

Sure, some of the audience is tourists and locals who haven't caught wind of the show's reputation for accidents or who enjoy being there precisely because of the chance for carnage. But most of it is made up of Nikola's friends.

You can't spot them at a glance. Tim and Mrs. Dean and any other family are the only ones who struggle to look genuinely happy to be there; Nikola's friends don't look as enthused as their companions, but none of them would be here if they didn't want to be. Danny only knows who to look for because he's seen them at so many shows, seen them at enough to recognize them and know what they are.

He doesn't know what life would be like, with a different vampire. They all clearly have the same control over their thralls- much as Lila mocks him for picking the word up during an adolescence marked by an intensifying wave of vampire media- that Nikola does over all of them. All the humans in the audience, aside from the family section, always look delighted to be there. Some are excited for the potential disaster, some are too ignorant to know better, and the rest have been Ordered to smile and clap and laugh at all the appropriate moments.

None of the cast get to see enough of the other thralls to form a meaningful connection, but they're a threat. They cycle in and out, some of Nikola's friends bringing a large and stable group every time, others switching in one or two fresh ones every visit. A couple have a boastfully large group, bringing half a dozen to every show and never the same person twice. Look at all these vampires, their presence says. Look what else could happen to you, even if you got away.

The performers are a threat, too. There's no show in the world like theirs, as Nikola says constantly, both casually and part of her default show patter. All these humans have less to fear, because many of them are back over and over. The only way to know who's human and who isn't is to be with the show long enough for an accident in front of an audience.

It isn't uncommon for an accident to not be immediately fatal. Awful burns, broken bones, wounds that could be handled in A&E but which would never allow the victim to perform to Nikola's standards again. They're all taken out a different exit than where someone with an injury Nikola thinks is worth treating is taken. That's the signal to the audience; all the vampires exit the stands and swarm after the dying.

Danny's just glad seniority means he and Lila are rarely ever designated as the offstage on-call stretcher-bearers for any part of the show anymore.

Most of the humans who didn't know what they were getting themselves into realize something's very wrong at the mass exodus, eerily silent and caused by a cue none of them are sure of. You can tell them by the way they react, sadistic glee and compulsion both absent, allowing them to fall into concerned looks and burgeoning fear. Some stay stubbornly oblivious, remarking to whoever they see running concessions and games after that they hope the unfortunate performer is alright. Especially when few of Nikola's friends are in the audience; guests often assume that four or five vampires are doctors in a way they can't pretend with a couple dozen.

He doesn't know what happens to the handful who understand entirely how much danger they're in and decide that running is a better choice than playing along until the end of the show. They never have police or ambulances show up, but that might be because Nikola has something worked out with them that makes them turn a blind eye. Maybe emergency services knows there's no point the second they're told that the accident happened at the circus. They hear screams down the midway sometimes, but that could be at seeing the feeding frenzy just as much as it could be from falling victim to it. He tells himself they all make it home safe.

-

They spend about an hour watching movies they grew up on before Tim gets fidgety. Danny doesn't say anything, just rolls his eyes when Tim vanishes into his bedroom and the guest room and emerges with laundry and stripped sheets. Cooking isn't the only chore Tim tries to do on his behalf, and it's an argument he isn't interested in having again.

Tim still sits with him while the wash is going, just gets up to change it over and start a new load, and stands while he folds it so he can carry it into the appropriate room whenever his folded pile starts teetering on the ottoman, in and out of the bedrooms over and over.

-

The finale, naturally, is the most dangerous part of the show. Danny rarely notices all of what happens during it; getting distracted by what other people are doing, so long as they aren't doing it near enough to you to be factored into your own work, is the most common reason for someone to die during the show or fail to even make it through rehearsals. He keeps one eye on Celia, because this is her first real show and he relies on her for part of his own act.

He goes out on Bibi again, as fast as the poor thing will go, and rockets around the edge of the ring while the rest come out. It contributes unpleasantly to his dizziness, but he's good at working through things like that. At least he's properly riding this time, even if it is bareback.

He gets Bibi to leap through a ring of fire, and almost immediately after hitting the ground he's supposed to grab Celia. He slows the horse as much as he can, for both their sakes, but is still moving faster than he'd like to leave her with when he stands up and does a front flip onto a trampoline. It takes him higher and higher as he flips and turns, making sure no audience member misses a chance to see his gleaming smile. Someone hands him a new set of torches to juggle during his acrobatics, and all he can do is catch a figure in his periphery before he hits his maximum height and has to toss them to hopefully be caught by another juggler. The next peak he reaches out, but the rest of this routine leaves him too disoriented to be able to do anything but trust Lila and hope she's positioned well.

His hand finds purchase and his last flip ends with him landing on the tightrope, drawn out of trajectory when he and Lila clasped hands. The action below hits a temporary plateau so everyone can bow, the two of them hopping carefully around each other to face the opposite direction and bow again.

Lila dips him after their second bow, only one of his feet resting on the line with a couple toes to help balance them through the maneuver. Their position at least means Nikola didn't feel the need to make them actually kiss, just get their faces close to each other so it looked like it. Lila raises her eyebrows twice, and Danny does it back- all good, for the moment. Then the crowd's cheers start to lower and she leaps back, dropping him backwards. He isn't afraid of the fall; he trusts Lila, and if she weren't sure she had him positioned correctly over the trampoline she wouldn't have said everything was fine.

He lands on his back in the center of the trampoline, the single motion all he gets to gain the height and direction to catch a dangling ring at the peak of his arc. Megan, on the opposite side of the ring on an identical trampoline, catches the other, their combined momentum setting the mechanism gnarled way up in the peak of the big top into motion. Lila hops to the platform at the end of the tightrope just before the sharp edge of the maypole lowered from above hits the line and severs it. A second set of rings flies loose from the top of the pole as it settles on the ground, and he and Megan start swinging between the four rings in a pattern that, done right, looks impressive and ensures the colored lines braid around the pole correctly. He hates trapeze work, but Megan doesn't have an opposite number and Nikola prefers him to the strongmen as her go-to male jack of all trades.

He hits the ground running as the last ring finally draws close enough to the ground for his next move. Another bright banner comes loose from the pole, squeezing his chest with transient gratitude for the fussy machinery making it through every part of the act tonight without malfunction, and he grabs it so it unfurls behind him as he races forward, bounding up at the exact same moment a trio of clowns takes a fall. He hopes he didn't land too heavily on any of them as he makes his leap from the last head in his impromptu staircase.

He lands on the ladder up to the tightrope and trapeze platform, and climbs one-handed. He clips the banner to a step a few rungs down from the top and grabs the handle left there for him. The handle fits over the banner, an burst of speed on the way up beyond what Nikola requires of him buying him the moment to make sure it's fastened on safely, and he ziplines toward the center again.

He drops the handle and has to trust that the cupped hands his foot is meant to land on make it up a half second before he's supposed to touch down, and that Megan will be there to meet him. It all comes together beautifully, and then he shakes the tower out of alignment by taking Megan's footing from her to crouch and cup his hands. Megan takes the boost and jumps, which shifts the pair holding him up out of alignment, and he flails his arms and one leg comically.

Above him, Megan's hands meet Lila's, thrown by one of the strongmen, and they flip and twist around each other in the air to bleed a bit of momentum. Lila comes down where Megan initially landed perfectly in time to grab one of Danny's flailing arms and lean out, their 45-degree angle held stable by their joined hands, each facing a different direction. Megan comes down on the bridge of their arms, hands in the air.

The performers all stand, arranged in a rough pyramid by the disparate heights of stacked bodies and vehicles, up and up amid clouds of ribbon and confetti and fire to the pair holding the three of them aloft atop the maypole as the crowd screams. For the first time all night, Danny's smile is a bit genuine. All that's left is to return to the ground and have Nikola assign him to man whichever stand she's decided his behavior recently warrants.

Probably concessions. She likes him, and she'll be pleased at having Tim here. Concessions is warm against the chill of the night and Tim can hang out to help him there.

-

The tension in the flat ratchets up and up and up as they choke down lunch and 3PM approaches. 

They both know it's coming, and they're both running through their respective lists of things they can do to make what follows as painless as possible. Tim goes into the guest room to change half a dozen times. Thank god he still had Tim's things in there from when he used to visit more frequently. Nikola likes for family members to dress up a bit, and Tim certainly didn't pack for a hike with that in mind. He wouldn't subject his work clothes to the backpack, and Danny saw his overnight bag open and all he had there were athletic and lounging-around-the-house clothes. It's a bit of thoughtlessness, a bit of careful preparation Tim used to be so good at, that makes Danny nervous for how well he'll handle seeing Nikola again.

And Danny worries because Tim is so obviously worried. It's been a long time since Tim did this, and Danny can't escape a nagging feeling that Tim's forgotten the extent of what he's signed up for. He'd like to fidget with his mobile while he waits, take his mind off things, but he plugs it in when he eats lunch on show days, and Tim's done the same. Nikola abhors mobiles at performances and they're held to an even higher standard than the audience, who get a lecture about turning them off as part of Nikola's opening patter. If he doesn't plug it in out of sight, he risks sliding it into his bag without thinking.

2:59 changes to 3:00 on the lighted display in the kitchen, and the bus beeps its horn outside.

-

On the bus again, finally peeled out of his sweaty costume into more comfortable clothes, Danny is exhausted and knows he's still not done. Tim squeezes his hand, equally aware of what's coming. Danny just hopes that the sweat around his hairline isn't an indication that he's so out of practice at this that he'll set Nikola off, or that he lied about not trying to kill her again.

There are a handful of stops before Danny's. Two of them take extra, leaving the rest of them shivering in the parked bus while Nikola drags out a two-minute feeding by playing games. He's pretty sure she's doing it just to torment him and Tim; she can't be eating much, because she already fed from him at the show and she'll want plenty of room for when they finally do get to his flat.

He eyes Mrs. Dean on the other side of the aisle. Lila keeps a quilt in the bottom of her show bag, but it's still freezing. It's nearly midnight, and Mrs. Dean is getting older. His fingers are going numb.

Tim sees where he's looking and nudges him with an elbow. "Gimme your bag."

Danny doesn't hand him the bag so much as he releases the strap and let Tim pull it off the floor himself. His arms feel like anvils. He watches curiously as Tim unzips and rezips all the exterior pockets until he finally finds the one he's looking for.

"Threw these in just in case," he says quietly, pulling out something small and crackling it. He passes several across the aisle, but Danny doesn't figure out what they are until Tim hands him one. He holds the little chemical heater in the pocket of his hoodie and curls his entire body around it.

Tim distributes more hand warmers up and down the bus. There isn't enough space in Danny's bag for him to have brought many, and except for the Deans there's only one per seat, but they drain tension from the atmosphere like magic, slowly revitalizing cold, tired people into soft conversation and trying to assess their neighbors for injuries. Megan has a sprain, and Lila coaxes Celia down the bus to share their blanket and heaters so that Megan can take off a long sock and squash hers into it so it can tie around her injured shoulder.

The bag is still in Tim's lap when Nikola returns, and he doesn't let Danny return it to the floor. He barely lets Danny share his warmer, feet tapping nervously enough Danny supposes that anxiety is its own sort of warmer.

It feels less powerful against the cold of the open air, following Tim and Nikola out of the bus and toward his front door. It's just the three of them, because the flats on the two floors above his are both unoccupied.