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Young Hearts

Summary: An everyday gig leads Arthur to the extraordinary.

Words: 3,445

Warnings: None

A/N: This story was inspired by a request by @fleckficgirl. Her prompt sent this piece in an unexpected direction, which is always interesting and fun! 😃 Many thanks and much affection to @sweet-nothings04 for beta-reading. Please enjoy! 😊

If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment, feel free to message me, or send me an ask. Requests for Arthur and WWH are open!

A creeping tendril of uselessness wound its way through Arthur's guts.

The months after October had been slow, the new year slower still. A gig a week if he was lucky. Flurries and sleet coming down like sheets were too unfriendly for street performances, and even when he did feel like tolerating the cold, people hurried home before their lips turned grey.

Though he had more free time to work on his standup, he felt sluggish. He liked steady work, not busy work. There were only so many hours homemaking, sitcom and movie watching, and therapy could fill - the last a trim fifty minutes.

That's why he decided to take fate into his own hands, why placing an advert seemed the brightest idea this side of the Sprang River.

Coffee Clatch was a free weekly found at laundromats and motels, takeout joints and discount diners. The classifieds were industry exclusive, meaning one for each type of business, and the Clown for Hire slot had been free since the Gotham Blades had won the Stanley Cup in 1964. Marge in the ad division had a blue rinse and a Virginia Slim perpetually between her fingers. Her good suggestions convinced him to sign on the dotted line.

"Can you look at this?" Arthur asked Y/N, standing over her while she dusted the TV stand. He held out a legal pad, on which he'd sketched a rectangle the size of a business card. "Carnival the Clown," he'd printed in block letters. "Avaleable for parties and events. Mention this ad for a 25% discount." (The discount had been Marge's idea, a way to keep track of the campaign's success.)

Y/N stood and put the lemon scented Stretch 'n' Dust cloth on top of the TV, traced the bundle of three balloons he'd scribbled in the center of the copy. "That should be a-v-a-i-l, no e after the l. Other than that, it looks good."

"You're sure you don't mind printing our phone number?"

"That's the only way for a client to get a hold of you," she said, returning the pad to him. "Our number's in the phonebook, anyway. How long is it set to run?"

"Until the last week of May."

"The deli by my office carries that paper. I'll get a copy once it's out." She wrapped an arm about his waist, leaned into him with her hip. "I hope everyone sees it."

~~~~~

Alas, none of March's calls mentioned it, and April flew by without an uptick. When it was merely drizzling, Arthur trudged to the usual pitches. When the clouds parted, he stood across from Amusement Miles' closed for the season gates. He had his monthly shows at the children's clinic, got a store opening here, a closing there. But no new regular, nothing he could count on to get him through the lull.

He scowled at the copy of the ad Y/N had given him, beaming with pride when he'd put it in his journal. In his malaise, the memory of her smile turned mocking. He crumpled his face and crumpled the classified. He was beginning to think the seven bucks he'd spent would've been just as effective if he'd thrown them out the window.

But a mid-May call convinced him to renew for ten.

"Yeah, that's me. Well, Arthur, my name's Arthur Fleck." He cradled the receiver between chin and shoulder to grab a pen. "Let me check. June fourteenth? At one? Yeah, that sounds great. Can I have your name and address?"

Summer Sullivan was a fancy moniker, a name out of one of those Harlequin novels his mother had read when she could still read. The address was uptown, above his old stomping ground, on the bad side of a bad neighborhood near Rogers. He hadn't been in that neck of the concrete woods since moving in with Y/N. But every kid deserved some joy and laughter, so he'd gladly go.

After hanging up, he jotted the date and time on the kitchen calendar and the legal pad where he kept appointments. Then he opened his journal to the page with the crumpled ad. Y/N's smile replayed behind his eyes, once again sweet and sincere. Thin lips quirked a half-grin. He tried to smooth out the wrinkles and taped the edges.

~~~~~

Though there were no stairs to climb, the feel of the place was an echo of what Arthur used to know.

Four interconnected buildings made up the public housing campus. A scattering of children played tag while two older women chatted and kept watch. Browning shrubs dotted the courtyard, a sunbathed playground sat in the center. Fresh red and blue paint covered the dome jungle gym, but the maypole was worthy of a tetanus shot.

Searching for Miss Sullivan's, he wandered the curved paths for a good five minutes. Directly across from a graffiti emblazoned slide stood a brick superblock stretching from Adams Avenue to FDR Drive. That must be the place.

The lobby was a testament to the tenants' diligence, clean with a matte finish instead of sparkle. Eggshell orange meant to be peach covered horsehair plaster walls, and the basket weave patterned linoleum floors were humped and faded. Arthur took a seat on a wooden school chair by the cluster mailboxes to change into his red and blue clown shoes.

The 3 in the 3G dangled upside down on the steel apartment door. He adjusted his bald green wig, tapped his tiny bowler hat, tucked away stray brown curls at the nape of his neck. Foam red nose in place, a smile on his face, he squeezed the handle of his prop bag and knocked.

The door cracked an inch. The chain lock clinked. One emerald eye peered out. "Yes?"

"Um, Miss Sullivan?" Maybe he'd misheard. Maybe the apartment was C instead of G. "I'm Arthur. We talked on the phone?"

"Yeah." A blink before she drew back her head. "Yeah, come on in." She pushed the door to slide back and unhook the chain.

The entrance opened directly into the living room, with kitchenette, telephone, and dinette table to the left. On the right, a short hallway led to two bedrooms. Two children sat on the loveseat facing the opposite wall. The younger boy bounced up and down the cushions. "Let me have a turn," he cried. "Let me have a turn!"

Tinny pew pews! from the Zenith television. "Later," gruffed his brother, at least ten years older.

Waving at Arthur to follow, Miss Sullivan went to the arm of the couch. "Guys, look who's here!"

Eyes shining with wonder, the younger boy sprung up and spoke through missing front teeth. "Are you here for my birfday?"

"Oh, man." Older brother sighed. "Clowns are for babies."

Birfday Boy rounded on him. "I'm not a baby!"

"Luis," Miss Sullivan said, taking one step forward. "Go to your room."

"But I'm almost through the last world!"

"Now."

Dropping the controller to the carpet, Luis shoved himself to his feet and disappeared into the hallway, footsteps thundering across the apartment. The bedroom door slammed shut with a dull thud. Miss Sullivan muttered an apology, fore and middle fingers rubbing the bridge of her nose. Birfday Boy stared up at him, brimming with expectation that bordered on awe. Pew pews! dissolved into an 8-bit Game Over explosion.

This was not the party Arthur had expected. He'd planned to take a few exaggerated steps and put on a record. Shimmy and spin and stomp his way through "I Know an Old Lady" and "If You're Happy and You Know it." Perform beginners magic tricks and make balloon animals. This was two kids, one of whom disliked him already. He'd have to improvise to extend this one-on-one to a full thirty minutes.

He bent at the knees to match the child's height, widened his painted smile in an attempt to push through his own jitters. "I'm Carnival. What's your name?"

Roger was the answer, a proud six years old today. And he spoke like a waterfall. He'd gotten a firetruck that transformed into a fearsome robot and a Red Fox RC car, the one that could do wheelies without flipping over, and he sure was excited to be able to show his dad this weekend, though what he'd really wanted was a Teddy Ruxpin, but mommy had told him it was too much money, so he'd write a letter to Santa at Christmas and try to be a saint the rest of the year. Say, did Carnival want to see his brother's Nintendo? Grammy bought it.

The blue triangles on Arthur's forehead rose higher and higher with each breathless sentence. Did Roger understand he was here to entertain him - not the other way around? Yet, being a clown meant tweaking his act to pry a grin from a sullen face. What Roger wanted was to be able to call Carnival his friend. Following his lead, Arthur tested out the Red Fox but declined Duck Hunt.

Once the batteries in the toy car ran out, Roger went to a leaning tower of boardgames in the corner and pulled out Chutes and Ladders. Arthur cheated to lose, slyly slowing the spinner's dial with the tip of his thumb. Whenever his player piece slid down a chute, he whistled along with the descent. Whenever Roger's piece climbed a ladder, Arthur offered a thumbs up.

Roger landed in the winning square, and Arthur saw Summer in the corner of his eye. She lingered by the kitchen counter, a mug in her hand. As they packed the game back in its box, he realized her eyes were on him. A glance her way and her friendly, closed mouth smiled confirmed it.

Ready to perform for two, he rose from the sofa and pulled a modeling balloon from his prop bag. Cheeks puffing in and out, he inflated it with great, goofy breaths. Each twist and fold made the yellow latex squeak, squeak, squeak. He'd intended to make a dog, but the elongated neck turned it into a giraffe.

Just as he tied off the tail, the telephone rang.

"But I asked for today off a month ago," Miss Sullivan said, across the room. "It's my son's birthday. It's not on me that Chelsea called out again - that's the third time this week." Her voice crumbled, the fragile tone shared by all stuck between a hammer and an anvil. "Charlie, please. I need this job." She sucked in a breath. "Okay, I'll- I'll see if my mom can come over. I'll try to be there by six."

Arthur's heartbeat slowed. The impossibility of saying no was a circumstance he knew all too well, one he'd been lucky to escape.

Arms wrapped around herself in a tight hug, Miss Sullivan neared the loveseat. "Say thank you to Carnival," she said to Roger, "then go get washed up and changed for Chow Fun's."

"But he's not done yet!"

"I know, but mommy was called into work tonight. I'm sorry."

Right as the boy's lips twisted into a frown, Arthur knelt before him. "One more thing." He reached into his suit coat's inner left pocket and gingerly pulled at a plastic bulb filled with water. Unpinned the red daisy from his lapel and worked its plastic tubing through the buttonhole. "Here," he said, offering the prop. Arthur gave the bulb a slight squeeze, enough to dribble but not to spray.

Mischief brightened Roger's face. He grabbed the flower and lunged at Arthur, tiny arms flinging around his neck. A prickle started in Arthur's nose. He patted the boy's back. "Happy birthday. Now go get ready." The boy disappeared into the side hallway on fleet feet.

Leaning forward onto the back of the loveseat, Miss Sullivan asked, "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"You're busy," Arthur said, and gestured towards the phone.

"It's already made."

Well, he didn't want to be rude, and one cup wouldn't hurt. He followed her to the kitchenette. The summer heat doing him no favors, his scalp was damp beneath his wig. He doublechecked the hall before tucking his wig and clown nose into his prop bag. "Three sugars, please." He took the mug with a small thanks.

She stood about five feet from him, by the stove. He raised his gaze to find her watching him - again - with curious intent. She asked, "Did you go to Gotham elementary?"

He turned the mug to sip from the side of the rim that wasn't chipped. "Um, yeah?"

"I thought I recognized your name. I wasn't sure until I saw you. We were in fifth grade together."

His recollections of school were far and few between, a handful of good, an armful of bad. "Summer...?"

"Mader back then. Maybe again depending on how my divorce goes." She gave an embarrassed huff of a laugh and grimaced.

Arthur shrugged one shoulder. "It's okay. My wife's divorced."

A grin found its way through her mask of uncertainty. "I tried to walk home with you a couple times, but you always slipped away before I could get my coat on."

Vague blurs lingered at the edges of his mind. A quiet girl in a torn blue parka, a small voice entreating, "Arthur, wait." But every day at school had been an exercise in humiliation, and he'd assumed she'd add to them, when all he'd wanted was to stomp in puddles all the way home.

He studied her now, and the blurs came into sharp focus. Flecked with lint and detritus, her hair had been woven with grease, the back as matted as an unshorn sheep. She'd smelled, strong enough for his secondhand smoke scarred nostrils to notice, like raw onions and cheap salami and wet. She'd picked at her face, raised welts the size of pencil erasers that she'd picked all the more. Classfoes had repeated a rhyme at every recess: Smelly Summer, Always Tell Her. As effective in its cruelty as it was unimaginative.

The slip of a girl he remembered was barely a shade of the woman standing before him. Stonewashed jeans paired nicely with her glitter sweater of black and purples stripes. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail, fly away gold strands curlicues at her forehead. Bronze blush went from her cheekbones to her temples, a light coating of copper eyeshadow shimmered. Her lip gloss was a honeyed brown.

"Oh, yeah. Summer." His thumb fumbled with the mug's handle. "You- You're so different."

Her stare fixed somewhere over his right shoulder. "I was going through a lot back then." A gulp rippled her neck. She smiled, soft and shy, strained at the corners. "You know, I had such a crush on you."

"Me?" He scoffed, his greasepaint a layer of hot top. "Why?"

"You never made fun of me or made me feel left out. Remember when Mrs. Shanker had the class make hearts for the Valentine's party? Hers and yours were the only ones in my tissue box." A giggled adorned her lips, pink shining through bronzed cheeks. "You were pretty cute, too."

He held his coffee but no longer drank it. Saucers of sweat formed under his arms. His placid, lax expression belied the tornado rising in his breast, at the crush and the reasons. Thirty years ago, someone had cared for him. A girl who'd grown into this pretty woman, offering him a drink and appearing just as interested. An undeniable pleasure settled in him. Not desire but something parallel, an allure that might have been called satisfaction.

But he hadn't done anything to deserve her high marks. What with Penny's neglect, the trauma of reading aloud in front of the class, his condition and the urge to disappear, he'd been going through a lot, too. Survival had been a matter of keeping quiet. He hadn't defended Summer against the bullying mass. He hadn't walked with her. He hadn't gone out of his way to be kind.

A rising tide of shame eroded his satisfaction to unease. "I- I didn't know."

"That's all right. I never told you."

Roger's high-pitched laugh pierced their newfound connection. An exasperated hey from the boys' shared room. Luis rumbled. "Stop spraying me!"

Arthur winced. "Sorry."

Shaking her head, Summer called towards the hallway. "Ten minutes or I'm leaving without you guys." She walked past him to her purse, which hung by the door. "How much do I owe you?"

Whatever his faults in the past, Arthur could choose kindness now. "Nothing."

"You deserve something," she said, shoving three Lincolns at him. "You made Roger's day."

He blocked the bills with a raised palm. "That was enough."

A tremor twitched her bottom lip. "Thank you."

"If you have another party of something - or know someone who needs a clown - you have my number."

Summer turned the doorknob. She hesitated, then looked up to lock her stare with his. The corners of her eyes glistened. "Your wife's a very lucky woman." She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, chaste but brimming with old longings.

Flutters tickled his stomach. Sweat saucers grew to platters. Clown shoes stammered into the corridor. A deep breath and he turned towards her, the shock of a ten-year-old getting a construction paper heart tying him into a pile of knots. "Thanks. I- I'll tell her."

With that, he offered a head bow and skedaddled.

~~~~~

Y/N squeezed strawberry essence White Rain into her hand, craned her head back, and lathered her hair. Droplets rained on her shoulders. Her palms slid to cradle the nape of her neck, and she released a long exhale of happiness. Even on warm days, a hot shower hit all the right spots.

The bathroom door thudded shut. Swiping suds from her forehead, she cracked one eye open, spotted Arthur through reeded glass on his way to the sink. "Back already?" she asked, a grin in her tone and on her mouth.

He stopped short to slide the shower door open a third of the way. Arms folded across his chest, he propped one shoulder on the wall. He'd shed his yellow vest and blue flower speckled button-up, leaving him in his white t-shirt. His greasepaint remained. "Hey."

Even through the humidity, she could smell his sweat, which she didn't mind at all. "Hey yourself," she said.

"How was Patricia?"

"Better. Her mother's expected to be discharged on Monday." On the cusp of eighty-five, Pearleen's diabetic stroke had shaken her only daughter. Y/N had left work to sit with Patricia at Gotham General, made sure to check in every day or talk to Matt if she wasn't at the office. It'd taken some cajoling to get her out of the apartment to meet for lunch. To convince her missing a call was unlikely but all right. But the outing came with the good news that Pearleen was showing small improvements day-by-day, along with much needed laughter. "There's a doggie bag in the fridge. How'd the party go?"

"Well, it wasn't really a party. Just the mom and a couple of kids."

"I'm sure they were happy to have you. I'm almost done if you want to clean up."

He gave a light nod, his gaze fell to her feet. Stray droplets dotted his clothes. "I went to school with her. The woman who hired me, I mean. I didn't remember her at first." A bashful, bewildered laugh left him. He scuffed a toe against the tub. "She told me she had a crush on me. When we were kids."

Y/N smiled. Arthur had made more of an impression on the world than he'd believed. "Can't say I blame her." She raked through her hair, fingers catching in tangles towards the ends. "I had a crush on you pretty quick, too. Had and have."

"She said you're a very lucky woman."

"She's right."

The bare tip of his nose went pink. He outlined a little more, the girl's uncleanliness and bad skin. How withdrawn she'd been, her frequent tardiness. Y/N's movements slowed. She recognized those symptoms from the child protective cases she used to work on, signs that nowadays would've rubberstamped a student as at-risk.

She inched towards him, leaned in to bestow a peck. The chalky makeup on his lips dappled her own. "I'm glad she had you to anchor her back then. And that you finally got the chance to hear it." A smile started. At his eyes first, crinkling his crowsfeet, curving his lips at the very last.

His joy made her whole body glow. Swiveling slowly, Y/N retrieved the soap from the wall mounted dish and lathered her washcloth. "Come in before the water gets cold. I'll scrub your back."

~~~~~

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