#ok putting it in the tags now we have to be brave 👽 clown love real

[nightsandreala]

THE jackle/balan fanfic 🫵 not new but just posting it here to have it here lol 🤭 jackle enters the theater somehow and instead of figuring out what this means or how this happened balan falls in love instead 👍

Certainly, a Nightmaren outside of the Night Dimension wasn’t a good sign. A Nightmaren in the theater was arguably an even worse one.

Balan had never heard of such a place as “the Night Dimension,” nor of such a creature as a “Nightmaren,” though his knowledge of the goings-on of foreign worlds was admittedly lacking— ensuring his own world was running smoothly took precedent, of course, and that was a nonstop job that demanded all of his time, no days off for vacations or even a day trip. Whether or not it was even possible for him to leave the theater was a question in and of itself— Balan found himself leaning towards no.  

And maybe it was for that reason that the Nightmaren currently residing in one the theater’s countless spare rooms had come to him, rather than the other way around.

Really, the implications of Jackle’s sudden appearance were scarier than he was himself— to the best of Balan’s knowledge, a creature from neither the human world nor Wonderworld itemself had never been admitted into the theater, and likely for good reason. But that certainly wasn’t to say that, as shameful as it was to admit, he hadn’t been afraid of Jackle. And Jackle knew it, and he reveled in it. Wonderworld had never afforded him a stage, so he’d started residence in one room and expanded his ‘stage’ to anywhere and everywhere else, sometimes silently, creeping catlike among the rafters, or lurking in empty storage closets, wrapped up in his cape and hanging upside-down like a bat, waiting for Balan to open the door to unfold and pounce. He kept himself silent and hidden away from the sight of the humans, though Balan could tell when and where he was shifting about, and would hurriedly usher the guests elsewhere until Jackle inevitably became too bored to wait to strike any longer.

Other times, though, most times, he preferred making himself known, and that was when Balan was sure of it, the scariest part, an uncomfortable truth: in any other world, in any other life, Jackle would have made for a fantastic maestro.

It was like looking at his reflection in the twisting, warping glass of a funhouse mirror— simply bizarre how similar they could be. The same shadow-seeped toothy grin, but where Balan’s was meant to be playful and inviting Jackle’s was downright sinister, lined end-to-end with sharp fangs meant to tear apart the very fabric of dreams and the flesh of other dream-creatures alike. And he had claws too, in place of Balan’s neatly-painted and filed nails, yellow claws that had long since outgrown and torn through his gloves, yet nimble enough to lay down and snatch up cards in such rapid succession that Balan’s eyes couldn’t hope to keep up. Orange devilish horns and a jester’s cowl where Balan had locks of seafoam-colored hair; skin and a body that was invisible, but not intangible— Jackle was too touchy for that to remain a mystery for too long.

And there were, of course, their respective lifelines, which they had both almost immediately recognized as a point of weakness in the other. And though he understood the feeling of attachment, Balan was so agonizingly curious— what was so powerful about the mantle that Jackle insisted on it not even being touched? Balan could only suppose it was similar to his own tophat, Jackle being a showman like himself, serving as a layer of protection between the inner and outermost layers of their personalities, what they allowed to be seen, what they wanted to keep hidden away. Perhaps even more so for Jackle, who often not only wore the cape but traveled in and out from the twisting galaxy captured inside it, another layer of mystery for Balan’s mind to struggle with.

(“I’ll take it off,” Jackle had offered once, pacing along a high beam of the theater’s ceiling while Balan sat dusting nearby— how convenient was the power of flight for such menial chores, “if you take your hat off.” And Balan really had considered, if only for a fleeting moment, and if only just to sate his own curiosity, but thought achingly of Lance’s warning to him and ultimately decided against it. If Nightmaren counted as fae was unknown to him, but it was probably best to not be making deals with them anyways.)

He was absolutely impossible to ignore. It made sense, out of place here as he was, but he had the same presence that Balan strived for on and off stage, overwhelming and enrapturing, combining charm with a hint of mystique, blurring the lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ , friend or foe (though Balan knew he mustn’t delve quite as far into that territory as Jackle had— there was a fine line between entertaining guests and terrorizing them that Balan stayed firmly on one side of, while Jackle seemed to merrily jump between whichever side served him best, or perhaps he never chose a side at all). But he would put on his widest, most gentlemanly smile for everyone and everything who dared approach him in the theater, take them by the shoulder invitingly, welcome them into his makeshift room for a round of cards (“no thank you” was out of the question), offer to read their fortunes (“They’re sure to come true,” he would say, offering a sly grin and his hand). The theater staff, perhaps remembering Lance and his own ways, steered clear, but Balan, watching from afar, could sense the gradual shift in Jackle’s intentions, murky to genuine. Not really such a bad creature at all. 

Yes, Jackle would be a good maestro, but he was still a Nightmaren, and so most of Wonderworld’s usual niceties were spared to him— no stage, no Tims flocking to greet him (though there were likely also other reasons for that, those pointed teeth didn’t exactly indicate a plant-based diet). Balan found, though, that once Jackle was through with shrieking and laughing, he could understand ‘the language of dreams’ just as well as he could understand the language of any human guest, and also that Jackle was a fantastic conversationalist. He was delightfully animated when he spoke— any good maestro would be— would tremble with excitement and grasp Balan’s hands within his own when he felt especially passionate about a topic, speech interlaced with all manner of joyful Dream Language vocalizations, chirps and hums and a deep, rumbling purr. And that was how Balan realized the gentleness that underlied Nightmaren nature, how Jackle changed when he spoke about his artwork or tarot cards (or, oftentimes, about hunting dreamers or the guillotine he’d left back home), absolutely lighting up, eager to tell everything and hear everything, not even the slightest suggestion of slyness or the notion of ulterior motives, only a purely joyful Nightmaren.

And because Balan had come to enjoy seeing Jackle like that, he’d taken up his offers of fortune-telling lately. Whether or not what the cards said were true was secondary, really— if Balan couldn’t help him fix his own heart, simply letting Jackle do what he did the best seemed to be a close enough alternative.

The spare room he’d taken up was barely recognizable as a mere workspace anymore— having undergone a stunning renovation by the means of Nightmaren powers, it could have passed equally for either a Nightmaren lair or one of Wonderworld’s stages, with curtained walls and an open view of a endless void of a galaxy, scattered with stars, similar to the one fit on the inside of Jackle’s own cape. He sat across from Balan at the table, face-down cards laying in a line between them. Jackle flipped them over one by one with those precise claws, revealing all cards whose meanings Balan had become familiar with; The Hierophant, Temperance.

Jackle turned the final card, held it towards himself between two claws, clicked his tongue in amusement— “Well! This one isn’t certainly isn’t familiar.” His eyes narrowed, his mouth split into his widest grin. Balan all but grabbed his invisible wrist and twisted it to face him. His heart sank— this wasn’t supposed to happen, but, regrettably, he couldn’t say what he saw was completely unexpected: figures in a garden, fruit trees, serpent. A new card, but Jackle’s interpretation wouldn’t be necessary here at all. In a futile attempt to soothe his leaping heart, Balan thought “at least the card wasn’t reversed.” 

Desperately wishing he could pull his entire being into his hat like Jackle could with his cape, Balan waited to hear the shrieking, howling, laughter, see the smug, sharp-toothed smirk, feel the threat of that rumored guillotine, even— but Jackle just stayed sat across from him, grinning wide with his eyes shut, chirping, humming, purring in a high tone.

No slyness, no ulterior motives. Only a joyful Nightmaren.