Well, here we are: the grand finale, the end of the line. Thank you to everyone who followed, favorited, commented, or read along the way. Especially my three most frequent commenters: HeartO'Glass, shekishere, and RHatch89. You all rule!

I think that the moral of this fanfic is that you just never know in life. One small varying factor, a slightly different way of meeting, and your worst enemy could have been the love of your life instead.

The first scene here is a double-homage: It not only pays respect to the classic movie Freaks, just as canon Freak Show did, but also to Larry Clark's 2001 film Bully.

What's next: Well, if you count yourself among the true Cry-Wank devotees and/or you like Murder House/Tate Langdon, check out my fic Baby Mine. It's also slash (Tate/boy OC), though probably not as dirty as this one. I also have definite plans for a Can I Keep You? sequel, so keep an eye out. You'll soon learn that my Freak Show and Murder House headcanons are connected in ways you might not guess. But I may not start the sequel right away because my real life is really busy right now and I'm not sure I can juggle two fanfics.

One more thing: Know how all these chapters are set to songs? I suggest turning this last one up loud. :)

I'm sure that we could find something for you to do onstage / Maybe shake a tambourine / or when I sing, you sing harmonies...

-The Front Bottoms, "Twin Size Mattress"

Jimmy stood in the darkened forest clearance, staring out over the calm black river. In his front pocket was a switchblade. In his back pocket were two pairs of tickets: Two plane tickets to New York City, and two tickets to a Broadway show for the night they got in-a welcome gift from Walter Van Zyle.

"Okay," he said loudly, doing his best not to feel like he was crazy and talking to himself. "I trust we're all clear on the plan? When I ask about alligators, that's when you make your move."

The thick of trees to his left and right and the parked convertible behind him were silent, of course. He'd instructed them not to speak. But now he was nervous. For all he knew he was about to get them all killed.

Jimmy cleared his throat. "I can't say I'm completely sure about this..." he said to his shoes, running a hand through his hair. He looked up, his voice strengthening as his resolve did. "...But when bad things keep happening to good people, you start to question what is right and what is wrong. Well I say it's wrong for Stanley to mistreat us, to lead us like lambs to the slaughter and butcher us for parts like common livestock! That's not what we are! We're people, good people, and in the end we're gonna be the last ones standing. You know why? Because we got no other goddamn choice! We've got only this, only each other. The freaks shall inherit the Earth."

More silence. Jimmy waited, hearing the rumbling of another car grow closer until Stanley's vehicle pulled up beside his. The headlights pooled behind him, their light catching in his eyes as he ghosted a charismatic grin.

"Showtime," he whispered.

Stanley parked, turning off his headlights and walking, tentative and guarded, towards the younger man. No stranger to malicious schemes, the con artist kept his hand stealthily close to the loaded pistol in his inner breast pocket.

"Mr. Darling," he said coolly, eyeing the boy.

The tension in the air was sex and lies and murder, thick as gravity itself. "Mr. Spencer," parroted Jimmy, not taking his eyes off the older man's hands. "...Shall we?"

Stanley flashed the smile of a poisonous snake. "Please," he said mildly, "You first."

Jimmy nodded tersely, his dark eyes hardly leaving Stanley. Only when he was a few feet from the water did he turn for a moment to strip off his shirt. He looked back, stooping to pantomime untying his shoe. "Say, you don't think there's alligators in here," he asked, his voice slightly projected, "...do ya?"

Before Stanley could answer, the convertible's headlights flipped on, startling him so much that he hardly had a moment to recognize Maggie or notice the gun in her hand. The shot rang out quickly as the bullet hit his knee, making him stumble backwards and fall to the ground, hands catching in the dirt behind him. Fearful, his eyes begged his former partner for sympathy, for mercy. But he saw only coldness in hers.

He scrambled for his own gun, but Dell was quicker. The strongman emerged from the darkness and grabbed Stanley from behind, locking the skinny man's arms in his own thick ones. He squirmed, but the struggle was futile.

Jimmy knelt and took the gun from Stanley's pocket, inspecting it a moment before tossing it backward like trash. Behind him, from the trees, crept all the remaining members of the Cabinet Of Curiosities: Penny the Lizard Girl still demure in her cotton dress; Bette and Dot with their conjoined gait and four innocent, haunted dark eyes; Desiree proud and womanly in stilletos; the towering form of Amazon Eve shadowing Toulouse's stunted one; Paul emerging with his tapered, painted torso; Legless Suzi creeping forward on her hands.

This is for the lions living in the wiry broke-down frames of my friends' bodies / When the floodwater comes it ain't gonna be clear, it's gonna look like mud / But I will help you swim / I will help you swim, I'm gonna help you swim...

Jimmy's eyes caught Dell's as Eve stuffed a rag into Stanley's mouth so that he couldn't scream. Tense and grinning, he drew the knife from his jeans' pocket.

This is for the snakes and the people they bite / For the friends I've made, for the sleepless nights...

He uncapped the blade as the group's missing member emerged from the trees, tall and handsome and deadly; Jimmy's unexpected love. Every eye there turned instantly towards him. Who was that, moving forward with the violent deftness of a shark? Who was that star; that beautiful, beautiful dark boy?

The two young men exchanged a smile, tender and feeling, as Jimmy's fused hands placed the knife in Dandy's perfect ones.

For the warning signs I've completely ignored / There's an amount to take, reasons to take more...

For a moment the only sound was the river lapping the shore behind them and the freak show performers moving to form a semi-circle around Dandy. His heart felt like a hummingbird and the whole world murmured electric in his ears. Then white.

Dandy stabbed him. And stabbed him again, and again, and again. Blood painted his starched, pressed white button-down shirt. It streaked his lovely face like war paint, his hair falling out of place.

It's no big surprise you turned out this way / when they closed their eyes and prayed you would change...

He was weightless in those moments; spiritual, transcendent. He seemed to fly and swoop with the grace of a butterfly, a blackbird, sniping and deadly and possessed of effortless perfection. Christ himself, he felt, the Christ he had never believed in. His neglected shell of a heart filled up with a meaning like sun through a window at dawn, so trilling and rich that he hardly could bear it.

Then the chanting began. Softly, at first, and then growing. One of us. One of us. One of us.

One of us, they chanted with growing fervor, one of us. An onlooker might have thought that the chant was meant for Stanley's mutilated form, but Dandy knew different. He knew it was for him.

And they cut your hair and sent you away / You stopped by my house the night you escaped...

He forced himself to stop abruptly and stepped backward with a dazed stumble, holding up a hand to make the group fall silent. He let the knife drop from his limp fingers and walked a few paces back to where the ax was stashed behind the front wheel of the car.

In an act of love that no one but the two would ever understand, Dandy placed the ax in Jimmy's shaking hands. He longed to finish Stanley, to savor his own moment in the sun as long as possible, but this was Jimmy's fight. Jimmy needed the honor. He deserved it.

It was love, it was love, it was love.

The fair boy took the weapon and stepped forward, his eyes meeting the maimed man's as the latter's begged for mercy, an appeal to the heart. But in that instant Jimmy Darling had no heart left. In that moment, he was the monster he'd always been treated as.

He turned, his elfin face illuminated, drawn and stony, in the glow. "Turn the goddamn lights off, Maggie."

With tears in my eyes, I begged you to stay / You said hey man, I love you, but no fucking way.

The headlights flipped off, leaving only the darkened silhouette of a boy, tall and broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, holding an ax above his head with two malformed, lobster-claw hands. He tensed, drew back, and then brought it down.

Upon the riverbank there was dancing. There was embracing, celebration, shouts.

This is for the lake that me and my friends swim in / naked and dumb on a drunken night / And it should have felt good / but I can hear the Jaws theme song / on repeat in the back of my mind...

The joy upon the riverbank segued into bubbling excitement hours later, as a bright morning spread across the New York skyline and Jimmy drove down the interstate, Dandy riding shotgun, in the car they'd picked up at the airport. The Cabinet Of Curiosities, safe in the capable hands of Paul, was on its way to the show's newest spot: Portland, Oregon. Everyone was going but Desiree, who was staying behind in Jupiter with her now-fiancé to start a family. Even Dell was along for the trek out West, busy teaching Maggie the fine circus art of contortion. Stanley's hacked up parts were being digested, at the moment, by various alligators. That magnificent cock of his was pickling in formaldehyde, on its way via Federal Express to the Museum Of Human Oddities.

Jimmy was wired, chattering a mile a minute, his words at once running through Dandy like liquor and washing atop him like rain. "This is so great!" he said, grinning. "God! Even more goddamm lovely than I coulda imagined. Look at that, Dandy; look at the tops of those buildings, that skyline. That's our new beginning right there, doll, that's the rest of our lives. We can start fresh here. We don't ever have to kill again."

Dandy imagined the skyline awash in bright blood. He stared out the window, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the median. Of course he had to kill again. He knew that as sure as he tasted, as sure as he rose in the morning and slept in the evening. Inside of his chest beat the heart of a killer. It could love, sure, just as wolves and tigers could be tender towards their own, but it was a predator's heart none the less. Violence was rend into its ventricles, immutable and constant.

Make sure you kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face / There are lessons to be learned and consequences for all the stupid things I say / And it is no big surprise you turned out this way / The spark in your eyes, the look on your face / I will not be brave...

The young actor watched the city grow and spread in his line of vision up over the hill. It was a city that held myriad lives, he realized, and at that very moment, some of them were ending. Some of them would end. The concrete melee spread before him, like a playground or a lover, was rendered in violence just like his own bones.

Dandy would move through it untouched and godlike-the nightmare with the angel's face, the shark in the dark suit. Beside him would be Jimmy, always Jimmy, stricken and vulnerable and lovely, and not without his own streak of brutality.

He looked sideways at his lover's grinning profile. The shark and the lobster. It had a nice ring.

I wanna contribute to the chaos / I don't want to watch and then complain / Cause I am through finding blame / that is a decision that I have made...

Dandy Mott's eyes grew wide as the car turned off the interstate, a grin like a child's on Christmas spreading slowly across his drawn face.

Jimmy drew a tense breath. "Beautiful, ain't it?" he asked, glancing sideways after a moment when his companion didn't reply. "...Dandy? You even listening to me, doll?"

"Yes," Dandy breathed, unblinking. "Beautiful..."

The pair exited through the back door of the splendid high-rise that held the large apartment that they now called home. The movers they'd hired still bustled back and forth with the last of their things, the sound of furniture bumping and boxes' contents shifting adding to the ever-humming symphony of the city. It was an auditory mosaic of leaves rustling, breezes, voices and car horns and engines. Somewhere far in the midst of it all, they could hear bells: a church, maybe, or an ice-cream truck.

Jimmy was downright high on it all, but when he glanced at his friend, he saw that the other man looked worried. "Doll?" he asked, eyebrows quirking. "You okay?"

Dandy's brow furrowed. "You meant what you said," he asked slowly, "didn't you? That no matter what I did, you'd always love me? That you'd never leave?"

Jimmy scanned the alley for prying eyes before stealing a quick kiss. "Of course I did," he said, holding Dandy's stubbled face between his hands. It was true, he realized-not without a slight sinking in his stomach. Completely, utterly, irrevocably true. "Now c'mon, get those silly thoughts outta your mind. This is our new beginning, remember?"

Dandy nodded, his face relaxing slightly. He glanced at the ground, where somebody had dropped a partially-eaten bagel. A pigeon swooped down after the morsel without warning, one dirty wing grazing his face.

He saw white. All he felt was the peripheral crack of bones before the clouds cleared and the bird fell to the concrete with an abrupt thud. It lay there, one talon twitching for a moment, and then it was still.

"Dandy, Dandy..." drawled Jimmy, putting an arm across his lover's shoulders and gently steering him down the alley away from the dead bird. "You have got to get a handle on that temper of yours, doll. We're in the city now. There's more people watching."

And more people to blame, Dandy thought. But the expression he put on was placid. "I know, pet," he said sweetly, hooking his nearest arm around Jimmy's narrow waist. "I'm doing my best to control it."

"I know, doll," Jimmy said, as the young couple exited the alleyway and walked arm in arm out into the dizzying vastness of the city, in the direction of all of their wildest dreams. "I know. Now come on, or we're gonna be late to the theater."

She hopes I'm cursed forever to sleep on a twin size mattress / in somebody's attic or basement my whole life / never graduating up in size to add another / and my nightmares will have nightmares every night / (Every night, every night...)

-The End-