He Took the Red One

Barrel looked at the wicks, biting his lip in thought. “Would duct tape burn?” He asked, looking back over to Stitch. That seemed like a good idea, but Barrel didn’t know if it would work, or where they would find duct tape, although finding it shouldn’t be the hard part. “What if we like-” Barrel grabbed two fireworks and wrapped the shorter wick around the longer one. “So like, the flame will be on the longer one for longer so they go off at the same time? Maybe?”  

“Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh” Barrel was now copying Stitch’s bouncing at the suggestion. “Because then when the big one is in the sky, then like the fountain will go off, oh my gosh” He gave a full jump. “That would be so cool!” Barrel paused. “Ok but, but wait, how?” He asked, examining the fireworks he was holding. “Do we like, intertwine, whoa big word, the two black string things and then set it off or like, ya I don’t know” 

Stitch practically grinned at this reaction, biting down on his lip to keep from laughing. Not because it was funny. But because seeing this side of Barrel made him happy. “Let’s do it. Let’s do it.” He hummed, looking over the fireworks. “Some of the wicks are shorter though it might go off too soon.” He looked up at him. “Duct tape?”

“Let’s do like- five at a time” Barrel said, grabbing a random selection of five fireworks. “And see what happens, because some of the small ones are really stupid like the fountains” He nudged a small fountain with his foot. “It like, sparkles a little and that’s it” Barrel had just grabbed whatever he could get his hands on and hadn’t actually looked at the fireworks until now. “You wanna do it?” He held out the lighter to Stitch and started walking a few steps away from the pile to place the five. 

“Yes.” He grinned, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. “I mean, fair but...maybe we could attach the little ones to the ones you shoot up into the sky and see what happens? Might explode but it would look cool.”He eagerly swiped the lighter out of his hand after setting down the firework he’d been holding, flicking it on for a moment. “Don’t mind if I do. Let’s light ‘em up.”

“I have my ways” Barrel gave a smirk. “And I’m really not, but I’ll take any chance to blow shit up” Barrel would set off fireworks any time of year, but it was the time of year when a ton of firework stores popped up and were busy, the best times to go, ‘shopping’ as it were. “Ok but, if we set them all off at once, then we’ll only get to do it once and I don’t wanna do it just once” He shook his head. “I wanna do it, a lot of times” 

“Apparently so.” He flashed him a smile, still toying with the wick. Fireworks weren’t as destructive as the kinds of explosives he normally played around with but. They blew up. They were pretty. And with the right person they were fun. “Alright alright you got me there I got ahead of myself.” He grinned, looking over everything again. “Should we start with the small ones? Work our way up?”

“Ey ey! We’re in California. There’s beaches. There’s gotta be like fifty bars in a twenty mile radius. It’s my birthday, where’s my free wine?” Reuben walked out of the bar car already more wobbly than normal. Scar shouldn’t be getting his money on his birthday he’d decided on his fourth glass. So out he walked looking for a free ride to someplace else. Hopefully less expensive and with a better wine selection. 

Reflexively he reached out to grab his shoulders, doing what he could to steady him with a grin. “Woah, slow down there bro. I see you’ve gotten a head start on your birthday. You sure wine’s all you want? You drink more of that than a white soccer mom.”

“Ok. I’ve got fountains, the big ones that like explode in the sky, some of the ones that spin around really fast and then fly off, some bottle rockets, firecrackers, sparklers, the ones you throw at the ground and they pop, smoke bombs, snakes, but those aren’t as cool, and roman candles” Barrel dropped the handful of fireworks on the ground gave a wide smile as he twirled a lighter in his hand. “Which one first?” 

Stitch stared down at the haul, shuffling through some of it with his bare feet. Head cocked, he whistled, bending down to pick up one of the bigger looking ones, toying with the wick between his fingers. “So. Let’s just say - theoretically - we set them all off at once. Think we’d get in trouble? Or maybe blow up? Maybe blow up something else?” He laughed. “Where’d you get all this anyway? Didn’t take you for a patriotic kinda guy.”

“Next time he’s drunk we gotta have him upside down kiss something. And–” Reuben fixed his brother with a Look. “I spend the last eighteen years makin’ you dinner and this is what you say to me? Am I sure I haven’t done nothing wrong in my life? Yes. You’re welcome.” There wasn’t a hint of a smile on his lips, but the corners of his eyes were crinkled. 

“As long as it’s not me I agree.” He looked back, raising a brow as he spoke. “Really? Not ever? Uh, bro I think you need to take a look at your closet and think again. There are plenty of wrong decisions there.” Stitch didn’t have as good a poker face as either Leroy or Reuben, a smile forming on his lips the more he spoke. 

All of Barrel’s strange conspiracy theories left his brain when Stitch said yes. “Yes I’m honestly asking” He nodded eagerly. Of course he was, that was such a strange thing to Barrel, who had already forgotten about his theory that this was all a sham. A bright smile crossed his face, he had a boyfriend, more importantly, this boyfriend was Stitch. 

Stitch felt light. A similar sensation to being high and he wasn’t quite sure what to make out of a sensation like that. He cleared his throat, absently chewing on the bar of his tongue piercing. But Barrel was smiling, brightly and happy and that coaxed a smile out of him as well. “Then yeah, consider us boyfriends then.” 

When Stitch said exactly what he had been doing, Barrel paused and looked up at him, ceasing his tearing out the grass for a moment. Quickly though, his attention was back on the grass. “I mean if you want to that is, you don’t have to, I don’t want you to- like- ya, it doesn’t have to, we don’t have to” The rambling was back and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Stitch. Barrel was overanalyzing everything. The laugh, that could mean a number of things. Maybe Stitch though this was dumb, of course he didn’t want to date Barrel and Clopin was wrong. Which would kind of make sense, maybe Clopin had been setting him up for this, after all the teasing he’d given Clopin about Lock. The whole was probably an elaborate plot, Stitch didn’t even like him. 

For that moment he was speechless. Lips parted as he tried to force something - anything - to come out but his mind was already overthinking everything. What things could go well from here. Which ones could end very very badly. If he were to be honest with himself he still couldn’t quite believe the situation was happening at all. He’d come to expect differently and again Barrel had done something to throw him off.

Barrel’s heart was beating out of his chest, and he was feeling like an idiot for knocking Stitch over. “No it’s that weird speed thing, I’m really sorry” He let out a nervous laugh, while trying to get off Stitch. His arms were shaky due to nerves and he almost slipped and fell onto Stitch again. Barrel was finally able to pull himself off Stitch, but he didn’t stand up and decided to sit on the ground. He knew he’d probably just fall over again. 

He just smiled up at him, amused and finding him very cute as he struggled to correct himself. If he were feeling more in a teasing mood he would suggest that he not move at all. “Relax.” He laughed. “It’s not the first time I’ve gotten knocked to the ground. Lucky for me it happened to be you and not one of my brothers.” Pushing himself up a little more he followed Barrel’s lead, sitting crosslegged in front of him, but looking around for where his phone could have gotten.

Bitch // Barrel & Stitch

Stitch hadn’t thought much about his relationship with Barrel. Well. He had but he tried not to overthink things. They had a pretty sweet set up the way they were and Stitch certainly wouldn’t be the one pushing things along. If there was any chance for moving it forward. He honestly didn’t think there would be anything more than this To him being the only exception to Barrel’s heterosexuality didn’t place him higher on a pedestal. It just meant that he was hot and he already knew that but he also knew hot didn’t mean dating material and he was fine with accepting that. There was only one him but there was also an unbelievably high number of pretty girls that could just as easily and more comfortably fill his position. But that was okay. Reaping the benefits for what it was now was top priority. 

“Sticky hands sounds like you’re stealing shit. You’re not supposed to draw attention to that, ‘member?” He sighed. “We can call you Andrew Garfield and Leroy can be Toby Maguire. He’s got the face for that.” Reu chuckled at his joke. What could he say? Through all this stupid acid shit the least the world could do was let him keep his humor. “Also why did you two get the same thing, and I get stuck with this bullshit? Genetics shouldn’t be working like that not when I’ve never done a thing wrong in my life.” 

“It probably wouldn’t help with stealing shit....well....i mean....it’d make getting away a lot easier when you can just fucking spiderman your way up the walls.” He snorted. “I would really like to watch Leroy reenact Spider Man 3.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno, man. I didn’t really get to ask any questions before I apparently got to spin the magical wheel of superpowers it just kinda happened. Also. Nothing wrong in your life? Ever? Are you sure?”

it certainly isn’t thackery’s first rodeo when he’s met with such

He stared back, merely blinking and silent the more the other threatened - or close to threatened - him. When he’d been younger there had been no time outs. Mostly because the people that tried to give him one could not keep him still. If he wanted up, he was up and that was that until one or both sides were frustrated enough. Not even when confined to his train car as punishments did he let the time pass without tinkering or bribing his way out. If Scar couldn’t keep him where he wanted him, this person certainly had a lot to prove.

perhaps in his own sense of retaliation for disturbance, thackery

He slid out into the light with nothing to hide now that he’d been caught, holding a hand up to keep it from blinding him. Carnival security did not intimidate him....Well, to rephrase, Calhoun intimidated him when she was very very angry but other than that...