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“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Ryan says drily as Shane pays for his cheeseburger from the food vendor.
“What? I wanted a cheeseburger!” Shane says.
“You’re at a fucking carnival,” Ryan says, spreading his hands wide and almost hitting someone with his chicken-on-a-stick. “You’re supposed to get stuff you can’t get normally.”
Shane unwraps his cheeseburger and takes a big bite out of it. “Says who?” he says with a mouthful of burger.
Ryan rolls his eyes and starts walking away into the crowd. Shane follows closely behind. His cheeseburger is pretty good, actually. And it is something that he doesn’t get anywhere else. Paying five dollars for a basic cheeseburger isn’t something he usually does.
“If it’s bothering you that much, I could ask one of these vendors for an empty stick and eat the burger off that,” Shane says.
“Oh my god,” Ryan groans.
“Oh, look fried oreos!” Shane says, stopping to look at another food vendor. “We’ve got to stop and get those later.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryan says.
Shane follows him to a big sign with a map of all the rides. The layout is more complicated than Shane was expecting, so he takes out his phone to take a picture of it. Ryan stares at it for a while, muttering to himself. After a minute, Shane bundles up his burger wrapper, throws it at a nearby trash can (and successfully makes it in), and then leans close to Ryan.
“Got a game plan yet?”
“Shut up, I’m thinking,” Ryan says. “It’s still early enough that the lines won’t be long… so to get on as many rides as possible and get more than our money’s worth out of the ride wristbands…”
“Hey, can we go on the Ferris Wheel once it gets dark?” Shane asks.
Ryan looks up at him. “No? The line for the Ferris Wheel is insane at night, trust me. You wanna go on that during the day.”
Shane opens his mouth to argue, but Ryan goes on.
“And it’s not even that exciting; you can see the whole carnival on the other rides that go up high,” Ryan says.
Shane bites his lip. Then he smirks. “That’s the only way you can see the whole carnival, isn’t it? Since you’re, what, five six? Five--”
“Shut up, I’m five ten,” Ryan snaps. He huffs and storms off. “Come on!” he calls, “We’re going to start with The Pendulum.”
The Pendulum is a great ride. It swings them in a wide circle while spinning them around. Next comes the Twister, which also swings them in wide circles while spinning them around. And then is the Kamikaze, which swirls them around while spinning them even faster than the last two rides.
After riding the Kamikaze twice, Shane grabs Ryan’s shoulder. “Can we go on something slow next?”
Ryan crosses his arms stubbornly. “Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know,” Shane tries to think of the things advertised on the flyer for the carnival. It’s hard to make his brain work after being shaken around so much. “The hay ride.”
Ryan makes a face. “The hay ride? Like on a tractor? Why?”
Alright, that’s not going to work. Shane shrugs. “I just want a break from getting shaken around,” he says.
Ryan looks away for a second, thinking. “We could do the haunted house?” he suggests. “It’s usually full of kids later on. I was going to skip it altogether--”
“Yeah, let’s do that.” Shane says. A haunted house can’t possibly shake them, right?
The haunted house actually turns out to be a ride. Shane and Ryan sit in a little car, which is rather cramped for Shane’s long legs, which drives them through the narrow halls of a comically spooky house. It’s almost like a low-budget Disney Haunted Mansion, with its own kind of charm. There’s a couple of places where Shane and Ryan jump, but they spend most of the time laughing at the decor and props.
As they get off the ride, Ryan is still smiling. “That was actually more fun than I thought it would be,” he says. “Thanks.”
Shane smiles back. “I guess we’re back to the faster rides now?”
“You got it.”
Except, on the way back to Ryan’s planned path through the rides, he stops outside the mechanical bull. At first, Shane assumes they’re here to see the guy currently on it get thrown off. But then Ryan digs into his pocket for cash.
“Wait, are we going on this?” Shane says.
Ryan grins at him. “I wanna see who can last longer. You or me?”
“Oh, you’re on,” Shane says.
Ryan goes first. Shane watches the ride operator take one look at how ripped Ryan is and immediately starts him off fast. Shane gets too distracted by watching Ryan’s muscles flex as he strains to keep on, and before he knows it, Ryan’s falling off. Ryan brushes himself off and walks over to the side where Shane is standing.
“How long was that?” Ryan asks.
“Oh,” Shane stutters. “I. Um. I forgot to time it.”
“You fucking idiot.”
Shane goes next and lasts for twenty seconds before tumbling off. Ryan goes again and stays on the bull for over a minute and a half. Then, even though Shane assures him that he’s definitely won, Ryan insists Shane has to go again.
“You screwed up my first go,” Ryan says. “I went twice, you go twice.”
Shane falls off faster this time, intentionally, although he stays on for at least ten seconds to make it seem like he’s trying. It doesn’t work. Ryan has a very unimpressed look on his face as Shane returns to his side.
“That was like watching a rag doll,” Ryan says.
“A really good looking rag doll?” Shane prompts.
Ryan shoves at him. “The stupidest rag doll I’ve ever seen.”
Shane pauses. “Your favorite rag doll?” he asks hopefully.
“Oh my god.”
Ryan takes Shane on a series of rides after that. The Monster, which spins them and moves them up and down in a wide orbital. The Supernova, which spins them around, and gradually takes them upside down. The Tornado, which thankfully only spins them in a large circle. The UFO, which is a return to the swinging and spinning from before. Thankfully, after the UFO, Ryan moves on to the Music Express, which is very fast but is a blessed break from all the spinning.
“Do you think they have a Tunnel of Love here?” Shane asks as they get in the line for a swinging pirate ship ride.
Ryan sighs. “I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but--”
“No, I’m serious,” Shane says.
“They do, but it’s on the other side of the carnival.” Ryan explains. “It’s more of a… kind of a boat ride? I read about it on their website. It’s like this path that your boat goes through that plays terrible love songs. The actual ride is like twenty minutes long.”
Shane likes the sound of that. “Perfect amount of time for smooching.”
“Don’t ever say that to me in public again,” Ryan groans. “But no, it’s a big fucking thing and they actually have to sell tickets for it at the gate so they don’t get too many people trying to get on it all at once.”
“Oh.” That’s a shame. Shane frowns and looks over his shoulder, back up at the Ferris Wheel. There’s still that…
After several more rides, night starts to fall and Shane notices the lines for the rides are starting to grow. He and Ryan go on one last ride, the Starship. Maybe it’s just Shane getting tired, but it feels like the fastest ride yet.
As they get off, Ryan says, “Well, that was fun.”
Shane looks around them. The sky is dark and everything in sight has turned on all of their bright flashing lights. The music playing from the rides is even louder than before, and game attendants are calling more enthusiastically for people to play for prizes. It’s beautiful.
Shane points at one of the games. “You wanna try and win something?”
Ryan looks. “I want to get something to eat first. Then I’m totally going to win something bigger than you.”
Shane grins. “Something bigger than me? That’s really challenging yourself--”
“Shut up, I meant something bigger than you can win--although now, yeah, I’m absolutely going to get something bigger than your ridiculously tall alien body.”
Shane eyes the games they pass as they head for the nearest vendor that sells fried everything. As he gets fried oreos and a lemonade, Ryan wanders to the vendor next door and gets loaded nachos.
They sit down on a bench to eat. Shane points at the nachos. “I thought you weren’t supposed to get normal food at a carnival.”
In response, Ryan reaches over to steal one of Shane’s oreos.
“Hey!” Shane says, trying to grab it back. Ryan moves out of reach. Shane then curls protectively around his oreos. “Get your own if you want them.”
“I want yours,” Ryan says. He tries to grab another one and it’s Shane’s turn to get up and move out of Ryan’s reach. Ryan laughs and digs into his nachos again. Shane tries to eat all of the remaining oreos, but unfortunately he needs to take a drink of his lemonade before he can stuff the last one in his mouth.
And of course, in that split second that he lifts his lemonade up, Ryan darts in and grabs the last oreo.
Shane almost chokes on his lemonade as he tries to stop him. Ryan blocks his attempts easily.
“Mmm,” Ryan says, his mouth smeared with powdered sugar.
Shane scowls at Ryan. He doesn’t actually care about the nachos, but he steals them out of Ryan’s hands anyway.
“Yeah, man, help yourself,” Ryan says cheerfully. “My food is your food, you know that.”
What a little asshole. Shane finishes off Ryan’s nachos. He makes a face when Ryan helps himself to his lemonade, but he doesn’t fight over it. Whatever, he doesn’t care. Much.
They get rid of their trash and then walk along the line of carnival games. “I know what I’m going to play,” Ryan says. “You wanna meet at like, I don’t know, at the Ferris Wheel in twenty minutes? See what we each get?”
“Sure,” Shane says.
Ryan bounces eagerly. “Just warning you, I’m going to win this.”
“Try saying that after you see what I bring back,” Shane says. Fuck, he still has no idea what he’s going to play.
“You talk a big game, but I’m going to be surprised if you can even win a plastic yo-yo.” Ryan teases. Before Shane can come up with a retort, he’s off.
Well fuck. Shane walks back along the row of games. He stops at one with massive prizes, but starts walking again when he sees how hard the game is. The next game he sees that has big prizes is the same kind of thing. Easy game, shitty prizes. Hard game, cool prizes.
Maybe he should just pick one of the hard games and see how lucky he is. Shane walks up to the next one he sees. And it’s a shooting game. Wonderful. He’s never touched a gun in his life. But either it’s this or some impossible-looking version of beer pong. Shane hands over his money, the attendant hands him a BB gun, and he awkwardly lifts it up.
How the fuck is he supposed to hold this? Shane adjusts the thing in his hands until he feels slightly more in control. He aims it at the piece of paper. He’s going to be lucky if he actually hits the paper, much less the tiny target on it.
Shane squeezes one eye shut and pulls the trigger until the gun is empty. Then he blinks and looks at the target.
Oh. Holy shit.
He actually did it.
A couple of people who must have been watching start cheering behind him. Someone claps him on the back. The attendant takes the gun from his hands and points at the row of stuffed animals dangling from the roof of the tent.
“Pick any one you like,” the attendant says.
“Uh,” Shane looks up at the prizes. The first one that catches his eye is an enormous brown teddy bear. “That one?”
The attendant takes it down and hands it over, and then gets right back to yelling for anyone in the nearby vicinity to come and try the game. A few people, upon seeing Shane with his ridiculously huge prize, come up with confidence written on their faces.
Shane doesn’t bother waiting to watch them. He has no idea how much time has passed, so he heads straight for the Ferris Wheel. Ryan’s going to lose his mind when he sees Shane’s prize.
He reaches the Ferris Wheel, which, sure enough, is packed with people waiting in line to get on. Shane stands to the side and scans the crowds for Ryan. He doesn’t see him at first. Then--
“Mine’s bigger,” Ryan says, directly to Shane’s side.
Shane turns to look. Somehow, impossibly, Ryan has a huge stuffed duck that’s maybe an inch or two bigger than the bear.
Shane stares at the duck, then he realizes what Ryan said. He smiles.
“Yours is bigger?” he repeats.
Ryan blinks. Realization hits him and he opens his mouth quickly. “I--”
“I mean--”
“Oh, god, shut up.”
“Hey, you were the one--”
“I didn’t mean--you know what I meant!”
Shane lifts up his bear and holds it in between himself and Ryan. “I think we both won.”
Ryan pushes the bear down. “How the fuck did you--what did you play?”
Shane shrugs. “Some kind of shooting game?”
Ryan looks at him skeptically. “You can shoot?”
“No.”
Ryan groans. “Of fucking course.”
“What about you?”
Ryan hefts up his duck. “There was this basketball game. Make twenty baskets in a row and you get the giant duck.”
“Well, you got the giant duck.” Shane says. “Unless there was a bigger one than this.”
“No, this was the biggest,” Ryan says. He sets the duck down on the ground. “So now what? It’s kind of impossible to go on any more rides with these things. Are we done?”
“Actually…” Shane trails off and looks up at the Ferris Wheel.
Ryan follows his gaze. He sighs. “Alright, fine. We’ll go on the Ferris Wheel.”
Shane beams with delight.
It’s a long wait, just like Ryan warned, but Shane doesn’t really care. They eventually make their way to the front and cram themselves and their prizes into the gondola. And then it slowly starts to turn.
The carnival is spectacular from in the air. Stretching out in all directions are all the lights, the tents, the people. It’s a sea of brightly colored lights and music and noise.
Shane slides closer to Ryan. Ryan is actually looking out at the scene below them with a small smile.
“Looks like you’re actually enjoying this,” Shane says.
Ryan snorts and shakes his head. “Yeah. I guess so.” Then, after a pause, he adds, “You know what people do on these, right? What… couples do?”
Shane does indeed know what couples do on Ferris Wheels. “Why do you think I wanted to go on this?”
Ryan laughs. He tilts his face up and Shane tilts his face down.
As their gondola reaches the top of the Ferris Wheel, their lips meet in a tender and sweet kiss. A kiss that lasts until they’re nearly to the bottom of the wheel, and Ryan shoves at Shane. Shane breaks off, although he really doesn’t want to.
“What?”
“People can see.”
“So?” Shane captures Ryan’s lips again as the wheel turns them past the people waiting at the bottom. They rise up into their second pass around the wheel. They move apart when they’re nearly at the top again.
Ryan rubs his forehead. “You’re an idiot,” he grumbles.
“I’m your idiot though,” Shane says.
Ryan smiles a bit. “Yeah. You are.”