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Leonard Snart didn't care much for his 'playmates'. At the ripe old age of four, his mother thought he needed to learn how to "socialize" with other children.
So she had been dropping him off every morning in some dump filled with snot nosed brats, literally for a few of them, and remembering to come back for him some time after lunch.
Leonard sighed as the two sets of twins got into a rolling fight over who got to use the 'real wood' blocks. They were obviously not wood, because Leonard had thrown it at the red-head's back and the kid hadn't turned his way.
Real wood hurts.
"Okay, children!" the head lady, Miss Lulu, called for everyone's attention in her nauseating super-peppy voice. "We've got a new friend today!"
A kid almost twice Leonard's size with a mop of brown hair on his head was frowning at the group of children who barely tried to pay attention to the adult. The new kid crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed his new surroundings.
When their blue eyes met, Leonard knew the kid was different.
Leonard took it upon himself to meet the newbie.
"I'm Leo," Leonard nods to the brunette. "What's your name?"
"Mick," the kid answers, frown still in place. "This place as big a dump as it looks?"
Leonard chuckles, "Yeah, pretty much."
"How can you stand it here?" Mick growls, glaring at the adults chattering away near the wall as a few of their charges chase after each other with crayons.
"Mostly I try to stay sane, but," Leonard grins. "I think if the two of us work together, we can make this place bearable."
Mick turns an interested smirk to Leonard, "What do you have in mind?"
-
They start small.
First, Leonard tests to see how many juice boxes he can fit into his backpack before the adults realize they're being robbed.
Mick keeps an eye on the adults and causes the occasional fuss while Leonard snatches the boxes from the tray, two at a time.
The answer is twenty five.
Leonard has the tray empty before the blonde girl, Tracy, catches him with two in his hand. They check his bag next and find the rest of the boxes.
Mick brings him the snack he wasn't supposed to have and they grin from Leonard's spot in 'time out'.
-
The next day, Leonard hides a container that is the exact same color as his backpack and shoves it to the bottom. While Mick starts bellowing out the loudest, most obnoxious made-up song in the history of small children, Leonard snatches half the packets of fruit snacks and hides them away in the container.
When Tracy checks his bag, she thinks she finds the bottom and Mick and Leonard enjoy their spoils from the corner near the books that they've designated as 'their place'.
-
The 'teachers' start showing them different letters and use stickers for them to be able to 'feel' the shape of each different character.
Mick and Leonard save half of their stickers to stick to the teachers on their butts, shoes, and backs.
-
When they have a pretend 'camp-out' inside, Mick gets really excited about the paper fire pit.
"It's too bad we can't have a real flame," his partner sighs, poking at the shiny, silver cutout in the middle of the fake brown logs. "Parents think us kids are too young to play with fire."
"Since when does what they want affect us?" Leonard grins, mind already forming a plan. Nicole, who must be related to the owner because she keeps breaking the rules, was an avid smoker. Getting her lighter, or backup box of matches, should be easy enough to do.
"If we torch the place, how will we meet up?" Mick grunts, abandoning the fake flame in favor of looking at Leonard.
That pauses Leonard's plan making. Mick was right. Without this dump, there was no telling where they could meet up again.
Then he grins, new plan already blooming in his four-year-old head.
"What would you say to meeting the parents?"
Mick stares at him confused.
"Mommy, I made a new friend at daycare,!" Leonard smiles up at his mother. "Can he please, please, please come over to play this weekend?"
"Oh, baby, I'm so proud of you!" his mother kisses his forehead. "You're finally opening up to other children. I knew you would make friends."
"Ahuh, you were right," he pretends to giggle the same way the other kids did when they were acting cute. "His name is Mick. Can he please come over, Mommy?"
"I'll ask Mick's mommy, honey," his mother pats him on the head. "We'll see."
Leonard keeps smiling the whole way home, hand tracing the outline of the match box hidden deep in his pocket.
Mick was going to be so happy.
-
Mrs. Rory drops her son off at the Snart house and Leonard takes the bigger kid's hand to drag him to the back yard.
"Be careful you two!" his mother calls after them.
He had no intention of being careful.
"Why did you have my mom drop me off at your house?" Mick asks once they've run far enough into the woods to be out of sight. "I'm no good at memorizing roads, so there's no way I'd be able to make it back here on my own."
"It would be a beast of a walk too," Leonard smiles, pulling out his stolen match box. "This is what we're here for."
"Is that what I think it is?" his partner's eyes go big with excitement. "Where did you get it?"
"One of our peppy caretakers likes to bend the rules almost as much as we do," he explains, taking his partner's hand to put the box in it. "Now you can finally have a go as the team's fire expert."
"Team?" Mick looks up from the match box to smile at Leonard. "I like the sound of that."
"Let 'er rip, Mick."
Dead leaves make for excellent burning material. Sticks are even better because they burn longer.
But a tree is a bit too much and the two boys have to run to the house to get Leonard's mother to call for the fire department.
The truck's horn is loud in Leonard's ears and he has to cover them as the big, red truck comes barreling down his road and up his driveway. The tree is completely covered in flames by this point and its setting a few of its neighboring trees on fire as well.
Men in yellow suits and masks jump from the parked vehicle and drag a long hose to the tree to squirt it with water.
Mick's eyes remain large and rapturous as the flames flicker towards the sky.
After the fire's put out, the adults start asking questions about how it got started in the first place. Leonard, with a quivering lip and watery eyes, tells them his tale of some mean bigger kids who were messing around in his yard.
"And when I told them to go away," he sniffles, rubbing the back of his hand against his nose. "They dropped something on the ground and it began to smoke."
"Is that what happened?" one of the firefighters asks Mick.
"Yeah," his partner shrugs. "I almost shouted at them when they took off."
"Okay then," the fireman smiles at the two boys. "You did the right thing getting an adult when you saw those flames. The house could have caught on fire, or the all the trees could have been burnt to the ground."
"Thank you," Leonard's mom tightens her hold on him as she smiles at the firemen.
"You're welcome, ma'am." They nod to her before making their way back to their truck and driving off.
Mrs. Rory listens to the story with a frown. She casts worried looks over to her son while Leonard's mother assures her that the boys were fine and that no one got hurt.
As his partner's driven away, Leonard briefly wonders if he's ever going to see his partner again.
-
Mick's at the daycare before Leonard the next morning.
Leonard smiles at his partner as he walks over to where the bigger kid is violently coloring a page completely red.
"You get in a lot of trouble, Mick?" Leonard asks, taking the chair next to him.
"Mom says to stay away from you and to stop causing problems," Mick growls, pushing the paper to the side and reaching for a blank one. "She doesn't want to be responsible if I get you hurt."
"Bologna spit on what your mother says," Leonard scoffs. "We're a team, Mick. We're partners, you and me. No parent is keeping us apart."
"Next year I'll be old enough to go to school," Mick looks up from his coloring to frown at Leonard. "You'll still be learning the fifty two numbers of the internet."
"Twenty six letter in the alphabet, Mick," Leonard corrects with a grin. "And if we've only got a few more weeks together, then I say we spend as much time together as we can."
"You sure about that, Leo?" his partner glances down at his fist clenching tightly to the red crayon. "What if I accidently hurt you some day?"
"Then I'll just hurt you back," Leonard shrugs. "Now," he takes out the, now empty, matchbox. "How 'bout you and I play 'tug the pigtails' before lights out?"
Mick takes the box and puts the stub of a crayon inside it.
He looks up at Leonard and grins so wide he shows teeth, "Sounds like fun."
- * - * -