365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

109. Carnival

109. Carnival: Write a poem or story or journal entry inspired by a carnival or street fair.

A/N: Whenever I think carnival, I think of Liam Payne's hilarious date in the music video Night Changes, so this is what will inspire this. Something different...

Night Changes

Sweaty hands. His hands were just a tad bit sweaty as he led you into the amusement park. It made you feel... good. Good to know he was a little nervous, because so were you. It meant he wanted to impress you, and that he wasn't sure if it was possible.

Sweaty hands. You must have fallen hard to even like that.

When he had phoned and said that he would pick you up at night, you had been a little doubtful. Why would anyone want to go to the park at night? Now you knew. The rides were lit in with a dozen colors: all of the shades of the rainbow. All the colors of your hearts. Strings of them lining the awnings of the awnings sheltering the games, attached to the spokes on the ferris wheel, whizzing through the hands of those who bought the glow-in-the-dark accessories. They stung the dark and made it bleed in neon.

"What do you want to do first?" he asked, grinning at you like the happy little boy he would never manage to eradicate from his personality.

You shrugged, so irresistibly ecstatic to be here with him, to be walking along the dark paths, surrounded by strangers and noise and colors and chaos, and yet so completely private with him. You would do whatever he wanted, and you told him so.

"Come on," he said, tugging toward you a shooter game. "I want to win you something."

You laughed, and went along with him. He was a tide, pulling you, and it was so soothing and delightful, that you did it. Watched him interact in his friendly, easy way with the man running the game, watched him take up the toy gun and aim at the ducks running along the painted waves, watched him grin at you like he could not believe his own good fortune. It was a magic night, and you knew it.

It was an enchanted evening for him as well. He won you a teddy bear, as he had wanted to. It was a picture perfect date. Perhaps it was stereotypical, but there was a sweetness to stereotypes. There was a reason they were common. Happiness exploded in your stomach, like a carbonated drink shaken and then exposed to air. It was a fizzing happiness: light, airy, and touched with smiles.

The more you spend with him, the better it got. You are able to relax, as he continually showed how pleased he is, and he was able to do the same. It felt like every moment could be captured in photos. The carousel ride, where they were so close together you could feel his heartbeat; the cotton candy you shared. Then the otherworldly, movie-like quality of the night came to an end when you went on the spinning teacups.

"I'll spin you so fast you'll puke," he had threatened you. And he had spun you fast, his adorable grin in place, as the world outside the teacup blurring and in it was just you and him. You had laughed then, with delight at his attention.

However, when the teacups stopped... He seemed fine at first, but then something changed in his face. He rushed away, and you, alarmed, followed. You tried to stop him, concerned, as he looked quite quesy, but then he stopped and turned around, looking quite desperate. What for?

In an impulsive moment, he grabbed your hat off your head -- the brand new one -- and hurled up all of that cotton candy into it. You watched in shock. When he had emptied his stomach, he sheepishly tried to hand it back to you.