Barry meant well. He always did. That was part of his charm—along with the speed, the smile, and that uncanny ability to turn the simplest task into a disaster within seconds.

It started with a drip.

A leaky faucet. Nothing catastrophic, just the kind of persistent noise that slowly gnawed away at your sanity. Drip. Drip. Drip. Until Barry—beloved, well-intentioned, recklessly optimistic Barry—decided to fix it himself.

“I got this,” he said, already rolling up his sleeves like some kind of overconfident handyman. “How hard can it be?”

He didn’t wait for backup. Or instructions. Or common sense.

A second later, he was under the sink with a wrench in hand and a dangerous amount of enthusiasm. There was a metallic snap—loud, sharp, and immediately suspicious—followed by a silence so brief it felt like the world was holding its breath.

Then came the water.

A full-force geyser shot straight out of the pipe, hammering him in the face like the sink had taken personal offense. Barry flinched, sputtered, and smacked his head against the cabinet with a dull thud.

He sat there, stunned and soaked, blinking through the spray. Slowly, he tilted his head up, eyes wide with guilt and panic.

“…Okay,” he said, water dripping from his eyelashes, “so… funny story—”

He didn’t get to finish. One look at your face—silent, unimpressed, unamused—and he vanished in a crackle of red lightning.

Seconds later, he was back, skidding into the kitchen with every towel in the apartment stacked in his arms. A moment later, gone again—this time returning with a roll of duct tape the size of a small tire and a look in his eyes that could only be described as delusion-fueled determination.

“I can fix this,” he muttered.

He dropped to his knees and started wrapping the pipe like he was trying to contain a bomb. Tape flew, water sprayed, Barry grunted something about “hydrodynamic pressure,” and for a moment—just a moment—it looked like it might hold.

Then the duct tape gave out with a pitiful squeak.

The pipe burst again.

This time, the water hit him like a fire hose, lifting a few towels clean off the floor. Barry reeled back, soaked head to toe, blinking hard as water poured down his face. His shirt clung to him like it had given up on life. He stood there silently for a few seconds, as if the sheer force of failure had short-circuited his brain.

“…Okay,” he said, voice flat now, “new plan. We call a plumber. And maybe… never talk about this again.”