• arcading •

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CHAPTER SEVEN: arcading

Corey's blinds were pulled shut, a stream of light filtering in through the thin gap between the window frame and the curtain. Sunlight trickled into his darkened room, and he groaned internally.

He was already late, he knew that. It was almost half one and he hadn't even left his bed yet. The thought of getting up and entering the outside world wasn't appealing. He wished he could stay there forever, just like this, curled up in his navy bedsheets, his eyes squeezed shut. The rest of the world ceased to exist, it was just him and his bed, isolated from the chores of society.

His mind was free to wonder, to ponder about the nature of the universe he resented living in. About all the beautiful things, just existing without a care in the world. A dripping tap, a faded postcard, a smile from a baby. And all the ugly things. The screaming, the blood, the gunshots, the knife wounds. But they were all the same in the end. And he was all of them at once.

As he shifted in bed, he heard the crinkle of a crumpled sheet of paper. He pulled it out from under his tired body and his eyes stung as they met the words tattooed onto the page. When he returned from Dorian's last night, fuelled with mind numbing rage, he'd just started writing. His brain wasn't in it, neither was his heart. It was pure instinct, passion, impulse.

As he read over his cursed words, he realised who it was about.

"Fucking hell." He murmured, screwing it up and tossing it into the bin. It was the most beautifully raw thing he'd ever written, and that's why he could never look at it again. There was too much soul in it, too much of himself. He was vulnerable, exposed, insecure. Because reading that poem was like looking in a mirror.

Corey finally managed to drag himself out of bed and start getting ready, brushing his teeth with an absent mind and pulling his grey jumper over his head. He ignored the thousands of missed calls from Velvet as he left the house, passing his Father on the way out. He was sleeping soundly on the sofa, the ashtray on the coffee table full of rotting cigarette butts while empty beer cans littered the floor.

The arcade was just a short walk into town. The sky was clear and bright despite the gentle autumn breeze firing daggers at his flesh, the fallen leaves crunching beneath his boots. The trees were stripped bare of their leaves, dying and decaying as piles of death on the ground. Just another way people found beauty in the decaying, the dead, the ugly.

The arcade was a flat box of ordered bricks. The mundane building was squeezed between a pet shop and a patisserie, and the only hint that it was an arcade was the small sign hanging on the black door. As Corey neared, he noticed a figure leant against the wall, smoke encircling him like a fantasy creature found in the dark wooded pathways of a children's book.

Dorian smiled crookedly as Corey drew closer, the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth adding to the boyish charm that poured out of him. "Thought you wouldn't show." He observed.

"I considered it."

"Well, I'm glad you came." Dorian assured him, "You smoke?"

"No. Since when did you?"

Dorian smiled guiltily, "I don't. Not really. Only when I'm stressed or bored out of my mind."

Corey nodded in understanding. There was an unrecognised presence between them, a twang of guilt, embarrassment, regret. "Where are the others?" He asked thickly.

"Velvet and Ty are inside. I thought I'd give them some privacy." Dorian scanned him up and down, stubbing the cigarette out on the heel of his converse. Corey didn't exactly radiate health and happiness. His eyes were circled with exhaustion, his cheeks hollowed, his skin tinged grey from lack of sunlight. And yet, he still pulled it off. He still looked good, better than good. "I'm sorry." Dorian started simply.

"Let's not do this." Corey turned to face him. Wide emerald eyes meeting cold black abysses. "Don't apologise."

"But I want to." Dorian protested. "I shouldn't have—"

"Just don't. Please." Corey begged.

Dorian hesitated. There was so much he wanted to say, so much he wanted Corey to hear. But by now, he'd learnt to follow Corey's lead and do what he asked of him. The boy was so fragile, despite the concrete mask he wore day in and day out. Dorian didn't want to break him, hurt him, bruise his delicate heart. So, with reluctance, he accepted Corey's wish and didn't apologise. "Do you wanna go in?"

"Yeah." He sighed. "I should let Velvet know I'm not dead."

Entering the arcade was like receiving a rush of a million different senses all at one. Neon signs and illuminated screens, a multitude of colours blurred past foggy eyes and the scent of dust, stale breath and hairspray mingled all at once. The games spat out crackly noises; gunfire, explosions, shouting, laughing, cheering. Half of it was indistinguishable over the sound of the pinball machines and children's ecstatic cries.

"They're over here." Dorian tentatively placed a hand on Corey's shoulder and led him past a row of glowing machines until they reached the small, grimy cafe in the corner. The lighting was harsh and the smell of greasy chips and plastic cheese invaded their senses. Thankfully, it was quieter than the rest of the arcade, but the floors were sticky and the reflective metal tables almost blinded them against the arcade's black, rotting carpet and dark walls.

Ty and Velvet were sat at a table pushed up against the wall, sharing a portion of chips and laughing merrily together. When Velvet spotted the pair emerging from the war zone of the arcade, she leapt up from her seat and wrapped her arms around Corey in a bone crushing hug. "You dickhead, I thought something had happened." She murmured in his ear, pulling back to hold him at arm's length. "Why didn't you call me?"

"I overslept and my phone died." He lied. "Sorry, I didn't mean to worry you."

She shook her head as if to dismiss it, a gentle smile softening her expression. "Ty and I were just gonna go play some air hockey. You okay here with Dorian?"

Ty pulled her away before Corey could even consider a response. "Should we get used to this?" Dorian chuckled, collapsing into the seat Ty previously occupied, picking at the chips they left behind. "Them, I mean. Them together."

Corey shrugged, "I guess so." He sighed, falling into the seat opposite, resting his elbows on the table, his face in his hands. "I don't understand why we had to come."

"It could be worse." Dorian reasoned.

"Worse than a grotty arcade full of noisy kids?"

"Yeah." Dorian laughed. "You could have decided not to show. That would have made this whole day a shit ton worse."

Corey tried to control the fluttering of his heart and the clenching of his nerves. His cheeks reddened but he lowered his head so it wasn't noticeable, appearing to be examining a smudge of ketchup on the table. "I was thinking..." Corey started, his fingers weaving together mindlessly, "Maybe I should enter that competition."

Dorian studied his expression, blinked twice, and then broke out in a grin. "You will?" He asked joyfully. "Corey, that's great. You're gonna win, for sure."

"I don't know." He mumbled. "But I might as well try."

"Do you know which poem you're going to submit?"

Corey's mind flashed to the scrap of paper crumpled up in his bin. The words sharp as knives and hot as fire. The passion, the emotion, the pure soul of it all. It was everything he hated in a poem; meaning. It was a subjective view of an unbalanced universe and the rage burning, blazing within his core. Nothing about it was beautiful and pretty to the mind. The words didn't graze softly against the consciousness but tore straight through it.

And it was about the boy sitting right in front of him.

"I don't know." Corey replied. "I have an idea."

"Can I read it?"

"No." Corey responded quickly.

Dorian wanted to ask why. He knew Corey wrote poems for himself but he was finally willing to enter them into a competition where they'd meet the eye of people he didn't even know. But Dorian wasn't allowed to see them. "Okay." He sighed, deciding not to fight it. He'd never win, not against Corey Winters. "Hey, you wanna get out of here? The noise is giving me a headache."

Every molecule in Corey's body was begging him to say no. Spare himself the heartache later. If he went with him, he'd fall further into the hole of that nagging attraction towards a boy he could never have. He was spiralling as it was, he needed to let go, not grip on any tighter. But his brain rarely won over the longing of his heart. "Yeah. Sure." He agreed.

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