LIKE A SLOW, LIFELESS, PALLID planet, Dorian’s life has revolved not just round the sun but has also been consumed by the flaming giant. Nothing is as it seems anymore. He is as mentally, emotionally color-blind as an albino caterpillar.
It seems safe enough to start from the fact that Bruce and Nadine have been watching them both from a distant thicket, eating invisible popcorn and rooting for the scene where Dorian saves his soulmate from digressing into the great beyond, away from the hands of Hades and into his warmth, where he possibly belongs. And how did Dorian not notice Scooby meowing out his feline lungs, in a fruitless attempt to awaken him from this reverie? Oh yeah, and Giovanni isn’t even not naked. His nude-colored [in this case, ester white since he is literally complexioned in that tone] sweatpants take his legs in a wet embrace.
But Dorian wishes all these things were at least a tad bit important to the present dilemma. Giovanni said he has something to say; okay. However, his time runs out the moment he opens his mouth to utter anything Dorian dares to guess.
Gio’s feet give up and loses the fight to friction, as his body hits the rock hard and slides down the curve, headed towards the bottom of the waterfall. Dorian, as if he expected it, activates a breakneck display of reflexiveness and lunges for Gio’s flailing hands.
“Gotcha!” Dorian manages to say, already feeling Gio’s weight drag him down by the second.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” Gio repeats to himself like a mantra that will save him death’s—or should Dorian say; his foolishness’s--grip. “Help, Dorian.” The empty look that was burned into his face some moments ago gone, now replaced by a sheer look of terror.
Dorian grunts as his own feet skid slowly down the upturned ledge of the rock. “Oh so now you don’t wanna die?”
“I’m sorry, okay? Just please pull me—”
“Sorry for what? For fuck sake, you need to be sorry for your goddamn self. I am fed up of sucking up to his royal brattiness and need to be so exhausting and demanding. You are like, a nuclear bomb inside a pot of chicken soup, like a personification of Kanye West temper. Can I ever catch a break from drama?”
“It is not my fault, you know.” Gio shrugs, as if doing that won’t pull Dorian deeper down with him. The two boys are basicsally in their worlds now, blind to the outside world or the fact that getting splintered into smithereens by sharp spikes of rocks is not a painful enough way to die.
“Wow. How am I not surprised you are about to blame this shit on cancer?”
Gio blinks in perplexion, but more because the falling water is beating his eyes in.
“Well newsflash, mommy’s boy,” Dorian spits, “as of January 2019, there were an estimated 16.9 million cancer survivors in the United States. The number of cancer survivors is projected to increase to 22.2 million by 2030.”
Nobody says a word now; they just stare at each other, Gio however dons a hell of a dumbfounded countenance.
Dorian just spilled out-of-character, and now of all times. He should be collected and cool as a clam, but his emotions get a hold of him.
“W-what was that, Dorian?” Gio breathes in disbelief.
“Just listen to me, okay? You’ve probably heard it and surely have been counseled about it but approximately 39.5% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetime. You’re not the only one going through this!”
Some weeks ago, he was all over the net, searching for survival rates of cancer and possible breakthrough treatments. Not like he’d have a chance to even tell him, anyways.
“I—I just—damn, Dorian. It’s way more than cancer. I’m a mess.”
“Tell me something new.” Dorian has taken a grip of his stance now and is relatively stable on the rock. Gio also is almost off the ledge.
Giovanni rolls his eyes. “I’m a walking loose end and my parents do not have to say it to my face and apparently, I’m not a kid anymore. They know this and they want me to know it too. I am dying, they are tired and I, resolutely am.”
“Man I hate it when you talk like this,” Dorian replies with unrelenting optimism. His shoulders are sore though, Gio is probably almost free from the hands of gravity. But his face is wet and tastes saltier than it should. Is he crying?
“You don’t have to like anything I do, or say, or even how I breathe. You have never from the beginning. I am right here, in front of you, perishing slowly, because I chose it to happen. I forced myself into your life ‘cos I thought, wow, maybe the bratty, sassy cancer kid can get one last thing he wants, just like how other things are handed over to him on a gold platter.”
“Okay, I have heard enough.” There is something about their balance that does not feel right to Dorian. “Help! Somebody, please help! Oh Gio, keep your damn mouth shut while I’m getting you out of this mess—"
“Today may be the last time you will ever hear me see this or I even get the chance to look you in the eye, traverse your soul; tell you how much my wanting to be your friend was and still a do-or-die affair, how much I wanted to even breathe the same air with you, come hell or high water. I never saw you as helpless although I pulled some strings into putting you on top of scholarship lists, out of the voracious claws of the racist school management. I never saw you as miserable when I leaked info that broke Khalid and Bruce out. I never saw you as gullible when I told you all was going to be okay, when it wasn’t.”
Dorian is trembling now. Either he has been holding Giovanni’s weight for too long or he has been holding Giovanni himself, in his mind, in his heart and every fibre of his body. Anyhow, he slips.
Like he actually slips, and this time, Dorian completely loses his foothold and dives over the ledge, his right hand still tightly wrapped around Gio’s slender one. It is a brief moment of staring at the gates of limbo and some people may say while surviving a near-death experience, they saw their lives flash before their eyes.
Dorian begs to differ. What he sees is a mess.
The wind blows onto his face and it is humid but also tropical in a way. He is soaking wet and he feels his body floating mid-air surrounded by fast-moving rivulets of the waterfall from above. He wonders if he will be blasted to pieces smaller than the watery streaks.
He waits for the feeling, but he doesn’t feel it come. His limbs feel intact and his head, although hanging in an awkward angle, is sitting pretty on his pretty neck. Then he hears voices. The voices are intense enough to tear through the curtain of the waterfall.
Dorian tries to open his eyes but the water keeps getting in and he tries his best to blink them out because strangely, his hand that is not holding Giovanni is hanging onto what feels like another hand?
“Doritos, fucking cokehead!”
“Bruce,” Dorian croaks out, looking above him before Bruce’s face comes into view. That seems to give him in that instant a different type of verve.
“I swear Ayuba, I am going to rip your head off after this.” His face is almost blue as he holds Dorian’s forearm with all his might, especially with the added weight of Gio. Lucky for them, the Hulk of the basketball team, Manny is holding him back by the waist. Nadine too, is putting some effort. “Push yourself back up. Against the wall, kick upwards.”
Dorian understands immediately what he is to do. “Gio, brace yourself.”
“Huh?” He stares, warily back up to meet Dorian’s fiery eyes. “I don’t wanna die now please. I have so many things to say, to do.”
Rolling his eyes, Dorian says, “Not until I say so, Giovanni Price. I will say when you leave and right now, you owe me a fist to the face.”
And Dorian swings himself and Gio slightly to the left. They sway, gaining momentum and threatening Dorian’s shoulder joint. Another swing and Dorian leaps on the adjacent, towering wall of granite, pushing all his weight against it. The impacted hip sprains in the slightest degree but Dorian shakes it off like he is Taylor Swift. This simple action springs Giovanni and harshly against the ledge they were just hanging some minutes ago.
One way or the other, the soaking duo is dragged back to horizontal land. Everyone is on their backs, staring at the moon, their lungs heaving heaps of air. Scooby is surprisingly right beside Dorian’s hyperventilating figure and licking the water off his face.
“Care to—care—care to—” Bruce musters enough air to confront Dorian. “—explain why the actual hell you are hooking up inches to the edge of a fucking cliff?”
Catching his breath, Dorian manages to say, “I can explain.” He is not going to spill that Gio was this close to ending his own life, of fucking course.
Bruce takes a fistful of his shirt and pulls Dorian closer to him, his eyes demanding and challenging. “I know you can explain, you will explain. That was why I asked in the first place. Were you trying to kill your damn self?”
“Nope but will you stop being a drama queen? Caring and showing actual concern for someone else is not a good look on you.”
“But you falling down a ravine of spiky rocks and getting impaled like a marshmallow all because of some rich, spoilt white kid is an ample way of spending your free time?” Seems like Bruce already figured things out.
Dorian’s face twists in a scowl before shoving Bruce back and away from him. The Asian bloke however repeats his action but with more muscle, that Dorian tips back and does not regain stamina for a few seconds.
“Yeah,” Dorian boredly says, diverting his attention on Gio who lies still on the floor, staring the silver sky with a silver trail rolling down his eyelids. “Get up.”
Gio replies, “Where?” with clattering teeth and frozen solid nipples.
“Back to camp of course. We have more than some bones to pick.”
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That's something about this chapter they doesn't speak well to me. I can't lay my fingers on it but read with caution and the fact that it's messy and unedited and purple and shitty as usual
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TORPEDO ✓
Teen FictionGirls have always been enough for Dorian Ayuba; until they weren't. Now, he is a hurricane in a box, all the while piggybacking scholarships, bills and his broken mother. Then there's rich, sickly Giovanni Price whose life expectancy is just as shor...
