Stray Kids Drabbles

Tetris

Genre: Comfort/hurt

A simple trip to the arcade leads to disaster after disaster and a brief doubt that your boyfriend truly loves you.

Trigger warning: Anxiety and self-doubt.

꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎ ꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎

It was a blast from the past, walking into the arcade that your boyfriend found one day. It was like stepping back into the 80's. Fun colorful and bright prints littered the black floor. Neon strands hung above your heads in waves. The lights had been dimmed to make everything pop.

"Do you like it?" Han turned to you and beamed.

"This place is amazing. How did you find it?" Your eyes were wide as you glanced around. The white t-shirt you were wearing seemed to glow beneath the neon funk. It was trippy and it was exhilarating. Excitement thrummed through your veins.

"I don't know. I went on a walk one day and accidentally entered. I wanted to go to the coffee shop next door and got lost in my thoughts. I ended up here in the process."

Off in the distance, you could hear the hums of bowling pins being set back up. Squeaky motors had been used year after year after year, gathering up rust and remaining ungreased. The old hinges seemed to be on their last limbs, but they still managed to hold up.

Cheers filled the air as a family, split in half for the bowling game, managed to gather a strike. Kids laughed and rushed in front of you. In another section, the greasy smell of fried food wafted over to you. You practically drooled at the sudden overpowering scent of pizza. The acidic tomatoes and the greasy cheese mingling with pepperoni.

Arcade game after arcade game sat along a side wall. Multiple people's silhouettes were lit up from the static screens. You managed to catch a few glimpses of familiar games. Pac-man, Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Tron.

More modern games had been speckled throughout the large area. Skeeball had been placed across from the bowling lanes. Four basketball hoop games and a few football throwing games sat beside it. Larger machines that held more unfamiliar games were speckled throughout.

Han laced his fingers through yours and led you towards the counter to get coins to play. It was one of his favorite parts of the place. All the games took old golden coins instead of electronic swipeable play passes.

When he handed you a cup full of coins, he smiled. "So where should we start first?"

You shrugged, still looking around with wide eyes. "There's so much to do. We could do anything and-"

"Then it's a good thing that we have the whole afternoon to play, isn't it?"

His uptick in energy made you smile. The two of you slipped into the full arcade and began to play. You managed to last for nearly two hours before exhaustion set in. Han still seemed to have so much energy, but you felt drained.

More people were flooding into the building. Han was distracting himself from this by focusing on the games, but you couldn't. You were becoming more and more aware of how much harder it was to move through the area.

Most people were polite, but some were not. A few glares were sent your way by a group of teenagers at one point. Your stomach churned with anxiety as you mumbled a quiet apology for stepping in front of them and scurried away.

Han hadn't realized it because he was too busy gushing about Pac-Man and how he wanted to get on the leaderboard. You were happy that he was happy, but you were starting to feel constricted. The crowd seemed to push against your lungs and make it harder to breathe.