―
The Yellow Room
~AN APH FANFICTION~
Warnings: Human AU, Male Slash,
Contains suggestive themes and strong language,
OCs as minor characters, Don't like? Don't read!
Favourite, Follow, Review ― Your Choice
Pairing: Haus Habsburg (Spain and Austria)
Edit: (18/07/14) present tense changed to past
I don't own APH whatsoever.
Chapter 1: Reprise
(in medias res)
…
-o0o-
You know how life had been unkind to us, giving us so much hardship that we both do not deserve to suffer. We were lost and cruelly wounded in so many different ways until we both could only gasp our very last breath. It had been so long that I've always thought that its ruthlessness finally left me and let me be at peace. However, I was completely wrong.
Earlier this day, as I stood there dressed in a stiff white tuxedo and utterly callous towards my own feelings, I just impassively waited to finally cage myself into my unbending decisions. Everything has been set as how I've clearly seen it to be, as how everyone clearly desired it to be. I would never expect for a mere sweet vibrato of a pressed 'A' string to easily cloud my thoughts and bring out all those hurting memories from the depths of my mind.
I furiously yelled at that poor young violinist.
It wasn't at all discreet how the people around me were nothing but scandalised. I could visibly see in their faces that my anger was deemed unreasonable and it wasn't that hard for me to know what goes around in their heads— that I was completely out of my mind getting too rash, too irrational for something so trivial.
Trivial? How could they simply think of it that way! As if they know what that piece meant to me, what it meant to us. As if they know exactly how I felt. As if they know how much I suffered as I pretend that everything is where it's supposed to be. I ran away. I am fed of all those people not daring to understand. I just wanted to get away from all of them… from everything.
It was just an unintentional mistake but then fate doesn't acknowledge mistakes, intentional or not. For all its notions, everything has its reasons, including these errors. Chance always has its way… like making that violinist mistakenly play that piece on this very day of all other days. But how could he be making this mistake of all other mistakes that he could make? Couldn't he just play anything else besides that piece? How dare would this wretched life play with my feelings all over again!
As if in the past, it hadn't had enough already.
In mere seconds, all of those memories I have always kept at bay came flooding in. Memories that are so happy, memories that are meant to bluntly tell me the precious value of what I have lost. The memory of you just simply brings up all of those tears that I've never shed all these years. You have no idea how hard it was for me to try to forget you. On how many times I wanted to see you, tell to nobody that I still love you and composing these messages that I know will never reach you.
Many years have already passed. Every day of each year only felt heavier and heavier. Even so, I never admitted the truth that I was struggling. I never dared to count each passing day. I did not ever dare take notice of the passing time, of what kind of a person I had become since the day you're gone.
But this must be the end of it, the farthest I could go on hiding from myself. I have no other choice but to acknowledge my honest feelings and the broken soul that is the true reflection of my present self. On where I would land after this, I don't even know… but perhaps someday, I'll find yet another glimpse of certainty in my life. However, I would never wish to forget you again. Not ever.
Since I'm already learning that forgetting your memory is just as painful as remembering them all once again.
…
…
I couldn't stop the blotting of paper under my closed fists. A swirl of dissolved ink then started running slowly through his scripted name, making it almost ineligible. I realised that I neither have written his name in a very long time, nor I have spoken a sound of it inside my mind. Or perhaps, I did… only for a few forgotten times on a handful of unconscious dreams.
Antonio
My lips felt the bitterness as a faint whisper escaped. The longing quickly started flowing in my veins, leaving me utterly and unbearably cold.
This place simply screams of his very memory. It longs for him as much as I longed for him. The yearning had all along seeped in the depths of the quiet walls, the yellow-covered novel sitting open on a chair, the red mug atop the sink… the pair of toothbrushes in the bathroom. They were all unmoving, frozen in perpetual silence. However, I still could hear all of those things that they're aching to tell me.
Everywhere I looked at is all worth a million words. Maybe even a lot more than that for they can easily outnumber the amount of dust gathered by the floor over the years.
I never knew what made me keep this place after everything that had happened and all I had gone through. Leaving for another residence but pleading before the apartment's owner for the sale of this unit was pathetic enough to begin with. But what's even more pathetic was my rushed choice of moving on even though deep inside, I really was expecting for something else to happen.
To make matters worse, I was not willing to admit it. Not even to myself.
Bound in silence at a small dining table, my hand reached for the pair of eyeglasses beside my letter and fitted them through my ears. The old refrigerator, I noticed, has still these numerous overlapping notes from before stuck on its surface. Most of the handwriting aren't mine but they are all piercingly familiar to me. The very last one on the middle says, "Gone to buy something, I'll be back."
"I'll be back."
Oh god...
The sudden flash of a long-forgotten memory made me force my way out of the kitchen, almost injuring myself with a scattered chair blocking my path. I heavily leaned on the door frame as I tried to calm myself and slowly deal with the flooding grief. The letter I wrote fell crumpled on the floor. For a handful of surreal seconds, my eyes followed and blankly stared at its ruined form.
My gaze eventually led me into glimpsing something large and draped in ashen cloth. Vivid images then began overwhelming my mind and I almost saw myself seated on a piano bench, feeling the keys under my fingertips. Nearly at the side of what seemed to be me is a bay window where he was seated, a beautiful hand caressing one cheek and his kind eyes fixed only to me as I play.
I swiftly took my eyes away, closing them for a brief moment before sombrely picking up my creased letter from the floor. That scene had been very real and tangible to me. But now, it only faded away into a mere desperate fantasy of mine. I perfectly knew that what I saw was just nothing but my coping guilt forming a breakable illusion.
The early evening air welcomed me as I went out to the balcony of my old room to take a deep breath. I sat on the cold floor and rested my tired head against the cold surface of the balustrade. As a nearby lamp post switched on for the nightfall, my eyes briefly constricted against the sudden glare. The light splattered through the baluster's gaps, flashing out silhouetted beams against the panelled door on the adjacent side. With that, I instantly recalled all those simple everyday moments when I heard him come out of the same door and saw his manner of yawning his own mornings away. That panelled door across leads to his room. I hitched a breath. I know that I will never have the courage to go through that door again.
My body eventually protested against the tough flooring and prompted me to shift into a more comfortable position. As I happen to grasp the bottom edge of the balustrade, I felt something cold and metallic below the jutting concrete. It was a lighter. It was his lighter.
I pulled myself up and leaned against the railing, drowned in thoughts. Playing my left thumb momentarily against the lighter's cap, I suddenly outstretched my arm towards my side and gave life to a small flame. I closed my eyes once again and never hesitated pretending that he was there, asking me to light his cigarette. In my deepest imaginations, the subtle feeling of his fingers tenderly wraps around my wrist, imploring me to stay. Although all I wanted was for it to last, reality cruelly opened my eyes into emptiness as the wind blew away his gentle grasp, the flame and every single remnant of my unreality.
Blended colours was all that came when my gaze lifted upwards. The night quickly draped itself above the whole city and most people on the streets began hurrying either towards home or perhaps, to someplace else for their evening plans. The darkening sky also started to thicken with heavy clouds and gave another significant reason for their haste.
However, unlike them, I have no plans of going anywhere— home or to someplace else.
All these years, I had done everything to continually step forward. Whenever it seemed that my efforts barely even cross the edges, I just simply faked the feeling that I did. Without realising anything, I had already been far too adrift into the validating applauses of mere strangers. It was utterly desensitising. Now, I perfectly know that only within these walls I would find my abandoned soul… my forgotten sense of regret. I am well aware that taking an uncertain step backwards is never void of pain. Excruciating it may be, I only hope that this remorse could bring me back my peace. If it would… then maybe, just maybe… I'd finally be able to forgive myself from speaking so much of promises that I couldn't fulfil.
My grasp hid the lighter beneath my fingers. I wanted to put it inside my pocket, but every time it almost went through, the urge to look at it once again becomes too unbearable.
There's just no stopping every simple thing from speaking about him, the memory of his voice and the smallest of mannerisms that I had learned to love. Touching something that once belonged to him even felt like living a little part of his life. All of these rather ordinary pieces that made him who he was and made up who he was— they make me miss him even so much more. I realise, the littlest of things are often the heaviest of burdens. It somehow sparks the realest of heartaches and drives the sharpest splinter into a wound that had long refused to heal.
"Is it so wrong to love somebody who is not around anymore? What difference does it really make?"
Back then when he said that to me, I could hardly take in all the sense within his words. I even found them completely absurd and laughable at that time. Confidently, I had thought— what's the use in keeping yourself trapped in the past? Suffering that way, for me, was just foolishly forcing yourself to breathe under the unfair waters of anguish. However, I never knew that there are always things in the past that you can never erase. It is useless even if you try the most desperate means to forget, recall is always inevitable. A person's memories keep the people no longer with them alive, their every habit… their every word and gesture. Now, I begin to fully understand what he meant even through the hardest way.
I flicked the lighter's cap and lit up a flame once again. My other hand felt its way through my pocket and drew out the letter from before. I touched a crinkled corner into the flame and embers then quickly spread upwards, turning my regretful words into ashes and smoke. The pieces of ash turned smaller and smaller as each broke and peacefully plummeted away towards the pavement.
Every fragment of my letter merely turned into insignificant dust through the frightening distance before finally succumbing into gravity. For a second, I also finally let gravity take hold of a welled-up tear escaping from my blurring eyes. With that, there was nothing more to say.
I have my resolve.
The lighter rapidly fell out of my weakened grasp. Both of my hands trembled as each one tensely gripped against the unbearably cold railing of the balustrade.
-o0o-
…
Author's Notes:
18 July 2014- I was supposed to leave this chapter in present tense just as planned. However, as I read it once again, it only sounded very awkward to me. Since it doesn't make me happy anymore, I've changed it into past tense. A few parts in this chapter are reworded too so that it will match the new flow.
ON THE NEXT!:
Chapter 2: Overture
[Excerpt]
...He was still exactly the same as I remembered him. What would three days do anyway? He still asks questions way too straightforwardly, his skin was still swarthy, his eyes were still as cloying as ever and his smile still gives off too much unnecessary kindness...