Beautiful Mess [UsUk / AmeDen]

Chapter XXXII

Back in the dormitory of the Yale New Haven university, Alfred wasn't having the time of his life - as if he was ever happy, but now he felt worse than usually. It could have been because of the thought that Emilia put in his head about Arthur. Would he give up this soulmate love for another guy if he ever met someone who he connected with on his level? It was a difficult question to process, especially for him, since he already had enough troubles having to deal with all the disorganized thinking most of the time.

He was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, right next to a messy hill made out of old, wasted art supplies he had never gotten to throwing away. Glancing at a sleeping Arthur a couple of times, he thought about whether he was truly the one for him or not. And that put him into a new state of distress.

What if all this soulmate thing was just another one of his delusions?

The fact that he was sitting in pure silence (accompanied by a little bit of Arthur's snoring once in a while) didn't help his case at all. Nothing has changed about silence being one of his biggest fears - it only worsened as time passed. So he quietly got up, reaching for his headphones that stood on the desk, which was even messier than the floor. At least his side. Arthur's side was cleaned up, just like it always was. The Brit couldn't stand when something wasn't organized. The laptop was in the corner, while the binders and notebooks stood perfectly aligned next to it. Alfred couldn't help but roll his eyes a little, but all in a loving manner. He simply loved Arthur despite anything he said, then why didn't Arthur feel the same?

Or did he?

Putting on the headphones and plugging them into his phone, he thought it would be a brilliant distraction from the noises he knew weren't real. How did he know? It took him some time and a lot of therapy sessions to understand this, but when he was hearing someone talking about painting the walls at seven in the morning in their small dorm room, it was most likely not true. And when he was hearing some weird screeching coming from under the table, it was not a nuclear powered spider coming to kill him. No matter how real that seemed to him. But when he looked through the window and saw strange black figures and shadows following him, that was the one hallucination that was always able to scare him to death despite how hard he tried to convince himself it was all in his head, and it wasn't real. It made him feel those cold flashes down his spine, and drove him to insanity. He hated feeling like that.

His theory about music being the perfect distraction was proved wrong. It was just a horrible day, his mind felt heavier than usual and he couldn't avoid it, so naturally everything he heard and saw had a stronger impact on him. Even if he took his medication this morning. Having schizophrenia treated wasn't as simple as downing a pill each morning and feeling extra sunshine happy and not hearing voices for the rest of the day. Perhaps that's how it was for some people, but definitely wasn't like that for him. Emilia was honest about the fact that he might never stop hearing them.

And he was suddenly so angry, but also sad at the same time. Angry at how he couldn't hear the music he wanted to play. Instead of hearing the beautiful, calming melody of Cinderblock Garden by All Time Low and Alex Gaskarth's magical voice, he heard a mixture of everything and anything that certainly wasn't as beautiful as calming as the song should have been. Out of the sudden wave of fury washing over him, he placed his hands over his head, getting the urge to rip out his hair from the distress it was causing him. But he didn't. That would hurt, and the last thing he wanted was any more physical pain. It was enough that he was nauseous and he had an unavoidable, pulsing headache. Instead, he let his emotions out through tears like he usually did. Maybe it didn't exactly help, but it gave him a relief of sorts.

Soon, a few tears turned into uncontrollable crying, and he threw his headphones across the room, leaning against the wall under the window and curling up to his knees, trying to stifle his sobs so he wouldn't wake up Arthur.