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It was cold. The room was cold, and silence was so deafeningly loud, floating in the thick air that filled the room with uncomfortable assumptions. In the middle of it all were two young men, around their early 20's, sitting on the edge of the bed covered in the clean white sheet that people always see in hotels. Their big bags laid on the floor, the zippers were opened, signaling how they had gotten themselves nice and comfy in this new place.
No words were spoken. Little gestures noticed by each other became the book from which a thousand words were gathered and interpreted, using their hearts and feelings. Their tense shoulders became the company of their shifty eyes which looked at nothing but the floor and, sometimes, the other man in the room. It was unheard, but they knew just how fast their hearts were beating at the moment. Thoughts and feelings mixed into one in a harmonious dance that thrived from the internal chaos they were engulfed in. Questions, doubts, fear, euphoria, anticipation, anxiety, all came into one to chain and lock away the tongues they so easily use most of the times, throwing them into a disarray.
It was quite the long agony of silence until one decided to jump into the cliff of unknown, an underwhemingly simple word laden of emotions, "H-hey."
Shock ran down the other man's spine. It was as if his usual way to the court was falling apart as his car was still on the highway. He opened his mouth, and what felt like jumping was more like his heart than his word, "Y-yes?"
"Are you, uh... okay?"
"W-whatever do you mean by that?"
"You just look so pale."
"Am I?"
The man he was talking to nodded. Anxiety started to bubble up. Was he really that obvious? The awkwardness was certainly intense, but he didn't expect that it would turn against him out of all the people in this place.
"Now your face is turning red."
"What?"
"Well, y-your face. It's red."
Now he did it. He had done it. He exposed himself, to this man out of all the people in this world. Great, what an embarrassing display. He could feel it, his face becoming hot alongside his ears. What a humiliation, he'd rather die than being–
"I-I think it's cute, though."
–in here.
Time once again spun ever so slowly between the two men in the little hotel room. It was not said at all, nor was it heard, but both of them felt it; the tension between them. As if Mount Vesuvius, it was ready to explode anytime, burying them in whatever debris the mountain was about to spew in the air. However, whatever it was, they both knew they weren't going to avoid the volcano's wrath. In fact, they were standing on the brim of the boiling magma crater, and they were going to be incinerated through and through.
One man knew this well, even more than the other. He just knew how hot the eruption was going to be, he was even feeling it on his face. But, no matter, he could not back down now, he thought to himself. Gathering what was left in him, he summoned the volcano's explosion, "H-hey."
It was loud. The explosion could be heard throughout Pompeii, lava started flowing, and debris were flying kilometers into the air together with puffy ash cloud. Earthquake came, accompanying the catastrophe this eruption brought about. Regret started to come to the surface as he felt the heat spreading with the speed of light. Even so, two men stood still with their bodies burning beyond the point of saving, "Y-yeah?"
"I, uh...," A huge rock hit one man in the head, throwing him backwards until he rolled down the mountain and smacked his spine against another rock. Yet, he persevered, with all the damage he had suffered, he propped himself against the ground, trying his best not to become one with it, "I..."
"You...?"
"I...”
"Y-yeah?"
"..." The man persevered, and with it, came glory, "...think y-you're also cute."
The other man who still stood at the brim of the crater also got hit by a huge rock, putting him in the same fate as his predecessor. Oh, how he wished he could just hit his neck against something hard so that he'd break it and end this agony. He couldn't move, he couldn't speak, and for the love of his significant other, he couldn't bear to wait any longer as the heat in his body prompted him to do something he so deeply desired, but caged by the eruption.
"T-thanks," He answered, a red mark spread across his face, "Edgeworth."
Another silence filled the room as the men waited for Mount Vesuvius to finally calm its rampant tantrum. Everything was burning in its wake, ashes were spread into the air, filling the lungs of the people in Pompeii. Buildings were left to ruins, each brick cracked and crumbled into pieces, memories were left as fragments of what they once were. It was a huge disaster from which the Grim Reaper received one of his huge pay. Yet, there they were, the two men at the foot of the volatile Vesuvius, all bones broken with consciousness still intact, witnessing and experiencing just how immense and intense the volcano erased the civilization; the aftermath of the eruption that just happened. The eruption... that they caused.
The room wasn't so cold anymore, despite the air conditioner that was blowing at 16° Celsius. It was supposedly freezing cold, and it was if it wasn't for the flame burning ever so brightly in the men's hearts. What they felt at this night was a genuine mix of adrenaline and serotonin. There was no explanation needed for tonight; they needed only a deafening silence as they started to acknowledge and embrace the fact that they existed in the same frequency. It was only a small step, a slow one at that, as if a baby learning to walk starting from doing it on all fours, but they were learning. As if a new tree nurtured by the Earth with its roots intertwining in the ground, looking for rich nourishment that came through fire, so did their fingers slowly binding themselves around each other, looking for each other in the silence of the small hotel room.