At the End

Summary: The end has come and a lover is saying farewell

Slash-pairing, but no slash-actions... just some romance *insert heart*

Disclaimer: Masque of the Red Death is in no way mine

Up till then he'd thought that he would be afraid, that maybe he would cry bitterly regretting for the things he hadn't done – or for those things he had done, but found instead that he was strangely calm.

Lying under the cloak, feeling the slow trickle of blood over his skin and seeing how chunks of skin and flesh loosen to disintegrate completely moments after. And he knew that the same thing was going on all around him, in time as the plague had spread in the mansion the guests who had attended what from the beginning had been meant as a celebration was breaking down to a viscous mass and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.

He had no exact thoughts as he lay there, how long time passed before his vision blackened he couldn't tell, but as he lay there he observed with an absent gaze as the blood red mass with slow pace formed about him and his lover, who was lying next to him facing him. His lover spoke no words, but that wasn't necessary, he could read in his eyes all he needed, all he was… all he was dying to know. His lips curved at the last thought, it was the end and he was cracking jokes.

His lover smiled back at him, if it was because he'd seen the smile or if he'd been able to read the joke in his eyes he did not know but it was so sweet to see him smile. He couldn't imagine anything more beautiful at that moment. He coughed and his lover's smile faltered a little and his body twitched as if he was to reach out to him, but he couldn't as his body was too weak. He smiled at the lover, telling him without words not to worry about him.

He took a deep breath, but found that it wasn't possible, his throat had collapsed along with his inner and he was at his last breath.

He thought that it would be painful to die, especially this way, and it had been at first but now lying there staring steadily into his lover's eyes there was peace and tranquility. Completely different from the panic and screams that had filled the halls of the mansion as the guests were dying. Seeing him resting next to him had calmed him, and distracting him from the pain he was going through, promising that whatever came next his lover would be there right by his side.

His lover smiled at him, a – by the process of the disintegration – grotesquely deformed smile but to him nothing could have been more beautiful (he'd thought that before, hadn't he?) as if he was thinking the exact same thing.

Feeling life leaving him he opened his mouth, painful but he had to he couldn't pass on without telling his lover how he felt, and he spoke those small, but so meaningful, words that he'd always wanted to say but never, and really meant it too, had:

"I love you," he said watching the lover, the words coming over tattered lips in a hoarse whisper. "I love you, Steffan."

Before his vision blackened and he drifted off to whatever lay ahead he looked into his lover's eyes, the lover had been unable to reply but he could see the love in his eyes. Those pale green orbs that would be the last thing he saw before he finally died.

Rest In Peace, my sweet boys