I saw a picture that said something along the lines of "Imagine your OTP dancing slowly to a love song, Person A singing in Person B's ear." Then someone else chimed in with, "Well, imagine this is happening during the apocalypse and they both know they're about to die." So I was inspired to write this oneshot. I'm sorry if one of my first attempts at writing angst is melodramatic and laughable, but I do hope you can still enjoy it!
The sun had set hours ago and the stars were high in the sky. What had once been a sprawling, flowering meadow was now dull and muted, its vibrant colors fading to darkness. Or perhaps it was just the hopeless perspectives of everyone who'd passed through it for the past few weeks that had caused it to lose its breathtaking beauty.
The meadow had one hill, and perched on the hill was a safe house that was loaded with food, water, medical supplies, and weapons—or it had been. Survivors had quickly stripped the house of anything useful, and since it was located in an area that had been completely taken over by the enemy, it was abandoned and practically useless.
But when Alfred Jones and Arthur Kirkland first saw it, it looked like a haven.
The world was immersed something—too small to call World War III, but too big to simply call a war—that had earned the name Armageddon. Alfred and Arthur had lived together for a while, but when their city was invaded by the enemy, they had no choice but to run. And when running failed, they were captured and sent to confinement. It was over for them, until they managed to escape from the guards in an attempt to find their way to safer parts of the country.
And this decrepit little house looked like a good place to rest for the night.
Rest for the night, Arthur told himself. What a nice little euphemism.
The truth was, it was over. They'd been running for days with only a backpack of food and a bottle of water, which had been gone for some time now. Alfred had been shot in the arm during their escape, and Arthur did not possess any first aid materials. He'd torn a strip of fabric off his shirt and wrapped it around the wound. Not much else they could do.
And the enemy was following them.
There was a pause as their weary eyes both surveyed the safe house, and in that pause, they seemed to be thinking the same thing: That this was possibly their last night together.
"Well, it needs a little work, but why don't we check it out?" Alfred asked, smiling and grabbing Arthur's hand.
The house was dark. It was clear there had once been matches and candles in the cabinets, but those had all been taken a long time ago. A vase of dead roses sat on a kitchen table.
"For you," Alfred said, grabbing the blackened flowers and handing them to Arthur.
The Brit laughed. "How romantic. I've always loved receiving dead flowers." He glanced at Alfred's arm. "Let me see if there's something else I can bandage that with. You wait in here, okay?"
"Will do, Doc." Alfred sat down at one of the kitchen table's chairs and sighed.
Arthur went into the hallway, where there was a staircase that led to a second floor. He stopped for a second, looking at Alfred. His lover was staring out the window, his faced bathed in the moonlight that shone into the kitchen. For a moment—for just a moment—Arthur could believe that this was just another normal night before Armageddon. A night like many they'd had together, where Alfred would pick out a movie and they'd watch it on the couch. And Arthur's heart ached for everything he and Alfred had lost because of this stupid invasion.
Upstairs, there wasn't much of anything. Arthur tore some curtains out of one of the bedrooms and turned them into makeshift bandages, then returned down to the kitchen, where Alfred was still waiting at the table. He was doing something.
"What's that?" Arthur asked, sitting down next to Alfred and redressing his wound.
"When we were coming inside, I found a bunch of these little wildflowers outside the door." He held up a couple of yellow blossoms.
"Buttercups," Arthur replied, leaning back and smiling. "What are you doing with them?"
Alfred's smile got so wide that Arthur believed it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. "I made two rings."
Arthur tilted his head. "Why?"
"Because." Alfred held one of the tiny wildflower rings out to Arthur. "I want you to marry me."
The pain was so overpowering that Arthur lost his breath. The pain and joy and sadness and hope were mixing into one emotion that rendered the blond speechless. He laughed as tears spilled from his eyes, trying somehow to tell Alfred how much he loved him.
How much he wished they could have more time together.
"It's okay," Alfred said. There were tears in his eyes, too. "You don't have to say anything. As long as I can get the first dance."
Arthur stood up and grabbed Alfred's hands. "Let's dance, then."
There was a perfect square of moonlight on the hardwood floor, and they stood in the middle of that. Alfred put his hands around Arthur's waist, and Arthur placed his hands on Alfred's shoulders, resting his head so that it was nestled on his chest and he could hear the American's heartbeat.
"I love you," Arthur said, watching as crystalline tear drops fell from both their cheeks, turned silver by the moon.
The first time they met, Arthur had taken an instant dislike to Alfred—who the hell could be so annoying and loud? But as time went on, Arthur reluctantly allowed Alfred to spend more and more time with him, until one day, they were walking around town together and Alfred said, "I like you."
There had been a street performer with a guitar strumming along to the song "You Are My Sunshine," and Arthur would forever connect that song with Alfred. But Alfred never mentioned it, so sometimes Arthur wondered if his significant other even remembered that incident.
They had been dancing for a minute or two when Alfred stiffened.
"What is it?" Arthur murmured, unwilling to break out of the dreamlike trance he'd placed himself in.
"I see people coming," Alfred replied quietly. "Soldiers. Enemy soldiers."
Arthur didn't look. "You know we're not going to be able to get away this time."
"I know. I know." Alfred's voice was a broken whisper. "I want to stay like this forever. God, I love you so much. I can't... I don't..."
Arthur looked at the buttercup ring on his left hand. He didn't say anything, just clung on to Alfred as tightly as he could. They kept turning in slow circles, dancing to some imaginary beat, when Alfred began to sing.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine..."
...
A few months after they'd moved into their first apartment, there were awful thunderstorms for an entire day and gloomy rain for the entire week. Having grown up in London, Arthur was pretty accustomed to such weather, but Alfred huffed and puffed and used up every 11:11 wish on the same thing.
"I want the sun to come out," he always said. "I just want the sun to come out."
...
"You make me happy when skies are gray..."
The first person to say "I love you" had been Alfred. They had gotten caught in the rain while coming home from a café—not the same home, of course, as this was years before they moved in together—back when they were young and reckless and never believed bad things could happen. The rain had been loud and the thunder louder, but together they were safe, lost in a world they'd created that included only each other.
...
"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you..."
And their first time had been wonderful. The one person Arthur wanted it to be with. They'd worked to make it An Occasion, and it had been. Arthur was crying like he'd never cried before, weeping for everything he was about to lose: Everything he'd lost already. The soldiers' footsteps were growing louder.
...
"Please don't take my sunshine away."
Alfred was finishing the tune when the door burst open, shattering the silence of the night. Guns were drawn, hands were thrown up, but to no avail.
They faced the soldiers bravely, wiping the tears from their eyes and staring down the soldiers defiantly.
They were like that until the very end.
"Sir? I'm sorry, I—"
"Do what I told you!"
"Yessir." The soldier hurried back into the abandoned safe house with another soldier, and together, they carried out the bodies of the two dead lovers.
The soldier knew his general had a somewhat soft heart for stories like these. Instead of capturing them and bringing them back to an imprisonment where they would be separated, beaten, tortured—no, he'd had them killed on the spot. Together. Fast and easy. And from the way the two kids had been staring them down, fire in their eyes even as the guns were pointed at their heads, everyone knew it really was the most humane thing to do under the circumstances given.
"Lay them in the wildflowers," the general barked.
"Sir? We're not burning them?" the same soldier asked, surprised.
"No. Put them over there."
Once all was complete, the general gathered his group of men. "Okay, let's camp here for the night. We'll move out before the sun rises."
The next morning, everyone was packing up, getting ready to head back to their main station. The general could not resist, however, glancing back just once as they walked away from the safe house and the meadow. The grass was waving in the slight breeze, and he could see the pair of dead bodies lying still and cold in the middle of a sprawling expanse of little yellow buttercup flowers, exactly where they'd been placed the night before.
The general was not a spiritual man, but at that moment, the top of the sun broke over the hill and light began to spill everywhere—pure and wondrous sunshine.
And through the meadow, the general swore he saw two people fleeing through the golden haze of morning. No, not fleeing.
Running, dancing, joyous and innocent. The picture of people who were not afraid, people who were in another world that was free of strife and heartbreak. They dashed along, their footsteps leaving the wildflowers undisturbed. The two figures ran toward the gorgeous sunrise, laughing with their hands interlocked, so bright and blinding they could have been angels.