A/N: Warning for implied double suicide
They do not go very far, now. Stay within touching distance of each other, and walking distance of the flat. If they venture out at all. Darius skirts around them, says little, but the stack of baked goods on the table grows higher and higher.
No one has much appetite now.
It is not as if they have only a vague sense of the bounds of time. The limits which they face is embedded in their very bones, etched into their skin. Each second that ticks away draws them closer and closer to their awaiting fate.
Midnight creeps ever closer, the guttering of the candles softening every angle, every line. And in precisely 48 hours, 59 minutes, and 58, 57, 56 seconds, everything that one of them is and has ever been will cease to be. The heart that pounds within his chest will stutter to a stop, and in the absence of a beat another heart will crack, and shatter.
Erik's fingers are gentle curled around Amir's hip, and Amir's lips are light pressed to his cheek, lingering. There is no room for words, tonight. There has not been room for words between them since the timers ticked to less than a week. What use have words when every breath is a blessing? When every touch is an affirmation that they continue to be? When every kiss is an enchanted moment encapsulated, skin on skin? A silent whisper of I love you, I love you, I love you...
The years that they have had could never be enough. But when Amir's lips brush Erik's, when he sighs into his mouth and presses himself closer, everything that ever could have been falls away, in the face of this.
And this is all they need, now.
Ninety seconds. The whole world come down to ninety seconds. All that remains for them.
The plan was unspoken, a silent agreement between the two of them. Each too old, too broken, to go on without the other. What would be the point, now, when they have lived whole lives in each other's arms?
Eighty seconds.
It would not do to have it be a messy end. Something quick, and neat, and sudden, out of consideration for Darius who, even now, is dusting as if the world is not about to end. They have refused to tell him the precise hour. There is no way he can stop them. All he knows is it is tonight. He does not need to know that it is in seventy-five seconds.
Time for one last embrace. Amir's heart is pounding fit to burst, and he can feel Erik's racing through his clothes, though his breathing is steady, even.
He squeezes Erik's fingers, stands back.
Fifty seconds.
Their fingers still entwined. Erik blinks, and Amir gazes up into his eyes. The last sight he ever wants to see. Gold-hazel, tempered by shining flecks of moss green and peat brown. Eyes that have seen empires fall, cities raised up, that have beheld the tiniest of creatures and gazed back into his own as they stood alone beneath the stars.
Their wills are written. Raoul has them for safe-keeping, and when he and Christine visited this morning they both knew the time had come, and there were tears in her eyes as she embraced each of them, not knowing which, not knowing both.
It is better this way, Amir tells himself. Better this way.
Those two have decades yet.
Thirty seconds.
Erik's lips brush his own, as soft as the very first time, all hesitancy lost. And in that kiss is a thousand promises, a thousand declarations, a thousand murmured sweetnesses held secret between the two of them. If he had a choice, he would have chosen Erik, over and over and over again. He would choose Erik, in every world, in every time, no doubt.
They part.
Fifteen seconds.
Each reaches for his glass. Eyes unwavering they clink glasses, link arms, a thousand silent I love yous passing between them.
Five seconds.
Erik promised it would be instantaneous. One of his own concoctions.
Brush of fingertips against his cheek, a nod.
One second.
And they drink.