Work Text:
It was a final kiss, drenched in tears and pain. Jeff closed his eyes, and Alan plunged the dagger into his heart. A small moan escaped Jeff's lips along with his last breath. Alan turned and picked a flask from his jacket pocket that had fallen to the floor in the scuffle. He opened it and drank its contents. Arsenic was a highly effective poison, but it came at the cost of a painful and agonizing death. Alan didn't care; he was willing to pay the price, just as he would pay the price of breaking the promise he made to the person he loved most in the world, and for that he would wander in solitude for all eternity. He broke the promise because he couldn't bear to see Jeff condemned to the pain and suffering of the walking dead. That's why he killed him, despite Jeff's desperate attempts to thwart Alan's plan. Jeff had come to accept his fate, the deserved punishment, but he never thought Alan wouldn’t accept it, never thought Alan would propose a change to the Fates and that they would accept.
Alan's last gasp marked the end of a love story that should never have happened, a mistake of fate that had to be rectified at all costs. And so it was.
THE END
The author wrote those last words, moved, clicked save, got up, and left the room. She would upload that final chapter to the internet tomorrow; for today, another tragic and dark love story had ended…
Indeed, the tragedy had ended.
Alan began to breathe normally, no more convulsions or gasping. He sat up and grabbed a tissue to wipe away the foam from his mouth. The arsenic tasted awful. He picked up the bottle of wáter behind the armchair and took a couple of sips, rinsing his mouth with it.
"Give me a hand, I can't move."
Alan immediately put down the bottle and went over to Jeff.
"Sorry, I was just getting a drink of water."
"Was the arsenic really that bad?"
"Awful. Next time you drink it," Alan said as he pulled the dagger from Jeff's chest and wiped away the drops of blood that trickled from it. "Better?"
"Yes, my heart is beating well now and I can breathe. I was a little dizzy, having gone so long without a single drop of blood reaching my brain. You really hit the bullseye, or my heart, rather."
"I'm glad. I practiced so I wouldn't miss and could do it on the first try. Let me help you up."
"Thanks. Honestly, I don’t know what’s got into the author to end her stories with us dead. In the last one, I killed you and ended up on the gallows, and in this one, you kill me and then you kill yourself. I don't even want to think about what’ll happen in the next story."
"Maybe she'll leave us alive but broken and separated by pain and the impossibility of being together," Alan began to declaim, like a tragedy actor.
"Well, maybe it's better than ending up with the knife stuck in me. My heart aches, and I'm not speaking figuratively."
"Yeah, my esophagus is a mess. Tonight, all I'm going to have for dinner is soup."
"I miss love stories with happy endings. The ones that barely had any drama. What do they call them? Fluff? Those."
"It's been a while since she wrote any of those. She started like that, but soon switched to drama: family tragedies, break-ups, betrayals, deaths of others, we've been through every Greek tragedy there ever was and ever will be."
"Yeah, but at least we had our happy ending, and our extra chapters with sex and pregnancies and all that. Here, no extras, no epilogues, nothing. We are dead."
"I don't know, but what I do know now is that we need a shower. I want to get rid of that poison smell, and you need to clean up all that blood."
"Right," Jeff said, approaching Alan affectionately. "Shall we shower together? I miss your cuddles and caresses."
"I miss your smiles. That one! Yes! This story hasn't let me see it for a single day. I think my brow is going to get all wrinkled from frowning so much."
"Hahaha," Jeff laughed, stroking Alan's brow. "It's perfect for me."
Alan, pleased, tilted his head and kissed Jeff on the lips.
"Ugh! It's true, arsenic really does stink."
Alan burst out laughing.
"Let's go have that shower."
"Do you think we could manage to make sure the next story she writes not to be 'dark romance' as well?"
"If you want the next story to be different, you know what you have to do, and it’s no use just doing it for five minutes, like last time. You saw that it didn't work."
"I can't spend all night glued to her ear telling her 'no more dark romance, change the theme, make it fluff,' over and over again. Do you want me to go crazy?"
"Well, it's the only way. Haven't you read the list of her upcoming stories? We're going to have 'dark romance' for a few more stories."
"Couldn't she take a break from all this suffering and write something sweeter, more tender, and loving? She could write a short, unpretentious story about two people who meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. That's not such a bad idea, is it?"
"No, it isn't."
"Besides, she could add some steamy scenes, wouldn't that be great? Readers love those scenes. And honestly, you and I are pretty good at them."
"We're good at them because we practice them a lot off the page," Alan grabbed Jeff by the waist, pulled him close, and bit his neck, "which is exactly what we'll do as soon as we get in the shower."
Jeff broke free and ran from Alan.
"That is, if you catch me," he stuck his tongue out, winked, and disappeared from the living room.
"Get ready, you're not getting any sleep tonight," Alan grinned mischievously.
Did Jeff spend hours by the writer's side? Or maybe it was Alan? Who knows? The truth is that a week later, she began a new story, a far cry from ‘dark romance’. She had suddenly felt an irresistible urge to write a beautiful love story about two men who meet by chance in the coffee shops that one of them owns, thanks to fate, or their friends, or both.
THE END, FOR REAL.