Tronnor One-Shots

Champagne Endings

Trigger warning: terminal illness.

The week before Connor was predicted to die, the apartment was like a convention centre. His parents, his siblings, Troye's family, all of their dearest friends: they all crammed into the living room with this sort of over-exaggerated glee. Beers in hand, smears of cheeses sticking to the corners of their smiling mouths, they injected their voices into the air until it was bouyant with chatter.

Death Con was what Troye broodingly dubbed it. Not simply because of Connor's circumstance, but because the convention-like experience was so painful that Troye felt as if he were dying too.

Painful, because all that glee was heavy with a sharply dolorous underbelly. No matter which way you looked at it, everybody was there for the same reason; they wanted to bathe themselves in Connor's luminous presence before the sun inevitably set. And, by the look of him, the horizon was already glowing; the evening was nigh, and the night was coming so terribly fast. They all knew it.

Troye watched everybody from the kitchen, a throng of familiars huddled on the couch and loveseat and chairs and the floor, laughing and cheersing and pretending they weren't trying to remember if their blackest attire still fit them. Connor sat in the middle of the couch, squished happily between his mom and dad, surrounded by his loved ones and looking sort of like Jesus in an urban depiction of The Last Supper.

His face was papery pale, hollowed out into canyons of cheeks and pits of eyes. All that gauntness casted solemn grey shadows, tainting his presence with quiet and slow doom, no matter how much he was smiling.

Chemotherapy had had very serious effects on him--the nausea had been so that Troye had to call an ambulance after the very first night, in fear that the excessive vomiting would cause his esophagus to burn--so he had never lost any hair, but every single strand had lightened to a dull silvery brown, looking crisp and tangled in the afternoon light. The colorlessness of his lips, the quivering of his hands, the way his jumper nearly swallowed his skeletal body whole; he was so sick, but looking so glad to be surrounded by those who weren't and loved him. And so Troye tried his best to pretend he didn't want to swat their company away like flies.

He mixed a rum and Coke for himself, took one sip and twisted his face in disgust. He hadn't been paying enough attention, and the drink was too potent to withstand, so he poured it down the sink. He emptied it slowly, stalling, watching the brown liquid wash away like the life source of his husband. Time was ticking, ticking, ticking, and the civil noise of the apartment gave him anxiety. What if Troye missed his last chance for alone time? What if the months and months they'd spent trying to outrun his death together wasn't memory enough? No, that wasn't even a question. Of course it wouldn't be enough. Only Connor--existent Connor--would ever be enough.

"Troye, are you okay?" A female voice spoke his name, and he moved with a lag to answer to it. He lifted his head tiredly, and smiled half-heartedly at Connor's sister, who was leaning against the kitchen counter in an ironically vibrant blouse.

Her eyebrows were raised, worried and questioning, but Troye tried to keep himself composed. "I'm fine, Nicola." He lied, placing his empty glass in the sink and grabbing a beer from the ice bucket on the counter. He held up a second one, asking Nicola if she wanted it, but she just averted her eyes and gave a solemn shake of the head.

Her mouth twitched in the fading smirk of a griever. "You're bad at lying." She said, with a breathless and dour laugh. "I mean, how can you be fine?"

Troye peered silently down the opening of his bottle, watching the brown darkness slosh about. One sip, and he'll feel nothing of the drug. One hundred sips, and he'll feel nothing of this hell he's living in. "How can I be fine?" He repeated blandly, taking that first sip almost eagerly. "I can't, but would you tell Connor that?"