Work Text:
“I know its not a real shooting star but I want to make a wish.”
That’s what Asa had said, all those years ago, on such a normal night. It was the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, wasn’t it? When they sat together on their chairs, sipping on hot chocolate and and listening to the nightingales singing? Later that evening, dressed for bed and kissing good night, Anthony got him to admit what he’d wished for— a long life here, with his great love.
Oh, how far Anthony Crowley-Fell had fallen from that night.
Asa’s wish brought them sixteen more years, but now he was gone and Anthony was drunk and alone, old eyes just unfocused enough to hide most of his stars from his view, even if the sight of the empty chair beside him didn’t bring enough tears to his eyes to turn his vision watery and blurred. Asa had built these chairs, right when they moved out here, had laughed when the red paint spilled all over their garden.
Asa, so full of life, had gone cold so quickly, had been carried out of this house one hundred and thirteen days ago and this bone-deep grief would never end.
Today would have been their anniversary, would have been thirty-seven years married, but Asa was sunk into the earth and Anthony was left here, drinking himself blind because his husband wasn’t here to hold his hand and hum some symphony into the night.
The damn nightingales weren’t even here, gone off on their migration again.
Squinting into the night, Anthony wept, lifted his overful glass and slurred his nightly toast to the world— it couldn’t be. A shooting star, meteorite debris, whatever it was…
Please let me see my angel again soon. Let him know I love him. Please.