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Phil looks beautiful like this, Dan thought to himself as they sat together watching a movie on their cracked tv. Well, Dan was watching the movie. Phil was grunting beside him, not looking at anything in particular. It had been five years since the start of the end- a new medicine that promised things that, in retrospect, couldn’t have been true at all. The both of them never tried it, but it only took a few hundred people to spread it around. The thing the world found out too late was that you didn’t need to take the drug to feel the effects, you just needed a bit of it in your system, where it would spread by itself. As long as it got in your system, whether that was by a bite, cough or spit, you were doomed.
Phil had gotten infected about a week prior. They managed to stay away from the virus in its entirety for a long while, never leaving the house much anyway. Dan had to admit, he thought they’d make it to the end of whatever this thing was together, which is why it was such a shock when their rations delivery driver suddenly leapt forward and bit.
They had accepted their fate by now. Phil had been scared at the start, but had surprisingly calmed down about the whole ordeal by the second day. He wasn’t happy by any means, but in a constant disassociative state. They had been prepared for this scenario unconsciously. They both knew, in some strange way, one would never want to live without the other. So they never changed their habits. They still kissed, still shared food, still helped each other through hardship, pretending like they weren’t dying. So yes, Dan had been infected practically immediately as well.
They had both turned a pale shade, almost with a green hue. They had lost their appetite at around day four, preferring to spend their last days talking to each other. How the infection operated wasn’t a secret anymore; an incubation period of three days, loss of appetite, losing hair, the body slowly decaying from the inside out until you’re left a bag of rotten meat and bones.
Dan turned his head towards Phil. "How are you holding up?” “Take a wild guess”, Phil replied sarcastically.
Phil had his head in his hands, eyes shut. “I guess I should’ve known literally decaying would hurt, but fuck this hurts!” Dan chuckled. It was true, it hurt like a motherfucker, and ibuprofen didn’t help this time around. “Honestly, Dan, why don’t we just bite the bullet now? We’re going to die in like three days anyway, why not just die now while we still have enough conscience to appreciate our lives for what they were?”
Dan swallowed. Phil was right. Dan didn’t want to see Phil slowly losing himself to this, neither did he want to experience the torture of it for himself.
“Fuck it.”
For the first time in a couple of days, Phil smiled - an actual, bright smile. His skin may be rotting away, his teeth decaying, but that was Phil. And god, was he amazing. Dan stood up and walked to the kitchen, Phil following. “So, how do we go about it then?”
Phil thought for a second. “Maybe we can shoot ourselves with those guns we found three years ago?” Dan reminisced. They had gone out together in desperate need of supplies. Amongst a surprising amount of dead bodies, they had found two guns. They were quite big, but still able to be carried single handedly. The disease tended to make people more violent. Not like in the movies where they’d attack anything that dared to breathe, no, it just stopped your repression of urges. They had kept them just in case. Little did they know then what they’d use them for.
Dan nodded and grabbed the guns from the top cupboard, before going back to the living room and turning off the tv as Phil sat back down on the couch. He sat down next to him. “Are you sure about this, Dan?”, Phil asked. Dan looked in his eyes. They were still as beautiful as the day he’d met him. He wanted to die looking in them, and now he could. “Yes, I’m fully sure.”
As they both raised the guns to the sides of their heads, they shared one last kiss. It was short but sweet, filled with words that spoke for themselves. Dan grabbed Phil’s hand. “I love you”, he whispered. “I love you too.”