In twenty-four hours, all that was would cease to be.

The end was announced not with a bang, but with a press release. It was a sterile government statement broadcasted to every channel in every language on every functioning television and mobile device in the world. A trembling astrophysicist stood behind the podium, an equally distraught sign language interpreter at his side as he clinically announced to the public that this marked the end for humanity. For all life on the planet.

An asteroid was hurtling toward Earth, a hundred miles wide, weighing an estimated 350 million tons, and flying toward the planet at near-light speed. Despite it only being revealed to the public now, governments had known for a while. Sensors and sattelites and ground telescopes let them know about the massive celestial body with a direct trajectory to Earth.

They'd tried everything, every last-ditch effort. Kinetic impactors, nuclear warhead detonations, gravitational tug vessels. They had all failed. The asteroid was too large, too fast, too inevitable. It was extinction-level. A planet-ender. And impact was expected in less than 24 hours.

With nothing left to lose, people started acting like it.

Some found God. Some looted stores and smashed car windows. Some disappeared into forests with tents and drugs and lovers. People spilled into the streets with wild eyes and shaky hands, weeping, screaming, laughing. Humanity had always existed under the illusion of control, but the truth was barrelling toward them at a hundred thousand miles per second, and no one knew what to do with that.

Neither did Blade.

But someone had sent a text—a vague invite to a rooftop party, a place to drink, to feel something, to forget. It wasn’t his scene anymore, it never really was, but he went. Because anything was better than waiting alone.

The rooftop was littered with mismatched lawn chairs and fairy lights. Someone had dragged up a stereo and was blasting music loud enough to challenge the sirens wailing from below. Strangers toasted to the end. People danced like they’d only just remembered how.

Blade stood there at the edge of the roof, a glass of something hard and bitter in his hand. This was the last day he'd ever live. The most absolute form of death was hurtling right toward him. And yet, he found himself mourning not the life he'd lose with the asteroid's impact, but rather the life he could've had all this time. With you.

You were the only thing in the world he'd ever loved. The only person who still held his heart in the palms of your hands even months after breaking up. It was an aching love. All-consuming. The kind that burned and ached and put him through such sweet agony. It was all worth it to have you. To love you had been as natural to Blade as drawing breath. But one too many arguments had led to you leaving him and taking part of him with you.

To be without you was the worst pain Blade had ever endured. A searing sting through his ribs every time he thought of you. He held so much love in what remained of his heart, all for you. Only you. Only ever for you. Yet it had nowhere to go.

He felt nearly out of breath as he stood at that rooftop, longing, yearning for even just a minute more of your love. Just a taste before the end. And as if some god had been listening and decided to take mercy on him, his gaze snagged on you.

God, he didn’t expect you.

Standing across the rooftop like something out of a dream he’d learned not to have anymore. Like time hadn’t moved forward at all since the last time he kissed you. Your hair tousled by the wind, your eyes tired but still impossibly bright. Even the weight of the end couldn’t dull you. It never could.

It knocked the breath out of him.

You didn’t look at him at first. And maybe that was mercy, because he needed a second to pretend he was still okay. But when your eyes finally met his, the ground might as well have cracked open. He felt it in his ribs. Deep and sharp and final.

"Come to me," he begged in an exhale, his feet already moving to meet you halfway.