Here it is! The last chapter.

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It's been an amazing ride-I loved writing every word of this story, and I hope that you all enjoyed it, too. I so appreciate you taking the time and energy to read the words that I've written. Every one comes straight from my soul. Overdramatic, perhaps, but I mean it. And you guys make this whole, sometimes frustrating, writing thing way worth it.

Shameless plug: if you liked this story, take a look at some of my others! I have a few others currently in the works so keep a lookout for those, too

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Love you all so much, enjoy the final installation of "Lovely As You Are."

Fight on loves

24

Arthur had an IV in his arm. He was calm and quiet in his bed. His eyes were open, somehow glimmering, as he stared vacantly at the ceiling. His gaze shifted when Alfred walked inside and closed the door behind him. The corners of his lips twitched, he blinked slowly, his fingers lifted from the bed ever so slightly.

"Al," he breathed. His voice was hardly there. Alfred did his best to muster a smile. He sat down in the chair beside Arthur's bed and grabbed his hand in both of his.

"Hey, Arthur," he said.

"I must look terrible."

"You look beautiful. So beautiful."

He looked like he could have done a photoshoot. Divine, haunting.

"You look rather banged up yourself. Did you win, love?"

"Yeah, I won."

"Really? I'm so glad," Arthur smiled. He closed his eyes, as if he didn't have enough energy to smile and keep them open at the same time. "I was so worried about you."

"Come on, I told you I'd be fine."

You? Worried about me?

"I should've trusted you more."

"Yeah. You should've."

Alfred squeezed Arthur's hand. Perhaps too hard. Perhaps not hard enough. He leaned forward against the bed and put his hand to Arthur's cheek. Brushed the strands of sweaty, matted hair from his forehead.

"You're a champion now. I'm so proud of you."

"I don't think it's really sunk in yet," Alfred said.

"Al, can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

He didn't want to cry in front of Arthur, but the tears came anyway. He smiled to keep them at bay, but that only made them flow harder.

"If you could take me anywhere in the world, at this very moment, where would you take me?"

"Back to Lake Placid," Alfred said without hesitation.

"Really? How funny. I was thinking the same thing. You could teach me how to really swim, and we could hike every trail there."

"There are, like, hundreds..."

"We'd do all of them."

"Sure we would."

"And we'd bring Alfred Fuzzy Jones with us. I'm sure he'd like to hike."

Alfred bit his lower lip, but it wasn't enough to keep the sob from escaping his lips. Arthur blinked at him slowly.

"I'm sorry, Alfred."

"You don't have to apologize..."

"If I had been better, you wouldn't be crying."

"It's not your fault," Alfred said. He brought Arthur's hand to his lips.

"I wish you didn't have to see me like this," Arthur sighed. He looked back up at the ceiling. Then Alfred noticed the tears on his cheeks, too. "I don't want it to be how you remember me."

"Hey, stop talking like that," Alfred said. "We still have a lot to do. We still have to see the rest of New York. We still have to take that road trip in England. You still have a movie to finish filming! And somewhere out there, there's a corgi waiting for you to adopt it. I won, and you promised, remember?"

"Let's play truth or dare, Al," Arthur said. His voice was so quiet. "You go first. Truth or dare?"

"I'm a bit scared of your dares." Alfred kissed Arthur's hand again. He was shaking terribly. "Truth."

"Okay, truth." Arthur closed his eyes once more. "What would you do if I died?"

Alfred couldn't answer. There were no words for him to say.

"Would you wear black, and keep a picture of me in your wallet? Would you buy a dog, or a cat, or even a fish, and name it Arthur? Would you go to my funeral and meet my brothers, and become their friend?"

"I'd stop believing in god," Alfred murmured. "There can't be someone so sick and twisted that he'd bring you into my life and make me fall in love with you and then take you out like that."

"I don't think it would be god's fault. Just the way things worked out."

"I'm sorry, Arthur."

He could hardly say his name.

"Al, would you tell me how much you love me? Please? The way you did that night at the lake. Do you remember?"

"You're like a painting," Alfred whispered. He remembered so well every word.

"Yeah, that's it." Arthur opened his eyes slowly. He smiled. "Will you come into bed with me, please? Hold me?"

Alfred was gentle when he lifted the sheets that covered Arthur's body and eased himself into the bed beside him. He was afraid that if he rocked the bed too hard, took up too much room, Arthur would disappear right before his eyes and that would have been so cruel, so unfair. Arthur turned to his side and reached weakly toward Alfred's chest. Alfred wrapped his arms around that frail, barely breathing body, and pulled it in, until he could feel the raspy breaths on his neck and fit his lips against Arthur's forehead.

"Tighter, please."

He squeezed tighter.

Even now, he smelled like roses.

"Will you keep going for me, Al?"

Alfred kissed Arthur's forehead and began whispering into his ear.

"You move like watercolor. You breathe out colors of the sunset, you blink in shades of grass and emerald green. You touch me the way an artist touches brush to canvas, you mark my skin and bleed your paint onto me. Sometimes you're saturated and bright, sometimes you speak in gray and black hues. Everything about you is beautiful."

"Even now? I'm still beautiful now?"

"The most beautiful person I've ever seen in my life. At this very moment," Alfred said.

"I wish I could tell you how much I loved you, too. Like a poet," Arthur sighed. His body shaking like a baby bird, but also like a tsunami that drowned Alfred in its magnificence. "But I think I love you too much to describe. And I'm tired, anyway."

"Don't leave me, please."

"Keep holding me, just like this."

Arthur released any and all tension in his limbs and let himself fall completely against Alfred. Trusting him to carry him somewhere, anywhere, that wasn't this hospital bed. When Alfred glanced down at Arthur's pale, tear-stained face, he saw a smile. The most dazzling smile Arthur had ever given him.

"I don't want you to go," Alfred murmured. "Please, don't go. Not after what you did for me-what you gave me…"

"Shh. I didn't give you anything, my darling," Arthur said.

"Yes you did. You gave me a reason to love, a reason to be strong. You're the best thing that ever happened to me, Arthur. You can't go."

"Would you smile, please? I want to see your smile, Al. My beautiful, my crazy Alfred. Your smile is so perfect."

Alfred smiled.

"There it is. Lovely as always."

Arthur's eyes lost their light. He closed them, and his breathing slowed, just like when he would fall asleep. That's what it felt like, then. Like those nights when Alfred had held Arthur so close and paid attention to every single breath until the sighs of wakefulness turned to sighs of sleep. And he could feel Arthur drifting off because he tended to trust Alfred more in his sleep-trusted him to keep him warm, secure, have a chest to use as his pillow and a pair of arms his blanket. Arthur was falling asleep now in Alfred's arms, trusting him, saying without saying it, Carry me.

"Soon our paths will converge again," he said. Just like he'd said in his letter one year ago. "I know it."

"Please, please, please..." Alfred wasn't sure who he was begging, or for what.

"Thank you for the love that you gave me. I will cherish it always. You know that, don't you? That you gave me a forever? You gave me a forever."

Alfred's tears flowed down into Arthur's hair.

"Al?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm so tired."

"You can go to sleep. It's okay. I'll hold you."

"You won't leave?"

"No. Never."

"All right...I'll see you in the morning, Al. I love you."

"I love you more."

Alfred held Arthur until he fell asleep. Then he walked out of the room, made his way to where the others were waiting, and told them that he wanted to go home.

Kiku secured tickets for Alfred, Matthew, and François to London for the funeral. Arthur, he knew, wouldn't have wanted it to be in America. His heart was in London, after all. Matthew helped Alfred find a nice suit, and in the moments that Alfred lost his composure Matthew and François told him to take his glasses off and handed him tissues. He couldn't turn on the television because Arthur was all over the news—either Arthur, or Alfred. The resurrected hero who took down the villainous Ivan the Terrible, ripped the championship from his hands and was slated to stay champion for a while.

Alfred couldn't handle it so he kept the television off. He avoided any press at all. Matthew, while he was soft-spoken and quiet most of the time, kept the paparazzi leeches away from Alfred like a bouncer.

Of course Alfred couldn't be happy that he'd won. Couldn't feel like the champion that he now was. He didn't feel any satisfaction. He couldn't remember what had happened in the fight, even when he watched and watched and rewatched the YouTube videos in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep. Every time the good memories were washed away by the bad ones. The awful ones. The refreshing, blood-pumping smell of the ring was replaced by the clinical smell of that Las Vegas hospital. The rush of winning replaced by the terror he'd felt in the waiting room. The vision of Ivan the Terrible at his feet replaced by the vision of Arthur, tears on his cheeks, smiling in the hospital bed.

"Okay, Al. Are you ready?"

He was fixing his suit in the mirror on the morning of the funeral. Matthew and François were standing behind him. François was trying to help him get his defiant cowlick down. It had always been pretty rebellious. But François was good with it.

"No."

"It's okay. We'll be right next to you, chéri," François murmured. "If it becomes too much, tell us."

"I'll be fine, guys." Alfred smiled at them, straightened his glasses. "Man, what should I tell his family? How do I introduce myself? Do you think he told them about me? No, definitely not."

"Just tell them you were a very close friend. I'm sure Kiku has spoken to them."

"I hope his brothers are nice. And his parents. I mean, Arthur wasn't close with them, but I still want to get to know them."

"I bet they're glad that you're here."

"I hope you're right."

Arthur's family was there. The service was shorter than Alfred had been expecting. Before it started he introduced himself to Arthur's parents and his three younger brothers.

"My name is Alfred. I was a very good friend of Arthur's."

They didn't seem to be listening to him. They generically thanked him for coming. Only his mother and youngest brother were crying. Alfred was somehow dry-eyed. They weren't interested in talking to him, he could tell. They were nothing like Arthur, nothing at all, and Alfred apologized to Arthur.

"I don't think I'll be able to get close to your family. Sorry."

He sat and he listened to the service with Matthew on one side and François on the other. He couldn't remember what anybody had said about Arthur. His parents didn't speak for very long. Only one of his brothers—the youngest, the same one who'd been crying—spoke.

When the time came to put the casket in the ground Alfred couldn't do it. Suffocating, gripping his heart, eyes stinging, he ran back to the car Kiku had sent for him and he sat in the backseat and he sobbed. He sobbed until Matthew and François returned. Matthew held onto him like he was an infant, crying but unable to ask for what he wanted. There was no way to get it, after all.

I finally got to see London, Arthur.

Sorry I couldn't see it with you.

It was dark. One week after the funeral, back in New York City. Alfred had spent another night alone in his room, but he couldn't sleep. It must have been two, or three in the morning. Coach had called him, but he hadn't answered. He was to go back to the gym tomorrow, keep training. Someone was set to challenge him in a few months and he needed to be ready to defend his championship.

Alfred stepped into his ripped jeans, put on a leather jacket, fixed his glasses, grabbed a protein bar and went down to his Thunderbird. He could almost hear Arthur's voice in his head.

And just where are you going, James Dean?

He smiled to himself and he drove wishing that he had a pack of gummy bears. Drove, drove, until he was in front of the hospital. He hadn't really planned on coming this way, but now that he was here, he needed to go inside. There was something very important he needed to do, something that he'd needed to do for a while. He went inside, took the elevator, passed by the nurse's station. He was worried for a second that he had the wrong room. He hadn't been here in a few weeks.

Ludwig looked just as he had back when Coach had brought Alfred here the first time. He hadn't changed at all. Even on the bed like that, he looked like a fighter. Alfred knew that he would never open his eyes again. He wasn't sure if he could even hear him, but he sat down beside the bed and he spoke to him anyway.

"Hey, Blitzkrieg," he said. "How are you doing? Hope you don't think it's weird, me coming to visit you. We never met when you were...when you were a fighter. I didn't even know Coach then. But you were really inspiring anyway."

He smiled and crossed his legs.

"Sorry, maybe you'd rather I call you Ludwig. Anyway, I watched your fight with Ivan the Terrible. Coach gave me the video. You fought so well. You didn't deserve what was done to you. But I have really good news. That's why I'm here, actually."

Alfred had cried a lot in the past few weeks. So he hardly noticed when the tears fell.

"I won. I beat Ivan the Terrible. I'm the champion. Coach and I beat him. Isn't that awesome? I wouldn't have been able to do it without you. I think Coach did all of it, trained me and stuff, thinking about you."

You move like watercolor. You breathe out colors of the sunset, you blink in shades of grass and emerald green. You touch me the way an artist touches brush to canvas, you mark my skin and bleed your paint onto me. Sometimes you're saturated and bright, sometimes you speak in gray and black hues. Everything about you is beautiful.

Alfred lifted his glasses and used the back of his sleeve to wipe his eyes.

It was always hospitals.

"We got him for you. So you have to wake up and challenge me next. To take back your title..."

Alfred leaned his head down on Ludwig's bed.

"Don't you just hate this hospital?" he breathed. "I fucking hate this hospital."

Maybe that wasn't fair. The hospital had given him something wonderful, after all.

"Well, guess I'll come visit you again soon, Blitzkrieg."

He stood up, mustered his smile, put his hands in his pockets. For the first time in his life, he was craving a cigarette.

Look at your lips—they dance and they speak acrylics. Your eyes are each a different universe that I'm floating between. I'm trapped in that little gap between your teeth. I put my palms against your chest, like this, and the touch overwhelms me so much that I worry for a moment that I've lost my heartbeat. That mine is yours, yours is mine, I don't know. When you yell at me I hear music. When I carry you on my back I feel like a missing piece has been fitted to me.

When he got home, he put in his headphones and got on his computer.

Lovely as you are.

He went to the humane society's website and looked at the dogs that were up for adoption. There weren't any corgis, but there was a golden retriever puppy.

Lovely as you are.

"Can't wait to meet you, Arthur."