Birthday-

He woke up with a pounding headache and sluggishly pulled himself out of bed, careful not to disrupt the sleeping stranger and immediately spotted the empty bottles on his desk, then glanced back to the unknown man curled up on his bed. Whatever he did, he knew he would probably regret it.

Tossing on his clothes he immediately got to work, starting laundry and brewing coffee, just waiting for the stranger to wake up. Remembering the beer bottles on his desk he walked back into the small bedroom, and gathered them up, as well as an evelope he had no recollection of recieving.

Tearing it open sloppily after throwing away the bottles, he squinted to read the cramped scrawl on slightly crinkled notebook paper.

"Happy birthday! I hope you have a good one lovely!"

The man smiled faintly, tracing the little heart they wrote next to their writing with his index finger, and wondered why he even took it out of the drawer. Maybe to remember their voice. It didn't matter though, they were gone. Just not absent from his mind.

He set the birthday card one of the desk's many drawers and turned to the still sleeping figure on his bed.

Weighing whether he should wake up his apparent partner from the night, he walked over and gave the pale man a light shake. No response. Again, he shook him, a bit harder this time. Again, again.

He didn't even have to check the pulse.

The cold body was enough to know it was what happened to his sister.

A sleeping figure that stayed asleep.