Hazel and Augustus go to his room and have sex

After the emotional intensity of the Anne Frank House, where they had kissed to the applause of strangers, Hazel and Augustus returned to the Hotel Filosoof. Standing on the brick sidewalk in a light drizzle, Hazel suggested they go to his room. Augustus agreed, calling it one of the better ideas he had heard. They squeezed into the tiny mirrored elevator together, and as it creaked slowly upward, Hazel kissed him. Augustus pointed at the mirror and said, "Look, infinite Hazels." Hazel, mimicking Peter Van Houten, drawled, "Some infinities are larger than other infinities." Augustus called Van Houten an assclown. The elevator lurched to a halt, and Augustus pushed the mirrored door open, but he winced in pain and lost his grip for a second. When Hazel asked if he was okay, he said the door was just heavy. In the hallway, a stalemate ensued as Hazel worried he was trying to find a way not to hook up with her. Then Augustus broke the silence, describing his prosthetic leg: "It's above my knee and it just tapers a little and then it's just skin. There's a nasty scar, but it just looks like—" Hazel cut him off, saying, "Oh, get over yourself," and took the two steps to reach him. She kissed him hard, pressing him against the wall, and kept kissing him as he fumbled for the room key.

The Act Itself

They crawled into the bed, Hazel's freedom circumscribed by her oxygen tube, but she was able to get on top of him and take his shirt off. She tasted the sweat on the skin below his collarbone and whispered into his skin, "I love you, Augustus Waters." His body relaxed beneath hers as he heard her say it. He reached down and tried to pull her shirt off, but it got tangled in the tube, and she laughed. As she disentangled her shirt, she crawled under the covers and kicked out of her jeans and socks, watching the comforter dance as beneath it, Augustus removed first his jeans and then his leg. They lay on their backs next to each other, everything hidden by the covers. Hazel reached over for his thigh and let her hand trail downward to the stump, the thick scarred skin. She held the stump for a second, and he flinched. When she asked if it hurt, he said no. He flipped onto his side and kissed her. "You're so hot," she said, her hand still on his leg. He joked that she had an amputee fetish, and she explained, "I have an Augustus Waters fetish." The whole affair was the precise opposite of what Hazel had figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet, neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic. There were a lot of condom problems that she did not get a particularly good look at. No headboards were broken. No screaming. It was probably the longest time they had ever spent together without talking.

Aftermath and the Love Letter

Afterward, Hazel rested her face against Augustus's chest, listening to his heart pound. Augustus said, "Hazel Grace, I literally cannot keep my eyes open." Hazel corrected him, "Misuse of literality." He said he was so tired. His face turned away from her, and she listened to his lungs settle into the rhythm of sleep. After a while, Hazel got up, dressed, found Hotel Filosoof stationery, and wrote him a love letter. The letter was brief: "Dearest Augustus, yrs, Hazel Grace." She left it for him, a quiet testament to the intimacy they had just shared, an intimacy that had been built on the understanding that their time was finite and precious, and that this act was a choice to embrace life and love in the face of oblivion.