Rowen glanced blearily at the alarm clock. Two fricking thirty. And nowhere near sleeping. Hn. He rolled onto his back and tried to be fascinated with the ceiling. It was interesting enough, with glow-in-the-dark stars stuck in random patterns above the bed. He smiled a little. It looked like someone barely tall enough had stood tiptoe on the bed and put them up--they didn't go past the edge of the bed.

The tiny creaky hotel bed.

Rowen sighed, thinking wistfully of Mia's house. Well, soon enough they'd be back at home. ~This is supposed to be vacation, remember,~ he told himself sternly, ~Fun.~ And then back to life as usual in a week. Insofar as anything they put their minds to could be normal.

Would sticking up glowing stars count as defacement of hotel property? The random thought amused him, and he felt a stirring of sympathy for the silly soul who'd seen fit to decorate. At least it made the room a little homier.

Stupid tiny hotel rooms. Whose idea had this trip been, anyway? What were they trying to get away from? He'd seen pictures of this place, a quaint little town up in the mountains, crystal-blue lakes, fall-colored trees, the works.

Boring.

Must have been Sai and Sage's doing, somewhere relaxing and natural. Never mind the interminable drive, the emergency lunch breaks (he'd lost count of how many). And whoever let wildfire drive-- one speedbump at 65 mph too many, they'd blown a tire. Replacing a tire on a backwoods road at twilight with only the light of Sage's indiglo watch to see by...

They'd gotten to the quaint (microscopic) town so late that the hotel restaurant was done serving dinner. "Fashionably late, as usual," Sai had quipped. The management hadn't wanted to accomodate them. But Sage, in his inimitably Seiji way, had smiled at their hostess, smiled winningly. She succumbed without much of a fight. Why, yes, there were five rooms left, the last five. And the cooks had plenty of leftovers, if they'd be so kind as to step into the dining room... Kento high-fived Sage: food conspirators. The dining room was all theirs... but Rowen had been too tired to eat much.

He rolled over onto his stomach, which rumbled in protest. ~Oh, now you're hungry,~ he thought. ~Great.~

He'd been so tired that after dinner he'd stumbled from the table straight to his room, barely noticing the directions that the others had gone, their rooms scattered at random through the one-storey hotel.

Heh. And where had that tiredness gone.

He yawned, wishing he had somebody to talk to. Another sigh slipped from him. How many times on the drive here had he wished for peace and quiet and aloneness? And now that he'd got it, he was lying in bed, moping.

Disgusting.

Two forty-five.

He couldn't even remember where in the hotel his friends were, let alone whether or not they were awake. Hmm... He tried to think. There was somebody down the hall by the main desk, somebody by the ice and snack machines--

Snack machine.

He shook himself, rolled his way out of bed. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to find the light switch and rummage through his bag to find a sweatshirt at the same time. He failed at both. In the dark, he couldn't even find his shoes, but he stubbed his toe on the leg of his bed. He swore, and meant it. Nothing as bad as being at loose ends and lonely in a claustrophobic room far from home.

Fine. He'd walk out into the hallway barefoot in just his boxers. Who'd be up, right? Just a two minute food-trip, a little walk.

There was change on the dresser, that felt like about enough.

The door stuck a little, but relented under his shove with a loud groan and an unexpected give. Rowen lurched into the hallway, blinking blinded in the yellow lighting, nursing his stubbed toe.

~Now which way to the snack machine?~ As he tried to get his bearings, the door slid shut--with nary a hitch--behind him.

Click.

He tried the handle anyway, just out of a sense of masochism. Yep. locked out. He couldn't believe it. ~Only here,~ he thought, ~do the doors automatically lock when closed. As a special inconvenience to our guests.~

The snack machine, as it turned out, was temporarily out of order. He was not surprised; he could not find it in himself to be surprised. The ice machine, on the other hand, worked just fine, dispensing complimentary ice. At random. All over the floor.

Rowen shivered a little, wishing he'd been able to find that sweatshirt. ~That's okay,~ he reassured himself, ~you didn't know you'd be spending the night in the hallway.~ Stepping over ice deposits on the carpet, he firmly banished all the fantasies that were beginning to dance in his head--all involving that blue sweatshirt and a sledgehammer to kill the damn snack machine.

He dragged a hand through his hair, looking drearily down the long hallway. With no idea which doors led to his friends, and which to complete strangers ("'Scuse me, sir, but I'm locked out of my room. Could I borrow a sledgehammer?"). He felt a bit like a contestant on a surreal game show.

"Ah, fuck it." He swore out loud, not caring who he'd wake. "I'm going for a walk."

There weren't so many places to go in the little hotel, as it turned out. ~Surprise surprise.~ But he found a window with a deep sill at the end of the long hallway and planted himself there. The glass was chill, but not really that cold, for November, and the stars were out, singing each in their clear crystalline voices. There was just the thinnest comma of a moon punctuating the sky.

He managed a thin smile. The town wasn't so bad-looking by starlight. In fact, it was kind of... quaint. Or at least quiet, and peaceful. Some of the peace seeped into his bones a little...

Or maybe that was the nippiness of the air. ~Did I pack a sweatshirt? Maybe one of the guys has it...~ The bare skin on his shoulders quivered a bit. Still, it was a beautiful crisp night. He thought he could see a glinting flat expanse of water-- that mountain lake, perhaps. There were no lights on in the town that he could see, the world slept.

~All 'cept me.~ It was a heady thought, imagining for a second that he was the only person awake in the whole world. The only person conscious to see the shining of the stars, looking just so, reflected in the obsidian-dark lake.

The winter constellations were on the rise, tilting ponderously above his head. He wished for a fleeting second that his armor orb wasn't locked in his room-- partially because he felt vulnerable without it, but mostly because he had an insane urge to fly.

A shooting star painted its way across the sky. Then another.

A wave of morbidity crashed over him, all unexpected, as the meteor flamed and died. There was something so-- fragile-- about the way the stars held themselves, something terribly temporary in the way his hips felt against the windowledge. He shook his head. Mid-November... that must mean the Leonid meteor shower was doing its thing... but for all the scientific reasoning he tried, he was only left with the feeling that the stars were dying...

Wasn't that the feeling that people sought to avoid by vacationing in places like this? But the tranquility had certainly faded, leaving just an obscure uneasiness behind. Something frustratingly inscrutable, like a language he'd forgotten since his youth, like something he'd lost.

~The bright star of our passage,~ he thought, imagining his own life playing itself out across the stage of the universe, only seconds of illumination, pouring itself young and hot down history's drain.

~I think too damn much. Wandering around god only knows why, at three o'clock in the morning in the middle of November, in my shorts... Time to find some maintenance guy to break down my door. Or fix the snack machine, at least.~

But for a long moment he couldn't move, for no comprehensible reason, sitting with his arms around his knees, watching the meteor shower and mourning for something he couldn't name.

So utterly caught up in feeling sorry for himself, Rowen didn't hear the click of a door being opened, didn't hear the soft approaching footsteps.

"Aren't you cold?" The voice was as sharp as a sword, slicing through his thoughts just as effectively.

He was terribly proud of himself for not falling out of the window, though he couldn't disguise the startled twitch of being thus snuck up on. Fighting down the undignified startled noise he'd almost made, Rowen managed a voice fairly close to his normal one. "Heya, Sage. Just star-gazing. You couldn't sleep eitha?"

"Hm," Sage didn't even grace that with a response. "I thought you might want this." Something warm thumped into Rowen's lap when he didn't turn around... his blue sweatshirt. It felt odd against his chilled skin... he hadn't really realized he was shivering until he had something warm for comparison.

"You had this?" he said, his voice muffled as he shrugged into it, gratefully. ~If you're reading my mind, you're sure taking your frigging time with it.~ He turned to face his friend, night vision vanishing in the garish hallway lighting. He blinked, squinting.

Sage's mouth crooked, but Rowen could hardly see enough to know if it was a smile. "You

forgot to pack it. I picked it up as we left, in case you wanted it." Rowen raised a blue eyebrow. "And you didn't seem as if you wanted company, so I waited to bring it to you."

Rowen felt his jaw go slack, clamped his mouth shut again. So Sage could read his mind. That wasn't the first time that'd happened. Mystical bonds, brothers in arms, and all that. He searched for something to say, found nothing. ~Okay, thank you for gracing me with your good deed for the morning. Now feel free to go along your merry way...~

Sage, to his vast surprise, leaned over him, finger tapping against the glass. "What's that?" he asked, pointing upwards.

"W-what?" Rowen tried to look out the window, but all he could see were their reflections, Sage a whisper's length from his face as he looked outside.

"That constellation, just above the treeline, the one with the three bright stars in a row."

Rowen remembered how to swallow. "Uh, Orion. Those three stars are his belt." Seeing Sage staring so intently out the window, Rowen couldn't help himself. "Since when have you taken up astronomy?"

Sage shrugged, still not looking at him. "Since now." Something in Sage's voice was warm,

dancing like sparkles of sunlight through heavily-leaved trees, but Rowen shivered. "Since I

heard you out here grieving for the stars."

Rowen tried to meet Sage's eyes in their reflection. Words came hard. "Am I that transparent?" He asked, but then he felt something swell in the air between them, a similar ache behind Sage's eyes, equally unspeakable. There was a moment of silence, loss and longing beating twin-hearted against the night. Rowen knew that he should be moved, somehow, knew that it was an unusual thing that the two of them should be sharing the same thoughts out here in the middle of freaking nowhere, when they were supposed to be on a vacation. He knew that he should count it as some kind of personal victory that he'd gotten Sage out of his room just to talk about the stars...

But all he could do was wonder--wonder so intensely it made his skin tingle--if Sage was as chilly as he was, in the poorly lit hotel hallway.

Easy way to find out.

"Ah, Sage, d'you see that constellation, the'ah?" He leaned back from the window, just slightly, pretending to strain to see outside. The curve of his shoulder fit neatly into the hollow of Sage's collarbone, not quite close enough to touch. Close enough to feel the warmth emanating from Sage, though, undeniably. ~Question answered,~ Rowen thought, realizing that his mouth was dry and he'd forgotten how to swallow.

Sage made a soft questioning noise in the back of his throat, as he tried to follow Rowen's pointing finger. "The one that looks like a ‘w'?" Rowen supressed a shiver, Seiji's voice butterflying right against his ear.

"Yeah. That's Cassiopeia." Sage nodded, and Rowen tried not to think about the stray strands of hair that brushed his face. "The ‘w', kind of on its side, is her throne..." His voice was thick, but the words came out all right, and Sage's eyes flickered over the star-pattern with something like a smile.

Rowen was grateful he knew the sky by heart, because the window was filled with Sage's face, just his reflection luminous enough to imprint itself on his mind's eye.

Rowen shifted a little on the windowsill, trying to regain his night vision and lose the double-image shining on the glass. His heart was hammering like mad underneath his ribs. Sage, eyes still intent on Cassiopeia, said, "I'm not sure I can see the whole thing," and lowered his head to the window, echoing Rowen's every shifting movement.

Rowen forgot the stars completely, lost in memorizing the look of Sage's face as he drank in the sky. "Maybe the'a's a glare--" Rowen began, but then Sage's reflection met his thirsty eyes and his voice died.

"May be," Sage said thoughtfully, to the top of Rowen's ear, and Rowen could only watch helplessly as those lips moved, so close to his skin that he could feel the thrum of his speech.

"Ya could open the window?" Rowen felt as if his own voice was far distant from him, as if he were a million miles away watching this happen.

Sage nodded almost conversationally. "You won't be cold?"

Rowen neglected to mention that not only was he not cold, he was beginning to feel downright steamy. He managed what he thought was a light grin. "I'm Strata, remembah? I go for night air." He reached down by his hip to unfasten the windowclasp.

"Let me." Before Rowen could react, Sage's hand was against his waist, long fingers flicking the clasp. He felt the glass lifting easily behind him, slipping against his sweatshirt.

The slightest furrow creased Sage's brow, but Rowen would have sworn it was laughter he

saw shining in those violet eyes. "I think it's stuck."

"Everything's broken in this damn hote--" But the word finished as a gasp, as Sage slid that half-step closer and circled both arms around him, lifting the window with both hands. No longer capable of coherent speech, Rowen sighed open-mouthed into Seiji's neck as he slowly worked the stubborn window all the way open, warmth lingering from his hips to his shoulderblades.

"Sage--" he tried, but the hands against his shoulders had slipped to his waist again, the trailing tingling sensation dancing on his spine. The whole broad night sky was at his back, and Sage was standing before him, wrapping halo-arms around him... Rowen surrendered thought, let his fingers explore the softness of the golden hair at the base of Sage's neck.

"Fixed it," Sage said into Rowen's ear, his voice sounding smug.

"Think ya fixed a hell of a lot more than the window," Rowen pointed out a little breathlessly, his lips against the contour of Sage's cheekbone.

The night no longer sucked the heat from his body; it seemed to give it back again and generously. His heart throbbed against the cave of his chest in the sudden swelling warmth. ~The bright star of our passing,~ Rowen amended his thought, feeling the tint of Sage's thoughts in his own, ~is bright indeed.~

They kissed delicate comet-trails across each others' faces, till their mouths met, tilting with all the weight of planets in eclipse, with neither shadowing the other... drawing light from light.