Romell Cyprus toyed with the thing around his neck for a moment, his eyes flashing across the dark expanse of the field. Fraser glanced to his side to watch Romell as he did so, frowning softly to himself.

       “You play with that thing a lot y’know.” Fraser mumbled out softly, his eyes darting to the left to see Romell out of the corner of his blue eyes. Romell looked back at him, his lips in a tight line. His fingers slowed their persistent touching of the medallion and slowly fiddled up across the chain and to the back of his neck, gliding their way into his red hair.  

       Fraser seemed to notice then, which he hadn’t took time to notice before, that Romell Cyprus was attractive. Not by human standards, no… he was too different. Humans weren’t fond of different. But in Shifter standards? Difference was something to be praised, the more different and unique you were, the better. And Romell… well he certainly was different. With his large ears and neon hair and glowing eyes… yes he most certainly wasn’t what you saw everyday. It wasn’t the sort of beauty that Fraser had, however. The sort of beauty that made people stop to watch you walk by and oh and ah. Romell wasn’t something you’d stop to stare at. It was the kind of beauty that if one were grazing their eyes past they may stop and look at Romell. Maybe just for a moment. A moment was all it took. And one might think to themselves, “Well my… he’s quite lovely in actuality”. Because he was. Romell Cyprus wasn’t a sex god, he wasn’t beautiful or handsome or anyone’s exact first choice for physical pleasure. He was just… lovely. He was that nerdy boy you knew in school who perhaps you didn’t exactly have a massive crush on him, because no, he was no all-star quarterback, nor was he the leader of the cheerleaders. Romell was the boy who would sit in the back and play, alone, with his necklace. But every now and then you might find yourself looking back. Find yourself glancing to see him and everytime seeming like the first. And maybe you didn’t love him. No one would expect you too. But he make you smile. And while that may not have been enough for a highschool romance, it was enough for you to admire him. Not love, no… but appreciate.

        Fraser’s eyes held firm on the locket. “Holds meaning for you, I bet.” Fraser started, but caught himself with a quiet laugh. “I mean, I know it holds meaning for you.” He gestured to it a little softly. “It’s the shape of a heart for god sake, no one just wears a heart necklace without it meaning something.”

       Romell rubbed his neck with a hum in response. He wasn’t quite sure what to answer that. “I suppose so, yeah. Yeah, it means something to me.” Romell’s fingers trailed the length of the chain slowly, each new rung in the metal seeming different than the last. Somehow new, like Romell’s brushing fingertips had never felt it before. But they had. He’d explored that god darn chain over a thousand times, over a thousand minutes, a thousand hours, a thousand days, what felt to him like more than a thousand years. He had every crack and rust spot on that chain memorized. And somehow, still, it felt foreign to his touch.

      “From someone special, I assume?” Fraser asked softly, his eyes roaming across Romell’s collar bones where the long necklace hung. His look came up, meeting Romell’s. Almost immediately, Romell’s fiery eyes darted away as if he didn’t dare to meet Fraser’s own. Like perhaps he was too scared.

      “Yeah, they used to be.” Romell said quietly, twirling part of the chain around his index finger in a ring. Every now and then he’d look down, realizing he was still touching it and stop abruptly as if it had burned him. Then he’d look up, look up to see Fraser, and forget the lesson he just taught himself, and would once again toy with the chain. Then the cycle would repeat.

       Fraser paused, his eyebrows furrowing. “Dead?”

       It wasn’t uncommon for Shifter lovers to be torn apart by death. Long before the “do us part” in the end of our days sort of thing. Shifter romances didn’t last all that long. Simply because, in this world, Shifter lives didn’t last that long. Hard enough keeping one alive. How could they manage to keep up with two?

      Romell choked himself on a hoarse laugh. “Hell if I know.”

      That threw Fraser for a loop. Usually if something meant so much to be worn everyday, played with every second, the owner might now what happened to the meaning of the necklace. Fraser glanced away to see down the dusty road in the dark. “Bad break up, huh?”

      Romell laughed real that time. Fraser looked at Romell with sad eyes. It was a pathetic laugh, one heard from a dying breath. A forced laugh, one trying to pretend the worst situation to be the best. A sad laugh, Fraser knew, was the only one that Romell could muster after so much time. “That would be an understatement.” Romell threw a trying-desperately-to-seem-happy smile.

     “They break up with you, or you break up with them?” Fraser knew he shouldn’t pry. It was rude. But he wanted to know.

      Romell shrugged a little, as if he were trying to shove a persistent weight from his back. “Sort of a mutual thing.” He hummed softly.

      He was no longer looking at Fraser, but instead straight forward into the darkness. He stared at the darkness with nothing more than yearning. A yearning for the darkness to come closer. To swallow him whole. Fraser paused once more, casting a look to the yearning Romell. Not many mutual breakups left so many scars. Romell could sense the look Fraser was giving him and he shifted slightly on the toolbox.

      “I mean, I guess, thinking back to it now…” Romell’s firefly eyes looked up to the stars. The galaxy’s own firefly eyes. “Perhaps he wanted it more than me…Taylor-” He caught himself on the name, his tongue suddenly not working properly as his throat closed.

      Fraser looked at him with soft, understanding eyes. Taylor… Fraser made sure to make a note of that for later.

      “Taylor was always the one to lead me to a consensus… didn’t matter whether I wanted it or not, I guess… Never been a decision maker in honesty… I suppose-” Romell coughed. “I suppose I just followed Taylor. Whether he led me in the right direction or not.” He let out a soft breath. “Now, thinking on it, I shouldn’t have trusted him to tell me which way to go… came back to bite me in the ass in the end.” He looked back at the sky again. “All that time thinking I had to follow him because I could never be the one to know which way to go and he was actually the one leading me astray.” His tone flooded sadness. Fraser could almost feel the depression and desperation seeping from Romell and into him like water. Fraser didn’t quite know what he should say after that. There were so many things to say. It was a heavy subject. A painfully heavy subject. And Fraser could tell it was one Romell didn’t want to talk about. He felt like he had forced Romell to let out that part about his past. His eyes suddenly went to Romell’s necklace again.

      Romell had a death grip on the heart medallion, clasping it tight in his fist. So tight in fact, Fraser worried he might break it. Romell’s knuckles were white.

      In a hope, and slight panic and need, to lighten the mood, he supposed, Fraser looked to Romell with a thin smile. “I didn’t know you were gay.” Probably wasn’t the right thing to say…

      Romell cast Fraser back a look with no expression. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Fraser Hunt.” He looked back to the fireflies. “I suppose that would be the side effect of not knowing me at all.”

       Fraser went quiet beside him. And slowly, reluctantly, he too went to look up at the fireflies in the darkness. Both boys, in silence, praying quietly to be swallowed whole by the darkness and wondering if they were truly going in the right direction after all. However, with no one left to guide them... how were they supposed to know?