A couple of days had passed. Pelham had informed April about Roshon leaving for the week, seeing as she - as part of their little circle of friends - had the right to know about it. She had been beyond thrilled to hear that someone she knew at least had their dream at their fingertips, but she didn't miss to point out the fact that Pelham wouldn't be having his best friend around for a while. Not that Pelham was having any objection. As a matter of fact, he and Lucio had gotten really close over the past few days. It was almost as though he knew Lucio for a long time already.

During the first night after Roshon left, Lucio was supposed to have Roshon's room all to himself. Pelham presumed that the boy was ecstatic to have the fairly huge bedroom. That didn't last long, however; the rain and thunder had returned that following night, the lightning piercing across the pitch-black sky, its flash glaring through the curtains and illuminating the dim room. And around one in the morning, Lucio had knocked softly on Pelham's door to ask whether he could sleep in his room instead.

That had just to be one of the things that brought amusement to Pelham even in his most somnolent state when he opened the door to question the circumstance: Lucio Alves was afraid of thunders.

It was considerably normal to be afraid of earsplitting sounds that rocked your guts, but Pelham couldn't help but find it kind of cute.

They were having their first night activity. The teachers had informed them not to prepare too many stuff, seeing as they were merely going to stay outside without performing much activity that involved a lot of energy exertion. It was up to them to pick from any of the three options; collecting fireflies ("You're kidding," Pelham had murmured), torchlight tag and star-gazing ("That's romantic," Lucio had pointed out) Pelham thought it was more of a children's play - or a recreation - rather than something that adolescents would normally do. Though, he had to admit that he himself missed doing those kind of night activities. It had been a long time since he had gone camping, after all.

It was mentioned that the students could change from one activity to another for as long as they wanted, and that they should stop five minutes before curfew - which was at midnight. The other positive part was that they didn't have to be in their group - not necessarily anyway. It was, after all, called the "Night Gathering". Basically, all of the students were going to spend their time outside until midnight.

"What d'you consider?" Pelham asked Lucio thoughtfully once they were gathered outside with the rest of the students, each and every one of them supporting a full belly.

"Er ..." Lucio swung his arms back and forth, alternatively, as he scanned the area.

"We can try all?" Pelham suggested.

"I'm not really in the mood for running around - especially at night,"

"So we cancel the tag game,"

"Yeah, I'm fine with the other two," Lucio nodded. "Collecting fireflies is kind of for kids. I didn't know those creatures existed."

Pelham stifled a snort that was threatening to escape his throat. "You must have a terrible childhood,"

"I never watched Barney, can you believe that?"

"That's really awful,"

"But I watched American Idol," Lucio shrugged offhandedly. When he saw the look of incredulity Pelham was giving him, he said, "That's something!"

Pelham shook his head, finally snorting. Somehow, he couldn't stop smiling around Lucio. He liked the boy, though not in an intimate way. Just because he knew he was an invert, it didn't mean he would instantly become charmed by boys around him. Candid, striking ones - like Lucio Alves - if Pelham were to put them into detail. He still, after all, had a girlfriend. To him, he couldn't simply have another intimate feeling towards someone else, even if they were his type. To him, it was as foul as cheating.

"So, what, you have a passion at singing?" Pelham asked rather jokingly, trying to engage a conversation.

"I sing, but-"

"You do?"

"But I don't feel like exposing that ..." Lucio shrugged.

"Sing, please?"

"I'd rather not,"

"Why not?"

"It's weird," Lucio told him.

Pelham narrowed his eyes at him, and he could see a faint blush creeping up on Lucio's cheeks, despite the darkness. "One day, I'm going to make you sing on the stage," he said.

Lucio huffed. "I can sing on the stage any time I want," he said with a smug grin on his face.

"Let me rephrase that; sing on the stage with an audience,"

"That a challenge?"

"If you're willing to take it, that is," Pelham shrugged, feeling a grin pulling at the corners of his lips "C'mon, let's catch some glowing bugs!"

If Pelham were honest with himself, he also didn't know that fireflies still existed. Each of the student who was joining the little activity was given a small jar and a tiny net, so they all felt like Spongebob and Patrick catching jellyfishes. They were then going deeper into the woods, accompanied by one of the facilitators. It was Lucio who first caught sight of the tiny, twinkling bugs, droning under the foliage like fire ember particles.

Pelham felt his face break into a wide beam when Lucio practically jumped on his spot, gave a yelp of triumph, and ran towards where the a number of small, flickering lights were buzzing in the night sky.

Everyone followed suit, and soon they were met by a really overwhelming sight of fireflies floodlighting the foliage and the undergrowth. Lucio was already running around, brandishing his miniature net as he tried to catch one. Regardless of the abundance of fireflies, it was comparatively a challenge to get hold of one. Nevertheless, all matters of maturity cosigned to oblivion, the adolescents started running around like complete minors. It was, in fact, quite of a strenuous task, considering the fact that they kept bumping into one another. Once or twice, a jar could be heard shattering into pieces. Pelham thought he'd caught one in his net, but then a student ran into him in accident, shouted "Sorry!" without much sparing a glance of what she had done, and ran off.

Just like minors.

He spotted a fat one hovering low above the ground and made to tail after it. But just as he was about to do it, he heard his name being called. "Pel! Pelham! I've caught one! I've caught one, Pelham! I've caught one!"

Lucio was running towards him with a fairly wide beam etched all over his face, hoping on his heels. He was holding the jar, and Pelham saw, not one, but four of the illuminating insects. "Can you even count?"

Lucio's eyes flickered to the jar. "Oh," he said. "I've caught four!"

"And everyone was just starting,"

"How many did you manage to capture?"

In answer, Pelham held out an empty jar. "And you said you've never done this sort of activity," he pointed out.

"Aren't you proud of me, though?"

Pelham sniggered. He put his stuff on the ground and sat down with his leg crossed, Lucio following suit. "Maybe I can have two of them and I can at least feel like I've caught two," he said.

"Never,"

"You're so complacent,"

"You're so full of high vocabulary,"

"D'you need me to list them out?"

"Feel free,"

Lucio was tapping absentmindedly on the small glass jar with the tip of his forefinger, his eyes glowing, following the fireflies as they buzzed idly in there and crawled on the glass wall, fluttering their wings while doing so. But Pelham wasn't looking at the flying luminous insects. In fact, he found himself gazing into Lucio's iridescent eyes, which were reflected by the hue of golden lights. Never once had he realised how bright they actually were, and how mixed up the colours of his eyes were. They were somehow greenish-blue with a tinge of hazel here and there. He also hadn't noticed about Lucio's full and red lips, or his neat, thick black eyebrows, in contrast to his pale, white skin.

Pelham found himself gazing at Lucio Alves.

Lucio's eyes moved from the jar and landed on Pelham. In that one second, Pelham panicked a little and made to put it off by pretending to be looking over Lucio's shoulder. Pelham felt a rush of warmth flood down his spine to the rest of his body at that, and he knew - he bleeding knew - that Lucio had caught him staring at him. He tried to think otherwise, but to not avail.

What the ruddy hell did I just do?

"Aren't you going to catch some?" Lucio asked, seemingly indifferent to the thickening awkward tension between them.

"I can try,"

And try he did. He managed to capture just one after twenty minutes of trailing after a really fat one that was hovering above the ground. Lucio was laughing at his effort. It must be a reasonably wacky sight; a towering seventeen-year-old stooping low and trotting after one fat bug, while holding an empty glass jar along with a pocket-sized net. Though, Pelham couldn't help but feel contented and pleased with himself as he brandished the glass jar with the captured firefly in it, which didn't do much but crawl around the walls. And after that, the two of them simply resolved to go and gaze the stars after an irrelevant row of whether or not the bugs would be enthralled by stars.

There were surprisingly less students there; sprawled out on the grass, forefingers held in the air, idly tracing invisible lines from one star to another as they tried to reason out the constellations. Some couples were cuddling, which just strongly reminded Pelham of the time when he and April went to his roof on New Year's Eve and nearly fell, vowing afterwards not to repeat it.

Some students were huddled in groups, laughing together. The rest were just in solitary, distancing themselves from everyone else, as though they needed their privacy in public, like a forsaken star in the constellation system.

Pelham looked up at the star-strewn sky. A sigh escaped his lips as he saw just how there were an abundance of them, like the fireflies earlier, floodlighting and twinkling the pitch-black sky. Winking. Static. He heard a soft thud next to him and saw that Lucio had dropped to the ground, four limbs spread out, eyes fixated on the sky - on the stars.

"This is honestly the cheekiest thing anyone could ever dream of doing," Pelham remarked, sitting down on the grass next to Lucio, whose eyes beamed as vivid as the stars.

"What, you mean you and Rosh never did this before?"

Pelham gave Lucio a weird look. "Is that even a question?"

"Who knows?"

*

Lucio pressed his lips together. Pelham was edgy, he could tell that by the way the older boy was looking at everywhere else except him. And he thought he knew why; people were going to presume that they were together - really together - if he and Pelham got close like this to gaze at the stars. He darted is eyes around him without much as turning his head; all of the couples star-gazing consisted of a male and a female. Even if there were two males gazing at the stars, they were at least in groups. But maybe that was just him being a little too apprehensive. It was Pelham. The boy had a girlfriend. And nobody in this country knew about Lucio, apart from two people.

"I can go over there alone, if you-"

"What?" Pelham asked suddenly. Then comprehension seemed to dawn on Pelham's face. "Oh, you're not comfortable. Okay, I understand-"

"I'm fine," Lucio said, sitting up in case Pelham tried to move. "I thought you'd be uncomfortable."

Pelham smiled and shook his head. And Lucio somehow felt relief flood through him. If Pelham didn't mind the homophile, then Lucio will definitely not mind coming out to him. However, due to past ordeal, he didn't think he would ever repeat the mistake - let alone when his infatuation towards Pelham seemed to bloom.

Pelham dropped on his back next to Lucio. At that point, heat was coursing through his body. Perhaps it was just Lucio not thinking straight again. Of course it had been him. For instance; earlier, he thought he found Pelham gazing at him, except that when he directed his eyes at Pelham, the boy was actually looking at somewhere else.

Lucio could not let the feeling affect him.

The last time it happened, the whole world had its back on him.

"So what are we supposed to do with the stars?" Pelham asked all of a sudden, nonchalant about his choice of words.

"You said that as if they've got feelings or something,"

"Unless you refer 'stars' as in celebrities-"

"Okay, okay, okay,"

Lucio felt Pelham shift his head; he could feel Pelham's eyes boring on the side of his head. When Lucio turned his head so he was facing Pelham, he found that Pelham had a small smile on his face - not the goofy smirk he always had. This one was rather soft and relatively genuine. How, Lucio asked himself, can someone be so carefree?

"What?" Lucio said in a whisper - which he regretted; he sounded like someone who was head over heels with someone. He wasn't, of course. He wouldn't let that in.

Pelham seemed to snap out of reverie. "What 'what'?" he asked, as if that stare hadn't just meant anything.

Lucio should lower his expectations more. "You ... nothing," Lucio could practically feel blush creeping from the base of his neck to his cheeks.

"Is star-gazing even an activity?"

"Why the curiosity?"

"It's just ... looking at the stars," Pelham seemed to be talking to himself. "Sorry if that sounds too blunt."

"I think the correct phrase is 'observing the stars'," Lucio pointed out.

"I'm not an astronomist,"

"Astronomer,"

"What?"

"You said 'astronomist'," Lucio said. "No such word exists, scientifically speaking. It's called an astronomer. You know, a person who studies celestiel bodies."

"Nerd,"

"Now you don't have to embarrass yourself in front of the brainy people,"

Pelham snorted. "Not a lot of people pay attention to the stars," he murmured, more to himself than to Lucio. "I think that's why they're holding this activity. But what do they know, really? Stars. Twinkles. The general ones, I guess. What's your opinion?"

Lucio shrugged. "I don't know," he said truthfully. "I know nothing unless I study them. Like us, stars have their own stories. Nobody bothers to open a book to seek for a certain knowledge unless they're curious and fishy. Same as us, don't you think? First we're alone, then we're connected to form constellations, and we stand out amongst the rest. We're known to the whole universe. Sometimes I think that's why celebrities are called "stars". Just saying."

"That's ... insightful."

Lucio didn't want to avert his gaze from the stars to Pelham, because he could feel the latter's eyes boring into the side of his head again.