''Ne, Sirix?''

Light orange-haired head turned to gaze at the other man. Loleus was wearing a soft smile, and Sirix couldn't erase the feeling that there is something that isn't showing in that single soft smile.

''You know that I like you, right?''

Sirix's brows furrowed together and he looked up with a questioning glance. Something was wrong, he just couldn't place it on what was wrong. He settled with answering unsurely.

''Yes...''

Loleus laughed, hard. And at the sound of his best friend's laughter, Sirix couldn't help but smile as well.

The nagging feeling didn't stop, it only grew.

Loleus stretched out his hands wide and looked at him straight to the eyes-with piercing, even gaze. Yet Sirix felt that at that moment, Loleus wasn't quite himself. Sirix wasn't even sure that he is quite himself as well. Or if it is the abnormality in Loleus that made him not quite himself, for his usual self would run to Loleus and ask him if he is sick. This him didn't, and it was strange.

The sun was setting and they were on a hill, Loleus laughing on top of the hill and the way the last rays of the sun played on his face, Sirix couldn't erase the feeling of sadness in his friend's antic. He walked to the top and stopped Loleus from his moment of laugh, turning the orange-haired face to face him directly and was quite unsuccessful in containing his gasp of shock. For there on his friend's face, is like agony and pain written all over it.

It reminded him of the time when he first met his friend, when the orange-haired man only gives out pained and strained smiles, when his eyes were as dull as it can get. Sirix wasn't shock at the pain it cause in his chest, like he was seeing one of his most precious person in the process of breaking and could do nothing to avoid it or help them. He just didn't expect to be mesmerized by how those eyes weren't quite as how he remember it to be. They weren't dull. They were never dull, and Sirix swore he was such a moron for ever thinking that those amber eyes are dull. Even in his servitude to Daios, there was a spark in those eyes.

Now staring right back, those sparks were coming back with tenfold intensity. A myriad of emotions, with the most apparent as pain. It choked him out of air, the sight.

''Really?''

And it accused him of lying. He couldn't defend himself.

''Do you really, truly, understand?''

He opened his mouth to question, his mind in a swirl of stormy wind that jumbled everything and anything he had ever known, but Loleus didn't let him. He shook his head and smiled. Why Sirix dare to compare Serena's smile with his best friend's smile, then daring to think that Loleus would look so pretty if he smile that gentle smile with those hypnotizing amber eyes more, he didn't know. Maybe he feared the reason.

Loleus' finger found its way to shut Sirix's mouth, and the pleading look to not ask in Loleus' eyes was enough to shut him for good.

''You don't understand.''

He wanted to scream that he did understand, but the fact that he truly didn't, coupled with the understanding in those orbs of amber, stripped him of any of those excessive energy he usually runs around with. He found, much to his disgust, himself nodding meekly. Unable to deny Loleus' words and merely watching as his friend broke, he gritted his teeth in frustration.

A cool hand wound its way to his face, cupping his cheeks lightly. He almost want to cry as he lean more into the cool touch. Almost, but he didn't. Opening his eyes, he was met with a genuine smile that made him choke in his insecurities and sudden whirlwind of emotion. Loleus opened his mouth and Sirix watched it with utmost intensity, reasons be damned as the hovering thought behind his head kept screaming at why he was ogling his best friend with the gaze he would only use to look at Serena. He couldn't put himself into awareness of his situation right now, not while the only function his body could manage is to ogle the way Loleus' mouth moves. He must be going crazy, both with how Loleus looked different and how his mind couldn't muster anything of his usual attitude towards his best friend.

''Your most precious person is Serena, right?''

That's more of a statement than a question. Sirix couldn't answer. And Loleus didn't pry. He merely smiled again, a smile that Sirix's crazy mind had dubbed as the radiant smile. The place for the most radiant smile in Sirix's inner ranking system was going into a jumble.

Everything is numbed in his sense, even as Loleus turned back to tug him all the while in his usual cheeriness, yelling about dinner. Body on autopilot, he merely ran in the way the hand on his wrist tug him to.

Craziness switch turned on to the fullest, his mind supplied that he wouldn't mind being dragged by that hand anywhere, which his common sense immediately slapped away.

He shook his head fervently after that mental slap, and ducked his head as he thought about Loleus' more-question-than-statement once again.

'Is Serena truly my most precious person?'

Lifting his head to gaze at the cheery orange-haired once again, Sirix truthfully wouldn't know.

A.N. Pre-slash as I imagine it