A/N: Valentine's Day challenge for Redblade.org. 500 or 600 words, more or less. Experimental POV. And Joseph/Zeo. Yes.

"Shadow's Shade"

(Joseph's POV)

They say it's bad luck to hurt a cricket.
I don't care.

You love the streetlamps. The one across the street, so small, so dim, reminds you of the firefly, a miniature sun in a jar.

You worship the moon. She was your nightlight those cloudless midnights in the trees, when there was nothing to worry about; when bitbeasts were only a children's story.

In the night, a cricket chirps.

Now, though, the streetlamp burnishes his hair but there's no escaping from the fact that it's a shade of yours.

And the moon flounders in his eyes, watercolor versions of someone else's.

You hate the streetlamp across the street.

You hate the moon tonight.

They betray you.

Chirp.

A long coil of his hair rests in the palm of your hand. You have to resist the urge to close your fist around it, to yank it. Now and then you even have to stop yourself from snatching up the nearest sharp object and lopping off the entire lovely mop. Just to prove you can.

And sometimes, when the shadowy things come creeping in the night, back in the warehouse, you lie in the dark and think about taking out your blade and figuring out just how keen the edge is. You think about painting the walls in crimson and throwing on the lights, just to show them -- her -- them that you can.

Chirp.

But you don't do any of that, because you can still smell his breath, hot and sweet, and the sheets are not yet cool, far from neat, and at night every mistake goes under cover of darkness.

Even the ones that began with a meeting in the street and a meeting of a different sort that should never have happened.

You can still smell his breath. You can still taste his breath.

Chirp.

But his hair is a shade of yours. His eyes are distilled from someone else's. He is the Shade and you are the Shadow. You've already been swallowed by the darkness. He clings to the world of the living and the light while they trample him under their feet. Because he is only a shade.

He is the Shade and you are the Shadow. You don't mix. Different worlds, different perspective.

But he was looking for a better color, you for a bolder, and you ended up meeting somewhere in the middle.

You don't remember the street name, or the time or the expression on his face or the terrifying free-fall feeling in your stomach.

No, you don't remember any of that.

What you do remember...

He tastes like mint and candy and sugar-spun dreams and his hair was a shade of yours and his eyes a shade of somebody else's.

Chirp.

Timidly, "Have you ever been in love?"

"... What the hell was that?"

"It's Valentine's Day tomorrow." Quavering. Hopeful. Way too hopeful for his own good in that wish-upon-a-star way.

Chirp.

And you remember more. Mistakes and regrets and mistaken regrets, fumbling in the dark and darkness fumbled. Shade upon shade upon shade of never-should-have-been stacking up and up and up.

Chirp.

But it's night. And that gives you an excuse.

"Shaddup and go to sleep."

You know he's not going to.

The door clicks shut, but you can still feel the draft.

The cricket is silent.

Its wings are broken.

"Bring on the seven years."

Or whatever.

~end

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(Muchas gracias to Rel & Red for helping out with this 'un.)