A/N: My Christmas gift to mixe. It's just a lil' thing, but . . . hey, there's Takao x Max-ness! -^__^- You know the drill: angst and fluff and shounen ai.

Merry Christmas, mixe! Hope ya like it, hon! ^__~

Max's POV.









"A Death of Many Stars"







It's snowing.

White fragments of the clouds obscure the winter sky behind a swirling tapestry of motion, never stilling, never stopping, and making me wish that there were a way to fall up instead of down.

You grin widely and throw your head back to catch the flakes in your mouth. I watch them vanish against your lips, like little stars tumbling heedlessly to their deaths, and wish I were one. I don't care if I have to die to do it; I just want to kiss you once.

Little starflakes, so delicate, so gorgeous . . . and you're destroying something beautiful without even realizing it. Would you stop, if I told you that? I want to know.

"How can you ruin something so pretty?" I ask, and you pause.

"They are kinda pretty, aren't they?" you agree, smiling at me. You've missed the point.

Then you kiss me, and I wonder if you don't just understand it even better than I do. So I let myself melt into your arms; and let myself forget what it was to be just me, and then something truly beautiful is born in a place where the souls of a million stars are dying.









* finale *









. : and the snow still falls : .