"I'm done with you."

The words echoed in Andy's mind, bouncing between his ears in rhythm with his heart. Even a night out hadn't done a thing to kill the ache inside his body. Not since high school had he felt this sort of rejection, and he felt as though he was drowning in it.

Even with the streetlights of the road behind him buzzing their ambient noise as they lit the pavement, Andy could see the stars clearly. The back of his pickup was far from comfortable, but he didn't feel like leaving. There were still other cars in the parking lot anyway, despite it being more than an hour past closing time, their owners too engaged in hookups to worry about the crime rate that was rising in the neighborhood.

Andy lived nearby in a much emptier apartment than he liked. But he stared at the sky, watching the stars instead of going home, wishing he knew their names.

Voices occasionally sounded elsewhere in the lot, breaking the white noise drone of the streetlights and and from the far corner Andy thought he could hear the telltale sounds of a car shaking under duress.

"Cassiopeia," a voice said just before the weight of another body pushed the box of his truck millimeters closer to the ground.

"And the Big Dipper... Orion you should recognize too. It's late to see Leo though, which is a shame."

Andy looked at his unexpected companion, a study in black and white in the poor lighting and likely those colors anyway.

"Do you always stargaze with strangers?" Andy asked, sitting up completely and regarding the man who'd joined him. Long black hair marred only by one lock of silver pooled over a dark patterned shirt, the silver strands threatening to be called a forelock by Andy's brain despite their placing.

A second later it clicked - this man was the one who held court in the corner, the one with the pick of partners. But here he too was alone in the parking lot after closing time.

"Only on the nights when I need to be reminded of the greatest truth of the cosmos," the man replied, brushing his hair back and looking up. "But we still have an hour to wait."

"Huh?"

"Have you ever heard the saying that it's darkest just before the dawn?" the man asked. "It's a metaphor, really, that things may be bad but something good always appears. But... the saying is also literal. So if you have nothing else to do, perhaps you'd like to watch with me."

"You're sitting in my truck," Andy said, still more than a little confused. "But you're inviting me to watch the sun rise?"

"Not the sun rise," the man corrected. "The dark. The blackest, most hopeless moment of the night. It's very important to see, to realize that even in the moment of utter night, dawn still comes."

"You're strange," Andy commented, laying back down and folding his arms under his head. "But I can't help thinking that you're right."

"This is coming from a man stargazing alone after hours at a gay club in the seedy part of town," the man said, chuckling. "Which I own, if that was your next question. Most just call me X, and I have family visiting else I would have taken someone home with me. But you..."

"Ended a relationship," Andy admitted. "Badly. I thought I needed to get out, but... you're not interested, are you?"

"Not tonight," X said. Andy could tell the pattern on that dark shirt now - stars. "You need your darkness in order to enjoy your dawn."