Woo-hoo! Bienvenu all to the first chapter of my first slash story ever! As anyone will see for my list of favourite stories, I am, yes, a rabid slash addict. I just lurve it! And this is the first product of my shonen-ai-ish obsession. I'm sorry if it's not very good, since it's my first, but I really hope you enjoy it. Reviews are crucially important because without them I can't improve. So please? Even if you think it sucked, review to say why so I can improve it and know my weaknesses! C'mon! Please!

Warning: slash, boyxboy love, shonen-ai, whatever. If you find it offends you I suggest you don't read.

Rating: uh…T. Might go up if I get past the whole being too shy to write racey stuff thing, or, alternatively, if I find someone kind enough to write it for me…we'll see.

Summary: Ethan loves his nice, neat, tidy, lonely, monotonous little life--until Zen decided to show him the 'beauty of shared love.'

Those Stupid Butterflies That Mess Around In Our Stomachs

Chapter I: Day Zero

I love my life.

I love the gorgeous neatness of it. The order, the calm, the peacefulness. The beautiful perfect monotony of it. I love how my flat is so clean and clear and light and tidy and neat, and how my life fits snugly into my apartment. I love how my days always are the same, how nothing changes, how I remain to keep still in an ever-moving world. I love everything about my life, and what I love the most about it is the fact that I don't share it with anybody. My life is mine, and the only person in my life is me. And I love it. I love waking up and stretching my arms and feel the empty fresh spaces either sides of me. I love cooking for one person and shopping for one person and not having to lend my books to anyone, and I love how no one ever knocks at my door, and how my phone never rings, and how the only mail that drops in through the letter box is bills and adverts. I love how it feels when it's Christmas and I see the mothers dragging their kids about like baggage as the items pile up in the carts, and then look down in my arms at my single bottle of milk, my single pack of apples and my single packet of ready-made carrot and mayonnaise salad. I love how it feels when someone at my workplace keeps receiving calls form his wife and getting told off, and how I am free of all this.

I love my life.

I love the beautiful emptiness of it.

I love the feel of being safe and alone and apart.

I love my life.

I wake up and it's a Saturday morning. Outside, the light is weak as the light always is during autumn, but it filters in through the amber curtains so that when it enters the room it taints it with a faint golden tone. I roll over in my bed, leaving my warm place for the fresh, cool one beside me, thinking how wonderful it is not to have to push a body over. I think about my day stretching ahead: breakfast in front of my laptop, a quick trip to the bookshop for a fresh supply of weekend reading and then a whole day spent in my beautiful, neat flat, reading and eating a pizza and then watching a movie and then going to sleep. In my beautiful, unoccupied double bed.

Aah…I love my life.

I raised myself slowly, sitting up with the covers falling around my waist, and then get up. I shower, and get some fresh clothes, dress, and then breakfast, slowly, enjoying the silence and then the sigh of the computer when I switch it on.

An hour later exactly, I shrug on a coat, sling my messenger bag around my chest and go out, locking the door behind me and then slipping my keys into my pocket.

Outside, the air is cold and pure, and when I breathe in it hurts, but it hurts in a good way because it makes me realise how pure and unadulterated the air is, if nothing else. Breathing in deeply, I begin my way to the bookshop, enjoying the fact that I do not own a car and thus feel the beauty of having legs that can take me from one place to another, and how beautiful the autumn is. With its millions of fauve shades; crimsons and golds, and yellows and jade greens and dry brown…

At the bookstore, I slink between the shelves, breathing in the deep perfume of paper and dust and undiscovered secrets. I love it how nobody else but me loves books in this city. I am alone in the bookstore, and there is no noise but the indistinct ticking of a clock somewhere on the wall.

I buy three books. They will last the weekend, and will allow me to watch at least two movies. I pay for the smooth volumes to a man who seems to have more years than hair on his head and barely looks up at me when I hand him the crisp notes which had been folded so neatly in my wallet. I pop the books in my messenger bag, muttering a rapid 'thank you,' and then walked out.

I was only a few streets away from the bookstore when my life was suddenly and irreversibly ruined.

I was walking briskly, head down and hands deep in my pockets, because it was cold and right now my thoughts were focused entirely on my home, and the feeling I'd get when I'd close the door behind me, and take off my coat and sink into the comfortable armchair with my book and maybe a cup of coffee. And then a form was right in front of me and by the time I looked up I'd crashed right into the form and found myself lying on my back on the cold cement, my head ringing from the shock, my eyes blinking rapidly up at the dull metallic sky before my vision was obscured my a mass of hair falling all over my face.

'Ah, damn—oh crap!' I heard a voice mutter vaguely somewhere above me.

The hair was tickling my cheeks and neck, but worse, I now realised that a body was lying on top of mine, heavy and warm and solid and very very present. After a few disorientated seconds, I took hold of my senses and attempted to push the mass from off me. It didn't budge.

'Get. The. Hell. Off,' I snapped, and strands of hair slid into my mouth, but before I could react and start spitting it out in horror, the person had jumped up and away from me, leaving me lying all on my own on the floor, cold from below but also form the top. I groaned, and then a hand grabbed my own, and with surprising force, pulled me up to my feet. I stood dusting myself and collecting my spirits for a few moments before looking up at the rude, annoying, irritating, stupid, hateful person who'd just dared walk right into me. I blinked.

He was young, probably fresh out of college, with a youthful face and flushed cheeks. His eyes were wide and bright and dark and rimmed in thick lines of kohl, and his hair exploded from his head in a halo of blond and violent green, blue and orange, a huge pair of headphones over them. He was wearing two sleeveless tops, one bright blue and one bright orange, with a hoodie which's sleeves seemed to have been ripped off over them, two or three buckled belts and a large, almost oceanic pair of jeans that were so badly ripped and covered in chains and dangling charms that I almost didn't notice the jeans at all. At his feet was a pair of old, battered converses, and one of his arms was covered in what looked like a bright green leg-warmer, while the other was covered in bracelets, tied strings and wristbands, with the skin covered in scrawled byro notes and doodles and patterns. The short, bitten nails were covered in chapped black nail polish, and his ears, lips and eyebrows were hanging with silver rings and studs. A messenger back covered in pins and badges hung low against his thighs, and what looked like a guitar case was slung across his chest.

He looked worried, flustered, and, oddly, fascinated as he stared at me, his pierced eyebrows raised so that they almost disappeared underneath the blue, green, orange and blond uneven bangs, his dark eyes wide and brilliant with emotions. He was flamboyant, and stood for everything that I hated, and he was adorable.

I blushed, my cheeks heating up so quick it startled me, and glared at him.

'I'm sorry! Sorry! I am so sorry! I didn't see you! I think I was thinking of something else—no! I definitely know I was thinking of something else—otherwise I would never have walked right into you and you must forgive me otherwise I'll never forgive myself but sometimes life can be so strange and weird and I didn't know what to do so I was thinking and wondering whether I should do what I think I should do or whether it was too stupid, but then I was about to come to a decision, a proper decision and last thing I knew we were both lying on the floor and I am so sorry please please please forgive me!'

He clasped his pale hands together and widened his dark eyes at me, giving me the most pathetic excuse for puppy eyes I had ever seen. I glared at him, but looking at his bright dark eyes and his clasped hands and his half-opened crimson mouth, with the ring glittering at the left corner of his lower lip, I found that I couldn't glare at him, and that looking at him was a very bad idea because my cheeks were heating up in spite of myself. So I stuffed my hands into my coat pockets, and mumbled a vague: 'It's alright,' and made to walk past him but he launched himself at me, knocking the breath out of my chest and almost throwing us both on the floor again as he hugged me tightly, his skinny arms around my neck and his hair all over my face. Again.

'Thank you! You're an angel!' he cried, hugging me tightly, and broke away when I shoved him away from me.

I glared at him, my cheeks burning so much I thought my face would melt, and, without a word, not wanting to look at this face again and blush like an idiot again, and wondering what the hell was wrong with him and with my world and with me, I strode past and away from him.

My mind was on the event throughout the entire way back to my beautiful neat flat, and I deduced that it was all (the thinking of a guy as cute and the actually still thinking about the whole thing) a natural reaction since I'd just hit my head on the pavement, and that I was bound to blush when complete strangers decided to hug me for no apparent reasons. Pacified by these reasonable explanations, I stopped in front of my flat door (my beautiful, white and clean flat door) and reached into my pocket to get my keys.

They weren't in it.

I tried the other pocket, and then I tried my messenger bag, and then I re-tried my pockets, to no avail. They were simply not with me. I wondered how I could have lost them: I clearly remember locking the door to my flat before leaving so I didn't lock them inside, and I hadn't used them at all since then. Maybe I'd reached for something in my pocket and inadvertently dropped it somewhere? I decided to retrace my steps to the bookshop. If I didn't find anything I'd just call a locksmith.

As I walked back out of the building, I wondered how it could have happened to me. My life always went according to plan: I was neat and organized and planned out and happened exactly how I expected it to happen, and it was frightening for me to see it all drop to nothing. I'd planned out the whole day, damnit, and then the stupid keys had to go missing, and that stupid kid (probably a junkie or something) had to come crashing right into me, of all people. I hated people. They were a nuisance and they made my life go all frayed around the edges and messy in the middle if I let then. I shouldn't let them. This kid, I decided, had no effect upon me whatsoever; I was just angry and slightly dizzy from having hit my head on the damn pavement.

At the bookstore, no luck. The keys were nowhere to be found. Resigning myself to having lost, actually lost my own keys, I walked back to the apartment, keeping my eyes on the road in case I noticed them dropped on the pavement, but saw nothing.

I stopped in front of my door, and looked at it with dislike. The hell? These stupid keys? How dared they go missing on me? Angrily, I pulled at the damn doorknob and kicked it. And fell right into my own corridor, the door slamming against the wall and bouncing into my sprawled mass. I lay on the floor, breathing heavily and glaring into the tidy, wooden planks of my corridor.

'Aah? You're back? I am so happy to see you, you can't imagine! I thought you'd gone missing or something! I mean, how horrible would that have been if you'd been kidnapped by aliens or something? I can't finally find my soulmate and then have him being whipped away into the abysses of nothingness, now, can I? It would be too damn ironic, you agree with me, don't you?'

A pair of dirty, battered converses, covered in ripped jean hems, entered my field of vision, rapidly followed my two fine, pale hands with black-polished nails. The hands grabbed my own, and for the second bloody time in the last hour, pulled me to my feet. I stood and stared, astonished and shocked and speechless, at the youth standing with a shy grin in front of me, scuffing the tip of his dirty converses against my beautiful clean floor and looking as nervous as I was shocked.

'What. The. Hell. Are. You. Doing. In. My. House?' I said, slowly and calmly and composedly.

'Actually, technically it's not a house. I think you mean home. Home is were you live but a house is, like, a building with at least two floors, a staircase or more, and loads of bedrooms and stuff; this is a flat, or an apartment, if you want it to sounds posh. T'tell you the truth, it looks more like an 'apartment' than a 'flat' to me, y'know what I mean? It's so clean and neat and tidy and stuff, and all your books, catch this: all your books are in perfect lines on the shelves. It's amazing! I didn't know anyone could manage such levels of neatness but you have. It's kind of weird that I end up here since it's, like, the opposite of my entity, all this neatness would kill me if I lived too long in it, which is why you and I will have to work to make this place look a little more human, y'know what I mean?'

I stared at him, blinking slowly. He stopped speaking abruptly, and blushed, his cheeks covering in clouds of dark pink, catching his lip in his teeth, looking anxious.

'Uh…are you okay?' he asked, sheepishly.

'I want you…' I said slowly.

'I want you too!' he said happily, bouncing up and down and clapping his hands together like a girl.

'…to tell me what the flaming hell you're doing, in my flat,' I went on, blankly.

'Ah, well, that's kind of a long story…' he said anxiously, and then brightened up, 'but it's alright, if you want, you can go and sit down and I'll make us both some coffee and we'll talk over it, okay?'

'No!' I shouted, losing my control and my calm in one sudden burst of confusion and anger, 'I don't know your name, I don't know who the hell you are, I don't know how the hell you managed to find yourself here, I don't know what the hell you're doing here, I don't know why I'm even talking to you and not calling the bloody police!'

'The police?' his eyes widened in alarm. 'You can't call the police! Why would you want to call the police? Did I hurt you? Did I harm you? Oh my God, I didn't hurt you when I walked into you, did I? Did you hit yourself really hard on the floor? Do you hate me? Please don't hate me! I couldn't bear it if you hated me, and we'd have to live together while you hated me and it would be too awful and please don't hate me!'

'Get the hell out. Get the hell out right now, you freak. Get out!' I yelled.

'Oh, please don't get angry!' tears appeared in the bright dark eyes, and he widened them away, the wet bryo ink from his hand smearing traces of blue on his cheek, and why the hell was I noticing these kind of details? This kid was a madman and a freak, and he needed to get out so I could close my door and let my life go back to normal.

'Please don't kick me out! It's not even been a single day! You can't do this, not before you haven't given it a go! At least let me explain, please, give me just an hour, just to tell you, or you might make the biggest mistake in your life!'

I stared at him, at his red eyes with the kohl and ink smeared beneath them, and the messy multi-coloured hair and the pale fingers twisting each other…

'Fine!' I snapped, kicking the door shut with a bang. 'Fine! Tell me what the hell it is you want and then get the hell out of my bloody life!'

He pouted, giving me the puppy eyes again, and I ignored him, storming into my main room which acted out as living room, dining room and study all at once: the cushions were thrown on the floor, several books stood in an untidy pile at the edge of a table, and both his bag and his guitar case were thrown against the foot of the French window.

'What the hell have you done to my beautiful apartment?' I yelled, slapping my forehead with my palm, and then decided to be rational. 'Right. Listen to me.'

'Okay,' he said, grinning at me.

'Sit down,' I said, pointing to an armchair.

He sauntered inside the living room and plonked himself down abruptly on to the armchair, smiling confidently up at me.

'Now. You are going to answer my questions, okay?'

'Okay.'

'How did you get in?' I asked.

His smile flattered, then he hitched it back up bravely on to his face and hesitantly pulled out of his jeans pocket a bundle of keys.

'My keys!' I yelled, snatching them from him.

'I am so sorry! You, uh, dropped them, and I picked them up and kind of followed you but by the time I got to your flat door you were gone so I thought I might as well go in and wait for you there and I am so sorry! But I had to do it, I couldn't just let you go!'

'Why not? Why the hell not? Why didn't you just give them to the concierge? Why?' I was almost screaming by now, some in order to collect myself and calm down (I was not a person who lost his nerve so easily, I had the control,) I sat down on the couch, laying my bag at my feet and taking off my coat to cool myself down.

'Alright,' the boy said quietly, curling into a ball and laying his head against the armchair's cushioned arm, with his dirty trainers on my beautiful clean cream-coloured cushions, 'I'm going to tell you my story: a few days ago, I lost some things. Quite a number of things that I couldn't really afford losing. And I kind of found myself at a dead end. So, in doubt, not knowing what to do, I went to see the only person who could possibly help me make a decision about what to do next with my life…My soothsayer. She's amazing, she can find out exactly what is really going to happen, except that she can never tell you what it is, only hints and advices. So she gazed upon the crystal ball and told me she saw a most extraordinary occurrence: but she would not tell me what. Instead, she told me that the first person who would talk to me after she'd last talked to me would be the key-keeper to my future happiness. She told me I should never ever let go of this person, or I would miss this chance for eternal happiness. So I thanked her and paid her and got out, and I was walking down the street, thinking over what I'd been told, when I walked right into…you. And…you talked to me!'

He gave me a beatific smile.

'Actually,' I corrected icily, 'I did not talk to you.'

'You did,' he countered, frowning at me.

'Did not.'

'Did too!'

'You talked to me, you random moron!'

'No. You talked first. You told me: 'Get. The. Hell. Off. Me.' Don't deny it!' he added severely.

'I—' I couldn't deny it. 'Well, yeah, okay, I did it, but I wouldn't have if you hadn't randomly walked into me!'

That's it, slick and smooth: get on the offensive, don't let him back you into a corner…

'Maybe you wouldn't have, but you still did,' he said serenely, 'and thus, you are my soulmate.'

'The hell? Are you crazy? That woman was just lying to you to get your money, you jerk, and hello? When did the 'soulmate' business ever enter the whole thing? And besides—' I clenched my teeth, 'I'm a guy.'

'Andromeda is not a liar! She is a genuine soothsayer, and you can't judge until you've met her! And she told me that the key-keeper to my happiness would be my soulmate. And who cares if you're a guy? You're cuter than a girl anyway so I don't mind!'

He smiled winningly at me, stretching his hand towards me and making grabbing motions with it as he cooed what sounded like: 'Kawa yiiii…' in an annoyingly high-pitched fashion.

'Okay. Right,' I sighed, rubbing my hands over my face and trying not to react to his idiotic comments on my appearance. I needed to be rational and reasonable, as well as remarkably diplomatic there. People were not my speciality, and as people went, he was an extreme case, so I needed all my wits about, 'okay. Listen.'

'I'm listening,' he said softly, rubbing his cheek against the cushion and tucking his fists under his chin.

'Soothsayers are liars. It's impossible to tell the future. But if you want to believe what this…this woman told you, then, fine. Be immature. Now: what are you going to do about it?'

'I am going to let you take control of my life, and use your key to my happiness to make me happy. Which is why I needed to go get my stuff: I like your place and I understand that you're my soulmate and all, but I need my precious personal items or I'll morally damage myself.'

He gazed a blindingly trusting smile up into my face, and I looked away. Then I caught up with hat he'd said.

'WHAT?' I yelled, making him jump slightly. 'What do you mean, get your stuff?'

'Well, you know, go grab my manga and my plushies and my music and my clothes and my stuff. So I can move in properly with you,' he added pointedly.

'Live with me? Live with me?' I realise I had started shouting again. I took a deep breath. 'Listen, kid. Get this through your head: I am not your soulmate, and you are not coming to live with me. Furthermore, I am not 'taking the control of your life'. Instead you take your 'bloody key to your happiness' with you and get the hell out of my life before I call the nearest asylum.'

He stared at me in silence for a few seconds, and finally said, quietly:

'So you are denying that you are my soulmate?'

'Absolutely,' I said, firmly, glad we were finally coming to the conclusions.

'So you haven't fallen in love with me?' he went on.

'No!' I gasped in horror.

'So you refuse to let me stay with you?'

'Yes. I refuse. Point blank,' I added for effect.

'So you don't want to make me happy?' he asked, very softly.

'No,' I replied, then, realising how harsh that had sounded, I amended: 'It's not my job to make you happy.'

'Alright. Can I ask you something?'

'Er…yes?' I said, frowning warily.

'If you were in love with me, would you want to live with me, take control of my life and make me happy?'

'Uh? What the hell kind of a question is that? I would never fall in love with you, so that question is just pointless.'

'So you think I couldn't make you love me?'

'No you couldn't,' I snapped.

'Whatever I did, you would never fall for me?'

'Never,' I assured with finality.

'So it didn't matter what I did, since you wouldn't fall for me anyway, right?'

'Right.' I snapped, beginning to feel a little annoyed with his repetitive questions.

'Okay then!' he bounced up, looking cheerful. I frowned. 'I'll go get my stuff! I'll be back in a jiffy!'

'What? No! Didn't you understand what I told you? Are you an idiot?'

'You said you wouldn't fall for me whatever I did. This means that if I ever came to live with you, it wouldn't matter since you could never love me. That means that I'll have to take on both sides of our relationships.'

'Aren't you listening? You are not coming to stay with me!'

'Why not?'

'Because…because…because! I don't even know who you are!' I cried, desperately, seeing no end to it all.

'I am Zen, I live in England, I am a student in the Arts, I am an Aquarius, I like chocolate flavoured ice creams, and plushies, and shonen-ai, and rock, and I want to be rich when I'm older so I can buy a manor in Lapland and beautiful huskies. I believe in faeries and angels and deamons and dragons and spirits and ghost and love at first sight and aliens, but the only good ones and I think the world should be ruled by butterflies because they know that love is better than war and when I was small I was abducted by faeries and then I kind of got bullied at high school but it was cool because broken bones and scars made me look so brave and I totally intend to find another world and I love lollipops and little bunny rabbits and little kitties with big black eyes and poems but only the cool old ones and I love playing the guitar and the piano and the violin but I'm not very good at it, and if I could I would totally sleep with Miyavi and I'm scared of spiders and daddy long legs because they are evil and they are plotting world domination and they get into people's stomachs through their open mouths when they're asleep to lay their eggs in their brains and then they're like in Alien, poking out through the skin and it's horrible, and I hope it never happens to me or you, and um, um, I love autumn and I love star-gazing and I love dreams and I love candy and I love anime and manga and films and you and waffles and pancakes with chocolate spread and the smell of apples and new sponges and Miyazaki and flowers because they're very pretty and, um, um…that's all. You know me now. I can live with you.'

'No, you can't!' I said, recovering from his overwhelming introduction of himself.

'Why not?' he insisted.

'Because. You just can't!' I cried desperately, raking my brain for some excuses why the kid shouldn't break into my beautiful, neat, monotonous life.

'Are you scared you might fall in love with me?' the boy, Zen or whatever he said his name was, said, suddenly teasing.

'No! Of course not!'

'Then it doesn't cost you anything to let me live with you, does it?'

'No! Yes it does! You're not messing up my whole life just because some stupid money-pinching idiot told you to!'

'How will my living with you mess up your life? I don't want to mess up your life! I just want to let you make me happy!'

'I can't make you happy!' I yelled, jumping up and facing him.

'Why not?' he exclaimed.

'Because! Because I'm an awful person, I am cold, I don't feel any emotions, I hate people and I hate company and I hate not being alone!' I shouted, exasperated to such a level I didn't care what I said anymore.

There was a moment's silence as we both stood facing each other, me breathing heavily, him chewing on his finger nails, eyes wide as he stared at me mutely. Eventually, he whispered:

'You hate not being lonely? You mean…you love being lonely?'

'Yes. I do,' I snapped, satisfied at his dismayed expression.

'You're so hardcore!' he shrieked suddenly, and launched himself at me, almost knocking me off my feet, hugging me around the chest so that my arms were pinned to my sides, and, for the goddamned third time this day, my face was obscured by multicoloured hair. 'You're just so amazingly kawaii!' he cooed, using one of his hands to ruffle my hair.

He. Ruffled. My. Hair.

My beautiful, tidy, neat hair, that I washed, then combed and then gelled into perfect tidy spikes. My dear, beloved spikes. He ruffles my hair, and killed my spikes!

'Argh! Get off!' I snarled, shoving him off me.

He jumped back with a shiny look in his eyes.

'That's it!' he declared with frightening determination. 'I'm moving in with you. I will rescue you from your sorrowful loneliness, and show you the beauty of shared love! Yaye! Like this, you'll be able to work at making my happiness while I work at making yours! It's perfect!'

'No, it's not!' I sighed, wondering what the hell I could say to dissuade him. 'Listen, kid.'

'Zen.'

I stared at him blankly.

'My name is Zen. Call me Zen.'

'Fine! Listen, Zen!'

'I'm listening,' he said angelically.

'I don't care what you think, or say, or do. Bring your stuff here, and I'll throw it by the window. And as soon as you'll be out of the door, I'll lock it behind you so you can't come back in.'

'Then…I'll have to sleep in front of your door.'

'No! You go back to your home and stay there!' I shouted.

'I don't have a home!'

I stopped for a second.

'You don't have a home?'

'No,' he said, and suddenly looked quite awkward, scuffing his dirty battered shoes on my clean, beautiful carpet, the jerk.

'At all?'

'I…uh…kind of had a room in an old house…' he muttered.

'You had?'

'I…um…kind of don't have anymore,' he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.

'Why not?' I said, grinding my teeth.

'I kind of…got kicked out.' he finished, lamely, staring down at the floor, his eyes mostly hidden by the blue, green, orange and blonde locks that fell over them.

'Why?'

'Um…I don't know.'

'You're lying to me!' I cried, pointing an accusing finger at him.

'I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to lie! Please forgive me! I'll never lie to you ever again!' he squeaked, raising pleading eyes to my face and clasping his hands together against his chest.

'Why did you get kicked out?'

'I…um…the others kind of…complained about me.'

'Why?'

'I'm sure I don't know!' he said, looking pitiful.

'Okay.'

I rubbed my eyes, sighing.

'So you don't have a home anymore?'

'Nope,' he said, brightening up.

'So you don't have anywhere to stay?'

'Nope.'

'At all?'

'Nope.'

'How about your family?'

'My family?' he gave a dismissive wave of his hand. 'They're scattered all over the world. I don't have a clue where most of them are.'

'Al…right. Okay. Right. Okay, listen to me.'

'I'm listening.'

'I will let you stay. For two days. The time you find another place. Then you get the hell out of my home and out of my life. Okay?'

'Nope. I'm coming to stay. I will make you happy!' he said firmly.

'No, you will not!'

'I will!'

'For God's sake! You don't even know me!'

He paused briefly.

'No I don't. But I'll have fun learning! That's the best part with finding your soulmate!'

'I am not your soulmate!' I yelled.

'Prove it!' he yelled back.

It was the first time I heard him actually yell. He sounded like an angry five-year-old when he yelled.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean: prove to me that you are not my soulmate.'

'How the hell am I supposed to prove that, you jerk?' I demanded angrily.

'Okay. Here's what we do. Let's make a deal: you let me stay with you for one month. Thirty days precisely. If by the time the thirty days are over you still think you're not my soulmate and you don't love me, then I'll leave and never come back. Ever.'

'No,' I said, stubbornly.

'So you know you're my soulmate!'

'I'm not!'

'Then why are you scared to prove you're not? That's because you are!' he said triumphantly.

'I'm not!'

'Then prove it!'

'FINE! I will! Stay for thirty flipping days if you want! I'll prove it to you and then I'll kick your stupid ass out of my life!'

'Yaye! You rock! I love you!' the boy, Zen, shouted, punching the air with his fists.

He threw himself on me for yet another hug, almost choking me in the process and then broke away.

'I'm getting my stuff! I'll be back tomorrow with everything! See you tomorrow, my love!'

He dashed out of the room as I yelled: 'Don't call me that!'

His head popped around the door.

'Then tell me your name!' he grinned.

'Ethan!' I snarled through gnashed teeth.

'Then see you tomorrow, Ethikins my love!' he cried, and before I could shout at him, I heard the front door open and slam shut.

I stood in the middle of the room, red-faced, breathing heavily and glaring at the door. Then I looked around, at the guitar case and bag on the floor, at the scattered cushions and the pen book on the table…

What the hell had I just done?

Hokely Dokely! Hope you liked it. Pleeease review, I can't go forward if I don't get feed back! So please! Come on! Just a minute of your life to help me improve this! Pretty please? puppy eyes I love you all (since you bothered actually reading this chapter up to my author's note.)

Even though I've already started writing the next chapter, I am very busy these days with college work and whatnot, so it might be several days until I update. Bear with me, though, and we'll get through this together!

Till next chapter! o