Wow, last time I updated this was last year. Makes it sound so old, huh:3

ANYHOO…here is, at last, an update on Those Stupid Butterflies. Thanks to all those of you who read and reviewed. I hope you enjoy this chapter and PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR TAKING SO FRICKEN LONG! I have excuses. I'd been working mostly on the others stories at first and then I finally decided to stop focusing on the rest and give this one a bit of attention and then I lost my whole 7 pages I'd written when I lost my memory stick, but here, at last, it is. For your pleasure. More Ethan-bastardness and Zen-cuteness an ramblingness.

Oh, and I wanted to say something about two reviews I got. Well, three actually. First of all, to the reader who complained about putting 's instead of "s, here we go. I heeded your comment :) I WILL go back to other chapters and replace them as soon as I have time.

Secondly:CarmenTakoshi asked how I managed to write such long, rambling paragraphs for Zen's rambles. No, I don't think there is the secret art of rambling paragraphs, so by all means we could INVENT it. I just basically go on a ramble myself. That's seriously how my thoughts go most of the time, going from one thing to another and reaching no conclusion. And I lend it all to Zen and here we are.

Again, still about the rambling Zen paragraphs, Anime Atem, you pointed out that readers could be put off by Zen's hue paragraphs. Well, the thing is: readers are actually SUPPOSED to be put of by them and skip them. After all, Ethan is telling the story, and you're getting it as he is. Zen also tend to drop in clues about his life in these long rambles, which the readers are also supposed to miss, along with Ethan, because we all ignore Zen's huge rambles.

So don't worry, it's on purpose. You're SUPPOSED to skip them, or at last skim-read them.

It's part of the Masterplan :D

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

Rating: Meh…still T.

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 IV: Day Three

The next morning I left for work leaving Zen peacefully asleep behind. Having thoroughly thought it through, I'd deduced that my only weapon against him was patience, so I'd decided there was not much point in trying to get rid of him, getting angry at him or working myself up over him. I was the mature adult in this whole affair, so I would have to act like one—as for Zen, he was nothing more than a child. A remarkably immature and retarded child at that, but one shouldn't discriminate. I wondered if the boy should see a psychiatrist; he probably had some deep rooted mental problems that kept him from growing up. How old was he anyway? I didn't even now his age. He looked sixteen and acted six, but he must have been older since he used to live alone, or at least that's what I assumed? And didn't he go to school, or college or uni or something? And anyway, why the hell did I care? I did not. Damn right.

At work, I did my best to ignore the SBB (Stupid Blonde Bimbo)'s smirks and sniggers and heavy hint-dropping, and kept looking at my watch, eager to be home and make sure Zen hadn't created another disaster. I didn't even pay attention to the work I was doing, completely ignored my colleagues when they dropped papers and documents on my desk, and as soon as the short needle of my watch reached the number five I leapt to my feet, grabbed my coat and bag and rushed out. Behind me, the SBB snorted loudly:

"He is so in love."

I ran all the way to the bus stop, mentally cursed every single person who got on the bus for making me take a little longer to get home, then ran from the busstop to my block of flats. When I reached my front door, I stopped for a moment before turning the key inside the lock, steeling myself for the sight of utter apocalypse that potentially awaited me.

I opened the door.

The flat was warm and it didn't smell too strongly of paint. Good. Zen hadn't been doing any more redecorating. Well, a least in the painting form. A heavy scent of strawberry hung in the air, however, and I could hear voices coming from the living room. The operative keyword being: voices. Voice, to the plural, suggesting the presence of more than one person in my flat. And I knew for a fact that last time I checked, Zen had only been one person, one entity—thank God. Was Zen some sort of Gollum-person? A psychopath with multiple personalities? Or, even worse: was Zen having…company?

I hung my coat on a hook in the corridor. I took off my scarf. I laid my keys and wallet on the little table beside the kitchen door. I took a deep breath, inhaling the hopefully soothing strawberry scent. I closed my eyes and steeled myself. I entered my living room.

I froze.

Zen was sitting on a wooden stool stolen from the kitchen, in front of a tall, paint-splattered wooden easel. He was dressed in a thin, sleeveless blue shirt that showed his pale and skinny arms, his round, childish shoulders and an indecent amount of pale, bony, hairless chest. His ripped, baggy blue jeans hung so low on his hips the waistband of his underwear was visible. It was a bright shade of candy-pink. The exact same shade of the varnish on his fingernails. Checkered black and white braces hung behind his legs, and dozens of ribbons, chains, elastic bands and plaited strings adorned his wrists. Completing the look he was wearing a lacy, flowery apron five sizes too big for him, and his wild multicoloured hair was in schoolgirl pigtails on either side of his head. His headphones lay around his neck, and he was holding several paintbrushes and a palette covered in blobs of paint.

He looked insane and adorable. But the worse was to come:

A young woman was stretched out across my sofa (my beautiful, cream-coloured sofa), wearing nothing else than a pair of oversized leather biker's gloves. Her long hair was thrown back over the armrest of the sofa and trailed on the floor, a dark chestnut with bright blond tips. She was talking and laughing, completely at easy, as though perfectly unaware that she was lying naked on a stranger's couch.

She looked up when she saw me come in, and exclaimed:

"Oh! You must be the precious Ethikins! Damn it, Zen, he's dishy!" she snarled at Zen, snapping her fingers at him before turning back to me with a wide smile: "Hey, baby, would you be interested in threesome?"

I gaped. I wasn't proud of it, but I gaped.

"Oh, leave him alone, Syl," Zen scolded. "He's too pure of mind to be corrupted by your perversions."

"Are you sure? Actually, it's even better this way: the innocent are always the hottest. Damn it, Zen, can I have him?"

"No, you can't. He's my soulmate. You can get dressed, now, by the way."

"Alright. Hang in there, cutie,' she winked at me. 'I'll be back in a sec."

She picked up a pile of clothing beside the couch and walked out. I averted my gaze, trying not to heave at the sight of all this flesh wobbling sickeningly all over the place like jelly. Naked women were a disturbing sight unfit for the faint-hearted.

"Zen," I said, as soon as I'd heard the bathroom door shut.

"Yes, my sweet marshmallow bunny?"

"What the hell is going on?"

"What do you mean?" he added a tiny brushstroke on his painting and raised innocent eyes to meet my glare.

"I mean," I snarled between gritted teeth, "why am I walking home and finding a naked woman lying on my couch?"

"Oh, that," Zen gave a dismissive wave. "Art project. We have to paint two nudes, woman and man. I'm doing Syl for my woman one and you for my man one."

"And why the hell do you have to do it here?"

"Well…here, my lovely chibi-neko, is where I live," Zen said, his patient tone unbearably patronizing.

"Why the hell can't you have her pose at her own home or something?"

"Because," Zen said solemnly. "If I so much as set a foot in her house, her sister will immediately try to rape me."

"Rape you?"

"Yes, rape him. She tried once, you know. Poor Zen, he was traumatized. We found him with his trousers around his ankles, crying his heart out on the floor."

"No, that was the time when you dared Kev and I to run around college with our trousers around our legs and I tripped and broke my MP3 player, remember?"

Zen's friend had re-entered the room, dressed. I noticed that when she was dressed there was very little difference compared to when she wasn't: she was wearing a pair of almost microscopic black shorts, bright pink fishnet tights, fluffy black boots, a skin-tight top and a shiny leather coat that looked suspiciously like an article out of some bondage gear.

"Well, Zen, aren't you going to introduce us?" she asked, smirking.

"Oops, yes, of course! Ethikins, this is Sylvia Medings, my best friend. Syl, meet Ethan, my soulmate. You may not call him anything beside Ethan, because only his soulmate can call him pet names."

"Yeah you think? I'll call him whatever I want."

I decide to take control of the situation.

"It is a pleasure meeting you, Miss Medings. Right now, however, I need to give Zen a good telling off, so I must ask you to leave."

"Ooh, a telling off, huh?" she said, smirking. "Sounds kinky. You want me to lend you one of my whips? I also have handcuffs and blindfolds, since you're into that kind of stuff. Oh my God, this is so hot! I have to go get them! I'll be back soon!"

And with that she rushed out.

"Are all your friends freaks?" I asked, still staring at the door through which the woman had disappeared.

"Depends on what you call freaks, really. Like, for example I once had a friend who had a friend—well, I still have that friend but we don't see each other as much, I mean we email and stuff and we text a lot, I spend most of my credits texting him to tell you the truth—it's just that he sends such bizarre texts he's the only person I know who role-play-texts, see what I mean? It's basically when you text as though you were someone you aren't, so for example sometimes we text as Yoda and R2-D2 and it's great fun though he's much better at doing it than me which is kind of ironic, you know, because I'm always cosplaying, I'm actually, like, the cosplaying king, you know? So anyway, that friend that I know has this other friend, well I don' know if they're still friends but anyway, that guy, my friend's friend, was a real freak, and when I say a freak I mean a real freak. You know what he used to do? He used to put loads of raw eggs into his bath and then actually bathe in it! Isn't that the freakiest thing you've ever heard about? One day, right, I was just going to visit him because my friend, not my friend who role-play-texts me but my friend who has a dog which is the tallest dog in the world, seriously, it's almost like—"

I was beginning to get the hang of that 'switching off' thing. Completely ignoring Zen's constant flow of words, I began to go about the room tidying it up: it was amazing how in a single day, well, a few hours actually, that brat had managed to turn my beautifully tidy flat into some sort of feast of disorder and mess: DVD cases lay on the coffee table amongst empty glasses and cups, the cushions from the couch were scattered around, books and magazines lay opened on the armrest and his bed, crumbs of food littered my (now paint-splattered) carpet, clothes were thrown around on the back of chairs, his guitar case lay against the window, the actual guitar sitting in the armchair with a tie around the neck like some sort of person, and to top the general air of chaos the walls were still a hideous orange colour.

I began cleaning up for a bit, and then gave up, glaring pointedly at Zen, who completely ignored my glare in favour of pursuing his long speech, which he seemed to be addressing more to his canvas than to me. There was paint smeared on his cheeks, wild green and blue and orange strands escaped from the nasty schoolgirl pigtails falling across his face and his goddamned jeans still hung at his goddamn skinny hips, showing the goddamn pink underwear. He looked frustratingly unaware of how obscenely alluring he looked, just—wait, he wasn't alluring! How could he be alluring? And what kind of a word was alluring anyway? It certainly didn't describe Zen at all! Zen was obnoxious and annoying and immature and stupid, definitely not alluring.

I grabbed what looked like some sort of hole-filled shirt from a chair and flung it at Zen.

"Shut the hell up and hitch up your trousers."

Zen threw the shirt away from him with a toss of his head, and replied with a smile:

"I can't. I'd have to let go of my easel and if I do that I will lose that special balance that I only get after hours of painting because it's really long to find and seriously right, one day I was painting one of my friend, not the friend with the dog or the friend with the friend who bathed in eggs but another friend that I met when I was looking for my brother in Germany and who didn't happen to be German, my friend, not my brother, though obviously my brother isn't German either—I mean I think my grandmother on my father's side had a German father, but that's as far as it goes. So anyway, I was painting that friend that I met in Germany but who wasn't German and I was painting him on this sort of sheet of satin kind of thing, because I was experimenting with surfaces and how well I could render textures with acrylic, and I just couldn't get it right because the tilt of my easel was just wrong and then we started to talk about magic and mirrors and how mirrors are kind of magical and the Matrix and that kind of stuff, because my friend was a—well, is a real deep kind of guy, I mean, he'd come up with the weirdest question, like for example one day he went to me: "Zenny, what is imagination?" and I was like…uh, well, because, when you come to think of it, what is imagination? Because, right, when you imagine something is when you see something that isn't here or that doesn't exist, but can you genuinely imagine something that doesn't exist? That actually brings us to the incredibly deep of question of the existence of faeries and dragons and stuff. Like, I was talking to Josh, that guy in one of my classes back when I was at college, about faeries, and he was going on about how they don't exist and I told him the famous saying: "there is no smoke without fire." The imagination never did anything more than echo and distort sights the brain received, so if someone imagines a faery, like, a little girl with butterfly wings, it's entirely possible that the person actually just put the two concrete, existing images of little girl plus butterfly wings and came up with a faery. But if we start talking about the more twisted Lady Cottington kind of faery, then the whole thing becomes much—"

With a sigh of exasperation that almost sounded like a groan, I stomped up to Zen, grabbed the waistband of his jeans and yanked it up. As I grappled for the belt to tighten it, my fingers brushed past the warm skin that stretched taught over his hipbones, and quite abruptly, the sick feeling in my stomach kicked up again, like annoying butterflies fluttering around in there and making me feel all warm and uneasy. I finished tightening the belt around Zen's waist and hastily stepped away from him.

"Thank you, my chibi-elderweiss," Zen smirked sweetly.

I glared at him.

"You wanted me to do that, didn't you?" I snarled.

"Yep. And you played right into my hands. You're so easy to manipulate, Ethikins, it's adorable. I could probably get you to do anything I want in a few days' time…which I'm really looking forward to because I have this maid uniform somewhere that would look simply ravishing on you…I don't know where I put it because I got rid of all my bondage and kinky stuff some time ago, but I'm sure Syl will be able to lend me some stuff…or, right, I could take you to one of my cons, and we'd both cosplay…oh my God we'd cosplay FF7! You'd be Yuffie, with your perfect short hair, and your kind of cute face when you're not frowning and glaring, and you'd be in tiny tight top and tiny tight shorts and long, long, long converse boots and a bandana and oh my God Ethikins you'd be so hot! I can just picture it! It reminds me of when me and Darren went to that manga/anime con together and we cosplayed D—"

Once again switching Zen off, I grabbed my laptop from where it was on the coffee table with an open book on top of it (the title read Candlelight and Candyfloss Romance) and made my way to the kitchen to get myself a cup of coffee.

I laid down my laptop onto the counter, beside the puddle of spilt orange juice, poured water into the kettle and switched it on. While it boiled, I opened and switched on my laptop. My laptop was to me like a dog would be to an animal-loving sort of person: my faithful and only friend that kept me company on cold evenings and made me feel I wasn't alone after all. As I clicked open an internet page, I suddenly noticed that the kettle wasn't doing its usual boiling noise. Frowning, I turned around towards the kettle and checked whether the switch was down. It was. I pushed it up and then back down, but the little orange light didn't flash. My. Kettle. Was. Broken.

"Zen!"

"Coming, my one and only love!"

Zen sauntered cheerfully into the kitchen, prancing about and giving me a bright smile.

"What can I do for, ballerina?"

"The kettle isn't working," I snarled, glaring at Zen and wishing I had lasers instead of eyes to blow Zen's stupid little head right off his stupid little neck.

Zen stared at me in surprise for a moment ad then said:

"Oh my God, no way! You broke the kettle! This sucks so much because we totally need a kettle to boil the water for the instant noodles and what are going to do for your coffee because you are a caffeine addict, sorry to have to tell you the truth but you actually are a junkie which is fine except that see you're only taking coffee and you're still addicted but I take weed and I'm not! I only smoke it when I'm camping, which reminds me that next week is half-term so I have one week fee and I was thinking that you and I should go camping in Lake District, I could borrow a tent off my friend Lisa and then we'd be able to go hiking and we'd have a campfire at night and we'd smoke my weed and then we'd sleep under the stars sharing our body heat to keep each other warm and—"

"I didn't break the fucking kettle, you did!" I yelled.

It effectively shut Zen up. He stared at me.

"I didn't break the kettle!" he cried indignantly. "And stop swearing! It's bad."

"I will fucking swear if I fucking want to, alright? And yes, you broke the fucking kettle. When I left this morning it was working fine, and now I come home and want to do myself a well-deserved cup of coffee but oh no, I can't because guess what? The fucking kettle doesn't fucking work for some fucking mysterious reason!"

Zen frowned.

"Ethikins, my bunny-boy…did you check the plug?"

I gaped. I frowned. I looked at the kettle. It was unplugged.

"What the f—why the hell is my kettle unplugged?"

"Well, it so happens that I needed to use the socket this morning to charge my iPod because I accidentally left it on all night long—I'm so sorry I was listening to The Used and it rocked me to sleep, literally! It always happens to me, which is why it's great that when we go camping we'll sleep together like this you can remind me to switch it off when I go to sleep, or even better switch it off for me! That'd be so sweet and romantic, don't you think? Oh God I can't wait, can—"

I ignored Zen, plugged the kettle and read the news headlines on Yahoo while I waited for my water to boil. When the water was ready, I poured it into my cup and turned to the cupboard where I kept the sugar only to find myself face to face with Zen, who was staring at me anxiously:

"We are going, right?"

"Going where?" I frowned.

Zen threw himself against me, throwing his skinny bare arms around my neck and squealing:

"Yaye thank you so much oh my God Ethikins I love you so much you rock you're the most wonderful person in the world and you're he sweetest and kindest and most adorable and nice even though sometimes you're a bit grumpy but you still manage to remain cute even when you're grumpy and I promise I'll be extra good and I'll even carry your backpack for you when you're to tired and I'll make it all so wonderful you're going to love me forever and yaye I love you so, so much Ethan you're perfect and beautiful and awesome and—"

"If you really love me," I said as calmly as I could, using the old manipulation manoeuvre, "you'll get off me, clean up the mess you made in the living room and then cook something nice and tasty for dinner."

Zen leapt off me, the paintbrush me was still holding smearing and splattering paint all over the place, including my shirt as he clapped enthusiastically.

"Alright! Okies! You can go sit back and relax and I'll make your apartment look so neat you'll cry with joy an cook you something so good you'll fall for me."

"I doubt that," I muttered darkly, picking up my laptop and cup of coffee.

"Aha, never underestimate the powers of Cupid or my cooking!" Zen said happily, waving his arms about.

I ignored him and got out of the kitchen and into my bedroom. It was only after I'd closed he door safely behind me that realisation hit me full force: was it just my imagination or had a just agreed to go camping with Zen for a week?

I was so fucked.

Two hours later, I was bored, stuck in my room and fed up with waiting for food, so I shut my laptop and walked out of my bedroom and towards the kitchen. When I opened the door a scene of chaos and noise assailed me: pans, containers and bowls scattered all over the place, fumes hanging against the ceiling, a tiny radio perched on top of the fridge blasted out music and Zen stood in front of the cooker, stirring food in a pan. He was holding a phone between his shoulder and ear and talking loudly over the sound of cooking food and the radio. I listened and frowned. He was saying:

"No, listen, you really need to go slow with the whole thing, okay? It's not every day that something of such incredible importance happens in a teenager's life and if Dom stole her Pikachu plushie then the whole situation should be dealt with with caution and tact. Yes…uh-huh. No! No! No, you see, that's where you and Mimi and Lana get it all wrong! No, listen to me, right, the Pikachu plushie isn't just a Pikachu plushie! That's what most people miss in those kinds of situations! If the Pikachu plushie was merely just some sort possession, like a house or a car, it would be fine! But as it happens, the Pikachu plushie is so much more just a mere worldly possession, it's—"

What a freak, I thought to myself, shaking my head. I walked to the fridge and opened to it, searching for something to eat while I waited for Zen to finish cooking, which it didn't seem like he would be doing in the near future. I spotted some yoghurt and reached for it before jumping back when the fridge door was abruptly shoved shut.

"No eating before dinner, you naughty boy!" Zen said severely, or as severely as one could manage while wearing a lacy pink apron and schoolgirl pigtails.

I glared at him and he went on speaking into his phone.

"No, not you! I was talking to Ethikins…uh-uh, yeah, my soulmate."

"I'm not your soulmate!" I snarled, and stormed off as he continued: "I know! Feisty little thing, isn't he?"

I went into the living room and switched on the TV. Surprisingly enough, Zen had managed to make quite an okay job of tidying up the room. Though it would never again be the same as before, what with the narrow bed beside the widow, covered in pastel plushies, the guitar in its case against the window, those goddamn orange walls…

When Zen eventually finished talking on the phone, cooking and setting down the food on the living-room coffee table, I ordered him to sit down and immediately took the control of the conversation. I'd thought it through and deduced that when trusted with a conversation Zen never shut up, so instead of letting him go off into a rant I'd talk to him to keep his questions concise and precise instead of completely pointless and rambling.

"So, Zen," I began. It had been a long time since I'd last initiated an actual conversation. "I want to ask you some questions, okay?"

"Okies!" Zen chirped happily, serving food into plates.

"First of all: how old are you?"

Zen's face fell rather comically.

"That's an easy question," he said disappointedly. "I'm nineteen! I'm definitely legal, you don't need to worry about that!" He winked.

I glared at him. He grinned happily back. I sighed and went on:

"So are you still at school or do you work or what?"

"School? I don't go to school! Unless you call Uni school but it's different because school has teachers and rules and diaries and detentions but Uni doesn't really so I don't really think that you can technically call Uni 'school' but anyway no I don't work but I used to work part-time in a music shop but then I got sacked because this guy was completely dissing Panic at the Disco and I was like: excuse me, Mr Tosser but PatD happens to be one of the best bands ever and totally kicks Sixty Cents' ass, yeah, because he was buying a Sixty Cents album or whatever and then he was like: you're nothing more than a racist shithead and I was like 'what!' and then my boss said that I didn't know how to deal with customers and that I talked too much anyway and I mean, me? Talk too much? That's such an overstatement because sure, I do realise that sometimes I tend to waffle on a bit, but it's totally not enough to be a reason to sack me, you know?"

Zen glared at me as though I'd been the one to have sacked him.

"Whatever," I told him. "So you go to Uni? How come you're never out, then?"

Zen blinked.

"Never out? Oh, I've just been a missing a few classes and lectures here and there but that's only because I've been through a major Emotional Crisis, with capitals, you know? That's what was written on the form my counsellor wrote for me and what with moving in with you and everything, life has been kind of a little, you know, hectic and I haven't had much time for such things as studying and anyway I've had to rehearse a lot because my bandmates always tell me that I don't play guitar well enough for actual gigs which is so mean, don't you think? I mean, I know I'm not, like, Billie Joe-good but what the hell I'm okay, no?"

"No," I said, just because he was pissing me off.

"Oh my God, how can you say that? I'm so totally going to play for you and then you'll see I'll completely blow you away!"

"Whatever. So, you've been skipping classes?" I asked severely, trying to regain control of the conversation.

"Uh-huh…but I'm going to stop. It's just so hard to wake up in the morning and it's so cold outside and your apartment is so warm and cozy and nice and I just don't have the courage to get up."

"Fine. I'll wake you up every morning when I get up for work. With cold water."

"You wouldn't!" Zen said in horror.

"I would too!"

"Aah…I see. It's tough love, right?" Zen said wisely, nodding his head.

"Keep thinking that, you diminutive cretin," I snapped.

"Don't use posh insults on me! Sheesh you're such a grandpa! I bet during sex you yell things such as "By Jove! How utterly smashing!" and "Spiffing, my dear, excessively spiffing" and stuff!"

Zen burst out laughing just thinking about it, spluttering food all over the table.

"You're disgusting," I snapped, lifting my plate out of the table so it was out of reach of the unbearable brat's spitting range.

"You know you love it," Zen grinned.

I opened my mouth to say I didn't, but his grin was so stupid and goofy and childish and…I didn't say anything.

After we'd finished eating, we spent an hour in the kitchen cleaning up the phenomenal mess Zen had made. Zen sang all the while, the same song that seemed to go "What's that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? Is it a monster? Is it a monster…" After half an over of listening to the same song being mercilessly murdered by Zen's tone-deaf singing, I couldn't take it anyone and ordered him to put on something on, just so I didn't have to listen to him anymore. He put on something that sounded good, except that it didn't make any sense because the singer seemed to be singing in some other language.

After we'd finished tidying up to kitchen, we switched off the music and I settled down on the couch to watch some TV before going to sleep. I put on the evening news, but Zen had other ideas: he undressed, put on some pyjamas, got his baby blue blanket from his bed and dumped it on the couch beside me. Then he took a CD from one of the boxes I'd gotten him to put underneath his bed and pt it into the DVD player.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing! I was watching the news!" I protested, glaring at the back of his head.

"Don't be such an old man, Ethikins," Zen said dismissively, pressing play and then sitting back beside me.

His shoulder was almost touching mine so I moved away, but he followed me, until I was pressed against the armrest, and his arm was tucked against mine. He spread the blanket over us, tucking the edges around our legs, and gave me a little smile.

"See? All comfy."

The film turned out to be The Princess Bride, and it turned out that Zen knew every single line of it. Halfway through the movie, I elbowed him hard, and snarled at him to stop saying the lines at the same time as the actors or else I'd get the bluntest kitchen knife in the kitchen and stick it in his ear. He promised he'd stop. After a few minutes, he laid his head against my shoulder, but since he was being quiet, I didn't say anything.

It was strange just watching a movie with a warm body pressed at my side. His hair felt soft and silky against my cheek, and when I turned slightly, I could smell apple-flavoured shampoo. His breath was steady and came to flutter, warm ad feather-light, against my collarbone. He was sleeping.

I thought of pushing him away, sending him to bed. I knew I should have done it, and I moved to move him, but then I stopped. He was silent, quiet, his face peaceful and his mouth gaping slightly open and he felt warm against me and…I just didn't have the courage to do it.

I sighed and laid my cheek against the silky hair on his head and looked at the screen and wondered what the fuck was happening to me.

Kay, guys, we're done for now. Is it just me, or does it seem like Ethan is melting?

DISCLAIMERZ: I do not own Pikachu, I do not own The Princess Bride (most quotable film ever made), I do not own Monster, or the lyrics to Monster, nor do I own The Automatic. I do not own Yoda or R2-D2 or anything else you know doesn't belong to me but I can't think of right now.

Now…reviewsies?

Love you all. I promise next update won't be near as late as this one. Pinkie promise.