1) Do what you want with me

The boy sat on the bed before him, shirt half off his shoulders and chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Stop pretending," Miyagi snapped, twisting around to slide off the edge of his bed.

But Shinobu was faster, lunging across the space between them and wrapping his arms around Miyagi's chest. "Don't go!" he cried, pressing up against him in such a way that Miyagi was really tempted to do just as he said.

But he shook off the boy, flinging him back against the pillows and rising resolutely to his feet. "It will only hurt you." He was well aware of the double meaning behind the words.

Shinobu struggled into a sitting position, wincing as he did so. "I don't—I don't care!" he gasped, sliding one hand across his chest and bunching his fingers into a fist over his heart. "If it's you… then I don't care what happens to me! I can deal with the pain if it's you, Miyagi!"

Miyagi turned back around, placing his hands on the pillows on either side of Shinobu and forcing him to back away as he leaned in. "I wouldn't be able to." His dark eyes studied the boy beneath him, memorizing the image to replay later when it was safer. But for now, he knew it was too dangerous and knew that he had to resist the invitation.

2) Hate me and laugh at me

It was hard to tell if Miyagi was serious about anything. For all he knew, the man could be leading him on a dramatic play only to laugh at him later and call him a stupid brat. But still, Shinobu had to take the risk and commit himself to the relationship with everything he could.

Until the truth of his intentions was revealed, Shinbou would continue to follow after him and love him. He prayed every night that he wouldn't wake up to find that he had been abandoned or hated. He would not be able to live if he was hated by Miyagi. So God, please God please, just let him keep on loving the man without anything happening.

3) Darken my daytime and torture my night

For a long time, Shinobu refused to acknowledge his feelings. Maybe the idea of 'destiny' was wrong. It had been too farfetched and only happened in stories anyways. He did not have a storybook life. And while it would have been nice to have his love accepted, the object of his affections was seventeen years older, a professor, a man, and married to his beloved sister.

But what made it worse was that he could not stop thinking about that man. He stopped going to that particular library in order to reduce the chances of having to see him and ended up hurting even more when he couldn't see him (even though it hurt just as much to see him).

Shinobu had a picture of his brother-in-law that he kept hidden away between the pages of his journal. And while in Australia, instead of thinking about his family, he would think about him instead. He came up with hundreds of scenarios in his head, wrote several of them down while in a half-daze (only to later tear them out in embarrassment, furiously throw them into the trash, and then fetch them from the waste-basket a minute later because he couldn't bear to throw them away).

And at night, alone in his room, thousands of miles away, he would lie awake in his bed and plague his thoughts with images that could never come true and torture his body with a longing that would never end.

4) For I know I shall find my own peace of mind

Shinobu was curled up on the bed next to him, clutching the sleeve of his shirt with one white-knuckled hand. "I missed you…"

"I missed you too," Miyagi returned, his lips curling into a small smile around the cigarette. He used his free hand to play with the light brown strands of hair that were splayed across the boy's forehead.

"Can… I stay over tonight?"

"You just live next door. It's not like anyone will notice if you don't go home for one night."

Shinobu opened one eye and stared up at him, then closed it again and turned his head to rub his cheek against Miyagi's hand. "Can I sleep with you tonight?"

"You're being awfully cheeky," Miyagi teased, chuckling as Shinobu frowned. "It's fine," he said. "You can stay over."

The boy lazily stretched up one hand, keeping his head nuzzled against Miyagi's. Obediently, the man pulled the cigarette from his mouth and leaned in to kiss him as Shinobu's arm folded around his neck.

5) Just give me a number instead of my name

As a professor, Miyagi had to deal with plenty of brats. He would often complain about them to Kamijou (who would then tell him he was being too lenient on his students and should buckle down. Then they wouldn't act like brats. "Ah, but Kamijou, I don't want to be called a "demon teacher" like you are." That earned him a book to the head) but in the end, the brats were still brats and he referred to them as such in his head. Sometimes it was a struggle not to call them that to their faces.

Shinobu was a brat as well. Maybe it just turned out that all people under the age of twenty were brats in his eyes (stop thinking like an old man, Miyagi). However, he couldn't always pretend to play the 'teacher' role to Shinobu like he could with his students. Shinobu is… well, Shinobu is…

His lover.

Not his student, nor his ex-brother-in-law, nor his charge, nor his next-door neighbor. His lover. To hide his embarrassment, he would call Shinobu a brat. Whenever he said the boy's name, sometimes he would think of how he said it the night before—how the name sounded so different when muffled against skin and kisses. And, ashamed, Miyagi would call him a brat and push the blame onto him.

6) Forget all about me and let me decay

Miyagi was afraid all the time. He was afraid that one day Shinobu would wake up and realize he was no longer in love with the man and move on to someone younger. It was only natural to think that, right? At his age, Miyagi was looking for something constant. But Shinobu was still young, and young love never works out.

He knew that one very well.

And while it didn't matter that the boy confessed to him first, it was his heart that was the more fickle of the two. What would happen to Miyagi then? Would he obsess over it like his previous lost love? He would have to see the boy every day as long as they lived next door. He would have to see Shinobu bring home other lovers (men? Women?) and would have to smile and pretend that it was okay. Of course it wouldn't be okay! Even thinking about it… Even thinking about it made him upset and distressed and feel like a troublesome old man. But until he was pushed away, then he would continue to play that role . Because it seemed to work so far.

7) I do not matter I'm only one person

Miyagi wasn't entirely too sure what he had said in order to send Shinobu off on another one of his rants. But he had said something wrong.

"Do I really mean nothing to you, Miyagi?" the boy demanded, teary-eyed and unable to calm his breathing. "You keep going on and on about society and rules and people and adults and everything without trying to explain it to me." He paused for a moment to try and form a coherent sentence, but was unable to.

"I don't know where you keep getting these ideas, Shinobu—"

"It's because you say these things! You say these things that make me—that make me wonder if you're not really serious about this!" Shinobu looked up at him from where he was standing several feet away.

"Shinobu—"

"Answer me first!" he shouted back, taking a few steps away as Miyagi tried to close the distance between them. "Do you really think it's okay to just push me aside because I'm a brat?"

Miyagi massaged his temples with one large hand, grumbling under his breath with the mounting headache. "Like I said, I don't know how everything I've said about that makes you think that I don't love you. Or it makes you think that I can't be serious about you."

"You—but you never…" The boy tried several times to come up with an argument, but Miyagi knew that he wouldn't be able to form one.

So he used the chance to step across the space, take the boy in his arms, and kiss him slowly. "You matter to me very much, because you are my one person, Shinobu. Don't ever think otherwise."

"S-stupid old man," Shinobu muttered, but the rest of the complaint was cut off by another kiss.

8) Destroy me completely

Miyagi had been rough in the beginning because he wanted to scare Shinobu away. When he first attacked the boy (he refused to think of it as borderline rape, but 'attacking' didn't make it seem any better), he had been in the hope that the reality of the pain that came with loving a grown man would turn him off. But apparently, Shinobu had taken it in stride and continued to pursue him.

"Are you a masochist?!" Miyagi wanted to ask him. But he knew the correct word to describe the boy was "terrorist" and left it at that.

As their relationship grew more serious, and their sex became consensual, Miyagi found it difficult to control himself. Was that what being in love was about? The inability to constrain emotions and physical desire when with Shinobu?

The boy would often complain about how Miyagi was abusing his body, although he said it with an embarrassed expression because he really didn't mind.

As for Miyagi, he knew that Shinobu was destroying his composed façade and provoking him into irrational actions. And he thought about it with an embarrassed expression because he really didn't mind.

9) Bar all the windows and shut out the light

Miyagi knew that if he could, Shinobu would always be by his side. Call him a paranoid old man, but he was constantly afraid of something making the boy leave or get into trouble or just… do something he wasn't supposed to. Or maybe it wasn't him being a paranoid old man… Maybe it's just him being a distrustful lover. A jealous lover?

He never asked Shinobu to stay the night. Instead, he would wait until the boy would ask or if, by some turn of events or another, they mutually decided with actions instead of words that they would sleep together that night. This way, he tested the boy to see if it was really serious on his end. Because Miyagi knew that he was serious. He had been quite sure of that when he made his final visit to Sensei's grave.

But since he couldn't trap the boy against his will, Miyagi settled for keeping him close when they were together. Most often, he would spend part of the night studying and kissing and stroking Shinobu's sleeping face. It looked so pale and beautiful in the dark. And, jealously, he did not want anyone else in the world to see it.

10) Close every door to me keep those I love from me

Shinobu knew that if society caught on, then it would be the equivalent to his life ending. Miyagi told him to not be so dramatic, and that even if they were forced apart, he would still find a way for them to be together. And while this comforted Shinobu slightly, when he would go home and close the door behind him, he felt as if there was some possibility that he would open it again and everything would go wrong.

There was the possibility that if, when he is visiting Miyagi at M university, his father would walk in. His father was the head of the literature department, after all, and had no reason to not pay a visit to Professor Miyagi. As it was, Shinbou himself had walked in on Miyagi and the assistant doing unmentionable things (just thinking about those occasions still pissed him off). What was to stop anyone else from simply opening a door and discovering just what really rested behind it?

Would he open the door to Miyagi's apartment and find him with someone? Like he found Miyagi and that man before—only this time in a more serious situation? (The apartment was a personal space after all. The office was one thing, but finding his lover with someone else while in the apartment was another.)

He knew that these were concerns he couldn't express to Miyagi. It stressed Miyagi out enough already just being with him (was he really that much of a burden?) so the last thing he wanted to do was add to the stress. He would not consider the option of ending their relationship. He could not and would not. It would pain him too much to be away from Miyagi. It was hard enough staying in his own apartment—they were next door neighbors, for crying out loud! Shinobu would have just preferred to move into his lover's apartment so that he could be with him for as long as possible. He wouldn't mind paying the rent for the extra apartment because it would distract his parents from the fact that he wasn't living there.

But then it would be too obvious. Again, someone could come and unexpectedly visit and it would be ruined. And so Shinobu spent as many nights as he could protected by Miyagi's arms, and wondering if someone would come to the door of either apartment that could blow their secret. It was a terrible way to live, but it was the only way he could think of.