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You Will Fall In Love With Someone Who Annoys You.
They say that there are seven kinds of people you can and will fall in love with in your twenties.
Your name is Sollux Captor. You are twenty years old and he is not your first boyfriend.
His name is Eridan and he wears five different facial piercings. His hair has in it a streak of black and a streak of purple and it is dyed white, a hideous colour that screams the word hipster. You meet him in a cafe, next to a sepia-toned poster for an arthouse film and he is watching you fiddle with your cigarette. He says, "You're not supposed to smoke in here." He has an accent and you immediately list him in your head as the biggest tool you've ever met. You bring him home and fuck him speechless on your balcony because you feel sorry for him. Everything about him begs to be pitied and he asks you if you want to date.
Everything about him is so awful, and you are in love with it, oddly protective over him and you don't stop and wonder why. You hate this face he makes during orgasm, these tiny little whines and sometimes he cries and you think you hate that the most, because you love him a lot and have to constantly stop to wipe them away, coo him in to relaxation and kiss his cheeks.
It takes you three months to realise that what you're trying to protect him from is people like you, monsters who are driven by sexual appetites and hurt with abandon. You break up with him and watch what was left of your relationship take to the floor, stepped on and mopped up and you finally understand what it is like to have the power to hurt somebody.
You're not sure what you're most comfortable with, being the one who is loved less, or the one who is loved more in a relationship. You are still thinking about the face that he makes when he screams your name months after, but you do not think about loving him any more.
You Will Fall In Love With Someone Who Pushes You Away.
You are 21 and she is your first girlfriend.
You meet her at a museum, in the back of a room you were not supposed to go into. She is dusting a mass of cracked and decaying bones with a look of utter concentration on her face and you fall in love right there. When she sees you, she makes fun of your hair and your glasses and you invite her out for drinks. She calls herself Aradia and she's your new favourite kind of dangerous. She has dark hair and pretty eyes and she takes you back to her apartment, not yours, throws you down on her bed and rides you for three hours straight. When you wake up later she's drinking whiskey and she grins and asks if you want to be friends.
It only takes two months this time, two months until you realise that you are never going to get her to love you. You break up with her and she laughs and asks if you can still be friends. You say you can, but she doesn't answer your calls and she's always busy and after a while you just give up.
You Will Fall In Love With Someone For One Night And One Night Only.
You are still 21. His name is Dave Strider and he works nights down at a club you used to frequent as a teenager. He smells like expensive cologne and the way he smiles makes you dizzy.
You stay past closing time to watch him mix music and when he leaves he takes you with him. You go back to your place and invite him inside for drinks. He's nice and he's happy and he makes you laugh and fucks you in to the mattress like he needs you, nails scraping, clawing, teeth on your neck. Afterwards he traces the marks on your body with calloused fingertips until you fall asleep. When you wake up, he's gone.
You force yourself to feel bad, try to convince yourself that you could have loved him longer but it's a lost cause and really, you couldn't have, and the fantasies of waking up next him every morning are far-fetched ones, so you wash the smell of him off of your skin and tell your friend who serves drinks at the club to tell him hello.
You seek help from a therapist, whose name is Kanaya, and she tells you that you probably need to hold off on dating for a while. Before now you hadn't realised how messed up you were in the chest, and you try to look back, retrace your steps and find what or who or when it started. You can't remember.
You Will Fall In Love With The Old Couple Down The Street.
You are 22. Kanaya has been married four years to an elegant lady named Rose and you see them together every Saturday before your appointments. You fall in love with them because to you they represent the impossible. They are stable and long lasting and completely in love. You wonder how one would get about finding a love like that, and you yourself are still trying to get someone to like you for more than one night.
You meet a girl named Feferi who works at the desk of the psychiatrist's office and can name every kind of fish in the atlantic ocean. She makes you happy and you smile when you think about her hair and you try dating, but give up after three days and decide to just stay friends. You think that she won't follow through and she does. She calls you every second night and convinces you to get an account on a chat website she seems completely taken with. She says that she thinks your glasses are cool and encourages you to go out more often and see friends. You run in to Dave in an Apple store and he invites you for drinks, introduces you to his friends. You are 22, and you have never had real friends before.
You Will Fall In Love With Smells, The Good And The Bad Kind.
You are going to be 23 in a month and you are dating Dave's friend John. You wear his shirt when he's not home and you love the way it smells. You are no longer taking therapy and you have a job at a video game store. You want to be a graphic designer. You sniff John's shirt in public and he pretends to be scandalized. You take a notebook everywhere you go and you list the things that make you happy, the kids who come rushing into the store you work at when a new game comes out, the feeling you get when your coding goes just right, the zap of electricity against thunder in the middle of a storm. It smells like Fall all of the time and you realise how much you genuinely used to hate yourself, how you didn't trust your own judgement and felt sorry for the people around you.
Everything about John is lovely, the way he holds your hand and the way he bickers with you over housework when you move in together; the way he screams your name during sex and the silly buck-toothed grin he gets when you're all hanging out as a group and Dave says something funny. You last two months of summer and all three months of Autumn before you decide that you've lost the spark and agree on a mutual break up. Neither of you are bitter and you go back to just being friends, but you will always think of him when you smell cinammon or rain and you know it.
You Will Fall In Love With Your Friends.
You are 24 years old. You see them every day and talk to them online every night, and you have never loved a group of people quite as strongly as you do them. Feferi introduces you to her cousin Nepeta, and Nepeta introduces you to her friend Karkat. Karkat knows John and John knows Rose and somehow you all end up as a big group, your ex therapist and her wife and your friends and these two new people who both remind you of cats, small and characteristically adorable.
You watch their faces and figure things out before they do, like how Dave and Jade both like each other but won't admit it, Nepeta is nursing an unbearably large crush on Karkat and Feferi on her. You sleep with Karkat once and think it's funny when he gets angry and rants and bitches.
You never knew your mother and your father didn't know how to love you properly. This group of friends you have are like a family to you, safe and warm and you don't have to feel vulnerable when you're with them because they not only accept your weirdness but accentuate it with their own, and they are lovely and it is lovely. Feferi says that she has one more friend that she has not introduced you to because he's been living with his family in England, and you never thought yourself the kind of person to want to make so many new friends.
You Will Fall In Love With The One, And You May Not Like It.
You are 25 years old. Feferi finally introduces you to her friend and you don't know what to do. His name is Eridan Ampora. He only has one facial piercing in now and his hair is black. There is still some purple left at the front and his eyes widen comically when he sees you. He is so pitiful and you don't know what to do.
He stays late when everyone comes to over to yours for a movie night and he doesn't leave with Feferi like he was meant to. Instead he stays the whole night, and you kiss his lips bruisingly and hold him achingly tight and cry when he does. You tie him to the headboard and make an absolute mess of him, force him to beg and fuck him until he's seeing white and chanting your name like a prayer. You feel sorry for him and you do not want to protect him anymore. You kiss his neck after you untie him and it is raining outside when he curls in to your body, whispers that he loves you, that he's always loved you. You say that you love him too and for the first time in a long time you're not sure what this is, this crazy little feeling and this tightness in your chest to match the tightness of your arms around his waist. You can't tell if you're loved less or loved more and there is nothing prettier in the world than when you get him to moan for you, cry and squirm and blush and bleed and he is so real and so in love with you that you can't bear it.
You last a month. And then two months. And then three, and you keep lasting. Sometimes you hate him and sometimes you love him but you always want him, whether it be red and raw or gentle and sweet. His lips are the only certainty that you hold in your life and you never feel stronger than when you have him whimpering in your ear. Your name is Sollux Captor and this is the last time you will ever fall in love.