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You met her at the coffee shop on campus at the end of your first fall semester.
Aradia had been bitching your ear off about the intense need for the limited edition mint hot chocolate offered around this season only, but she didn't want to go by herself, that would be terribly boring, so you let her drag you away from your computers and your moody roommate to be classy and social for once. You haven't got enough meal plans to indulge, but she insists you must try one, it would be a sin not to, so you sip on the overly festive drink and let her chatter on about the classes she got in to for the spring semester.
The girl in the booth across from you looks so out of place that you don't mean to ignore Aradia, but she looked like she stepped out of a magazine ad. Wearing a fleece pull-over boasting the seal from the Ivy League university an hour up the interstate and designer jeans that cost half your tuition, her chestnut brown hair falling in waves over her shoulders and her eyes as green as the holly leaves decorating her table, she didn't belong in the dinky little coffee shop of your state college. But such a girl, at least in your experience, should be accompanied by a gaggle of female friends or a boyfriend, and not be studying her cell with such longing.
"Maybe she's being stood up," Aradia said, looking over at the girl and not being subtle at all about it (not that the stranger noticed). "You should say hi."
It's hard not to snort, but you can swear you see a faint glimmer of tears, and her shoulders are hunching inwards the longer her phone doesn't do what she's hoping it will do, and something tugs on your heart, hard, and Aradia is just as surprised as you probably should be that you're approaching a total fucking stranger who's totally out of your league.
"Are you okay?"
She looks up, and her face caves in to the most pure expression of rage and sorrow that you've ever seen, and bangs the bejeweled phone on the table angrily. "He's such a fucking idiot, if he messes this up, he's not going to get another chance." The tears you thought you saw begin to trickle down her face, and she scrubs angrily at them with the sleeve of her pull-over. "I'm sorry, I'll be fine, I'm just-"
"-tired?" you offer, the corner of your lip quirking up just the slightest, and for a moment you're not sure if you've said the right thing, but then she smiles back, and it's radiant. You're going to make a fool of yourself for this girl, you know it.
Her name is Feferi Peixes and she's most definitely out of your league. Heiress and sorority member and valedictorian of her high school, she shouldn't have even looked at a shrimpy computer fuckface like you twice, but you scooted in to that booth next to her, let her lean on your shoulder and swear and cry and laugh and smile and probably let a lot off her chest that's been burdening her for a long time. It was totally fucking worth getting snot on the sleeve of your favorite hoodie.
You meet "him" for the first time by accident
It's rare when you and Karkat have to go up to the bigger city where Feferi lives, but when your teacher mentions a particularly awesome lecture going on at the convention center, you can't help but grit your teeth and fill your gas tank and make the drive. Karkat bitches that if you're going to go all the way up there, you might as well stop for "some goddamn booze" on the way home. After a debacle involving a "girly ass drink" and Karkat just about smashing the bartender's nose in, you find yourselves scrambling out the back door, only to trip over someone splayed out in the alley.
Knowing what you do now, you wanted to say that he looked out of place, and honestly, there were a few things that could have tipped you off. His jacket looked too nice, there were no holes in his jeans, and the rings on his fingers caught the street lamps enticingly. But he was unconscious, and through the stench of the dumpster near the back of the bar, you could smell alcohol clinging to him heavily. But Karkat is running ahead of you, whooping and laughing, and all you catch is a streak of purple in his hair before taking off after your wayward roommate.
His name is Eridan Ampora, and he's Feferi's. Feferi's not-so-much boyfriend, parent-appointed fiance, fellow company heir, and soon-to-be roommate. You hear her lament about his drinking habits and his bad attitude and terrible grades, you hear her worry about his health and relationship with his parents, but you don't really meet him again until you help her move in to the townhouse she plans on sharing with him.
He's so closed in you can practically bounce balls off the wall he's built up around himself. Apparently he'd been moved in the day prior, so although he helps you carry boxes of Feferi's things, he doesn't talk to you, and you make no move to talk to the prick in return. She'd warned you that he'd be like this, that he doesn't understand why she'd pick someone like you over someone like him, and you want to dislike him for it, but you can't.
Because there's something wrong with him, and Feferi doesn't know how to cope any longer on her own. He won't go to the doctor, his parents wouldn't let him even if he wanted to, would rather see their own son drown in alcohol than risk their heir being publicized as medicated. All teenagers go through an alcohol stage, they'd tell the press; Eridan has just hit his. Antidepressants are harder to explain, not without embarrassing them.
Feferi is a girl of happiness, who doesn't like to linger on negative thoughts. She doesn't know how to deal with Eridan and his anger and his hurt, with the scars on the inside of his thighs from their breakup in middle school or the way the weight has fallen off him since they started college. The townhouse is located between their two schools; the Ivy League school Feferi blossoms at and the state university that Eridan drowns in. Even with all the influence and money, Eridan hadn't had the grades to go to the same school as her, and it had been the straw that broke the camel's back. She'd been so excited to have him there with her, had been sure that if he could just het in to a good school his parents would let up, but he couldn't even do that much.
Feferi says you salvaged what was left of their relationships. His moods had been swinging since they were fifth graders, and she's just a kid, was then and still is, and he's been something she'd had to keep a secret and try to make sense of on her own. It's broken her down, made her jaded and fearful and avoiding, and you're quiet by nature, know how to be gentle with her. But you know how to deal with Eridan too. You give as good as you get, and as soon as he realizes you're a permanent fixture in Feferi's life, he turns all his anger and poison on you. And you take and take and take and let it roll off your shoulders just like you do with Karkat.
He's beautiful under the layers of clothes and exaggerated hairstyle and angst. There's a rawness around him that draws you in like a moth to flame, and although his grades suck, he's so smart you just want to smack him silly for not just doing the goddamn work so he can get somewhere with his life. He takes pictures, and he nearly knocked out two of your teeth the first time you snooped in to his room and saw them. They decorate the wall closest to his bed, pictures of Feferi, vibrant and giggling, pictures of who you assume to be his parents, of his chubby baby brother, of sunsets and dilapidated buildings and a fat old cat and you feel like he's spread out all that's left of him on the whitewashed walls.
It was beautiful, and it's something he does just for himself; Feferi probably doesn't even know. But after that day you notice him hiding his camera under his scarf, sneaking pictures of you when he doesn't think you're looking; when you're cooking or helping Feferi with her calculus homework or just dicking around on the XBOX in the living room. He gives you a black eye when you snoop again and spot a picture of you dozing on the couch, sunset painting your skin gold and your hair indigo, and when you explain your bruised eye and your bruised lips, Feferi starts to cry, but pulls you in to a hug so tight you can't breathe, and the picture Eridan shows you later is so bursting with happiness that you wonder what you ever did to deserve this girl.
Sometimes he's all right and doesn't go out binging into the wee hours of the morning, and he'll sit on the couch with the two of you and nibble on popcorn and occasionally smile when Feferi guffaws and end up curled up behind you, ribs pressing sharply against your back under her obnoxiously pink comforter, Feferi tucked snugly under your chin, and it's perfect, this place you've found between the two of them. They both need you for different things and you can do both, they fit absurdly well in to different holes in your heart that you didn't know you had.
But tonight is not one of the good nights. You were dimly aware of Feferi getting up to get a snack in the middle of the night, and she comes back with that tell-tale frown worrying her features, big pink glasses balanced on her nose and your Portal sweatshirt hugging her curves.
"He passed out in the entryway," she said, and there's a resigned bitterness in her voice that you've come to recognize.
Running a hand through your hair, you haul your tired body out of the warm arms of her bed, scrabbling for your own glasses as she retrieves your boxers and t-shirt. You dress and follow after her, able to hear his angry muttering as soon as you leave the bedroom and hit the stairs. He'd had a fight with his father earlier, you can tell by the way he's swearing like it's the only way to get oxygen back in to his system.
You shouldn't be able to pick him up as easily as you do. Karkat is the skinniest motherfucker you knew, but Eridan is emaciated. His bones feel hollow, like a birds, and you know that the hunger has started to eat away at his muscles as well. You haven't seen the whole process, just the end. Feferi can't help you change him out of his clothes; being able to count every rib and practically cut your hand off with how sharp his collarbones are is something that sends her in to hysterics.
She disappears to the kitchen to fetch the lidded cup and bendy straw kept in the house for this occasion only, when he's too drunk to even hold his head up. It's easy to move in to his room, and you're too practiced at sliding his dead weight limbs out of his clothes. You wonder how Feferi dealt with the cold ball of nerves stuck in her throat for so many years, because there's almost nothing left, and he's muttering angrily and there's tears crusted at the corner of his eyes and speaking of eyes, where did his glasses go?
You've wrestled him in to a pair of sweats and a long-sleeved tee by the time she returns, and her hand lingers on the back of your neck when you slide him under the blankets, his skin cold against yours. She kisses you, once, twice, thrice, and she'll go back to bed and read one of her favorite romance novels and wake the two of you up with pancakes and sausage and a smile that's only a little sad. But for now, he needs you, not her, and she's slipping out the door, the scent of her lilly shampoo lingering even after she's gone.
Eridan's muttering has almost completely stopped, and he just watches you as you scoot him over toward his pictures, scooting the cup to easily within arms reach on the nightstand after your glasses are off. His face has crumpled, and when you slip under the sheets with him, his hands fist in your shirt, the bones in his wrist sickeningly detailed even in the dark.
"Wwhy aren' I good enough?"
And you want to tell him that he is, but no matter what you or Feferi or anyone says, it's never enough. He's amazing, but not in the way his father wants him to be, so that means he's a failure, and when you're already fucked up, how do you deal with your own parents telling you that you're worthless? You thread your fingers in his hair, nails scraping lightly against his skull, and his shoulders are shaking and the first of many tears drips on to your shirt.
You adore both of them, you've found, this light and dark, yin and yang thing they've got going on, but now you've been dragged in to Feferi's nightmare, the one that she uses you to avoid. Now you need Eridan too, just like she does, and you're not sure how you're going to convince him of that truth before it's too damn late.