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He’s yellow and you hate him (except when you love him, except when you want to take away everything that hurts him and make him feel safe, you hate him except when you don’t, you don’t know, you detest vacillation). He’s yellow and he’s fragile and you could break his skinny arm with the same amount of effort it takes you to snap a twig if you wanted to, but you don’t because he’s infuriating, and you adore him.
His grub name is Sollux, and you know his title, know what he goes by now and how you’re supposed to refer to him in all but the most private of situations, but you won’t call him that because he won’t call you Mariner, or Sorcerer, or any of the titles you’ve racked up. No, he calls you Eridan, has called you that since the day he overheard you talking to Her Radiance, because he thinks it’s hilarious for some reason that's completely beyond you. You really don’t understand why he thinks it’s so funny, but nothing he does ever really makes sense to you, and you aren't above being petty, so you call him his name instead of his titles, though he seems to mind a lot less than you. The situations in which you refer to him as ‘Sollux’ instead of his title keep getting increasingly more inappropriate, but you refuse to be reasonable because he refuses to be reasonable. You recently learned that he used your grub name in a session of Radi’s court, that you weren’t in attendance of (as usual), and have since given up all efforts to be civil. You will not be the first to crack. You refuse to lose. This is a matter of pride and no one is more prideful than you.
When you don’t want to rip his horns off, you enjoy his company, for the most part. He’s intelligent even if he isn’t civil, is frequently willing to talk to you about your magic, and is a willing participant in some of your more idiotic tests if only so he can laugh when they fail (and ask endless questions when they succeed, clearly dumbfounded that you actually managed to do something right for once). He’s everything you’re not, or at least everything you are that you’re not supposed to be. He’s callous, he’s rude, sharp and unavoidably blunt. Ironically, you think that’s the part of him that you fell in love with. (You think that’s typical, because your previous matesprit was the biggest, rudest bitch on all of Beforus, and you loved her like you’ve never loved anyone, except maybe Sol.)
He’s sitting with you now, perched on the desk in the captain’s cabin (your cabin) of your ship. You will let it be known that you did not invite him on, he simply let himself on, made himself known, and would not be removed (damn psionics). You argued, watched him spark in irritation, but things have calmed down since then. He’s been here for a few hours now, has spent some time talking with you, and you’re feeling decidedly more pale than you’d really like them to be, considering how ready you were to punch his stupid, crooked teeth in not so long ago.
(He’s older than you’d like him to be. His face is wrinkling, his hair greying, his horns starting to chip, starting to peel. You realize it’s been longer than you think, that it’s been more sweeps than you’ve processed, and you’re scared.)
He’s getting old, he tells you, he thinks he’s sick. You’re terrified, and although you try not to let it show, you're certain he can see it on your face, you're certain that he knows it. He doesn’t laugh at you, doesn’t make fun of you for you fear, just tells you that he’s here because of that, because he’s starting to feel it, he thinks he’s running out of time.
(You want to throw up. He’s dying and you’ve barely aged a day since you met him.)
You tell him that you don’t want to talk about it, and he doesn’t argue. You don’t think he wants to talk about it either. He lets himself float, lets the little red-blue sparks pick him off your desk and carry him gently, absently around the cabin. You like when he does that, floats like that, even if you haven’t ever really figured out how it works. (You’re running out of time to figure out how it works, you realize. You want to cry.)
He stays with you for a week, this time, before telling you far more gently than you're used to, that he needs to leave. He has some more people to talk to, he says, he’ll see you again soon. When he leaves your ship, you're not sure you believe him. The more time you spend with him, the more obvious it is to you that he's frail, that he's sick, that he's probably dying.
But you do see him again. He makes it a few more sweeps, and you see him often before he dies, take a leave of your ship and spend his last perigee with him. It’s quiet, and for the first time in however long you knew him (which, you realize, amounted to most of his life but very little of yours), you don’t fight. You love him, then, you don’t hate him.
He dies, and it hurts, of course it hurts, but you move on. You’re violet, you live for centuries, sometimes entire millenia, you’re not made for permanence.
(Still though, when you let yourself, you miss him even when you’re old, no matter how many times you tell yourself that you shouldn’t.)