A/N: hello!
"Hey," I said with a deliberate smirk, "I got you something." The tan-skinned boy in front of me grinned eagerly, as I'd hoped.
"What is it?" I shrugged. "Dave," he said, "Pl-please don't, uh, tease me," he said with a bashful smile. I coolly passed him a game card. The sun reflected off its surface. He curiously reached and took it, tilting it back and forth to admire the foil card.
"This musta been a fortune! It's really rare!" I shrugged it off as nothing. Really, I bummed the twenty bucks the card cost of my brother. I glanced down at my phone, which has just buzzed. It's from Terezi, another friend of mine. 4R3 YOU COM1NG? Shit, I forgot all about meeting up with her. I stood up and kissed the boy's head.
"Hey, Tavros, that was my Bro," I lied. "I'll see you tomorrow, alright?" Tavros smiled and nodded. I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, making him blush, and stood up to leave. I still didn't quite understand why I was with him. But right now, Tavros was definitely my favorite. That was, probably, subject to change. Last week it'd been TZ and I always did seem to go back to the internet lovers.
The thing was, I never really left any of them.
You ever had a bunch of chocolate and you decide you're gonna eat one? Then you're like damn that was a good chocolate. So you eat like nine of them. Then you're thinking you better stop eating them before you eat them all and you get fat or whatever. You know you shouldn't eat that chocolate. But you do. Your self control is out the window. I have that problem.
Except with me, I can never get enough superficial teenage love. It started very simply with me dating Terezi. After a while I realized I was way more attached to her than any cool guy should ever act. After a while, we ended up breaking it off. Then I met a guy online. Karkat Vantas. Cool enough kid. So we started dating online.
That was fun for a long time. It was pretty easy to handle and left me no responsibility, two things I ate up like a pig in shit. Then shit got complicated. Terezi's date had stood her up one day and she was pretty upset.
Gold star if you can guess what happened there. Now, Terezi knew I was in another relationship. And she didn't care. So we kept it going, in secret. After a while, I met a nice enough girl online named Jade. Well she confessed to me. It was like having another chocolate waved around in my face. I took it. Terezi was annoyed with me, but she didn't stop me.
Newest of all was Tavros. Sweet, innocent little Tavros who never would think that he'd dating the biggest asshole on the planet. I promised myself Jade was my last, I'd even consider picking between her and Karkat and cutting it off with Terezi. Get my shit together, you know? But when Tavros and I started talking, I knew it was out the window. I couldn't take it. He confessed to me. He was innocent, and sweet and I didn't want to say no. I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
But even more, I didn't have the willpower to say no. I liked Tavros, and the words "I'm already with someone," didn't even cross my mind.
Sometimes, I'd considered cutting off the two on the internet. I'd stared blankly at the simple break up messages I'd typed out, before deleting them and sighing.
Some people collect comic books, some people collect photographs. I collect lovers.
I knew very well it was wrong. But I felt like I got something different from each of them, a different kind of emotional high that I hid between black aviators. Tavros was sweet and caring. Terezi was the one I could talk to. Karkat was the one that I could tease. And Jade was the one that I could play the prince with.
That was fun, and it was cool. I spent my days with Tavros, I spent my evenings with Terezi, and I spent my nights with Karkat and Jade.
And then there was one more. The one that didn't like me. But he came in later. I'd never actually confessed before, so I'd never handled rejection. And that shit was about to set me straight, let me tell you.