I'LL DESTROY YOU baby
Dan recoiled and let out an unholy squeal as the back of Eve's hand left a throbbing, red imprint on his face. It was almost cartoonish, he told himself. He briefly imagined them as two squat, poorly-animated blobs gesticulating wildly at each other while chattering like squirrels on PCP.
"Haaanh!" Eve snorted, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. "I catch you inside that farmer girl and all you have to say is 'Technically, we weren't dating anyway'? Did you know she was saving herself for marriage?"
"Ohhhhhwuh! C'mon, Eve, you never said you didn't want an open relationship," Dan pleaded, shaking his head. "Besides... it was a marriage! Of our bodies and souls! She never said what kind of marriage, baby! You know, so, technically, I can't have cheated!" Then he tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, when were we an us, anyway? A thing? I... I can't recall it happening!"
"Haaaanh!" Eve growled, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder in the exact same manner as she'd previously done. "Too dumb to take a hint, even! Remember when you said Meryl was beautiful and I got irrationally annoyed? What do you think that meant?"
"That you envy children who get compliments and it makes you horrible at dealing with kids?" Dan responded earnestly.
"It's a mating ritual," Eve snarled, stealing Dan's identity and miring him in irreparable credit card debt. "Punch-punch-kiss! Tsun-tsun! You've met Jamie!" She roundhouse-kicked Dan in the forehead to demonstrate. He crumpled to the floor and got up slowly, groaning and grinning.
"Heheheh, Jamie watched me bang Tina," Dan chuckled to himself. He spun around in place.
"You don't even realize what's going on around you!" Eve howled, pointing Dan out as a sex offender and ruining his reputation around the town. "You act like a Casanova, but you're really a dimwit!"
"Like I was supposed to know mutual hatred fed the fires of love!" Dan shot back, his anger undercut by the fact that he sounded like Julia Child. "Seems pretty counter-initiative to me!"
Eve groaned and rubbed her forehead. "God, stop speaking."
God agreed with the sentiment, because of Dan's bloody voice, but was sadly unable to do anything about it, not being the prominent deity-in-chief of Flowerbud.
Eve narrowed her eyes. "So what did you think I kept having sex with you for? Because I hated you?"
"Because ladies love the Dan Man," Dan bragged, buffing his nails on his chest. This animation wasn't in the script, and the game crashed. "So hatred fuels the flames of love, huh? So... malice, abuse, arguments, stuff like that? That's how you tell people you want them around here?"
"That's how you propose!" Eve shrieked, shaking Dan like a magic 8-ball. "I... how clear do I have to make it? I'll fuel the flames of love myself if I have to!"
Moments later, Dan was on fire. He shrieked in agony, causing Eve to wish she were deaf, and sank to his knees.
"Ohhhhhwuh! Why would you do this?" he screamed. "I thought you loved me!"
"Hatred is love! We will be dysfunctional together while courting and it will be wonderful. That's what Harvest Moon does to love!" Eve snapped Dan's spine, withdrew a blue feather from her cleavage and thrust it at Dan. It promptly burst into flame. "If I didn't have any romantic, loving feelings for you in spite of all this, I'd be friendly towards you! Or I would completely ignore you!"
"That sounds abusive and plenty of other things that are horribly incompatible with the concept of love!" Dan wailed. Eve rolled her eyes.
"Are you going to accept it or not? Marry me! Look, I'll prove how much I love you! How serious I am!" She pulled out a rifle and aimed it at his heart.
"I... I think we should be... just... friends!" Dan gagged, choking on his own blood.
Eve sighed. her shoulders slumped, and she pulled a pail of water out of her cleavage. "For fuck's sake. Fine. I guess I'll be forever alone, and you'll have a one-in-eleven chance of ending up married with a kid that never passes toddlerhood, you bastard." She hummed and crossed her arms over her chest. "On the other hand, it's not like anyone else in this town is allowed to date anyway..."
Dan wept in relief after Eve doused the flames charring his body, and was promptly forgotten as she wandered around the Moonlight Bar a bit more, staring into Forever, only uttering one of two stock lines when spoken to for the rest of the evening.
At the doorway, a very startled and traumatized Tina watched in silence. Snapping out of it with the experience of a pro used to observing this sort of shit, she tapped her chin thoughtfully and stared at the ceiling.
"Wow... I guess Jamie really is perfect for me." She fondly patted the stab wound Jamie had made in her gut and left the bar to hunt down the malevolently affectionate pinnacle of romantic bliss.
AUthor's Notes: I went for "is it just me or are rival heart events increasingly centered on negative, uncomfortable and unfriendly interactions in HM games nowadays?" and suddenly veered into meta as hell (with a bit of "please stop writing things"). Plus I've always wanted to set Dan on fire. He's just so ho-*sniped*
Feel free to a leave a review. Yes, "what the fuck" probably counts in this instance. Gotta battle writers' block somehow, right?