How to Love

Woooo, and here I go, with yet another Deceit-centric fanfiction. And here I go projecting my feelings onto Janus again. Why do I project my feelings onto a slimy snake boi I have almost nothing in common with? The world may never know.

Seriously, though, this is like REALLY strong on the projecting. It's largely just me venting through Janus again, except I changed some of the details and switched girlfriends to boyfriends (though Janus's exes in this aren't meant to actually be my exes. The relationships are just based on what happened in my own).

Btw, this takes place in a Human AU.

XXX

He just didn't get it sometimes. Or, most of the time. It would be a lie to say he never understood it, though.

Love.

Remus's brother, Roman, was always going on and on about true love and grand gestures and candlelit dinners and red roses and on and on. And he didn't think Roman was wrong to do so. He just didn't really get it.

But, well, he sort of did? On some level at least.

Because it wasn't like Janus had never experienced romance before, never experienced love before. He had. He knew he loved his ex-boyfriend while they were dating, and if he was being honest, he loved him for a while even after they broke up. The light, happy feeling in his chest, and the following heartbreak, weren't just some charade. He wasn't pretending.

Or was he? Janus lied a lot, and it's not like lying to himself was off the table. What if he had just convinced himself he had been in love?

He'd almost convinced himself that he had been pretending when he decided to re-read his diary entry he wrote when he had his first kiss. He wasn't one to write diary entries very often, but he sometimes did so to vent. The entry about the kiss was the only positive diary entry he'd written in years, having been written to help him remember the moment rather than cope with all the bad things he couldn't control in his life.

And in that diary entry, he described the kiss as being like stars. Stars. Looking back, it seemed so silly and cliche and stupid to have written that, but at least he knew now that he hadn't been lying to himself. No, that night, he'd been giddy and excited and happy about the kiss. That was why he wrote such a cheesy diary entry in the first place- he was off on a sappy love-induced high.

So, okay. It wasn't a lie. But then why did it feel like one?

Janus had, at one point, convinced himself he was completely asexual before slowly realizing that he was, in fact, very gay. He hadn't even dated anyone until he was 18, long after anyone else he knew had started. Apparently, even his younger brother, Virgil, had started dating at the age of 12. Obviously not something serious, but still.

Even after Janus had realized he was gay, he just didn't find himself actually doing anything with the information other than making the occasional jokes about how gay he was. Which was actually how he came out to his family. No big thing, he just started throwing in little comments into conversation, and his family got the point. He supposed it helped that the majority of his family wasn't straight. He didn't have to worry about being rejected. Which was lucky; it was great that he had a family so accepting of these things that he didn't even need to have a big coming-out, but sometimes he felt like the real reason he didn't was so he had the opportunity to backtrack if needed. Just in case it turned out he wasn't really gay, he could just say that the jokes were only jokes or something.

But, well, he couldn't exactly keep doing that once he started dating his first boyfriend. They'd been friends for years before they started dating, though they'd had a few periods of falling out of touch with each other. Funnily enough, and perhaps this should have been a warning to him, they actually started dating because, after one of these periods, his ex had texted him calling him a loser. Which may or may not have upset him and ruined his evening until his family returned from an outing and explained that they'd run into him and the text was supposed to be a joke.

And so, Janus stopped feeling bad about it and pretended it never hurt him in the first place, and he started talking to his friend again. And talking led to hanging out, which led to dates, and eventually, it led to them officially becoming boyfriends.

And yes, that relationship didn't work out- the two of them just turned out to not be compatible, and his ex ended up hurting him a few too many times- but there was a time in the relationship when he legitimately loved his boyfriend. He knew he did. Yes, they hadn't even kissed, but they'd cuddled and held hands and went on dates, and that was fine.

After the breakup with his first ex, Janus went a while without dating again. About a year, when he'd gone off to college.

During that time, Janus had been angry and upset and heartbroken, so he assumed that it was only natural that he didn't want to try to find someone else just yet. He was fine on his own- content.

And then he met his second boyfriend. They only knew each other for about a week before his ex told him that he liked him. At the time, Janus had simply just agreed to go out with him because he liked him well enough and just went along with it. After all, dating someone was meant for getting to know them, and you fell in love afterward, right? It's not like it was love-at-first-sight like in Roman's romance novels.

And those feelings did come. Janus had fallen in love, and he had his first kiss at 19, which seemed ridiculously late compared to everyone else, but that hadn't mattered at the time.

Inevitably, because of course it was inevitable- Janus had not entered the relationship thinking he would spend the rest of his life with someone he started dating before he even turned 20- that relationship ended too. This time, Janus felt like it really was his fault. With his last breakup, Janus had at least been able to use his anger at his ex for constantly blowing him off as a way to cope with the heartbreak. But this time, anger was just replaced with guilt.

The thing was, it turned out they weren't compatible either. Intimacy was very important to his ex, and Janus had a lot of trouble being intimate in, really, just about any sense of the word. He was afraid of it, afraid of opening up, and afraid of going any farther physically than they already had.

It would be completely false to say that his ex was trying to force him into anything. No, his ex was extremely adamant about consent and went along with Janus's attempts to slow the pace in their relationship. But even still, his ex kept bringing up things, things that went farther than kissing, and Janus couldn't bring himself to tell them that he was uncomfortable with it. He'd convinced himself that it was only a matter of time before he'd want to do those things too- he just had to get over himself first, stop feeling afraid- but it never happened. He was still scared of letting anyone see him like that, even his kind and supportive boyfriend.

So, he started distancing himself a bit. He was still in love and didn't want the relationship to end, but he couldn't provide something that his partner valued in a relationship. And by the time he was finally honest about his issues, it was too late to salvage the relationship. At least it had ended on relatively good terms, but the whole thing left Janus with an incredible feeling of guilt anytime he thought of his ex or even anything that reminded him of them. He felt bad for leading them on, for not being honest sooner. But he wasn't an honest person, and now he had to deal with the consequences.

He got over both of his exes eventually, though. And now, he didn't really understand why he had even bothered with relationships in the past. Sure, he liked being in a relationship, but he didn't need to be in one. He was just as happy or sad whether he was in one or not. Romance wasn't essential to his life, just something that was nice while it lasted and hurt when it ended.

And Janus had been thinking a lot about that lately.

He thought of his previous assertion that he was asexual, and he thought about all the times he had believed he was faking being gay and just lying to himself. He thought that, while those thoughts might not have been completely true, maybe they were a little true?

He didn't know this back then, but he now knew that someone could feel romantic love without feeling sexual attraction. His second ex had even told him that his feelings didn't make his orientation less valid (and wasn't that funny? His ex comforting him five minutes after their breakup that he was at fault for).

But now he wondered whether he deserved to be in a relationship when he was like this. Because, sure, there were other ace people and even some non-ace people who would be fine with a relationship staying only romantic, but didn't relationships at least require emotional intimacy? He wasn't sure he could provide that, either.

Sometimes, Janus felt like he was such a cold person. He didn't pine after people, didn't have crushes, and both of his relationships were really just him agreeing to someone asking him out. Had they not taken the first step, he wouldn't have started dating them and wouldn't have been upset by that. But beyond even the starting of relationships, he felt like he wasn't as committed to them as he was supposed to be- Which wasn't to say he would ever cheat on someone he was dating. No, of course he wouldn't. Sure, he didn't have a problem with polyamory (not the same as cheating), but polyamory wasn't his thing either. Hell, he could barely handle one relationship apparently.

No, he just didn't seem to see relationships the same way as those he was dating. Hell, his first boyfriend started talking about getting married and adopting children and starting a farm when they had barely even started dating. He went into relationships expecting them to eventually end, and he didn't really have any intention to get married, even though he could now. Even if he did, or even if he was just living with a partner, the idea of sharing a bed with someone every night, made a lump of dread settle in his stomach. He didn't think he would be able to sleep like that. He couldn't see himself being so comfortable with someone that he could fall asleep next to them- every night. No- if he ever did live with a romantic partner, he would at least need to have a separate bed, if not a separate room.

It seemed like everyone else didn't agree with his thoughts, though. Roman acted like he was crazy, and Virgil just thought he was being dramatic.

Janus just wasn't sure what to do with himself in terms of relationships. He enjoyed them while they lasted. They weren't fake. And it wasn't like he just didn't care. He wanted to spend time with his partners, wanted to be cared for. He didn't just want a relationship on paper, with his partner declaring their undying love through social media and text but then ignoring him and blowing him off whenever it suited them. (Which maybe made him a bit of a hypocrite, but even when he distanced himself from his second partner a bit, they still saw each other at least once a week, and they had never ignored each other for longer than a few hours). He also didn't want excessive attention or much physical attention at all.

And maybe it was ridiculous to conclude this after only being in two total relationships, but it somehow seemed like he couldn't find the middle ground.

And maybe that was for the best because he wasn't a good boyfriend, anyway, so it was better to just not waste other people's time with his particularities and problems.

Maybe it was better if he just stayed alone.

XXX

Wow, okay, this got a bit more angsty than I was going for. Sorry if this mostly just seems like complaining. I just have thoughts, and I can't always express them without yeeting them onto whatever character I'm obsessed with at the time, So, sorry Janus, 'cuz you've been my character obsession at a very angst-filled time, lol.

Anyway, thanks for reading this if you're still here, I guess?