Eridan(diamonds)Feferi: Tatemae and Honne (Japanese): What you pretend to believe and what you actually believe, respectively
"We're not meant to be moirails Fef!" Eridan screams at her, hair wild and eyes shadowed. "We're meant to be something better, something greater!" He screams it at her like those words are all that's keeping him afloat in a storm. Spittle flies from his mouth and there are veins popping out at his temples, but she takes it.
And when he finishes, when he slumps against her and quietly lets Feferi pap his face, she is gentle and forgiving. He grumbles but sort of rearranges himself so his head rests on her shoulders, his legs draped over her hips and his arms wrap around her waist, tired and exhausted and just soul-achingly numb.
"Shush," Feferi murmurs, running her hands through his hair, "It's okay." She understands, she's always understood. His longing isn't for her as a matesprit, or a kismesis, or even as a moirail. He wants her in all the quadrants, tries so hard to make them be the sort of couple that goes beyond the quadrants and lives on in stories and movies.
It's in his motions, in his words, in their fights. The way he positions himself around her, always conscious of what his actions convey to her. He truly wants to believe it, that the two of them could be that sort of couple. But then again, in the moments like this when his anger and frustration have burned themselves out, she knows he doesn't really believe it.
Because in his most vulnerable moments, when he sits in her lap and lets her rub his horns and share her feelings, she knows he's pale for her too. He never says much after he's been emotionally wrung out like this, but if he really believed they were fated and destined to be concupiscent he'd never let her stay his moirail.
So she weathers his tantrums and his posturing for these moments, the moments when they can both sit in a pile of his making (all the scarves and cloaks in his closet flung haphazardly together by arms left weak from rage long gone) and just talk. She jams with him in truth then, finally getting to speak out about what troubles her. It's so nice, she thinks, when he's allowed himself to stop pretending.
The weight of this expectation that he fill his quadrants with other seadwellers, despite Feferi being the only one he knows and likes (the only one still around that he knows and likes), has him acting like this. She knows that. It's so frustrating at times though, because when he stops pretending that she's his end-all be-all love…when he allows himself to drop the pretense, he's the moirail she's always wanted. He returns to being the boy she went pale for all those sweeps ago.
Closing her all-white eyes, she leans into Eridan. Though she can't see them, she knows his white eyes are closed too. Even in death, he's still pretending.