When you first noticed these feelings, you weren’t quite sure what was happening. See, you and Cleo had been friends for months by then and, well, you hadn’t felt anything like it before. You had dated people before but you never felt anything different for them than for your other friends. You just kinda assumed that’s what everyone felt and moved on. That everyone just had, kind of, collectively lied about what the correct feelings to feel for someone you love are. But then, you started questioning that because, well, Cleo was, and still very much is, adorable, and fabulous, and bloody annoying when she wants to be but you can’t help but want to be around her. It’s not the butterflies in your tummy feelings that you’d been chasing for so long but it wasn’t the same thing you feel with your friends or with any of your exes.
So you took a step back for a bit. You could tell that Cleo noticed, that look on her face whenever they noticed you during group hangouts was proof enough. You just didn’t understand what was happening. Every time you thought about explaining it to someone you started feeling like an idiot. What were you meant to say, “I think Cleo is adorable, and funny, and wonderful. I want to be around her constantly. But also I have this sickly feeling in my bloody gut that I don’t actually want to date her despite all that.”? It sounded so bloody silly whenever you thought about talking about it. Yet, no matter what, you couldn’t quite shake it. This all encompassing feeling that occurred whenever you dated someone or even thought about dating someone. It felt like sludge being poured down your back, thick and heavy and cold, sending shivers down your back, or like someone dragging their nails down a bloody chalkboard right next to your ear.
And then. Then, you finally find it. You can’t even remember where at this point. Just one little word. It changed everything for you. Aromantic. You had never heard of it before but you read it and well. It didn’t click instantly. Life is more difficult than that but the more you read the more you were convinced. It sounded right! It seemed to explain everything and yet, something was still wrong. Because it explained approximately nothing about Cleo. Nothing about the way you felt whenever they so much as smiled at you. The way you thought Cleo was bloody wonderful and no matter how many times she admitted to arson or attempted murder or whatever other crime they may or may not have committed, you couldn’t stop thinking that she was the most beautiful person you’ve ever met.
So, you suffered in silence for another month, two. Fruitless Google searches and eye contact between the two of you that lasted a little too long. Your friends started catching on, started egging you on, but everytime they joked about your “obvious crush” you felt like crying. Or screaming. Or committing a violent murder! But you didn’t know what to say, how to paraphrase the churning in your gut into something more palatable. Whenever blummin’ Joel teased you for it or bloody Scott encouraged you to “go for it! You would be so cute together!”, you felt like banging your head against a wall. How do you say that the thing you’re feeling looks like love, sounds like love, and talks like love, but that calling it love makes you feel very not cute?! How do you explain to someone who looks at you and sees someone who should like romance, what with the pink and the hearts and the everything, and tell them that even when you did date people it always felt like ants under your skin and tension in your shoulders?
You don’t. That’s the answer. You don’t explain. Why should you? Clearly you’re not aromantic if you still feel like this, right? Who cares if now that you know that aromanticism is a thing you suddenly have a bone to pick with the idea of romance, of kissing, of bloody anything? Maybe you just need to try harder, smile wider, giggle louder, learn to blush on command.
Maybe, just maybe, if you actually ask her out, all of this will just go away and you’ll suddenly realise “oh my gosh, this is what I yearned for all along!” and you two can ride off into the sunset together. It’ll be fine, all you need to do is take that first step and set up a date and you’ll stop feeling so alienated by everything. It will all finally be fine. Maybe if you say it enough, you and Cleo will work out. Maybe.
end notes: look, it is my sworn duty to make everything i write about these two unreasonably unhealthy. the toxicity is my favourite part of shadowrot. they're like a train wreck, i love it.
anyway, i feel like i should ensure everyone knows that i am aromantic and that lizzie's opinions in this stem from internalised arophobia and amatonormativity and don't reflect my own thoughts. i pulled parts of this from my own experiences as an aro person. so like if fellow aros want to critique this, fine, but otherwise you can argue with the wall.
anyway, tommorow's another shadowrot fic because i'm obsessed. title's from crush culture by conan gray. see ya!
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