Time goes on, and despite Love's best efforts to the contrary, he ends up closer and closer to his Passion. Both physically and spiritually. His best attempts at ignoring the Universe have been heard, catalogued and respectfully shelved.
This was so weird and unlike everything he’d ever felt, experienced or even thought beforehand. He’d once been under the impression that he’d finally made sense of this chaotic swirl called life, and especially, he thought, he’d started to understand his opposite, fairerror gender. But he did not expect Passion to show up and shove all of Love's neatly stacked and organised philosophies, in a tumble drier, just to prove that "It don't hold water!"
Most normal people start their relationships with cute nicknames like: Bunny, Bumblebee, Honey Dew, Sugar Drop or whatever else normal people can think of that is either A) Soft and/or B) Sweet.
Our two character's cute nicknames for each other were "Dickhead" and "Clumsy". They loved to tear into each other's flaws, but they also made each other laugh before, during and after the tearing. They both preferred honest opinions to pretences and appearances. And did they ever both love to laugh!
Slowly but surely, Love found himself in a very unfamiliar and terrifying territory. That of the Agape love, which, pardon my pedantic nature, but for readers that don't know, is the unconditional love successful spouses show each other. It is the kind of love that doesn't love despite the flaws, but loves the flaws themselves. It loves the whole, not some idealised version, nor does it ever feel like a compromise. Furthermore, it is the scariest kind of love, and quite probably, Love thought to himself, the purest.
With friends, we help each other and amuse each other. Family has no choice but to love us, and we them. Lovers, well, the benefits of that are pretty clear-cut, no? But with the Agape love, there is no obvious benefit to the user. This love expresses itself through the unconditional well-being of the person loved. While Love was never selfish per se, he was never put in a situation of wanting somebody else's happiness above his own, with no guarantee, promise or even as much as an insinuation of him getting any kind of "reward".
Terrifying and unfamiliar, but he liked it. In fact, he loved it.
For the first time in his life, Love loved somebody else. He loved his lil' Passion, and felt the urge to protect her, keep her safe and happy. No matter the costs.