#i love you both very much /p | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

unfinishedslurs · 2 years ago

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welcome to eden

this is a love letter. inspired by this song

As soon as Steve picks up the phone, she knows she’s making a mistake.

“Rob?”

“No,” she says instead of hanging up like she should.

“Nancy?” He sounds more alert now, and she can picture him standing up straighter, calling to attention at the sound of her voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Not really,” she sniffs, hating herself for it. “I—can we talk?”

He’ll say no. He’ll say no, because it’s one in the morning and he was probably asleep before the phone rang and she shouldn’t be asking to talk years after she broke his heart and didn’t even remember—

“Of course,” he says, and Nancy could kick herself. “Over the phone?”

“No. Not over the phone. I’m sorry, it can wait, you can go back to bed.”

She hears him huff a laugh, even though there’s nothing funny about any of it. “I wasn’t in bed,” he assures her. “Am I picking you up?”

Tears spring anew to her eyes. “If that’s okay.”

“Works for me,” he says. “See you soon.”

“See you,” she echoes, and hangs up.

She spends the time it takes pacing quietly in front of the front door, berating herself for using him like this. But she needs to talk to him, and the sooner it’s over with the better.

Headlights cut through the window way too soon, and she nearly throws herself out the door.

She gives him a look when she opens the car door, telling him she knows how many traffic laws he must have broken to get here this quick. He just grins in return, ready to point out the felony in her closet.

“Where are we going?” He asks, and her heart clenches. He’s so good. He’s so good, and she couldn’t-can’t love him like he wants. She has to tell him.

Tonight probably wasn’t the best night for this conversation, but her skin feels like it’s peeling off and the faster she says something the quicker it will be over with and she can go back to how it was before. Back when she didn’t have anyone to talk to, because Robin might never speak to her again after she breaks her best friend's heart for the second time.

Just rip the bandaid off, Nance.

“I don’t know,” she says instead. Maybe she’s a coward. “A field? Somewhere I can see the stars.”

“I can do that.”

The drive goes by in silence, Nancy staring stubbornly out the window. She can feel Steve periodically checking on her, and she knows he wants to know why she called. She can’t open her mouth to say it in the suffocating enclosure of the car. She rolls down a window.

They get to a field almost out of Hawkins, and the car is barely in park before she’s climbing out, going around to sit on the hood. Steve cuts the engine and follows.

She still doesn’t say anything. She called him to have a talk, why can’t she just open her stupid mouth—

“Nancy?” Steve asks, gentle in a way that used to make her melt. She pulls her legs to her chest, feeling vulnerable. “What’s wrong?”

“Jonathan and I broke up,” she finally gets out.

“Oh shit.” He looks genuinely surprised. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it was never going to be forever.” Except she’d thought otherwise. She thought they were Nancy and Jonathan, the two of them against the world. She hunches her shoulders. “We never talk anymore, and he was pulling away from me, and he was lying to me for months-“ she shakes her head, clearing the anger she feels at that. “It doesn’t matter. I’m starting to realize there’s things I need to work on, too. A lot to work on, actually.”

“I don’t know what that could be,” he says, flashing her a smile filled with boyish, roguish charm. “You’re already the best person I know.”

She sniffs, and suddenly she’s crying into her knees, shoulders shaking. He freezes beside her, before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into his side. She leans in for a second, chasing the comfort, before remembering what she came here to do and ripping away violently.

“Fuck,” she whispers. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I don’t—I can’t—this isn’t what I—“

“Hey,” he soothes. “Slow down. Let it out.”

She wipes her eyes, suddenly furious. “I don’t want to date you,” she says, finally looking him in the eyes. “I don’t—I’m sorry for calling you. I just remembered how much better you used to make me feel, but then I realized that’s like…really shitty of me.”

“Why?” He asks, as if Nancy didn’t come out here to break his heart again. “I want to make you feel better. I like knowing I can make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to lead you on,” she says, mouth screwing up. “That’s why I called you out here. And I know it’s shitty of me—“

“Nancy, you’re not leading me on. I…I don’t want to date you either.”

That stops her in her tracks. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” he echoes quietly. “I—don’t take this the wrong way, okay, ‘cause I know I’m gonna sound like an asshole saying it, but, uh, I can’t do that again. And even outside of that, I don’t like you that way anymore. Uh, sorry.”

She tries not to sag at the overwhelming relief she feels at that.

“Are you sure?” She studies him closely, trying to see if he’s saying this for her sake or if he means it. “Back in the Upside-Down, and when we were fighting Venca, it seemed…”

He grimaces, and Nancy thinks if it wasn’t dark she’d see the beginning of an embarrassed flush on his ears. “I…may have been feeling things,” he admits. “I was testing the waters, I guess. I started feeling nostalgic, and you were there, and everyone was encouraging me, and it all just ended up in this weird…feelings soup. Sorry.”

“You said you wanted to have six kids with me,” Nancy reminds him. “And travel the country in a Winnebago.”

He groans, covering his face with his hands. “I am,” he says, “so sorry. I don’t know why I said that. That had to be so weird for you.”

“It was kind of sweet?” She tries, not letting her relief show. Not yet.

“We haven’t been together in years, and I decided to tell you I used to dream about you having my babies. How do you deal with me?”

“Well it helps to know you were dropped on your head. Puts everything in perspective.”

“Yeah, yeah, yuk it up.” He looks at her, really looks at her, and she tries not to fidget under his gaze. Too earnest, too caring for someone who doesn’t deserve it. He’s always tried so hard. To woo her, to be a better person, to keep back the vicious streak she still sees in him. “I meant it, when I said I loved you,” he tells her gently, no sign of that cruelty that had him painting her as a whore for the whole town to see. “Back then, I mean. I just wanted you to know that.”

She wants to cry. “I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t say it back.”

“It’s okay,” he says like he means it. He leans back against the windshield, looking at the sky. After a moment, she copies him.

They watch the stars together, and the air feels clearer.

“Where do we go from here?” She asks, afraid of the answer.

“What do you mean?”

“What happens with us now?”

“Well,” he says gingerly, like he’s testing the waters. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend.”

Friends. She doesn’t know that she and Steve have ever been friends, not properly. Even after the apologies they made to each other, she doesn’t know that she could call what they had friendship. It wasn’t substantial on its own, needing Jonathan as the barrier between them. When it fell, so did they.

“I haven’t had a friend in a while,” she admits. “Robin is kind of a novelty for me. She’s amazing.”

It’s funny, in a way. She was so jealous of Robin, of how close she was with Steve in a way Nancy wasn’t. She’d thought, at first, that it was because they were so clearly dating. After Robin told her they weren’t, she realized how badly she’d just wanted friends. She missed hanging out with Steve, missed his laugh and his squint and his bitchy attitude. She’d hoped that eventually they’d get to that point, was sure they were almost there before Starcourt. In a way, she’d been jealous of Robin for stealing Steve. She knew it was ridiculous. Steve had found a friend, a real friend who hadn’t cheated on him or slept with his girlfriend. She couldn’t begrudge him that.

She just missed him.

“She is, isn’t she?” Steve grins, but sobers up quickly. “I didn’t really think about that. How lonely you must be, since…”

She’s already shaking her head. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t reach out.”

“I didn’t exactly reach out either.”

They fall silent again, at a loss for words. Barb’s death, as always, the canyon between them.

Finally Nancy huffs. “It’s both of our faults,” she declares, “or neither of our faults. I don’t know. I just missed you.”

“Well shit, Nance, I missed you too,” he says, touched.

“I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend too, you know,” she says, glancing at him. He smiles.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Nancy Wheeler, I would be honored to be friends with you,” he says, and sticks out his hand to shake, like they’re meeting for the first time.

She stares at him, and starts laughing. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

She shakes his hand.

Max has always felt like a mirror. One Nancy wanted to smash, pull her out of the shards of her reflective grief and hug. Stroke her hair the way she wanted someone to do for her and say you’ll get through this. So Max could hear it from someone who knows.

Except Nancy doesn’t know anything. Still drowns in her guilt, the ball and chain dragging her into the depths. She can’t help when she’s still such a mess, three years later.

Her hands clench when Mike says Max is pulling away from Lucas. She wishes she could look her in the eye and tell her you don’t have to be me. You can be better.

She’s Mike’s friend. They barely know each other outside of a quick hello as they cross paths or fighting monsters. Max has enough on her plate, she doesn’t need her friend’s weird older sister butting in to tell her how to mourn the right way.

Nancy just hopes she’s getting out of bed. Remembering to eat. Brushing her teeth. She had more cavities in the year after Barb died than she’d ever had in her life, and she knows Max doesn’t have insurance.

Now, sitting next to Max’s hospital bed, Nancy wishes she’d reached out.

With school back comes studying, and with studying comes Eddie Munson, in all his super-senior glory. Nancy is going to get him a diploma if it kills her.

He laughs when she tells him so. “Shit, Wheeler,” he says. “The day something manages to get you is the day this shithole goes down for good.”

Robin turns down her offer to form a study group. “I’m pretty sure if I joined, I’d just distract Eddie, and let him distract me, and we’d end up throwing things at each other until you killed us. Sorry. Steve’s going to help me study for finals, though!”

She looks at Steve, eyebrow raised. She’s pretty sure it’s fair to be dubious, since she was the reason Steve passed his finals in the first place.

“I’m her rubber duck,” he says as an explanation, and she nods in understanding.

Her mom isn’t about to let her study alone with a boy in her room, though, and especially not a boy like Eddie, so she drags him to the library three times a week. He complains, he bitches, he tells her he doesn’t care about his fucking history class anymore. She just hands him a Rubik’s Cube she found to keep his hands busy as she quizzes him.

Three sessions in, he slowly puts a worksheet down and screams into his hands.

“Stop that!” She kicks him in the shin. “If you get me kicked out of the library I’m never forgiving you.”

“I can’t do it,” he says, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m so fucking stupid, Nancy. I can’t even get past question two. Is this torture? Did I die and go to hell? That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? Doomed to repeat high school for the rest of eternity?”

“Stupid” her ass. She knows what kind of work goes into those campaigns of his, has absently flipped through his annotated fantasy novels and left feeling as if she’d seen the story anew. Plus, she went and made a tape of everyone’s favorite songs, just in case, and she knew damn well how quickly he’d taught himself to play the song he did in the Upside-Down. “Stupid” and “Eddie Munson” don’t belong in the same sentence, much less belong in the same space in his brain. She hates Hawkins High just a little bit more for it. “Stop being dramatic. What are you stuck on?”

“Fucking nothing! I can’t focus, it’s driving me fucking insane. I keep trying, I swear, but it’s like I can’t even read anymore! This always happens, I swear to God it’s killing me more than the fucking demobats ever did.”

“Don’t joke about that,” she snaps. “You’re smart, Eddie, you know that. You just need to try.”

His face twists, and she realizes that was the wrong thing to say.

“Oh, thank you, Miss Wheeler, why haven’t I thought of that? Sorry for wasting your time, I’ll get out of your perfect hair now—“

“Sit down,” she protests as he gathers up his stuff. “Eddie, I’ll help you work through the problem, okay? Just sit down, please.”

“No, Nancy!” He swings around, eyes wild. “It’s what everyone always says. Just sit still, stop doodling, be quiet, pay attention, try fucking harder…I tried, okay! I’ve been trying, I tried for fifteen fucking years, and I can’t do it! I might as well just drop out and get it over with. I’m fucking sick of this.”

“Okay!” She feels herself getting riled up. “You want to fail so bad, fine! I’m not your keeper, do whatever you want.”

“I will!”

“Fine!”

They stare at each other, not moving. Finally Eddie storms off in a huff, flinging open the library door in a grand gesture she pretends not to see. There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach, but she can ignore it.

She pretends not to notice when he comes slinking back five minutes later, shuffling his feet.

“Sorry.”

“For what?” She asks primly, going over her notes.

“Nancy, please.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry too. I’m just…frustrated.”

“I’ve been told I’m pretty frustrating,” he offers.

“It’s not…”

“It is,” he says, sitting down. “It’s okay. God knows I piss myself off with this shit.”

She studies him, looking over his defeated face like he’s one of her flashcards. “You’re trying your best,” she says, sounding it out. She can’t really make sense of it. After all, trying her best has always been straight A’s, not stopping until she knew everything she needed to and more.

“It’s not good enough.”

“It will be,” she says. “You’ve got me this time.”

“Listen, I know you’re trying to help—“

“Do you want fries?”

“What?” He blinks at her, shocked, as she starts packing up her things.

“We’re not getting anywhere today. Sometimes you have to step back, and come back with a clearer head.” Usually she locks her door and cleans her guns, the repetitive motion soothing her mind until she can think again, but she has a feeling that won’t work for Eddie.

“I usually just give up.”

“I don’t. Get your backpack, we’re going to the diner. Dinner’s on me tonight.”

At the diner, he makes her laugh so hard soda comes out her nose. The next day, they go to the library again.

After a couple of days, he solves the cube. After three weeks, he nearly kicks her door down rushing to show her the B he got on a test.

Two months later, he throws his cap into the air and his cane on the ground. Swings her around, both of them laughing.

“Nancy fucking Wheeler!” He crows. “Achieving the impossible yet again!”

“Eddie, put me down!” She shrieks gleefully as he stumbles. She barely makes it back to solid ground before two more bodies are slamming into them, Steve and Robin whooping in their ears.

It was weird, to see Steve and Robin effortlessly communicate the way she and Jonathan always had and have it be so unabashedly unromantic. She’d always thought that knowing someone like that was a sign you were meant to be, and they did it while still loudly proclaiming Platonic with a capital P.

She and Jonathan didn’t do it much anymore. It was like dancing to a song that was always a beat off, syncing for just one moment before stumbling again, unsure that they were still allowed this.

She’d known him better than anyone, once, and he’d known her the same. Now she wonders if that was ever true.

“So,” Eddie says, throwing himself onto her bed. “Steve.”

She sits in her desk chair, raising an eyebrow. “What about him?”

“You broke up with Jonathan, right? Are you going to get back with him? I thought you would, but it's been months and neither of you said anything.”

“No,” she says. “No, that’s not what I want. It’s not what either of us want.”

“Really?” He rolls over, eyes searching. “What happened there, anyway? With both your boys. I’m a nosy little asshole, and I wanna hear it from you.”

It makes her laugh, the way he admits to it so freely. He grins wolfishly at her, baring his teeth in a grin. That’s probably why she tells him the truth.

“I wasn’t okay, when I was with Steve,” she says honestly. “I was distant, grieving…I was a mess, and I stayed with him because I didn’t know what else to do. With Jonathan…I was getting closure, I was healing, and things were good between us. They were so good, but after a while, we just started to…deteriorate. I don’t know if we lost momentum, or if the stress just got to us, but we started fighting more and more,” She traces the desk with a finger, remembering the sour taste of Oliver Twist on her tongue. It was a shitty thing to say. “I thought we’d figured it out, for a little while, but then we just…stopped talking. I think, maybe if we’d talked more, we could have worked it out. But I’m…not upset that we didn’t, you know?”

It’s a different kind of loneliness when your partner won’t talk to you. It was different than grieving, different than not having anyone to talk to at all. Because even when she didn’t have friends, she had Jonathan. And then, slowly, she didn’t anymore.

“Nancy, you’re one of my best friends, so-”

“Steve is your best friend.”

“Steve is my best best friend,” she agrees. “But he’s also more than that? Like, I think we’re literally soulmates. Platonic with a capital P soulmates, but, like, it feels like more than friendship sometimes? Like sometimes it’s like he can literally feel my bad days even when I haven’t talked to him yet. He told me once he just knows sometimes. It’s like I hit my hip on my desk and he felt it, but emotionally. It’s wild. It’s like the drugs literally combined our minds. Where was I going with this?”

“I don’t know,” she says, slightly bewildered. She wants to ask how they do that, but Robin barrels forward.

“Right. So outside of mine and Steve’s platonic more-than-friendship, you’re kind of my best friend? And you’re, like, the coolest person I know.”

She blinks. She’s not sure she’s ever been described as cool before.

After Barb, Nancy tried to cut her own hair.

Her mom found her in the bathroom, unshed tears in her eyes and hair a mess on the sink and floor.

She hadn’t laughed, hadn't said oh, honey, your beautiful hair. Just clucked her tongue and took the scissors from her hands. Stepped behind her and took over, took the uneven mess and made it something good, something presentable.

She didn’t say anything until she was done, setting the scissors on the counter. “Sometimes,” she said, wetting her lips. “Sometimes we need a change, before we can move forward.”

The closer she gets to Emerson, the more she feels like she’s letting someone down. Mike. Max. Jonathan. All the people who have relied on her, all the people who trusted her to fight.

In a strange turn of events, her mom is the only one she doesn’t feel is disappointed in her. Her mom is more excited about college than she is sometimes. Chattering excitedly over dishes about the classes she’s going to take as Nancy dries and smiles and tries not to feel like the ground is being pulled from under her feet.

This is everything she’s ever wanted. Why does it feel so wrong?

She takes Eddie to the gun range, because having a gun in her hands has always made her feel safer. More in control. More like the badass protector she wants to be, than the scared little girl she feels sometimes.

Eddie stares down the scope of the gun and shoots like he has experience, but doesn’t hit a single bullseye.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“I’m in a fucking gun range and a bunch of small town hicks were hunting me not too long ago,” he snaps, taking another shot and missing the target completely. He swears and changes the magazine. “Excuse me if I’m a little bit on edge.”

She hadn’t really thought of it like that. “You didn’t have to come,” she says. “I just thought with everything that’s happened, you should know how to use one. Just in case.”

“I know how to use a gun,” he rolls his eyes.

“You know how to shoot one.” She looks from him to the target pointedly. “Not the same thing.”

“Deep. I could really feel the judgement there. Tell me, is there anything else wrong with me?”

“There’s security cameras all over this place. We’re not in Hawkins, so there’s no mob coming after you. I’m here, and I do know how to use a gun. No one is going to hurt you here.”

“I know all that.”

“Do you?”

He scowls at her. She looks back unflinchingly. She’s been here plenty of times, and the guys laughed at her until they didn’t anymore. By the time she brought Eddie, all she got was a raised eyebrow and a “boyfriend?” from Hunter at the desk. She didn’t know what was more incriminating, so she just shrugged.

“You’re kind of a pain in the ass, you know that?”

She rolls her eyes, taking the gun from his hands and lining up a shot. “I’ve heard worse,” she says, thinking about Nancy Dre-ew, and Nancy “the slut” Wheeler, and priss, and shoots. It hits the bullseye.

So do her next five shots.

Eddie looks begrudgingly impressed when she reloads and hands the gun back to him. It’s more satisfying than it should be, to realize that while he’d known she had guns he’s never seen her actually shoot before.

She raises a challenging eyebrow at him, and he huffs around a smile. “All right, all right,” he says good naturedly. “Let’s try this again.”

He does a little better this time around, now that he’s actually trying. He does a little dance when he hits one of the inner rings.

“Take that!” He crows. “I bet Steve couldn’t do this. In your face, Harrington!”

“He’s much more of a close-combat kind of guy, isn’t he?” Nancy agrees.

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” he says. “Does he really have a bat with nails?”

She blinks, caught off guard by the fact that Eddie hadn’t seen it. She never registered that he hadn’t used it during Vecna. Something about the fact seems weird somehow, as if it was as integral to Steve as his coiffed hair. “He keeps it in his trunk.”

“You and Byers need to update your Steve manuals. He said it’s under his bed now.”

“Ah,” Nancy says, thinking of all the times she’s slept with her pistol under her pillow. Empty, because she’s not stupid enough to sleep with a loaded gun when her little brother sometimes wakes her up after a nightmare, but the comforting weight of it alone makes it easier.

“Just tell me one thing,” he says, widening his eyes imploringly at her. “Did he look as sexy as I think he did? Byers won’t give me a straight answer.”

It’s a joke, but his cheeks are a little pink. She’s not dumb, she’s seen the looks the two of them share, as if he and Steve were circling each other. Caught in a whirlpool, waiting for the moment the vortex would drag them down and they could finally touch.

The looks between Eddie and Jonathan, too, that share a certain camaraderie she doesn’t entirely understand and at the same time understands all too well. Steve and Jonathan had always had a strange relationship, too close to not be friendship but not quite there. Surprisingly enough it was better after she and Steve broke up, Jonathan no longer avoiding them and the talk she’d forced the three of them into clearing the air. Sometimes, she’d wake up to Jonathan climbing into her bed, smelling of cigarettes and a hint of something stronger, and he’d tell her it was Steve who drove him there.

She’s a journalist. It’s her job to notice things. She just wasn’t ready to confront that reality, where the two boys she’d wanted wanted each other as well. But she’s grown since then.

She also knows that whoever Steve chooses, it won’t be easy.

“You know,” she says, considering, “when we were dating, Steve never pressed me up against the wall or anything you’d expect from the King.”

Eddie gets this look on his face, caught between confusion and caught out. “…okay? Did you want him to do that or something? Are you trying to ask me to hint to him?”

“No,” she says. “I’m just saying, he never did any of that. It was kind of funny. He always made it so that he was the one pressed against the wall.”

Eddie misses the next five shots entirely, and she laughs at him through it all.

She’s hyper aware of touching other girls now. She didn’t used to be. Even with Robin, who is a lesbian and definitely won’t hate her. Who’s probably gone through the same thing. She can’t help it.

What if they get the wrong idea? What if someone else sees? What if they can tell, what if they know, what if they hate me?

She hates feeling like this. She doesn’t know why it started, doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s no stranger to casual affection—or at least she didn’t used to be. Why does it make her feel so tense now? It’s been years since she realized she liked girls, shouldn’t this have happened back then?

Deep down, she knows why. The Reagan sign in her front yard. Her dad sitting in his chair, the news always on. “Always that nasty disease, Karen, I swear some people are just asking for it.” She’s always known she could never tell him, but now she knows that if she gets sick he’ll say she deserves it. She doesn’t know what her mother thinks. She’s afraid to find out.

She’s growing up, and her fear is growing with her.

Objectively, Nancy knows she and Eddie don’t make sense.

They’re not cut from the same cloth, like Steve and Robin. They don’t calm each other down, like Jonathan and Argyle. They’re too different, too alike in all the wrong ways, for them to get along. They’re both snappy, a little mean. Eddie’s dramatic enough to get on her nerves, and she’s prim enough to get on his. At their worst, they have earth shattering arguments that end in them not speaking to each other for days.

When people see them walking down the street together, they whisper about “that nice girl Nancy Wheeler” and “that awful Munson boy.”

It’s not fair, never has been. Nancy hasn’t felt nice for a long time, maybe before Barb ever disappeared. Eddie isn’t always particularly nice either, but the court of public opinion takes it to extremes, twists him into something cruel instead of the kindness he carries under his leather armor. Someone to keep their children away from. It really is a shame, because Eddie loves kids in a way Nancy never has. She can see it in the way he interacts with them, his bright smile fading when a parent comes to drag them away. Even when he’s expecting it, his face falls, just for an instant, before spinning around with a grin that won’t reach his eyes.

Nancy wants to take him out of here. There’s an offer on the tip of her tongue that she knows he’d refuse.

He’s not her brother, but he’s not…unlike one. It’s almost like talking to an older, flashier Mike. He’s annoying, is what he is. He picks at her, keeps pressing over the littlest things. Tries to get under her skin, succeeds, until she’s on the verge of stabbing him with her pencil. Looks triumphant whenever Robin has to grab her arm to drag her away, rambling an excuse about “some girl thing I totally forgot, yeah it’s an emergency,” while Steve drags him the other way to have bro time.

“She loves it,” she’d heard Eddie crow delightedly once, when Robin didn’t get her out of hearing range fast enough. “Do you see that fire in her eyes?”

“Do I?” She asked Robin. “Love it?”

“I mean, far be it from me to tell you what you do and don’t like,” Robin answered. “But, uh, as far as I can tell, you totally love it. You look like you’re going to rip him to pieces and enjoy it, and he loves that. I didn’t think you’d be this much of a nightmare together, seriously, like, how are you two at each other’s throats one second and then best friends the next? Steve and I have debated locking you in a bathroom until you get along, but we’re kind of afraid you’ll kill each other.”

So no, Nancy and Eddie don’t get along. They’re kind of a nightmare together. They don’t make sense, and they don’t try to. They have other friends, who they get along with better, that they can seek out.

But when Eddie knocks on her window, the only surprise is that he could even get there.

“How?” She hisses, opening the window. He tumbles in, doesn’t even try to play off the utter gracelessness he’s displaying.

“Wowie, I am never doing that again,” he breathes, flat on his back. “You’re going to have to help me down the stairs when I leave, had to leave my cane at the bottom and I cannot get back down that way.”

She doesn’t even want to know what he had to do to get up on her roof with his bad leg. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m but another lover, nothing but an ant in the face of your unwavering beauty, my queen,” he says, batting his eyes at her. The dramatics don’t hit the way he intends, given that he’s stuck on the floor. He holds a hand out pleadingly, and she rolls her eyes, hauling him up until she can get him to her bed.

“Never mind.” She puts her hands on her hips, a gesture that is so obviously Steve she removes them immediately. From the glint in Eddie’s eyes, he notices.

She tries not to be jealous. She tries, she swears, but…

Three of the four (five? she doesn’t know what Argyle thinks of her) friends she has are dating each other. Two of them dated her, first. She can’t help but wonder, if she’d known that was an option, if everything would have been different. If she wouldn’t have this aching bitterness between her teeth.

(Nothing would have changed, she knows. She’d been too desperate for other things. Trying so hard with Steve so her best friend didn’t die for nothing. Staying with Jonathan because he understood her more than anyone else, so maybe they didn’t need to talk. It wouldn’t have helped anything. She still wonders.)

It doesn’t matter. What’s past is past, and she needs to move forward. She can’t stop to think about could-have-beens, because thinking about boys is what got her into this mess in the first place.

She closes her eyes, taking a shaky breath. That’s not fair. None of this is fair. None of it is fucking fair because Nancy stopped caring about fair when Barb died.

She needs a drink. She needs a nap. She needs to stop feeling like Atlas with the world on her shoulders.

She doesn’t do any of that. She calls Robin.

“Barb was my first kiss.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Nancy says, and keeps talking, because Barb is dead and Robin is a lesbian and she’s long forgotten what Barb’s favorite chapstick was back then. “We were seven, and I liked it but I didn’t know if I liked her. But I was convinced I was going to marry her, until my mom told me that girls don’t marry other girls. And I knew she liked girls when she died. She told me when we were fifteen, and I didn’t know the word bisexual but I knew I loved her and that was all that mattered. Not—not like that, not romantic, or maybe it was but it doesn’t matter because she was my best friend and I still love her but she’s gone forever. I loved her.”

She feels Robin lay a tentative hand on her back.

“I had to look her parents in the eye and pretend. All those fucking NDA’s, I had to pretend there was hope. Pretend she was still missing. It was like everyone forgot about her except for me and them, and they sold their house to find their dead daughter and I wasn’t supposed to say anything and Steve kept reminding me about the fucking NDA’s—“

“Nancy…”

“It’s my fault,” Nancy says, staring at the water. “I lumped in Steve, because it was easier than being alone. He didn’t know her like I did. She was worried about me. She stayed because she cared, and look where that got her.”

“That’s bullshit!” Robin’s eyes are wide, and she waves her hands around as she talks. “If it’s anyones fault, it’s those—those scientist guys experimenting on El! They knew there was a problem, and they tried to cover it up instead of making sure people were safe. You didn’t know it was dangerous. How were you supposed to know it was going to end up as anything other than normal teenage drama? None of this is supposed to be real, you didn’t know—“

“But I left her,” Nancy cuts in. “I left her alone to go lose my virginity to a boy she didn’t even like—“

“He was your boyfriend, it shouldn’t have mattered if she liked him—“

“It doesn’t matter!” Nancy shouts, and Robin falls silent, mouth still moving. “It doesn’t fucking matter how it happened, because it did and now she’s dead and she’s never coming back and it’s all my fault.”

Nancy is sick of crying. Sick of feeling helpless. Sick of not being able to change the past.

“It’s not just Barb. I took Fred to the trailer park—he didn’t even want to be there, and now he’s dead. Eddie needs a cane, Max is almost completely blind and might never walk again and it was my plan that put them there. My plan that almost killed them. I’m responsible—“

“Fuck that.”

“Robin…”

“No, you listen to me, Nancy Wheeler,” Robin says, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You are one of the most remarkable people I have ever known. Max would have died without that plan. We all would have died. Venca-slash-Henry-slash-One would have won without that plan, and I am not going to sit here and listen to you blame yourself for saving lives. And-and Fred! Venca had already marked him, you know that. You couldn’t have done anything! And Barb is not your fault, okay? I-I-I know I can’t convince you, but I’ll say it as many times as it takes until you start believing it, because it’s true. You didn’t kill her. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I killed Bruce,” she says, just to prove Robin wrong. And isn’t that shitty of her, to forget about him until she can use him to prove a point? She’s a fucking awful person.

“I don’t know who Bruce is, but given your track record I highly doubt that.”

“I bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.”

Robin pauses, and Nancy’s stomach sinks. This is it, she thinks. This is what will convince her, this is what will make her see that I’m wrong, that I’m poison-

“What was he doing?”

“What?”

“Bruce. You had to have a reason for it. What was he doing?”

It’s like Robin doesn’t even care that Nancy just admitted to first degree murder. “He was flayed,” she admits, knowing Robin will take it as proof that she’s right.

“That’s not murder, that’s self defense,” Robin says, just like she knew she would. “Also, if he was flayed he was already dead. Sorry, I’m sticking to your side on this.”

“But I’m less torn up about killing my asshole coworker than I am about anything else. How does that not make me a monster?”

“He was already dead, Nancy!” Robin shakes her. “You’re not beating yourself up over it because you know he was already dead, a-a-and I know you’re using him to try and push me away and I won’t let you.”

“Robin…” she says, tears springing to her eyes. She’s so fucking sick of crying. So sick of the way she never seems to stop anymore.

“Nancy,” Robin says. “None of us are going to leave you. Stop trying to make us.”

She pulls her into a hug, and Nancy sags into it, boneless.

There, sandwiched between the sky and the water, Nancy starts to feel like she could forgive herself.

“Nancy,” Steve says, putting a hand on her shoulder and ducking his chin to look her in the eye. “They won’t be alone.”

Tears well up, unbidden, at the way he seems to understand her now in a way he never did before.

“I want this,” she insists.

“I know you do,” he says. “Which is why you’re going to go out there, kick ass, and take names. We’ll be here, okay? We’ll keep an eye on them.”

“I know you will.” She swipes a hand across her eyes. “Can you talk to Holly, too? She gets lonely.”

Steve smiles. He’d always loved Holly, when they were dating. He used to braid her hair sometimes. Asked her about her drawings, her TV shows, listened to her talk with the same attentiveness Nancy’s father had never shown any of them. He’ll be a good dad, someday. To someone else’s children.

“I’ll talk to Holly,” he promises. “Does she still like princesses?”

“Ladybugs,” she says. “It’s ladybugs, now.”

“Ladybugs. I can do that. Black and red, and they’re all ladies. What’s not to like?”

“There are male ladybugs.”

“Wait, seriously?”

She laughs, tearfully, but they’re happy tears. Steve wipes them away gently, and she smiles at him to let him know she’s okay. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

“You’re the best person I know, Nancy Wheeler,” he replies, achingly sincere. “You’re gonna have the whole world under your thumb, I just know it. Ever thought of running for President?”

“Can’t be worse than the one we have now,” she says, grimaces as her own joke lands too bitterly to be funny. She sees his jaw tighten before he forces himself to relax.

“I’d vote for you.”

She grins at him, sharp to punch through the tension she’d made. “I’ll make Eddie my Vice President.”

“Oh, fuck no. You lost me,” he says, and Eddie makes an offended noise from where he’s stealing snacks from the glovebox. Jonathan swats him, and she smiles at him too. He smiles back, tentatively, and wanders to her side.

“You gonna be okay up there?” He asks quietly. She can hear the guilt in it, still, and she reaches down to squeeze his hand. The one with the scar that matches hers, so their palms line up. It feels full circle, somehow, the three of them together like this.

“I’ll be okay,” she confirms, and feels the truth of it in her chest. Her boys are here with her, the ones who have been there since the beginning. Eddie’s watching them fondly, munching on a granola bar. Robin is inside somewhere, rambling at her mother. Mike and Holly are probably still bickering over the last cupcake. She loves them so much, all of them.

“Of course you will,” Steve says. “You’re Nancy fuckin’ Wheeler. Nothing stops you.”

She wants that to be true. She can feel in her bones that it will be. Eighteen has nothing on who she’ll be at thirty.

She’s Nancy Wheeler, and the world won’t see her coming.

#welcome to eden au #stranger things fanfic #nancy wheeler #eddie munson #steve harrington #robin buckley #jonathan byers #this is the biggest thing i've posted so far #i ran out of the little fics i'm gonna have to start figuring out how to format the big ones #there's background steve/eddie/jonathan bc this was originally a companion piece to a seperate fic about them #that was 22k before i lost interest #i'll post that one eventually #can you tell nancy is my favorite character. i love u miss survivors guilt <3 #sometimes i think about how nancy has no friends for p much three seasons after barb died and i get very upset #jonathan could count but he also wanted to date her so i'm not counting it #I JUST WANT HER TO HAVE FRIENDS #i also love nancy/eddie friendship they're both judgy bitches #so is steve frankly. nightmare trio #i'm gonna write that ot3 one day (don't hold me to that)

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itstheelvenjedi · 11 months ago

Note

~couple questions~ for when you need an excuse to talk about your characters/ship 😽

8, 10, 16, 19, 22 and 25

Pick your fav pairings with your tav.

These are from the [~Couple Questions~: For When You need An Excuse to Talk About your Characters/Ship] list for anyone who either wants the list or wants to send some more!

Sorry this one took a while @csphire, I too got a little carried away and wrote probably way more than I was supposed to bwahahaha But I hope you enjoy! 😉 Obligatory disclaimer that there's some very horny/suggestive things in some of these answers, and also there WILL be spoilers for the plot of the game so like. Do not read if you're someone who hates spoilers and hasn't played through the whole game yet etc etc.

Also, I'm playing loosey-goosey with the lore in some respects because I'm here to have a good time, not a 100% canon compliant time. If you don't like that then just stay off my posts for the sake of both our sanities, I beg of you 🙏Rai is a polyamorous bisexual disaster and has a closed polycule with Karlach, Wyll and Dammon (tho I'm going on ~vibes~ and Wyll and Dammon aren't romantically/sexually involved bc I just didn't get that vibe from them while writing. It's a "ah yes, my girlfriends and their cool boyfriend : )" situation from both sides for the guys. They're purely platonic but they both love their girls a whole lot.) And before someone says it, no I don't care that it's not canon in-game. I don't need it to be canon in-game to do it anyway and I will die on this hill so don't try me /hj

commence the spoilers/horniness/etc under the cut! last chance to click away if you don't want to see that! XD (oh also trigger warning for mentions of child abuse/mistreatment, and...idk how best to word it other than discussions of being trained as a child soldier and references to past abuse and trauma. I've tried to blanket cover with trigger tags but ask if you'd like me to add any others I've missed!)

What do they find physically sexiest about each other? Going with Rai and Wyll for this one bc I think they have the best answers! ☺️

Rai: The ✨horns✨. Listen. I get why he's upset about them at first. I do. I totally get it. But come ooooonnnnn!! You CANNOT tell me those babies are anything except sexy as FUCK to tieflings. They're fucking beautiful horns, and I like to think Rai's a big factor in Wyll learning to "live with" his horns and maybe eventually like them. Just a little bit. She loves his horns and she'll use any excuse in the book to get her hands all over them. At first she was offering to help him with the horn care because he really had no clue & asked her & Karlach for help (tho Karlach wasn't touchable at the time so Rai had to step up for the physical "here like this" demonstration and that's prolly where it started lol) then it became a little intimacy habit between them, he doesn't need her help anymore but he's not going to say "no" if she asks/offers, ya know? :3 (honourable mention to the time drunk Wyll at the Grove party complained very loudly about having "bumps and stuff where they absolutely should not be" because Rai's only reaction to that was "OOH~ 👀💖" hahaha)

Wyll: This might sound like a weird one, but probably her tail? Rai's very tail-expressive, if she doesn't force it to keep still by wrapping it around her own leg (or someone else *wink wink*) then it's ALWAYS moving around or giving away her emotions in some way! It started out innocent enough in that his eyes were automatically drawn to it because it moves around so much. Even despite growing up in Baldur's Gate for some time and thus being around a fair few tieflings (from my limited understanding of the lore and stuff thus far, don't lynch me hardcore fans, I've never played tabletop 5E or the other baldur's gate games lmao) he'd never met a tiefling that moved their tail so much until he met Rai. But now he can't help but stare when he thinks she isn't looking (she totally knows and does things with it on purpose sometimes just to tease him because she knows Wyll is staring. Rai and Karlach have a running (playfully ofc) bet going about how long it's going to take Wyll to figure out that she knows he stares, he hasn't figured it out just yet 😉 lol) Honourable mention for her eyes bc he thinks they're very pretty uwu and not at all for smutty eye-contact reasons cough I mean what

What was their last big fight? What did they learn from it? You get a two-for-one with this one bc the two fights are interconnected (pov: one half of your polycule gets into a pretty major lovers' tiff and the other half gets dragged into it as collateral damage anyway. Sorry boys lol )

Both these fights are also the focal plot beats for a Hurt/Comfort oneshot, but alas, I can't get away with being too vague with this or the reasons why it was a fight kinda don't match up with the "what they learned from it" in the 2nd part of the question, so just act surprised a while from now when I post the fic, ok? XD(I've got all the dialogues and whatnot plotted out now, just gotta convert it to written prose 🫶 ) This one ran away with me and got REALLY long, sorry (or you're welcome, I guess? lol)

Rai and Karlach: disclaimer: I know in-game it all kinda happens in the same convo but for some ~creative liberty~ (because I love me some good ol' Hurt/Comfort angst) I chopped the convo in half with the first bit happening before the fight (bc something Karlach says in the heat of the moment kicks it all off) and the latter half of Karlach realizing she does still want to live and is upset that she's still dying happening a couple days later, after the spat is resolved.

Karlach technically starts it after she hits out when they've killed Gortash but I wanna be clear when I say both of them are at fault for it. This is not only their biggest fight but also a powder-keg type of situation where things built up over time till they both exploded at eachother for different reasons, see below :

Karlach's very stubborn about not wanting to go back to Avernus at first - even into Act 3. Wyll and Rai ofc offer to go with her, but initially that doesn't help Karlach feel better. The worst thing she could possibly think of is putting two of the people she loves more than anything through the nightmare that is the Blood War. So when Rai keeps bringing it up and keeps pushing her about it, she snaps. Listen, I love Karlach a LOT and I think she means well, genuinely, and would never hurt her partner's feelings on purpose/maliciously. But she's a Yeller when she gets mad - and with Rai that is a BAD kind of mad to be. We see this in-game especially if you have her with you when you run into Gortash, and her heartbreaking meltdown after you kill him.

Logically, Rai knows the autonomy of getting to make that decision - to choose her freedom even if it means that it comes with death as an unwanted consequence - is important to Karlach, and if she was thinking logically at the time she would of course want to respect that. In theory. In practise however, it turned out "just sit there and watch me die" was not a line Rai was willing to draw. She gets pushy about Dammon's suggestion that they should take Karlach back to Avernus to stabilize her Engine, even when Karlach insists she's made her mind up and doesn't want to talk about it anymore. Rai keeps bringing it up over and over again, and insisting that she and Wyll would both go with her if it'd make it less scary for her, and just refuses to take "no" for an answer etc etc

By the time they kill Gortash and Karlach has her little meltdown she's just had enough of Rai throwing the suggestion into what feels like damn-near every conversation they've had since Dammon broke the news to them in Last Light. So she loses her temper and starts shouting before Rai can say it again.

And the thing about Rai is…she's emotionally reactionary. Whatever energy you give her, she'll bounce right back to you, she can't help it and hasn't quite figured out how to stop doing it at that point in time (though she does get better at it in the future!). If you keep your voice calm and level, she might growl and snap her teeth or smack her tail on something a little bit but eventually she'll match your energy and chill out to just talk about things. But if you yell and scream and shout and call her names? She's gonna yell, scream, and call you names back.

And that's exactly what happens. It's a huge miscommunication/misunderstanding between both of them. Karlach makes assumptions about Rai's past despite the fact that unlike Wyll and Dammon, she'd never really asked Rai about her childhood in Elturel or anything like that (again, I'll stress that I don't think this was done with deliberate malice, but I feel like being a little bit selfish is a realistic character flaw for Karlach to have. She's been through a lot and she gets tunnel-visioned on solving her own problems and when you pair that with Rai's brand of "too busy trying to fix everybody else to fix myself" trauma response and it's just an unfortunate combination. Rai never brought her own trauma up, and Karlach never thought to ask) So as a result, she thinks Rai "got lucky" not being in Elturel when it fell and that as a result, Rai is naïve and doesn't know "how bad" Avernus really was. Meanwhile, while she's certainly not as well-acquainted with it as Karlach and Dammon, Rai's not as ignorant as Karlach thinks. Her Mother Superior was a necromancy wizard, and one of Zariel's goons. The temple where Rai was "taken in" and raised was really just a front for training up either spellcasters or sword-fighters (depending on an individual's aptitude and uhh, the way they figured out where to funnel them was to use them as magical target practise until they either threw a spell back at their "tutors" or the staff agreed that it had been long enough and "they're too slow/useless at magic so idk just give them a sword I guess", basically - most of Rai's scars come from the early years where she was used as every other "student"'s magical punching bag, the rest are from Avarice's rituals, except for the one on the end of her tail which she got when Elturel came back and Rai didn't know the tieflings had been exiled so went back to try and look for Dammon, Rolan, Cal and Lia and ended up being attacked and driven off instead) to be ultimately sent to Avernus for Zariel to toss into the Blood War. She's been the unwilling participant in far too many necromancy rituals and while I haven't quite hammered out the full details of this yet, they were definitely not nice and she's definitely ended up looking some brand of devil or other in the eye before, during said rituals. I'm very much going for the angle of if Rai hadn't been assumed dead and left where she'd run off into the woods and she HAD been in Elturel when it went down? She'd have been just as fucked as Karlach was with Gortash. Straight to the Blood War with her, she would've been Infernal Engine prototype 2.0 and she and Karlach would've met fighting in the Blood War. Karlach doesn't know any of this, and thus makes a flippant off-hand comment that rubs the salt right into the open wound that is Rai's survivor's guilt without fully realising she's done it. Instead of staying to talk it out, Rai gets even angrier and storms off despite poor Wyll's best attempts to try and get between them and calm them down.

Dammon and Karlach: After Rai storms off, she finds herself going straight to Forge of the Nine. It's not a surprise really. She's known Dammon the longest and because Rai already felt bad that Wyll was in-between her and Karlach during their fight (they were having a screaming match in the middle of camp, it wasn't exactly quiet, or pretty D: ) she didn't want to make it worse for him by forcing him to pick a side, so Rai made the choice for Wyll and went to Dammon. Rai's so upset at first that Dammon's terrified Karlach's engine has exploded and Rai's here to tell him she's dead. When he finally calms her down enough for Rai to tell him what actually happened, he…doesn't feel that much better. He's too worried about Rai to go marching back to camp and confront Karlach himself, especially when she asks him "can I stay here tonight? I don't want to go back just yet". But he does stew (I like to think Dammon isn't one to get angry often. And even when he does he's not loud and shouty about it. It's more a broody, quiet, "give you the silent treatment" type of thing)

Karlach's the one, after she's calmed down, who ends up checking Dammon's place when the rest of the party split up the next morning to go looking for Rai after they realize she's still gone. Rai sleeps through Karlach's knocking (she had a hard night, did a lot of yelling/screaming and crying, ya girl passed tf out once Dammon wrangled her into a bath & then bed to sleep it off ;-; ) but Dammon doesn't. He tries to be patient with Karlach but when she starts posturing and growling and snapping at him, Dammon loses his temper right back. Again, he's not a Scream And Shout kind of angry but he is a "Do not raise your fucking voice at me!" kind of angry. It's a side of him that Karlach hasn't seen before and it stuns her so much that it shuts her right up, but Dammon keeps going. He ends up reading Karlach a bit of a riot act about how much, exactly, she'd hurt Rai's feelings because Rai was probably never going to admit it to Karlach herself and it gives Karlach some serious cause for self-reflection. Dammon and Karlach's fight only gets broken up when their back-and-forth finally gets through Rai's Sleepiness and she wakes up and stumbles down the stairs to find them mid-argument. Karlach feels so guilty when she locks eyes with Rai over Dammon's shoulder that she apologises on the spot, which leads to Rai apologising too and they work it out with a little bit of mutual encouragement from Dammon <3

As for what they learned from it: Rai defo gets the longest list but I'll do all 3 of them again bc why the hell not lol

Rai definitely learns to not let her emotions make her careless/less aware of her partners' feelings. As an orphan who was treated more like a tool/weapon by the main parental figure in her life (part of the reason, like Astarion and Karlach, that Astarion and Rai are besties. Cazador treated Astarion like a possession, Avarice raised Rai as a weapon and they're kindred spirits of sorts as a result despite Astarion complaining about Rai being "too nice" XD) for most of her formative years, Rai's emotional maturity very much comes from her stumbling face-first into the lessons/epiphanies herself lol

So she learns to be a bit less "keep my shit to myself but expect everyone to let me deal with their shit" and take up a bit more space/be a bit more communicative about her own trauma. "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you" and "Avernus fucking sucks and they're all haunted by it in some way or another" are the two overarching themes for Rai and her polycule 💖

She also learns to be a bit less impulsive. She ran off because she didn't want to force Wyll to "pick a side", but ended up doing exactly that to BOTH the boys, because she ran off first without thinking it through logically.

Karlach has a little "oh, shit" moment when Dammon sets her straight and she realizes that she never actually asked Rai anything about her time in Elturel or what it was like for her/why she danced around the subject. She just…made assumptions and didn't fact check or think that maybe her assumptions could've been wrong.

For my "version" of the story the snowball effect from this fight culminates in Karlach ultimately deciding that she doesn't want to die. She wants to LIVE. So when they get to the dock at the very end and Rai and Wyll tell her "we won't make the decision for you, but whatever you choose, we're with you". And she chooses Avernus in the end, because even though she's fucking terrified, the fact that after everything they've all been through with something from Avernus dogging their every effort to get away from it, both Rai and Wyll are still willing to go back too. For her. And if they can do it for her, then she can do it for them, and maybe buy Dammon enough time to figure out how to fix her heart for good. (I'm not crying you're crying /lh)

And she also learns that while she has a right to make her own decisions, she cannot presume to make those same decisions for anyone else in the polycule just because she thinks she's protecting them by doing it. She can make those decisions for herself, but she has to let them make theirs sometimes too, even if they're not the decision Karlach wanted them to make.

(honourable/slightly joke-y mention: "Don't piss off Dammon. He's scarier than any Raging barbarian when he's angry" lol)

Bonus Dammon, bc I love him and he's kinda a package deal with Rai /jk. Who gets to wrestle a little bit with guilt (it was his suggestion that snowballed into making his girls fight, after all ;-; ), the guilt from this fight is the straw that broke the camel's back in a biiiiiig pile of guilt he's been carrying around since Rai "disappeared" and he just believed Avarice when she said she was dead and never thought to try looking for her etc. He has to learn to make peace with it, before it starts eating him alive, sort of deal. ;3; Also feel like he gets a bit more comfortable with making his voice heard despite his general introverted nature. If he hadn't been a bit firmer with Karlach she might not have stayed quiet long enough to listen and the spat might've been a lot more drawn out than it ended up being so he gets a gold star for that hahaha

How do they react when the other is upset? How do they try to help?

Sorta-kinda talked about this one in question 10 with Rai and Dammon and Rai and Wyll so I'll do Rai and Karlach for this one! :3

I'd say it depends? Unlike Dammon who just gets angry but not necessarily violent, Rai and Karlach both have a tendency to get aggresisve/violent when the other one is hurt/upset. If its a specific person whose made them upset (and you know. it's not someone they already know/just a misunderstanding between friends) they will start threatening and even actually hurt the person responsible if they can get their hands on them. Be careful with upsetting the other one because you will have a homicidal tiefling on your ass and when she catches you she will rip you in half. Trust me on that one. If Wyll and/or Dammon can't talk her down.

When Raphael starts bothering Rai during the course of the game plot, Karlach has absolutely threatened to rip his face off if he dares lay a finger on Rai. This may or may not become foreshadowing, haven't written/planned anything that far ahead just yet so we'll see when/if I get there hahaha. If its just a general "someTHING happened and I am upset" the default is definitely cuddles. They're both absolute cuddle fiends, esp after Karlach's touchable again. If they're not busy adventuring or helping with camp chores they are huddled on a bedroll snuggling, but this is doubly true when one of them is upset because cuddle piles fix everything. "No you may not bother her until she decides she's done, unless you want IN the cuddle pile too then go ahead". You get the idea lolol

What values do they not share? How do they reconcile those differences?

Going with Rai and Dammon for this one bc they're the first ones that came to mind when I looked at this question!

Rai's definitely a warrior/soldier at heart. Fighting comes naturally to her, whether Dammon likes it or not (and assuming that she'd had a "normal" childhood and not been scooped up by Avarice, this would still be true. Just instead she would've probably ended up a Hellrider instead of an Acolyte). It doesn't mean that he's not going to worry, or freak out, when she charges into something dangerous. Especially because Dammon is the opposite. As I said earlier, I think he can fight, he just chooses not to because he doesn't like it.

From Rai's end, it works perfectly fine. She's never expecting Dammon to come with her into battle, she knows he hates it. But Dammon does worry. He's terrified that one day she'll leave for a battle and never come back. And he won't be there, it'll be Wyll and Karlach by themselves coming back to give him the bad news. Dammon doesn't think his heart can take it. He's definitely had panic attacks before because of worrying about Rai charging off into a fight, but he's had to make peace with the fact that it's in her blood and he can't stop her. A frequent exchange between them before Rai runs right into something dangerous is usually Dammon telling her "I don't need you to be a hero, I just need you to be alive and safe" ( D: ). But he has to learn to trust her when she responds with "I promise you, I am coming back. I'm coming home to you when it's over". The more times she does come back, the more he starts to believe it even if the worry doesn't ever completely go away </3.

Rai always makes sure to "check in" with him before and after a fight as a result. Because even if it seems silly to her, she knows Dammon needs to hear her say it. (Also I think once they end up in the closed polycule with Karlach and Wyll, and knowing that they're there to watch eachothers' backs helps Dammon's anxiety be a bit less bad!)

What's different about their backgrounds? Do those differences affect the relationship?

And again bc they were the first pair I thought of after looking at the question, Rai/Wyll ✨

Rai's an orphan, with the Acolyte background because she was raised in a temple in Elturel and the closest thing to a "parent" she ever had was her Mother Superior, Avarice (who is also a Bhaalspawn a.k.a canon-divergent Durge). Even then, Avarice was not at all nurturing past the absolute bare minimum and by that I mean "don't kill the child soldier before she's been put to use in the Blood War" kind of deal. She has no memory of her biological parents whatsoever and doesn't really even know what having parents feels like.

Wyll on the other hand at least has his dad. But as a result of her childhood, Rai doesn't really…understand, the father-son dynamic that Wyll and Ulder have because she never had anything even close to that in her formative years. She's never deliberately confrontational with Ulder but it definitely takes her a LONG time to warm up to him after Wyll tells her about how he ended up pacted with Mizora as a result of what went on between him and his dad. She doesn't want to make things difficult for Wyll (on purpose) or tell him he can't have a relationship with his father. But she definitely doesn't GET it for a good long while and I think that would definitely bleed over into her relationship with Wyll until she can work through it.

(also something to be said for the Nobility/essentially a street urchin class-gap possibly? But no immediate anecdotes come to mind as of typing this. Just that I think that def creates some differences of experience for them that I'll prolly expand upon/explore more as I write more for them! :D)

Who said "I love you" first?

Aaand for this one, I'mma do all the Tav(Rai) ships again, because I think they're all equally cute and I can't just do one sorry! :D So here we goooo, in no particular order ~

Rai and Dammon: Both, pretty much. As discussed in question 10, Rai and Dammon have known eachother pretty much their entire lives. Their "I love you" was a "both of them blurted it out at exactly the same time" deal. When Zevlor recognised Rai and thus let them into the grove, and she started milling around and reconnecting with old friends/acquaintances/found family from Elturel, it takes her a little while to come across Dammon because his makeshift forge is tucked so far into the back of where the tieflings are staying. And while he's close with the other tieflings, Dammon does prefer to keep to himself so when there's a commotion at the gate he doesn't think it's his place to go sticking his nose in. It's probably something to do with a fight, and ever since Avernus he doesn't want much to do with fighting anymore (I'm also a "Dammon is an introvert" truther. And while I think he can wield a sword I feel like he very much chooses not to. Avernus fucking sucked my dudes, and I don't think he enjoys being on or around a battlefield AT ALL after getting back, though he will craft/fix weapons, armour, shields etc for his friends and family and if it called for it (like helping protect the tiefling kiddos during the grove raid, or defending Moonrise with the Tadpole squad and the Harpers) he will pick up a sword and fight if he HAS to. But he'd very much rather not if he has the choice between fighting or not.)

Eventually, she wanders to the back where his forge is and suddenly Rai is hit with a wave of recognition when she catches sight of Dammon and realizes it's him. She ends up getting his attention by calling out to her and at that point he almost burns himself dropping the weapon he'd been putting through the coals because as far as Dammon thought, Rai had died during the fuss with Elturel and he couldn't believe she was here - cue them both almost strangling eachother with hugs, a lot of tears and a very rushed out "I love you" because with the way Rai was carting around looking for a way to get un-tadpoled, they had no idea if there would be a "next time" that they saw eachother alive again and "I need you to know". ;3;

Rai and Wyll: Wyll went first here, but only just. Rai and Wyll's "I love you" was very much both of them were waiting for the other one to say it first because they were worried it was Too Soon(tm) otherwise. Wyll was the one that cracked first and Rai said it back ahem I may also have a fic for this hence why this one is so short, I don't want to spoiler y'all before I'm done w/ the oneshot and that was that.

Rai and Karlach: Rai went first, she'd known she loved Karlach for a while (I'd even make a cheesy "love at first sight" argument for these two tbh lol). Post-Engine upgrade 2, Karlach had a good cry when she realized it had worked, and as she cuddled and comforted her a little "I love you" slipped out into Karlach's hair. Karlach wasn't too far behind, it pretty much went down how it does in-game after they finally get to go to bed on that same night because I just think her getting so excited and yelling "ILOVEYOUTOO!" back at Rai is so goddamn cute that I have to keep it in there ;3; ❤️

#bg3 sort of #couple questions ask meme #mildly n/sfw #suggestive #long post #elven's bg3 headcanons #bg3 oc: tief!saarai #tiefling tav #saarai/wyll #saarai/karlach #saarai/dammon #saarai/karlach/wyll #saarai/karlach/dammon #thank you for picking very fun questions i had a blast writing these #''everyone deserves their own polycule'' truthers unite :P #i am very normal about rai and her polycule (i am physically incapable of being normal about how much i love them. Ever /hj)#also pretty sure i read somewhere that tief tails *aren't* prehensile anymore?? but they are to me so the lore can fight me lmao #also also both wyll and dammon *are* also bi because in her other verse rai's polycule is all-bi so #it makes sense to make dammon bi as well (and wyll is ofc also bi anyway in-game)#so it's not that they're het here they just *happen* to not have a vibe with eachother is all lmao #we had that convo with drunk wyll at the grove party and i couldn't stop fucking laughing #wyll. baby boy. sweetie pie. firstly she loves you *anyway* you silly (affectionate) man.#but besides that; you're complaining about bumpy/spiny dick as if that's not something that's like. if it's *not* canon for tieflings #it *should* be [nodding emphatically]#so you just got 10x as attractive between that and the horns #(actually now that i think about it...#that's prolly about the point in time that wyll realises rai has been doing the fuck-me tail *at him too* and not just at karlach #bc that was her *immediate; instantaneous* response to his complaint about the bumpy dick lmfao)#i love him so much #tw: child abuse mention

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