#tbc i dont mind touch averse essek hcs at all

[aeoris4lovers]

i hope verin doesn't fight essek to let him touch him. i hope he respects his boundaries.

i think it’s worth keeping in mind that, while i see a lot of people headcanon essek as touch averse, that’s never actually established as canon. we see him act annoyed or put out by physical affection (the group hug at the blooming grove), not really know what to do with himself when he gets it (jester hugging him at the outpost), and reject it when it’s being used to manipulate him (caleb squeezing his arm while trying to persuade him), but we never really see him outright reject it or express that it genuinely bothers him.

so i don’t think he really dislikes being touched in and of itself, i just think part of him sees it as silly and unnecessary because he saw love and relationships in general as silly and unnecessary for a long time, and i think verin would say “fuck that” and do it anyway just like jester and the rest of the nein do because he knows essek well enough to know he doesn’t actually dislike it, he just avoids it on principle. it’s less that he hates being touched, and more he hates that he doesn’t hate it, you know? and i think verin would be the last person to care about letting essek uphold that cold, i-don’t-need-anyone facade.

not to mention, i don’t know if you have siblings but i do and i can tell you that a certain amount of boundary pushing is basically a sibling love language — when you know a person that well, you know what will annoy them versus what will cross a line and how to tell when their reaction goes from being annoyed to being genuinely upset, so you can fuck with them a lot without really hurting them. essek might roll his eyes and go stiff and complain the whole way when verin hugs him, but verin would know him well enough to know that’s not what it looks like when he’s actually upset so it’s safe to keep doing it anyway.

i imagine verin always knew essek enough to know he secretly enjoyed the affection verin showed to him, even if he acted like it was the stupidest thing in the world. so when i say essek doesn’t fight it anymore, i don’t mean there was a time when verin would literally force essek to take the affection, i mean essek always accepted it but had to put on a show of hating it while he took it because he felt like it went against the person he was trying to be and he couldn’t let anyone know he liked it.