#okay ngl it IS kinda funny that my aromantic ass fell SO damn hard for this ship | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sword-and-lance · 1 year

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((yup I'm not entirely done and I wasn't joking about the Nereus/Lahabrea elaboration deserving its own post 8D

these two idiots (affectionate) I stg, like

it actually took a fair bit of time for them to even realize that oh yeah I do get the warm fuzzies about this person in THAT way don't I

and while Nereus was actually pretty willing to run with that, if a bit cautiously because this blowing up in his face like the other relationships he tried having would be kinda bad if he still had to work with the guy

Lahabrea was just. um. kind of scared actually even if he couldn't even admit that that's what it was to himself

I mean of course there's the whole specter of what if someone just uses me again hanging over him but also even if that wasn't the case--

after something that outright horrible happening to him, like

it leaves something awful and grievously wounded and angry in your chest that lashes out not just at other people but yourself, too, so he wasn't even convinced he deserved that chance because he (thought he had) fucked up so. BADLY. in his last relationship that he nearly got his own kid stuck into a fate possibly worse than death

despite supposedly being one of THE smartest people

and given that Ancient society was, um, clearly not good with mental health stuff, and given that he couldn't even actually talk about what happened for obvious reasons of having to admit to murdering someone, that all had to be terrifically isolating, too, on top of all the self-blame

and that nasty combination of bad feelings basically going at him 24/7 made him want to run from even a hint of a relationship because did he really deserve it after that and what if what if what if, and yet

he was also just as painfully lonely as Nereus was after all this time and (while he probably considered it selfish of him at first) he just...wanted just one single thing that was his, after sacrificing damn near everything of himself to the star, to the Convocation, to everyone and everything else until he truly had made himself a bit miserable as a human being

(He just liked to think he was above that sort of thing when L O L no you are not sir, and he nearly had a wholeass mental breakdown over it at one point even)

and Nereus was actually genuinely kind, if a bit prissy and vain outside of work, and even when Lahabrea's harder more jagged edges bit into him he never really blamed him for it--didn't like it, sure, no one likes being on the receiving end of someone being angry or distant or just plain difficult, but never got too pissed and seemed to realize it was coming from a place of immense hurt

(I mean the guy's a healer, it's generally pretty obvious to someone like that when someone's just lashing out in pain, rather than just being mean for the sake of being mean)

and he was just quite willing to sit there and listen when Lahabrea wasn't being too...mentally shut down about the whole thing to be functional about it, and yeah it took fucking AGES and slow, painstaking work to get the man to actually open up about anything, but

damn if Nereus didn't manage it anyway at some point

and Lahabrea got to know him better too and realized that yeah Nereus is in fact just Like That in some ways but also that he's a rather sweet man, especially towards the people he loves

(And he...struggles to actually show that same softness in return, after so damn much of his life was basically building layer after layer of personal armor until what was the armor and what was him started becoming less and less distinguishable)

(but even if he can't really bring himself to do too much in public without feeling like his everything is screaming at him to knock it off, he does try in private--even if he was never really shown how to do it, he is still willing to try, as awkward and hesitant as he can be about vulnerability inherent to intimacy)

(not just emotionally, though that's a major part of it, but also physically--I headcanon he has a bit of a scar across his neck from when Athena actually tried to kill him back, hence the weird under-robes that no one else seems to wear, and he is actually really self-conscious about it)

(In fact that caused a bit of a spat between them when he first revealed that mark on accident early on, because Nereus was a bit sensitive to wow do you even trust me to DO MY JOB at the time and wasn't happy that one of his closer professional cohorts was uh, not asking him to help. BUT ANYWAY--)

As for Nereus he was basically just extremely lonely and felt like he didn't entirely fit in, especially since every other person of the Fourteen were from the city at the time (least until Azem wandered in) and he was basically from the Beach Boonies--and while the settlement he was in was actually pretty chill with his propensity for indulgence, the city really very wasn't and it made him wonder more than once if he was actually a good fit for the post

or even still being in the city at all tbh, for a while there

...and then it turned out that part of that particular brand of impulsivity was mostly because he was just. very very alone and didn't like it, and so it got tempered a fair bit when he actually started to be with Lahabrea proper (and Lahabrea himself being very you stop that? helped lol); he felt like Lahabrea saw him for who he was rather than what, and accepted it and even loved it, and it really did chill him out a bit as a result

they really did just both want to be seen and heard and loved for who they were, rough edges and all, and even if it makes Nereus nervous and Lahabrea straight-up anxious to try and do that, it gets juuuuust slightly easier as time goes on and it's just

genuinely pretty healing for the both of them

and in a world that wouldn't sit with big complicated damaging feelings that might never go away, that really did just mean everything, to the both of them))

#; musing #nereus tag #6.2 spoilers #okay ngl it IS kinda funny that my aromantic ass fell SO damn hard for this ship #it's just. Lahabrea actually trying again. It means everything to me #especially when this is two people SEEING each other's hurts and going #I see it. I accept it. I love you.#just. how am I NOT supposed to go utterly feral for that

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