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arduinnaI shifted the Dec 14 question forward a few days, since I did two posts on Saturday, and then I forgot to answer Sunday's. Whoops! So this one is for December 15.
justhuman asked: Tell me about Duke and Nathan and the fanservice that's gushing out of Haven
Oh, man, I'm not even sure I can be coherent about this. This season has been a Duke/Nathan slasher's dream, from the moment Nathan turned around to see Duke and reacted with completely nonverbal sounds and one of the best hugs I've ever seen anywhere. ... I may have watched it a few times since then.
That hug makes sense from Nathan's POV, where he's spent six months thinking Duke was dead and it was his fault, but for Duke, it's been a few hours, maybe a day tops, since he's seen Nathan, at which point they were at their normal levels of semi-grudging trust and working together. But he sees Nathan's face light up at the sight of him, and that triggers an identical reaction in him; he lights up right back, and he may not quite be trying to crawl into Nathan the way Nathan's trying to crawl into him, but he doesn't let go, even though Nathan smells bad.
And they never go back from that point. They've had other moments of relative peace and harmony in the past, but they're just moments, and then the protective walls go back up. This time, it's like they both decided oh well, the cards are all on the table now -- they really do mean that much to each other, and they both know it. So they just move forward from there.
I'm tempted to go all gushy and say all they ever needed was one moment like that, of pure trust and love, but I don't actually think that's true. I think they needed the last few years of history to make that moment possible in canon.
And then we get things like Duke backing Nathan's play in a heartbeat, even though he first doesn't believe him, and then thinks Nathan's out of his mind and tries to keep convincing him it's a bad idea. But even then, publicly he's still backing him, even if it means coming up with yet another lunatic plan later, to the point that other people tell him outright they know he's just doing or saying whatever to protect Nathan, which. ♥
We get Nathan trying to stop Duke from risking death to save Nathan, with the weird angry living blood trouble thing; and Duke whapping his arm away and then absorbing all the weird angry blood anyway, because he knows what that blood wants to do to Nathan, and at least he has a shot of surviving it.
We get that fantastic moment on the hill, with all the Guard around wanting to kill Nathan, and Duke absorbing some Troubled blood and yelling "Run!" and Nathan just BOLTING, without a blink, totally trusting Duke to have his back and to know what he's doing.
We get Duke just assuming the role of Nathan's de facto partner in the first part of the season (and again later, when Audrey's out of commission), with both of them accepting it as perfectly normal (and again, not just them, but everyone else; the vibe between them is so relaxed and simpatico at this point it's amazing). He even makes sure that Nathan's coffee can't accidentally scald him before he hands it over.
We get that moment when Duke actually tells Nathan he's good at his job -- not mockingly, not even teasingly, just a straight-up "the thing you're good at is solving cases and finding people" -- and even though the way he does it sounds like it could be a setup, Nathan doesn't think he's being set up, he trusts that this is a genuine conversation. We get Duke and Nathan having a nose-to-nose, heart to heart convo about how Nathan wants Duke to protect "Lexie" when he's gone, while earnestly telling Duke that he *will* stop the Troubles, and Duke quietly and sincerely saying "I know you will". Oh my heart, the trust, the belief.
And later, when Duke has killed Wade and is grieving and angry and freaked out and lashes out at Nathan and Audrey, Nathan doesn't go defensive or angry; he acknowledges that Duke's saying some true things, and then when he realizes that Duke's Trouble is gone and figures out that Duke must have killed Wade, he just sort of absorbs it; he doesn't go all cop on Duke, he's just there for him. (... which, okay, is sort of being a terrible cop, but in Troubled Haven terms, makes me kinda melt.)
We get Duke, who for seasons now has been saying he doesn't want to help people, eyerolling at the sky and plaintively wanting to know why everyone always thinks he wants to help, telling Jennifer that when he was a kid, he's the one who carried Nathan to the hospital when he broke his arm -- and even more tellingly, that's how he differentiates himself from Wade, who freaked out and didn't help at all. That childhood moment was defining for Duke.
And most of that is just the first few eps of the season, as they turned themselves into this tight little unit of two, even with the other people swirling around them, even as they made room for Jennifer and "Lexie", even as Duke's brother showed up trying to reconnect, even as Dwight tried to reintegrate Nathan into Haven PD.
I have been eating this season up with a spoon, man.
The difference between all of that and the pricklier earlier seasons is kind of vast, but it really does feel to me like they've just dropped their protective facades, and that this was lurking underneath the whole time.
I have been ridiculously happy about it all. ♥
---
Full request list here, still open!
justhuman asked: Tell me about Duke and Nathan and the fanservice that's gushing out of Haven Oh, man, I'm not even sure I can be coherent about this. This season has been a Duke/Nathan slasher's dream, from the moment Nathan turned around to see Duke and reacted with completely nonverbal sounds and one of the best hugs I've ever seen anywhere. ... I may have watched it a few times since then.
That hug makes sense from Nathan's POV, where he's spent six months thinking Duke was dead and it was his fault, but for Duke, it's been a few hours, maybe a day tops, since he's seen Nathan, at which point they were at their normal levels of semi-grudging trust and working together. But he sees Nathan's face light up at the sight of him, and that triggers an identical reaction in him; he lights up right back, and he may not quite be trying to crawl into Nathan the way Nathan's trying to crawl into him, but he doesn't let go, even though Nathan smells bad.
And they never go back from that point. They've had other moments of relative peace and harmony in the past, but they're just moments, and then the protective walls go back up. This time, it's like they both decided oh well, the cards are all on the table now -- they really do mean that much to each other, and they both know it. So they just move forward from there.
I'm tempted to go all gushy and say all they ever needed was one moment like that, of pure trust and love, but I don't actually think that's true. I think they needed the last few years of history to make that moment possible in canon.
And then we get things like Duke backing Nathan's play in a heartbeat, even though he first doesn't believe him, and then thinks Nathan's out of his mind and tries to keep convincing him it's a bad idea. But even then, publicly he's still backing him, even if it means coming up with yet another lunatic plan later, to the point that other people tell him outright they know he's just doing or saying whatever to protect Nathan, which. ♥
We get Nathan trying to stop Duke from risking death to save Nathan, with the weird angry living blood trouble thing; and Duke whapping his arm away and then absorbing all the weird angry blood anyway, because he knows what that blood wants to do to Nathan, and at least he has a shot of surviving it.
We get that fantastic moment on the hill, with all the Guard around wanting to kill Nathan, and Duke absorbing some Troubled blood and yelling "Run!" and Nathan just BOLTING, without a blink, totally trusting Duke to have his back and to know what he's doing.
We get Duke just assuming the role of Nathan's de facto partner in the first part of the season (and again later, when Audrey's out of commission), with both of them accepting it as perfectly normal (and again, not just them, but everyone else; the vibe between them is so relaxed and simpatico at this point it's amazing). He even makes sure that Nathan's coffee can't accidentally scald him before he hands it over.
We get that moment when Duke actually tells Nathan he's good at his job -- not mockingly, not even teasingly, just a straight-up "the thing you're good at is solving cases and finding people" -- and even though the way he does it sounds like it could be a setup, Nathan doesn't think he's being set up, he trusts that this is a genuine conversation. We get Duke and Nathan having a nose-to-nose, heart to heart convo about how Nathan wants Duke to protect "Lexie" when he's gone, while earnestly telling Duke that he *will* stop the Troubles, and Duke quietly and sincerely saying "I know you will". Oh my heart, the trust, the belief.
And later, when Duke has killed Wade and is grieving and angry and freaked out and lashes out at Nathan and Audrey, Nathan doesn't go defensive or angry; he acknowledges that Duke's saying some true things, and then when he realizes that Duke's Trouble is gone and figures out that Duke must have killed Wade, he just sort of absorbs it; he doesn't go all cop on Duke, he's just there for him. (... which, okay, is sort of being a terrible cop, but in Troubled Haven terms, makes me kinda melt.)
We get Duke, who for seasons now has been saying he doesn't want to help people, eyerolling at the sky and plaintively wanting to know why everyone always thinks he wants to help, telling Jennifer that when he was a kid, he's the one who carried Nathan to the hospital when he broke his arm -- and even more tellingly, that's how he differentiates himself from Wade, who freaked out and didn't help at all. That childhood moment was defining for Duke.
And most of that is just the first few eps of the season, as they turned themselves into this tight little unit of two, even with the other people swirling around them, even as they made room for Jennifer and "Lexie", even as Duke's brother showed up trying to reconnect, even as Dwight tried to reintegrate Nathan into Haven PD.
I have been eating this season up with a spoon, man.
The difference between all of that and the pricklier earlier seasons is kind of vast, but it really does feel to me like they've just dropped their protective facades, and that this was lurking underneath the whole time.
I have been ridiculously happy about it all. ♥
---
Full request list here, still open!
