I have a lot of feels for Nathan and Victoria. They waver between romantic and platonic, tbh. I just needed to get this piece of character study/headcanon out so my heart would stop aching over these babies. If you want to listen to what I did while writing this, it's Disarm and Tell Mama by The Civil Wars.
It had never been easy for them. Everyone looked at her like she had everything together, that people bowed at her feet. Those same people cowered in fear or praised him for his actions against them.
Negligence and mental illness went together like cheap whiskey and thick cigarette smoke. They went together like they had meant to be one person, but God was cruel and put everything terrible into both without sparing them the ability to cope without each other.
He needed her for something he had never found. She needed him for the only thing she ever wanted.
The slightest thing set them off; it caused them to snap without thinking, even to those they cared about. Friends, teachers… each other. The world had never taken it easy on them, why did they need to take it easy on anyone else?
He had destroyed her camera lens and ripped up a pile of her freshly printed photographs in his moment of rage against the world. Blue eyes filled with anger and hatred, highlighted by dark circles. His words were harsh, and his actions terrifying. It wasn't that he was much stronger than her, but that she was scared for him.
It always took time to calm him down, let everything take its course through his system. He could yell and throw things until his voice gave out, and she would clean up behind him, only nodding when he needed the affirmation that he was being heard. Sometimes, that was the only thing he needed. Other times he needed his phone to text the asshole who supplied his fix.
In the wake of his destruction, it always ended the same way regardless of the issue. His letterman jacket on her floor, shoes kicked away.
They lay side by side, his head in the protective cover of her arms as his body gently shook while he tried to breathe. Tear stained cheeks still wet, flushed red from his outburst against everyone and everything.
His scarred arms held her as tight as possible, hands gripped into the soft cashmere of her shirt hard enough to wrinkle the fabric. Each kiss of white scar tissue against tanned skin spoke of a time she couldn't save him from himself. Of before they knew one another, before they found out just how much of a balance they had become.
She was tangible in the moment of panic. She didn't say she understood because she never could understand the storm in his head, but she didn't judge him for the way his brain worked. All she could do was wait it out and shelter him when it was over.
Her head ducked down to press her forehead to his crown. Nimble fingers of one hand feathered through his tawny locks as she other protected the nape of his neck with the other.
She hated that she couldn't take away his pain, that she couldn't stop him from destroying himself from the inside out all the time. She loved that he came to her and trusted her in this vulnerable state.
Victoria needed to be needed. Nathan wanted comfort.
It had never been easy for them. But the struggle was easier when they were like this. It wasn't sexual, and it wasn't harmless. It was the closest thing to love and acceptance they had found. It completed them.
As his breathing evened out, his hands released their grip on her, though his arms never lost their strength. Pale pink lips kissed his forehead, adjusting her legs to wind with his as she let herself be taken under with him.
They could spend the night like this. Everything could wait until the new dawn washed away the pain of the night.