#tanguine

Valduggery? Good on you.

Ghanith? Enjoy your hot beverage.

Tanguine? You do you, whatever makes you happy.

Chinduggery? That’s great.

Skulpine? You scare me slightly, but if it makes you happy, embrace it.

i gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this

i hosted parties and starved my body

like i’d be saved by a perfect kiss

OKAY SO

here's the rundown

DEAD MEN

ghasdug: they don't really use pet names. ghastly sometimes calls skug skul, which skug hates, but he gets away with it by dint of having done it since they were teens. they get together at 16 and for most of their relationship skug doesn't use affectionate nicknames or pet names for anyone. He does sometimes fondly call ghastly bespoke, though.

sexter: dexter is just dex, mostly - not just with saracen, but with all his lovers. saracen is like 5'9 to dexter's 6ft, so dexter fondly refers to him as big guy.

shudderkin: shudder isn't a pet name person, but he is pretty much the only person who regularly calls larrikin by his first name, rover. on the flipside, larrikin will answer to pretty much anything, and shudder promptly gets nicknamed altar boy, in honour of all that religious guilt he carries around.

other: ghastly was a sergeant major during the war. everyone who doesn't outrank him still occasionally whines "but sarge," if he's telling them off for something.

BAD BOY BRIGADE

violent: their relationship is a closely guarded secret for a long time, so in public they're professional: vile calls mevolent your grace, and mevolent calls vile general. in private, over the years, mevolent will sometimes fondly refer to vile as rouquin ("little redhead" or "little ginger" in Middle French). vile doesn't use pet names at all, but he does call mev mevolent, rather than an honorific title, which isn't something many people get to do

nefmev: they don't do pet names, especially not from nef. he's pretty smitten with mevolent, but mev sees him as a convenient casual hookup whenever he wants one, so he won't get away with over-familiarity in the same way vile could if he was the pet name type. he's one of mevolent's closest advisors, and in the war room, to a certain degree he gets to talk to mev like an equal and argue with him, but that doesn't really carry over to the bedroom. nef is used to messed up power dynamics, so this never really strikes him as odd.

sorrowscorn: they're both rather fond of darling

baronscorn: they have their own little awkward thing where she calls him husband and he calls her wife. the rest of the court are not entirely sure whether these are affectionate pet names or whether they are just strange ultra-repressed oddballs who think that's how normal people speak. vile and mevolent have a running bet.

GOOD GUYS (MISC)

cassdug: she's not flowery at all about her pet names - he's usually either love or lovey, depending on her mood. he doesn't really go in for them with her, but he does call her cassie in private, which is. very unusual for him, seeing as he pretty much never shortens names.

skulpine: skug calls nef nefarian. this is significant to nef because he isn't on first-name terms with leibniz!skug, and he gets visibly annoyed when og!skug keeps calling him nefarian in lsodm/tdotl. as his obsession shifts from skug-as-enemy to skug-as-ally, he starts to like the informality, because it makes him feel like skug likes him, and at a certain point he starts reciprocating by going from "the skeleton" or "detective pleasant" to skulduggery. these aren't actually pet names for skug though - he and og!serpine are on first name terms the whole way through book one, so this is normal to him.

valdug: pet names are pretty rare from him, and non-existent from her, but he does call her dear every now and then. neither of them are really the type that show affection like this.

skugwife: easily the most petnamey couple here - he's my darling and she's dearest. when they're courting and writing to each other, him at the front and her back in dublin, his letters begin with "dearest clary" and hers always end with "be safe, my darling". they keep this sappy shit up until she's killed, and even after - he vaguely remembers hallucinating her comforting him and telling him to come with me, my darling when he was being slowly tortured to death in serpine's dungeon, and that's the incident her ghost tells him about in tdotl - "we watched you suffer, we tried to get you to come with us".

vilekyrie: not so much a pet name, but i've always had a headcanon that when vile has nonverbal periods, he communicates with little shadow emojis like the sandman in rise of the guardians. he has one for her, like (🙎🏻), and mostly uses it to show he's worried about her if she's upset (🙎🏻❓) or that he's happy to see her/wants to show her something (🙎🏻❗) or say "I love you" (🙎🏻❤). sometimes his shadows will make the little signs in his sleep, and she can tell he's talking to her in his dreams. she sees it as almost a pet name. when he's talking though, they don't really have any.

(@bubblemoon66 do they have pet names in the spy!au? now im curious)

soldug: they mostly call each other by their surnames (pleasant/wreath) or by titles (detective/cleric), so their version of pet names is just...informality. if they use skulduggery or solomon, it's usually affectionate or concerned.

skug's siblings: after skug's mother is killed, he gets custody of the five youngest siblings. respair, the youngest, is only like four, and still has a little-kid lisp, and can't actually say 'skulduggery'. So skug gets to spend several unfortunate years as...well...skug thkug. respair grows out of it - eventually. raising kids is a thankless, embarrassing job.

BAD GUYS (MISC)

vilequesse: she frequently refers to him as my little toy or my pet. he doesn't really have one for her (but vilekyrie!au vile does have a sign for darquesse, and it's different to his one for val, which is. a relief for her tbh because for a while she's not actually sure whether he knows there's a difference)