;0 feel free to ignore this if you wish, but maybe a romantic Ted ihnmaims x reader??? Something just, soft and cute? There's a severe lack for him unfortunately
I've got nothing else but love for you
Ted (IHNMAIMS) x Gender Neutral! Reader romantic headcanons
Warning: mention of violence, murder, torture, killing, religious imagery (specifically Christianity)
Word count: 1.1k
୨ৎ˙⋆.˚ ᡣ𐭩
Everyone knows how paranoid Ted is and how quick he is to judge others no matter their side of the story, and it doesn’t change with you. If anything, it’s worse when he gets a thing for you. He knows there’s a specific beauty to you that makes his heart beat a little too fast for his liking.
Ted will think it’s AM’s doing, making him want to crawl back to your arms after each torturous hour of the day. At some point, he asks, and it turns out AM did nothing with it. The blame is then put on you, you cursed him! You’re truly terrible!
He knows how romance works but hasn’t felt it in such a long time to the extent he forgets sometimes. Ted would watch as you helped Gorrister calm down or be close with Ellen and feel an awful sense of hatred. He barely differentiates if it’s toward the person you’re with or toward you.
Ted has a habit of getting caught in his thoughts, so once he realizes that the feeling is love, he would be beyond annoyed. He’s got so much going on to the extent love is not what he needs now!
It’s indescribable how much he loves praise. He’s self-conscious to an insane extent (from AM, though he doesn’t know it) and needs some reassurance that you truly love him. If you praise him before he confesses how he feels, it will solidify the idea that he likes you. Again, more blame is put on you.
Your beauty would play a part in his insecurity, it wouldn’t affect the relationship to the extent that he’d leave you. But it would be rather prominent with the way he talks about you then himself. Just consistent sayings of “I don’t deserve you”, it’s less manipulation and more so genuine insecurity. Ted is so insecure to the extent he never understood why you love him the way he loves you.
Physical affection would be gradual with how terrible Ted is to himself. It would be years before a normal amount of touch was visible in the relationship. Of course, there are ways to get him in your palm: praise him and he’ll basically melt. Though make sure he doesn’t think twice about your affection, he’ll be more willing to push away.
Ted isn’t the most affectionate person, but he knows that he has you for love. He’ll hold you as tight as he can once he fully gets comfortable and admires you silently.
Ted is hesitant with PDA but once he tries it, he’ll understand why he would walk down the street and see couples holding hands and kissing in public. He’d hold your hand on the journey for the canned peaches, making sure you were there with him.
Since he asked about the AI changing his brain to feel funny things for you, AM would use you to torture Ted. He’d take you, torture you beyond compare, and bring you back in the hands of an angel or another man. And Ted would take you back with care, taking your hand to continue the journey. It would affect him less if you were brought back in the hands of an angel, it would just solidify the idea AM is God but the man would hurt more, especially if it’s a guy who looks nothing like him. He’d puff his chest and continue without a word.
Kisses are another form of affection he loves, feeling your lips on his face, specifically his lips. His arms would tighten instinctively from the newfound affection and adore you each time.
Part of him would like being in a relationship since he knows the closest thing he had with Ellen wasn't real love and knows that she was “obligated” to help the men. Now that he has you, he hasn’t gone back to stress her more. It’s not only a mix of thankfulness from him for real love, but also one from Ellen. She’s already got so much from the four combined but thankfully, it would go down to three only.
It’s not unlikely for him to still accuse you of being against him too, saying you were plotting against him with the other men then running off to sit with his thoughts. It being a couple hours, days, weeks, months, years even doesn’t matter. You’ll find him again and assure him with your love. Ted’s bound to crawl back to you anyway.
Ted would try his best with being romantic, though it’s not his first idea to do. He’d try holding hands and calling you sweet names, and trying to make you swoon. But at the end of the day, he’s an awkward man. The others would see how he tries and cringe from the words he would say. You would laugh and accept his oddness with open arms.
He has a habit of following you like a dog sometimes, especially when he’s not wallowing in his own sadness. Ted would follow you around and talk to you, really about anything, about his life and what he liked to do before AM.
Ted would watch over you in your sleep, keeping your body to his chest as he laid awake, the dark bags under his eyes would gradually get worse. He was guarding you from nothing that was there, it was all his hallucinations. It’s truly the thought that counts, isn’t it?
A lot of convincing for him originally done by Ellen would later be done by you. When that hairy creature ran at him while on the walk to the peaches, he ran and hid. You would take your time guiding him from hiding, with words of praise and kisses for him.
The rest of the group (Gorrister and Nimdok) would use you to get Ted to do something with them. If he didn’t want to go about doing something with them and they didn’t want to split, they’d use you as a compromise. But if you agreed to stay with Ted, it’d be nearly impossible for the rest of the group to get him going until you egged him on.
By the end, when it turned out there wasn’t anything they could use for the peaches, Ted would kill you first. As much as it hurt to do, he’d want you out the quickest and confirmed gone. He wants you happy at any time he can get you to smile but if you must die for that, so be it.
When AM turns him into the soft blob when the group is dead, he would one day wish the AI would give him pity and kill him. Maybe in heaven he won’t look like the creature AM turned him into, even then, he could only hope you would love him just as much as when he was human.
