#thrthgdfe

(this isn’t structured b/c i was just thinking aloud?? sorry for being vaguely incoherent)

I’ve never really seen Eric as necessarily a submissive character, I’ve seen his deferring to Nell as a conscious choice to lay back and let her work it out after his pretty self confident exuberance of earlier seasons spooked her, as opposed to him just in general having the instinct to be submissive? i’m not really sure i have a good read on it. He’ll happily roll over and let somebody else be in charge but he doesn’t have any real problems taking charge, either, he kinda enjoys it? He just in general seems chill about it to me. He’s mildly possessive and overtly jealous sometimes, but not really reaching into straight up dominance level. 

But I genuinely think that this whole time Eric was just waiting for Nell to make the first move so he knew it’d be okay, like, she kissed him in the grass and from that he made a move on her, immediately, you know? He knew he was welcome so he was straight on it, with confidence. Before getaway she was kissing his face (very close to his lips) in opps and hugging him and stroking his hair in pretty emotionally charged moments, Nell has obviously been moving closer to him for a long while, and I pretty much feel that he was waiting for her to make an obvious, blatant move before he made any, just so he could be 100% sure he wouldn’t scare her. 

I don’t want to make this comparison but like... when you kneel down and let a cat approach u so it doesn’t get spooked and run away. Like that. I don’t necessarily think Eric is submissive as much as i think obvious dominance can spook Nell? 

I mostly just think they’ve been operating on a system of give and take for a while, on a surface level Nell is far more dominant control freak, she’s just like that as a person, but Eric is also the one person on the show she will defer to and open up to with all of her thoughts and feelings (she will talk to Hetty about her work anxieties, and i assume to Nate b/c she’s actually his patient, but nobody as much as Eric) and I???

I think she trusts him, If she didn’t love the blond nerd, she never would have gone to kiss him after he made it known that, yes, he is in love with her, and i think that trust would inspire her to let him have more of a measure of control than she would give up to anybody else. It’s also kind of nice in a symmetry way that her first introduction of being super dominant w/ him because she admired him faded into being relaxed b/c she loves him. 

I also think it’s probably notable that Nell is incredibly dominant and sometimes overtly pushy reaching into ‘you’re being a total ass’ territory in areas she is comfortable in (eric is literally one of the areas she feels comfortable being a little shit in ha), if she knows her stuff, she’s kind of arrogant about it, but when she perceives herself as, idk, the less experienced or learning, she’s unsure about it. She’s on very loose footing with the field work sometimes, she doesn’t know it like the back of her hand so she defers to the rest of the team’s judgement, she might defer a lot to Eric (probably correctly) assuming he’d be better at the relationship thing, i wouldn’t be surprised if it happened. 

i actually think my lack of firm opinion here lays with me not having a read on Eric, he’s pushy and confident and will easily go ahead and take charge but is also totally willing to roll over most of the time without any hint of ever being bothered by it. I kind of think his chill about it is why he works so well with Nell’s high strung-ness a lot of the time, it compliments her well and doesn’t bother either of them.