Until The End

i have this cute headcanon where skug only uses emojis when texting valkyrie

and she has emojis in her name in his contacts 

and he refuses to put them for anyone else because he only appreciates her enough to make the effort like that

oooooooooooh bitch you asked for it im doing all of them

so here have Part 1/? of what has been a very, very, very long valdug post in my drafts for like a month bc i have a Bad Brain

1.      Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions?

skug drives. val is, technically, meant to give him directions. but she doesn’t bother, partly because she can’t be bothered and would really rather be in charge of the music and partly because she knows he’ll argue and claim he knows a short cut and they’ll find out that his supposed short cut became a one way street in 1937, a one way street which they are now driving down in the wrong direction and everyone will stare at them and they don’t want that to happen again, do they skulduggery

she did get him a satnav for his birthday one year after he bullied erskine into giving her a wage. he argues with the woman giving the directions. it’s been in the glove compartment ever since she got sick of listening to him mutter under his breath about how his way would be faster. 

2.      Which one spends all day running errands and which one says “You remembered [thing], right?”

they both kind of do this? skug remembers shit like paying bills, anniversaries & birthdays, dates for when either of them has an appointment, and who has to be where at what time. he’s organised. but he’s useless at household shit, because the last time he needed any of that, he had servants to do it for him. val, on the other hand, remembers to toss the out of date groceries, do the laundry on occasion, and fill the cupboards. bc, you know, she’s alive. she needs to do all that stuff. 

3.       Who would wrap the other in a blanket when the other one has a bad day?

skug, bc he fucking worships her. he’s an expert in Bad Day Val. he knows to make her a coffee, hand over control of the television, keep his mouth shut when xena gets up on the couch and spreads her great big furry body all over his expensive upholstery, and just let her be a miserable dissociated lump until she feels better. sometimes she wants him close, wants to lean on him or rest her head on a cushion in his lap, wants a back rub in the shower, will call him back into a room he’s just left because nothing feels real and she just wants to remind herself that he’s actually there. he handles this well. sure, there’s some gentle mockery about not being able to keep her hands off him, but he’ll drop everything to take the day off to be there for her. 

other times, she just wants him to leave her the hell alone, and she’ll get up and fling mugs at him if he doesn’t do it fast enough. 

4.       Who in the OTP would be more ready to sacrifice themself for the other?

ultimately, both, because neither could deal with being the partner “left behind”. but they’d rather kill for each other. they’re far too codependent for one of them dying and leaving the other one alone to work out happily for anyone. val successfully separated herself from skug quite a bit while she was in america - she can function “without” him quite comfortably on a long term basis - but he’s always at the end of the phone. if she needs him, she knows he’d be there for her no matter how long they’ve been apart. removing him from her life permanently would probably break what little spirit she has left. 

and as for skug, we all know how well he’d handle it if anything happened to val. #m u r d e r m o d e 

5.       Who sings along with the radio?

skug, very quietly, when he’s working and zoned tf out. it’s generally very quiet, sort of under his breath, and for the longest time he refuses to sing in front of anyone, so the only time val sees him doing it is on the rare occasion that he’s so into his work that he’s actually forgotten she’s in the room. if she speaks, or draws his attention, he stops immediately, awkwardly clears his throat and starts talking. 

I don’t know how many of you in the fandom are old remember the old Kink Meme communities, but for those of you who don’t know there used to be two Skulduggery Pleasant ones on dreamwidth: the Skulduggery Pleasant Kinkmeme and a separate Valduggery Kinkmeme.

The idea behind kink memes is pretty simple. Someone posts a prompt and a paring (often anonymously) and another person fills it with either fanfic or fanart (often also anonymously) . The prompts can be extremely detailed or extremely vague, and despite the name prompts don’t have to be kinky or even shippy (although you will find both those things if you click the links in the paragraph above so proceed with caution). 

- fletcher actually has a nice fucking girlfriend to bring who isn’t trying to kill him

- omen has a little kiddie girlfriend he can take as like a first date or whatever and skug mocks him mercilessly. preferably another old-ass man reminds him in front of omen how awkward he was at his first big ball

- skul actually fucking asks her to go with him this time. as his date. instead of just. forgetting to mention it and then springing it on her at the last minute

- val making “are you asking me on a date” jokes and skulduggery getting all awkward and defensive

- skul agonizing over buying val’s dress because she is a Very Different Person to who she was at 17 and he’s barely seen her out of her depression sweats since she came back from america

- they match, like skul’s tie or buttonhole flower or whatever dudes wear is the same colour/pattern/whatever as val’s dress or something

- he wears the skeleton cufflinks she got him

- trash talking  e v e r y t h i n g together

- china is there and actually fucking interacts with them á la phase one china because her phase 2 character arc so far has been messed up as shit

- they actually get a  f u c k i n g   d a n c e to a shippy song that i will never listen to because i hate derek’s taste in music and he kisses her hand before they dance like its a fuckin regency ball. he means it to be all charming but val’s brain just goes pride and prejudice and she just starts sniggering it’s terrible 

- val probably messes it up massively and keeps stepping on his feet and would absolutely be bumping into people if he wasn’t keeping an eye on that shit and with anyone else she’d be very awkward and definitely not having a good time but because she’s with skug they just laugh their way through it and tbh? she doesn’t even really realise there are other people around them. 

- dexter and/or saracen makes a return to the country for the event because there is nobody else left alive who knows skulduggery well enough to notice he’s only had eyes for val all night despite the lack of actual physical eyes and also derek give me back some characters i actually care about you asshole. preferably they’re actually talking to each other again

- val gets tipsy on very expensive champagne and makes some very blatant flirty comments @ skuldug, who was Not Expecting This and has absolutely no idea how to deal with it, cue awkward stuttering and clearing the throat he doesn’t have

- sneaking out onto a balcony together when they’ve had enough of everyone else to sit on the balustrade and chat and play angry birds while the music from the orchestra still plays very faintly in the background

- requiem ball selfie

- he gives her his suit jacket to put around her shoulders so she won’t get cold bc she’s not an elemental anymore and can’t regulate her own body temperature

- heads very close together while they’re playing angry birds

- at some point he glances up and she’s looking at him and he’s like “what?” and val kind of. bites her lip. says, “nothing, i just…” then cans that sentence entirely and just fucking kisses him

- val resting her hand on top of his on the gearshift on the way home

Ah, thank you for the ask! I’ll answer the questions for valduggery first in this post and then make a separate post for vilekyrie because this is going to get ridiculously long otherwise. 

1. Who is the one who asks crazy questions, and who is the one who tells the other to go to sleep?

Valkyrie asks the crazy questions. She bombarded Skulduggery with them for the first three or so years after they met. The questions got less frequent as she gets older, but they also get more bizarre. She is exactly the kind of person to ask Do you think pigeons have feelings? at 1 AM. Skulduggery will generally humour her, he likes talking nonsense with her, but he has had to tell her to go to sleep on multiple occasions because he knows what she’s like when she doesn’t get enough sleep. 

How could i pass up the opportunity to do Darquesse as well.

Here they go, fighting evil with steampowered magical mashines. i’m so proud of them. :’)

Dai Maybury: But what if the ghost makes advances back? I won’t have a plan then.

Fletcher Renn: Yeah, what if it’s a horny ghost?