I know you want weird ships but can I blsssss have some valdug? Bls fren
Who starts most fights?
Val. She'll start being sulky and combative, which he's dealt with enough to know it means there's a storm coming. He'll ignore it while they're working, but eventually he'll call her out on it - "You think there's an argument coming, so you've started arguing early. It's what you always do."
Who surrenders at the end of most fights?
It's usually Skug.
Who is more likely to cry during a fight?
Val, by virtue of being the only one with eyes.
Who is more likely to storm out during a fight?
Skug. If she's being especially unreasonable he'll grab his keys and walk out in the middle of whatever she's shouting at him and go drive around until they've both had time to calm down, maybe start some fights with people who aren't Val - but they only have a row this bad every few decades.
Who is louder in fights?
Val. One of the things Ghastly's parents impressed upon Skug way back in the 1500s is that a good man never raises his voice at his lady - he'll yell up the stairs for her or shout instructions while she's learning to fight but he never really shouts at her. She shouts at him though, if he's being too annoying or she's having a depression session or it's that time of the month. Depending on how upset she is and how self-destructive she's feeling, sometimes it actually bugs her more that he won't engage and shout back.
Who is more likely to throw things in fights?
Val. She canonically throws things at him when she's angry with him. Most of the time he sees it coming and deflects it, but she's beaned him in the face a few times over the years. It's. Never really occurred to him that maybe this is Not Okay - he thinks it's normal.
Who is more likely to bring up past mistakes?
Skug, because she has a tendency to be a hypocrite, and that's one thing he prides himself on not being. He can't help himself - he has to butt in if she's being hypocritical. "Let me remind you that you only told me about the Darquesse thing after you had Nye seal your true name. You may continue." He can be really patronizing about it though, and it drives her nuts.
Who is more likely to give the silent treatment?
Val. He...doesn't cope with it very well. Even when she was younger, he'd last a grand total of three days before he'd start bugging her to talk to him again, because he had nobody else to talk to. But now, knowing that she can and will vanish to another country and abandon him for an indeterminate length of time? Lowkey getting the silent treatment makes him worry she's going to disappear on him again, and it stresses him out a lot more.
Who is more likely to blame the other?
Val. Nothing is ever her fault, and he won't really stick up for himself if she bares her metaphorical teeth at him, so it's very easy for her to happily hand over the blame. She often knows, deep down, that she's being unfair or lashing out at him over something unrelated that's upsetting her, but she also has a tendency to find little excuses for things not to be his fault, so. Well yes, I'm stressed about X, but if he hadn't said Y and annoyed me I wouldn't have lost my temper so it's his fault we're fighting.
Who is more likely to blame themselves?
Skug. His problem is that he's used to a certain pattern of behaviour in his relationships - he gravitates towards manipulative, emotionally abusive women. He has all the signs of someone whose abuse started so early - probably with his mother or sisters - that he has no idea it's even happening. He's used to being gaslit and snapped at and told that things are his fault.
And? He never used to have that problem with val. They bickered constantly, and she sulked a lot, and sometimes so did he, but it was all in good humour, there was never any real anger behind it - except for the Vile thing, and honestly, he can't blame her for that. But then she went away, and when she came back, she'd bite his head off for no obvious reason or snap at him for calling her or sit in the passenger seat and scroll through her phone and ignore him for an entire stakeout and if he asks her what's wrong she says, "Nothing! God, I'm grand, okay?" in that voice that says Nothing Here Is Okay so? Of course he's going to slip back into the old pattern of assuming he's done something wrong. That's what it always was in all his other relationships.
Who gets jealous more easily?
Skug. All she has to do is mention Solomon Wreath and she can hear him grinding his teeth from across the room. She on the other hand has never really had cause to feel jealous of anyone else in his life: she knows she's his favourite person and top priority, she knows that given a choice between her and literally anyone else he's been with it wouldn't even be a contest. And at this point all his friends are dead, so he literally doesn't have anyone he cares about left but her anymore.
Who is angered more easily?
Generally, Skug. In their partnership, Val. It's very, very rare that he gets angry with her. She irritates him on the regular, but it's a fond kind of irritation.
Who is more likely to break off the relationship?
Val. He never would, lbh. Skulduggery doesn't know the meaning of "short-term relationship". He committed to 1000+ years with the same woman when he was only 30, China is still his lesson that he can't seem to learn after like four hundred years, Aby was at least a five year relationship. Skug doesn't do short term, and his normal meter is so screwed that even Aby's straight-up abuse didn't chase him off. At this point he's locked in for life.
Who is more likely to threaten to leave?
Val, but she regrets it immediately, and it's not so much threatening as just sort of, entertaining the idea. She knows he didn't have a good time during her five year Colorado-based depression session, and she knows he walks on eggshells now because he doesn't want her to leave again. She just says it occasionally, sometimes I just want to get away from all this or sometimes I think I never should've come back, because part of her does want to leave and go somewhere else and never have to look at Roarhaven again, and she doesn't even think before she opens her stupid mouth and she only realises she just said that out loud because he's gone very stiff and quiet and when she asks him about it he'll either act like he didn't hear her in the first place ("Mm, sorry, what? I was miles away. Did you say something?") or he'll overcompensate and act like he's grand ("Me? No. I'm fine. Perfectly fine. A bit discombobulated, perhaps, but fine [launches into 20 solid minutes of talking at 90mph]") and by that point she feels bad enough that she just lets him and goes quiet because she can't seem to say anything right anymore.
Who is more likely to actually leave?
Also Val. He'd never walk out on her. We all know that.
Who is more likely to forget the other first?
I don't think either of them could ever forget the other, but if we take this as "who'd move on first", it'd be Val. She does seem to like to bounce from relationship to relationship without much of a break in between, and she has considerably more romantic options than he does. Even in self-imposed exile in a pit of self-loathing, where she wouldn't even go into town to buy her own groceries because she Didn't Deserve To See Another Soul, she still had to have a boyfriend.
