Headcannon: Avad and Nil are brothers. They used to share a bathroom when they were teenagers. Avad did not enjoy this arrangement.

Avad: Nil! Why did you leave a pile of bloody clothes in the bathtub?

Nil: They’re soaking.

Avad: But there’s no water in the tub! It’s just a bunch of bloody clothes! It stinks in there!

Nil: Oh. I suppose I forgot to add water. My bad.

Avad: … I’m gonna kill you.

Nil: [perks up with interest] Ooh. Is that a challenge?

Avad: [sigh] Sweet blazing Sun…

“There was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing himself as an animal come from the forest, drawn by the fire. He was a thing of brush and liquid and eye, of fur, and muzzle and hoof. He was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like autumn if you bled it out on the ground.”

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Niloy fans, listen up.

Have you guys seen the @nsfwfrosch blog? I THINK WE NEED TO START A CROWDFUND SO WE CAN COMMISSION A NILOY GIF THE NEXT TIME COMMISSIONS OPEN. Anyone???

Dom!Nil needs some lovin’. That’s all I’m saying. 😉

“You’ve been walking on the edge of life and death. I can tell.” Suddenly Nil reached towards her and cupped the right side of her neck in one large palm, then ran his thumb over the scar on her neck left by Helis.

Aloy’s breath suddenly caught in her throat at the heat of his hand on her skin. A shiver of unfamiliar warmth ran over her body and pooled in her belly, then lower, in her feminine core.

Nil spoke, and his voice was low, deep, and intimate. “Now this scar… That’s a true sign of victory. A neat dance at death’s edge, a bloody scrabble to stay alive, like a fingertip along the edge of a knife.” He looked so hungry that goosebumps rose on Aloy’s arms, and she couldn’t decide if it was a good feeling or a bad one. She frowned and folded her arms, then stepped back just out of his reach, ignoring the tingling warmth that suffused her body.

“This scar isn’t victorious,” she said quietly. “It’s a reminder of terrible things that I had to live through.”

Nil tilted his head quizzically. “But you’re still standing. That’s a victory in itself. Isn’t this a thing to savour, if it’s a trial you’ve overcome?”

Aloy was quiet. She could see his point, and she was mildly surprised by his sudden insightfulness. But the pain of Rost’s passing was still too sharp. “Not yet,” she said finally. “Maybe someday.”

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Aloy: why are u like this tho

Nil: i dunno girl, lets kill bandits

“I waited for you,” Nil said with a yawn. He scratched the back of his head sleepily as though he’d been napping. “Time passing pulls the anticipation tight as wire.” He smiled, and his eyes glittered like shards of metal and ice. “How many has it been now?”

Aloy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t keep count, Nil.”

“Don’t keep count?” Nil gave a huge exasperated sigh and stared at her like she was a disobedient child. “Sometimes I just don’t get you. Are you like us, or a little different?”

Aloy bit the inside of her cheek to stop from smiling. Imagine Nil, of all people, accusing her of being different! “Hopefully a little different,” she retorted with a graceful lift of one eyebrow.

Nil gave her a skeptical look. “Hmm, if that’s what you’re going to tell yourself. Shall we get started?”

Aloy nodded, then frowned at him. He’d winced suddenly and shrugged his left arm as though it had a kink. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Come now, we’re wasting time,” he said eagerly. Too eagerly.

“Nil. Are you hurt?” Aloy placed a stern hand on his left shoulder to stop him, but he shied away from her touch defensively.

“Just my pride,” he quipped with a pained smile. Then finally he pulled back the left side of his vest to reveal three long, shallow, angry-looking scratches along his left pec. The skin around the scratches was red and inflamed-looking, and the scratches were weeping serum.

Aloy’s eyes widened. “Nil, you lunkhead! Why didn’t you bandage these?”

He shrugged. “Suntress, it’s but a scratch. I’ve seen far worse. I’ve given far worse.”

Aloy sighed loudly. “That’s not the point. It could be infected. How did this happen?” she demanded as she thrust some salvebrush berries into his hand and started crushing hintergold leaves, as she has done the last time he was wounded. She had never known him to get this kind of injury when fighting bandits before.

“I hunted a Sawtooth. It wasn’t a particularly clean kill,” he admitted grudgingly.

Aloy gaped at him in surprise and confusion. “You hunted a machine? Why?”

“You know, I’m not sure,” he mused. “When you hunted that Stormbird, I felt… something. An unusual thrill. I had hoped to capture that again if I hunted a machine.” His eyes slid to her face, and his expression was thoughtful. “It wasn’t the same without you.”

More on AO3.

My biggest headcanon is that Nil came up with a nickname for Aloy since he literally did not know her name until right before the Battle of HADES. So…

“Have you found a new partner yet?” Aloy asked.

Nil finally turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “I thought we were partners.”

Aloy recoiled slightly with surprise. “Uh… I have my own roads to follow, Nil.”

“And they seem to lead back to bandits,” he replied reasonably. “That works for me. I’m not suggesting a Carja wedding.” Aloy’s cheeks warmed at the mention of a wedding, much to her annoyance.

Nil nudged her shoulder slightly with his own. “I’m never lonely when there’s killing to be done.”

Like I was worried about you, she thought acidly, but declined to comment. Perhaps it was best to let him think they were a partnership; maybe it would keep his viciousness on a leash if he knew she would be keeping tabs on his activities. She gave a reluctant nod, then rose to her feet, brushing dust and grass from her legs. “Time to move on,” she told him. “And… thank you. For the meal.”

He nodded, but made no move to rise. “A brief encounter for us, but the end for them,” he said, with a nod of his head towards the camp. “They were squalid lives anyway. Until next time, Suntress.”

Aloy gave him a funny look as she readjusted her weapons on her shoulders. “Sorry? Did you say ‘huntress’?” She wasn’t sure if she had misheard him; everyone in the westlands had been addressing her as huntress.

But Nil shook his head. “Suntress. You know, tresses of hair scalded crimson like the fiery sun… though it also rhymes with huntress, which you undoubtedly are.” He grinned at her. “Such a satisfying name, don’t you think?”

Full story on AO3.

“Did bandits wrong you somehow?” Aloy asked. Maybe there was a good reason he hated them so much.

“They wrong us all,” Nil replied briskly. “They live filthy lives, so they have to die that way too.”

Aloy breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Well, that’s more normal, she thought. “So you hunt them down to help others?”

Nil frowned at her suddenly. “No, no. For sport,” he corrected, as though this was obvious. “I can’t wait for wars anymore. Life’s too short, and the thrill of death too sharp. If you kill a tribesman, there’ll be retribution. Hunt a boar, and they’ll complain if you waste the meat.

“But bandits?” He smiled slowly, and his face reminded Aloy of a thirsty man enjoying the first sip of honey mead. “They’re vicious; they always put up a fight; and no one cares if you kill them!” He nodded at her brightly, clearly under the impression that she would be impressed with his reasoning.

But Aloy was not impressed. What if one day, his fingers ‘itched for the bowstring’, as he had said earlier, and there was no bandit around to take the hit?

“I’m not sure who’s worse: you or them,” she scolded.

Nil smirked at her and tilted his head charmingly. “We’re standing, they’re not,” he explained. “Clearly we were better.”

Aloy sighed and looked down at the bodies scattered around the strangely-dressed man. “Varl told me there would be bandit ambushes on the road,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

The man replied, his voice sounding oddly apologetic. “Well, it’s not all good news. They don’t always come to you. Most dig out a camp, and there they’ll sit like spoil on meat.”

Aloy glanced at him sharply, one eyebrow unconsciously raised in puzzlement. Why would bandits attacking ever be good news? And why does he talk like that? Like he’s coming up with poetry on the fly?

Then she caught his expression. His eyebrows were raised expectantly as he watched her. Oh. He wants something from me, she thought with a touch of resignation. It seemed that everyone she met along the road needed something from her. “Unless… someone does something about it?” she guessed.

The man smiled again, and this time the expression lit his face with warmth. A strange, irrelevant thought entered Aloy’s mind: He’s handsome. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t noticed it the first time she looked at him. More importantly, she wasn’t sure why she even noticed it at all.

“I like you,” the man said, and his voice was tinged with approval. “Follow the trail of smoke on the other side of the ruins. I’ll be there.”