>>4316>the boss has to be comforted by the subordinate and feels ashamed to be taken care of by someone 'lesser' than himI'm really into this, but worse, I like an OP monster having to let a human take care of him. Making something that feels superior be vulnerable for once and accept that there's some feelings in common or that are actually worse for him and he shouldn't carry that alone. Or even scaring the human with their always reliable OP partner being bedridden and at the mercy of a curse or injury, something they could never imagine before. Trying their best to patch them up and haul them around, repeating this mantra that he's the toughest guy ever, he'll be back on his feet in no time, nothing could kill him, right? ~~And then that unfaltering belief gives them the strength to recover because magic.~~
When it flips the other way around it's "how is this thing being so gentle with me right now?" You can have the non-human fuck up caring for the human in some way and scramble to try and fix things. Cultural misunderstandings are easy to bullshit, like the non-human thinks the human is avoiding them, acting cold, rejecting their company, shutting them out. The human just has a bad cold and isn't aware the non-human can't catch it.
There was post I saw recently, where a long-lifed creature was faced with the idea that if they slept like they normally would, their human partner might die in the years before they woke up again. He struggled to admit this troubled him, because he was proud and supposedly very powerful. A little human no longer being there could cause him pain that no healing spell would fix. Obviously the answer was to confess his anxiety so they could help him wake up every day and be together as much as possible before the inevitable.
I might be straying a bit, but the answers in this thread are super varied already. I think the catharsis for me is when a couple communicates. There were some webnovels I read where the MC is piling up burdens on himself and never fucking tells anyone what he's actually thinking and trying to achieve or feels about anyone, and when you're in the midst of this you really want that moment where he breaks down and admits it all to someone. Some novels you're lucky and it's a male deuteragonist, but others the guy barely gets to tell a girl half of what's happening or never does at all, so there's still room for fics to run in and pull it off for the sheer indulgence of it. I want one of these isekai fuckers who coughs blood and passes out for a week to just lay himself bare and hear someone tell him something kind that he doesn't expect in return. What were you keeping it to yourself for, stupid. You know he'd accept you.