#there was actually plot to this whole dream but it gets fuzzy after this

[neonjazzparty]

I had a dream that the Riddler died and at his funeral all the rogues gallery was there. But of course the Joker kept sending his goons to put "More masks!" (Joker party favors) As offerings to show his "friendship" aka Up Do Everyone Else putting stuff on Ed's casket. Anyways there's a knock on the door and everyone is thinking maybe Batman has finally shown up. Since it's his fault that he died anyways. Nope. In walks Ed, tired and covered in dirt. He's not pleased to see this mockery of a funeral for him. Shocked, the rouges watch in awe as Joker whispers to grieving Selina "I knew he wasn't dead."

[omi-boshi]

period cramps and a little bit of pining

your best friend omi comes over to take care of you during your period

tags: no plot just gratuitous fluff and yearning word count: 2.2k

through the haziness that comes from just waking up, you hear the muffled sound of knocking, followed by the click of the door unlocking. you poke your head out from under the covers, curious. the sound of footsteps and rustling just outside your bedroom door fill the space and truthfully, you should be more worried that a stranger has seemingly broken into your apartment. however, the lack of angry growling from your sweet great pyrenees and screams of bloody murder from the stranger soothe the concern that tries its damnest to rise above your grogginess. you stay quiet, curled up on your side, head still peeking out. the continuing muffled sounds almost lulling you to sleep, your eyes falling close. that's how kiyoomi finds you.

he pushes the bedroom door open. quietly, he pads over to the bed and crouches just beside where he can see your face. the concerned furrow between his brows softens slightly as he takes in your sleepy form. he debates waking you up, not wanting to disturb the sleep you're finally getting after a night dealing with cramps of the worst kind. he wishes nothing more than to indulge you as he always does but as your closest friend, he knows you have yet to get up and eat. and that takes priority. cautiously, he runs his fingers through your hair and down your cheek which you turn into, seeking the warmth radiating from his skin. the subconscious action disarms kiyoomi. he has to fight through the thumping in his heart to call your name until you finally start waking up. he watches as you rouse from your sleep, grumbling through the whole motion. it tugs a small smile up his lips. your eyes flutter open and the seconds that follow are punctuated by the stillness of the air as you stare up at him, slowly processing his presence. your eyes travel up his figure. the mask dangling from his right ear. the hoodie he wears — the one you usually steal from him. the fuzzy socks you got him for Christmas. the worn sweatpants you've told him many times to replace and yet he never does because it looks fine, you remember him arguing at some point. the memory of it makes you smile. your gaze trails to the soft curve of his lips, the moles partially covered by his damp messy hair — he must have showered before he came from practice — before finally landing on his eyes that quietly watch you. "hi," you finally whisper in what feels like eons. voice scratchy from disuse. "hey, sleepy head," he says just as softly, mirth coloring his tone. "what are you doing here?" "you texted me last night. did you forget?" you hum in confusion, sitting up slowly and pulling your arm from under the covers to look for your phone.

to omi!!! :] Yesterday 10:43 PM

omiii com e over tmrw :((( - from omi!!! :] Yesterday 10:44 PM

You okay? - from omi!!! :] Yesterday 10:44 PM

I have practice in the morning but I can come over after. Is that alright?

- to omi!!! :] Yesterday 11:07 PM

that work s yes!!! and im okya, just kinda in pain and loopy from the meds and sticky ;-; - to omi!!! :] Yesterday 11:07 PM

everything hurts n i cant sleep on my back but it's ok see u tmrw! - from omi!!! :] Yesterday 11:08 PM

It's that time, huh? - from omi!!! :] Yesterday 11:08 PM

Get some rest. I'll be there as soon as I can.

"oh," you mumble, as you scroll through your messages. "i thought I was dreaming." you put your phone down to look kiyoomi in the eyes, a tilt to your head. "i'm glad you actually came though." kiyoomi breathes in deeply, heart thumping so loud — at this point he's sure you can hear it. but of course, you are none the wiser as you continue peering down at him, sleepy smile on your face.

"of course, i would." he returns the smile. “anyway, i didn’t know what you wanted since you didn’t reply to me all morning.” he pulls out a paper bag that was sitting behind him. “so, i just got a bit of everything.” in your curiosity, you sit up straighter to look at the bag kiyoomi has brought. he starts pulling out its contents and showing them off to you with a dorky grin that grows the more items he shows you. there were donuts, churros, chocolates, cookies, mochi, bread of all variations, and a singular bottle of the tea drink you've been raving to him about the past month. "kiyoomi!" you yell, doubling over in laughter. "i can't eat all of this!" "well, good thing there's two of us," he rolls his eyes, grin still on his face. "in my defense, i didn't know what to get." which is a lie. sort of. because everything he got were things you mentioned craving the days leading up to this week. not that you needed to know that of course. "you'd ruin your diet for me, omi?" you pout, eye glimmering in amusement. "that's so sweet! come here!" you reach out to pinch his cheeks, cooing how your omi is the sweetest and kindest person there is and that people would know that more if you stop looking so grumpy, you idiot.he feels his ears flush and he pushes you — nudges, really — to the side, grumbling something about ungrateful spoiled brats. but he can't bring himself to actually chide you for it, not when you're high in spirits right now and he knows how the littlest things could set you off. he wants you happy for as long as your period lets you which isn't long; fickle as your moods are at these times. "alright, alright." he chuckles. "go freshen up and let's get some real food in you first before we eat the sweets," he stands up from his kneeling position on the floor, hand on your arm to pull you up, grunting as he does so. you groan as if remembering why he was here in the first place. you flop helplessly on the bed, boneless, unwilling to leave the inviting warmth of the blankets. "nooo," you whine, purposely obnoxious just to irk him enough to let you go. "i know what you're doing." he tugs again. "it's not gonna work." it's a losing battle, one that you fought valiantly 'til the end. your whining doesn't work and only ends with you thrown over his shoulder. you yelp, thumping his back with your fists in protest as he makes his way through the living room where your dog sees you both and follows you to the bathroom.

kiyoomi gently puts you down, righting your crumpled shirt. he chuckles at the look you send him. to him, you look about as threatening as a baby chick but he rightfully stays quiet. not taking any chances with your knees so close to his crotch. "there are some pads in the cabinet that i bought," he pauses to fix your hair that got messy from being upside down. "it's the kind you always have." you grumble out a thanks, still a bit peeved from being carried out of bed. kiyoomi was right, of course — you do need to freshen up — but you can still give him trouble for it. you're bleeding out and you feel all weird, sue you, right? "while you're here, i'll go heat up the food i got you — it's korean, by the way — and feed snowball too then we can do whatever you want after. sound good?" kiyoomi tilts his head towards you to see your face.

you don't answer immediately, still stubbornly holding on to the frustration of being forcefully pulled out of bed. but just like most things are with kiyoomi, it's a losing battle. again.

it doesn't take you long before you drop the pretenses and meet his gaze. what you see makes the fight in you leave all in one go. his gaze is warm with mirth and... something else. you don't know what it is but it makes you feel shy being at the receiving end of it. you are suddenly conscious of how sloppy you must look right now even though you know kiyoomi would not mind. in your rising embarrassment, you usher kiyoomi out of the bathroom, eyes not meeting his. snowball, who's just so happy to be there, follows kiyoomi out the door. a muffled boof! sounding through the door once you get it shut. you get your wits together and freshen up, taking extra time to deal with the flush on your cheeks that just won't disappear. kiyoomi is taking out the last of the food from the microwave as you come out of the bathroom, livelier now that you've washed your face. he greets you with a smile and calls you to the dining table. lunch is far calmer, a nice change of pace after the hectic ordeal of getting you out of bed. the strange shyness from earlier is forgotten temporarily as you both talk about nothing and everything; how volleyball practice went, how his courses are going, about the new show you wanted to watch with him. once you start feeling the cramps come up again, kiyoomi catches the change in your expression and decides it's time to go back to bed. he hands you the pill you take to treat the cramps and a glass of water. you give him a grateful smile and he ruffles your hair in return.

"go back to bed. i'll be there in a sec," he says, no room for argument. you feel a bit guilty not helping with the cleanup and you tell him as much. he only snorts and tells you it's fine and that it's what i'm here for.

it doesn't do much to abate your guilt but with the cramps only getting worse, there's not much of a choice to be made.

when kiyoomi comes back, he sees you curled up under the covers, eyes shut in pain. he grabs the rechargeable heating pad from across the room and nudges your hand with it. it's only then that you open your eyes.

"hi," you mutter, attempting to smile. "the medicine hasn't kicked in yet." you grab the offered heating pad. "hey, guess we're not watching that show then?" kiyoomi murmurs, knowing full well that you would want to sleep the ache away. you give him an apologetic smile which he only waves off. "i really wanted to watch it too," you mourn. "it's fine. we can watch it another time." he smiles kindly. the silence that follows is somewhat cautious, neither one sure where to go from here. usually, you would have invited kiyoomi into bed by now and he would groan his protest before reluctantly joining you, all the while you would be teasing him about it. but the shyness from before overtakes you and kiyoomi is unusually hesitant as well, eyes darting and feet shuffling in place.

he is the first to break the silence. "i'll head to the living room so you can sleep, okay?" he begins turning away from you. at his words, you hastily sit up. "omi," you call out. he looks to you, head tilted to let you know he's listening. you can barely hold eye contact as the next words stumble through your lips. "um, the-the heating pad falls off when i sleep on my side and, and you know how i can't sleep on my back because the bleeding would leak," you look away from his gaze. "do you... do you mind helping me?"

kiyoomi turns around, regarding you curiously. "and what do you want me to do?" knowing that words will fail you, you silently flip the covers and pat the space beside you. kiyoomi exhales and cautiously takes his spot on the bed, as if this is the first time he's done this. it makes you snort; your shyness and his hesitance, it's ridiculous. and yet you're unable to soothe your increasing heartbeat.

"and then?" kiyoomi asks, quietly.

shaking off the anxiety that's starting to take hold of you, you nudge his shoulder, urging him to lie down beside you. you turn your back towards him, reaching for his hand and slowly guiding it down to lay flat on the heating pad pressing to your lower abdomen. you swear you hear the sharp intake of breath over your shoulder; whether from the temperature of the heating pad or the action itself, you don't know.

kiyoomi is quick on the uptake and lays his palm fully on the pad. it takes you by surprise when he pulls you towards his chest that you can't help the little gasp you let out. "like this?" he asks, almost teasingly. the hesitance from before melting away from his tone. unfortunately for you, it does menacing things to your heart.

with your heart seizing in your chest, you hum your affirmative and relax in his hold. kiyoomi pulls up the covers on both of you and adjusts so that your head rests on his other arm. with the soft thump-thump of his heartbeat combined with the warmth from the heating pad and his body, you are slowly lulled to sleep. "we should talk about this, you know?" you hear just as you are on the brink of sleep and you only hum in response. you hear him chuckle, or rather feel the vibrations of it. And then lastly, a kiss to your hair. "another time then."

what comes after will be dealt with another time. for now, you will enjoy each other's warmth.

i wrote this on a whim because im currently bleeding out and everything hurts so bad and i wish i had an omi to take care of me ;;;;; I've got a more planned out fic that i can't wait to get out there i swear ;;;; pls take this crappy peace offering for now

[absolutebl]

Top 10 Cozy BLs!

Our Dating Sim made me realize we have a new sub genre of BLs happening right now: the cozy BL. 

I decided to invent/identify/name this new BL category because... I can. I crowd sourced (here in the hellhole) opinions of how to define it and what should go on it. The collective brainstormed and elected the following qualifications: 

low angst 

low stakes 

high domesticity 

a central relationship that is more cute than anything else

extra points for found family

AKA BLs that make you feel happy and comfortable. 

These BLs leave you feeling warm and safe, like a hot water bottle. I will list them in order of my personal preference when in the mood for “cozy.”

1. Our Dating Sim 

(Korea, Viki) 

Did I create this list for this show? Yes I did. It defines this category. It is a very low stakes, high domesticity, extremely warm and gentle second chance at love office romance. 

This is a fuzzy blanket of a story that perfectly suited KBL’s short-length tendencies. The pacing is... muuuuuah... chef’s kiss. 

2. Seven Days 

(Japan, grey in 2 parts Seven Days: Monday - Thursday | Seven Days - Friday - Sunday) 

 Popular first year Seiryo has a policy of going out with any girl who asks… for one week. On a lark, third year Yuzuru tests to see if that policy also applies to boys. Seiryo agrees that it does. Along the way they accidentally fall in love. Possibly my favorite BL of all time. It’s very gentle with us and its characters while still having that Japanese emo edge to it. 

A master class in quite yet riveting cinema. 

What, you doubted me? OF COURSE it’s on the list

3. My School President

(Thailand, YouTube)

GMMTV gave us a classic high school set Thai BL with tropes like messy boys singing their feelings that made this one Love Sick for the modern age with all the gentle sweetness and pining ache, but none of the dated damaging tropes or issues. Yes, we’ve seen it all before, but I still ADORED this, and that’s partly what makes it so comforting. Who let my BL be this wholesome and funny? 

4. See You After Quarantine?

(Taiwan, Viki) 

Be you never expected lockdown to be comforting? This under appreciated gem is Taiwan’s answer to Gameboys and is just as charming and adorable yet still as quintessentially Taiwanese as one might hope. It features a Japanese love interest and the cutest most confused disaster gay. Slow burn because the two have almost no actual screen time together and yet manage some truly amazing chemistry plus sweetly caring and earnest. Honestly how does Taiwan do it?

5. Ingredients 

(Thailand, YouTube) 

At the time (during lockdown) many of us referred to this as our “emotional support grocery store advertisement.” If all you want is two soft boys being domestic, cooking together, cuddling on the couch, cat sitting, and babysitting - just put this on and be comfy.

6. What Did You Eat Yesterday?

(Japan, grey) 

Basically the grown up version of Ingredients. Emotionally repressed, grumpy, salary man shows his hair dresser husband his love by cooking amazing meals. That’s it, that’s the whole show. There some queer fam drama, and blood-fam coming out drama, but mostly is husbands cooking and eating together and it’s great. Is it BL? Not really. Do we care? Not really. 

7. The New Employee

(Korea, Viki) 

This one is queer comfort, explicitly. If you aren’t queer you might not find it as warm and engaging. A near pitch perfect office BL with conflict derived from that setting. Also featuring found family and a lesbian bestie. Sweet & innocent (and out) Seung Hyun scores the office internship of his dreams. On his first day at work he gets into it with his cool reserved (and also v gay) boss. 

As you do. 

But things get romantic pretty darn quickly. 

As you gay. 

8. En of Love: Tossera & Future the series

(Thailand, YouTube) 

Tossera = Younger boy wants to court older boy and does and… that’s it. No really that’s the WHOLE STORY. There is actually no angst, drama, or, indeed plot. But are they the softest bois ever to BL as a main couple? Yes, yes they are.

Future is... exactly the same thing. 

Are we mad about it? 

Nope. 

9. Oxygen 

(Thailand, YouTube) 

Softest seme in the universe sings his affection to the older boy at the cafe. Let the slow burn courting commence. Oxygen uses every BL trope in the playbook for one of the gentlest lowest angst BLs ever made. It’s a hyung romance (younger boy courts older boy) but very very earnest about it. Am I biased? Sure. This is probably one of my biggest comfort watches. 

10. Our Dining Table 

(Japan, Gaga)

Lonely salaryman and talented cook gets accidentally adopted by a college kid and his little brother. It’s a quiet cozy little parable of found family alleviating loneliness. Possibly too slow for some but definitely high up there for me with the best of what Japan can do (like Restart After Come Back Home), it’s only flaw (if I dare say such a thing) is that it is not really “romantic.” Lovely & sweet but the romance beats are being used to build a family relationship, not just couple intimacy, it’s OK with me, but not totally BL.

For me one of the hallmarks of cozy BL is that as a chronic rewatcher I find myself starting to rewatch these ones even as they are still airing. Oxygen was an icon of this (also my first watch-along and the reason I realized I really had a passion for BL)

Shorts

Summerdaze - Singapore & Korea, YouTube

The 8.2 Second Rule - Japan, YouTube 

A First Love Story - Korea, YouTube 

Some More - Korea, Gaga 

Quite a few other Strongberry offerings.

More like this?

Top 10 Most Romantic BLs for Valentine’s Day

Top 20 Softest Couples in BL

Top 10 Cutest BLs

Fluffy Sweet Soft Thai BL

10 BLs Best Enjoyed with Hot Tea & a Roaring Fire

MOAR RECS?

From the blog comments. If I agree I gave it a description. 

Boys Lockdown (YouTube) - actually on this list because it go so many votes by everyone else, I haven’t watched it. 

My Ride (GaGa) - Thai BL grew up with this pulp - a truly lovely and special little show featuring the extremely rare pairing of sunshine/sunshine AKA a cinnamon roll couple. Mature explorations of relationships using one of the softest, sweetest and most innocent friends to lovers vehicles. Kindly, overworked doctor meets broken-hearted motorcycle taxi driver in an “other side of the tracks” slow burn romance. The support cast is excellent, making for great friendship groups and family dynamics. With honest queer rep that adds to, but doesn’t impede the story, and genuine conversation about the nature of class, wealth, and classism, not to mention communication, honesty, and respect for boundaries, you can’t go wrong with this show. In other news, I am a sucker for a single dimple. Full review.

Takara-kun to Amagi-kun (Viki & Gaga) - yes, high school angst but so sweet about it. Review here.

2 Moons 3 Ambassador (grey) - I love this odd little pulp, it’s oddly satisfying for all it’s awkward cheese-fest. Maybe that is why I like it. Review here.

21 Days Theory (YouTube) 

About Youth (Gaga) - A truly lovely little coming of age high school BL with a classic YA low drama but high angst and an earnest depth. Full review here.

Ai no Kotodama (Gaga) 

Be Loved In House: I Do (Viki) 

Cherry Blossoms After Winter (Viki warning dub con) - it’s here because a lot of people (like me) love it, but there are objections. Review here.

Cherry Magic (Japan, indie subbed) AKA Doutei dato Mahoutsukai ni narerurashii - the sweetest, fluffiest, most charming bit of adorable ever, full of found family and pastry and serious slapstick, the characters are utter spazzes, but so cute about it. Still that aspect makes me a little tense so I don’t find it as cozy as others do.  

Craving You (Viki) 

Destiny Seeker (grey) - see 2 Moons Ambassador 

DNA Says Love You (Gaga) - particularly the last few episodes. 

La Cuisine (GaGa) - sweet and kind of pure show, and like Thai desserts perhaps requires too much patience for a layperson. Because of the pacing and the focus on the bad girl character, I did dock it. But if you like stuff in the Oxygen vein, then this show is for you, and far better than most Thai BL pulps. That said, I suspect that I enjoyed it more than many would. Full review. 

Meet Me Outside (Gaga) 

Meow Ears Up (Gaga) 

Mr. Heart (Viki) 

Mr. Unlucky has no Choice but to Kiss (Viki) 

Nitiman (Thailand YouTube) - This Thai BL pulp had sympathetic characters, a solid tsundere uke redemption arc, and a fantastic pining seme who yearned without bullying, grooming, or gaslighting. Plus when they were together, they were ridiculously soft. But it also had a realistic portrayal of university life, bisexual awakening, and friendship groups. Ending is okay but a victim of lockdown.

Old Fashion Cupcake (Viki) 

Ocean Likes Me (Viki) 

Roommates of 304 (Viki) 

Wish You (Korea - Netflix or Viki, you want the movie version) AKA Wish You: Your Melody in My Heart - low stakes high pining romance about a pianist who falls in love with a busker who is on his way to being the next big idol.

There was quite a lively discussion coming up with this list, since everyone defines cozy differently but I am not alone in my top 10 choices, these mostly got the most votes. 

(source)

[elephantlovemedleys]

My ★★★★★ review of Moulin Rouge! (2001)

or rather, just me rambling about The movie rewatch of my 2024 that i didn't expect to became a highlight, and is definitive of one of my biggest interests and current fixations at this rate.

At the start of the year, I promised myself to go and rewatch some films that I have not seen in a long time, nor do I have memories of in terms of recalling the plot. For some reason, one of the movies that came into mind for me to brush over again was Moulin Rouge! I do have some history with this film, as I remember one of the very first songs I learnt how to sing, was Lady Marmalade (yep, this is actually true). And I recall myself as a child seeing various scenes from it on TV, thinking of how gorgeous Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor looked together and overall how colourful the movie looked. Other than that, I eventually did get to see the film as a whole when I was a little older, and I did like it of course, but it somehow just stopped there.

I’m pretty sure the last time I saw it was back in 2017. My memory gets quite fuzzy so i can’t exactly remember, but anyways the point i’m making here is my god, I can't believe i didn’t appreciate this movie back then as much as i do nowadays. This isn’t the first time this kind of scenario has occurred to me, as I had the same experience with the Princess Bride, watching it as an eight year old. I thought it was fine and I liked it, but it also stopped from there. But seeing it again after so long when I was 21, I just fell completely in love, and it’s now one of my favourite movies of all time. 

In my part, what struck me to the core and became such a standout was the immense passion and emotional intensity that surrounded the relationship between Christian and Satine. An idealistic man who dreams of being a writer, moving from a well off family in London to pursue his dreams and join in a cultural revolution, and a more cynical woman who works as an entertainer at the Moulin Rouge and as a courtesan, but has hopes and aspirations to become an actress. They have different approaches to how they view love, Christian never having experienced the act of falling in love, is curious and wants to know how it feels like, and Satine being somebody who can’t dwell into love for any means due to her job and the life she leads, lets it clash altogether. But one thing is for sure, it’s in these differences that they fall for each other. The more they spend time together, the more they realise what they have been looking for all along or never knew they needed was as simple as that, love. But it’s through the expression of song, and writing that makes a simple melody or a lyric that screams “I love you!” to the rooftops so powerful, and even more dramatic because as much as they love each other, they still cannot be together due to circumstances–especially a very inevitable doom. The way you come to care about these characters and root for them even if things don't fall perfectly into place stems from having a lot of heart, and it's one i totally know that i have. A very defining factor that drew me to their love story was the rawness, and utterly convincing and undeniable chemistry between Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. There are instances wherein i'd be watching their scenes and i feel like i shouldn't be there, that i was intruding something very intimate happening. Goodness, nobody else i believe can replicate this kind of chemistry balanced with such amazing performances, all they had to do was look at each other and sing to each other and I already knew what it meant. You could feel the love, the yearning, the want, and passion between them which is just so fantastic, that it also goes to show that it is in the power of this sort of acting showcase and the vulnerability shared that makes you feel every inch of how much you want these characters to overcome such circumstances and be together. 

Everything that i said in the paragraph above, is why my favourite scene is the Come What May reprise, and why i just adore this movie so much. It tugs right through your emotions, one minute you're laughing and singing along, and the next thing you know you feel as if your guts have been torn out the way Christian's heart felt like multiple knives were thrown at him when Satine died in his arms. Getting really into this film and going over it has become one of the best things or one of my ultimate highlights for the year, and i definitely don't regret anything. That being said, i shall go and listen to Come What May again for the nth time of the day.

[whichstiel]

A Christmas Prince II

I haven't even watched THAT many Christmas or other holiday movies yet this season, but I just vividly dreamed an alternative sequel to the Netflix's A Christmas Prince.

The movie began with them divorced after a short but rocky marriage. The magnifying glass of royalty charred them both and they parted ways amicably (but also obviously heartbroken).

After the opening recap monologue where she talks about her whirlwind royal romance and subsequent heartbreak (disclaimer: I haven't watched the movie in at least a few years - what even happened in it?) we cut to her leaning in to kiss her new girlfriend. (That's right, Netflix says bisexual rights!) They're ready to spend their first Christmas together. Her new girlfriend really wants to introduce her to her parents when the whole family gets together for the holiday. It's bittersweet for our heroine but she tries to move on.

But Amber (I just had to google her name, shut up) gets a call from her Journalism Boss, the Boss of Journalistic Sources. The crown jewels from her former lover's kingdom have been stolen!!! And there's nobody better to cover the news than Amber.

Amber breaks the news to her new girlfriend buuuuuut also obviously makes a big terrible lie out of it. Instead of "sorry, babe, I need to work," she tells the girlfriend that she can't meet the parents because her Christmas surprise is an all expenses whirlwind romantic trip toooooo ALDOVIA. Her girlfriend is apparently NOT a news reader, connects no dots, and packs her skis, baby!

They arrive in Aldovia. Amber tries to spend the whole time wearing slouchy hats and sunglasses, so that nobody in this tiny, fake European monarchy will notice its famous former queen. Hijinks happen. She probably gets recognized by the butler, or something, who secretly plots to "accidentally" reunite her with her former husband who has been pining for her this whole time.

The girlfriend is a sweet but lazily written cinnamon stick who is mainly in the movie to be holiday-card cute and super sweet to Amber (while Amber spirals after glimpsing the Prince - er, King? IDK). We want Amber to reunite with her lost love but also? Girlfriend is sweet like kitten? Must protect??? Maybe this will be a Frozen situation and the girlfriend will turn out to be a total Hans.

Amber is trying to focus on the case - er, journalism story. WHO STOLE THE ROYAL JEWELS? She is only in the country for this reason! She definitely does not find herself comically hiding herself in hedgery to spy on her prince! Especially when a princess comes to town looking to give away her rose, if you know what I mean.

This part of my dream is a little fuzzy, which probably means it doesn't actually exist. So let's have a little fun and make it up.

We can throw in a...baking contest. How about Amber goes undercover as a contestant to sneak into her former home and nobody will recognize her at all because, uuuuuuh, she just has "one of those faces?" (Her bakes are terrible.) She tells her boss that she's only in it to find the jewels and save the prince's kingdom cover the news story.

While Amber is living her worst life, her actually still pretty new girlfriend is busy being a solo tourist of Aldovia. We get what could be a sad montage of solo Christmas card moments (decorating cookies at the local snowy farmer's market stall, holding baby bunnies at the Pet Palace Emporium (the bunnies wear little fake poinsettia bows), and drinking hot chocolate while looking at CGI snowy mountains). The thing is, she's not sad about it. Girlfriend is having the BEST time. It keeps things light for this Netflix romance and we don't feel too bad for girlfriend. She is in a stale three month relationship and all she has is this amazing overseas vacation to show for it!

Amber ends up getting discovered at the palace by the prince. He pulls her into a lavishly red and green decorated room to hold a hissing conversation about why she is there, is she there because of this princess interloper, does she want to get back together, does she miss him too, has she happened to spot any very shiny rocks anywhere?

They decide to solve the mystery together before parting ways FOREVER. One last adventure! Hijinks ensue again, and we're made to suspect the interloping princess, the mysterious relative of the prince who just so happened to be visiting and may be trying to steal his throne, and probably a mysterious shopkeeper who bears some resemblance to Santa Claus and keeps showing up unannounced all over the movie.

While they try to find the missing jewels, Amber and the Prince fall back in love. Or, realize they never fell out of love.

Amber breaks up with her girlfriend - probably during the baking contest - and runs off to stop the prince from getting engaged. It turns out the princess interloper is nowhere in sight and the prince is just...staring out over the mountains, longing for Amber.

Finally, we get back to my dream. The snowy garden is full of twinkling lights and Amber and the prince lean in. Turns out they never stopped loving each other. They vow to let nothing get in the way of their love again. It's time to get married again! They can overcome anything including Journalism and Jewel Thieves! Will their marriage crumble again?

That's probably for next year's sequel.

The cinnamon-stick girlfriend soothes her sorrow by heading back to the Baby Animal Emporium to snuggle more bunnies. The spurned Princess shows up, looking to soothe her heartache with some, uh, bunny snuggling as well. I guess they're going to be featured in the spinoff movie?

Oh, and what about the JEWEL THIEF? We almost forgot about the mystery sub-plot! A squirrel lumbers across the yard while Amber and her prince reaffirm their love. It's...dragging a ruby pendant. They follow the squirrel and find the entire treasure trove of Aldovia shoved into a hollow tree. The thief was small and furry and there's no threat to the kingdom after all! Let's turn to the camera and laugh, share a kiss, and.......fade into snowy mountains while a generic Christmas love song plays us out.

[doyouknowhowtowaltz]

35?

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

Earlier this year, I was on some considerable pain medication, and I had incredibly vivid dreams? Hallucinations? I became convinced I had written, edited, and published a whole 53k three-shot fic. I have memories of the whole process. They were so vivid, that to this day I occasionally look through the Dumb Gay Eldritch Psychopomps tag on Ao3 expecting to find it, as if maybe I only hallucinated writing it, maybe someone else wrote it and I read it and imagined having made it myself.

I'm not ever going to write it, because I went through the whole process once already, and have nothing to show for it, but I've wanted to relay the general plot since I realized I didn't actually write this fic.

(A warning for anyone about to click Read More, bellow is almost 4k of a summary)

The story begins with the Beast, who is a human, and an astronaut, stationed on the first ever base on mars, however he is eerily alone. It is revealed, slowly over the course of the first chapter, that about five years ago, something began to happen on earth.

Beast (Whose first name I cannot recall, but his last name was Dagenhart for the purposes of this fic.) and the other original twelve astronauts stationed with him, didn't really know what was happening. The rotating team on earth who radioed in with them couldn't explain what was happening, only that it was bad, but far away, on the other side of the globe, before suddenly one day they were cut off. The astronauts then assume, obviously, that whatever it was reached them too.

After that, the timeline gets a little fuzzy, because Beast doesn't dwell on the memories, making the narrator wildly unreliable, but somewhere along the line, the resource shipment they're due fails to come, and one of the team members on mars is killed and eaten for the rest to survive, because the life support cannot sustain them all. Eventually one by one, the rest of the team is killed off, but it's unclear after the first few whether this was done out of necessity, or if the isolation got to them, it's not even very clear if this is a thing that was voted and decided on, or if Beast just murdered and devoured as he pleased and covered his tracks to the rest of the team. It definitely wasn't necessary by the last one, because the life support and food growing resources have been supporting Beast for two years and could have supported another two or three people comfortably.

This is all revealed casually, in asides of Beast's internal monologue as he goes about his daily habits, tending to life support, taking readings, recording data, and entertaining himself.

Beast speculates, as his day draws to a close, that there might be more people left on mars than on Earth, and is really too amused by that to possibly be healthy. It's clear he's content, but definitely not normal, but it's not very clear if he was already off before he came to mars.

We follow him for another day, before suddenly, in the middle of one of his routines, the radio crackles to life with a voice on the other end. Beast is stunned, so stunned he almost doesn't make it to the microphone in time. The voice on the other end seems nearly as surprised to hear him as Beast is to hear it, but Beast quickly identifies himself as the last member of the mars mission, though he doesn't specify exactly what happened to the rest of the team.

The voice on the other end introduces himself as Enoch, and as Beast presses for information about what happened, tells him that a string of increasingly bad natural disasters swept the globe, and there are estimates that as much as half the population has been wiped out, but they're finally starting to pick up the pieces and fall back into their usual routines, and that Enoch is here to reestablish communications.

Due to the collapse and rebuilding of most major systems, Enoch will probably be the only voice online for a long time, and he warns it's definatley going to be longer before the world is reestablished enough to build a rocket to bring Beast home. This is not a concern for Beast who mostly seems to be in shock to hear someone else's voice at all.

Cue a few weeks of Enoch and Beast getting used to each other. Beast, despite his initial jump for the microphone and eagerness to hear Enoch, doesn't really adjust super well to having his isolation disturbed, but Enoch still tunes on, every day, (even weekends. They really are short staffed, he insists.), at 8 o'clock on the dot. Earth time, that is. Slowly, not entirely unlike a cat being socialized, Beast comes around, and finds Enoch an incredibly enjoyable companion. Even though Beast finds himself trying to relearn social norms after not only isolation, but also murdering at least seven of his twelve companions. (Slowly, through what Beast doesn't tell Enoch, it becomes increasingly clear that Beast is responsible for most of their deaths, and that most of them were motivated by hunger, but not starvation.)

But Enoch is a bit of a weirdo himself, as becomes increasingly hard to hide after four or five months of which he spends at least eight hours a day on call with Beast. There's something decidedly off about him, which Beast mostly attributes to living through half a decade of an apocalypse.

Enoch is missing a lot of common knowledge, some of it mundane, and some of it incredibly weird considering he's at least theoretically, a government employee, working for a space program, but hey, its the apocalypse, Beast assumes they can't be picky. The knowledge that Enoch does have makes him ever more enigmatic, he couldn't tell you how to fry an egg, but he does know everything about the hidden messages in the work of Edgar Allen Poe, and has encyclopedic knowledge of burial practices throughout history.

A couple of interesting interactions come from a game of twenty questions early in their interaction (initiated by Enoch, but escalated by Beast), which eventually ends with Beast asking the incredibly intense, and unrecommended game question "Have you ever killed somebody." to which Enoch laughs and says that he's lived through what very narrowly missed being the end of the earth, of course he's killed somebody, but doesn't provide any context. Which both relaxes and intrigues Beast, and the rest of his questions prod about looking for the edges of Enoch's moral compass. Enoch on the other hand asks things that he should really know considering he has Beast's profile on hand.

There's also a point where Beast asks if Enoch can access any of the cameras on base, and Enoch seems stunned there are cameras at all. Which leads to Beast getting suspicious and pressing about why Enoch doesn't seem to know jack shit about the mars mission, Enoch replies that the original earth team are dead, and among the weather phenomena were extreme electrical storms that at least partially wiped the computer system, meaning Enoch is kind of fumbling about with only the paper files he can find. Beast accepts this answer, and decides he'll help walk Enoch through the process of bringing the cameras on line.

But first, deep cleaning.

Not only has Beast been living alone, assured that no one will ever visit or see him again, he's also not had to be particularly careful about hiding the fact that he's a serial murderer. He scrubs basically anything that might have a trace of blood on it, hides all the bones, and breaks the camera in the deep freezer where he is... saving a few treats. Then, painstakingly walks Enoch through the process of bringing the cameras on line.

Enoch's reaction to seeing Beast for the first time can be, I guess, construed as flirting, but honestly it's just a very weird scene that emphasizes how very weird, but charming, of a guy Enoch is. Beast is even more awkward than he was adjusting to Enoch in his ear, because now Enoch can see him, and he's certain most of his mannerisms have grown ever more eclectic while left alone, but Enoch rarely comments on them. Beast is also a little put off about the fact he can't see Enoch, and mentions it, to which Enoch responds he would rectify the situation if he could.

He can't exactly, but Beast talks him through the process of sending a photo to mars. It takes half an hour to get sent and load up, but in the end Beast is left with a low quality but goofy selfie of Enoch, with an image of himself on one of the screens in the background. Revealing Enoch is, as he described himself to Beast when they first started conversing, a tall, heavyset black man, with a neat goatee, and presumably brown eyes, that are, in the photo, glowing eerily from the light of the flash in the darkness of the radio station. Beast teases Enoch over this, and Enoch makes a remark that he's never been particularly photogenic, which obviously fishtails into extremely round about flirting.

Beast also asks, at some point, if Enoch knows, or could find out about what happened to his goddaughter, Lorna. He gives Enoch a description of her, and her phone number, and Enoch promises he'll look into it. Enoch eventually (after a few weeks) tells Beast that he can't locate her if she is still alive. Beast remarks that she's a tough girl, and willing to do anything to survive, and that he's sure she's fine. Enoch gets odd about the remark and replies something along the lines of her not being the only one, which obviously catches Beast's attention, and he comes to the conclusion that maybe Enoch has done more than just kill to survive, and Beast is heavily considering telling Enoch about eating the other members of his mission, if only to try and crack Enoch so that he can get through the strange reserve that Enoch has around certain topics.

Slowly, over the course of nearly a year of constant communication and bonding, the inconsistencies in Enoch's stories have started to build up, and Beast has become convinced that Enoch is hiding the scope of what happened on earth from him. Enoch is just so strange, and never really has a good explanation for why no one else ever comes on air and talks around certain subjects in such a way that only raises Beast's suspicions more.

Beast is certain, so certain he would bet every penny to his name, on the fact that Enoch is lying to him.

He concludes that Enoch is alone, perhaps not the last person on earth, but the last around for miles, whatever catastrophe had not simply damaged the human population, it had decimated it, and Enoch, a survivor of the wastes, who had done what he deemed to be unspeakable, unredeemable things, had managed to stumble into the old government facility, and upon finding a radio, had tried desperately to radio for someone, anyone, only to be shocked to find someone had answered, but they weren't separated by land or sea, but by the vast expanse of space. Enoch must have clung to the only proof he wasn't alone in the universe, even if he was on earth, inventing a better alternative to the end of the world in hopes to keep the normalcy that might foster a relationship with the Beast, perhaps worried that news of the true end of the world might lead to Beast shutting down, or doing something drastic as he realized he was trapped on mars.

The chapter closes on Beast musing on how utterly poetic it is that the last person on mars and potentially the last person on earth found each other in the vastness of the universe, and that if they really are alone together, he might as well go all in and lay everything bare.

And then the second chapter opens with Enoch, this off the wall concept goes totally off the rails.

Because in this chapter, it becomes immediately obvious that not only is the Beast right that the cataclysmic event wasn't just devastating, but in fact world ending, it becomes clear immediately that Enoch is, in fact, the cause of that event.

Enoch is an ill-defined lovecraftian horror, that might be colloquially referred to as a star eater. He's come from the dark embrace of space and had been hibernating here on earth for a long time, however upon waking up, was utterly charmed by the culture and lifeforms that had sprung up since he crashed here a couple hundred thousand years ago. He spent about fifty years poorly disguised as a human, enjoying and learning about whatever struck his fancy while utterly ignoring whatever didn't, before deciding it was time he returned to his journey of slowly snuffing out the lights of the universe.

Needing a bit of energy to get himself started, he promptly began devouring life on earth, less a physical process of eating, as it is draining the life out of every living thing in a vague incomprehensible manner, that couldn't be interpreted by humans as anything but weather phenomena, because the brain really just isn't meant to process whatever it is Enoch is. That was the first three years. Over the past two years he's been slowly working his way across the globe to pick up any stragglers and incorporate them into himself. There are a few encampments of humans shored up in fortified bunkers and basements that he has to work to get into, not unlike an octopus figuring out how to open a jar, and he finds stray colonies of insects and rats that repopulated when he missed them the first time all along the way. There are also obviously a couple stretches of forest he never quite got around to, and some stuff kicking about deep in the ocean he hasn't bothered to even try and eat, but he's slowed down considerably in the last few years, enjoying wandering about in abandoned cities and trying out different knickknacks and that sort of thing.

Which is exactly what Enoch was doing, messing around with radios and space stuff deep in the heart of government facilities, wearing his human disguise because all the knobs and levers were so fiddly otherwise, when he spoke into one of the microphones and got Beast's response back.

Enoch has time, all the time in the world, because he doesn't live on the same time scale as a human, and he is initially fascinated because he wasn't aware humans were a spacefaring species, and admittedly, a little concerned he's made one galactic federation or another aware of his presence by suddenly wiping out a planet, which is initially why he sticks around, so that he can snoop through government files and see just how deep into space they've reached, radioing in with Beast is just something to do in the meantime. Luckily for him, mars is the furthest humans have traveled, but by the time he figures that out, he's already been charmed.

He's not exactly sure how the nuances of human social systems work, though he's got a broad understanding of it, so most of the red flags the Beast sends off about Definitely being a Murderer, are lost on him, but he's not entirely oblivious to the fact that Beast's also a weirdo, but chalks it up to the fact that this is a human who has clearly spent the better part of the last five years alone, and even Enoch is aware that humans tend to go a little off like that.

Enoch's motivation for lying to the Beast is mostly that he isn't sure how to break it to a guy that he incorporated the rest of humanity into his being, and gradually he digs himself into the lie, because he's having a good time. He builds himself a little den in the room he radios to Beast in, and during the hours he claims to be at home and doing his day to day life, he goes out and continues his slow purge of the planet.

He's nearly done, really he's stalling at this point, so he can linger in the cramped dark little room where he can talk to Beast. And we get a very interesting perspective to his lies, which come off as rather obvious from the Beast's side, but as rather ingenious from Enoch's side.

At this point there are fun parallels being drawn left and right for the audience about how the Beast ate everyone on mars, and Enoch ate (or is in the process of eating) everyone on earth, and how if they were actually together, one of them would have made an attempt to eat the other. Also clearly being displayed is the absolute lack of guilt on both sides, Enoch doesn't really view what he's doing as wrong, nor does he even consider it killing, and it technically isn't, and Beast has either abandoned his moral compass or didn't have one to begin with. It's a very dramatic irony heavy stretch of the story, that makes the flirting happening between the two even weirder, which is impressive considering neither of them have spoken to another human being in about four years at this point, and it was already weird.

And then Beast reveals that he ate the other members of his mission while also subtly hinting that he knows Enoch is alone, and lying to him, the latter thing immediately goes over Enoch's head, because he's a little caught up on the cannibalism thing. He was aware, of course, that cannibalism was a thing humans sometimes did, in theory at least, but to actually hear an admission of it? From his companion? Enoch is over the moon. Could Beast get any more perfect? They have so much in common!

And because he's never heard of subtlety, Enoch also reveals almost entirely unintentionally that he has also eaten people! Cue cannibalism discussions, Beast suddenly being a lot more cavalier about the murder thing, though he's still currently insisting that he did it out of necessity and not pleasure, and probably the most surreal scene out of this fic that doesn't exist, where the Beast and Enoch have a dinner date, separated by the vast expanse of space, Beast eating... leftovers from the rest of the crew, in front of one of the cameras jerry-rigged into a dining seat, while Enoch chatters on and tries desperately to sound like he understands how actual eating works, and is also eating, while staring with rapt attention at the screen while Beast slowly works his way through his meal.

So from Beast's end we have a budding cannibal romance, admittedly with the wrench that they're on different planets, both of which are equally apocalyptic, and from Enoch's end, he's fallen hard for a charming human who theoretically wouldn't be put off by Enoch's nature, but he can't even get to him.

This revelation also makes Enoch a lot less careful about hiding his inhumanity, not that he was particularly good at it before, leading to Beast coming to the conclusion that clearly, Enoch has cracked, but isn't particularly bothered by it, because really, who wouldn't given their current situations.

Eventually, the topic of Enoch being the last person on earth comes up again, with Beast being a lot more blatant about it this time (After all they're... weird... planet separated domestic partners at this point. Enoch can be honest with him) but Enoch understands this as Beast knows what he is, and Enoch is like, oh I'm so glad you already knew, and they comedy of error their way through the realization that the Beast didn't actually know what Enoch is, Enoch revealing he's some sort of spacefaring monster, Beast realizing Enoch actually thinks he is a lovecraftian horror, all of which happens while they're laying together in bed. (Beast in his bed, with one of the cameras propped up on a pillow, and Enoch comfortably curled up in his den of pillows strewn about the floor of the radio room)

This leads into a very strange couple's argument, which follows usual couple's argument tropes, while having the wild content of Beast insisting Enoch is just experiencing delusions as a result of intense isolation, and Enoch insisting that he's real, and also an incomprehensible horror.

Beast is starting to think that maybe he's the one with delusions, and maybe Enoch doesn't really exist at all, and he's just a guilt ridden fantasy, and that perhaps earth is fine, all those miles away, and nothing ever happened to it, and he's growing increasingly furious and panicked during the argument.

Eventually this argument coalesces into a week of radio silence from the Beast's side, while Enoch cajoles and pleads on the other side as Beast slowly and methodically covers up all the cameras, leaving them in a strange situation where Enoch is constantly on the line, talking in the dark room, with no external stimuli or response, which was a scene I conveyed by roughly 5k of a solid monologue which gets increasingly deranged as Enoch slips further and further away from human over the course of it, both in subject matter, and in the fact that the words get increasingly jumbled, doing that thing where the first and last letter are the same but all middle letters are jumbled, which is usually readable at a glance but dissolves into a jumble of letters if you look too long at it. (An effect you may rest assured will never actually be in a published fic of mine for numerous reasons.)

The Beast comes back on line with a few short words which basically boil down to "Prove it."

And Enoch does. He doesn't have the energy to get to mars alone, he'd need to nap to process the energy he got from eating earth, and by the time he woke up, Beast would be long dead, so he decides he's going the old-fashioned way. By rocket.

The issue is, Enoch doesn't have a crew, he doesn't have a team of specialists, and he's not very good at math, and he knows he can't get to mars if he just aims, because he'll definitely miss.

But you know what target is a lot harder to miss than mars?

The sun.

So Enoch decides he'll head for the sun and using an unmanned spacecraft which he squeezes into via size fuckery, launches himself, after signing off to Beast to wait for him, to just give him a little bit longer.

It takes about a month to get to the sun, but once there, he consumes the energy from it, the same way he'd been consuming energy from earth, and then, through... teleportation? Extreme speed? Ends up on mars, he has enough energy that he's able to focus in on the energy signals from the base, and basically lands in incomprehensible weather phenomenon form cradling the base, before taking on his human disguise to knock on the hatch.

Beast is, in a word, stunned.

He lets Enoch in, and things get very... noneuclidian. The actual distinction between them starts to slip away, and Enoch reveals that, he ate the sun to get here, meaning that the light that's shining on mars is borrowed time, and they have ten minutes before the sunlight runs out, and mars is plunged into darkness. That was the title of the fic I think. Ten Minutes In the Sun.

The ending gets very weird, very much A Great and Terrible Union turned up to eleven, as the prose gets weirder and weirder as... something happens? It's unclear if Enoch is consuming the Beast into him, if the Beast is metamorphizing into something more, maybe something like Enoch, or if they're fusing into something else, Star Trek the Motion Picture V'ger style.

But it ends, when the mars is suddenly plunged into darkness.

Having typed that all out, it's very obviously a concept that I wasn't entirely lucid with when I came up with it, but I can safely say that this one of the two fics that doesn't exist that lives in my brain rent free.

[d-issent]

You guys ever thrown a massive tantrum over things not going your way, to the point that it actually ruins the lives of those around you?

Hopefully not - but Cora absolutely has.

While "Dissent" was focused mainly on the Mid Sodor Railway, I had planned to only show the railway in flashbacks throughout the story. A huge chunk of these flashbacks involved Duke, Smudger, Stanley, the railway's manager and his daughter Cora.

I've talked before about how; due to pretty shitty circumstances, my TTTE AU is focused on the engines being sentient and mobile enough to essentially make up for the lack of humans, hence why they're cyborgs and not trains. However for some people there's a pretty fine line between the engines being there to assist humanity and being there to replace humanity.

The latter is unfortunately what Cora believes. By the time the comic reaches the 80's, there is a definite but not aggressive effort to start phasing engines out of public service as humanity begins to recover from the chunk taken out of its population. However, Cora ultimately reaches a high enough position of power that she can speed up that process, so much so that it ends up being more like a total decommission effort.

However there was/is one engine who - in her mind, she had planned to spare, though to most everyone else, he got arguably the cruelest treatment from her - and that engine was Smudger.

Cora's initial grudge against the engines stems from when her father - the Mid Sodor manager, tried to introduce one into the family after the death of his wife, Cora's mother. Hence where Cora's mindset on engines replacing humans comes from.

It's essentially deep-set and unaddressed grief and anger all mixed up into one, big mess, and unfortunately quite a lot of engines get caught up in that mess, with Smudger being the one who bears most of the brunt. Unfortunately for Smudger, the fact that his personality chip didn't come with a set personality - and he's essentially like a sponge, soaking up little bits and pieces of everyone he's been in contact with - makes him stick out like a sore thumb in terms of the way he acts.

To put it simply, he's really not like other girls! And that isn't lost on Cora, he's a breath of fresh air for her. In her mind; each time she visits the MSR in the story, she's surrounded by cookie-cutter, mandated-personality engines with no individuality, she sees them as nothing else but soulless machines, until Smudger. In her eyes, he's the only one who could actually pass as human.

So! She develops quite the soft spot for him, a soft spot that quickly turns detrimental when she confesses to him that she dreams of a perfect world where humans outgrow the need for engines, by any means possible! But as it turns out, he doesn't actually appreciate being her "only exception," and he also doesn't appreciate her confidently saying that she wants all of his friends and coworkers scrapped, so he quits being his usual feisty and warmhearted self and tells her that to her face.

From that point on, the plot becomes kind of fuzzy, but I remember that she was actually the one who convinced the MSR's manager to convert Smudger into a generator after all of that. I imagine the manager was already thinking of putting him to some other use, because it was very evident by then that his prototype bodywork wasn't anywhere near as durable as the rest of the engines. But Cora's influence was the killing blow.

I honestly can't remember much about her motives? I think her intention was to stop Smudger from blabbing about her whole "perfect world" vision, but I think what she really wanted was a way to punish him for rejecting her, and also to get hold of his personality chip. Going the generator route meant that she could put his bodywork to some other use and then take the chip so she could maybe build him another body later? I don't actually think I got that far back when I first thought up the story! But she definitely wanted to keep him with her, regardless of what he wanted. Ironic, since his "individuality" and his "ability to think for himself" was what endeared him to her in the first place.

But - that's Cora! She was meant to be a kind of "surprise" villain, but if I'm honest it probably would've been obvious that she was no good. I think she was also responsible for decommissioning Stanley too, since he was actually the first engine on Mid Sodor to realise that she wanted them all scrapped. Though she probably had a much easier time convincing the powers that be to convert him into a pumping engine, as he was clearly unstable and still had the weaponry he'd used in the war just, sitting on his shoulders lmao.

If I remember more - I'll be sure to add onto this post. But, man it feels great to get some of these ideas down after 7 or so years.

[pammydawes]

Wow! Sry for the wait folks I’m at 4:31 hours left in Hell Bent and I have Thots

🛑!!!SPOILERS BELOW!!!🛑🛑

It’s been so long that tbh I’m a little fuzzy on the details of where I left off but DANG…….that trip to hell???? Everything I hoped it would be!

I absolutely loved getting so many of the main team’s POVs, I’m hoping that on the return trip we can maybe get some more!! I am so curious abt the meaning of Babbitt rabbit being threaded through all their…..dreams? Visions? Experiences? Idk it’s hell man

The insight into Turner’s background left me feeling pretty broken. Cannot personally speak to the accuracy of Bardugo’s representation of the experience of a Black detective, but I thought it was moving.

Tripp’s backstory was intriguing! I actually know how to sail so the whole thing was pretty visceral to me, I wonder if Leigh has experience with boats bc the accuracy was impressive! Also Spencer can eat shit!

Whew….hellie’s POV. That was excellent. Just hearing how much she loved Alex already had me, but it’s rly the details of their relationship that I think Bardugo hits uk? Loved hearing abt Alex from the perspective of someone who loved her, because in NH darlington was predisposed not to care for her, and 90% of the other insight she hears comes from people who are underestimating her, judging her, or trying to kill her! So I’m glad that we got a glimpse of a diff perspective. Still hurt to re-live ground zero tho

In turner, Alex, and to some degree pammie’s cases, I can understand why they meet the criteria for murder, as justified as it was in some situations. It’s a little blurrier with Tripp, though, and I think an argument could be made that Pammie didn’t really murder her victim. So that leads me to think that maybe the murder requirement to get into hell is based more on a person’s own feelings of guilt or regret rather than some objective external judgement, which I think could have some interesting implications!

LOVE that darlington’s personal hell is trying to rebuild a ruined Black Elm, I feel like that illustrates both his love and hate for the house really well!! Nice nod to Sisyphus in Greek mythology also!

FINALLY some good wheelwalker content!!! Basically crumbs but I LOVE the imagery of Alex and the blue flames. I wonder why they’re blue?? Blue fire is supposed to be the hottest after white, right???

Anselm has rly done a magnificent job of disappointing me, which is somehow still very satisfying!! Honestly if he’s the next murder victim…….my condolences to his family ig

Love how everyone basically drags themselves out of hell completely distraught, having come so close to success only to fail, and Mercy is like great job team let’s get them in the next half!!

The demons………oof. Alex reuniting with Hellie was ROUGH man. Kind of cool how as the reader, Leigh put us in hellie’s head, which meant that when you start clocking that something’s off it’s not just like “next logical plot point”, it was like actually realizing something was wrong the same way Alex did. The hellie we got a glimpse of would NEVER say those things to alex!!! And we knew that not just bc Alex told us, but bc we actually got to read it and draw those conclusions ourselves.

I would bet my entire family that my prediction abt Lionel and the praetor is correct. They were 100% in love back in their school days and now demon Lionel is gonna kill the praetor via some gruesome/emotionally manipulative manner as literary comeuppance for his misogyny!

The talismans? Excellent. Superb. Dare I say, delightful. MORE COSMO EASTER EGGS. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I cannot wait to learn what that little guy’s deal is!!

The vampire’s visit…..uh oh. My theory is that Michelle is working for him, bc I feel like I remember her having a white umbrella at some point?? It’s a toss up whether she’s being coerced or doing it for her own benefit, I really couldn’t say. Maybe he’s turning her into a vampire?? And that’s how she’s connected to the murders???

I paused halfway through the return of Eitan, which I have mixed feelings abt tbh. I still keep feeling like his storyline is kinda tacked on needlessly, but I also do think he’s a fascinating character, so we’ll see how the rest of the convo goes. It’s also just like….Alex literally killed a room full of people that WERENT actively out to get her. What is the hold up here.

Love a good Lauren tidbit!! I’m curious to see how the rooming issue resolves. I would like for them to bring her into the fold somehow, but I also feel like the direction they’re going in is that Alex and Mercy are ultimately going to leave her out for her own protection, thereby alienating her and sacrificing their friendship. That’s definitely NOT my ideal outcome, though. Ideal would be Lauren getting to join them and get some character development. What can I say, I have a soft spot for the vinyl girlies bc…..I am one.

Now, to see what eitan has to say for himself! Next you hear from me will be, gasp……the end. I can’t believe it, I’ve been waiting for this book so long and idk if I’m ready for the next wait!!! Hhhhhnnnnng ok bye

[covenofwives]

Hi Coven! I’ve been following your blog for. A while. Hello. Llama and I were chatting about your XD vs canon!XD and came up with a pretty interesting idea? And I need to introduce myself somehow so I guess I’m telling you about it now.

So, as per the ask I sent a few days ago (yes that was me lol) coven! and canon!XD are VERY different. And something interesting about how canon!XD acts is that. He’s not really HUMAN — he doesn’t really react like one at ALL. Where your XD is a fully fleshed out character (who I love very much) canon!XD is the one character in the whole series that I might actually pin down as Pure Evil. He has his moments, sure, but a lot of the time it almost feels like a mimicry of life instead of an actual example of it. Not to mention his whole thing about literally feeding off of misery and pain, to the point where he’s created this whole Limbo space to act as his digestive system. For context, there’s this person I follow on Dreblr (the-final-sif, she’s incredible, highly recommend) who often talks about “viruses” as they would exist in a world made entirely of code. And it kind of got me thinking: what if canon!XD was a virus?

Consider: Dream and coven!DreamXD have a falling out of some sort like you’ve indicated before, something about Dream pushing XD away as he grows up and then feeling rejected when XD reluctantly isn’t as affectionate with him anymore. Point is they don’t talk so often nowadays: XD is off doing other things, and Dream is now making his very first server and he’s so EXCITED :3 Because this is going to be a Happy Place for him and his One Big Happy Family :33 And hey, if he does a good job then maybe XD’ll come back someday — who knows??

And then a virus somehow latches onto the world’s code.

As the Admin, Dream is kind of…connected to the world. And in most circumstances he’d probably be able to detect the virus and get rid of it immediately. But, as luck would have had it, this is a virus that is INCREDIBLY advanced — advanced enough to be able to avoid detection. And it does this by — basically feeding off of Dream’s memories, taking his memories of coven!XD and becoming a caricature of how he remembers his older brother. And it tampers with those memories in the process, making them fuzzy and hard to recall, so Dream can’t see the difference.

And then, with a body stolen from Dream’s memories of coven!XD, the virus becomes canon!XD and starts feeding off of the server like a parasite.

It creates the Three Lives system, and instills it in the memories of the server members. It creates Limbo as a place where it can eat off of the players’ codes. And it does all of this while remaining near-invisible to those within the server’s borders. Dream can’t detect it, and can’t even really remember his brother much anymore — and the memories he still does have are caricatures of who coven!XD actually was. Some of the other players, those who’ve met coven!XD before, they can tell that something’s off — George, mainly — but it’s. Well. Who’d suspect something like this? It would mean suspecting that reality itself is bending in around them.

Bonus: canon!XD’s existence is feeding off of Dream a LOT. At first it’s barely noticeable, but as the plot progresses and he becomes more and more unstable the parasite gets a firmer grip, and by the time someone finally notices he’s kind of. Mentally destroyed. Even moreso than in canon, somehow. Maybe his motor functions have begun to give out or something, I dunno.

Bonus x2: coven!XD comes to visit after a while and is horrified at 1) the state of his little brother, 2) the parasitic bundle of code that has ruined the server his baby brother was so excited to make for him and his friends and 3) that…is THIS really how his little brother sees him?

Soup. Soup...soup...first off. I am honoured. I see the stuff you and Llama have created and I am just so blown away by the talent of you both. Now to find out you know of me and my blog AND you have sent me an ask is amazing. I am just flooded with feelings right now. You are like this to me 😎 I forever see you as a cool, sunglasses wearing anon who is just so much cooler than me.

pls, take my feelings under this cut

Virus XD is such an amazingly dope concept I love it so fking much. Not only does it beautifully tie in with canon!XD but it's such an amazing character design because XD does, in canon, sort of act like a virus. Messing up peoples lives and taking them to feed. That's actually an incredible idea.

And then XD morphing and pretending to be coven!XD 😭 omg omg using Dream's own feelings towards his brother so the creature morphs into that. An aloof, uncaring, maybe downright mean version of coven!XD and Dream just can't tell the difference from the corruption. I'm so imagining a scene between Dream and canon!XD arguing, and XD is loving it. He's loving the misery off Dream (and maybe with the more intense negative feelings from Dream it gets canon!XD stronger like there's more to feed on) and Dream is so enraged but sad because he's saying "Why are you like this?? You were never like this!" and canon!XD can just answer "Wasn't I?" and Dream can't deny it because his memories are already messed up beyond repair but he remembers some good feelings from XD. He remembers feeling safe and happy with XD but he has no memories of it actually happening. Which just confuses and frustrates Dream more.

AND I LOVE how it feeds of Dream makes dream more unstable. Mentally. Physically. EVERYTHING. Which I think fits perfectly to dream's predicament and plans. His mind is being messed with and he's mentally all over the place, so he acts out negatively to those around him. Which in turn makes everyone react hostile to Dream, which makes Dream act hostile to them in return again, giving virus!XD more to feed off of. A cycle the virus is deliberately making to grow stronger. Maybe it's full power can only be taken when Dream is so mentally and physically drained. Maybe (say after the prison break) Dream is just so unused to his own body he cannot move for long. Like he's forever with pins and needles all over his body, it all doesn't feel right.

AND THEN coven!XD coming back and seeing whats happened. I just it kills me to imagine him finding Dream first, so limp and weak in his body but when coven!XD goes to help, Dream is crying and telling him to get away and XD is just "???" so confused. Meeting the virus!XD 😭omg cause the first thing he'd probably think of is "how did Dream ever think that was me?" and then realising that that is how he's been acting to Dream. Of course it's all overexaggerated but that's how Dream saw it and maybe it isn't far off from the truth. But firsts things first, he has to absolutely go and kick a virus ass.

[alyssacat013]

I have now finished the first season of twin peaks and woah…it was a lot. This show has been a real wild ride with some many plots happening at once that are still somehow connected. I feel like I got some questions answered but still have so many left. The first big one being who shot Cooper at the end, like I’m sure he’s still alive, but like what!? Like is that person Laura’s actual killer.

Like it seems that Leo killed Laura , but I’m not sure like I’m sure he had some part in it, but I feel like there must be someone else or multiple other someone’s. Also, we still don’t know what the whole thing with the one armed man and the man with the long gray hair means. Like they must still be important somehow especially since Agent Cooper and Laura’s mom both had visions of the same guy. Also, we still don’t know what “fire walk with me” means and we still don’t know anything about what happened at the train cart or why. Also, Romette still hasn’t woken up yet so we still haven’t gotten her story yet. Lots of stuff still to uncover in season 2 it seems.

Outside of the Laura stuff we also had this story of the mill which took so many twists and turns. Like at first it seemed like Catherine and Ben Horne were working together to burn down the mill, then it turns out that he’s actually working with Josie and is going to screw Catherine over for some reason, but then Josie is also secretly working with Hank who she paid to kill her husband so she could get the money. But Ben still wants to burn down the mill since he hired Leo to do that? So, like is Josie actually okay with burning the mill down, like did he offer her something? I’m still a bit fuzzy on what’s going on with all that.

Also, as the season went on I accepted Donna and James together more even if the timing was still weird to me, I don’t mind them so much and kinda like them together now and I guess Laura wasn’t all the faithful either so yeah. Also, I still think it’s fun that they got Laura’s actress to still be in the show as her cousin and just put a brown wig and huge glasses on her, haha. Although, I am worried for James, I hope he can find a way to prove his innocence after Bobby put the drugs in his motorcycle.

Now, speaking of Bobby, I don’t know how I feel about him, I hated him in the first episode and while I still don’t like him I don’t know I feel a bit bad for him I guess. Although, I’m mad he framed James like that, like he’s such a hypocrite to be mad at him because he dated Laura when Bobby also cheated on Laura with Shelly. But, that’s stupid teenage boys I guess.

Now, onto Shelly, I feel bad for her and I’m glad Leo is dead now. Although I was a bit confused about her relationship with Bobby because he’s like what 17/18 and how old is she? Like at first I thought she was a teenager too, but then it seemed like she wasn’t but then Bobby mentioned something about how she dropped out of high school to be with Leo so maybe they are close in or the same age. Yeah, but I hope she’s okay and that she gets out of the burning mill, I’d hate for her to just die like that.

Next, a character I really came to love as the show went on was Audrey, I wasn’t sure how I felt about her at first but I really came to love her. She’s smart and quick-thinking. I see why she vibes so much with Agent Cooper, maybe they would be a cute couple if not for the fact that she’s a high schooler and he’s like in his 30s, I’m glad that Cooper officially told her they couldn’t be together but still offered to be her friend. Also, I’m very curious about what’s going to happen with her dad when he sees her at One-eyed Jacks.

Now about Agent Cooper, I enjoyed every minute he was onscreen he’s just so fun to watch and I also loved how everyone at the police station just accepted his weird methods and dreams. Like Harry didn’t even bat an eye at Cooper telling him about his dream and was fully ready to arrest whoever he said Laura’s killer was. It’s fun where supernatural esque stuff happens and everyone just rolls with it. I also like how much he’s come to care about everyone and this town and I’m glad he stood up for Harry against that jerk fbi guy and refused to agree to press charges. And when he agreed to help him with Josie even though he was a bit skeptical because Harry told him he loved her and said that’s all he needed to know, I thought it was sweet.

Now, a quick thing I want to talk about is some of the other side characters. Honestly, I kinda love Nadine, like yeah she’s crazy but idk I think Ed’s too boring for someone like her and she deserves better. I’ll be sad if she really is dead next season. Then, we had Norma’s storyline with her husband, I like Norma and I’m honestly a bit worried about what Hank will do to her if he finds out about her relationship with Ed. Then, Dr Jacoby who I’m not totally sure what his deal is, like he seems like a creep and like he had some gross infatuation with Laura and honestly seems like a bad therapist. Then, Laura’s dad, who seems like he’s lost it like I understand wanting to get back at your daughters killer but I’m not sure how much farther he’s gonna go. Then, there’s Pete who seems like a really nice guy, I liked his friendship with Josie and I hope he doesn’t die trying to save Catherine. Then, finally, I hope that Lucy and Andy work it out and he apologizes to Lucy for how he reacted to her saying she was pregnant and steps up to be a father. Lucy is very sweet and deserves only the best so he better give it to her.

Finally, to talk about Laura herself, it seems like Laura had a lot of issues she was struggling with. Like she seemed to have a really low opinion of herself and seemed to think that she was inherently bad and therefore deserved bad things to happen to her and even took it out on others. I feel like the show is a bit trying to portray her as some devious girl, but I don’t know I just feel sad for her. I’m interested to learn more about her and what happened to her in the next season.

Anyway, I really enjoyed myself this season and I’m excited to see what awaits.

[sugar-petals]

sub!𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐜 🌹║ 𝚗𝚜𝚏𝚠  𝚊𝚕𝚙𝚑𝚊𝚋𝚎𝚝 

↳ smut A-Z / 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖓

【ＧＥＮＲＥ】› smut/angst/fluff + monaco gp au

【 ♥ pairing.】charles x reader

words. 🍒 16k — bc 16 is a good number :)

WARNINGS/TAGS. ⚠️ 18+ (mdni), pwp, sub charles oh là là, bondage, femdom + vanilla dynamics, face sitting, suits kink, protected sex, pegging, anal play, masochism, oral, multiple sex partners mention, alcohol mention, French language kink who knew

↳ [ // 🍓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄. ] i like my alphabets long with feelings and sub plots: pun intended 😂 you’ll find parts that are romantic, sad & horny, the rest is fun, now let’s get into it. 🍌

posted: july 7, 2022

【 read it on AO3 】

a = aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

One of the best parts of sex, he’s one sucker for you. Charles loves getting aftercare so much, ending up lost in your eyes because he can’t help it. Jeez, his cuddliness. And god, he smells so good. Charles is blushy, and he’s and clingy, and he talks so much. Face buried in your hoodie kind of affectionate. It always has you wondering, why does Charles love me so much, why does he act this way, like a literal puppy. But he just likes being looked after this way after he satisfied you. Behind all those layers of ambition and stress, there is only needy and dependent Charles left — he won’t lie about it.

In contrast to him, you keep it efficient. And relatively short, never exceeding 20 minutes, but it’s oh so vital. Less is more sometimes. A glass of water for Charles and he feels refreshed: „Merci beaucoup, mon rêve.“ — he calls you `my dream´ very often. A little lotion on his back and legs is just as quick, and he’s ready to sleep. Lighting some incense, candles, or bringing him a big cup of tea. Putting on a vintage movie on a beamer and just embracing to snuggle, barely listening to the dialogue in the background since you turned down the volume deliberately. If you denied your darling pillow prince his orgasm earlier, you will gently suck him off now, sloppy enough for little bubbles to start forming around your lips. You make sure your favorite blue-white cotton duvet is within reach just like towels. Gotta stay warm and covered afterwards.

On other days, you like to go the extra mile. You switch on the big red popcorn machine or make some light pink cotton candy. Cherry flavored, of course. His mom always gifts him these fancy kitchen machines for fun, but she’s right: More delicious things for Charles. His secret sweet tooth is actually adorable. Ferrari’s dietician comes for Charles, but not for you, so this is the ultimate loophole. Charles and his cotton candy have become inseparable. He just loves to pull those fuzzy strings out of the `main cloud´ as he calls it. Or, laughs his ass off when his lashes get caught in it. They’re so long, how can he blame `em.

Dose of head pats, lots of water chugging — no coffee, rule of the house. As a wise British prophet (King Lewis the 44th) once said: Coffee is disgusting! You’re keeping it healthy, Charles he wants to sleep tight in your arms later, after all. Instead, sweat wiping. Forehead kisses. Snack bars. Charles needs a quick fix here and there. But he’s very relieved of some heavy stress, and very smiley. You feel content and proud, but usually not with a weight off your shoulders since there was hardly any to begin with. You’re with Charles, your everything. Your angel and treasure, and your beauty. Just looking at his friendly face once can suffice to destress for three days in a row. If you do the math: Looking at him ten times equals one month without tribulations. That’s the energy.

What’s absolutely expected: He appreciates your idea to run a bath after sex recently. This man might as well live in the tub permanently. „Grown any gills yet?“ — a frequent favorite quip of yours. Maybe he should pin wheels to the whole thing, paint it red, and roll up at the starting grid with this next-generation Ferrari. Nickname: The Merman of Maranello. Nothing else on but some yellow trunks and shiny designer shades. He’s gonna win a Championship with that in no time. New Ferrari Masterplan unlocked: Charles drives his bathtub to P1. But anyway, we digress. Aftercare.

Charles loves to be bathed and lathered in jasmine shampoo. You like to shave him when he’s covered in foam like that. His axilla, chest, or neck, just because the sound is satisfying and Charles enjoys this type of personal attention. Aftercare with Charles Leclerc can turn anyone into a soft domme or service top. You take your extra time to towel him down bit by bit, and make him feel luxurious in a way that even his salary can’t. You will admit to Charles that you like to pamper him, and that makes him give you a very sheepish look. Is he flustered? Yes, he is.

Aftercare is filled with conversation. You know how he can suddenly talk like a waterfall, lots of exclamations and dramatique expressions? That’s exactly the atmosphere. Free-flowing chats. Charles talks about himself in 3rd person pretty often, which is cute. Little spoon all the way, too, this guy is like a human kitten. Likes to suck on your fingers with a cheeky, blissed-out expression. It’s a go-to favorite to calm himself a little and to have his lips busy on you. Definitely an aftercare hugger rather than a direct kisser. He wants to breathe deeply now. And be softly tickled, it’s perfect to make him laugh. The sweet bun, no wonder his name rhymes with éclair.

b = body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

As far as you observed him at the bathroom sink, Charles is super into his hair recently. He’s trying out new products, often things you bought him as a casual gift to spoil your honey boy. It’s the personalized things that make Charles feel special to you. Since last month, he talks about how much shine and definition he can achieve. The helmet ruins his whole effort in one go, but he’s trying. Even consulting his barber on it. Always learning from the professionals.

As for his body as a whole. He’s still not admitting to his height, but at one point you said, silence bottom. You look good. You look nice. You’re a cutie pie. Head to toe. The whole world likes you. And you’re serious, because the entirety of your boyfriend is more important than whether he towers over you or not. He’s compact and huggable, what’s not to like. He got everything to hold on to, the arms, the shoulders. Even his pecs are growing nowadays, those tight white shirts look damn good on him. Wet t-shirt contest when? Father, son, and the house of Ferrari: That sight would be mindblowing.

People think his appeal is mysterious. To you, Charles’ handsomeness can be explained in simple terms. Everything about him is pleasant. That photogenic masterpiece, look at him. The Orlando Bloom of Formula 1. Any angle does him good. His way of coming across, his speaking, his gaze, his humor, his smile. All pleasant. Nothing upsets the ear, the eye. He is polite, he is pretty, with the exact amount of being gorgeously sexy on top. His face is banging, his body is shapely, what more does anyone need. That he’s often a little confused without even intending to just adds to his overall charm.

Being good with people is the cherry on top. Charles having a hundred social graces and winning people over with a simple „could you please repeat the question, sorry“ — I mean come on. The thing is. If you put him next to a Men’s Health magazine cover, he probably won’t meet whatever white guy beauty standards of the time, in whatever circles, whatever trend it is now. He’s not carrying around a 10-pack, he’s not a 6’3 spaghetti noodle, and doesn’t crank out an itty bitty waist either. Your man’s neck looks like he got it from a different person. And yet— Charles is the ultimate magnet. What is it?

Oh honey… it’s the demeanor. People so crucially forget his ways of expression factoring in. Charles’ body language. Why does nobody ever mention that. It’s very readable. That makes someone so easy to approach and like. You love his mannerisms and point them out often. Charles is always surprised he’s even doing these things. This guy even shifts from one foot to the other like he’s dancing 24/7, so. Even more attractiveness points.

c = cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Plays with it using the tips of his godly fingers when he gets you off in the evening — “Oh my god. You’re incredibly wet.” His job is all about working with his hands all day, every day, after all, finding the right buttons. So, Charles got that down, rest assured.

Loves the sounds, loves to make you cum slowly but surely, calling you oh mon amour while doing so. Prepare for his hooded bedroom eyes and him licking off his fingers like it’s icing. His hand coordination… it’s criminally insane what this guy can do with your clit. I believe it’s magic. Charles is an epicure but also a loverboy, he does all of this without expecting you to do anything in return. Just lean back and enjoy.

Meanwhile. Brace yourself, Monsieur. You have some other plans when the mood is right. Charles is definitely up against a caliber here. Your latest fantasy is ruining one of his ultra-expensive Italian suits with some crazy debauchery. Jacking him off in all directions, no mercy. And squatting down naked on top of a very clothed him, Charles wearing a silky blindfold for good measure. His suits make you turned-on beyond all reason. It’s custom, the cut clings to his million-dollar body like satin. The material of his clothing somehow gets drenched in your spit and drool as well — I wonder how that could happen.

To make it worse, you deliciously eat slices of watermelon while sitting on his face. Choking him out by pulling at his black tie, all without a care in the world where the melon juice will drip and dry. Feeding him with another slice is step two, just to see it all flow down his cheeks and chin. Charles can clearly feel his collar being soaked, but there’s only so much he can do. The blindfold is perfect because not only deprives it Charles from knowing what you do, but it also makes for a good reaction face once he sees the result.

Yeah, I know. This poor `innocent´ guy getting a full 69 treatment. Although you have to say, Charles is definitely rising up to a challenge here. Who of these other drivers currently has his face full of pussy, does breath play level expert, gets waterboarded by a sticky summer fruit, and tries not to cum from getting his dick French kissed and drooled across. Sounds fun, but from a sub’s perspective, that’s actually demanding. Multi-task legend.

Part of your fantasy is Charles whining about the ruin of said suit until it is born again after a thorough laundry. The next day, as per your text decree, he has to wear the whole thing on the paddock. No excuses. Distinctly Italian shoes with laces and glossy coating included, even if it’s not the red carpet. Charles rises to the occasion, he keeps his promise. Time to strut some golden pinstripes down the runway, baby. Wearing a slutty turtleneck underneath the tux, which almost explodes at the seams because his neck just won’t fit. Even Mister classic suits king George Russell will have to pick up his jaw from the concrete when Charles will walk, no, float along.

Jesus is the whole thing fitted. Literally so tight around the ass and shoulders. Gotta raise the fashion morale among the younger drivers and inspire more men to be a suits hoe. And the best thing? You like the fact that he’ll only think about last night while wearing it, constantly checking his body as if the evidence was still there. He concurs you have him beat with outrageous ideas, and managed to successfully corrupt him. Just to be sure, though: His racing suit is off-limits. But yep. The media will go wild and Charles’ beauty will break the F1 Internet. Nobody suspects what happened before the detergent.

d = dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

This cute lil’ mouse really is one of the most toppable drivers on the grid. Yes, I hear the crowd: Besides Mister Norris (Formula 1’s undisputed HSIC — Head Sub In Charge) and Monsieur Gasly. Gotta be precise and honor Charles’ contemporaries. An absolute dark horse sub is none other than Valtteri, but the world is not ready for that discussion yet. Maybe his booty portrait will pave the way among a 30+ audience. In any case. Charles got a certain hard sub flavor to him. That’s right. His luxury twink face and cotton candy antics deceive. He likes a strong grip on him. His dirty secret really is how far he is willing to go to submit.

He’s not as easy as Pierre on his own soft limits. Pierre is more playful and loves a good niche fetish that nobody heard of. Charles, completely different. What on earth is a soft limit! He doesn’t want to put anything on a `try…maybe…´ list. Too tentative. He either goes for it or not. „I can do it“ is a frequent agreement. Aftercare is mellow, but your man definitely has a streak of wanting to be steadfast and likes your topping more abrasive and immediate than not.

Really letting go is his unspoken sexual dream. It’s something every good driver wishes to achieve in their car, so of course, he wants to know how that applies to him in bed. Charles’ secret desire is to be tenacious when he’s in pain. No half-assed domination on your part. The real fucking deal. Red stripes on skin, everything. Charles is the quintessential masochist, you can smell that from across the Shanghai straight. And that straight is long as hell.

Charles has no intent of taking his frustrations out on you. He puts a lot of his stress into neck training, and his stamina, but he would feel bad using his strength to dominate you to the bone and make you writhe. He just can’t. Sure, Charles knows what he wants (…for the most part), but that doesn’t entail hanging you from the ceiling by one ankle. Vice versa, if you talk to him about trying a bondage suspension, however— You might awaken a curiosity. When it comes down to it, he has no qualms.

After thinking about it a lot, you realized there was a convincing reason for his secret. In his life of racing and competing, being steadfast? That’s often impossible for him. Racing is messy, sudden, direct, and fleeting. In bed, Charles can surrender and endure as much as he like. On the one hand, he can prove that he can take it all. On the other hand, he does not have to worry about getting things under his control. Subbing is his unexpected perfect match, even if he might only be half-aware, or not confident enough to go full BDSM at the beginning of your relationship. He still needs and wants to be taught.

One of his dream scenarios is this. Your kitty cat, classy but nasty he is, wants to be groped while he’s playing the piano. The bench is elongated enough for two people. His thighs and crotch are right there. So, while he’s playing you a little piece, Charles’ expression is kind of like „just do something really inappropriate“. And aggressive, not just feather-light. Your hand between his legs, making him go insane through the fabric of his black pants? That fantasy is his eternal cause for morning wood. Likes being groped while driving, too. Neither case needs a handjob to top it off. Charles just wants to feel aroused and then rub his dick against your thighs if possible. Until you get annoyed with the sensation and tell the naughty garçon how he can touch himself. And he can drive with one hand.

e = experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

While you were on holiday in a lodge, he conceded something to you in a bittersweet recount of his earlier years in Monaco. Charles hooked up pretty quickly when he was still sleeping around, getting lost in whirlwind emotions. If he had the time, any excitement-promising approach was considered. And: Put to practice fast enough to match the pace of the racing world, if not on the spot. He couldn’t really say no, his vice. If somebody cute asked him kindly, please sleep with me, Charles: He replied where and how.

Charles almost went too far liking to please, offering his body, and his default answer being „so what do you like me to do“. Rather than „what do we like to do together“. He regrets he didn’t decline more often. For a myriad of reasons, Charles has a difficult time telling you that. Sex was taking over his life and didn’t fit into his natural flow. He was careful with his partners, but it was just as lustful as one would expect. That in and of itself didn’t impact him as strongly as the confusion of feelings. And, the fact that he had an easier time saying yes to someone who wanted a ten-minute romp than actually approaching somebody he had a crush on. Small talk, sure. He’s good at it. Offering a hot lap and driving them around track? Sure. But asking that person on a real date? He was terrible.

He’d only manage to drop hints he was throwing a party at best. Charles ended up surrounded by flirty people before he could even spot his crush in the crowd. On to the next circuit after sunrise: The opportunity gone. No number, no nothing. Charles’ trust into his own feelings for somebody corroded time and again that way. There was no event where he could develop his own infatuation or any reciprocity. The people he liked didn’t think they had a chance, and those who liked him wanted fast relief from their obsession, disappointed at how normal, frustrated, or half-hearted he came across.

The vicious cycle continued with distractions and more attractive people that gave him a blitz hormone rush that almost felt like being in love. Some of them — those who essentially invited themselves into his sheets — were really good in bed, which increased the satisfaction and had an addictive shock value. But after getting them off and then himself, in an almost medical and hyperfocused, stoic way, he still went to the bathroom with a deep existential sigh in his mind which he had no idea how to label. It might have been a feeling of being dragged along into something too messy to get out of.

Meanwhile, people who thought themselves less attractive came back for validation and wanted to pry Charles into daddying and husbanding them back and forth. He almost fell for the incentive and toxicity of that power trip he was offered. Which doubled the people on his lap, his fatigue, the let-down, and mistakes while driving. Wanting to try things out harmlessly became a stream of forgotten names which Charles thought was a mutual pity, all done just for the sake of a tiny glimpse of feel-good body motions. Which he could deliver, he was great, which complicated things even more, and gave him nudges to repeat himself.

That irresistible seduction swallowed up countless hobbies and friendships before he even noticed. The hookups went by faster and faster. Charles was no longer cocky, but numb. Which put his already inundated and clueless brain through a blender and confounded him even more. Knowing he had so much responsibility in this cycle was just as stalling. His notorious Achilles’ heel of not being able to do quick problem-shooting was the last straw. What Charles said to you about this will haunt you forever: “When I make a mistake, when I try to fix it, it just becomes a second one.“

All of this results in Charles’ body count easily exceeding the two figures. He feels paralyzing guilt in retrospect, mixed with positive emotions of remembered pleasure, which is an awkward blend. Charles overthinks how he got passed around so much to distract himself from an empty inner space. He cries about his memories on the couch and doesn’t really seem to stop being preoccupied for weeks after he revealed those things to you. That he apologizes for being `used up´ rubs you the wrong way since he has so much love to give. But you get why Charles got himself into these situations. He had always been stunning, and people thought: Sharin’ the joy.

Good for them, and his drive is arguably high, he wanted relief. Charles did get something out of it. He satisfied many people who deserved some Charles Leclerc in their lives, even if it was just for an hour. But still, you can imagine the chaos and heartbreaks. Many people Charles hooked up with gaze at your boyfriend in a peculiar way when passing by and seeing you. Charles can’t look up, even if you have nothing against these persons and they seem to be cool people.

It’s his body, he did what he wanted to do with it. Charles could try himself out as he should have, and he’s the master of fanservice. Truth be told, who wouldn’t like it when their idol was making out with them. Nothing more understandable than the massive collective excitement for Charles Leclerc. Of course you’re flattered he settled with you, and you can build this from the ground up. He protected well, having a baby is quickly done indeed. Last thing he wants to do is spread STIs or race with a toddler at the back of his mind. Who Mommy has to explain to what dad does for a living. Everything but that.

He’s talked a lot about it to you which you think is courageous. You don’t resent Charles having done things like taking two people with him to his hotel every time there was some palpable sensual chemistry. And there was, and it was good to live in the moment. Some dates weren’t draining or disappointing. Who’s mad people had a good time with Charles: That’s a thousand times more preferable than any opposite of that. And no way to wind back the clock — he knows that best. It happened, and he is honest to you about it, risking the whole relationship by doing so.

Your stance is this. If Charles slept around, that’s what he did. Nothing to complicate there. He’s done his thing. A lot of people had a lot of late-night fun, and there were two or three emergency pills. Which gladly turned out fine. He figured all the other safety stuff out, too. He really learned the essentials, but in person, not in a textbook. Charles thinks he’s a dummy, but you disagree. It shows in his way of showing worry and saying the right words, and he knows not to cause someone he slept with physical concerns. That he’s not a wild-ass sadistic zaddy dominant adds to the overall image. He could not slap someone across their face for a hundred million plus.

All that amounts to a pile of experience. What about it? It’s not like Charles is craving eighty people on him every Sunday night. Come on, King Lewis could outdo your boy on any given evening in one of his local vegan gangbangs where the Sir indulges anyone who shows up with a smoothie, Sebastian merch, or a pride flag. With a big cheeky smile, you know it. Charles was more on the other side of the spectrum wanting fewer people involved. Keeping the overview and staying focused on good sensations and at least a little romanticism, which usually failed. Which is why he also wants a monogamous future for himself. A partner he can worship but also eat greasy takeout with, somewhere in an empty American diner at 3 AM looking like you both just survived all ten Biblical plagues.  

His experience helps him know what feels good to both partners and what to avoid. But he also has some remaining mental baggage from the exhaustion, the stigma, and rapid socializing. He got fucked half-drunk pretty often which was not a good thing, and he hates that the most. That’s why it’s important to Charles that you’re sober, you’re in control, and he’s glad he has you. His health is checked. He’s well aware what a French Letter is and keeps on using it. Although Charles thinks he is undeserving of a stable relationship regardless of his wish for exactly that, you don’t falter. After a `second mistake´ can always come a right choice.

f = favorite position (this goes without saying)

By far that’s face to face, lying down on your favored sides. Your leg over his hip. A comfy pillow under your heads. The room nice and warm. Need I say more. Charles enjoys the angle and way of accommodating so much. He can penetrate you while kissing and feel your legs and hug. It’s the position you had your very vanilla first time in, so you keep repeating it for nostalgic value. You love being centimeters short of your lashes touching his, nose next to nose, and seeing his eyebrows arch in pleasure: Priceless. That position is called The Rocker, and it does have a nice rocking motion.  

It was — and how else would it be, Charles is a wonderboy — a kind first time. Charles was not a klutz and knew how to arrange his body perfectly. He put a lot of sweat into making this a great starting point. That way of having sex on your sides is actually not so easy from the guy’s perspective, it speaks of Charles’ dexterity even if he is not extremely bendy Yuki-style. You like it because it feels so stable and is close to a regular hug. Charles really did the opposite of walking up to you saying „okay madame, missionary?“. He’s generally open-minded and makes less popular positions feel easy instead of awkward. This particular position is also useful to transition into many others, which is why it’s a bedroom staple.

Charles can make love in any reasonable way, though. You on top of him. Prone, super relaxed. Doggy over the backrest of his sofa. And those are just the classics. He’s not gonna throw you around or put you in a piledriver, and most standing positions are weird to him, but the rest is fair game. There’s no shame he feels in the moment, although he may be shy. Just because he had a lot of partners, doesn’t mean he won’t be bashful. But also don’t forget: Behind those dimples is a lot of resolve. He wants to be flawless. You always look forward to Charles taking the whole thing so damn seriously. You don’t mind him being so accurate. Like anything, it shows his natural will to please and be good rather than not caring at all.

g = goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

In a puzzling contrast to his rigid perfectionism, Charles `I sing in the shower´ LeBean is a hilarious goofball incarnate. He’s insane, he’s strange, he can’t stay straight-faced at all, ironically. People are far too distracted by his appearance and Monéygasque attitude. He constantly makes little jokes during foreplay — he once acted like he handed you a toothpaste instead of a lube bottle — and won’t stop randomly squirming or making weird-ass moves. Body language again: He’s his own universe. He can create the greatest atmosphere with that dripping chocolate honey marshmallow strawberry ice cream French, too, even if he said the biggest ever nonsense. It’s a miracle language.

His PDA is just as unconventional. Recently, he gave you a hand kiss and curtsy. Basically on the paddock, where you arrived to work, see him, and bully some team principles as a side quest. You simply got bored once Charles was told to warm up indoors. So there’s that, a nice hand kiss. Charles seems to consider you Monte Carlo royalty, but maybe that’s because he’s such a pretty prince himself. Although, he does not behave like some kind of monarch as soon as the occasion calls for him to be a meme, and that includes right in the act. Charles is the type to verbatim say „oops, I actually came! What happened!“ As always, one of a kind. You’ll never stop laughing with this guy.

He’s so sorry about making all these unintended jokes. He just can’t see the puns cumming, can he. As mentioned earlier, Charles prefers a whole bit of orgasm denial anyway. Tell him he can’t climax until you say so, and he’ll gulp, and stick it out with his teeth clenching. You’re gonna make this man explode harder than the night race fireworks, that shit got nothing on him. You’ll have him a sweaty wreck by the time you’re done with him, he’ll talk in at least two languages at once. Charles’ trilingual lifestyle is a warranty for plenty of verbal mix-ups. „You are so `otte…“ — „Haute? Like haute couture?“ — „No, `ot! Like temperature!“ — „Oh, hot!“

h = hair (how well-groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Trés chic! Charles is a chameleon: Closely trimmed, then all-natural. To give a more orderly impression, he likes to take care of his cleavage and especially the happy trail to give you a nice view in general. That spot’s gotta be smooth. When you lick across his chest, that’s gotta be sleek, too. He experiments with how to groom his pits and puts a scented conditioner on his leg hair in the shower sometimes.

To rave about the obvious: Charles has that lovely and consistent dark hair. Spectacular, amazing, stupendous. That beard awakens something in you. Don’t get me wrong. There are some pretty cool beards on the grid. But Charles has one that is stylish, versatile, fitting, and unobtrusive. It’s complimentary and gives him yet another touch of elegance. He has quite the beauty regimen in the morning. Knows how to tweeze his eyebrows, but doesn’t overdo it in the outer corners.

i = intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Charles is so sensual. If not the number one driver on the grid who understands what `erotic´ really means and looks like, next to Monsier Gasly of course. Erotic, that’s giving no discomfort, but a smile. Your first guess was that he might be a bitchy brat who gave his top a dramatic display — I mean he puts the winky face smoochy heart emoji into his captions — but little did you know he’s very focused on your experience and snuggly. Charles needs that downtime. Babe can’t expend all his energy smiling through the pain all day, or distract himself on his phone, can he. Charles has an expected soft side that comes out even more in complete privacy. On an intimacy scale to 10, he’s an 8.

Sure… Charles has a tiny bit of attitude: „That turns you on, doesn’t it?“ Because he knows exactly what you like, and his way of speaking English can make it sound bolder than it is. It will sound way different in French. But his nature as a pleaser who looks for signals in return rather than someone who thrives on one-sided romance does come out pretty quickly. He’s talked to you about those awkward past scenarios of being in that unrequited position, and how that ended up like. Charles is careful looking up to someone although he wants to do that so much, and it’s a huge part of defining intimacy to him. That’s why romance has to feel light and airy to him. He values fooling around rather than classic date nights sometimes, but is also the type to say „You feel amazing“ a lot during sex since he likes to give revering compliments.

His most candid intimate thoughts will only exist in written form: A diary. Yes, Charles will sit down and journal. If he finds time to write stuff into his Ferrari burn book, he will find time to write something in his journal at home or the hotel. Facts. You don’t pester him to show you. Charles can keep secrets or talk about it however he likes. He’d not touch your phone ever, either. Not once. He is more wary than jealous. He figures his mind out by himself and trusts you. One of the things he’s written down and actually dared to put forward in a conversation is that he has a fantasy of you acting more possessive over him.  Physically, psychologically. In less of a romantic way. Who knew.

j = jack off (masturbation headcanon)

He’d never eat his own cum directly. The rest? Free reign. Charles treats his dick like. What to even compare it to. Lando vibrating and squealing and jumping around in his gaming chair. Weird analogy, but you get the idea. He’s going ballistic. Traction control off. Among the whole grid, Charles would win a speed contest. Always masturbates like it’s his first time doing it. Usually on all fours, winding left and right when no one watches, throwing himself around. This guy is fucking desperate, you don’t even know. His post-nut regrets are three times worse than the average guy’s. His wrist hurts while steering later, so Charles will masturbate the most at the beginning of the week. Saturday night? Not a chance.

Since he jacks off like a madman to destress, it makes him even more like a human pressure cooker. Ironically, since he thought it would blow off steam big time. You often have to remind him that he better not detach his dick from himself with all that heavy tugging. Charles realizes that a gentler approach will be better at prolonging his pleasure and finding the right moment for release. „The more deliberate you are, the less regret you’ll feel“ — especially if you get kisses all over your face while doing so. Guided masturbation is his perfect match. „Keep it clean. Only this direction.“ He listens to you since Charles knows you make sense. The more he gets into that, the more he likes that form of indirect domination. Just how much can he arch his back? Come in and find out. Allez, Charles.

k = kink (one or more of their kinks)

The thing is. Your bébé has not really tried full-on submission beforehand. He’s played around with handcuffs, blindfolds… but never dared to go all the way. And neither was he encouraged, even if he’s really interested in those things. That’s probably why he was bouncing from one hook-up to the other, hoping for something spicier to occur, without actually communicating that, which set him up for being disheartened. Vanilla sex is great, but still far away from his full potential.

Those thighs and ass can handle it, Charles is ready for a whipping. He’s ready for the strap, he’s ready for the slaps, he’s ready for the feathers tracing over his body. Bring on the adrenaline. And oh boy, he’s already among the top 20+ drivers in the world doing adrenaline as a full profession. You gotta hit it out of the park. His fascination with BDSM has a reason: Charles thinks he missed out on exploring his submissive side, like there’s a gap in his sexuality. From your side, it goes much further. From your observation, you have a masochistic diamond on your hands. Still raw, but soon to be sculpted in full.

Pegging as a first step, it’s a wild ride in all meanings of the word. You have to be careful to guide him. Charles is easily sensitive. Paradoxically, he doesn’t want gentle prep. Go big or go home. That goes for strap size, too. Using smaller toys to dilate is simply not his thing. He cleans himself up in the bathroom to get ready, but that’s it. This man is gonna talk nonstop. „Like this? What do I do? Is this okay like that? This feels crazy! But in a good way! What do I do with my hips?! Where do I put my leg? What’s this feeling?“

You have to talk your cherry boy through it like an instruction video. Charles’ ass is twitching like hell, which makes you wonder how on earth did this man not get properly dominated by anyone yet. Well, there’s always a first time, and who knew there was still a way to take his virginity. Like wow. And so abruptly, he just wants you to push it in from behind, no fingers first. Good evening to his prostate. This guy’s eyes will be falling out. He’s never been this touchy-feely.

Charles is going to be stunned out of his mind for hours after. You’ll see reactions he never did before. It hurts a lot, like a lot lot, but… he gets excited from that; his heart beats faster than at the start of a race. Charles had no idea that being split in half was that much of a big deal, and you spanking him as a little treat makes it even better. He’s gonna do a little yelp anytime something happens, and seriously. Sure you’ve heard him gaming, but Charles is a different kind of screamer when you pull his hair. The ultimate stress relief.

If that already keeps him on his toes and gives him an existential crisis (which, to be fair, is his primary mode of living these days), wait until you break out the long gloves. Charles will think you’ve gone insane, but it turns him on. He likes being confronted with extremes as is his driver nature. Oh, to get his face slammed down into a pillow and just getting ravaged, and this time not a piece of plastic. And again: He does not like it tender. Charles has the guts to enter an F1 car, you can rearrange these guts without a worry. No „Mommy mommy please take your time“ — he’s not that kinda sub. His name ain’t Lando. It needs to be at the limit until he can’t take it anymore. Lube is your best friend.

In vanilla, he’s a romantic, but for subbing, this guy is not for the faint of heart. You’re doing those things on Monday, not Friday evening. Maybe Charles doesn’t feel the car bouncing because his ass is already numb. That would explain a lot. You’re leaving is in literal shambles. Just how often have you blown his back out? Charles will avoid soft subbing, he enjoys you being brutal, sometimes a bit too much, in fact.

Sure, you can give it to him strongly. Why not have a little hate sex. You saw how much he likes being choked with his own tie. It’s nice if things get red-hot. But the calm and subtle side is missing, which is why you sometimes just rope him in while on his knees for an hour or two. Believe it or not, for some softer couple time. Bondage is the best and most patient way to explore Charles’ body in full and to develop your rigging skills along the way. This is an art, and pretty red ropes (what else) fit a pretty boy well, don’t they.

l = location (favorite places to do the do)

First off. You know the drill. His racing car is taboo. Some… other drivers would pull this. But not your very mannered guy. The garage, same thing. Charles behaves. Come on, that damn car. You wouldn’t squeeze in there either, who are we kidding. Keeping it classy, and if there’s nastiness, it is calculated or just in his head. Like Charles’ fantasy to have sex in the car while competing at Le Mans. He’s insane for this, but he will constrain that idea in his head for obvious safety reasons.

That he likes being pinned against a wall though, that can be arranged. Yuki would be proud of your expert kabedon. And not just the light version. Charles wants to get pushed against the surface ruthlessly, have you ripping at his shirt and collar, and he wants to get scolded. Quite submissive of you, Monsieur Leclerc. Some like it wild.

The superior place though? His yacht has a nice interior. The perfect spot. Superb privacy. It’s not just for sex, though. Charles has an open ear for your thoughts while it’s cuddle time or you’re having pasta there. He’s your bestie, you are giggling about a random Youtube video you’ve seen. Once you go on land, still laughing, you will look crazy to outsiders, but you are free. PS: Has long joined the mile high club with you. That’s been one of the first things you did together and oh boy, was it enjoyable. One of the horniest days in your history as a couple. You’ve done it again a dozen times after.

m = motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Would never admit simping over you, even if he’ll often say „Je t’aime“ in broad daylight. But he wears his mirror glasses for a reason. Nobody will notice how often he looks in your direction. Charles is in a precarious mindset about you very often. He knows it could all be over by the dawn of tomorrow, whatever the unforeseen event or split may be. Hoping that the odds are in his favor and in yours, but knowing all the ways of misfortune and endings all too well, Charles often tries to tweak his thoughts to be more shallow when looking at you: But in all cases, he fails. He’s a relationship guy, he can’t help it. He’s turned on by by thinking „I am her boyfriend.“

n = no (something they wouldn’t do, turn-offs)

Mind games. Someone with zero brain cells. And: Classical music. Or mainstream rap. Those stay off the sex playlist. Either would disturb his creative flow. Being, in essence, either too cheesy and epic, or too much in your face with mumbled punchlines. 90s rap, he would say yes. But with modern music, Charles needs a way more sensual way to color the room with background atmosphere… and puts on cringe tracks that you will promptly roast. Who listens to Vampire Weekend while fucking. It’s not like you’re slamming his taste, you’re just um putting on your own playlist and he’s gonna like it. Easy.

o = oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Let’s start with receiving. So. He doesn’t have a desperate preference, but he sure enjoys himself to the rare maximum. Like, really letting go. Which is a feeling Charles does not usually experience without any roadblocks. This man is violently cursed from experiencing pure joy. So naturally, you like to spoil him rotten. Charles is terribly weak for that. He’s a lips enthusiast. And he knows his dick is nice, he’s clean, so he got a nice pastime to offer in return.  

What’s in his mind about it? That he has been blessed. When does life ever give this man a break except for a damn blowjob. He feels pathetic and never begs you to do it, but he’s also grateful. Charles is feeling very much alive again. His sexy hands are surely busy on you, too. It’s all big serotonin for Charles. Which is a concept you like. Something simple within ten minutes can paint a relaxed smile on his face. He sleeps like a baby afterward, and probably cooks you breakfast while dancing in the kitchen the morning after.

You do pay attention not to give him pleasure as a `substitute´. It’s not supposed to be a drug. And it can’t obscure the fact that he’s often faced with strife that needs to be overcome directly, by himself. Then again, you do like to comfort him by sucking him off. You can’t help wanting to do it, even if it contradicts your wish for Charles to come home from the circuit with a smile on his lips already. Since a big famous racing team is responsible for either fucking him over and ruining his mood, it’s a little complicated, though.

Whatever you do: Charles considers you an oral sex goddess, and even scorns himself for thinking he falls short vice versa. He works hard to reciprocate. You put dedication into it and really bother with techniques. Hands-free and shallow and deeper and twisting and tongue work and rubbing the sweet spots underneath, everything. It’s the passion that counts the most though, and you have it. Charles can’t like it enough. You can suck his dick until it falls off like a 2020 Mercedes tire. Fuck, does he taste good. Champagne bottles do pop differently when they’re from Monaco.

He likes the more energetic style of fellatio even if he is otherwise quite the sensualist. Some timid licks won’t do here, nor does a languid double-handed twist. He stays true to his endurance motto. And you’re similar to him. You wanna eat him up, you’re eager to see him tremble. Plus, you’re aware he’s a wanted man. You want Charles all for yourself. His moans, his dick, his body, his smiling. Charles asked you to be possessive. This is one of your ways of showing it.

Charles is pretty vocal with his back against any horizontal surface stable enough. He wants both of you to have plenty of cushion support. He typically rests his hands on your shoulders, or loosely palms your hair. What’s interesting to you is that Charles has actually been pretty stingy with blowjobs in his past. This is something special to him. He wants the lips wrapped around his dick to also say loving, encouraging words to him in other situations. Charles wants to deeply like you rather than just wait until you put him in your mouth and he won’t care about the rest. That he’s okay with you giving him head says a lot about what Charles thinks about you.

Saved the best for last: Giving. At first — Charles is actually a bit insecure, but in a way that you can work with. What steps to do? Where to look? How to move? He prefers it when your hands guide his head and put some gentle pressure on it. Teach him all the spots and directions, teach him all your ways. Initially, you wonder why a person who slept with a gazillion people is so not confident with eating you out. But you realize, Charles always needs a little push. He wants to please you the way you want it with an immense exactitude. His mindlessly horny encounters were… less ceremonious, and as you saw, not that heavy on the oral component from both sides.

That stuff was like. Hop on my dick, I give you a hot lap. Let me heat that engine, big finish, chequered flag, let’s kiss, goodnight, it was very good. I’m flying to another continent in two hours, you were amazing. Charles wants a bit more indulgence and deliberation this time, and a more correct technique. Giving head to party girls was like: So here we have Charles Leclerc and his aimless tongue finding random spots, making superficial 8s, and it’s all under time pressure! Going down on a complete stranger and figuring it all out in a minute, and the same applies to a blowjob, that’s just weird as hell. Charles’ opinion is, you have to know what they like in detail.

He regrets not having put more effort and education into it back then. Although, and that’s obvious to you but not him, his former slut life was clearly facilitated by his already far above-average sex talent. But yes: Now he can make up for lost knowledge. Which are more like, mere finishing touches. He’s quite proactive to catch up. And as you know, Sharl is a bit of a social butterfly. After getting advice from the number one sex coach in town, things are wildly different. You’ll hear sentences like „just cum on my face sweetie ♡“ and immediately know it’s the voice of Sir Lewis Hamilton speaking through him. You’re not surprised that Charles asked Lewis out of all people to level up. After all: No surprise, eating pussy is completely vegan. Instead of meat, I eat veggies and y/n — Eurovision fans will get it.

But you also raise a little brow at Charles’ loose lips. He really did kiss and tell there, huh. You’ll make him sign an NDA if he continues to consult people who so happen to frequently chat with Sebastian #TheGossipMan Vettel. Who will then spill the tea at a press conference for the world to hear. Instead of Charles just researching on the plain ole Internet and calling it a day. Your boyfriend apologizes profusely and realizes just how fast this intel could spread. Regardless, you compliment him on his choice of expert and are sure that Lewis will not pass on the information lest he wants his avocado toast stolen.

Instead of learning complicated tongue swirls, Charles has an easier time when you just sit on that Orlando Bloom of Formula 1 face and just ride on. Like properly. On your knees, facing his feet. Charles’ feet are fucking top tier. Did I mention his feet are great? Elegant, beautiful, aesthetic. Like the man himself. And no worries. He preps his beard so you won’t get hurt. Charles is now confronted with your ass doing all the work, but his horse neck can handle it, zero doubts there. In other words: At the beginning, he’s better at being passive than active. Gotta make that mattress squeak. You can drive it home on that glorious face. That will enter his mind permanently, just like what you did to his sexy suit.

But then again, he won’t give up on improving himself. At dinner, Charles has recently confessed to having a lot of sexual fantasies where he sees himself in 3rd person, pleasing you with his tongue like a pro. He thinks it’s a shame his lips aren’t very big and plump, but he does his best, zealously, to stimulate the right spots. Sometimes, you need to urge him to concentrate, he’s really trying and trying everything at once. Charles enjoys the effort to lick you up well. If he loves someone, he likes to figure them out.

„I wish I was a natural“ is his constant motto. He really makes no excuse. No wonder, because you’re so delectable. Your labia are so tasty to suck on, and the dripping wetness in the middle is his undisputed favorite thing. No wonder you are Miss Éclair. People with a bump on their nose simply are the best pussy eaters. Sorry, I make the rules. Charles will ruin his face in the best way possible by swiping his nose base to tip, upwards, making you gasp out loud. Somebody is getting the hang of it. Just imagine feeling his lashes on the insides of your thighs. Lucky you, lucky you. And him doing the thumb-tongue combo. He really goes for the podium in your heart, does he. Instant win.

If you are the goddess of oral, Charles feels very inspired to be the matching god. Standards, baby. You hold him back from pushing himself, but it’s clear he is a gifted student at almost everything, as is typical of him. In other words: Learning curve. Charles has you heated up like the comment section of George’s topless pics when he talks that extra sultry, heavy fucking French. „Mon rêve, how do you feel?“ Goodbye, man. Good fucking bye. Charles will cater to your voice kink until you’ve cum twice in a row. He is really starting to play to his strength these days, keep that guy.

p = pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

To be enjoyed with care. Charles’ brain is imploding when the speed picks up, and he’s turning into a messy hoe. Mind that he’s extremely strong by virtue of his job �� Charles doesn’t want to hurt you or himself by acting out. He’ll have to hold his body back to match you, but he’s okay with it. Subbing clearly helps with that, too. He’s not at the risk of doing something disproportionate when he’s tied down. Charles can control his physique really well, but he still wants to be safe, fearing his arms could crush or sweep you in a wrong direction by accident. As always, he is paranoid of mistakes. That’s why Charles is comfortable being on the receiving and passive end especially, and will rather use his muscles for simply looking good laying there (hell yeah), and enduring rather than going on to dole something out.

At a certain point, he loses his usual athletic coordination and just closes his eyes. He will peak in no time and cry out loud. A mid-range speed is always the best way to go. Anything that will match a sped-up breathing pattern. Charles thought going steady is not his thing, because he’s a racing driver. But he does feel proven wrong with time and embraces it. Which adds to his sensual style, and that’s fucking hot.

q = quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

How does one even find time and inspiration for that. In the high-paced circus shitshow that is Formula 1? Well, easy: Charles has driven the 2020 car. He knows what it’s like to slow down and create his own lane. A little sex on the side, absolutely his thing. Charles is a quickie enthusiast of the highest order. He doesn’t call it quickies, though. He always refers to it as `little fun´.

But it’s more than fun. He could make out with you all day, even if he turns delirious. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, night. For example, he fantasizes about standing behind you at the kitchen counter in the afternoon. With his shorts a little pulled down. You eat together while you’re feeling him from behind. And the whole thing becomes more and more passionate, and, and— The oven goes up in flames.

Charles’ fantasies are always interrupted by an element of demise, added to the fact that he is already terrifyingly booked on weekends and in the factory. Which is why he has a mentality of improvising quickies rather than modeling them after what goes on in his head. His eagerness tends to backfire there. On some days, Charles might not even manage to get out of his own trousers by virtue of his dick situation, fumbling around aimlessly while kissing. Uncoordinated Charles and the helping hand of his domme — a match made in heaven. Admit it: You baby Charles too much and you enjoy it. But really: He needs that bit of extra TLC. And he’s on all fours to repay you, he’s fair.

So. It’s you who’s guiding his hands. Charles hesitating or not knowing how to move sometimes doesn’t mean he wants to safeword. His insecurities don’t root in you. You’re out of that equation. He definitely wants to sleep with his mon amour, out of question. He just needs some minutes to catch up and switch into off-the-paddock mode. It all works best when you indulge his inner romantic rather than fucking like rabid beasts. Being tender and focusing on the waves of pleasure will grant you a much better 15 minutes of little fun in the kitchen — without the oven on. Charles is already hot enough, aye.

r = risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

He’s the kind of sub that sees something on the Internet says „Oh my god! Who would do that!“ and proceeds to ask for doing it five minutes later. Jesus fucking Christ, Charles. „But I guess we can try it out!“ is his battle cry. Needless to say: He needs a wise and circumspect partner who at the same time is very open-minded and resolute. It’s a lot to ask, but his best partner is an all-rounder domme. A lady who knows how to lead, but also strokes his cheeks and gives due praise. That way, it works out considering Charles often changes his mind and wants to go more extreme, more immersed. Roleplay, and the like.

There’s a negative side that you noticed, though. Charles infuses a lot of it with personal topics that he normally pushes to the side. He really wants to act and feel like you hate him sometimes, giving him severe punishments, stepping on him a lot more brutally, hitting him in the face hard with no regard to the consequence, and talking to him from behind a callous emotional barrier. In short, really mistreating him.

You’re not 100% okay with that and actually tell him off. You feel like Charles will end up misusing this dynamic without even noticing. To castigate his conscience, to grant himself a proxy to express the buried feeling of being really beaten down. Since his self-hate has terrible effects, he believes someone else hating him could free him of it: But it has to be someone who actually likes him, so that the situation is not real. Roleplaying seems to look like Charles’ coping. You understand the point of relief through a fantasy, but you still don’t agree that his reasoning is healthy or in any way effective for his career.

Even if they appear like immovable mountains, you animate him to rather face those problems outside of bed. He clearly has the zeal, that’s absolutely obvious to you. Charles can’t fix what happened, but he can think about the present day. Getting a sexual punishment won’t really let him move on. Guess why he likes bondage so much: It mirrors his feelings of constriction (alongside the burden of being il predestinato) and gives him the relief of being unbound after a session. Real-life doesn’t unbind him, which is why he keeps wanting to do it in kink, symbolically, and he asks you to do it again and again.

Even if you really enjoy tying him up and roleplaying — these types of Dom/sub play consume enormous time already, and with Charles, it feels like an emergency remedy. You can see where this is going: BDSM ain’t therapy. Especially since he’s a sub who tends to be on the receiving end of some pretty intense practices, you explain to Charles that it’s better to pursue sexuality for physical and spontaneous mental pleasure. Rather than, say to compensate for a larger life crisis that weighs too heavy on him to confront outside of sex. Or so he believes. Easier said than done, but you want to point it out to be sure.

It’s a bitter truth to swallow. And a criticism often unheard of. But it’s part of safe-sane-consensual that a partner will slam the breaks on any deeper issues that creep up. Dominating him should be no all-purpose sugar pill. It should be leisure that so happens to bring some extra dopamine. And if somebody agrees that being light-hearted is a hundred times more beneficial than compensating into a bottomless pit, it’s Charles. Hands down. This guy knows what you’re really talking about. There’s a reason why he thinks back positively to his karting days since that environment was more cheerful, not as serious and quickly punishing as being among the best drivers in the whole world.

He’s gladly aware and won’t deny it, which makes the situation easier. Charles has well observed that he’s not the most unbothered person out there. Somebody who refuses to be conscious of that is simply nerve-wracking to deal with. That mentality can shatter relationships. You are relieved that Charles listens. He asks to think about the concern for a while because he sees the point.

Charles misses a lot of people who took care of him. So, he’s swinging to one extreme of accepting his abandonment by asking his partner to act highly dismissive and degradingly towards him. Or, the other end of the pendulum: Of wanting to be doted on nonstop, reassured he won’t be left alone. You thought about it, and it told you something extremely important. That Charles is largely clueless about balancing his need for an authority figure. He either wants full distance or too much love, all to mitigate his perpetual inner turmoil. It really is what it boils down to. And it must be extremely painful. You understand why he wants a quick fix and can’t find the golden mean.

That’s also the reason why he could and would not attach in his hook-up days. Because these people just wanted good dick from a smoking hot guy (understandable), and then they took off. Abandonment. People showed up for his body, an orgasm, and the brief experience of the famous Charles Leclerc, the celebrity him. And now he’s with you, permanently, and it’s suddenly an elaborate power dynamic where he is the actual submitting party. Being taught discipline, and having somebody stand above him. Do you finally see why Charles is so interested in you now?  

It takes a week until he sorts himself out, and you don’t really have sex until then. The breakfast table glances are extremely loaded with thoughts. Charles feels guilty for things digging so deep where you should be having a blast and enjoying life, especially with the amount of money and travel opportunities at his disposal. Coming to terms with his burdens on your sex life and this risk for your connection is already half the path to go, though. He values that you confronted him and want to know what really drives his actions. To Charles, that’s a testament to caring and sincerity.

He returns to sleeping with you after clearly stating that he’ll try his best to focus on being more moderate. Although he also says he’s afraid he can’t eradicate his submissive side, and moreover, and most importantly, he really needs you. You’re taken aback since that’s not really been a question to you. In your eyes, he can take your respect for these things for granted. Charles needing you is okay, and his interest in freaky stuff is okay when it’s done for the right reasons. Wanting to look up to someone is not a bad thing. Nor are you going anywhere anytime soon.

You’re here to chill out on red flamingo floaties in the pool and goof off, and bond in the sheets with your petit beau. And Lord knows who doesn’t love a subby Charles. You just don’t want him to fall into a further downward spiral of loathing, anger, compulsion, or rapid mood swings because of his grief. You’re literally right there for him. Which unburdens him a lot when he hears that from you, although he realizes that it’s a given when he looks at how you behave. And you depend on Charles a lot, too. You want him, badly, you can no longer deny it to yourself.

Charles goes on to promise that he won’t expect you to heal his losses, or give him an excuse to open up solely through kink stuff. As, he puts it like this, some kind of cover-up. While at the same time neglecting your needs and not centering his attention around you. „It was too selfish of me even if I had my reasons. I was drawing too much energy from you. That can’t be justified.“

Knowing that he’s not the only one who likes sweet stuff, Charles frequents a top-class confectioner to get an expensive, personalized chocolate basket as an apology. There are all kinds of treats in there, in fantastical flavors. He buys it not for showing off, but to show you the meaning of wanting you to be satisfied, and reassured. He doesn’t want to use you as therapy, forget your side of the coin, or please himself only, just to alleviate what spins around in his mind as an issue that should not slowly undermine your love life.

His grief is important. But it should not disturb the affection you’re sharing, even make you despise or control each other, or cause wreckage. What he does want is for you to stick around and be his anchor, or someone he can learn from to some extent. That’s what he really desires. Well, at the end of the day, you did teach him something there already, further proving his point. So, you don’t really have to do anything to assure Charles. You’re doing it naturally.

s = stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

His abilities: Jawdropping. Charles is very invested in being able to go a lil’ longer than a meek two minutes. Charles is excited, but deliberating. He knows about the common irony that when he doesn’t focus on stamina, and just directs his pleasing to you, stamina is no longer a thing. Seeing a random homo sapiens naked does not send him into a wild frenzy. Charles has seen it all. He feels like that’s a plus, but also an obstacle.

You did notice that he is a bit desensitized, physically. His job is defined by pushing himself beyond all limits. He knows how to show his appreciation for you, but he’s also scarred by his former sex life which was endlessly repetitive. Being stuck in that rut kind of fried his brain, as do the constant fuckups in Ferrari’s racing strategy. Double whammy. There’s a reason why Charles wanted a permanent partner who had a different approach. What Charles dreams of is spicing it up with things he’s not done yet, conversations he’s not had yet, with somebody who’s the clever to match his stupid. Sapiosexual detected. „Ah, it’s like this? You’re a genius!“ — classic Charles phrase directed at you.

What’s not surprising and an advantage: He doesn’t really bother with picture-perfect appearances anymore. Someone being beautiful, extra-groomed and well-formed is amazing to him, but the result of having sex is always the same. Everybody wants a positive feeling out of it. The most otherworldly and rich sex partners he’s had were some of the most stress-laden personalities. Who had, pray tell, uncanny baggage in life and really suffered with no seeming way out. Copy-paste to Charles. Not so wholesome, and a natural relationship slash libido killer.

He’s aware of how jet set attractiveness is hard to create and maintain to begin with. Attractive people with by a thousand bees buzzing around them are just like him. Birds of a feather, a great spark at the beginning, common ground of popularity, but also twice the exact same issues combined. He already considers himself hard to date due to his fame, schedule, and a mountain of horrible things swirling around in his brain. A person who might look extraordinary but has as much pressure as he has? They’d barely hang out or find some opportunity for creating happiness. Dwelling on a deserving mentality, waiting for outside luck, doing chronic complaining, and overwork. Charles knows the drill. Even more detriments to stamina.

Double the extreme beauty in a couple might be common in his circles — doesn’t mean it’s beneficial. The paparazzi would tear the relationship apart, and Charles can’t just do his thing in peace from all the hype and envy. His partner’s looks will wind up irrelevant down the line. Only someone witty gets this guy off his phone, someone outrageous, a bon vivant who provokes him. Not a fellow celebrity who’s just clocking in for two minutes facetime, too busy making themselves presentable, smiling, posing, strutting around, pretending the world is happy and they are sexy, all that rotten phony Instagram delusion.

Chances are they have zero muse for talking passionately about racing or his mental health, and if they do listen for a second, it’s meant to gain approval points. Actually taking Charles’ circumstances to heart is more than just an `understanding´ hum on the phone. Imagine someone having that audacity and then going on to promote their own stuff online. In your words to him: Shrugging off your partner is a fucking insult. You have to get your hands dirty — in private — to really really show what you’re there for. Them. Not just yourself.

Charles doesn’t want to wait three hours until he can cuddle you. Every hair and lash in place, still insecure how you come across? Please no. His lifestyle does not allow for waiting. Everything has to be on the spot, and he wants a partner who has kick-ass swag five thousand. Not someone who caves as soon as Charles is struggling. They have to be strong! An iron will under the surface. He’s not Lewis finding time to fly to every fashion show within a radius of 24.901 miles aka the whole earth, nor a poker-faced Scandinavian driver with indestructible patience. Not to mention that he doesn’t want to peel you out of ten layers of whatever fabrics. Corsetry, tons of jewelry, complicated itchy hairstyles going all over the place and whatnot. Makeup caking in the heat of Bahrain, or sky-high shoes he can’t take you anywhere with for a getaway. Turn-off. Pragmatism is sexy.

PJ and athleisure: Just right. So comfy. And don’t say you’d rather go through all that dolling up forever rather than being in his arms right away. If you’re horny for Charles, you won’t postpone it. Everything else messes with your natural instinct. He gives zero fucks. Only being fresh out of the shower is a good idea, obviously. The same goes for the often sweat-drenched, stressed-out him. No double standards. Charles is a bubble bath hoe anyway, he smells like a rose garden. But yes — the guy’s not as superficial as his origin suggests. Which results in an interesting dynamic.

The psychological `glue´ between people is more impressive to Charles. He’s turned on by a person’s way of acting. He’s well-versed with body stuff. He’s in a contact sport, to understate it. On the other hand, if we’re talking D/s. Since he’s new to submitting, Charles is easily overstimulated. You can tell that he had lots of conventional sex that didn’t really target much of the body as a whole. BDSM, in a lot of disciplines, is a little more distinct and takes into account every nook and cranny. Which Charles is very enticed by. Imagine the effect of a single nipple clamp on this strong-ass Italian stallion.

Body endurance-wise, and that goes for the entire grid: High, of course. This guy’s job is doing a 2-hour Grand Prix almost every other week. Driving front of the grid, at immense speeds, with crazy focus. Steering and talking and drinking and pushing buttons and memorizing the track and racing the Top 10 and adhering (unfortunately) to strategy and… the list just goes on and on. Imagine the chemicals on fire inside this body. What an athlete.

So: Charles has the resilience. Sex is pretty easy on his circulation, it’s not a crazy cardio workout for him. He trains much harder stuff. Don’t mistake his lack of breaking a sweat fast for a lack of feeling, though. You’ll be able to sense it in his touch. I don’t have to tell you he’s courteous and affectionate and the cutest, you already know it. But also remember that Charles is careful to attach himself 100%, and not because he’s a player. This guy can’t even wink properly.

You know the reason why he’s hesitant to confide in somebody. And that his profession is an enormous hazard. He often has no clue whether to go the extra mile feeling-wise or not. If he does, that makes it so much harder to watch the race for you. If you can bring yourself to do that at all, after an especially spectacular night with him. It’s the price to pay. Keeping it lighthearted versus YOLO-ing the whole thing is the bane of your relationship. Charles wants to be emotionally available, but also no let-down or a tragic figure. You tell him, „Charles. That already shows you care so much.“ He’s loving regardless, no matter what he decides. He’s already invested, so why not go all the way and make it a relationship that lives life to the fullest?

Charles, knowing that entire emotional backdrop, gives the whole dynamic a touch of good friendship rather than aiming for Romeo and Juliet. And he doesn’t have to. Charles suffers from the invisible break on his romantic nature that wants to prepare you a candlelight dinner instead of doing an extra track walk. It’s the Sebastian Vettel effect: Either full power on the circuit, or full throttle at home: Choose one. The amount of times he asked another trusted driver about improving his thinking with those things, being vague enough about you but still desperately trying to find a solution, you would not believe it. Pierre has tried everything so Charles would not feel so conflicted.

Your boyfriend talks a lot to you about being in the mood for love and wishing he could pour rose petals to your feet every weekend when you woke up rather than being on the grid. But — if that’s not romantic in and of itself. Charles didn’t realize how words could be enough to tell you what he means. A thought can be priceless, much better than making something reality sometimes. Doesn’t mean a big candlelight dinners won’t take place when the season’s over. You are patient for Charles. That is also important stamina in relationships.

t = toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Aside from straps? The absolute minimalist. Not the type to ask being collared and put on a leash like a puppy: That’s Lando and Lewis territory. Charles is pretty reserved, he would not mass buy toys or experiment much. Anything that vibrates? Freaks him out. Your theory is that his phobia has to do with being a driver for Ferrari in particular. When something goes brrrrrrhh he automatically thinks he needs to box box immediately to get his car reconstructed from the ground up mid-race.

And whether that’s toys used on him or yourself, he’d also get a heart attack when the battery starts dying on him and the toy makes irregular noises. You know which ones I mean. As if it’s staggering. His driver mind goes like `Oh my god. The engine! What’s happening?!´ while you are already busy switching batteries like it’s no big deal. Anything that’s too high on the tech component and needs a whole-ass instruction manual makes Charles question his life choices. How would Charles spend his time stretching condoms over a Hitachi. That’s your thing, not the unsuspecting kitty’s. This man is far too traumatized by vibrating noises. So, please spare Charles of the toy mania unless you buy him a nipple pump for fun and plenty of laughter. Nipple stuff is fine. But nothing too fancy.

His blissful ignorance is amazing. He has no idea how a vibrating constriction ring works and what that even is. Charles can tell you what a Hockenheim Ring is, a Hungaro Ring, a Nürburg Ring, and a Red Bull Ring, but some super specific toys? He’s too confused and doesn’t want to find out. This dude has enough electronics to deal with on the regular. Like. Charles thinks anal beads are a home decoration. Okay, he’s not that naïve. But you get the point. In his mind, brrrrrrhh equals red alert.

Obviously, he doesn’t mind if you have your own little collection to masturbate by yourself, it’s just not his cup of tea to use as a couple. He also doesn’t like watching you in a weird way. He’s more likely to offer helping you himself, or he listens to some music in another room, or he’s gaming. He’s not gonna disturb you doing what you like doing. He might enjoy seeing you please yourself with your fingers, just laying there half relaxed half on edge, but even then, he can’t stop stroking your thighs. It’s either no contact or full contact.

In the same vein: Those sexy black harnesses you bought for him to try on make his dorito body tingle in the oddest ways. Tip: Mail them to the Mercedes and McLaren garage instead. It will be highly appreciated. Sir Lewis, Prince George, and Mister Ricciardo will slay the house down on their social media with those. Lando will use them um, privately. Charles, and this is very chic and extra of him, prefers a nice homemade rope harness that’s specifically crafted by you. It’s just more intimate and beautiful because it’s temporary.

You tie it in front of two mirrors so he can see what you do in the back and front, and you always see his face, too. He prefers the more complicated stuff rather than just beginner’s bondage. Shibari is right up his alley. So, if ropes count as toys rather than accessories or tools, then this is it, this is the one. And I mean. This is no surprise. At all. It’s the nature of the sport. Every Formula 1 driver has the strongest safety belts and trains their body with harnesses on strings, you know the ones. That crazy painful G-Force neck and shoulder workout. If that’s not high-end BDSM, I don’t know. The creepy torture machines F1 drivers have in their gyms? Gives any dominatrix a run for her money. And tell me what kind of utensil Charles uses to warm up? A jump rope. Bingo. He has such a thing for that stuff.

Ropes aside. If we’re talking classic masturbation helpers: Charles’ skeptical gaze says miss me with that Jurassic Park stuff. Because that’s what toys look like to him. Would never use even the most basic toy on himself if his life depended on it. He might be curious, but Charles thinks it’s really embarrassing and gross to clean it all up. He doesn’t have time for that. The same goes for using anything on you, he just thinks his hands and thighs do a better job than „creepy dinosaur toes and purple plastic snails“ as he puts it. What on earth does he mean by purple snails, what has he seen? He refuses to elaborate. It’s probably better that way.

Besides, and he is honest here. This sinnamon roll had so much Quali traffic in his early years before he got to the main GP in this relationship — and he notoriously masturbates like a jackhammer, careful Charles don’t hurt yourself — he needed no fleshlight ever. That all amounts to Sharlie being on the fence with toys. Except, and we summarize: For nip stuff and bondage supplies. See the positives: No extra cupboard needed. And: That Charles is not a big tech enthusiast speaks volumes of his confidence to make you climax.

By the way: He thought lube is a lame alibi, while spit or being extremely horny are the answers. Fair enough, you can spit on his dick or in his mouth any day of the week. Essential skill. And you have no problems getting the hots for Charles. We’re talking wetter than Monaco 2022, and it has really been pouring down there. Meanwhile, your approach is the exact opposite. Tops see the whole thing from a different perspective. You would literally bathe in lube with Charles, swim in it, and: Roll out the big bottle on him when his ass is about to get destroyed. He will thank you on his knees and realize the value of a good lubricant. Charles is soon returning from the groceries with new stock.

u = unfair (how much they like to tease)

He’s always the one who catches your eye by looking so good and tasty. Charles being so pretty and delicious really is a way of teasing. That logic cannot be argued with. But yes. You womanhandle the living shit out of him. Charles walking around with blue balls is the best thing ever. This shit will have him melting down because he tries to control himself so much. Which spurs him into even fiercer masturbation minutes later. You have some very sexy solo videos of him on your phone, with good lighting and sound quality.

Fairness as a whole? You do something good and caring for him, it goes on his mental list to make sure you feel reciprocated on the right occasion. Although he knows some people wouldn’t like that style of relationship, he sees a need for a certain back and forth. If you come home and give him the biggest hug ever, he will come home and give you the best back massage ever on the exact day where you feel tense. It’s not always reciprocating with the same thing, but with what’s appropriate.

I know: He’s the most blatant Libra ever. This man is ruled by Venus, baby. Mutual uplifting, he reveres his lady. Charles always nails the presents for you. As if his face was not the gift already, but that’s beside the point. He also creates proper quality time as often as he can, jet ski dates beloved. And there’s so much more, he never runs out of ideas. Charles’ thought process: „So many things to do with her!“

Amusement park rides at night, food buffets, motorboat cruises for two. Bowling. Pool billiards. Going to a swimming pool with artificial waves (so much fun). Baking you pizza with exquisite ingredients he bought with great care. Going to a top-class barber together. And the like. All presented to you with a wink. Not boring stuff like golfing — ugh — and blah, although he does flex his legs and silhouette there so props to that. If we’re talking fairness, he’s always more than that. Cash can’t buy love, but it can embellish it by making memories when it’s already there. Charles is using his money wisely.

This man rolls out the red carpet under your feet or throws himself into the puddle you walk across — and he is the celebrity. Let that sink in. Charles is fucking humble. Rather than thinking of himself as a walking piggy bank, a reason he won’t disclose is that he’s aware how his good pay when there’s a good reserve and you have that privileged opportunity, needs to be used for the present moment to do what it’s supposed to do. He has an actual reason to consider that there might be nobody who could eat a big pasta plate with you anymore by tomorrow. Carpe diem, baby.  

v = volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Medium volume. At first. Guy doesn’t even know he can and will go much louder when it comes to… some type of pain play. Before he has to show up in the adjacent hotel rooms to go „Um excusez-moi“, it’s all constricted to your personal estates. So, he screams his lungs out at home for the most part („Oh, my ass—!“), and just breathes really hard everywhere else. Charles is any dom’s wet dream when he gets loud and responsive, and really creative with his expression. Makes you wanna say, good job, baby. He’s such a talker, too. Even mouth gags cannot stop him. And, as before. He is pleasant in every facet, so Charles’ sexy time noises are no different. Especially when he receives praise.  Oh my goodness me. The praise kink is real. He will cum in five seconds if the compliment hits right.

w = wild card (a random headcanon for the person)

Your first time meeting? How else could it be, just days before a Grand Prix. And which GP? You guessed it. Miami. You got a free paddock pass for being an influencer and bumped into Charles at the fake marina just minutes before Free Practice: In your super skimpy bikini. And then you just made out with him after the race. Party in the city when the heat is on— No I’m just kidding. Of course you met in Monaco.

Alerted by some very strange noise outside, you scooped up this wet poodle of misery with your bare hands. From a random edgy premise at 4 AM, an empty low-rise socialite building you sort of lived next to. He crashed at this place after an unhinged party and really didn’t know why. A hungry as hell Charles floated in the water with swollen eyes, making the pool close to overflow with his tears. He was actually about to open an XXL flask of absinthe he got from a house bar to top it off. Yeah, fuck.

You were like, what’s going on there! You went down, squatted at the pool and said, put this bottle of poison away and come out, you need something to eat, man. Just because you can cleanse a wound with that liquid doesn’t mean it works on your soul. Thank God this house is vacant because I think you’re trespassing. And Charles went „oh mon Dieu I’m such a loser I’m the worst“ and you were like „no you’re just naked in cold water, let’s go upstairs“. And Charles was like „okay“ and reluctantly put the alcohol aside, even he didn’t have an idea where and who he was anymore at that point. Hell, he was already extremely drunk. You gave him your jacket to cover up down below, then helped him climb nothing short of 80 stairs with wet feet.

An XXL American-style deep-frozen pizza with extra pineapple later (to shock his Italian brain back to reality), Charles was rambling and rambling. With a mere towel around his hips, saying „guess I just give up and see what happens“. Eventually collapsing on the table face down, Charles ended up dragged into your bed. 69 kilogram and his legs were still on autopilot, so that was doable. Your couch was nice and comfy so you moved there after checking if you had anything toxic that Charles could drink in your flat while sleepwalking or waking up earlier than you. Just to be sure.

Months later, Charles said he thanks you for „not taking advantage“ of him then and there. It would have been easy to just take off the towel, or just do whatever thing with him. You say man, what the fuck Charles. You were a sobbing mess. This guy has really been surrounded by psychopaths, leeches, betrayers, and manipulators everywhere. Hell, Charles almost forgot his own name from all that crying. He needed a damn shelter, bed, and something warm to drink.

Back there, you felt like Edna Mode from the Incredibles giving her big speech on how to stand up and fight. You wound up driving Charles to the track the next day after getting hangover sushi for lunch. He asked for your number, and you said Charles, I work right here in the paddock. You’ll see me walk around, now eat this chocolate bar and put your chest out walking with pride. He said what, are you a good Samaritan, and you said no I just move some Formula 2 Pirellis around. Now get to work, there’s a title to win! Veni, vidi, vici! And off he goes.

So you just kept on rolling stuff around as always and saw Charles’ helmet turning whenever he passed you. You did wave at each other. Later in the afternoon, you saw the Ferrari team, soulless faces all around, in shambles during a routine stop. You came along and grumbled, why is everything so uncoordinated and untidy here. Step aside horse hoes, I will rearrange your tires, this is a safety hazard. The team said who the hell are you and Charles said wait she’s my friend. Okay so that’s how you’re rolling and rearranging things around for Ferrari, including Charles’ baby step confidence, but it’s not like he didn’t need it. Your logic is simple:

His iconic booty is already racing around at 300 kilometers per hour. In an oddly-shaped circle. He can steppy step on some pedestals and steery steer this little expensive computer wheel. He has sexy balaclava lines, great feet, and nice eyebrows. How could someone not win a championship like that. He just needs a team that can roll the tires correctly at the right point in time, that’s all. Bewildered, the Scuderia tells you mamma mia there is so much more to it, like what about this and that DRS issue and other teams and— but you insist, no folks. Stick to the basics first.

Busted suspension? Who the hell cares, duct tape is a thing, takes a good mechanic three seconds. Charles is just as fast regardless! He doesn’t even need the car, the car needs him. Corroded engine? Duct tape again. Rival teams are acting shady? Nobody cares! Just check if you have enough duct tape with you! Gotta focus on one damn goal! Just let Charles be good-looking and press some buttons and everything will be alright. Blend out the others, he should just be careful not to hurt himself or someone else. Just drive round and round and get tires when you think you need `em. That’s it. The motto has stuck with him since, actually.

Charles qualified third and won on Sunday. Big party, spell break celebrations, everything. He was crying right in front of you again. You agreed to meet for pizza without pineapple the next day. At your’s, because it’s cozier. This time, Charles — without a hangover — brought the pizza along and it was perfectly soppy in the middle, with crisp edges like his jawline, oh duh. Guess who was the happiest man on earth and got a little kiss on the nose goodbye.

Charles stumbled into the new race week a little love drunk which some mechanics noticed, but they were also too busy rolling around the tires the way you told them to. Since Charles suggested you travel to the next GP instead of working in F2, you packed your stuff and did as you always did next Sunday in Baku. Charles followed the exact guidelines and just sat there looking good, steering his Sharliemobile in a circle, the whole shebang, and earned P2. The curse truly was dissolved by the power of pineapple on pizza. It was like a reset for his neurons.

Charles had a new philosophy. Rule #1, if he made a mistake, he just shrugged and pressed another button. On it went, there was always another chance to slay. Rule #2, if somebody wronged him, he was unfazed, too fast to linger. After all, racing was nothing more than a hobby, and he knew what he was doing. The more Scandinavian the approach, the better. Charles didn’t need rehab or new team staff. He needed some Hygge in his life. On track, and with a partner. Ease in his body, ease in his mind.

Five weeks later, Charles asked if you could be his girlfriend because he had one big fat crush on you.

x = x-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing. So we’re talking car equipment of the number one Monégasque Megawhore (trademarked). Now this Ferrari doesn’t have an engine failure nor faulty smokin’ breaks, believe me. And I mean. Look at this lil’ freak. His way of walking is the weirdest way of human movement. Charles’ shorts are always sitting suspiciously low. He constantly tweaks and pinches at his racing suit, it’s so painfully tight. Somebody save him.

He’s literally wearing swim trunks that say ICONIC on them, in bright neon so everyone will know and the competition can sashay away. Charles also has to spread his legs sluttishly wide when he sits down not to get super uncomfy. Come on man, pick up some loose trousers and close your legs instead of wearing fabric that holds everything in place and— Oh. Hum, what could that mean. Not one clue. But science tells. How on earth could he have had a rendezvous with every possible single his age if Charles had no one-size-fits-all dick. Seriously. It really has a bit of everything. An enviable universal appeal.

Very slight upward curve, but it’s well-aligned. No slant to the side. Mister Charles Leclerc junior stays off the track limits, baby. A proper tip, but it’s not disturbingly formed. Some sleek thickness to it, but he’s not too heavy nor just — awkwardly flops around. Yikes. Nothing like that here. He’s not really huge, and he’s not really small. Because he’s Charles, he has lied about his inches total, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that he’s nice and meaty the way he is. You’re particular about this, but you like your hand wrapped around him. Charles holds his breath when you do that. He’s just on edge, don’t make fun of him.

He’s not too flexible either, but also not one thrust away from his dick breaking in half. Doesn’t look cut, but he’s also not uncut. Not veiny, but it’s also flushed and light. Yes, I know — It’s still hard to picture it. So let’s just say it looks very good like everything on his man. No big news. You’ll make it clear to him, nothing to be insecure about. After all these phone numbers he got, Charles is still not happy and finds flaws? Damn. To raise his esteem, what do you do? Well, not what has failed to lift his esteem in the past: More sex. Instead, you’re doodling cute NSFW caricatures into his burn book to make him laugh. Laughing is the best medicine. Who knew silly drawings could make him feel better about himself, but it works.

And last but not least. Pubic hair. Of course, as dark as his legendary eyebrows. It’s the Italiano in him, va bene. Even a close shave will not get rid of the shadow underneath the skin. It’s not too messy, not too stubbly. All in all, class act.

y = yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Charles is on fire. Boy started wilding topless since the year began. If the season is shit, he can at least be down bad. By the sheer power of languages, Charles has French, Spanish, and Italian style libido combined. He could not keep this up without an equally horny partner. They need to have an obsessive craving for his body. Your guy does not leave the house without condoms. He is ready anytime there is relative privacy, and you are dying to rip his pants down. Charles gets hard pretty fast.

What kills his yearning is a bad day at work, and that has consequences. Seeing Charles struggle has the same effect on you. It doesn’t comfort either of you to just postpone your vexation and replace it with an orgasm. Nor is it a good idea to fuck Charles if his body had to deal with the enormous impact of thudding against a track wall. When he is worn out and depressed, it’s no good to milk him for attention or pleasure. Fatigue is extremely tough to alleviate with sex, whether that be vanilla or not. Charles has no other solution for that than time. You feel for him when he’s retiring the car or missing crucial points. In fact, you cannot comprehend how Charles can bear this inhumane level of constant misfortune and mishandling of his career.

In the same vein, and exactly because Charles cannot stand you looking as ruffled as him, your boyfriend caters to your every need when you have cramps and feel no libido at all. When you feel sick, this stuff is constantly in his head. He thinks, she must feel so uneasy. Or, I hope I wasn’t too loud in the morning making breakfast. Recently, Pierre has given Charles an instructive TED talk on how to mend cramps and body aches. So that advice will be in action, although Charles has to text Pierre to repeat bits and pieces sometimes. „Je suis désolé. My brain is a sieve.“

Charles adds his own touch by cheering you up with his prettiness (very effective) and cuddly body heat, which is the perfect mix. During those days, he seems to be obsessed with peppering your head with countless kisses, and you actually switch positions for once, he big-spoons you. So his hands can go rub rub and say „sorry that you are hurt, mon coeur“. Charles can’t stop kissing and kissing and putting his face in your hair, too. He’s touchier than usual without even being conscious of it, and he doesn’t celebrate a pole for longer than an hour when you’re at a hotel, tucked into bed nauseous.

You didn’t expect him to hurry back to the place you’re staying at, but it’s a pleasant surprise. He brought a ton of your favorite snacks from the groceries. Bébé spent a  fucking fortune. Big ass sandwich, pastries, choco cake, muffins, that one ramen that just never fails to taste amazing, tangy cookies, a mango, paprika crisps, brioche, croissants, and strawberries. Express pain killers and pads your size on top. Boom.

Could he be a better boyfriend? Except for the fruit, he can’t eat any of it because of his diet, but he’s happy to see you eat. He admits it… since Charles doesn’t want to cheat his food plan too much, he lives vicariously through you a little there. You can literally pick from the whole store and stock up without going there. Charles, you legend. He’s so nonchalant about it and just goes to order you some tea from the hotel kitchen, serving it like a butler at the bed. You are the queen of Monaco. Charles also calls you a cute little hamster, though. Hamster mom to be exact, and he is hamster papa, fluffy as he is with that hair.

His recent specialty is helping you shower, picture this pup with a big ole sponge asking „is this okay“ every other second. He genuinely helps. Sometimes, it makes your heart sink that Charles extends more endless concern towards your painful days than toward himself, and you do tell him that. Charles realizes that he could inspire himself from the acts of service he does for you because some driver self-care never hurt anyone. It’s okay to eat a little snack for the soul every now and then.

z = zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterward)

Before sex, he tends to keep himself awake and ready by doing some light exercises. Warms up his muscles, warms up his torso, which gives off a snuggly heat when you make love. His favorite time of the day to have sex is in the evening. After all that hustle and bustle is long faded, he’s slacking off, he’s showered and shaved again. Only so many hours in a race week — Charles can enter the twilight zone in ten minutes after. Until then, you make sure everything’s cleaned up and dressed up and wound down and switched off. It all follows a certain regimen.

Sleep becomes extremely valuable when you’re on the move. You are 24/7 adventurers and travel enthusiasts, dwelling at a new quay every week to watch the water. Charles and you always look for interesting protected places to go. Charles has his arm across your shoulders often because he is just so huggy. You sometimes fall asleep in a different country than where you wake up, the jet lag is real here. Which also means, you don’t just go all night and forget the rest of the day. Resting as a couple is your number one hobby more than you assumed. It's good to chill with your honey to recharge. The best place to sleep is on your bébé’s chest to hear and feel him breathe.

Charles can’t sleep without you laying down on top of him. More often than not, he gets pretty bizarre dreams otherwise. If you can call it dreams. All kinds of unsolicited graphic nightmares, and that’s a far better description, can drive him into a 4 AM scare, and a gut-wrenching discomfort until he rolls over to you, gladly thinking „everything’s fine, everything still there as it always is“. He often plays with your hair in his sleep to calm himself down. You do the same, he tells you, when you’re the one being exhausted. Who can blame ya. Charles Leclerc… Sleeping beauty right there. Caressing each other is a natural antidote to a bad night.

read charles a-z on ao3

✿ FINAL NOTE. ⇢ i just wanted to post something sexy and instead i’ve been writing and crying my heart out 😔 thanks for reading, i hope this hit home and made y’all laugh. look at my horse, my horse is amazing 🙌 reblogs and esp comments always welcome 💞

© 2017-2022 sugar-petals. all rights reserved. no reposts allowed. all depictions are fictional and for entertainment purposes only.

[heybal]

Stanley remembers.

Stanley remembers, even when the voice in his head forgets,

even when the white text on the black screen doesn’t remember the answers. Stanley remembers everything perfectly well. He remembers getting blown up, he remembers falling from a flight of stairs – again, and again, and again – he remembers the space, he remembers the fake apartment, he remembers the phone. He remembers the memory zone, even though the Narrator never showed it to him. Or did he?

The Narrator forgets a lot. He forgets endings, he forgets emotions, he forgets the plot of his own story – and he looks down at the marks on his script, not recognizing his own handwriting. Red marks above words, small essays regarding Stanley’s choices – endless, written on top of each other. He doesn’t remember what the text originally said. He doesn’t want to remember the way Stanley jumped to his death, he doesn’t want to remember being left alone for years on end – and so he doesn’t. The parable doesn’t let him. He tries not to think about the gaps in his memories – tries, because admitting to his state being altered is a terrifying thought.

Stanley is the only thing the Narrator always remembers. No matter what happens before, he starts out the story just the same – he doesn’t even need the script, really, he remembers the freedom ending by heart. He doesn’t remember leaving the writings on the script, but they all make sense – from annoyed remarks to endearing comments. He doesn’t remember, but he knows that he loves Stanley – loves him as much as a man in this position can. Not just as a character, not just as a face in his story. More so as the only person in his life. His only friend, his only companion. Someone who’ll always listen to him talk, even if he doesn’t obey his commands.

Stanley doesn’t really like obeying – he doesn’t, but he sure does love listening. No matter what the Narrator says. No matter how long he’ll spend explaining something that doesn’t really matter to either of them. And, when faced with a skip button, Stanley simply sits down next to it – and he listens to the looping voice for hours, unable to make himself press the button. Even if there’s no other way out.

And Stanley hates, hates, hates himself when he does. He can’t feel his hands as they press the yellow button – his mind is dizzy, his whole form is shaking. Taking a deep breath, he prepares to be frozen in time – knowing that for him no time will pass, knowing that for Narrator a whole eternity of waiting is about to start. Freezing isn’t as pleasant as the Narrator thinks – it pushes all the air out of your lungs, leaving you conscious for one agonizing second of suffocation as coldness rushes through your body.

Walking through the endless desert, Stanley feels his eyes water. He didn’t want this to happen. Sure, he might like getting on the Narrator’s nerves – sure, he likes annoying the voice, not listening to directions and ignoring the main plot – but he doesn’t actually want to hurt him. He wouldn’t do this, would he? It had to be someone else – someone that overtook his body, like the godforsaken mind control machine. He wouldn’t leave his Narrator alone for so long. He’d never, never do that. He doesn’t want to be responsible for this. He can’t, he just can’t accept the fact that he caused so much harm. And sure, the Narrator is back to normal after another reset – and he sends Stanley running after figurines, and he shows him the broken down machine – but something’s just wrong. Stanley doesn’t like it, doesn’t like it one bit.

This restart felt different.

It felt like all the weight he’s be carrying suddenly disappeared. All the endings, all the problems now felt like a fuzzy dream – almost like none of it happened at all. No sliders, no desert, no bucket – absolutely nothing, nothing at all. It almost felt freeing.

He can’t relive that again. He just can’t, no matter how hard the invisible strings tug on his wrists. He feels them often, really – almost every time he stands up from his desk. Something controlling him, someone watching him, someone making decisions for him. He probably wouldn’t leave the office if not for this mysterious force – he’d probably just wait it out. At least a few couple of times, until it gets too boring to bear. There are no new directions on the screen, after all.

The memory cottage is cozy – just cozy enough to stay there for a little longer. Just cozy enough to take a deep breath – to smell the flowers outside, to feel the warmth of the house. Home. It’s a very nice place, really – there’s everything Stanley needs, because Stanley doesn’t need that much at all. He doesn’t need to sleep or eat or drink – he just needs to feel calm. Feel at peace. Know that the Narrator’s happy, and know that he’s happy too.

Sitting down on the floor, Stanley sighs as he feels the wooden wall behind his back. He feels at peace, for once in his life. He doesn’t feel like he has to keep going – running, exploring, reacting – he doesn’t feel like he’s obligated to do something. Nothing is hurrying him along, nothing is forcing him into action. He can hear birds chirping, and he can’t help but wonder if the birds actually exist. This place is nice.

“Stanley, what are you doing?”

The voice in his head sounds a bit annoyed, but mostly just confused. Stanley shrugs, looking up at the ceiling and waving his hand, as if greeting the Narrator. And the Narrator responds with a little noise – calm little noise, almost adoring. And Stanley’s happy.

He’ll stay a while.

[ibrithir-was-here]

So I've sat down and thought out a really basic Actual Sort of Plot for my Crack Treated Seriously thing for my OC Thanastasia and the Corinthian xD

For wibbly wobbly Crack Plot reasons, Ana gets pulled into the Sandman universe in the 80s, and after she's done freaking out about it, she starts doing what she does best-- hunting monsters, both supernatural and mundane.

And the 'Collectors' soon have a killer terrorizing them.

The serial killers start to call her things "'The Angel of Death', due to how she can appear from seemingly nowhere, has superhuman strength and speed, and never fails to kill her target.

There's only a few eyewitness reports of her, from the victims she's saved, who give fuzzy reports about shining white hair and red eyes.

Ana both in her own reality and in Sandman survives by drinking the blood of the killers she takes out, making sure to slash their throats to cover up the blood loss/bite marks.

But the Corinthian gains an interest in this new and clearly supernatural player, and starts trying to seek her out.

He's originally only interested seeing just what she is and then in clearing her out of the way

But after finding her and getting the fight of his life out of it, ending in a draw, he's genuinely impressed, and more determined than ever to figure out just who Ana is, ao he invites her home for a beer.

(Ana can eat/drink human food a little but its like junk food, it does nothing to keep her actually full or healthy)

And so begins their own weird sort of Morpheus and Hob meet up, only instead of 100 years its The Corinthian seeking her out every six months or so to see if one of them has gotten good enough to kill the other yet.

And they fight tooth and nail before getting a drink and talking a little bit more about themselves in the vaguest terms as neither is about to admit they're from basically a parallel dimension/universe, even if they can both tell the other is paranormal

Ana is incredibly weirded out by this whole thing at first. She's somehow gained a charming and murderous stalker who's an even match for her so she can't kill him

And she can't report him or the police are gonna get onto her tail for all the killing she's done/having no real IDs/living out of a car she stole

But despite herself she finds that she kinda looks forward to the fights/drinks?

All her other friends are back home and with all the traveling around she has to do to keep ahead of the police and all the criminals/monsters trying to kill her she hasn't had time to really make new ones

So The Corinthian becomes this one weird stable thing she has where she can be her full self and (mostly) not worry about it.

(And he is almost supernaturally charming)

Things hit a turning point when some of the other Collectors /or maybe some vampire hunters or both together teamed up manage to track down Ana and try to kill her

But luckily for her the Corinthian has been keeping an eye on her and shows up to help in the fight, as now in his mind he's the only one with a right to kill her---and he really doesn't want her dead yet

They manage to take out all the attackers and The Corinthian takes Ana back to his safe house/apt to patch her up cuz she did take a beating

And she's having a bit of a panic from the adrenaline and trauma of almost dying since her attackers where actually prepared to fight a vampire

So Cori starts telling her random stuff about his past in the Dreaming to help focus her mind back on the present. And she ends up finally telling him her name and some more about herself and her past and they start seeing some real parallels in each other

Cori sees a lot of his younger self in Ana, her dedication to what she feels is her calling, and the loyalty she feels to the person who inspired her, along with a lust for life mixed with anger at how she can never truly escape being a vampire even as she tries to turn her hunger to fit her views.

And Ana sees in him something of what she might have become under different circumstances, harsher, angerier, bloodier. But with those same confused mix of passion and trauma and desire to twist what you can't escape to your own will, rule it instead of letting it rule you

Ana ends up spending the night on the couch, and when Cori finds out she's been living in a car he gives her a standing invitation to drop by his place whenever she needs a safer place to crash

And this starts the phase where they stop trying to kill each other and start gravitating towards each other, both becoming enamored against their better judgment of the opportunity to have someone actually know them--and have that mean something safe and maybe even soft, instead of something to be worried about.

This is when Cori starts offering to let Ana drink his blood when she needs it as he's not human and won't die or turn if she does

(These are older pictures with their modern day designs but it still works)

And she knows this won't help the attachment issues she's trying to fight but honestly she's so tired of running and killing and he's offering…

And they're dancing around the growing fondness they have for eachother, something more than friends but less then lovers and honestly they're both happy with it like that

But they kinda just keep getting wound up tighter and closer while both knowing that eventually something will have to give. One of them will have to finally cross over to the other side if they want to stay together or they'll have to go back to trying to kill each other eventually with one of them succeeding.

And …i haven't figured out the exact ending but they're definitely 'broken up' by the time of the show--but that ring on The Corinthians wedding finger is Ana's

They've only ever literally slept together, no sex, a few kisses maybe. I can't see either of them wanting the other that way but they're something special to each other, and maybe they only got married for tax or hijinks purposes and they're for all intents and purposes divorced now-- but he keeps it still...

[paradisetemporarilymisplaced]

Fave 1D fics?

Hello! This was very fun to put together and I really enjoyed my journey down memory lane in doing so🤗 Full disclosure, this list is all fics from 2016 or earlier bc I stopped regularly reading fic around then, but these are my very favorites. These are all either AO3 or PDF links because some have been deleted, and I'm sure I'm missing some (it's hard to keep track when so many have been deleted and my AO3 bookmarks are not as comprehensive as they could be). Happy reading, friend!

Wear It Like A Crown (zarah5, 141k, E): The first fic I ever read in this fandom and it remains my very favorite to this day! Royalty AU in which Louis is part of a team of PR fixers hired by the royal family to spin a photo of Prince Harry getting some with his bestie, Zayn. Enemies (ish) to friends to lovers, grand gestures, tragic backstory, and remarkably well-written communication issues. Zarah is one of the most beloved fandom authors and has written some classics, but this one is my personal favorite.

These Inconvenient Fireworks (mdasch & everydaysalike, 190k, E): The OG fandom classic for a reason. Louis is a drama teacher and Harry, an aspiring photographer, starts coaching soccer football at the same school part-time. Friends with benefits ensue, but there's a lot of angst as they try to figure out what the fuck they're doing and what they really are to each other. Major OT5 feels, funny as hell, heartbreaking - it's everything you want in a fic.

Allies in Heaven, Comrades in Hell (rockinaintnowalkinthepark, 265k, E): Catholic school AU. God, this one just punches you in the dick. I love it so fucking much. Louis and Harry are classmates and Louis realizes he's really into Harry. Unfortunately, his father is violently homophobic, and when he and Harry get together, he's terrified of the possible consequences. Major warnings for violence and homophobia, so if that's not your cup of tea you might want to stay away. I however am a sucker for angst with a happy ending and this fic delivers.

And Down the Long and Silent Street (whimsicule, 89k, M): THIS! FIC! God. I love it so much. Historical AU - Victorian England. Louis is selling newspapers on the London streets when he crosses paths with Harry, a wealthy young gentleman. They start an affair and fall in love, but unfortunately, a serial killer on the London streets is targeting poor young men - in particular, as it turns out, Louis - which complicates things. Plotty, heavy on the hurt/comfort, and keeps you on the very edge of your seat. I reread this one all the time.

Pull Me Under (zarah5, 140k, E): Another Zarah fic and also incredible. This one features Louis as a professional footballer trying to navigate coming out. Liam is Louis' agent, who suggests he be in a long-term relationship to ease the coming out process. Luckily, Liam's boyfriend Zayn has a friend named Harry who'd be perfect as the fake boyfriend. Fake relationship ensues. Beautifully written, also a classic.

Butterfly Gun (eravain, 100k, M): 1940s AU, set around WWII. In 1940, Harry and Gemma were evacuated from London to stay at the Tomlinson farm. Harry and Louis become friends, but as they grow up and learn more about themselves, there's the possibility for something more - except Louis' grandpa is a dick. Harry and Gemma are sent to another home to stay, and after the war, Harry goes back to see Louis in an attempt to rekindle their relationship and see what's actually there. Beautifully written and clenches your heart in the best way.

Coax the Cold (mediawhore, 86k, M): Another Victorian AU, this one featuring professor!Louis, whose focus on the supernatural has resulted in professional ridicule. He stumbles across ads for a circus sideshow that supposedly has a mermaid, so he goes undercover as an employee to obtain proof of the mermaid's existence. He definitely obtains proof, but his goal shifts as he gets to know said mermaid (Harry, obviously) and instead of proving his existence, he needs to free him and keep his secret to protect him.

College AU series (whoknows, 75k, E): This is a two-fic series that's just fun. In part 1, Harry and Louis are in an epic prank war - well, at least Louis is engaged in a prank war, while Harry calmly retaliates. Louis is a fucking menace in this one which I just adore. Dialogue is NEXT LEVEL. Friends with benefits (or at least, that's what Louis thinks it is) that (obviously) becomes a relationship (which is what Harry has thought it was the whole time). The last scene (before the epilogue) is one of my favorites in any fic. Part 2 is pretty much more of the same - sex, banter, and planning for the future.

Give Me Truths (iwillpaintasongforlou, 110k, E): This fic HAS. IT. ALL. College AU! Hurt/comfort! Punk, confident, psych major Louis! Sad Harry! I just! Love it! In this fic, Harry is in an abusive relationship and Louis helps him gather the strength to leave his abuser. In the process, they end up falling in love, and Louis helps Harry regain his confidence and self-esteem. I love this one especially because it was written at a time when the common fic trope was that Louis hates himself and Harry is the manic pixie dream girl who makes it better, so the role reversal in this fic was very refreshing. But it's also just such a good story and so well-written. (And again. PUNK LOUIS.)

Relief Next to Me (dolce_piccante, 333k, E): Okay. This fic is a MONSTER. It's really just 333k words of slice of life as baker!Harry and graphic designer!Louis become friends with benefits and then fall in love. I read this as a WIP (which I rarely do) just because there's barely a plot, they're just having a great time living life and having sex. Chapter 17 in particular is my comfort reread, I just love it SO MUCH.

Love Is a Word, You Gave It a Name (hattalove, 21k, T): Pure fluff, canon compliant. It's Christmas time and the boys are celebrating with their families and each other and getting ready to take a major step in their relationship - that is, publicly coming out. OT5 and family feels all over the place. This fic just gives you such warm and fuzzy feelings and I always smile the whole way through reading it. Also features a reunion with Louis' infamous geography teacher and also him being jealous of Ed Sheeran's cat.

Soft Hands, Fast Feet, Can't Lose (dolce_piccante, 113k, E): College AU in which Harry is an (American) football star for a Texas university and Louis is a dancer at the same school. In everyone's favorite 90s teen flick trope, Harry's friends bet that he can't get Louis to fall in love with him. You can guess how this plays out. It's very fun and especially good to reread during college football season.

[sneezefiction]

attention

Miya Osamu x Reader

desc: you’re spending too much time fawning over a very fictional captain Levi and not enough time doting on your real boyfriend, Osamu. 

a/n: @starrysamu dearest remy, this is for you. i only just found out that it’s your birthday and i felt like i needed to show my appreciation for you in a tangible way. this isn’t the best, but i laughed a lot while writing it, so i hope it’ll make you smile. so much love to you and happiest of birthdays!! you’re such a joy to speak with <33

warnings: mentions attack on titan (fictional deaths), language, suggestive towards the end

wc: 1.5k

---

“I bet you haven’t moved in hours.”

“Mm,” you hum absentmindedly.

Osamu stays silent for a moment, squinting judgmentally at you from the corner of the living room. He’s been standing there for ten minutes and you’ve not so much as acknowledged his existence. Granted, you already spent the entire morning with him, but you could at least greet him with your usual, “hey, babe.” 

He’d even settle for a “what’s up, ugly” at this point.

However, your eyes are glued to the TV screen. Blue light and flashing colors reflect off of your skin while the blood-curdling screams of various animated characters fill the room. You gasp and a hand flies to your mouth. That’s the fourth time you’ve done that since he’d walked in the room.

Whatever it is you’re watching, your reaction seems reasonable. The show looks and sounds disgusting. Or at least to Osamu it does.

“You really should move around a little.” He coaxes, “You’re gonna cut off all your circulation.”

Osamu approaches the couch, but you continue to ignore him.

“Yeah, and?” you respond, eyes still fixed on the screen, “I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

You reach for the remote and turn up the volume a couple of notches. His brows furrow in contempt. Now, this is just plain rude.

“Well, if you lose a limb, don’t come cryin’ to me.” He says flatly.

“I won’t…” you start, “but-“

You point to the screen, singling out a few characters being hunted by hideous and… very naked titans. Gross, Osamu thinks.

“-they might.”

If you were known to watch shows for the plot, he wouldn’t mind your series marathons all that much. But he knows you too well.

Osamu flickers his gaze to the TV and steps in front of the screen, intentionally blocking your view. It’s an attempt to steal your attention away from all of these fictional characters you claim to keep “falling in love with.”

You whine and tell him to “get his ass out of the way,” while craning around his broad shoulders to see. It’d be a shame to miss out on Levi Ackerman’s hella sculpted jawline, even just for a second.

But your efforts are to no avail. ‘Samu (his ass included) refuses to move away from the screen.

You breathe out a white flag of a sigh, slumping back into the couch in defeat. Though you’d planned on this being a solo watch party, you know that the only way to get what you want out of this situation (Levi screen time) is by appeasing your actual boyfriend.

“Whatever ‘Samu. Just join me already.” You huff out.

Tossing open your blanket for him, you pat the empty space expectantly. If you’re going to give him any attention at all, he’s obligated to at least keep you warm.

And he won’t lie, you look very comfortable.

Seeing you cozied up in his apartment and lazily splayed out on his couch has always made him melt a little. Osamu is just a bit domestic like that.

But if you’re just going to use his Netflix account to fawn over fake (albeit incredibly sexy) men, then he’s less than thrilled to have you sitting there alone. Any good boyfriend would be at least a little agitated… right?

So for the sake of reining you and your wandering mind in, he decides to plop down next to you. The whole couch sinks when he sits and you tilt into him like a planet gravitating toward the sun. A really obnoxious, show-interrupting sun.

Osamu snakes an arm around your back, pulling you into his chest, and turns his head toward the TV. All is calm as you get comfortable and adjust yourself against him... until suddenly the screen splatters red. His arm tenses against your waist and a frown forms on his face. Apparently, something or someone just bit the dust. 

“What exactly are ya watchin’?” He asks, tone drenched in disgust.

You whip your head toward him, an eyebrow cocked and lips parted. You’re looking at him as though he’d just gone and grown a third eye or called your mom a hoe. In terms of drama, Osamu is beginning to think you might actually rival Atsumu.

“You seriously don’t know?” 

“Do I look like someone who keeps up with anime?” 

��Well… no,” you admit slowly, “but that’s got nothing to do with you not knowing about Attack on Titan. I bet even Kita has heard of it.”

You wait for recognition to flicker in his grey eyes at the mention of the anime’s name. Instead, he gives you his signature blank stare. Should you be shocked or disappointed? Which emotion would bother him more?

“Yeah, it doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Have you been living under a rock?” You scoff, mouth still agape.

“No, but I basically live with you and that’s difficult enough.” He jests, poking you in the side.

His warm hands gives you a quick squeeze and you almost jump out of his hold. For someone who runs a restaurant, he’s got some well-toned arms. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to escape his grasp anytime soon.

“No! None of that shit!” You hiss as he tries to tickle you. “You’re just trying to distract me.”

Your back curls like a cat and you bat at his hands to abate any further pokes or prods. He only chuckles, smirking at your feeble attempts to stop him. You were the one provoking him in the first place, but he’ll let it slide just this once.

When Osamu no longer seems like a threat to your ticklish sides, you nestle back into him. Your hand rests lightly on his chest and your head finds a soft-ish spot on his shoulder.

Feigning a pout, you mutter, “Captain Levi wouldn’t treat me like this.”

He’s quick to respond.

“Well, Levi-” the name sounds uncharacteristically bitter as it leaves his lips, “-wouldn’t treat you like anything, sweetheart. Sorry, but he ain’t real.”

You open your mouth to protest, but Osamu beats you to it.

“And judging by the rate these people are dyin’, he probably won’t last long enough for you to even mentally date him.”

“Don’t underestimate me and my mental dating abilities, ‘Samu.”  You warn, “Or Levi. He could totally beat your ass.”

With perfect timing, Levi makes an appearance, striking a lethal blow to another one of the babbling giants. Two giants. Now four of them. Okay, he might’ve spoken too soon.

“Mm… maybe. But he probably couldn’t put up with all of your bullshit. This Levi kid seems like a bit of a hardass,” Osamu responds after a few minutes of transfixed silence.

You jut your lip out, sinking further into the couch, “Crush my dreams, why don’t you?”

He rolls his eyes in response.

“But,” you continue, “you’ve gotta admit, he is attractive. I mean, just look at those eyes. That body, too…” you breathe.

You swoon and tease and clutch at your heart, but it’s all an act to get under ‘Samu’s skin. He is your number one, after all. Teasing is just a part of your relationship and you would try to milk it whenever you could.

However, you don’t get a verbal response from him this time. He just tightens his hold around you and buries his nose in your hair. Warm breath tickles your scalp and trails across your skin.

Is he pouting? Or is he finally watching the show without adding commentary to it? You can’t tell the difference.

Osamu stays like that for a moment and you revert your attention back to the screen, intent on catching the last couple minutes of this episode. 

Though you hardly have a chance to re-invest yourself before Osamu is speaking again.

“Well, I’m just glad he’s behind a TV screen,” he sighs against your head, “and-”

A smirk works its way onto his lips and Osamu begins circling a thumb on your exposed thigh. Your breath hitches and you turn to face him. His fingers press against your skin and play at the hem of your shorts.

The warmth of his hand sinks deeply into you like poison. In a matter of seconds, you’re at a loss for words, rendered unfit for battle… even if that battle is just teasing the ever-living shit out of him.

Thoughts of the show, of Levi, of other fictional men, are long gone from your mind. 

Damn him for still having this effect on you after all this time.

“-judging by the way you can’t keep your hands off of me-“

He glances at your hand, which is resting delicately on his abdomen. You’re pressed up tightly against him, tucked into his side and looking up at his face which seems dangerously close to your own. Then his eyes, heavy-lidded and a shade of grey far prettier than Levi’s, flicker down to your lips. 

Your skin flushes hot and you grip the fabric of his shirt.

“-I’d say you’ve gotta be at least half as into me as you’re into general Levi or whatever the hell his name is,” Osamu murmurs, his breath fanning gently on your lips.

He leans in, planting a slow kiss at the corner of your mouth, effectively teasing the delicate skin.

With one calloused hand on your face and the other still stroking your thigh, you feel your mind going fuzzy. This was escalating much faster than you’d expected it to and you haven’t even had the chance to pause your show. 

You glance over to the TV...  and heaven seems to be shining down upon you. It’s the blessed Netflix “are you still watching” screen; your show is perfectly paused. Now you can focus on what’s right in front of you.

Osamu finally has your full, undivided attention. Just as he should.

“Just for the record, it’s captain Levi.” You whisper to him.

“Oh, shut up.” He says before crashing his lips into yours.

You do, in fact, shut up.

[rivalsforlife]

Do you have anything you wished was different from Ace Attorney canon?

Hello I'm finally slowly starting to get around to answering some of these! Sorry for the wait.

Uh this ask got super long so a basic summary of it: narumitsu being canon in a well-written way would be nice even though I don't think it would ever happen, I stand by not bringing back Phoenix as a main protagonist in DD, and I'd also want to rewrite all of SOJ so that Apollo goes to Khura'in in place of Phoenix, to have more interesting character stuff going on.

So the longer answer is this:

Aside from some of the actually problematic stuff that I don't feel qualified to talk about, story-wise, I answered a sort of similar question about a year ago here. I have changed my opinions a little bit since then, particularly with regards to the canonicity of narumitsu... because while I do love narumitsu I feel like I don't trust Ace Attorney to actually do it properly. After all if this past November has taught us anything "making a ship canon" could actually be quite undesirable and I have no desire to see Phoenix and/or Edgeworth sent to superhell. (I literally know nothing else about supernatural sorry about that.)

If capcom were somehow able to make narumitsu canon but in an unobtrusive way and as a natural progression of the storyline, like oh hey, the court record profile for Miles Edgeworth's Obligatory Last-Case Appearance has Phoenix mention they're dating, and maybe there's a few lines suggesting they live with each other, but it's not like... taking the entire story to force them together and otherwise does not change the way they interact with each other and butcher one or both of their characterizations in the process? I'd definitely be happy about that. Not gonna lie even if they made narumitsu canon in the most terrible way possible I'd have a "holy shit I can't believe they did that it's the best day of my life" kind of moment before I could think about it critically. But I honestly see no chance of them ever actually making narumitsu canon, so that's quite unrealistic to hope for anyways.

Aside from that in that other ask I talked about basically the premise of an Apollo trilogy and not bringing back Phoenix as the main protagonist in DD, and I still stand by that, buuut in my other ask I did touch on making SOJ a different game where Apollo goes to Khura'in instead of Phoenix - and you know what I'm going to take some time to actually talk about my dream version of SOJ because there were a lot of little things about the one we got that I didn't like. And it's going to be very long. So it's under a cut.

SO yeah I talked about it a bit in the other ask. I think that Phoenix going to Khura'in is a rather weak idea both externally and in-universe. In one of the interviews, too lazy to find which one, Phoenix basically goes to Khura'in because the writers couldn't figure out how to challenge him anymore. ... And then they don't actually challenge him at all. Because oh well now we're going to this new country where they KILL DEFENSE ATTORNEYS WHO LOSE and then it's supposed to be *shocking* that Phoenix would risk his life for a kid or his best friend. you know the guy who ran across a burning bridge to save his best friend. you know the guy who got punched in the face, nearly killed by the mafia, and tazed trying to save his clients. This doesn't tell me anything new about Phoenix's character. His whole travel in Khura'in doesn't tell me anything new about Phoenix's character. Basically the only reason he's there is to see Maya - Maya who theoretically would be returning home in about two weeks. Maya who was still in her training for two more weeks when Phoenix visited so he wouldn't be able to see her anyways. ... And in the meantime Trucy had the biggest show of her life that was going to be on TV and Phoenix wasn't there for it. And of course Phoenix didn't return home after Trucy was accused of murder (yes he couldn't be there for the trial, but he definitely could have for the emotional support afterwards) and instead just sits for two weeks in Khura'in doing literally nothing after Ahlbi's trial.

(And yes I know about the anime prologue that has Phoenix think Maya's in danger... but that's not strictly canon since it's never mentioned in game, isn't technically a part of the game, and even still, why wouldn't he go home after knowing that Maya's safe and that Trucy had been ACCUSED OF MURDER. Honestly that's what makes me angriest about this whole thing is that it makes Phoenix out to be a terrible dad. We really don't need any more takes like that, especially not from canon.)

And what about Apollo, you may ask? Well, given case 5 of SOJ, Apollo actually has a personal link to Khura'in and ends up staying there afterwards... after being there for like a day or two. I should note here that it has been a while since I went through SOJ in its entirety so I am fuzzy on many of the details. But both through what I remember and some conversations with people who actually played the game recently, the motivation for Apollo to actually stay in Khura'in isn't that great. It mainly seemed like guilt about his dead dad who he hadn't been in contact with for years and had completely written off until a few days ago but oh he died and then went to go visit him so... better take up the law office!

If Apollo had gone to Khura'in in place of Phoenix and spent more time there, reconnecting with his childhood home and actually getting passionate seeing how corrupt the legal system is there (even though we have a corrupt legal system at home) and being driven to fix it, that would make for a stronger story, I think. The Khura'in plot is more personally focused around Apollo than it is Phoenix. Phoenix's connection to Khura'in is through Maya, but Maya doesn't really have much of a connection to it aside from "it's where spirit channeling is from and she trains there". But Apollo, I guess, grew up there. So it's so strange to me that they force all of Apollo's connection to Khura'in in the last case while Phoenix is running around doing who-knows-what for the rest of the game. Phoenix spends more time getting to know the state of Khura'in and the Defiant Dragons and case 3's whole thing but he isn't the one who in the end decides to sit down and fix it; that's all on Apollo. It almost feels like they forced one of the two plots in to everything. And it was probably conceived as a Phoenix story that they needed to fit Apollo into last minute because oops he's supposed to be a protagonist too.

Some other strengths to Apollo going to Khura'in include that it would shake up the character dynamics a bit. Instead of Phoenix defending Maya, it's Apollo defending Maya, and that's a particularly interesting thing to look at in the context of Khura'in's "we kill defense attorneys" system. Of course, Phoenix would risk his life to save Maya, 100%, every time. But what about Apollo, who hasn't met Maya, who only knows her as "Mr. Wright's former assistant" - would he risk his life for her? And I feel like Maya would argue more against him defending her because of that. "We're strangers, you don't know me, you don't have to risk your life defending me." (Sidenote that I was always upset that Maya didn't protest much when Phoenix offered to defend her, knowing his life was at risk - sure she knows him better and knows he's always been able to get her out of these situations, but at the same time, the fact that there was no "what about your daughter?" conversation sucks. I really wish SOJ wouldn't have like. completely forgotten about the phoenix-trucy father-daughterisms.)

Let's say Apollo goes to Khura'in. Phoenix stays at home. Phoenix gets a call from Apollo that's basically "uhh hi Mr. Wright you know your friend Maya, she's been arrested for murder, if I defend her and I lose we're both dead," then you can tie in to that moment in 6-2 where Phoenix (who can't make it in time for the trial!) believes in Apollo and his skills as an attorney, not just to save Maya's life, but also his own. It ties in a bit more to the overall challenge of defending someone at the risk of your own life. Again, Phoenix would have very few hesitations, if any, risking his life to defend Maya. Apollo may have more defending a stranger at the risk of his own life.

Then if you can actually have Apollo and Maya talk together that would be neat - Maya can tell him embarrassing stories about Phoenix's rookie days, for instance. Their dynamic would be quite a bit different from Phoenix and Maya's, and that would be an interesting thing to see, unlike what we have in SOJ where all of Maya's substantial interactions are with characters she already knows or brand new characters.

(It would also be pretty neat to know more spirit channeling politics and dive in more to Maya's perspective on Khura'in and also her role as upcoming Master of the Kurain Channeling Technique and where she plans to lead the village in the future and also reconcile with her family's bloody legacy, but I'm not quite sure how to fit that in right now.)

And how about Phoenix, back home in Japanifornia? Evidently he'd end up being in charge of defending Trucy. Now, I did love the siblingsisms in canon 6-2, but I feel like there is still potential for Phoenix defending Trucy. All of Apollo Justice has a bunch of good moments between Apollo and Trucy, and she's co-counsel on all his trials, but we've never had any substantial Phoenix and Trucy investigation or co-counsel moments. I feel like AU 6-2 would be a great opportunity to dive more into Phoenix and Trucy's relationship and how it may have changed after Phoenix got his badge back. Plus, Phoenix being "the only one who knows how she really feels on the inside", he'd have unique insider knowledge into some of the Gramarye stuff that comes up in the case and Trucy's personal connection to the Gramaryes, which Apollo knows a bit of, but Phoenix knows more of. ... Or at least, should know more of, given that he raised Trucy for nine years at this point and they're very close, and Phoenix knows her better than anyone else does, even if capcom has forgotten this.

... Of course having Athena defend the case would also be great because more Athena spotlight is never a bad thing, but it's hard to come up with a reason why Phoenix wouldn't be there to defend her. And doing more switcheroos in terms of role in the plot is a bit beyond the scope of what I have in mind right now. Sorry Athena.

Aside from that, Athena still gets Storyteller, Apollo still heads Turnabout Revolution, and Phoenix still gets the DLC case. Apollo stays in Khura'in in the end with a bit more to his motivations. Rather than it just being about carrying on Dhurke's legacy, it's also something Apollo is passionate about after all he witnessed here. While we're at it I'd still rework a lot of Turnabout Revolution to make it so that Phoenix genuinely believes in Atishon because that makes for sooo much more interesting of a plot and actual character development on Phoenix's part than "Maya was kidnapped again and Phoenix is only wrong when he has no other choice", but that'd require some more detail and this post is long enough already.

And in terms of other details that need to be sorted out, there's the question of why Apollo would need to go to Khura'in in the first place. I'd probably say something to do with Dhurke. Maybe he comes back a bit earlier - actually alive, maybe, though crossing borders would be a bit of a challenge, or he reaches out to Apollo remotely somehow and Apollo goes to yell in his face about abandoning him (or at least that's what he thinks he wants.) Then we could have some more Dhurke and Apollo bonding time, potentially? Idk, if you switch up Phoenix and Apollo you're pretty much writing a whole new game and obviously I have not worked out all the details, but I think if Capcom had tried to go with this route from the outset they'd have a stronger game. At least stronger character motivations.

So... yeah. Those are my opinions. If you read through this whole thing I'm very impressed because it got very long!