St. Nothing

For me my chewtoy is Charles suddenly snapping “You’ll rip your arm clean off. Stop that now!” and Edwin immediately obeying

It instantly shifts the power dynamic of the scene - before then, Edwin has been condescendingly ordering Charles around, and then Charles snaps a command and from that point in the scene Charles is in charge (telling Edwin to take deep breaths and use his big brain), in a sort of… protectively and lovingly firm caretaker role. And Edwin accepts that power shift without hesitation or complaint, no attempt to either assert authority (as he had been doing earlier) or resist authority (as he does with anyone other than Charles)

And it’s a pretty sharp snap, which means the only time we’re really shown Charles being at all aggressive towards Edwin without being completely and utterly in crash-out mode is in order to protect Edwin from himself, and a clearly-long-established part of Charles’s protector role being protecting Edwin from Edwin by force if necessary just makes me kind of feral. (He also gets kinda harsh with the impatient “Great, can we go?”s when Edwin’s stalling leaving Hell, which is also protecting Edwin from Edwin, from his POV at the time.) Like, how often does it happen, that Charles has to intervene to prevent Edwin from harming himself? And it’s not just him that’s adopted that as part of his role, Edwin also clearly accepts that as part of Charles’s role, and and and

Anyway, I could write a twenty page essay on that line because it’s my chewtoy, but the point here isn’t my essay it’s the invitation to share your chewtoys. So what are y’all’s?

A fic written 2 years ago is NOT OLD. Two years is nothing. Two years ago was yesterday.

They’ve always been unconventional, so this thing they have (being utterly devoted to the point of walking through Hell to save one another) reflects that. They love each other, both in their own unique way, and they wouldn’t want anything else.

See, just, aromantic Charles who thinks he’s broken because he can’t give Edwin “what he deserves” and Edwin accepting everything Charles gives him happily, because he knows Charles loves him wholly and completely.

gasps. you captured The Shape