omg are you willing to talk more about Julian liking to be edged because holy shit the response to that ask was hot 🥵

Oh yeah for sure. So like, here’s my thing. Have you ever had the kind of orgasm that reverberates so hard in your nervous system, that just completely overwhelms all higher thought and cerebral function until all that’s left is what’s hard-coded in the hindbrain and all you can do is laugh?

Because I think Julian needs that a lot, to function optimally. He needs the hard reset. He needs the overstimulation that gives way to peace. He needs to have all his thoughts just be-borped right outta that brain. I think it’s in part due to the autism and in part due to the augmentations just how loud his brain gets and then can’t downshift. He needs something that will override the noise.

Enter, your friendly neighborhood torturer. Interrogation and torture are two different things with two different aims. One is about eliciting information, the other is about power and control. And Garak is someone who understands power and control. He would feel utterly remorseless hearing Julian whine and keen and fight the restraints as he takes him right to the precipice and just… lets it slowly receed. It would rewire the synapses in his brain to know that’s exactly what Julian wants, that he’s giving Julian pleasure, that he’s taking care of Julian.

There’s something I’ve spoken about before, usually in the context of professional wrestling, but when you are raised in the theater of domestic violence you understand the language of violence. You speak it fluently. And there’s nothing inherently wrong or bad about wanting to see the language of violence represented in a fictional context or in how you choose to work out your own body or to exert control over someone who consents to it. It’s not morally repugnant nor does it make you a bad person or degenerate person if your sex reflects a language of violence (power, control, sensory overwhelm, restraint, denial, humiliation, pain) in it so long as it’s safe, sane, and consensual. In any scene, the sub should hold all the power. Their consent predicates the existence of the play. It can be withdrawn at any time. It’s not shameful to explore those things during sex. Sex can be many things. It also doesn’t have to be one thing all the time to one person.

Which is how sometimes you end up getting tenderly edged to the point of tears and writhing as if you’re in agony, reduced to begging, completely helpless. Because you need to feel helpless and out of control and no longer in charge of you but safe. Because you have felt those things before and harm was done to you. Those things are happening to you now, and then you will orgasm and be held and petted and told you are loved. Told you are worthy of being kept warm and safe to fall asleep. Because you have been judged before, and found not worthy.