Arctic Light

I ended up nominating a few things for Enemies to Lovers (hush, I'm using it as a bribe for finishing my other assignments xD) and this made me spend some time thinking about which of my ships actually qualify - I had some trouble coming up with a third fandom, and trying to figure out where exactly I'd draw the line. (Like, I wouldn't call Sam/Bucky E2L - more like people who mildly antagonize each other to friends/lovers. But some might!)

So I got to wondering how other people define it. I selected check boxes since some people might have more than one answer. I mean, *I'm* not even sure where I fall in all of this!

I've been noticing lately how much I love physical gestures of affection that aren't sexually charged in particular, between two characters who *are* romantically interested in each other (or whose status is "maybe") - hair petting, forehead kisses, that kind of thing. I knew I liked the inverse (normally romantic gestures and touches, or tropes like arranged marriage, between two people who genuinely aren't interested in each other that way), but I have only really been noticing the other one recently. And I mean ... obviously it can be sexual/romantic in nature? Like, there's a lot of middle ground there, and I think it might be the weirdness/ambiguity/slipperiness of the middle ground that really gets to me. Anyway, it's a thing I really like, which I am now finding weirdly difficult to describe, but I find myself putting it in fic more often these days.

(I strongly suspect that if this explanation doesn't make sense, or needs a bunch of clarification of the edge cases, or if you want to argue with me about what it really means, this probably isn't a thing you're into, and that's fine; however, if you see this and go "OOH", then perhaps it is.)