Locke had a very strange game.  Three days ago he specifically let Natasha know he was angling for her romantically; she said she wanted more memories, he put things on hold.  Two days ago he stole Kira’s fingertrap. Yesterday he slept with Kira, gave it back, and got slapped.  THIS IS CONFUSING ENOUGH AS IT IS.  So of course a game promoting casual physical intimacy makes it even weirder.

Let’s break it down chronologically.  He kissed Dorian, Sinbad, Canna/Clover, Natasha, Selenia, Kira, Briar, Naha, Smoke/Ahad, Rin, Radu, Obsidian, Sunshine, Mirage, Beauty, Madame White, David, and Dean.

In thread order, I thiiink his kiss with Dorian was the very first kiss in the game?  Anyway, he meant it to be.  Another example of Locke being reckless with Personae just.. to show he can?  Not terribly meaningful.

Kissing Sinbad was a playful thing, basically just a conversational gambit for control, but I will say it was one of two kisses with a guy where he said “that was fun and I might do it again.”  Which I did not expect.  So.  Something to consider.

Kissing Selenia, Briar, Ahad, Radu, Obsidian, David, & Dean… all of those were entirely about the game.  There was a friendly element with a lot of them, and kissing a dragon was about bragging rights, but basically the conversations were more meaningful than the kiss.  Mirage is kind of a border case because of all the banter and flirting, Locke was sort of like “well maybe kissing dudes is okay I guess?” Which made Dean more awkward because.  Nope.  Kissing dudes is still weird.

Basically, Locke is straighter than I am.

Kissing Canna/Clover was something he paid specific attention to because it was the first kiss of the game with someone he found physically attractive?  And the blushing was fun, and they both got into it a little.  Ideally, from his perspective, it would have been better if every kiss in the game was like this one.  He’s a little curious whether she was just embarrassed or whether she’d be interested in doing it again, but it’s a mild thing and mitigated by some of the more serious stuff later.

Natasha, on the other hand… he was just going to talk to her.  But she… reeled him in when he was going to stay back?  And wow, it was everything he’d been hoping it would be, and it seemed to mean something to her too, and then… she apologized?  Which deeply baffled him.  Anyway, he’s still very very much interested and that was a definite Moment of some sort.

Kira and Locke got a short span of time to chat and iron out some misunderstandings.  He acknowledged his attraction was real, they made out a lot because Kira Issues (and he was brazen enough to still ask for a kiss), and as far as he can see things are still fraught and up in the air.  He’s definitely interested in something, but he’s not positive what.  He also has deliberately not yet begun to ponder how the Kira & Natasha situations might effect one another, if they would.

You know, Matt-the-player isn’t that interested in women who intimidate him, but based on who I play you’d never guess that wasn’t an ironclad kink of mine.

Naha.  Well.  Naha is really hot.  There were wine metaphors.  Locke told Sinbad later that she had nice… grapes.  But I think he emotionally disengaged a bit at this point because he realized that his kissing life is complicated enough as it is.  Still, if he had things figured out, he wouldn’t mind doing that again.  He just didn’t mean it when he told her he’d like to do that again.  Or rather, he’d like to, but he doesn’t intend to.

Rin is fun to mess with.

Sunshine.  Sort of Canna, part 2?  Here’s a younger lady who seems attracted to him & who he has a previously established flirting relationship (which is more than he had with Canna before, they have a previously established let’s-get-revenge relationship).  Kissing her was a great deal of fun, but after his distancing with Naha, he deliberately gave himself some mental space on this one.  Unless Steph pursued him in some way, he doesn’t want another layer of complications.

Beauty (and Mal).  So he actually wanted to kiss Mal and just sort of wanted to tease Beauty, and then Beauty (TOTALLY JUSTIFIABLY) zapped and chastised him when he tried to ‘steal’ a kiss, because Locke is dumb and dumber around Personae; & Mal & Allison also chastised him, and… *in context* he learned a lesson here, which is that Beauty has more steel in her than he thought, and that tempers but doesn’t remove her vulnerability, and… he won’t mess with her again.  And then she danced with him, and was patient with him, and let him kiss her, and his respect for her and dere for her went up A LOT.

And then Mal was less charmed by him and he totally blew any chance he might have had to kiss her, and this is leading to a lot of Thought about Sterling and Onyx, and probably the first real thoughts he’s had about moderating his behavior.  Like, from stealing from Jaina and getting a trauma memory, he learned “be careful about memories” but nothing about more generalized caution.  Stealing from Madame White lead him to want to know what he was doing.  Stealing from Old Joe reminded him of how tricky Personas can be.  Stealing from Kira reminded him that he can hurt his friends and trigger unforeseen consequences.

And yet, trying to steal a kiss from Beauty is the first time he’s done something and had the thought “my behavior as a whole may need some modification, the problem here is general and not specific.”

Locke is not terribly self-aware.

Madame White.  The kiss itself wasn’t meaningful in any way but it did get him thinking about patron options and persona relations and his role as a knight and how he could find alternate ways to live up to hit.  his lecture by Allison helped with that, too.

So there’s a lot of substance here for him to deal with, moving forward.