First Of All, I've Absolutely Loved The Fic, I Love How You Write Them Interacting With Eachother. Secondly,

First of all, I've absolutely loved the fic, I love how you write them interacting with eachother. Secondly, I'd love to hear more about your lube research because from what I've gathered Vaseline was invented in 1872, but it became a popular lubricant in the mid 1900's and the first comercial lube was invented in 1904.

Thanks for your fic!

I full body CACKLED at this ask 🤣 thank you for liking my fic! It means the world to me that people are liking it!

As for the research…

I am no historian by ANY means, so I just waved my hand around some technical things and made up a rhetoric for myself:

If one person from this couple is a more seasoned veteran on being gay, he’d know more about **things**

Said person is not rich (by the era standards) but he’s probably got good connections in a community that is marginalized and persecuted (meaning, they’ve got each other’s backs and would help out with almost anything, to their abilities)

Probably has had more than 1 partner in the past so it’s trial and error, practice makes perfect, and experience mixed all together

Taking all of this into consideration… while yes, petroleum jelly was **just** invented but hadn’t actually gained a popular status in the market, what were other historically known substances used prior to its invention?

Oils.

And Henry could probably get his hands on some better quality ones (both by his presence as a photographer and how alluring people used to find that profession [ie. payment through services or favors/products for **explicit** photography]). So think, more than the cooking olive oil or oils you’d find in a kitchen, he’d probably have access to things like clove oil or even hemp seed oil. Maybe even GOOD quality ones that come from outside England (importing them would’ve made them wayyy more expensive, but if poppy sold for cheaper than bread, surely some seller would sell nice oils for a more affordable price).

… or they could’ve easily raw-dogged it and used saliva.