Thank you for reading, and for your kind words. Although this story was written primarily with an aro/ace audience in mind, it was never supposed to be solely for them. Representation isn't only about the people seeing themselves, after all, it's also a vector of acceptance and understanding for those around them, and the public at large.
Colin is done with his work for the day, and Dragon has decided to ring him up for an idle chat.
(They are alike, in many ways. He knows that. Similar drives, always striving to do better, to be better. Similar tastes, in movies and stories and shows. Similar lack of close relationships.)
Colin likes talking to her.
"Did you watch yesterday's episode of C.R.U.X.?" Dragon asks.
"Kind off," he answers. "I was doing some routine maintenance on the Halberd so I put it in the background, but I wasn't following super closely. It wasn't a very good one anyway."
"Really?" Dragon says, the Newfoundland accent, half-hidden as it is, made thicker by her surprise. "Most people are happy about Varina and Leo's kiss."
"I don't like that," Colin says. "It feels… Unnecessary. They had a great storyline going, a forced romantic subplot is just going to weight it down. That's how it always goes."
There doesn't need to be romance in every damn story, but it feels like there is, and Colin is tired of it.
(The lack of it was part of why he liked C.R.U.X in the first place, and now it's gone.)
"I wouldn't say it's forced," Dragon says, "or that it will be a detriment to the story. People like that kind of thing. Everyone wants to find someone to spend their lives with."
Colin thinks about Sophia, about what she told him, and he's not sure, not yet, but…
"I don't," he says.
Dragon lets out a small laugh.
"Don't worry," she says, "I'm sure you will find the right person one day."
There is something strange buried in Colin's throat, a scream, or a sob, something hot and hard that won't let him breathe, and he has never been more aware of how far away Dragon really is, in her appartement somewhere in Canada.
"I'm sorry," Colin says, and the word feels like tearing his own guts out because he isn't, he's not sorry, and if he stays here, if he has to keep seeing her face he's going to say something, to do something he will regret, "I need to go. I just remembered, I think I left a light on in my house this morning."
As he turns off the monitor, he knows Dragon doesn't believe him.
Colin comes to work the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and he keeps doing so, except on the days he doesn't go home at all. Things are a bit more heated right now. Not an outright crisis, but enough to keep busy.
Dragon doesn't mention the way Colin lied and left, is perfectly polite and friendly, but Colin feels like there is something between them, a distance or a wall of glass, and he doesn't know if it's a fruit of his imagination or something that is really there. If it comes from him or her.
He should talk to her about it, he knows, before it takes root, simmers, spoils one of his rare friendships. He should, but…
He doesn't know how. He doesn't even know where to start.
(All his doubts and questions are still there, in the back of his mind, neither ignored nor dwelled upon, an uncertain tinge over his every thoughts.)
There is something strange buried in Colin's throat, a scream, or a sob, something hot and hard that won't let him breathe, and he has never been more aware of how far away Dragon really is, in her appartement somewhere in Canada.
When Colin goes in the break room to get himself a coffee, Sophia is there, and no one else.
Neither say a word, or do more than distantly acknowledge the other, but there is something hanging in the silence between them, something heavy and unspoken.
(There are many things Colin is keeping silent. Many things hanging, heavy and unspoken, weaving walls of cold glass around him, watching others through inside a box.)
The coffee machine drones on, excruciating.
"You had a friend," Colin says, and he almost jumps at the sound of his own voice. "When you were in the Wards. A civilian girl from your school."
"Katelyn," Sophia says. "Yeah."
The machine sputters out, and he stares as the last drops fall, bitter and dark.
He doesn't take the cup.
"Did you tell her?" he asks, his words shattering against the silence and the glass.
"Not at first," Sophia says, and she's not looking at him, her gaze fixed on the door. She laughs, briefly. Humorlessly. "I used to think I had a crush on her, you know. She was pretty, I liked spending time with her, I thought everyone had to love someone. I thought people were exaggerating when they talked about love, and that I loved her. Turns out I did, just not in a song and flowers and dates way."
The strange feeling in Colin's guts comes back, like a bird trying to spread its wings.
"But you did tell her," he says.
"I did," Sophia confirms. "She… She didn't react well at first, kept telling me it was just a phase and I would meet The One, but she came around in the end. It felt good, having someone who believed me."
The bird is making loops in Colin's stomach as he walks back to his office.
Colin doesn't quite remember why or when he decided to do more research on the subject, but three days after his conversation with Sophia, he finds himself sitting at his computer, her message opened before him.
He goes deeper this time. He looks at the questions, and the answers, in the spectrum and the shades of grey and the things that aren't clean-cut, obvious, self-evident, into the words he didn't see the last time he looked.
Yes, he can be asexual if he has had sex. Yes, he can be asexual if he didn't dislike it.
Yes, he can be aromantic if he has been in relationships.
Yes, he counts.
The screen blurs before his eyes, and Colin realizes he's crying.
It's late. There are no windows in his office, nothing to show him the sun or the stars, but the digital clock at the bottom of his screen betrays the passage of the hours, if only he remembers to check.
"I should go to sleep," Colin says.
"Yes," Dragon says. She pauses, hesitates, continues. "I wanted to apologize. When we talked about C.R.U.X.. I didn't listen to you. I'm sorry about that."
Colin freezes.
I'm sorry for lying and leaving, he doesn't say, because he still can't think of what he could have done better.
It's fine, he doesn't say, because it hurt him, even if she has no way of knowing why.
Forget about it, he doesn't say, because suddenly, he's remembering Sophia telling him about coming out to her friend.
She told him it was worth it.
"Dragon?" Colin asks. "Do… Do you know what 'aromantic' means? And 'asexual'?"
She hesitates. Not long, barely enough for him to notice, but she does, and the instant stretches like the scales of a sea monster, and Colin can feel the bird crawl up into his throat.
"Yes," Dragon says. "I do."
Colin almost doesn't go through with it. Almost gives up, almost says he heard the words in the news, almost pretends they have nothing to do with him. Dragon would let him, he thinks.
The nanothorns Halberd, almost complete, is lying on his desk. He has spent many hours on it, over the course of many months. A weapon made to slay a monster.
He lets the bird out.
"That's me," Colin says. "I'm... That's me."
The words feel better than silence.
And thus ends this story. I hope you all enjoyed it!
I thanked you last week on my Reddit account but I seriously appreciate this story - I discovered I was aro ace in college because my psych prof brought it up when talking about the Kinsey scale and have only recently started talking to other people about it. Before now I mostly saw rep through activists online, and some podcasts and it didn't really occur to me how much I wanted something like this - It really helps and I wanted to say again, thank you for writing this. Hopefully in the future we see more rep in the mainstream
