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Ravi grabbed his hand and squeezed. “No.”
Wren blinked as he carefully pulled his hand away. “Ravi…”
“No. There can be a thousand books, and a thousand blogs, and a thousand articles published about what makes someone aromantic, and you still might not find the exact definition that explains who you are and how you feel.”
Wren took in a long, slow breath. “It doesn’t seem fair to people like you who…fit their labels better than me.”
Ravi stared, then threw his head back in laughter, his whole body moving with it. “I don’t fit anywhere the way people want me to, and I love that about myself,” he eventually replied when he could control his arms again. “I’ve been with people before. I’ve been with people who made me feel good, and I’ve been with some who made me feel like the very idea of sex would be better solved by throwing myself into the sun. That doesn’t make me less asexual.”
That startled a laugh out of Wren. “But… I’m?—"
“You,” Ravi interrupted, letting his finger thump Wren in the center of his chest. “Romance, sexuality, identity…it’s a spectrum. Fit where you fit, and don’t let anyone else make you feel like you don’t belong. And if someone does, I will fight them. With my fists.” He held up curled hands like a boxer, and something about his pose made Wren crack.
His chest felt like it was bursting, and all he could do was grab Ravi and pull him close, holding him as he started shaking because it made sense again. Not completely. Not entirely. He still felt lost at sea with no idea what to do about Percy because he was still so goddamn confused, but he didn’t want to peel his own skin off anymore.
Ravi sat in his arms, gently rubbing a hand up and down Wren’s spine until he could breathe again. When Wren let him go, Ravi cupped his cheeks and knocked their foreheads together, just sitting in each other’s space.
It was such an odd sensation to feel naïve and young in the face of someone who was almost a decade beneath him, but it was a profound sense of comfort too. He felt like he was home, and he’d never been more grateful in his life for someone who understood him.
When he sat back, he leaned his head against the cushion and looked at his friend. “Will you ever want to be with someone? Like long term?”
Ravi shrugged. “No idea. I’m willing to if I meet someone who understands me, but the few times I’ve tried, it didn’t work out. Even when I want sex, it’s different from the way other people want it.”
Peh-peh. Wren knew exactly what Ravi was saying because he’d felt that way about falling in love. He just hadn’t realized it at the time. “It’s so hard to live up to those expectations when they feel so…”
“Unnatural?” Ravi signed. He reached for his tea and took a long drink before settling back. “I had a girlfriend once who said she understood. And she tried her best, but she realized she was waiting for me to start being more…normal, I guess. And when I couldn’t be, she took it personally. Like me not thinking about fucking her brains out every seven seconds meant I thought she was ugly or unworthy. It fell apart after a month.”
Wren rubbed at his face. That’s what terrified him about Percy. They had one night together and a friendship fraught with chaos. Hell, he wasn’t even sure they were speaking anymore, considering how long it had been since he’d heard from him. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wanted to give it a try.
Even with his past crushes—the few that were real—he’d never felt so strongly before. He wanted to give Percy the benefit of the doubt that maybe he could be the one who got it.
The only problem was Wren didn’t know what he was going to need if he gave a relationship a try.
He looked up when Ravi waved his hand in his periphery. “You know you don’t have to figure it all out right now.”
Wren laughed. “Yes, thank you. I do know that. I might be uneducated, but I’ve existed in the dating world a lot longer than you.”
Ravi flipped him off with a grin. “Well, you’re either emotionally or physically constipated. I can make you coffee for one of them, but the other…”
Wren shoved him, then laughed as Ravi dove at him and dragged him into a cuddle. They sat for a while, and then Wren tapped him on the arm before signing with one hand, “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Ravi squeezed him before answering, “Luckily, you’ll never have to find out.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Percy felt like shit for being completely distracted during his ASL lesson with Luke, but he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t expected to be babysitting that day, and he was terrified that Lila would act up enough that Luke would just quit on him. But his sister had an impromptu meeting with CPS regarding her adoption hearing, and his only saving grace with Luke was that Anthony could back him up in promising it wasn’t on purpose.
Percy wasn’t trying to make things difficult, though he really was starting to feel like a burden on a lot of people. He did his best through the lesson to focus, but his heart wasn’t in it. And as much as he wanted to say it was only Lila’s situation that was making him stray, it wasn’t.
Every time he saw Luke, he thought about Wren. And every time he thought about Wren, his world felt like it was turning sideways.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Percy signed at the end. He’d practiced the whole speech before showing up to the class, and he’d been waiting for an in so he could give it. ‘I know you’re taking time out of your day to work with me privately.’
‘It’s okay,’ Luke signed very slowly, mouthing along the words after slipping his laptop back into his bag. ‘I understand.’
Luke glanced over at Lila, who was happily decorating a few sugar cookies that Luke had brought with him to keep her entertained. His heart ached at the thought of something going wrong, and he still hadn’t heard from Penny, so he had no idea if this meeting was good or bad.
‘I don’t want,’ Percy signed, trying to get his brain to remember the signs, ‘to…L O S E her.’
