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With a huff of frustration, Simon gave up trying to fall asleep. He grabbed his phone and before he could second guess it, he sent Ben another text.
Simon:I’m glad you came home with me. I don’t think I could have slept at all tonight if you hadn’t.
Not that he was sleeping now, of course. He stared at his phone, willing Ben to reply, but there was nothing. He was about to put his phone away when he had an idea. Maybe he needed more information.
He pulled up Google up on his phone then fell down a rabbit hole of more information than he knew ever existed. Asexual. Demisexual. Heteroflexible. Aromantic. Homoromantic. It was almost dizzying. But the main thing he seemed to get from most of the articles and essays he found was that not knowing exactly what you were was more common than he’d previously thought and defining himself as either gay or straight wasn’t necessary if Simon didn’t want it to be. It was an oddly freeing thought. He’d always assumed you were straight or gay and he’d never given much thought at all to bisexuality. Probably because he’d never been particularly attracted to either sex, which would make him asexual. There was, however, a fly in that ointment and his name was Ben.
The more Simon read about attraction and sexuality, the more he realized that he might, for the first time in his life, understand what it meant to find another person alluring enough to take off his clothes in their vicinity. Simon found that he wanted to see Ben’s body, but not in an objective way. He also wanted to smell his skin and see what it tasted like. He wanted to touch Ben, and more than the casual touches he’d been subconsciously allowing himself. He wanted, moreover, for Ben to touch him, and that was a mind-blowing thought to him. He’d never particularly desired anyone to touch him. Casual kisses and embraces didn’t bother him; he’d just never understood the overwhelming appeal of being skin-to-skin with another human being. It wasn’t that Simon was a virgin, but he’d never had sex that felt worth all the bother.
Now Simon desired to be intimate with another person and he had no idea what to do about it.
Simon looked again at the texts he’d sent to Ben. There was still no reply. Maybe Ben had gone directly to sleep. Or maybe Simon was pushing too hard, although pushing for what he couldn’t say. Something more than what Simon had now, that was all he knew. He needed to discover what that more was. He decided to send one last text, anormaland not at all weird or needy or creepy or possessive message, which would be hard because he felt all of those things in that moment. At last, he went with something simple.
Simon:Good night, Ben. I’ll see you in the morning.
Like magic, a message appeared on his screen, then two more in quick succession.
Ben:im glad you brought me here
Ben:thx
Ben:night
Simon’s heart began to gallop, which couldn’t be good for it. He concentrated on trying to slow it down. Should he reply to the messages or not? After a few seconds and barely any thought, his fingers typed a short message out and pushed send.
Simon:Sweet dreams
Ben responded almost immediately.
Ben:ill try
Simon:lol. Put down your phone and try harder.
Did that sound lame? Did people even use the word lame anymore? Probably not. There was probably some new word that Simon had never heard of that meant the same thing and Ben would think he was that.
Ben:put down urs
That took Simon a few seconds to translate, then he gotyoursfromursand felt both triumphant from figuring it out and also entirely too old.
Simon:make me
Where the hell hadthatcome from?
Ben:*eye rolling emoji* pretty sure Im not making you do anything
Simon:lol! You’d be surprised.
Lol again. Simon winced and wished he could unsend that text. He googled what to say instead of lame, and that went in a variety of odd and interesting directions that weren’t helpful, but he did get cringy from Urban Dictionary, so decided to use that instead. Simon was being cringy. He was all full of cringe. He was, indeed, thoroughly cringeworthy.
Ben:ur stronger
Alright, good. Ben hadn’t given up on Simon as a cringeworthy lost cause.
Simon:you could ask me nicely.
After pushing send on that one, Simon groaned out loud and then smacked himself on the forehead a few times with his phone. What was hedoing?But then he thought of Ben, standing at the foot of his bed, saying that he’d come to be nice to Simon and he got hard. He hadn’t gotten hard like that out of nowhere since he’d been going through puberty.
Ben:how nice
