Sex in C Major

"Vodka," he said finally. "A bottle."

"How big of a bottle?"

"A-a litre."

Daz exhaled heavily. "Why the hell did you go home and drink a bottle of vodka?"

Stefan opened his mouth, then closed it.

"Stefan, talk to me. I can't continue this if it's fucking you up."

"It's not fucking me up!"

"Then tell me why, after we talked and you said you wanted to be a part of this, you went home and got trashed?"

"Because I shouldn't want it!"

Stefan shouted, then clapped a hand over his mouth and glanced around in mortification. Thankfully, the cold had driven most of the coffee drinkers inside, and a busker was doing a rendition of "She Will Be Loved" so loudly and badly that it could penetrate eardrums at twenty feet. Nobody seemed to have heard them.

"Why not?"

"Oh come on," Stefan hissed. "I felt that evening, when you were being all affectionate and and lovey, I didn't like that. And who does that? Who wants to be beaten and hurt and all their sex to be painful and degrading and maybe not even get an orgasm out of it, but then finds a hug and a kiss uncomfortable?"

"Plenty of people."

"What?"

"Plenty of people," Daz repeated flatly, then rubbed a hand over his face and leaned his elbows on the table. "Look, I'm not the best person to talk about this, but you're obviously not that comfortable with Yannis at the minute, so...I'll take the unholy row we'll have when he finds out I said anything..."

"What are you"

"Yannis is asexual."

"He's what?"

"Asexual. He doesn't feel sexual attraction."

"As in..."

"As in, he has never once seen someone and had sexy thoughts. Ever."

"Ever?"

"Ever."

Stefan stared.

"He said once it's like-you ever looked at a tree and thought, that is one sexy tree, I would totally blow that tree?"

"What? No!"

"To him, the whole world is made of trees."

"Nobody? Ever?"

"Ever."

"But what about you?"

"That's why we don't mesh sexually."

"So he doesn't have sex with you?"

"Rarely. Once a year, tops."

"Once a year?"

"Yeah. And it's not just sex. He's not interested in-❞ Daz paused, rolling a word around his mouth. "I don't want to go into everything, because he's very private and he'll kill me when he finds out I've told you, but-intimacy, I suppose. He actively dislikes kissing. He said once if he wanted my spit, he'd sign me up for the Anthony Nolan register and use the sample kit they send in the post. He won't cuddle, though he lets me cuddle him if he's doing something else, so I get a bit of a snuggle in when he's watching the telly or going to sleep."

"But what-what do you get out of it, then? If you can barely touch him?"

"I love him," Daz said simply. "He's grumpy, he's a dork, he's funny, he'll explode if I put my shoe on the piano stool to tie my laces but he'll just pull a face when I bring lost drunk souls home to keep them out of harm's way-"

Stefan flushed hotly.

"-he lights up and he's at his most beautiful when one of his experiments works, he's so damn clever, and I can just sit there, just sit and watch his brilliance, and he makes me feel like I matter. He makes me better. I'm a better man with him. And I love him, even if he doesn't-"

He stopped sharply.

Stefan frowned.

"He doesn't love you?"

"That bit...that bit is more complicated."

"But he doesn't love you."

"Not quite like I love him, no."

"Because...he's asexual?"

"Yeah. He's yeah. Like I said, it's not just that he's asexual. Look, ask him. We love differently."

"And you're okay with that?"

Daz shrugged. "Sure."

"How?"

"Because it feels like he loves me. Maybe it's not factually true, but I feel like it is. He does love me, in his own way. He certainly cares just as much as I do. My point is-look, I wasn't really talking about me and Niss. I was talking about you. My point is, who would want to be in my situation either? What normal guy wants a boyfriend who won't so much as kiss him goodbye when he goes out the door for the day? What normal person wants to spend a decade and a half with a man who has to be extensively bribed to have sex more than once in an entire year? Who wants that?"

Stefan mentally recoiled. He wouldn't. Daz had to be crazy, right? How could Yannis love him if they never slept together? And Daz had just said Yannis didn't love him, not really, so what the hell was Daz doing-

It clicked.