His words were incredibly gentle as he asked, “What what was like?”
“What it was like to be wanted,” they admitted shamefully.
“Zef,” Bryce said, and the pity in his voice set their teeth on edge. “You are wanted.”
They scoffed at that. “I am not speaking from self-pity, Bryce, nor do I disparage myself. I am simply stating fact. I am loved and accepted, yes. I have many friends and people who like me, for which I am deeply grateful. But in the context of this, of romantic interest? No, I am not wanted.”
“Do you want that? To be wanted?” he asked, gray eyes intense, and that prickling along the back of Zef’s neck was back. It was everywhere, though, crackling over their scalp and buzzing down their arms.
They swallowed the sudden nerves collecting in their throat. “I am not opposed. Romantic partnerships can be very beautiful and fulfilling. I do not need it,” they clarified, “as I am happy and content with myself and my life. But to find someone who cherishes me, who I can cherish in return… Well, who would refuse that?”
Bryce’s expression was so soft, and it made Zef fidget with the hem of their tunic. “But here, I am odd and strange. And outside the Colony…” They drifted off with a shrug, “Well, I do not foresee that happening.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I am a Mantodea,” they said matter-of-factly.
“So?”
Oh, it was cute how Bryce could be so smart, yet so naive.
“I have no interest in sex,” they said bluntly, and his thick brows rose half an inch. “It is part of my identity, yes, but it is also part of my biology. Not to say all Mantodeas have a complete disinterest in the act of intercourse. We are not a monolith. But it is not inaccurate to say that most Mantodeas, in the eloquent words of Toni, do not fuck.”
At the curse, Bryce snorted a laugh, and Zef’s wings buzzed in satisfaction at the sound. “Speaking in generalities, we lack the hormonal drive, the urges, the biological imperative for the sake of procreation. Down to our chromosomes, we do not need or, in most cases, want sex. Seeing asculture and society revolves around it, you can understand why we are so often overlooked as contenders for companionship by other species.”
“But sex ain’t everything,” Bryce said, and their chest squeezed exquisitely.
“Of course not, but that ideology is in the minority. Even you know that.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he said, dropping his hands back to the table to fist the edges. “I just… It don’t sit right with me. People looking right through you simply because they can’t getthatfrom you. Like sex is all any of us are worth. Don’t sit right.”
“Because you are wholly wonderful,” Zef said, and his head shot up, surprise painted over his face.
“I don’t think that makes me wonderful,” he whispered. “It makes me a decent human being.”
Leaning forward, they placed their top hands on the edge of the table beside Bryce’s, close enough they felt the static energy pulsing between them. “Perhaps. Wanting sex, acknowledging that it is a priority, is not a failure of character. But neither is my disinterest. Why should I have to apologize or change simply because I do not want the element of sex in any relationship I may enter into?”
“You shouldn’t,” Bryce said resolutely. “There ain’t nothing wrong with you.”
Carefully, they scooted their hand closer to Bryce’s until the hairs on his knuckles tickled their skin, until they could feel the heat of him. “You see?” they whispered. “Wonderful.”
“Decent,” he corrected again, and Zef acquiesced.
“Still. Most people do not view me as a viable candidate for partnership outside circles that think and believe as I do. That I am not lacking. ThatI am not broken. That I am worthy of love and acceptance exactly as I am. And I am fully ready and willing to live and enjoy my life unpartnered, until the day I join my ancestors, rather than ever settle for less than that simply to not be alone.”
A sheen glinted in the human’s eyes, his expression full of something Zef thought was pride. “I am in awe of you,” he said, voice rough, and they ducked their head, emotions they could not name rising in their chest.
They said, “I am simply who I am.”
And Bryce said, “I know, and you are wholly wonderful.”
Unable to look at him, too afraid of what they might see in his eyes, Zef inhaled shakily and squeezed their lower hands in their lap. Their top right hand, however, shifted once more, a mere inch, until their pinkie skated over Bryce’s. The human’s gaze was heavy on the side of their face, but they still could not look at him.
Instead, they curled their pinkie just enough to slot between his fingers, anchoring them together by that one singular point. Hidden between their bodies, shrouded in shadow, it went unnoticed by those around them, a secret only for them.
Under the light of the twin moons, Zef watched the Mantodeas dance as Bryce watched them, and by the time the night of frivolity ended, their entire body was alight with tingles.
Chapter sixteen
