Chapter Text
The next few weeks of living together went really well. Medina is such a nice roommate to have. They’re quiet, and conscientious, and clean up their messes in a timely manner. I'm so glad they moved in! We haven't really talked in person much since that first day because work and school has just got us both running around, but we did set up tomorrow to be our arts and crafts day because we both finally have a free three-day weekend. I'm so excited to do that with them, I'm so glad we get to know each other over a fun craft that both of us really want to do.
~~Next day~~
I grab my box of glitter and paints and step out of my room before turning right back around and grabbing an old shirt from my chair. It’ll make a decent enough tarp/floor shield from all things sparkly. As much as I love glitter, I don’t think we’d ever be able to get it out of our floors if we didn’t protect them.
Medina is already on the couch in the living area with blank signs and their own supply of crafting materials.
“Hey, Nacelle!” They piped up, “You ready to make some Stuff?”
I feel my face morph into a grin and sit next to them. “You bet! Which sign do you want to start with?” I begin to lay out all my stuff, placing the beat-up shirt underneath all of our supplies.
“Ahh, is that for the glitter?”
“Yeah! I don’t want it to get everywhere, y’know?”
“Ah, yes,” Medina nodded solemnly, “It’s always important to use protection.” I burst into laughter at the unexpected joke.
“Truly. You know what they say, glitter is the herpes of the craft world.” I match their deadpan tone.
Now they smile, “Ah, I may not be getting herpes anytime soon, but I’m very susceptible to glitter. Here I was thinking that being ace would keep me from all of that.”
I chuckle and tilt my head, “You’re ace? I don’t mean to pry if you don’t want to talk about it. I’m ace, that's all. Always nice to meet a fellow Finland invader.” As I said that I grabbed the paper and started sketching out my ideas for my bedroom sign.
“Oh my gods, YES! We need to go to Finland and make it the ace country. We wouldn’t have to deal with any weird people! Just queer people who are weird in all the best ways! Did you know that at least 1% of the population is asexual!” I fantasized for a second about a country where I didn’t need to pretend to be cis or straight depending on my company. It sounded amazing, I loved being around other queer people.
Medina started on their rooms sign and we theorized on what an all-ace country would look like. “There would be, like, no sexual harassment, it would be awesome! There was a book about that once, I think. Oh crap, what was it called?”
“Oh, like The Left Hand of Darkness?”
Medina snapped in remembrance, “Yes! That was such a good book, one of my favorites that I had to read in high school. Probably one of the only ‘classics’ I’ve ever read with enby rep.”
“Right? Honestly, I read it a while back, so I don’t really remember it well, but I wish there had been more of a discussion on the inherent queerness of it all. My class really just went over the main plot, nobody really cared about the worldbuilding, though it probably should have been a clue that I was non-binary. I was obsessed with that book for, like, a year.”
“Queer people and their English classes, I swear!” Medina chuckled, “Now science? That is the best class ever!”
“You literally just said that you liked that book, first of all, and second of all, I’m not a stereotype because I didn’t read the book in English, I read it in my French class. So checkmate!”
“Well oui oui croissant then.”
“Tu ne sais pas ce que je dis.” *You don’t know what I’m saying*, a cheap comeback, but so was theirs.
“If you say so, Frenchie.”
We turn back to our respective signs at the lull in the conversation. I decided to paint mine the colors of the ace flag, not only my flag, but one of my favorite color schemes in general. I grab the purple paint from atop the table and look around for a palette. “Oh no, I think we forgot the palettes!” But my perch on the couch is too comfortable for me to get up, so I just squirt a bit of paint straight onto the wood. “Good enough, I suppose.”
Medina laughs and follows my example, choosing an arrangement of yellows, oranges, and blues from our vast assortment of colors. My stomach twists in uncertainty, are they Aroace? I’d never liked the aro/ace flag much, but I’d never had anything against it! Why did seeing it now bother me so much? Was I prejudiced against aromantic people? I didn’t think so, but you can’t always see your own biases. I’ll need to look into these feelings once I get into my room. Or maybe they were just colors, ughh I’ll just deal with these thoughts later.
After a while of some pretty fun conversation my sign had on the top “This human is currently” in black glitter then I had cut up two sheets of paper and on one with purple marker “Happy for human interaction!” The second sheet of paper in gray said “Needs their social battery charged!” Medina’s sign was a black canvas with a socal battery on it that went from orange at the bottom to dark blue at the top. Next to it were little arrows that showed where they were on that battery currently.
Over top of that battery in white and blue glitter it said “Don’t be a Beach, look at my battery before coming in!”
"Wow, Medina, your sign looks so good!”
“Thank you so much! I'm pretty proud of how it came out, I really like yours too, great color scheme! Now what are we thinking about for the bathroom sign?”
After some brainstorming, we settled on a book that opened when the bathroom was occupied. This day was such an amazing one, I hope we can do something like this again. I really like hanging out with Medina.