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Emma curls against Julian, and closes her eyes, but there’s a part of her, no matter how tired she is, that can't get Julian's words out of her head.
"Only you. No one but you."
“The fairy girl looked you. That’s the only reason I kissed her.”
Has she loved other people? No. Has she desired one people? Yeah. Not like Julian, but she has. With Cameron and Mark, there was some real desire, a want. What Julian feels for her, that singular desire for her, she’s not quite like that. But Julian’s never stopped her from talking about her relationships, not even when in hindsight she can tell he wishes she wouldn’t. But he never really stopped her, because he just wanted her to be happy. She wishes she could make him happy, she wishes they could be happy together.
“Julian?”
“Hm? You should be sleeping.”
Emma raises her head and Julian is looking at her with similarly tired eyes. “I know. But there’s something I want to ask you. Do you mean it?”
Julian raises an eyebrow in confusion, “Mean what?”
“That it’s just me. No one else?”
Julian shrugs, which makes Emma moves slightly on his stomach, and she loves that connection. “Maybe Izzy Lightwood? But I don’t know if she counts. I didn’t really got all that stuff before you.”
”Do you think there’s something to it?”
”What do you mean?”
”I mean, maybe you’re… different.”
Julian sits up more on the bed and Emma follows him, cuddles against his body again in this new position. Julian doesn’t fight it, and she’s glad. “Maybe,” Julian says, so quietly Emma only hears because of how close she is to him.
”I kinda ended up ranting at Magnus about my feelings for you. How it’s just you. He said… the mundanes might have a word for that.”
Emma smiles, “That’s great! Do you want to look?”
”Emma, we need to sleep.”
”I know, but…” Emma sits up, but takes a hold of Julian’s hand. She doesn’t want to break their connection before they have to. She swallows the lump in her throat, “I’m going to be exiled, soon. I wanna do this with you, before that.”
”OK,” Julian whispers, and then pulls Emma into another kiss. It’s sweet and tender and doesn’t ask for anything beyond this brief touch.
Emma takes her phone, and as Julian tells her the words Magnus gave him, ‘asexual’ and ‘aromantic’, they search the internet for explanations and labels and words. The internet is slow but they eventually find a term that might work.
”Demisexual,” Julian whispers, his voice full of awe, of understanding, of connection.
”That sounds like you,” Emma whispers with similar awe in her voice. She’s glad Julian has this, that even when he will alone during her exile, he’ll know that this is normal, that he’s not alone with being like this.
Julian takes a hold of her arm, and he writes with his finger ‘I-A-M-D-E-M-I’. He looks at her with all the love in his heart and says “Thank you” to her out loud. Emma takes back her arms and writes on Julian’s, ‘I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U’. Julian repeats her written words, but it really is late, and it is really starting to hit them both what they’ll have to do. With one more shared kiss, they cuddle together into each others’ arms, and fall asleep.