Work Text:
“Is … Is that supposed to be sex?” David asked.
Poppy felt her stomach drop. “Shut up, I’m good at it!”
—
Even after she’d figured out and concluded that the whole sex-dream-about-Ian thing wasn’t sexual and was totally and completely about power or something, Poppy still found herself thinking about it more than she liked. Not in a sexual way! Absolutely not!
It was just … bothering her. She wasn’t really sure why.
She also kept replaying the conversations she’d had with Rachel and Dana and then David, where she’d insisted that she was good at sex. The truth was that she’d never actually had sex, but she was sure she would be good at it if she ever tried it.
But she’d never tried it. It wasn’t that she was necessarily opposed to the idea, it was just that she’d never in her whole life met anyone she would want to have sex with. Which meant that she just had to keep waiting, right?
Right?
She decided to stop thinking about this whole thing and just keep waiting, like she’d always done. It hadn’t worked yet, but she figured it had to work eventually. Eventually, she’d meet someone she’d want to sleep with, and then she would be completely unstoppable.
Poppy managed to do that for exactly four days before her determination broke and she turned to Google.
After only a few minutes researching her questions, she stumbled over the word asexual. She stared at it for a moment. She read the definition of it. Stared at the word some more.
Poppy didn’t want to cry, so she closed her laptop and went to bed.
The next night, Poppy returned to her research. She actually managed to read quite a lot before she got overwhelmed and needed to stop. That night, she dreamt about hanging up an asexual pride flag in her and Ian’s office. Ian didn’t say anything, just nodded approvingly. The dream was weird but also kind of nice.
Things continued like this for a few days: every night, Poppy read about asexuality. Then she went to bed and dreamt about asexuality in some way — sometimes the dreams kind of made sense, sometimes they didn’t.
After a week of this, Poppy felt like she’d read enough, at least for now.
She’d read enough to understand that she was definitely asexual.
When she’d first started reading about it, she’d thought that she couldn’t possibly be asexual if she’d had sex dreams — even if the sex dreams about Ian in particular were about power and not sex. But it turned out that asexuals could have sex dreams. They could even have sex, apparently. Both because asexuality was a spectrum and because there was a difference between your attraction and your actions. Like, you could have sex with someone even if you weren't sexually attracted to them.
Poppy thought that was pretty interesting. She’d never really wondered if she actually wanted to have sex. She’d just assumed that she wanted it because everyone else did.
She wasn’t really sure what she wanted. Maybe she would want to have sex some day, just to see what it was like. But she was busy with other things right now, so it wasn’t really a priority.
It was a huge relief to realize both of these things: that she was asexual, and that she didn’t need to be ashamed of not caring that much about sex. It was okay that she didn’t know that much about sex, either. She didn’t need to be good at it! It was such a huge relief to realize this.
“I’m asexual,” she said to herself, and it felt good.
The next day, Poppy walked into her and Ian’s office confidently. Ian sat on the floor with his legs crossed, looking very deep in thought.
“What’re you doing?” Poppy asked.
Ian looked up at her slowly. “I’m centering myself.”
“Okay, whatever.” Poppy sat down on the floor too. “I have something I wanna tell you.”
She’d wondered who she would want to come out to, and Ian had been one of the first people she’d thought of. Not for any particular reason except for the fact that he was maybe her best friend in the whole world and she wanted him to know this thing about her.
“I’m asexual,” Poppy said as confidently as she managed. Compared to saying it to herself in the middle of the night, saying it to Ian during the day was … a lot scarier. But Poppy still did it. She felt proud of that.
Ian nodded, not looking particularly surprised. “Okay, cool. Thanks for telling me, I guess.”
“You know what it means?”
“Uh, yeah. You didn’t?”
Poppy opened her mouth to defend herself, but realized that she had nothing to say and closed it again. Her cheeks turned pink with embarrassment. She was the young one! She was supposed to know stuff like this before Ian!
But it was fine. She knew now. That was what mattered.
And it was nice that Ian knew what asexuality was. She’d kind of dreaded having to explain it to him.
Ian stood up and patted Poppy’s shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you’ve figured it out.”
Poppy smiled. “Yeah. Me too.”