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Thomas had settled down in the smoking room for the evening, solving the Kew Gardens Puzzle book he had been gifted by Abdul for Christmas, until Molly, who'd locked herself away in the kitchen the entire day, presumably busy with preparations for his birthday, appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with a can of tea, two cups and a plate of biscuits.
He didn’t need words to understand what Molly wanted him to do.
Abigail had returned from University for Christmas, and had requested the Mundane Library to work on her papers without disturbance. He’d seen little of her since then, apart from her infrequent trips to the kitchen to beg some snacks off Molly.
Thomas found her at one of the tables, bent over a notebook, loose pages scatterdd around he. Her braids twisted up into a bun and wearing sweatpants and a hoodie she had gotten from a concert – two garments Thomas had not known excisted prior to Peter moving into the Folly – she looked right at home. He’d even offered to let her stay in one of the empty rooms upstairs, but Abigail had declined, making the journey back to her parents‘ flat every evening instead.
„From the looks of this I think you deserve a short break“
Looking up at him with tired eyes Abigail sighed, but nodded anyways. „Might be a good idea,“ she said, „I’m not getting anything done anyway“
„Any plans for tomorrow?“ Abigail asked, taking a sip of her tea.
„Peter and Beverly are coming, with the twins and his parents, Abdul and a few colleagues from the Met as well. I, of course, have no knowledge of this just yet“
He assumed that Abigail would come to the Folly as well, as she had done on most days in the past week or so.
„That doesn’t sound as if you are excited“
„I suppose I have gotten out of the habit,“ in the decades following the war his birthdays had passed by unaknowledged apart from Molly making sure to cook his favourite foods, „not that there is much sense in celebrating considering I no longer age“
Abigail raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
„What is it you are working on?“ he asked, in an effort to change the topic.
„It’s for a course I'm taking on Identity,“ Abigail explained, „we all were assigned a topic we have to write a paper and it helps me to visualise things“
She was referring to the whiteboard she had dragged out of some dark corner, where it had been gathering dust for a while now. Peter had originally bought it when the Folly had been turned into the headquarter for Operation Jennifer. Now it was filled with terms he had never heard of, connected by a plethora of arrows in different colours.
„I had hoped to write on race, or maybe class, but I think my professor intentionally gave us topics that have nothing to so with our identity. Or at least as far as she could tell. There’s an asian lesbian writing on lesbianism“
„And your topic is what, exactly?“
„Asexuality“
„Don’t plants do that?“ He faintly recalled being taught about it in a biology class he hadn’t been paying much attention to.
„That is asexual reproduction. This is in the framework of human sexuality“
„So would that entail not engaging in sexual intercourse at all?“
„Not necessarily. Some do and some don’t. It’s about the absence of sexual attraction“
„I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what that means“
„It means that you find other people sexually appealing. That you want to have sex with them based solely on their appearance. Someone who’s asexual doesn’t feel that. But they might still choose to have sex as a way to be close to a partner, or simply because they enjoy it. Meanwhile people can have a myriad of reasons to be abstinent that have nothing to do with asexuality.“
Thomas looked at the board again, traced the lines forming unfamiliar words.
„It’s not difficult to understand if you read into it. And it exists on a spectrum, so some might experience that attraction from time to time, or with people they are close with. It's not set in stone. The frustrating this is that we are supposed to include the personal experiences of someone,“ continued Abigail, „but I’ve never met someone who’s asexual“
For his part Thomas could think of several people fitting that description. His younger sister, David, and, well, himself. „I suspect that there are many that would identify with this if they knew about it. And were brave enough to admit it to themselves“
„Why would that be more difficult to admit than, say, homosexuality? I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone being punished for this“ Abigail said.
„Do you remember Plato’s Symposium? The story about Zeus splitting the original humans in two?“
„To be honest I stopped paying attention after the part that argued that the love of an adult man towards an adolescent boy is more virtuous that that towards a woman“ Abigail said with disgust.
Thomas could not argue with that. „It says that since humans are now only a half of what had someday been a whole, they longed to find that missing half, and once they found it could not bear to be parted from them,“ he said, „and have we not all been taught that if we are not with someone that we are incomplete“
Abigail looked at him rather strangely, as if she had just understood something that had previously eluded her. „So others might think that a quintessential part of them is missing. That they’re broken“ she said.
„Quite,“ Thomas said, „even though it isn’t true,“ he added quietly.
*
The next evening, after all his guests had left, he found a small parcel on the desk in his study. He unwrapped the gift, revealing a thin book.
Some further reading, the card that had been tucked inside said.
Thomas sat in his favourite reading chair and opened the first page.