iii.

HOLLIS HAD MONEY .

Most of it wasn't as liquid as it could have been, maybe. He had it tied up in various things—mostly real estate, though he'd had a period of time when he'd toyed around with the stock market, and he'd eventually gotten good enough at that to make some money there and kept some of his investments in various companies. He had enough liquid assets to pay for whatever he needed. His physical needs were minimal, anyway.

He could eat. He didn't need to. He preferred simple and casual clothes, so these he purchased cheap and wore until they fell apart. He had places to live, lots of them, and the place he was staying now was only one of them. As for possessions, he was always trying to have less. It was too easy to accumulate a lot of useless things, even very nice things.

Once, he'd collected musical instruments. He had too many, though. He found himself only playing maybe three or four of them. So, eventually, he sold them off—probably for less money than they were worth. He didn't really care about that. It didn't matter.

Anyway, he had money.

He didn't need a job.

But he'd taken this one out of boredom. He had a bit of a perverse streak to his personality, he had to admit. There was a reason he'd been exiled from his home in the first place, after all, and it wasn't because he was a stickler for rules and expectations.

So, this job, working behind the counter in what was basically a sex shop called Simple Pleasures, it was a source of constant amusement for him.

The store was not on the main street of Shepherdstown. The entrance was off Union Alley, and it only had a small and tasteful sign. Once upon a time, decades ago, the store had made most of its money selling pornography—tapes and magazines, mostly. There was still some of this to be had—not tapes, though, DVDs—but no one went out of their houses to procure pornography anymore, so this wasn't what kept the store afloat.

It wasn't the vast array of sex toys that lined the shelves either. Most people preferred to buy that online too. However, there were customers who came in for that sort of thing—a decidedly large percentage of them women. They came for vibrators and warming gels and suppositories infused with CBD oil for enhanced sensation.

And while they were there, they saw that there was a piercing room, and—if they were curious—they got the spiel about how Gigi did intimate piercings for women in a way that was respectful and safe and that if they were ever curious, they could come and ask any questions they wanted.

And nipple piercings—male and female—kept the lights on in the shop these days.

Hollis was the only employee of the store. When he wasn't there, the counter was covered by Gigi. He wouldn't have bothered to take a salary, but Gigi wouldn't hear of such a thing. That's illegal! she had said, horrified.

Usually, he was alone in there, which suited him fine. He'd watch Netflix on his phone or read a book (also on his phone) or play various games (usually on his phone as well, although he'd been trying to get himself to play solitaire with actual playing cards).

When Fifer Ione came in that Wednesday afternoon, nearly a week after he'd met her, he was surprised. For two reasons—one, because she had said she was asexual, so why was she here at all? And two, because she knew her way around the place in a way that seemed to indicate she'd been here several times, from the way she was talking to her companion, and he'd never seen her before.

She didn't realize he was there. The counter was towards the back of the store, hidden behind shelves of bullet vibrators and anal beads and vibrating cock rings. That was where he was standing, the cards all set up in front of him for solitaire.

She was chattering to the dwarf woman with her, "I know you can buy things online and it's more private, but I feel like—for your first vibrator—you want to see what you're getting. Size can be really hard to gauge online. And anyway, I think they still have the little finger one I was telling you about, which is probably perfect. It's also nice to be able to go somewhere and then come home with it instead of waiting for it to be shipped to you, you know?"

The dwarf woman looked overwhelmed. She was just nodding.

"Okay, not that shelf," Fifer was saying. "Those are all shaped like penises, and seriously, I don't even understand why they do that with vibrators." Fifer rolled her eyes. "It's like men think women find penises more important than they actually are, and then they make masturbatory tools for women without actually asking women how they masturbate."

A snort from the dwarf woman at that. "I always thought that was because I was ace that I didn't really care if there was anything in there."

"No," said Fifer. "Not a lot of nerve endings in the vagina. And thank the tangles of time itself for that, because otherwise, childbirth would be even more excruciating. Did you know, there's a kind of hyena who gives birth through the clitoris? Can you imagine? "

"No," said the dwarf, making a face.

"Me either," said Fifer. "I mean, I do have some insertable penis-shaped things. I have a lot of toys. Sometimes, I experiment with penetration, but it doesn't really feel like much to me. I think different women have different amounts of sensation, though. It depends on the positioning and sensitivity of the inner parts of your clitoral wings and the distance between your vaginal opening to the hood and—oh, here we are." She came around one of the shelves and looked up and saw him. "Oh."

He cleared his throat, feeling like an intruder, like he'd done some kind of violence by being there. "I'm so sorry."

"You work here," said Fifer. "I didn't think anyone except Gigi worked here."

"I work here," he said, "And I wasn't listening or anything. I mean, maybe I happened to hear, but I'm really sorry about that."

"Why?" she said.

"Why?" he repeated.

"You work here, so, you're probably used to it by now? Are you new? Is that why I've never seen you here before?"

"No, I've worked here for years," he said. "I don't know how it is I've never seen you before."

"Well, me either." She put both of her hands on her hips. "I've been in here a lot ."

"Anyway, you know, your conversation is really intimate and private, and I don't mean to be… I mean, I'm not . Listening, that is." He looked back at the cards. No, fuck this, he was going to have to deal them again. He must have accidentally knocked them around, and nothing looked right. He took a deep breath.

"Well, it's fine," said Fifer. "I mean, we're fine, right, Helnia?" She beamed at the dwarf.

Who didn't really look fine, actually. Who looked mortified.

He gathered up the cards, businesslike. "I'm… just pretend I'm not here. Do you want me to…?" He gestured. "There's a room I could disappear into."

"How are you this embarrassed if you've worked in a sex shop for years?" Fifer was gaping at him.

"I'm not embarrassed," he said. "I don't get embarrassed about this kind of stuff."

"Well, I don't either," she said, tilting her head to one side. "Sex is totally natural and normal, and masturbation is my jam, so…"

"But you're…" He turned his attention to tidying the cards into a stack. "Never mind. I'm going to be quiet."

"Asexual, you mean?" Now, Fifer was leaving the dwarf behind and coming across the shop towards him. "It's actually a really common misconception. You see, asexuality is a spectrum."

"Okay," he said, nodding. "Right. I guess that makes sense. So, you like to masturbate but not to do it with other people?"

"Well, that's not how I would explain it."

He shuffled the cards—not because they needed it, just to have something to do with his hands.

Time to admit to himself that this woman made him nervous. What was that about? No one made him nervous. Tangles and briars, the Unseelie Queen herself had stared him down and called him names and told him to get out and never come back and… no nerves during that whole incident. Well… maybe some nerves, but anyway, he didn't care what the Faerie Queen thought of him, that was the point.

So, this little selkie girl—woman, she was a grown woman , even if she was kind of bite-sized—it didn't make any sense to be so unsettled by her presence or her conversation.

But he wasn't exactly unfamiliar with the feeling of it, he realized. It had simply been a really long time since he'd felt it, and he'd been pretty certain he wouldn't feel it again.

Too old for that, he'd thought. Or maybe it was them. You could only see so many people before they started to run together, really. No one was special after as long as he'd been alive and stuck here in the mortal realm, tied to the way time passed for them, stuck in this endlessness.

No, everyone was mostly the same.

And she… she wasn't like other people.

It's just my luck to become intrigued with someone for the first time in centuries and she's not even interested in relationships.

"How would you explain it?" Well, his voice had gotten really deep there, hadn't it? Tell me how you like to masturbate, selkie girl.

Fuck.

He didn't even—

Sex was not a thing he cared about. Sex was a mortal thing, and he wasn't even… but all of his kind had always found it interesting, even if just from some sort of exploitative perspective, even if it was only to attempt to steal the power of it.

Sure, he found working in a sex shop mostly amusing.

He found sex itself mostly amusing.

But it was easy to find something amusing when you hadn't been aroused in decades.

Am I aroused right now? He wasn't even sure if he remembered what that felt like. And if he was, he couldn't do anything about it. It wasn't as if this was something he could ease within himself. He couldn't masturbate. He couldn't feel it unless he stole it from some mortal, anyway.

Fuck fuckity fuck.

It was inconvenient and it was going to mess him up and he wasn't pleased, but…

Well, he'd forgotten about all these emotions—excitement, curiosity, desire. He felt like he was just waking up after a long, long sleep.

Fifer scratched the top of her head. "Well, I guess what I usually say is that I like the idea of sex, but I don't really like the… physicalness of it? Basically, in the abstract, it's pretty great, but when you actually do it, it's… eww."

He chuckled softly, considering. "I mean, maybe there's a warranted ick factor." He nodded. "It's not super cleanly, maybe?"

"Not even remotely," she said.

"So, it's like an OCD thing?"

"No." She glared at him. "That's a disorder. This is a sexual orientation."

"Your sexual orientation is just, what? Yourself?"

"No." She laughed, shaking her head. "Like, the opposite, actually. It's called aegosexual, my subtype of asexuality. Basically, me being part of it at all, eww. I don't want to be there. I do not turn myself on—if I'm there, it's too real . When I fantasize, I'm never there."

"Huh," he said, looking her over. "Don't you like yourself?"

She snorted at him. "What kind of question is that?"

"I don't know." He shook his head. "I don't even know. I should have kept my mouth shut." He laughed softly and shuffled the cards again.

"No, sorry." Her voice was softer. "It's fine. I don't mind, really. I like to let people ask all kinds of invasive questions usually. But for some reason… you…"

"Really?" This cheered him. "So, wait, you don't like sex with people, but does that mean you don't like, um… do you go on dates?"

She let out a little surprised laugh. "Seriously?"

"No, if it was out of line—"

"I'm not aromantic," she said. "Some people are. Asexual, aromantic. But some people want a romantic relationship and they just don't want sex. And I guess that's me. Not that I'm saying that you—"

"So, you're turning me down?"

"Did you actually ask me out?" she demanded. "Because I don't really remember—"

"Go out with me," he said.

"Now, you're ordering me to do it—"

"Say no, then."

"Yes," she said, giggling. "Yes, okay, I would like to go out with you." She was blushing. Her skin had a light blue tinge, but the blush made it look purple.

He liked it. He'd be grinning if he had muscles, which he didn't. He set down the deck of cards and leaned against the counter. "Cool." Did people say cool anymore? It was hard for him to keep up with slang sometimes.

She looked down at her feet, smiling, still blushing.

"Uh, I should get your phone number or something." He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and began to manipulate the screen.

She rattled off numbers to him. He put things in the phone.

Then, they stared at each other while her blush faded. They didn't say anything.

Say something, he urged himself.

"I need to…" She pointed over her shoulder. "My friend needs me."

"Mmm," he said, nodding. "Right. I have things in the back." He ducked away from the counter, but as soon as he got back there, he realized he wasn't even remotely out of earshot.

"He asked you out," Helnia the dwarf was saying. "But he knows you're ace."

"Yeah, but he's… he told me he doesn't have genitalia."

Hollis cringed, running a hand over the smoothness at the top of his skull. Yeah, he was never interested, that was the thing, and usually hearing that made women assume he was neutered, and he didn't care what anyone thought of him, but…

Wow. He was embarrassed. He could really do without this emotion. This waking up thing was a mixed bag, wasn't it?

"Oh, he's all bones?" said Helnia.

"I mean… I don't know. I guess."

"What is he?"

"He's got to be something magical," Fifer said. "And if he doesn't have genitalia, like, his kind doesn't reproduce that way, maybe, or he…"

"What?"

"I'm just wondering if he's really old."

You have no idea, little selkie woman.

"Would that be a bad thing?" said Helnia.

"No, I guess not, I…" A sigh from Fifer. "Okay, forget this, we're here to buy you something."

"No way," said Helnia. "I can't go up there and buy this from him."

"Why not?"

"I don't even need a vibrator, Fifer. My fingers are fine."

"You've never used one. You don't know."

"Okay, I masturbate, like, twice a month and I legit think of fields of flowers waving in the wind when I do, and… all of this… it's not even me. I appreciate your bringing me in here, but I'm good."

"Did I do the thing where I push?"

"I like it when you push. You're so much more adventurous than me, than a lot of us in the group," said Helnia.

"Can I just show you what it looks like? Then, if you wanted to find it online, you could."

"Okay, fine." Helnia was laughing.

They left soon after that.

Hollis came back out to the counter and picked up the cards and started shuffling them again.

A date? He'd never even gone on a date. The last time he'd pursued a woman, there hadn't been a social construct like that. How did it even work? Why had he thought this was a good idea?

"ARE YOU SERIOUSLY expecting me to understand this?" demanded Ross Mitchem, who was a sphinx, and another friend from Aces are Aces! He was curled up on Fifer's couch, wings tucked around his lion body. His tail was hanging over the arm, twitching in time to the music that was playing. "Because I can't and I don't."

"You could try," said Fifer from the kitchen. In her apartment, the kitchen and living room were only separated because the linoleum changed over to carpet. "I mean, how hard is it to imagine that you have feelings like another person?"

Ross grunted. He was fraysexual, which meant that he was only ever attracted to people with whom he had no real connection. He would get very intense crushes on people from afar and feel compelled to act on them, to go after the people. If he had sex with them immediately, it was amazing and electric.

Then, as he got to know the person, all of his attraction faded away. Ross had been very pleased to know he had an actual sexual orientation that wasn't just big-fat-jerk-who-uses-women. He actually developed deep emotional ties to women he was initially attracted to and formed intense friendships with them. It was only—once he had an emotional connection, he couldn't feel sexual towards a woman. It just seems gross when it's someone that, like, I care about, he would say.

He actually didn't have much sex at all anymore. It was too painful for everyone, he thought, himself included. When he'd been in his early twenties, he'd gone through a series of strange and awful affairs—they'd start out amazing and then he'd just turn off towards the women except as friends. He hated it, actually.

Like Fifer, however, he experienced sexual attraction and had a libido, and so they had a lot in common and had become very close friends.

Fifer came in from the kitchen with sodas. She handed one to him and threw herself down on the couch. "Just… if you were in the first phase of liking someone, and you said you were going to ask them out, you'd actually text them or something, right?"

"Maybe?" He shrugged. "I don't even know."

"But when you like someone, you like them."

"Me personally or men in general or people usually or…?"

She glowered at him over her soda. "I hate you."

"Text him."

"I didn't get his number."

He laughed.

"And I went to open mic night last night, figuring I would see him there and then I would tell him the fuck off, and he wasn't there."

"So… you think he's avoiding you?"

"Oh, tangles and briars, he is ." She groaned, setting down her drink to cover her head with her hands. "I told myself that I was being really dumb about it, and that I was overthinking it, but seriously, it was a week ago he asked me, and nothing ."

"Yeah, he probably changed his mind."

"Fine," she muttered.

"I'm sorry, Fifer. You deserve so much better than that shit. Seriously, fuck him."

She dragged her hands down over her face. "I know where he works."

"So…"

"So, come with me while I go there and yell at him."

"Come with you?"

"Yeah," she said. "For moral support."

"Well, what do you want to say to him?"

"I don't know, but he can't just get away with ghosting me. He didn't want to reject me to my face? Well, he has to. Sorry, buddy, you have to face the fucking music and see what you did to me."

Nothing from Ross.

She picked up her soda again. "You don't approve."

"Look, you're one of my best friends, Fifer, but I've talked you before about how you have this save-the-world complex."

She groaned. "It's not trying to save the world to—"

"It's like with asexuality, where you have to be this martyr, explaining it to everyone on earth and letting them ask you super invasive questions, and you don't have to make the world a better place for asexuals everywhere, you know? That's not your job."

"Well, maybe it is, though," she said, shrugging. "If not me, who?"

"I just think, sometimes, you have to accept that the world is a flawed place and that the people in it are flawed too. So, he ghosted you. So, he's a jerk. Telling him that he's a jerk is going to make you upset, and it's not going to change him."

"It might." She sounded sulky. "Will you come with me or not?"

"If I say no, will you drop the idea?"

"I'll just go alone."

He groaned. "Okay, okay, fine."

She beamed.

"I'm just saying, anyway, this is another sign you should take our deal," he said.

"I never agreed to this deal," she scoffed. "You think I did—"

"You did so, and you don't even want to take it back."

"I can't be with you, Ross."

"We'd be great together," he said. "We're so very freaking compatible."

"No, we're not, because you'll never feel romantic feelings for me, and I definitely can't feel them for you."

"That doesn't matter," he said. "We'd just, you know, mesh well. We hang out all the time, and you wouldn't care if I had the occasional one night stand, and I wouldn't care if you masturbated all the time. And if we wanted to have kids, we'd just do the turkey baster method, and I think half-selkie, half-sphinx kids would be so fracking adorable, don't you?"

"I do not want you to be the father of my children!"

"Why not? I would be a great dad. I'd actually be a great husband." He spread his paws, sitting up. "You know, when people are always saying their better halves are their best friends, we already have that."

"I want more," she said.

"Yeah, but we are not normal, Fifer. So, we can't have everything. We have to make compromises. You're the one who's always saying this. That being a happy asexual is about trying to make the best of what you have. That we have to work around what society expects of us and find the places where we can fit."

"I seem to remember this deal isn't until we're, like, thirty-five."

"Come on, you don't want to wait until you're thirty-five to have kids," he said. "Thirty. I'll be thirty in two years, but we'll wait until you're thirty, all right?"

"I'm not making the deal."

"You already made the deal," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "Come with me to talk to Hollis."

"Yeah, sure, I'm there."

TWENTY MINUTES LATER , Fifer was making her way through the sex shop, heading back towards the counter. Ross was loping along behind her on all fours. He didn't have to walk that way. He could walk upright, but he said it was more comfortable to walk like a lion, and he obviously didn't care much about meeting social norms.

She was never sure how serious Ross was when he would bring up that little "deal" of his. At first, she had thought it was only a joke, nothing but a joke, and she'd entertained it with the gusto of something silly and impossible. Yeah, sure, when we're in our thirties, we'll get married, haha.

But when he kept bringing it up, she began to realize he meant it more seriously than she had taken it.

She thought Ross had hit a point in time that a lot of asexuals did, the hopeless point.

The hopeless point actually was a place that asexuals kept circling back to, if she was entirely honest. At first, before you figured it out, you felt hopeless because you simply thought you were broken and abnormal and mentally diseased.

It was maddening, really, being in a world that was so incredibly tinged with sexuality and not experiencing it the way everyone else did. So, you'd go through puberty, try really hard to assimilate to the normal experience, fail, and then… Hello, hopelessness!

Then, usually, came the point in time when you figured out you were ace.

This was accompanied by a period of boundless hope! The internet would paint some bright and cheery idea that there was some relationship out there for every stripe of person. If you wanted things to be different, you just needed to be upfront and communicate, and you'd find someone who'd be happy to be with you.

But, well, this turned out to be pretty difficult.

After all, it wasn't easy for allosexuals to find a longterm romantic partner. Most people had lots of long relationships before they met the "one," and it was hard to have these starter, throwaway relationships when you didn't really want to have sex with someone else.

Most people were not interested in a celibate relationship. They maybe claimed sex wasn't important to them, but that didn't mean they wanted to be with someone who didn't want to do it.

It probably would make better sense for asexuals to be with each other, she supposed, but—for whatever reason—she found that asexuals were often falling for allosexuals.

This is our tragedy, she often thought.

And then, Hello, hopelessness, my old friend.

It was true that most asexuals ended up just deciding to give in and have sex. They'd say it was a thing they did for the person they loved, and that they didn't really mind, and that it was fine.

Fifer wasn't quite there yet.

She simply couldn't get to the point where she felt she wouldn't somehow resent the idea of betraying her own deep nature for someone else. And she didn't think she wanted to be in a relationship with a person who would ask her to do that either.

She thought that giving in, having the sex, it was a point of hopelessness to which she had not descended.

Sometimes, in her very dark moments, she wondered if she was just being dumb. Maybe sex was fine. Maybe she wouldn't mind it. Maybe she wasn't even asexual. Maybe—

But this doubt cycle was also par for the course. She'd get depressed—she'd try to go out with allosexuals—she'd psych herself up to lose her virginity and become normal like everyone else…

And then she never could.

So, that had to mean something, right?

Now, she cleared the end of one of the shelves in Simple Pleasures, and the counter came into view. Hollis was behind it, sitting on a stool, gazing intently at his phone. He looked up at her. "Fifer!" Well, he sounded pleased to see her.

She stopped right where she was and put her hands on her hips. "That's how you greet me?"

Hollis tilted his head to one side. "You're angry," he said in a wondering voice.

She rolled her eyes.

Ross got up on his hind legs and folded his forearms over his chest. "Fucking A, she's angry. You can't just ghost someone and then act confused about why they're annoyed."

"Ross," said Fifer, shaking her head at him. "Let me do this myself."

Ross narrowed his eyes at Hollis. "I'm watching you, man, that's all."

Hollis cleared his throat. "Ghost you," he repeated. "I've heard that…" He tilted back his skull, causing his hoodie to fall backwards. It was strange, because his antlers poked through the hoodie, but when it fell back, she realized this was just some kind of magical illusion. The skeletal antlers flowed through the fabric like through liquid. "Oh, right, ghosting. Shit. How long has it been since I got your number? Has it been a long time?"

"A week."

"Oh, seriously? A week is ghosting." He fingered his antler tips, thoughtful. "Well, I've just been trying to figure it out, actually. I've never, um—shit. So, if I tell you I've never gone on a date, that's going to make you think I'm weird."

"Never gone on a date?" said Ross. "Are you asexual, too?" He turned to Fifer. "Is he asexual?"

"No," said Hollis. "Not asexual. I mean… I don't know. I'm not sure it's a fair term to apply to someone who's not mortal."

Not mortal? She blinked at him. What did that mean? Did that mean…? Her heart started to pound in her chest. What was he? Could she ask that without being really rude?

"Whoa," said Ross.

"Let's go to Alma Bea," said Hollis. "We'll just go out to dinner, and that's totally adequate, right?"

She swallowed. "So, you still want to go on a date?"

"Oh, did the ghosting mean that you don't want to?"

"I just think you need to give me your number, too."

"Sure," he said. "How about I call you, and then, you can save the number?"

"Fine," she said.

He got out his phone and moved his skeletal fingers over the screen.

Her phone rang. She hit the button to silence it.

He put his phone away. "We could go to The Press Room, if you'd rather—"

"You're picking the expensive restaurants," she said. "And I don't know if I want to pay that much for dinner at this point, because—"

"Doesn't the guy pay?" Hollis sounded genuinely confused. "I googled and googled, but that seemed like the consensus. If I ask, I pay, right?"

"I mean, it's not a given," she said. "But if you want to—"

"I do," he said.

"Why haven't you ever gone on a date?" she said.

"I, um, you know… it's just been a while," he said, "since…"

"You're really old, aren't you?" she said in a tiny voice. "You're like, ageless and magic and… and… old."

Hollis cleared his throat. "Well, if you want to back out, I would understand."

"So, yes?"

"I'm fae," he said. "Like you. I mean, not like you, not mortal fae, not of this, uh, plane. And yeah, I don't really age here. I got exiled from Faerie a while back."

"When?" she said in a tiny voice, her heart pounding even more intensely.

"Well, I really couldn't tell you the exact date."

"Estimate, then?"

"Nine hundred," he said. "Give or take? It was England. There was… I mean… lotsa forests mostly, at the time. Old roads from when the Romans were there. Some castles. Knights and dragons having, like, feuds… No one was real concerned with calendars, though."

She let out a squeak. Fuck. What was she to him? Some plaything in a long string of playthings? This… this was—

You knew. You knew deep down when you saw that he was an animated skeleton who looked like he had muscles under his clothes. You knew he was magic . You knew .

"I'll text you," she said, holding up her phone.

"I freaked you out," he said.

"Nope," she said, shaking her head. "No, I'm just fine." And then she ran out of the shop without even checking to see if Ross was coming after her.