fandomhigh | Fandom Library, Wednesday, February 12th

Arden had been dreading heading into the library today, unsure what she was in for. Would the gremlins be having a speeddating event like 3MD? Would there be safer sex displays holding lectures? Would the safer sex book displays be lecturing speeddating gremlins? She didn't know. All she knew was that the library would absolutely, positively refuse to be normal about this week.

And she was right.

Not about the book displays or the speeddating gremlins. Instead, there were just a thousand different romance genres everywhere. Shifter romances were flirting with erotic myth retellings. Historical romances were fluttering their pages invitingly at post-apocalyptic ones. Romantacies were insisting to their friends that they could 'fix' graphic celebrity tell-alls. Glossy art books featuring nudes canoodling with cheaply-printed translations of BL light novels. Everywhere she looked, there were piles of books an the susurration of paper brushing against paper, the scent of ink heavy in the air. Worse was when she'd accidentally glance somewhere and catch the books delicately sliding their pages together in an intimate--

"N-no thank you! Absolutely not!" she snapped, knocking two books (an overly-sexualized murder mystery and a copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover) apart with a yardstick she was keeping handy for just this purpose. "If you wanna do any of that, there are any number of private bookshelves available. Go on now, shoo."

She needed to talk to Constantine about hazard pay for this week.

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"You could. Or I could try to help," Cal said after a moment. "Maybe help relieve some tension, in a way."

"Please give me enough time to leave," BD added.

Arden sputtered before her brain caught up and realized he meant with meditation. Not...any of the other ridiculous number of scenarios it had tried to put into her head instead.

"I. Uh." Brain still rebooting. "Sure!" Reboot clearly failed. "Relieving tension sounds good."

Abort! Abort! Abort!

BD was already traveling down Cal's back, and Cal nudged him back up in place. "Relax. We're not going to do anything here." Probably. Maybe. "This is only going to last a few more days, right?"

"Probably?" Arden said. "This is only my second one, but everybody talks about it lasting a week, so..."

Gray's voice chose this moment to echo in her head, causing her to wince.

"What, what's wrong?" Cal asked. "Did I say something wrong? Should I go? Maybe I should go."

"No no!" Arden said. "No I just--okay, weird question. It came up earlier and I realized I didn't know and I've been assuming and honestly, it's probably not even any of my business!"

What a great lead up, Arden.

"But like. You're not a eunuch, right?" Beat. "I mean! You could be! It would be fine! I phrased that wrong! Cause whether you are or not, it doesn't matter, right? I'm just assuming not because, like, nobody assumes you are...Not you-you, the general you. But also you-you. Nobody is assuming you specifically are a eunuch, either. But! Even if you were! It would be totally fine!"

Gray, Arden hated you so much right now.

Well, that didn't help Cal's concerned look, and as BD leaned up and chirped in his ear his eyes got wider. "No! I--no! Everything that's supposed to be... down there is down there. Totally functional. The Jedi aren't barbaric, that would be awful. We just don't, you know, do certain things with everyone we meet. Is that something you've been worried about?"

Gray was going to Special Hell and Arden would meet him there because she was about to be deceased. Didn't even need to walk into the ocean this time. Embarrassment would do the job nicely. There was a radio squirrel already succumbing to secondhand embarrassment over there! RIP radio squirrel! Sorry about your beat today.

"No, no!" She insisted, because the last thing she wanted was Cal to assume that she'd been thinking he was a eunuch this whole time. "I never assumed you were, or that the Jedi maybe had a practice of--that. Or whatever. Just Gray asked and I said of course you weren't, and then I realized that, like, I was just making an assumption, because we never had the, you know, 'Are you a eunuch?' talk--" Because those weren't a thing, Arden. "--So I just figured I'd ask and let you know that no matter what, it wouldn't matter because I like you for you and not what is or isn't in your--I'm not gonna finish that sentence."

Could she be dead yet?

Edited 2025-02-13 15:42 (UTC)

If BD-1 could laugh, he would be losing it at both of them. For now, he was just making mental notes for how much therapy Cal might need later.

"Is this a thing? Do I need to tell people I'm not a eunuch?" New nightmare unlocked, thanks Arden! "I thought it was a given. I know I'm not from Earth but I thought we all just assumed everyone has..." Cue the uncomfortable motioning to his bits. "You know, the same stuff going on for the most part. Wait, why were you talking to Gray about this?"

Maybe coming here had been an awful idea after all.

Hmm. How much did Arden want to cop to anymore of her conversation with Gray than she already had?

Negative a billionty percent? That sounded accurate, yeah.

"Gray has asked a several if they're eunuchs because the crazy vampire doctor lady told him to in class one time," she said, which was true, if not exactly the answer to the specific question. "Captain Flint, definitely, and I think possibly Mr. Logan? I think the general assumption is that most people assume you're not a eunuch unless there's reason to think otherwise. Which was why it never came up before."

"Of course this is the crazy doctor's fault," Cal said with a sigh. "Well, now you know and we never need to talk about it again. At least, not this week, because I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

Ignore how he was the color of a tomato, his discomfort was not the issue, obviously.

Fandom Library, Wednesday, February 12th

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