Curry is a character in Addergoole: Year 9.  This is set – well, it’s got to be an AU which I didn’t think about until I’d finished writing it, or rather, until I started posting it. 

This is set in 2021 or thereabouts, which means it can’t happen the way I wrote it, because it is set 10 years after the apocalypse.  No Victoria’s Secret Angels in 2021 in Fae Apoc. 

But enjoy it anyway as a look into Curry.

🌲

“You’re.. thirty.”

“Thirty-four.”  Curry shifted.  He had kids that were older than he’d been when he’d – when – when he’d seeded. 

Which was enough time to figure out a few things, he supposed. 

He cleared his throat.  He’d thought this would be the right sort of person to talk to.  He’d called back to Addergoole and they’d suggested this woman as someone he could talk to about everything. 

“The thing is.  I’m a tree.”  He dropped his Mask and held his breath. 

The therapist looked him up and down thoughtfully, shaggy bark skin and needles hair and the sort of greeny color over most of him.  Well, the parts that were visible; he’d rolled up his sleeves but he was fully clothed. 

“I see.  You have an interesting arboreal Change, I agree, but what does that have to do with – with your sexuality?”

 He cleared his throat. “Can I – can I sit?”

“Yes, of course.  Please do.” She cleared her throat and sat in one of the comfortable-looking chairs, gesturing to another one.  Curry put his Mask back up – he’d never really been all that comfortable with it – and sat.  

“So the thing is, the thing people didn’t really explain to me until part way through my second year,  I don’t, uh.  I don’t grow up at the speed a normal human did. I’m something like 15, 16 in tree years, maybe? I mean, I might’ve grown up slower if I’d Changed earlier, but..”

It still made him uncomfortable.  The whole thing made him feel like a teenager again. Like an idiot teenager. 

“…but more or less,” he tried, “uh.  I looked more adult than I was at sixteen, seventeen, and I tried hard to you know, fit in, but I didn’t really get it.”  He huffed.  “I went to a school that was designed to get people having sex and the only time I felt anything remotely like – uh.  like anything was when someone lit me on fire.  Kheper.”

He huffed a little, a little laugh at himself, just before he caught the therapist’s expression.  “It’s okay! It’s okay, it didn’t even hurt.  It just – my seeds.”  He coughed.  “Turns out that’s uh.  That’s how I reproduce.   Asexually.  I have some little – well, they’re not little anymore, they’re like… late teens – seedlings.  But I – I was sitting with a couple friends the other day, and they were watching this thing, uh, Victoria’s Secret Angels.  And… nothing.  And it finally occurred to me that they weren’t all just pretending to like them.  And then I thought about the way Eli looks at Zola, this girl he’s seeing, and that’s… another thing.  I’ve never looked at anyone like that.  The closest I’ve ever gotten is, is this guy I was friends with right out of school.  And I think I was trying to be his sidekick, you know?  Everyone seemed so much more grown-up than me.”

He huffed again.  “I think this is a longer matter.  Everyone’s always seemed more grown-up than me.  I’m just now starting to feel like the twenty-year-olds make sense, you know?  And my kids are nearly twenty. But.. .I’m trying to figure this whole thing out.  Men.. women… I’m not sure I…”  He winced.  “I’m not sure I care?  I’m not sure I’m into.. anyone?”

The therapist leaned forward.  “It’s possible you never will be.  It’s possible that you’re asexual in more than one way.  I’ve got some literature that would be good for you, if you don’t mind a little reading?”

Curry smirked.  “I outgrew hating reading,” he admitted.  “Or maybe it was something else I was always faking.”

“I think there’s a lot to unpack here,” the therapist continued, “but if you’re willing to take the time… well, my Change is rock.  I’m willing to move as slowly as you need.”

Curry chuckled as the woman dropped her Mask to reveal stony crags and spikes.  “I guess Professor Valerian knew who she was sending me to.”