Archive of Our Own ^beta

Cole wasn’t straight.

He wasn’t exactly sure what he was, but he knew that he wasn’t straight. He’d known since before he came to the monastery, since before his mom died. Or, well, he’d suspected it, if not anything else.

His memories of before, of the person that he was before Wu found him on top of that lonely mountain, were a bit murky. They weren’t sad, per se, which was good. But they were also less memorable. But he did remember that, even all the way back in kindergarten, so many of his friends seemed obsessed with romance. It was mainly his female peers who kept bringing it up (Nya had explained to him, years later, that they probably wouldn’t have been so interested in it if they didn’t feel like it was expected of them) so he assumed that there was nothing strange about him just because he couldn’t understand what people saw in romance.

Besides, at age four he had far more pressing matters that needed tending to and more urgent problems that needed solving than his sexuality – like which toy car would he get to play with after lunchtime.

When he was in middle school, his mom was already sick. She had been sick even before, his dad admitted to him years down the line, but they didn’t want to tell him. If he didn’t seem to care for anyone in a new way, it was because so much of his emotional capacity was taken by the worry he felt.

When his mom was gone, he didn’t feel anyhow about anyone because he was grieving.

It was that simple.

←→

“Look who’s awake! Rise and shine, our beloved sleeping beauties.”

Cole groaned, blinking his eyes open and feeling the stiffness in his shoulders. There was a weight on his chest, very briefly, before he was strangely cold. It was too early for him not to perceive anything that happened around him as blobs of color so he had no idea what was happening.

“Morning Kai,” Jay grumbled from somewhere nearby.

Cole murmured a string of grumbles that were only meant to sound like words. He didn't quite have the capacity to even think of a sentence yet.

“Hey guys. Sorry for waking you, but it’s already noon and sensei Wu said that he’d be back by three. We need all the help with the courtyard that we can get.” Nya’s voice was far kinder and softer than her brother’s, a display of care for the two sleepy heads. When his eyes finally started functioning, Cole saw that she was standing by the window, slowly drawing the blinds open.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get to it.” Jay walked up to Nya. He was fixing his hair, which was funnily only messy on one side of his head, and stretching a bit. He proceeded to straighten his back out, clear his throat, and then obviously speak in a lower tone than he normally would. “Did you sleep well?”

There was something amusing about the way that Jay puffed out his chest and tried to act tough even when he was wearing his summer (read: pastel blue with tiny brown teddy bears) pajamas. It wasn’t because Jay trying to be masculine would be funny on its own. It was just that his pajamas had a far stronger and sillier power than him and ultimately overshadowed his attempts at coolness.

“Eh, you know how it is. The full moon always messes with me,” Nya said nonchalantly. “But I did get some sleep in, which is nice. Anyways, Zane’s made breakfast…”

Nya and Jay walked out the door, the former still talking, the latter hanging on to her every word, failing miserably at appearing like he wasn’t. The smile on Cole’s face was less one of amusement and more one of fondness.

“What were you two lovebirds doing out here?” Kai asked from his spot in the corner of the room. “Watching Starferer, or perhaps some heart wrenching rom-com?”

“Har, har.” Cole stood up from the sofa, his back cracking as he did. “Very funny Kai.”

Kai approached the TV. “Gorgeous woman? Well, not Donagan’s best performance, I hear. But certainly good enough for a romantic evening.”

Cole gave Kai his signature ‘as the maybe-part-time-kind-of-leader of this team, I must say that I’m disappointed in you’ look. Eyebrows furrowed and all. Then he sighed and walked away, following the sweet smell of porridge into the kitchen where Jay was no doubt heating it up.

He knew very well that the movie wasn’t the best. He suspected that Jay, who picked it out, did too. But if watching it after waking up from a horrible nightmare made him feel better because it was his mom’s favorite movie, and if cuddling Cole made him feel even safer, who was he to deny his best friend that comfort.

And yet he couldn’t help but wonder if Kai’s teasing was just that. If it really was just a joke, or if maybe, just maybe, there was something that he saw between him and Jay that Cole didn’t. Something…

Cole knew that the position that they spent the night in wasn’t exactly one that most straight male friends would choose to be in voluntarily. He knew that the way in which Jay slept snuggled up to him, head resting on his chest, limbs entangled together wasn’t normal for people who weren’t interested in each other.

And, even less voluntarily, he thought if Jay might like him more than a friend.

There was already… Well, Cole wasn’t sure what name Jay wanted to use for it.

For the way that he never took his shirt off in front of anyone, even when they went swimming up until a couple of months ago. Until Wu took him to Ninjago city for a few days for some sort of surgery and until he came back and properly healed.

For the way that his voice tended to be high in moments of distress, the times when he’d go from his alto to a higher mezzo soprano. For the way that someone kept pads and tampons and dark colored towels in the monastery’s bathroom even before Nya came around.

Cole knew better than to question it. He lived with Zane, for the first master’s sake, if Jay wanted to win the award for being Cole’s strangest roommate, he still had a lot of room for improvement. But not asking meant not knowing more than what he learned as a child. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.

Not asking meant not knowing if Jay could feel anything non-platonic towards Cole.

Cole himself wondered if he could feel that way about Jay. He wondered if the way that his heart sometimes grew a bit happier when he heard Jay make one of his horrible jokes, the way that he liked most seconds he got to spend with the brunette meant that he liked Jay that way.

He didn’t think it did. He didn’t really want it to.

His first crush should be a girl, he decided a while ago. Even if he got his first crush later than others because he was busy grieving, it would be a girl.

He didn’t have a name for what he viewed Jay as for a good amount of time. He wasn’t sure how to go about naming something so important to him, something so big. Best friend felt too… too vague. Too impersonal. Too little.

Jay was his brother.

And there was nothing that he would like to be to Jay than his brother as well.

←→

“Cole and Nya, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

The kids’ silly singing taunted Cole as he tried to fall asleep. His headache was seriously becoming harder to tolerate with each second, the discomfort almost comparable to that which was caused by fighting the whole stone army. He had less than an hour until his next class and it just so happened that the kids decided to go out for recess. If he stood up to close the window, he would’ve puked. Most likely.

And so he kept lying on the leather couch in the teacher’s lounge. He settled for pressing a pillow over his face.

(Like putting a plaster onto a stab wound.)

He wanted to fall asleep and yet the words of his students, Meda, Rose and Rebbeca, if his guess was correct, echoed in his mind.

It was silly. It really was.

But his father had asked him if he had any plans concerning his romantic life, he asked if there was any pretty lady that he was thinking of, just last week.

And…

He’d lost his family a couple of years ago, his only living family. He’d left his dad and hadn’t looked back, not properly. Only a few times, to make sure that the letters full of lies, pages upon pages written about someone that wasn’t him, landed on his dad’s doorstep. And his dad liked him – his dad truly liked him, didn’t just love him.

He was interested in what Cole had to say, listened to him, made an effort to see him as often as he could. Their relationship was still slightly strained, but they were working on it. Working hard.

He wanted nothing more than to make him proud, and if saying that he wasn’t really looking for anything romantic right now brought a small frown onto his father’s face, wrinkled from smiling in some places, from frowning in all the other ones, then he was willing to at least try to be open to that kind of a relationship.

He didn’t want to like Nya that way. He loved Nya, liked her, too, but… It wasn’t like that.

He didn’t lie awake, thinking about all the ways that he could profess his undying love to her. He didn’t see her lips and think that they would be lovely to kiss. He didn’t like to look at her when she was training, when she was teaching, when she was talking, reading, eating, doing anything any more than he liked to look at Kai or Zane or even Wu.

He loved Nya, but not that way.

And a part of him, a small, insecure, dark part of him wondered if that made him broken.

Jay did all those things and more for Nya. Kai winked at and flirted with every woman unlucky enough to cross his path when he wasn’t that busy. Wu looked at Misako like he did all that romantic stuff too, but couldn’t talk about it. Lloyd was a kid and they weren’t sure if Zane could be attracted to anyone, really, so…

So maybe he was supposed to like Nya that way. Or any of the other women in his life – of which admittedly, there wasn’t an awful lot. He talked to the Ninja, Wu, his dad, his students and, on rare occasions, the student’s parents. His personal life wasn’t exactly diverse.

He didn’t want to drag Nya into this, didn’t want to rope her into feelings that he would have to actively force himself into, especially when Jay was already interested in her.

But he was quickly approaching his nineteenth birthday and was yet to even have his first kiss.

His parents had gotten married at twenty five and twenty six.

He didn’t have much going for him in the work department, either. He was a middle school teacher, for the first master’s sake. Few jobs were more dead-end than that! Sure, he loved teaching, but not that much. It felt selfish to admit, but at least when he was a ninja, he had a purpose. He could save people, could make the world a safer place.

And yes, in order for him to be a ninja, there would have to be bad guys that needed to be defeated and that would mean that the people of Ninjago would be in danger again which was bad, obviously, but without it, without his identity as the earth ninja, all he had was a small apartment in the middle of nowhere, a couple of tweed suits, a position as a music and art teacher, a couple of cool scars, a messy and complicated relationship with his dad, no concrete future and a stupidly strong headache–

He let out a sigh.

He wasn’t going to fall asleep, was he?

←→

Cole never planned for grief to come back into his life so soon.

He’s said goodbye to it before, waved and held back tears as he saw it walk away along with the few lingering touches that his mother had left behind on his world.

Zane wasn’t supposed to be stolen from him.

He wasn’t supposed to meet her again. But he did.

The last time that she was around, he felt like he’d been frozen or his core, stuck in the same day, while the rest of the world moved on. He watched his father and his friends dance and sing, listened to his teachers lecture about new topics and watched the seasons change and yet there was a layer of something thick and murky separating him from it. Like a ghost, he didn’t seem to age, didn’t seem to go forward. It had taken him a very long time to figure out that the only way that he could go was upwards.

This time, everything was upside down. The skies always seemed to be as gloomy as on the day that Zane left them, threatening to send down a new gust of snow or, on the slightly warmer days, rain at any given moment. The candles that people lit never went out. And yet Cole was going forward.

Forward and forward, forever marching on against the ruthless stream of time and destiny.

He traded his scythe for a microphone for a bit — merely a few days, a total lapse of judgment on his part — then for a brush and finally for an axe. He made new friends, kept talking to his dad, though not as much. He was doing surprisingly good, he thought.

He spent his days surrounded by wood, a clear objective in mind and his nights in a comfortable little apartment that he was renting, snuggled up with a book or a good movie.

He might’ve been alone, but that wasn’t important.

It was a normal day, a Wednesday if he remembered correctly, when he’d seen that particular episode of Good evening, Ninjago. It aired on NGTV after Gale Gossip’s evening news. Cole put it on so that he’d have something to listen to while folding his laundry, ready to switch the channel at any given moment.

The first guest of that night was some strange man he’d never heard of before. C… C-something Powers, maybe, he wasn’t really paying attention, too busy fretting over the fact that he forgot to take a paper tissue out of his pocket before washing his clothes. From what he heard, the man wasn’t that interesting. He was your typical self-centered guy with a semi-cool job, nothing that he hadn’t seen before a thousand times. At least the host had a nice voice. Smooth and low.

Then the ad break came. And believe him when he says that Cole didn’t expect to have his view of himself changed mere seconds after he saw an advertisement for a supermarket chain that claimed that neither one of their shops were destroyed in the past three years because they were, and he quotes, ‘protected by the power of the First spinjitsu master himself’.

First came the show’s signature tune; then, the voice.

“And we’re back, with our second guest for tonight! She’s one of Ninjago’s biggest heroes, a boss of anything technological and anything martial arts related. The idol of thousands of Ninjago’s girls and women and the dream girl of at least twice as many men! You know who I’m talking about, it’s Nya Jiang Smith!”

The audience on TV cheered. Cole froze, eyes glued to the screen.

Nya walked up onto the stage, waving her hand and smiling proudly. Her suit glimmered in the bright lights, the material itself seeming like it was made of something liquid and crimson. Like she'd donned on a gown of blood, gorgeous and powerful.

She looked stunning.

Cole was too enthralled with seeing one of his best friends – yes, even despite the rift that he and Jay caused between the three of them – again to note that his heart didn’t skip a beat, but rather swelled with pride.

She sat down on the big and lofty black couch, waving at the audience one last time, before she turned to the host and crossed her legs over each other. Her earring twinkled, a single bright star amongst the sea of her black hair.

“Thank you for the introduction.”

“No problem Nya, although I hear that I should’ve added something more; you aren’t only popular amongst guys as one of ninja that they’re most likely to have a crush on, but a big survey by Teen dream magazine also revealed that more than a thousand girls all over the country seem to have the hots for you more so than for any of the other ninja!”

Nya chuckled. “Wow! That sure raises a girl's confidence! Although I’m not sure if I technically qualify as a ninja.”

“Well, the people seem to love you! No matter if you do or don't wear a gi!”

“That’s good then.”

“I’ve also heard that you and Jay are taking a break from your relationship. Is that true?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly a relationship even before, more like the beginning of one. We never actually got together, but it’s true that Zane’s passing, as well as other issues kind of pushed us apart.”

“Does that mean that there’s some lucky gentleman out there that has a chance of scoring a gorgeous woman such as yourself?”

Nya straightened up a bit. “Well, I’m not exactly looking for a relationship right now. And I definitely don’t want to be scored like I’m some prize at the fair. But It is true that, under the right circumstances, I might be open to dating a nice guy or girl.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot in the past couple of months and exploring new ideas – you know how it is when you get bored at work – and I found that I like girls that way, too.” She took a deep breath. “I’m bisexual.”

“Well, I certainly don’t know what you mean by getting bored at work, but that’s wonderful news!”

Nya snickered. “Wonderful?”

“Well, I suppose so. I hear that the lgbt community of Ninjago is thrilled to have yet another ninja willing to stand with them. Plus, it means that the playing field is now leveled for all our gorgeous women in the audience.”

“That’s one way to go about it.”

“Well, not that it isn’t interesting, but moving on from your colorful love life, I have to ask you about the things that our viewers are dying to know – what’s it like, working at such a high position at Borg industries and when is the new line of Borg phones that you helped design coming out?”

Cole tuned out the rest of the episode. He registered Nya’s familiar voice, kept stealing glances of her fabulous outfit and tried to catch sight of her smiles. His hands moved on their own accord, hanging one piece of laundry after another, until his basket was empty and his drying rack was filled with flannels, t-shirts, jeans and underwear of assorted shades of black and orange.

There was a pull, or push or both at once deep inside his ribcage and there were too few thoughts on his mind – like calm before the storm. He swore that the hair on his neck stood up a bit, as if lighting was coming, and he might’ve even smelled ozone.

There were flashes of blue and red and white, appearing and disappearing around the edges of his vision.

The talk show ended. Nya left the screen. There was a different commercial playing.

It was nothing more than static to his mind.

Cole was too tired to do any of the other things that needed doing. He walked over to his kitchen corner. He got a drink.

His apartment was dark, all the lights turned off. Only the TV still flickered and the lamps outside the building shone. It was raining again. Cole was beginning to feel fuzzy.

His phone found its way into his hand. A new google window was opened on it. Bisexual was typed into the search bar.

He poured himself another glass a few moments later.

The deep ache in his chest didn’t go away – it changed. There was something inside him that needed to understand. That wanted a label to put on what he felt. A curious little part of his soul and his mind, wondering why he never seemed to look at Nya differently than he looked at Kai or Jay or Zane.

He’s always felt the same about everyone no matter their gender. Ever since he was a kid, boys and girls looked… well, not the same, exactly, but what he saw in them was the same, only in slightly different fonts.

He told himself that it was the grief. That there was too much sadness in his heart to feel something as new as romance. But maybe he’s already felt it – maybe he had a minor crush on all of his ex-teammates and so many of his past classmates and on Cliff Gordon and on the actress that played Fritz Donnagan’s love interest and he hadn’t even realized it.

Maybe he was already in love with so many people at once, just lightly but still romantically, even when he valued their friendship more than he could say.

He found that his phone was dialing. Nya’s photo was on the screen, right above her name. He pressed the phone to his ear, listening to the beeps. He refilled his glass.

“Hi Cole, what’s up?”

There was a ball of something heavy in Cole’s throat. “Hey Nya. I… um… I saw you on the TV.”

“Really?” Nya sounded equally proud, tired, surprised and embarrassed. “I didn’t think that either one of you guys would watch it.” Her hearty laugh cracked in the speakers of Cole’s phone. “I honestly didn’t expect Mic to rope me into talking about Jay and romance off all things for so long.”

“You were amazing.” There was some kind of warmth spreading through his veins, from his fingertips to the crown of his head. He wasn’t sure if it was love and Nya or the alcohol.

Nya laughed again, softly this time. “Thanks! I was worried that the suit would get all wrinkled up when I sat down, but it looks like it was fine. Lloyd helped me pick it.”

“That kid’s tastes are getting better,” Cole mused, a small smile finding its way onto his chapped lips. “It’s weird to think that he willingly had a bowlcut just a few years ago.”

“Yeah.”

There were some clangs coming from Nya’s end of the line. Cole took a sip.

“Cole…” The way that Nya said his name had him forcing back tears. She said it like it was something to be handled carefully – not like a glass sculpture but an old photograph of a loved one. She said it like she could read his mind, like she knew exactly what was wrong. “Not that I don't appreciate hearing from you, but… there’s no way that you called me just to say that.”

He took a deep breath. Then a bigger sip. The ball in his throat got bigger. The force in his chest got stronger.

“I… How did you learn that you’re bisexual?”

There was silence for a few moments. Cole couldn’t even hear Nya’s breathing over the phone. He worried that she would hang up on him. He felt too blurry for his heart to start hammering.

“I’m not sure. I know that I said that it was a new development, but I’ve honestly known for a while. The first crush I ever had was on a girl. I didn’t realize it at the time, because I was super caught up in trying to be tough and thought that I was just jealous of her, or I didn’t like her, because she made me feel completely different than everyone I knew. And everyone always taught me to try to compete with other girls, not appreciate them.

She was my classmate. I went to live with you guys before I ever got to do anything about it. And then I met Jay and realized that I felt the same way about him and that girl. I told Kai and Zane and Lloyd when we were teaching. I was planning on telling you and Jay, but then the whole love machine fiasco happened and… Honestly, I felt like you two drifted away from me then. Like you started to care for my opinion and love more than you cared for me. So I…”

“Yeah. I get that.”

Thinking about the way that he acted deepened the ageless pit in his stomach. He had no idea why Jay started fighting with him and he was so worried that he’d missed some big cue that his brain went into fight mode. He felt like Jay wanted him to be mean, to argue, and he didn’t want to let his best friend down.

If Cole was… well, the same thing like Nya, the argument would appear completely different. He was pretty sure that he might’ve been in love with both of them at the same time.

“I’m sorry. For… everything.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Cole.” Nya didn’t sound as emotional as he felt, but there was something incredibly vulnerable in her voice. “If anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. I was the one who made things such a mess. I–”

“No, no. Nya, you were just conflicted. No one blames you. It wasn’t your fault–”

“But it was, though!” Nya’s voice was going higher like it always did when she was frustrated. “If I didn’t force you guys into that silly charade, if I actually talked to you, things would’ve turned out much better.”

Cole didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t because of surprise, for once, but because there was no argument that he could think of that would make sense. So he said the next best thing.

“Maybe so. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve forgiven you already. I never blamed you in the first place, but I’ll always forgive you. No matter what. And I think that Jay will too.”

“I– oh, first master.” Nya chuckled. He could hear the tears gathering in her eyes. He felt his eyes getting watery, too. “That’s not healthy, Cole.”

“Yeah. But…” I love you. “You’ve been one of my best friends since, like, forever.” Even if they only knew each other for less than three years. “We saved the world together multiple times. I can’t not forgive you.”

Nya stayed silent. After a few moments, he heard her take a very shaky breath.

“Hey Nya?”

“Mhm?”

“I think that I’m also bisexual.”

←→

THE EARTH NINJA – HERO, IDOL, ACTIVIST AND LINGERIE MODEL

Amelia’s secret, Ninjago’s best selling lingerie brand, posted the promo materials for their new line yesterday. The images have appeared on every major news station, in every magazine and even on some of the biggest billboards in Ninjago city, marking this as Amelia’s secret biggest promotional campaign. The reason for the images’ popularity is not a secret to anyone, but it’s definitely a surprise!

You know him, even if you’re used to only seeing a bit of his face – it isn’t hard to recognize those rich eyes, thick eyebrows and silky black hair. The glowing green scar is also the opposite of subtlety!

That’s right, Cole Brookstone, Ninjago’s savior n-times over is Amelia’s secret’s newest model! Showcasing their newest line of merchandise might just be a quick gig for anyone else, but for the earth ninja, there’s far more to it!

We bring you this exclusive interview with Ninjago’s hero:

<->

R: Mr. Brookstone, thank you for joining us!

C: The pleasure is all mine.

R: I’ll get straight to the question on everyone’s mind – it’s just too hard to ignore it! We would’ve expected Kai, your teammate, to become a model far sooner than you. You’ve stated already that there’s more to why you went into this job than just a desire to model; could you tell us what really drove you to doing that photoshoot?

C: I’d be glad to. Since we’ve become huge public figures, I figured that I should use my influence for something good. Nya’s been doing her best to get women equal rights, Zane’s been trying to increase the quality of public school education… We each have a cause that we’re trying to help. I love helping my family out, but I couldn’t stay behind and I knew that I just had to speak out about something so close to me. Since last year, I’ve been trying to make body positivity a much bigger thing than it was before.

I’m obviously not the smallest guy out there. I’ve always been bigger and, especially since I grew up in a community of performers, I’ve always felt that pressure to be thinner. My parents were lovely people and didn’t give me a hard time because of my size, but most of my peers did. Even now, when I’ve been working out almost every day for the last… gosh, five years, I’m still not slim. Partly because of my genes and partly because life is too short for me not to enjoy good food when I can!

I think that my presence in the public world has already had a positive impact on the way that people treat folks who look like me, but I wanted to do more. I’ve been told many times by my teammates that I am good looking and if the minor army of my fans is anything to go by, I doubt that people mind looking at me. [laughs] And so I reached out to Amelia’s secret and asked them if they were willing to do something like that with me! I hope that if people start seeing people like me in these kinds of settings, the stigma around being fat, chubby, thick and anything in between and around those terms is going to lessen over time.

R: People are also wondering if this has anything to do with your recent announcement that you are, in fact, bisexual.

C: What do you mean?

R: Well, people have been wondering if this new display of your sexuality has anything to do with being comfortable with sharing another kind of your sexuality with the public.

C: Oh. Well, to me, that photoshoot was kind of disconnected with that. I was just thinking about the fact that I’m attractive, not necessarily sexy. To me, it was more about showing off that even people like I can wear those kinds of clothing and be in those kinds of spaces, and not really about expressing that part of myself.

R: So it isn’t connected to your bisexuality?

C: Not really, I guess. To me, wearing lingerie isn’t that sexual. It’s like wearing a swimsuit, except that you get to look even prettier! But obviously, the main thing about lingerie is that you get to look unapologetically attractive. Anyone can do that, regardless of their sexuality. You don’t have to want someone to want you to look good.

←→

“No, no. You don’t get it, dirtbrain!” Jay exclaimed, voice still hushed enough not to be heard outside of their tent, even if there wasn’t anyone who could hear them for at least five miles. His cheeks were rosy, the sea of freckles standing out on them. The light of their lantern cast heavy shadows on his face, hanging behind his silly, lovestruck expression. “It’s like, a thousand times better than it could ever be if you’re alone!”

“Okay, but have you considered that that may be just because you have different parts than me?” Cole asked, still pretty skeptical. Jay just huffed and rolled his eyes, blue bolts of frustration running through their beautiful murky teal, glowing softly in the near-dark.

“Of course it’s not because of that! I’ve… finished on my own before. But it was so much more, I don’t know, profound I guess, or important when it was with Nya.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know how to explain it to you,” Jay murmured, “when you haven’t even dated anyone before. I mean, there’s just so much intimacy and vulnerability involved. And it feels like you were always meant to be doing it. Like it’s the most natural thing you can do.”

“I’m pretty sure that that’s just because you’re so helplessly in love with her, dude,” Cole deadpanned.

“So?”

“So you can’t claim that sex is just that good, if you’ve only ever done it with one person.”

“Well, about that…” Jay turned even redder.

“Jay. I’m sensing that there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

The brunette buried his face into his pillow for a good few seconds. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you. But you can’t say anything to anyone, capiche? Not a beep.”

Cole raised his eyebrows. “Sure, I–”

“And also, you can’t judge me or make fun of me or anything like that!”

“Me? Tease you?” Cole said in faux hurt. “You wound me, Walker!”

“Ha, ha, ha-larious,” Jay said, voice flat.

Cole sobered up, sensing the underlying seriousness of the moment. “Don’t worry, buddy. I promise not to do any of that,” he swore and made sure to be as sincere as he possibly could.

Jay untensed his shoulders and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. Cole could see the way that he fidgeted with his fingers.

“Okay, so… a while ago, I may have, you know, messed around a bit with Kai. We were… it was after Zane died. We were both lonely, we met up, got drunk, fought and well… one thing led to another. And then we did the same thing a few times again.”

“Oh.”

“And, okay, um. Maybe it wasn’t… maybe we didn’t do it because we were just so in love that we couldn’t not do it, like it’s with me and Nya, but it was still good. Amazing, ground breaking, world shattering, mind blowing– you get the point.” Cole saw Jay smile. “We talked about it later, decided that we have no hard feelings for each other anymore but that we still matter to each other.”

“Does Nya know?”

“Of course she does!” Jay replied. “She’s the only other person who knows.” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t tell her, especially now that we’re dating again.”

Cole hummed. Then he said, rather impressed: “so you, out of everyone in the sixteen realms, managed to bed both of the Jiang Smith siblings in less than five years?”

Jay burst out in laughter. “That’s your takeaway from that? This and not the fact that sex is actually super cool and amazing?”

“Yeah, I mean, I can see Zane being cool enough for both of them, Skylor, Pix or, hell, maybe even Griffin, but you? Compared to some of the people that we know, you’re a pretty big loser.”

“Hey! You promised not to judge me!”

“No, I promised not to judge you for sleeping with Kai. I would never give up the ability to make fun of you for anything else.”

Jay rolled his eyes and flopped over onto his belly again, throwing his pillow over his head and groaning. Cole chuckled at his best friend’s antics.

“You know what? Even if I am a loser, at least I managed to get laid by two badass people, whilst you’re still alone,” Jay proclaimed and sounded extremely proud of himself, as if he’d just won every argument that the two of them ever had with a single sentence.

“Wow. Low blow, buddy.” Cole crossed his arms over his chest. “What am I supposed to say to that? Oh, woe is me, I’m a virgin even though I have tens of thousands of people thirsting over me and also a loving family and also cool powers?” He kept his voice light. “Yeah, I’m such a poor soul, just because I don’t want to sleep with anyone at the moment and am not bound by romance to any one person! Such a tragedy that I’m single even when I can’t see why people would ever get into romantic relationships!”

He laughed, threw his head back, closed his eyes, rested on his pillow, and expected Jay to join in on laughing about his joke. When Jay stayed silent for a few moments, Cole expected that he simply fell asleep. They’d been climbing mountains the entire day, of course they were going to be tired. And Jay had a habit of falling asleep to Cole’s voice.

But when he opened his eyes and looked to his side, he didn’t find Jay passed out next to him. Instead, he was looking at him, face strangely serious and somber. He looked like he was deep in thought.

“What’s wrong?”

“Cole, don’t take this the wrong way – and also, if I’m just, like, super wrong, tell me to shut up, okay?” Jay rambled on. Cole was getting worried but nodded anyway.

“Right. Um…”

Nya’s words had changed his entire worldview no more than two years back. Her words brought him comfort, the name that she gave him made him feel accepted and understood, at least most of the time. What was it with his best friends making him question his sexuality?

“Are you sure that you’re bi? Because it honestly sounds like you might be aromantic. Or asexual. Or both.”

“A as if in…”

“As if in you don't really want anyone. In any way.”

Silence. Deafening, suffocating silence, pressing down on Cole’s chest.

“I…”

He didn’t want this.

“I’m not sure.”

Jay, hearing the awful crack of his best friend’s voice, the emotions ready to spill through the cracks, reached for his hand. He struggled to find it in the dark, but when he did, he held on to it with all his strength.

“I guess–”

“Man, I’m so sorry – I didn’t want to hurt you or mess with you or anything, you don’t have to think about this if you don’t want to–”

But he would. He’d been avoiding the topic since his best friend all the way back in middle school confessed to him that he had a crush. He’d been swiftly sneaking around everything that could possibly be wrong with him, swiping his mess of feelings under the rug with one step, waltzing perfectly to the beat in his head with the next since he’s discovered his true potential.

He didn’t want to think about the time that he accidentally went on a date with someone when he was still teaching at Wu’s academy, not realizing that it was, in fact, a date until the poor soul leaned in to kiss him. About the way that he then promptly ran away, blaming it on a family emergency.

He didn’t want to think about the gossip columns in every magazine in all of Ninjago, about the pages upon pages of writing, all questioning his sexuality, speculating about his potential partners, just trying tofigure him out – some of which dated all the way back to the time before he was openly bisexual, though most were relatively recent.

He didn’t want to think about the fact that he never actually had a crush that he could act upon.

He didn’t want to consider it.

But if even Jay thought about it…

“I really… I’ve never even kissed anyone,” Cole admitted.

He was pretty sure that Jay knew. That Jay had known since the first sleepover that they threw on in the monastery, since that night when they watched low-quality teenage rom-coms, ate shitty popcorn and played all of the assorted party games popular amongst normal teenagers – even if he, Jay and Zane were as far from normal as they could imagine at the time.

Cole swallowed. “I have no idea if I’d even like it.”

He didn’t want to say that. He didn’t want to share that, admit that, think about that. The more that he did, the higher the chances that the thing that he worried was messed up about him was actually messed up and he wasn’t just imagining things.

But there were few people that he trusted more than Jay. One of them was lost. The other was dead.

He was tired.

“Would…” Jay started, rolling out the sound as he always did when he was thinking hard. His voice turned into something that was barely a whisper. “Would you like to try it? Kissing someone, I mean.”

“Are you offering to find me a stranger to kiss out here in the middle of nowhere, or are you trying to kiss me?”

“Well, I mean, I did bed both of the Smiths, I would potentially be able to find you a fling of some sort,” Jay joked, glad to lighten the mood a bit, too. “But I’m leaning towards the second option more, to be honest.”

“You’d cheat on Nya?”

“No! Of course not! This would be… um.. How would I put this…” Jay was getting slightly redder in the cheeks again. “The two of us – you know how we talked about me and Kai? So, um, basically, me and Nya agreed that we could. Uh. Do stuff with other people.”

Cole raised his eyebrows. Partly in disbelief, partly in surprise.

“If stuff meant something brief and not all mushy and lovey-dovey. And if other people wouldn’t think that we’re breaking up with each other just to pursue them.”

“Huh. I see why Nya wanted to keep her options open, given that she and Skylor seem to be getting on well, but you… well, if she knew that you’d slept with her brother, she probably had at least some faith in you getting laid.”

Jay rolled his eyes again. “I’m offering you a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience here, rocky. If you don’t want to kiss me, all you have to do is say no, not go out of your way to insult me.”

“Yeah, but making fun of you is way more fun.”

“Ugh. Do you want the stupid kiss or not?”

Cole dared to glance up upon Jay’s face. The atmosphere was a bit lighter, but there was something heavy in the brunette’s gaze, something warm and sticky and electrifying – something that Cole felt cling to his skin.

“I guess…” He licked his lips. “It couldn’t hurt to try, right?”

Jay nodded, rich curls swaying with his head.

The master of lightning sat up and Cole followed in suit – he had no idea what he was doing, what the proper kissing etiquette was, if there was such a thing and why he was thinking about that.

Jay approached his cot, hands going up, then down, then up once again, teal eyes searching for something. Cole felt strange looking up at Jay for once.

After a moment of deliberation, the blue ninja weaseled his way from between Cole’s legs and sat down right next to him. He could feel his body heat, warming up the tent.

He might’ve even heard the other ninja’s heartbeat, if his own heart wasn’t pounding against his ribcage so loudly.

Jay took hold of both of Cole’s hands. He gave him a serious look. “If you get uncomfortable at any point, you can actually just push me away. Or tell me to stop. Whatever works, m’kay?”

“Alright,” the earth ninja chuckled, trying to shake off some of the tension.

“I’m going to kiss you now.”

Jay started to lean in, hands moving from Cole’s shaking hands to his broad shoulders.

Cole felt his heart beating faster, faster, faster and he hoped to the First spinjitzu master that it was because he was so enamored with the boy next to him, not out of fear. Jay’s freckled cheeks were so close and Cole wanted to trace all of those little spots, dream up new constellations like he used to back when Jay came to him whenever he was having a nightmare.

If there was anyone in the world that he would be attracted to, it had to be Jay or Nya – there was no one who had stayed with him for so long in the same way. Yes, Kai and Zane stayed by his side since they met but Jay—

Jay methodically broke down his stone walls with his technical genius and nerdy ramblings, appeared in his life in less than a flash, broke his heart and then mended it again, just in time for it to turn corporeal. Even then, his words, his never ending blabber kept the lack of a heartbeat from driving him insane.

He and Jay were messy. They were something that both of them were too afraid to name, choosing instead to enjoy their presence before they started to claw at each other’s throats again.

Jay was probably the most important person in his life. That was a scary thought.

It was a truthful one, though.

Jay’s lips brushed against his own and instantly all the love that had been swelling up in his chest faded into terror. A deep, paralyzing terror, the kind that dragons used to bring him, the kind that death tended to give him.

He lightly pushed at Jay’s chest.

He pushed at the soft blue fabric of his clothes, fingertips on fire from the contact, almost exactly like back when he first stopped being a ghost.

He held his breath like he used to whenever he wanted to yell out in pain, before he realized that life is too short not to let anyone see his pain.

He stared into Jay’s gorgeous eyes, afraid and afraid and afraid to find any judgment or anger in them – like whenever he used to mess a dance move up when his mom was still alive, like he was staring back into his father’s eyes, praying to see love crackling in them instead of all the bad things that Cole tended to feel.

He stared and he stared, the ball of tears and frustration and shame and anger spreading in his throat, about to choke him. He stared because breathing was too hard, because he loved Jay but only like a brother – no, not only, the word brother couldn’t physically convey all the love that he held for his bluebell –, because there had been talk in their little family about him and Nya taking things between them even more seriously, because he’d been slowly pushed apart from both of them, two of his siblings, two of his teammates and because the life that they wanted took notice of him only as a side character.

He swallowed, muscles tensing at the thickness of his saliva, praying to whoever was out there that he wouldn’t start crying right there and there, because it was all he could do in the face of his thoughts.

He’d been so, so, so terribly alone before he joined the ninja – to be perfectly honest, he was pretty lonely for a while after, too, but that drop of sadness couldn’t hold a candle to all the love that they showered him with.

He’d been alone until Nya and late night sparring sessions. Until Jay and nights spent babbling on about anything and everything and watching movies. Until Zane and food – amazing, gorgeous food and all the time and joy that they put into making them. Until Kai and hours spent styling brunette hair – coarse and rough and short at first, long and smooth later on. Until Lloyd and dancing to theme songs of just about every good cartoon and show known to man at three am when the darkness outside was too scary for both of them otherwise.

Until he was a part of his family.

He cherished that love and that togetherness, felt more human than he ever thought he could – because loving was inherently human, even though being human wasn't inherently loving, and because Cole loved to love.

But then Jay started coming to Nya when he woke from a nightmare and Nya came to him. Then Zane spent hours just existing in silence with Pixal. Then–

Then he was alone again. Slowly but surely loneliness crept back into his life like shadows creep up when the sun starts to set. The love around him wasn’t enough, he knew that he was supposed to find his own partner that he could ride off into the sunset with at some point, just as so many of his siblings had, but he couldn’t seem to latch on to people that way.

He had fallen behind and scraped his knees in doing so.

There had already been an aching in his bones since before he learned to run, since before he ran with his family. But now that he had fallen down, stopped to breathe and to watch everyone that he loved run on and on without him, he couldn’t get over that ache.

He couldn’t get back on his feet.

Jay pulled back, a small smile on his lips. It’s okay, it said. We’ll get through this.

It was enough to send the avalanche of love and fear and despair that had been building up in Cole’s chest for years now tumbling out.

He sobbed into the night.

Jay held his hand.

←→

Lloyd was supposed to be asleep, along with all of his teammates.

It didn’t surprise Cole when he found him very much very awake, sitting on the roof of the monastery.

“Hey kiddo, what’s wrong?” he asked the blonde when he sat down next to him, calloused hands pressing into the new-ish tiles.

Lloyd lifted his head from the place where it rested on his knees, looking up at his older brother with teary green eyes. They were red and there were glossy tracks on his cheeks, gleaming in the starlight.

“Just thinking,” Lloyd whispered but he didn’t break eye contact. There was an explicit sadness and despair in their richness, a melancholy strong enough to rival all the energy that ran through the poor boy’s veins.

Cole wrapped his hand around his brother’s shoulders and pulled him into a sideways hug. Lloyd relaxed into his embrace. Cole hoped that he helped unwind the tight knot of nerves that was clearly already formed in the depths of the boy’s chest.

“I know that I may not look or act like it sometimes, but I, too, can think.” Lloyd snickered at his joke. “Would you like to share those thoughts with me? I am older, after all, I might be able to help you figure them out.”

Lloyd stayed quiet for a bit, grabbing Cole’s other hand, tracing all the little scars that he had with his gentle fingers.

“I think that I might be… like you.”

“Like me?” Cole asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Aromantic. And asexual.”

“Oh. Thanks for telling me–”

LLoyd cut him off, clearly not as worried about Cole’s reaction to this as he was to what he was about to say. “I think that– oh, first master, I was so sure that I had myself figured out, that I just wouldn’t like anyone in either one of those two ways, but then – then Harumi came and messed with my head and I genuinely thought that I was in love and that she was in love too, but at the end of the day, she just – she just stabbed me in the back! Oh, fuck, she actually hated my guts! She really hated me! And I fell in love with her. And now – now I can’t– she took that away from me, I can’t be aromantic, i can’t– and she was the only person who I loved, and maybe that means that I’ll never be loved and–”

“Lloyd.” Cole’s heart was properly broken. Crushed and demolished, especially when Lloyd went quiet again, only to start sobbing uncontrollably. Cole hugged him closer to his chest, careful not to activate his superstrength. There was a wet spot on his chest, warm and salty, where Lloyd’s face rested. Cole pressed a kiss to the crown of Lloyd’s head, into his golden curls, careful not to scratch himself on Lloyd’s small horns.

“Lloyd, I’m going to need you to listen to me. Can you do that now?” Cole asked, almost whispering the words into Lloyd’s hair. The younger boy sniffled, then nodded once, twice. The movement was ragged and shaky and Cole knew that it had taken a lot of his energy.

“If there’s one thing that I’m sure of, it’s that you’ll be loved until the end of time. Me, Kai, Nya, Zane, Jay, Wu… all of us would throw our lives away if it meant that we could make you happy. And even if we don’t count, for every person that’s bitter towards you, there will be twenty who would shout their love for you from the rooftop of Borg tower. I’ve never met anyone as kind and good as you, buddy. You deserve all the love in the world.”

Lloyd was sobbing again. Cole wasn’t far from crying, either.

“Also, the fact that you liked Harumi doesn’t instantly ‘ban’ you from being aromantic,” Cole continued. “If you feel comfortable under that label, you’re free to use it. No one can tell you not to, and if they do, I’ll grab Kai and we’ll personally shut them up.” The next sob sounded a bit like a very broken giggle. Cole took that as a victory.

There is a very specific comfort in names. Cole knew that very well. A name is a community, an answer to a puzzle, a proud expression of oneself. No one could take that away from anyone, especially from his little brother, who had already had to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders more times than he’d ever blown out candles on birthday cakes.

“Harumi can't ‘steal’ that from you. You're your own person.”

Cole's t-shirt didn't dry out until the morning.

←→

The TV was on in the living room. Fritz and Spitz interrupted the steady staticky hum of it from time to time, their excited or disgruntled cries cutting through the sizzling of the onions on the stove. Geo was watching with them – though, perhaps ‘watched’ isn’t the right word. Like most dads (or dad-adjacent figures) he had fallen asleep before Fritz Donnagan had even entered the first big spaceship chase.

Cole couldn’t help the smile on his lips. He was glad that his family was happy and safe.

“Hey, Cole?”

“What’s up, buddy?”

Cole took his eyes off of the frying pan to look towards his eldest, hand still stirring the food. Bonzle stood in the doorway that connected the kitchen and the stairwell. She was holding a book in one hand and fidgeting with the hem of her jacket with the other. Cole noticed that there was a small tear next to a spot where a button was supposed to be and added sewing it up to his list of chores that needed to be done in his head.

“I need…” Bonzle cut herself off, trailing off into silence for a bit. “Something happened in this book that I’m reading and it– well, I, um, don’t really know what any of it means. And you said that if I… if there was something that I didn’t understand, I could always come to you. Or something.”

“Right. Can you read it out loud for me?”

“Oh, uh,” Bonzle fumbled with the flimsy paperback in her skeletal fingers. “Sure.”

Cole turned his eyes back to the onions.

“Ebony and Edric kissed, their tongues fighting for dominance. They broke apart, gasping for air. Edric looked into his mate’s eyes and spoke in his raspy deep voice: ‘fuck, you’re so hot right now.’ His hand found its way under Ebony’s black gown.

She batted it away. ‘Edric! We can’t do anything like that now! Did you forget that the prince – my literal fiance – might call for me at any given moment? If he finds me with you…’

‘Screw the prince,’ Edric growled. ‘I need you now.’

They stayed in the silence of the broom closet for a while, staring at each other’s faces through the dark. ‘Alright,’ Ebony whispered at last. ‘But we have to be careful.’

‘Whatever you say, my princess,’ Edric smirked and slid his hand all the way to Ebony’s chest, the other making its way to her crotch–”

Cole dropped the spatula, slapping a hand over his mouth and then quickly rushing to close the book in Bonzle’s grasp.

“I wasn’t finished,” Bonzle stated. She had a way of making simple statements sound like accusations that only teenagers possessed.

“I know, honey, but…” he shot a worried look towards the living room, where his other two kids just cheered at something. “I think that I know exactly where this is going. And, uh, well I'd prefer if those two didn't hear about it just yet.”

“Why? Is it something bad?”

Cole rushed to shake his head. “No, no, not at all! But it's a pretty mature topic.”

“So… what is it?”

He ran a hand through his hair, over his face, feeling the coolness of his rings – all gifts from Geo – and his callouses – hard earned from years of being the savior of Ninjago for the better part of his life. How to approach this, that was the question. When two people love each other very much felt like a joke and a very untrue one at that. He loved Nya very much but he very much didn't end up sleeping with her.

He took to examining the cover of the book. The paper was bent and discolored from use and from the outside world. It wasn’t rare to find books lying around the Land of the lost but most of the literature that they had was textbooks and encyclopedias and old books that no one liked to read anymore. The kinds of books that didn’t actually say much. A fantasy romance novel was a bit rarer to come across.

There was a bookshelf built by Geo out of bricks and interesting pieces of wood in the hallway. They’d been filling it with books that they found over the time that they spent here, and they were proud to say that they were almost running out of shelf space. The lower shelves were dedicated to adventurous books and comics that the youngest of the household gravitated towards the most. The middle shelf was full of encyclopedias and cookbooks. The top shelf was what he liked to call the ‘red library’.

Romance novels of varying plots and styles, though all made for women by women. Cole, though not a romance literature fan by design, knew that both Jay and Kai loved certain books of said genre, though their favorite titles definitely wouldn't end up on Cole and Geo’s red shelf.

There were many ways to sugarcoat it, but the truth was plain — the books on the top shelf were all mostly bad and all about sex.

At least the sex was relatively good, Cole supposed. Even if he had no other good things to say about the books after he and Geo read them for the heck of it when they couldn’t sleep, he was glad that the girls in the stories got laid and enjoyed it.

He knew exactly how some parts of the world treated female sexuality, having heard a great deal about it from Nya. He didn’t want his daughter to feel like sex wasn’t for her, even if she didn’t end up wanting to do it in her adulthood.

”So… um, what I assume that the two — Edric and Ebony, right? Yeah, what the two of them ended up doing was sex,” Cole began. He was beginning to wish that Geo was with him. “And that means…”

What did sex mean, exactly? Especially for folks like skeletons and such who didn’t have genitalia? He knew about the human definitions of sex, but they never taught him this kind of sex ed in school.

He really hoped that schools all across the merged lands didn’t only teach about the sex that two humans or human-adjacent folks could have, for the sake of all kids around the world.

”Usually,” he tried, “it’s something that happens between two and more people. It’s a certain activity — well, the term is pretty broad there are tons of ways to have sex — that stimulates certain parts of people’s bodies. Genitalia. Usually.”

Cole opened his mouth, trying to figure out a way to describe what that word meant. Then he shook his head, set the book that Bonzle had brought on one of the few clean spots in the kitchen and rushed into the hallway to the bookshelf.

When he jogged back to his kid, he was already searching for the correct page of the biology textbook — his favorite one, mainly because it was Vania’s idea to make it. A collaboration of scientists from Ninjago and Shintaro, human, Munce and Geckle knowledge of the living world combined.

”Right… so for most people, sex is about what happens in these areas,” he said, pointing to the crotches of all the drawn silhouettes, circling around the illustrations of organs with his fingernail — painted yellow by Fritz. He looked over to Bonzle who’s expression didn’t give much away. He wasn’t sure if it was the lack of muscles, ergo a skeleton thing, or a teenage girl/ Bonzle thing.

”When folks with a penis get excited sexually, their body sends a whole lot of its blood into their genitalia, so it stiffens. When folks with a vulva get excited that way, their blood is redirected into their clitoris.” Cole could hear Nya’s voice in his head, he could see the exact expressions on her face as she said the words. She definitely enjoyed speaking on the half-hour long special that they shot on sex-ed for Ninjago’s youth a while back.

“The clit is actually a pretty big organ, but only a bit of it is visible. It’s one of the only organs in the body that’s dedicated purely to pleasure, so most folks who have sex and have a clit see having it stimulated as a big part of sex.”

Bonzle was looking at the pictures from beside Cole. She was fidgeting with her jacket again.

“A lot of people—“

“Hey, is everything alright? I think that something’s burning.”

Both Bonzle and Cole turned their attention to the lovely person standing in the doorway. Geo’s hand, strong and sure, held onto the wood of the doorframe, his hair was ruffled from resting on his shoulders, long dark strands flying free of the braid that was no doubt Fritz’s doing, and his eyes were a bit teary from being shut for so long.

He looked beautiful.

“Morning, sunshine,” Cole greeted, setting the textbook down for a bit, just so that he could hug the gorgeous man. Geo put his hand around the noirette’s shoulders and Cole could’ve melted right there and then from the warmth. “How come you’re already up? Did the TV shut itself off again?”

“No, thankfully not.”

Though Cole was glad that they found a semi-functioning television, there was an abundance of issues that it brought. He’d spent the last twelve years — more, maybe — in a household with Jay, Nya, Zane and Pixal. His technical skills, though he’d learned that they need at least a bit of an improvement, have not had the opportunity to better themselves. He was paying the price now — when the oven would randomly stop working, when their central heating made strange noises, he was utterly unprepared and had to wing it. The only thing that he knew exactly how to fix was their radio.

“But Spitz got a bit carried away with acting out a fight scene again,” Geo said, fond and sheepish at the same time, as he showed off his gut. A small bruise had already formed and it would surely only get bigger.

“Elbow?”

“No, only his fist, thankfully.”

Bonzle watched her dads from where she was standing by the counter. She watched the way that they leaned on each other, the matching jewelry on their necks and hands and fingers. The smiles in their eyes.

And in her signature deadbeat tone, she asked: “do you two have sex?”

Cole and Geo spluttered, faces growing darker with blush.

“Oh, sorry, am I like, not supposed to ask that?” Bonzle asked in a tone that very much suggested that she was not, in fact, sorry for asking. Her mouth remained a line still, though Cole could see the smug smirk in her eyes, an expression of teenage self-satisfaction powerful enough to rival Jay in his glory days.

The two men exchanged glances that ranged from worried to confused to embarassed, trying to figure out the correct move from here without actually talking. It was a bit of a habit of theirs, though it had turned out to be a relatively bad one. Their impromptu silent staring matches had never been exactly productive.

Fritz yelped out at something that happened on the TV.

“Yeah. We… we do,” Cole admitted. He felt… strange. Sheepish, for sure, slightly proud, of course. Almost like he was a teenager again, too. More so than that, it felt like coming out, minus 90% of the baggage.

“But it isn’t exactly like – um… I wanna say Evelyn and Ed…? Ed, do,” Cole tried to explain. He held Geo’s hand just a bit tighter, took breaths just a tad deeper. This, he thought, was exactly like coming out. Now minus only 30% of the original baggage. Luckily, he had plenty of experience in this regard.

“A lot of folks tend to like other folks that way. They might see a hot actor in a movie or someone that they went to school with in a swimsuit and think to themselves that they’d like to sleep with them.”

There was little to no stigma surrounding queerness in the Monastery. Or on the Bounty. All of the ninja, in one way or another, would proudly hang a flag of assorted colors in their bedrooms, would have paraded down the street with a rainbow or the sky painted onto their cheek if only they had the time for it.

“Some folks only tend to like folks who have other parts than they do and some folks only like those that don't. Some like both. Some don't really even think about that.”

The issue, the deep rooted problem that had been living inside the edges of Cole's mind, didn't stem from his family. Well, not his ninja family, anyways. And not entirely.

“If you hear reasonable people talk about it, they'll usually use the term sexuality. When most – okay, uh I'm well aware of the fact that I'm using the words people and folks a lot, but bear with me – folks think about two people together, a girl and a guy pop into their head. When a girl only likes guys or a guy only likes girls, that's called heterosexuality.”

The reason why Cole’s breathing hitched in his throat when he tried to name how he felt or why his fingers never obeyed him when he wanted to change his profile picture on Chirp to one with him in front of a certain flag was convoluted and stupid and incredibly simple.

“But a lot of folks don’t feel that way. Maybe they only like people with the bits that they have. Maybe they like both.” A deep breath. “Maybe they don’t like neither.”

Lily had been a romantic. His father was a hopeless one. When he met the ninja, his entire family, Jay immediately found himself pining over Nya. His whole life was a flurry of love songs and adoring fans (fangirls and fanboys alike) and cheesy rom coms that cheered his brother up after a nightmare, a collage of a very specific idea of love.

“The same goes for romantic attraction, too.”

There was no doubt in Cole’s mind that he was loved — how could he not be, when Kai let him do his hair on the days where his hands ached too much or when Lloyd fell asleep on his lap on the couch while they were watching Starferer? He knew that he loved others dearly, he could feel it. But none of that love fit into the neat, small box that his forebears had prepared for him.

“Generally, you can label yourself however you’d like. There are no rules when it comes to your own sexuality. If you feel that it’s something fluid, it’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to put a name on it. On the other hand, if you hear a name and something about it just clicks with you, it’s yours to use.”

The shame that he’d carried was not about being queer. Not for a long time. It was about not being able to fit himself into that box — from not being able to find the key, even, from not really knowing how to go about opening it.

His eyes met Bonzle’s, cutting through the tension in the air. “I’m aromantic and asexual.”

He’d held on to that box, to that idea of what life and love should look like, watching people around him fly into their own boxes only to walk out again, sometimes looking downwards in shame, other times screaming at the person who they walked in with. He’d placed the box on a shelf, looking at it wistfully every now and then, imagining what his life may be if he ever found his key, not really even wanting to go through the process.

“Which means that I don’t like anyone either sexually or romantically. It took me a while to figure it out, but it’s true. And, also…how should I put this.”

It wasn’t intentional, the way that people tended to idolize the box and shove him into it. There was no malice behind people’s teasing about the difference of love that he held for food and for any possible partner. (...mostly.) There was never anything strange to him or to anyone else about all the romance that infiltrated fiction, the constant labeling of complex feelings and expecting any bond between two persons that was exceptionally strong to be romantic. Not until–

“I never see anyone and go ‘oh yeah, I’d like to make sweet love to them.’” Bonzle held back a snicker at his choice of vocabulary. “And for a long time, I didn’t really feel comfortable with doing things like sex and kissing and candle-lit dinners – well, actually, I was always down for dinner of any kind, so I guess that I still would’ve done that, if anyone ever invited me.”

It wasn’t strange until he returned from being a ghost and saved the world multiple times. Until Wu was gone and so were any major villains (for the time being). Until he had semi-free time on his hands that he chose to spend in libraries and places of study, hoping to find any clues that would help him bring his family together again. Until he ventured into more niche queer spaces. Until he found people who thought and felt almost like him.

“What Geo and I have is… It isn’t a normalrelationship, I guess. We don’t really do much of the romance stuff.” He looked to the other man, tightening the grasp on his strong hand. “We aren’t quite boyfriends, but there aren’t many ways to describe who we are. Partners, maybe. I love Geo, but not like how I’ve been told that love is supposed to look, the fairytale kind of romantic love, and not like I love all of your aunts and uncles, either.”

There was nothing strange about the idea of centering your life around one person that you loved romantically and maybe your kids, forgetting everyone else that you’ve ever loved, until he’d met people who didn't want to leave their family of choice. Especially when they also didn’t want to be left behind.

“So, I mean, we do have sex. But it… I don’t think that either one of us are attracted to one another that way. It’s just a fun friendly bonus to being partners.”

He didn’t want to leave his family behind, but the Merge had flung him far away from them and he had no clue if he’d ever find them. He found a new family, three lovely kids and a partner with a smile brighter than the Sun. He missed his siblings. He missed Wu – his… well, whatever label would fit a man who was both his father figure and son, at one point. And he could only hope that he could bring his two families together to make one big one in the future. For now, he had a lot of things that he didn’t before – time, long-term children, a garden, a partner…

“It’s – imagine a cup of coffee, if you will. There are a lot of people who will want one, specifically one with milk. Maybe a bit of sugar. And because there are a lot of coffee and milk lovers out there, wanting it becomes the norm.”

… and a bedroom reserved only for him and said partner. There was an awful lot that Cole had tried in the past year – from actually kissing someone with tongue (which he found he didn’t care for) to having sex. All of it was new to him, and a lot of it he didn’t like. But if he was being honest, sex could be incredibly fun.

“But there are people who don’t like coffee at all. Or maybe they hate milk. Or they don’t like either. Sure, if someone offered them a cup of it, they’d drink it. But it isn’t something that they really want. Something that attracts them.”

Cole knew very well that the way that he and Geo had approached sex wasn’t the ‘normal’ way to do it. That maybe most folks would say that they don’t value it enough, that they treat it too lightly. But Cole liked the way that they went about it. He liked the way that he could feel during sex and he liked Geo – but the two weren’t quite connected. He liked sex for being sex and he liked Geo for being Geo.

“I don’t ever crave either coffee or milk. I can definitely enjoy it under the right circumstances, like maybe if I haven’t slept in a while or it’s too gloomy outside, but I probably wouldn’t even think of making a cup for myself.”

Maybe there was a connection to Geo and sex and the way that he liked both of them. He liked Geo for trusting him so much and he liked that he could trust him, too. That they could sit down, talk about their feelings, bang and then move on with their lives as if it wasn’t a big deal. That they’d slept together, had fun and didn’t try to make it the center of their relationship. That they both agreed (if a bit jokingly) that the cuddles afterwards were somehow better than the act itself.

“So — now imagine that coffee is romance and milk is anything sexual… And tell me if anything that I said made sense, because I really hope that it did.” Cole’s voice was downright sheepish now. He wished that Zane was there, or better yet, that Nya was there. Partly because he always wished that he would be reunited with his siblings, partly because Zane had a far better way with words and him and because Nya was extremely knowledgeable when it came to both sexuality and teenage girls.

He could definitely use some pointers when it came to having a teenage daughter — even after almost a year of living together, Cole was still no closer to fully understanding the gaze that Bonzle subjected him to.

There was the usual ton of mischief in it (of course) but he was glad that he couldn’t find any judgment. She took a deep breath as though she was about to say something. Cole mentally prepared himself for whatever she could throw towards him, be it more strange questions about his sex life or the most insane kind of wisdom the world had to offer, because practice had proven time and time again that girls of Bonzle’s age possessed an almost arcane kind of knowledge that seemed insane even to Cole.

And yet the words that left her mouth still shocked him.

“Um. I think that you burnt the onion.”

And sure enough, now that he wasn’t focused on giving his child the talk, or something very similar to it, he realized that there was an odd tang to the air in the room — sharp and hot, like Kai’s gi on a bad day.

Something was burning.

Bonzle helped him cut up the onion again.