The Following Question Is Going To Be About Sex

Note: Hey babes im tired and overcaffeinated so just about the same as always 😉💜

Alright, so I wrote this immediately after posting the chapter I just posted this morning. I'm just sleep-deprived enough to make an impulsive decision to go ahead and just post it now. Just for you guys <3 It's got some comedy to it, so I'm hoping it'll satisfy your need for happier content.

Anna is seventeen.


The Following Question Is Going To Be About Sex

"How bad is it?" Anna asked, wincing like she was prepared for somebody to rip her heart out of her chest. "It's bad, isn't it?"

Sam frowned in utter confusion. "What are you talking about?"

Anna's defensive expression fell flat. She was not impressed. "Sam, my face is covered in acne, and I haven't washed my hair in a week. What aren't I talking about?"

Sam's shoulders dropped. He didn't look impressed either. "Anna," he scolded. "You look perfect."

"Don't lie to me," Anna said distastefully. She brushed her fingers self-consciously over her forehead. Her skin was oily and she could feel several pimples forming along her hairline. "I'm disgusting," she decided aloud. "You think Cas can fix acne?"

"There's nothing to fix. It's normal," Sam informed her patiently. "Sit and eat some breakfast before school."

"It's four," Anna said bitterly. "I got time." She pulled her phone out and set it on the table then walked over to the counter to retrieve a cup of coffee. She caught sight of her own reflection in the refrigerator as she passed it, and her despair was renewed. "I'm gonna kill myself," she groaned quietly.

She tended to get trapped in serious conversations when the boys heard her say things like that. She wasn't proud of herself for it, if she was being honest, but it was a habit she didn't want to spend energy breaking. And honestly, some days Anna did want to die.

But she had bags under her eyes, she was pale, her forehead was zit-central, and she just all-around looked like crap. She wanted to go back to bed. But even if she did, she wouldn't be able to sleep. Life sucked.

Anna poured herself a cup of coffee and, in doing so, also managed to dump coffee all over the counter. She didn't even curse at the spill. She just put the pot back into the machine and calmly laid down on the kitchen floor, forehead against tile.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked, and she could hear the barest hint of amusement in his voice.

"Waiting for death," Anna replied.

"Come on," Sam said, tilting his head to the side and looking at her in a combination of pity and amusement.

Anna turned her head so her cheek was against the cold floor, and she could see her brother's face. "It's not worth it," she said decidedly. "Even the coffee is betraying me. This day is fated to suck."

Sam finally laughed out loud at her. "Honey, get up," he requested. "I'll clean up the coffee."

Anna pressed her face into the floor again and closed her eyes. She would have to get up eventually, so she might as well just get it over with. She let out a long groan of displeasure and then finally planted her palms against the floor and shoved upward. She saw the warning in Sam's face not a second before her right elbow slammed into the counter behind her.

"Ow! Son of a bitch!" She doubled over and palmed her elbow with her other hand. "Ow," she whimpered, exaggerating just a little bit. Her elbow hurt like a motherfucker, though.

"Anna-" Sam didn't even bother to finish whatever he had planned to say.

Anna suspected that he'd wanted to scold her for swearing or maybe just express his sympathy. She felt pathetic enough, though, without him rubbing it in. She straightened and grabbed her coffee off the counter with a little too much attitude– it splashed over the rim of her cup and scalded the skin of her hand as well as the floor and counter.

Anna closed her mouth forcefully around a scream of frustration.

"I'm callin' it," she said with barely contained hysteria.

Sam had the gall to chortle at the pitch of her voice. "Ladybug..."

"Don't pity me," Anna said and held up one hand. She took a deep breath and wiped the coffee from her hand onto her black sweatpants. "Just shoot me. Please. It would be so much easier."

"That's not funny," Sam cautioned, and he finally stood up to actually help her. "Did you burn yourself?" he asked.

"You mean did my coffee burn me when it attacked me?" Anna corrected. "It's fine." It hurt, but it didn't hurt as bad as her elbow.

"Okay, sit. I'll get you coffee. I'll clean the counter. Just... chill out a little bit, okay?" The amusement was back in his eyes and voice, and Anna didn't like it one bit.

"You're enjoying this," she accused. But she did as he'd suggested and sat down at the table where she let her forehead rest against wood. It was only four in the morning, and the day was already strangling her.

She knew for a fact that once she got to school, things would only get worse. She'd neglected to finish her term paper for history, and her teacher wasn't the type to be lenient about deadlines unless you told him on the frickin' first day of school that you needed extra time. She was hoping against hope that she could charm her way into an extra night or two and just binge-write the thing. Sam would be kinda pissed if she didn't swing at least a C in this class, and she was barely passing at the moment.

Her phone buzzed with a notification. Ian was up early for sports practice, and he was asking her to call him. She was too tired to talk to anybody, really, but Anna figured she should suck it up and talk to him. After all, he was her sort-of-boyfriend-sort-of-friend-guy-that-she-dated.

Without further ado, things got worse.

"You're kidding me," Anna breathed, trying to be quiet enough that Sam didn't hear her. "Did I just start my period?" Without explaining to her brother, she popped up from her chair and announced, "I'm takin' a shower."

()()()

When she told Ian she was going to take a shower before calling him, the questions started. He wanted pictures, and he was offering some of his own, and Anna was too tired to deal with it. She put her phone aside and pretended not to have seen the messages at all.

Ian was horny, but he didn't have anger issues. He wouldn't be a jerk to her about it.

She just wished he would quit asking altogether.

When she got out of the shower, she was greeted by an explicit image and an offer of phone sex.

Anna pursed her lips. She should want this, she knew. But she didn't. So she continued ignoring him.

She knew she couldn't keep evading, though. She had to make a decision eventually. Did she want to do all this sex stuff? Both feet in? Or did she want to draw a line and tell Ian the truth– that she just didn't want it. That it wasn't him, but she wasn't interested in the sexting and she certainly didn't feel ready to have... intercourse.

Anna was tempted to talk to Kate about it. But she knew Kate didn't like Ian and would probably tell Anna to dump him, which she didn't want to do.

Kate wasn't going to be her go-to on this one.

No, she had to either suck it up and talk to one of the boys or figure out an answer to her questions on her own.

She thought about what Sam and Dean would want for her. Safety, above all. She'd suspected that Dean would blow up when she had her first date. But he'd been mostly chill. Yeah, he'd been protective, but he'd let her go in the end, and he'd been weirdly calm about it. And Sam was just too understanding to flip out if she asked him something like this.

But it just felt so... weird. Uncomfortable. Almost as bad as talking to them about depression. This wouldn't be so painful, though. Just weird. Super fucking weird.

The fact of it was that this was going to suck for her either way. And she would rather make the right decision than make a mistake that had the potential to traumatize her.

Choice made, she put on a pair of skinny jeans and her soft zip up hoodie. Then she went and knocked on Dean's door.

()()()

"Okay," Anna said, a sort of mental check as she rubbed a hand against the back of her neck. "Okay, so... Let me... preface this with saying that um– the following question is gonna be about, um, sex." She looked up, fully prepared to get a startled and freaked reaction.

Dean looked wary, but he didn't look panicked or even all that confused. He huffed a laugh. "I follow," he said, widening his eyes in a way that said he wanted her to keep talking.

"Okay. That's not gonna be weird?" Anna asked, just to be safe.

"Very much depends on the question, Runt."

"Right," Anna said, doing a little finger gun motion. She then looked at her own fingers judgmentally and closed her fist before bringing it down to rest in her lap. Talk about embarrassing. She needed to pull herself together. "Here's the thing," she said. "It think it sounds pretty, um... unpleasant, right? And like, I've been told that, you know, once you've done it a couple times, it's not– unpleasant– um– anymore."

Dean was looking increasingly wary. "Okay, hang on, hang on," he said and put a hand out in front of him to get her to slow down.

Anna closed her mouth and nodded. She was more than happy to let him take the mic for a minute.

"Tell me you haven't done anything yet."

"I haven't," Anna said quickly, her eyes wide at the very implication. The thought almost made her want to shiver.

"Okay. So what are you asking?"

"I guess, like... are you supposed to feel like you're ready? Or is it supposed to be like super weird and terrifying?"

"No, it shouldn't be terrifying," Dean told her, concern and maybe some anger beginning to invade his expression. "What the fuck is Ian sayin' to you?" he snapped, standing up from his chair.

Anna raised her hands placatingly. "No, he didn't do anything!" she promised. "Can I just... finish asking this?" she requested.

Dean sat back down, and this time he seemed to be scrutinizing her.

She tried to be careful with her choice of words as she slowly continued speaking. "I just, like... I guess I just want to know if it's... normal... for girls to– like, to have sex... to appease a guy..." At the increasingly dangerous look in Dean's eyes, she let a small, "Hypothetically?" escape from the corner of her mouth.

"I'm gonna kill him."

"He didn't do anything!" Anna reiterated. "I just... you know... he's asked, and I don't know what to say."

"How about no," Dean suggested loudly. "It's obvious you don't really want to. And sex is a two way street."

"That sounded really weird," Anna said softly, squirming in her chair.

"You know what I mean."

Anna frowned a little. She didn't want to be blunt, but, "No, I don't."

Dean looked frustrated, but she watched him breathe and summon some patience. "Alright," he said with a surprisingly strong note of calm and collectedness in his voice. "I don't want to be that guy who's all, like, sex is sacred," he said in a whiny, mocking voice. "But self-respect is important."

Anna tilted her head back in thought. She didn't really have a lot of self-worth or self-respect. But she knew the boys wanted her to. Hell, she wanted to have those things. She just wasn't sure where people got them from. "You mean, like, autonomy?" Anna asked quietly.

"Yeah," Dean said intently. "You gotta put yourself first, kid. You know, maybe in a lot of areas, it's easier to just give people what they want. But doin' that now," he frowned, but it wasn't an expression of anger so much as seriousness. "It's not gonna help anyone. It's only gonna hurt you. If you don't want it– really want it– you don't do it. It's that simple."

"It doesn't feel simple," Anna replied, shaking her head. "I feel guilty."

"Seriously, do I need to pull a gun on that kid?"

"No!"

"I'm not convinced," Dean admitted.

Anna ran a hand down her face. She still felt disgusting, from the zits by her hairline to the cramping accredited to her uterus. She was so tired, and she didn't feel like dealing with any of this. Physically, mentally, or emotionally. "Ian's not pushing me, Dean. He just... asked." A lot. "And I figured I should answer him." Finally. Since she'd been putting it off for the entire three months they'd been seeing each other. "I just, you know, I don't want to hold him back because I'm... I don't know... scared."

"Hey," Dean said with so much disbelieving agitation that the exclamation came out just short of a bark. "You are not holding anybody back. You never owe anybody anything just because he's your boyfriend or whatever."

"He's not really my... well, I don't know what we are."

"Yeah, and if he can't be bothered telling you who you are to him then maybe you shouldn't waste your time on him."

"Come on, Dean," Anna grumbled as she rolled her eyes and tossed her head in tired annoyance. "It's not that simple."

"Yeah, nothin' ever is."

Anna sighed. She wanted to go back to bed. And this time the feeling was more serious and less of a self-organized half-joking pity party. She was tired and a little sad and guilty. Mostly she felt a sense of dread. There was something wrong with her, there had to be. She was seventeen, and she still wasn't interested in sex. It still freaked her out. Even now that she had a guy who wanted her– something she'd never been sure could possibly happen.

"Yeah," Anna murmured.

Dean sat down next to her on his bed and wrapped an arm around her. It was just the way they'd sat on that night she had her first date. She felt a little safer for it. But she was still feeling inexplicably downtrodden.

"What's the matter?" Dean asked her gently, giving her a little squeeze.

Anna shrugged and leaned her head sideways to rest against his shoulder. "I'm just... depressed," she said. "I feel like a loser. I mean, look at me, I'm seventeen, and I still think sex is gross? Talk about defective."

"Hey, don't say that shit," Dean said seriously, pulling back so he could look her dead in the eyes. It was clear he was serious, and so Anna didn't argue with him. She just bit her lip and tried not to keep thinking all the things she hadn't said.

But it was a losing battle. She felt like a terrible friend or girlfriend or whatever the fuck she was supposed to be to Ian. She felt like a stupid piece of shit. She didn't know what she was doing in any area of life, or so it seemed. She felt ugly and tired and sad and guilty and worthless. She couldn't make decent grades, she couldn't emotionally support anyone the way she wanted to because she was so depressed all the time, and she couldn't even commit fully to the role of being Ian's girlfriend? What good was she?

()()()

"You can put your papers on my desk. There's a stapler here if you need it. The printers in the English department are available if you weren't able to print it at home," Mr Bailey was saying as Anna filed into his classroom in a line of students. "I'll be grading them this weekend."

She didn't even bother stepping up to him to explain that she didn't have a paper for him. She just walked past his desk and went to sit at her usual desk in the back of the room.

"You didn't do it?" the blond kid beside her asked. Kylee was her name, and she wasn't awesome, but she wasn't all that annoying either. And she was the most likable kid Anna knew in this class.

"Nope," Anna said dryly and didn't further engage in conversation. She was too tired and, honestly, a bit too moody to have a friendly conversation.

Kylee didn't take the hint. "I stayed up all night finishing it."

"Why?" Anna asked a little tersely. "I mean, I used to do that shit, but I stopped giving a fuck. You should try it."

"I can't help it. I want to go to college, so I need the grades. Anyway it's kind of a big paper."

"Yeah, I'm not proud to know I'll get a zero," Anna admitted.

"Sorry," Kylee said gently. "I didn't mean to rub it in."

"You're fine, dude," Anna reassured her. They didn't speak again after that.

Anna snuck her phone out while Mr Bailey was repeating his instructions to all the other kids coming in. She reread her texts from Ian without actually opening the message convo– she didn't need to get caught looking at explicit images, and she didn't really want to see that again anyway.

The whole situation made her feel even more like shit again. She opened her browsing app.

why dont i want sex even tho im 17, she typed into google.

The results were varied and unsatisfying. But she tapped on a Quora page eventually. Most of the answers were unhelpful and vague– don't rush into things. Totally normal. Nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, but she had a gut feeling that there was something... different about her. Like she was a glitch in the system or something. It wasn't just that she wasn't ready. She never wanted sex. Not with Ian or anybody else. Not a dude or a chick. Not a nonbinary hottie. She just didn't want it. It grossed her out.

She was scrolling through the page, getting increasingly frustrated, when she skimmed over an answer that made her heart skip a beat.

You may be asexual.

In some sort of flash of paranoid anxiety, Anna clicked her phone into sleep mode.

Asexual.

She'd heard the word somewhere before, but she'd never even thought of it as possibly describing her. She thought briefly about all her concerns over the last year or two. She'd expected herself to just... start feeling all the teenage lay-me crap at some point. And it just kept not happening.

She thought about the talk she'd had with Chuck in the bunker. That motherfucker had gone and made her asexual and just left her to figure that out and deal with it on her own? What did it mean? Would anyone believe her? Was it even accurate?

She tapped her phone screen to wake it back up, but before she could unlock her phone, Mr Bailey was suddenly standing over her desk.

"Do you have a paper for me, Anna?" he asked. It was clear he was assuming that she actually did have one. He looked way to chill and friendly to be assuming she'd skipped the assignment.

For some reason, his demeanor pissed her off. Like she didn't have more pressing problems than his stupid history class and his stupid term paper and his stupid deadlines and his stupid smile.

"No," she said tersely. "I didn't do it."

Mr Bailey looked more startled and confused than angry. "You just... didn't do it?" he repeated.

"No," Anna said more bitterly. "I didn't do it. My life sucks, dude. I've been preoccupied." She caught the hint of a smile that crossed his face before he nodded seriously at her.

"Okay. You understand that means getting a zero on the assignment?"

"I think I can connect the dots."

"Anna, you're being very difficult. Do you need to take a walk?"

"To the headmaster's office?" Anna asked tiredly, already grabbing her backpack strap.

"Just a walk," Mr Bailey corrected.

Anna realized then that her eyes were burning with the threat of tears. No wonder he was being so patient despite his usually strict nature. "Thanks," she said quickly and shoved out of her seat.

On her way past all the other desks in the room, Anna felt so humiliated that her mind once again supplied the words Kill me. Once she was in the hallway and out of sight, she put her fingers to her head and made a shooting motion.

She was probably meant to stay in the social studies wing of the school building, but Anna didn't bother. She walked right out of the building and sat under the big tree out front where she could be left alone. She pulled her phone back out and changed her search terms.

am i asexual she searched this time.

Someone who is asexual, she read, doesn't experience sexual attraction and/or doesn't desire sexual contact.

"Fuck," Anna muttered out loud. She felt like the world had stopped moving for the time being. She appreciated that it was giving her a minute to figure this out. "Seriously?" she asked, a little horrified. "Okay," she breathed. "Okay, this is good," she reminded herself. "Except I'm a liar."

Well, she wasn't a liar, really, because she hadn't known. But still... how was she supposed to tell Ian? All the guy talked about was sex and how hot he thought Anna was.

"Goddammit," Anna said and tilted her head back against the trunk of the tree. She looked up through the branches above her, seeing just the tiniest glimpse of sky.

She was asexual. Ace. She was ace. It fit, and it felt good, but it was scary too. It was scary because she'd discovered the word on the internet and so who knew if anybody else would ever believe her when she said it out loud. It was scary because she was supposed to be hyping herself up to get in bed with her sort-of-boyfriend. It was scary because she'd been prepared to find out she was gay, but finding out she was ace... that was blindsiding. How was she supposed to tell Ian? Or her family? Or anybody?

Was she overreacting? Was she making this shit up?

Her shoulders dropped, and Anna finally gave in to the need to cry.

She was weird. She was different.

She had a word for it now. But... God, she was still so fucking confused.

La Fin

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