🏳️🌈 + alastor, I like seeing you talk about his asexuality
First of all, thank you! That makes me happy. >:)
Alastor does not know he is ace... and by that, I mean he doesn't know the term and might react poorly to it if he was told, depending on the delivery and who it is coming from. (He would take a talk like that much better from someone like Mimzy or certain muns' versions of Pentious, than, say, Angel). However, he most definitely knows he is asexual in that he knows and has always known that sex sounds horrible to him and is not something he wants to do. (General disclaimer that Alastor is not reflective of all asexuals. I trust that everyone is smart enough to know about nuance. This is how Alastor feels. It would be traumatizing to him.)
He does not feel "broken" because of it. I would go as far as to say he views himself as intellectually superior because he is not tempted by such things. He is a prude and does look down on people who are openly sexual or do PDA and he views himself as above them. I have had the chance to explore this with my friend's Angel, and the way the two of them contrast each other while simultaneously being similar is very interesting.
However, as far as being aro goes, it is a bit more convoluted. He feels more mixed about it. Also doesn't know the term, but has always known he did not want to get married or date or kiss. In general, that kind of affection seems uncomfortable and unnatural to him. Where he feels mixed is that (despite what he vehemently claims) a part of him, deep down, craves companionship and connection and he feels as though he might get close to someone in his own way and then find out that the subject of such fondness views him as "less important" than whatever romantic prospect they may have. He was raised in a very marriage-forward society, where being a married man earned you more respect and was expected and being a "bachelor" too long raised brows.
The closest my Alastor has come to a 'normal relationship' has been his queer platonic partnership with my friend's Pentious, but his sexuality definitely affects how they interact and Pentious' openness and willingness to understand that the way Alastor shows his love is different than someone who is not aroace has been very freeing for Alastor, and has helped him be a bit less of a curmudgeon who hates everyone. I feel like these two are very healthy and help cultivate each other's true and oft-repressed selves and I love it so, so much. Alastor refuses to kiss and their "cuddling" is very chaste and often just limited to linking arms, but this is their own little language and they can be two prim and proper old men whose 'thing' does not have to make sense to anyone else. They're happy. We joke that once they move in together, they are going to sleep in the same room but in separate beds.
The best way I can describe what Alastor feels in a situation like that is that it IS love, but it's not attraction. "I want to keep you" / being so close and fond of someone that you want to be committed to each other or be each other's priority person, but there is not any traditionally romantic stuff going on and no sex. It's like those historical accounts of a queer person where they gloss over it and say that "he moved in with his best friend and the two of them both died childless and unmarried" but for real.
This all said, it is EXTREMELY difficult for my Alastor to get to this point and I can't force it. This partnership happened entirely on accident because these two muses got attached, and in my two years of writing on this blog, it has been the only time my Alastor has been inclined to do that despite me trying to attempt it with other muses (to which there is zero shade, it is not you but rather Alastor who is the reason it has stalled).
