Blue Steel Chain Quotes

“if sex could exist without love, it surely stood to reason that love could exist without sex.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“To all the asexual activists out there without whom I would still be thinking of myself as merely weird, wrong, and slightly inhuman. In the hope that the more people talk about it, the fewer people there will be in the world who reach my age without knowing what they are.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“Sex isn't everything. I love you because you're beautiful and caring and an incredibly strong person to go through so much and to come out of it still so generous and loving. I'm not losing that, not for anything.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“James tried to imaging a future in which he did not make love to Aiden, but in which they nonetheless shared the same house and slumbered innocently in the same bed and woke up every morning with that same bone-deep contentment he had felt this morning. Then he imagined a future that had no Aiden in it at all. It was no choice. No contest.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“Oh for heaven's sake," Carol cut in, putting a plate on the table for Aiden. starting to collect everyone else's and dump them in the sink. "He's asexual, that's all. Let's just have it out there and deal with it."
"He's what" Jame's mind immediately went to protozoa. He had top assume that they were not saying that Aiden reproduced by splitting into two identical copies. "What does that mean?"
"She's saying that Aiden loves you, but he doesn't want to have sex with out, And not because he is broken, but because he's part of a set of people who just don't do sex.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“Do you like fishing?"
James didn't know what to make of the non sequiter. "Not really."
"But if I wanted to go you'd go with me, you'd still come, wouldn't you? It's like that."
James didn't see how sex could possibly be like that, but Aiden knew his own mind best.
...
"I'm honoured you would do that for me. What can I do to make it up to you?"
"Make me a coffee in the morning?"
"That's all?"
Aiden shook his head, as if exasperated that they were coming up against a translation problem. "A coffee in bed first thing in the morning would really improve my day," he explained slightly sharp. "Sex isn't more important than that. You;d have to get up before me and go downstairs in the cold and boil the kettle while you were still bleary and zombified. If you did that for m, of course I would know that you loved me. It would be just the same.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“He’d thought he had to give Aidan up so that Aidan could find someone he genuinely desired, but if Aidan wasn’t capable of desire, then that changed everything.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“He had never experienced a kiss like that before...
Now it read differently. What if Aiden hadn't been shy at all, but reluctant. The little stroke down his back, which he had taken for encouragement-could it have been something else? An attempt to calm him down, maybe?
Aiden hadn't pulled back unitl James had touched his throat... but even so...Aiden would only have had to say something and James would have stopped.
Did he know that though? Did he, after his experiences with Piers, have any reason to believe that? Was he in fact just bracing himself for something he believed was inevitable? (Yes)”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“What would [James} do now? Would he think to Aiden was too much trouble for too little reward? Would the sex matter to him so much that he would discout everything else in favour of it? Aiden didn't want to think so, hoped that James would see that love was so much more than that. What was so great about sharing fluids that looked like snot anyway? What did love have to do with that? But he know by now that ninety-nine percent of the population would call that opinion world. The mathematics of the situation were not in his favour.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“Aiden felt so safe he didn't even go to his room to weel, just covered hos eyes and let the fire's warmth and the warmth of tears mingle on his fingers.
Molly had clarified Carol's statement for him, explained that "ace" in his case probably meant "homo-romantic asexual.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“All couples had little niggles they had to deal with. People who squeezed toothpaste tube in the middle, and people who were oddly obsessed with rubbing their groins together. It wasn't a big deal, not really, considering how lucky they were in every other way.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“The right to say no was a right he ought to exercise if he wanted his yes to mean something.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“He must have looked as radiant as he felt because Sara tilted her head and gave him the sort of look she normally reserved for baby bunnies.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“Now James though about it, he had mentioned that his favourite colour was grey and Aiden had worn grey ever since... James had been frustrated because he had wanted to talk about anthropology and Aiden hadn't had a background to make a decent contribution to the debate. A week afterwards Aiden had turned up carrying Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande.
James clutched both sides of the crate and bent his head over it, signing. A creeping sensation crawled up the inside of his back and took residence in his hair as his analysis of the situation took a shape he didn't want to see but could not refuse.
Aiden had been making himself into someone that James might fall in love with.
...
Besides, Fin had already said what needed to be said. He and Michael had seen it at once, the clear-sighted bastards. They had tried to warn him: Aiden had grown up with a protector who took care of everything in his life, so that all he needed to think about was how to please Piers, It was the only way he knew how dot deal with the world. Now subconsciously or not, he must have been looking for that kind of relationship again.
Of course he would look to his rescuer for it.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“I love cooking, he said instead. "And I really quite like doiung all the prep and the washing up too."
"So a long day of heliong me make soup and scones and cakes...?"
In this warm little room looking out onto spring sunshine and flowers? Did thinks like this actually happen? His chin crumpled by itself, and he gad to cover his face agains fast to avoid bawling in somethinf like agony. He had coured a layer of preotection off and instead of hurting him they had come together to protect. He struggled with volcanic levels of gratitude and anger-anger because Piers had told him people weren't like this, but they were.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“Oh sweetheart," Molly explained, touching him on the arm again, kitten-light. Both of the women had tears in their eyes. For him? He didn't understand that, because they hardly new him. Piers had known him all his life and Piers hadn't cared at all.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain

“Besides." Finn had a little smirk on. "The last thing Aiden needs right now is another protector. What he should do is have a year alone to work out who he is: To learn to be his own man for a change. He doesn't want to go to your house and end up your boy instead."
...
"I'm sure you'd be kinder as a master," Finn sneered, "but is that the arrangement you want? Even if it is, you can't have it until he's sufficiently his own man to be able to consent. I tell you this, if you take him in now as he is, it'll be abuse, no matter now nice you are about it."
And of course the worse thing about them was that they were right.”
― Alex Beecroft, Blue Steel Chain