Delfunia

“I want you—"
"Then fucking have me."
"—but I don't want this."
Alex wants to grab Henry and shake him, wants to scream in his face, wants to smash every priceless antique in the room.
"What does that even mean?"
"I don't want it!" Henry practically shouts. His eyes are flashing, wet and angry and afraid. "Don't you bloody see? I'm not like you. I can't afford to be reckless. I don't have a family who will support me. I don't go about shoving who I am in everyone's faces and dreaming about a career in fucking politics, so I can be more scrutinized and picked apart by the entire godforsaken world. I can love you and want you and still not want that life. I'm allowed, all right, and it doesn't make me a liar; it makes me a man with some infinitesimal shred of self-preservation, unlike you, and you don't get to come here and call me a coward for it.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“In any case, right in this moment, the demon was wearing the infinitely lovely face of a cocubine. Being felt up all over by those lovely hands, Shen Qingqiu inevitably became embarrassed, and he involuntarily shrank back a little.
This vision—that moment—struck Luo Binghe to his core.
Until now, he'd only ever seen Shen Qingqiu's aloof and remote attitude, his derisive expression. But here and now, a faint, uncontrollable red flush formed on that face, and the way those eyes darted away... Also, Shen Qingqiu's upper body was completely bare but for the thin yet unbreakable immortal-binding cable and the red marks it left, and for Shen Qingqiu's long, disheveled, jet-black hair—neither of which concealed anything.
Luo Binghe's chest was burning with a convoluted emotion that was impossible to describe.”
― Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù, The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong, Vol. 1

“But you know! You get it. I'm not trying to trivialize anyone else and what they have to do, but if I go to my parents and say I'm a lesbian, they would know what I meant. If I went to my siblings and said I'm bisexual, they would know what I meant. If I tell anyone I'm asexual, they're going to look at me like there's something wrong. They're going to tell me to go to a doctor. They're going to tell me I'm too young to know what I want or I'm still developing. Or they'll tell me how important sex is to finding a good man. Or they'll think they can fix me, that I'm lying because I don't want to sleep with them. It's hard enough trying to explain that word, so how in the hell am I going to explain I'm biromantic asexual? They're really going to think I'm making this shit up.”
― Claire Kann, Let's Talk About Love

“We should always make time for the things we like. If we don't, we might forget how to be happy.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea