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Berdly and Noelle had been working on their final papers for hours, and the work ground to a halt. Berdly flipped through the book he’d chosen to write his paper on, and the words seemed to blur together into streaks of ink across the pages. Noelle typed henceforth, then deleted it, replaced it with furthermore, and deleted it again.
“I just don’t know what else to say,” she said. “I’m never going to make it to eight pages! That’s too long!”
“I usually have the opposite problem, my dear Noelle,” Berdly sighed. “They ask for five pages, and I write ten! But today… my eloquence eludes me.”
“You know, maybe we should just take a break,” Noelle closed her computer. “Get back to it with fresh minds. Right?”
“I suppose.” Berdly slammed the book shut. “What did you have in mind to occupy us for the meantime?”
“Um… I don’t really want to play a game right now, my brain is too dead as it is,” Noelle said. “We could watch something?”
“Aha! Perhaps now is my chance to finally introduce you to the epic world of powerscaling!” Berdly waved his feathered fingers excitedly in the air as he pulled his own laptop closer to them. “I believe I have the perfect video to show you: a ranking of all the characters from Dragon Blazers 1, 2, and 3!”
Noelle laughed awkwardly, about to ask how long this video was, when Berdly opened his internet browser and the first thing that appeared was a Nerddit forum, with the title Monsters Loving Humans plastered across the top of the page.
Berdly screeched and frantically moved the mouse to close the tab, but Noelle had already seen. She covered her mouth and looked at Berdly with wide eyes.
“That’s! That’s just! I was just researching! A scientific curiosity!” he said. “It has nothing to do with anything! Forget you saw it!”
His wings flapped about, gesticulating wildly. Noelle started to laugh behind her hands.
“Berdly, calm down,” she said. “It’s totally fine if you like humans.”
“I don’t like humans! That’s not—you’ve misinterpreted!”
“Um… OK, if you say so,” Noelle said. “I mean, I look at weird Nerddit forums out of curiosity sometimes too, but, um, the way you reacted kind of…?”
Berdly groaned and hid his face in his wings.
“Is it so obvious?” he said.
“Yes, Berdly, it is.” Noelle gave him a cautious pat on the back.
Berdly sighed dramatically.
“I can’t believe this is how I was discovered…” he said.
“Um, well, to be honest, I already assumed you liked Kris, so—”
“WHAT?” Berdly squawked. “H-how do you know it’s them!? I only said I like humans, not—not a specific human!”
Noelle laughed, then shook her head, trying not to be too mean.
“Berdly. They’re the only human you know,” she said. “And you two have been getting quite close. Plus you totally give them special treatment.”
“I do not!” Berdly was aghast, then frowned and added, quieter: “Do I?”
Noelle nodded gravely.
“Ah, I see. I’ve allowed my emotions to infect my behavior after all,” Berdly said. “And here I thought I’d contained it all quite neatly!”
“Aw, Berdly, don’t repress your feelings,” Noelle said. “I really don’t think you have anything to be worried about.”
“Heh, nothing to worry about, you say?” Berdly adjusted his glasses. “Dearest Noelle, I do not think you realize how much these strange and unbecoming feelings have given way to worries! Not only did I have to question whether it was appropriate to feel such a thing for a human, but it threw my entire perception of my sexuality into chaos!”
“Oh. Because Kris is nonbinary?” Noelle said.
“Percisely! I had only ever favored the fairer sex prior to this—”
“But I thought you said you didn’t really ever like me or Susie?” Neolle cut him off, and Berdly choked.
“W-well. Yes. My feelings for you were manufactured and my feelings for Susie were a mistaken desire for friendship, but in general, generally speaking, I desire women!”
“Mm-hm. Can you give a specific example?” Noelle said.
“Y-you are not helping!” Berdly crossed his arms and looked away.
“Sorry, sorry… just. You know it’s OK if you don’t like women, right?” Noelle said. “Like—you know your best friend is gay, right?"
“Obviously I know that! And of course I accept and embrace your identity, Noelle, and I wish you and Susan nothing but happiness, but I know myself, and I know I am—” Berdly paused, beak held open, then sighed and looked down. “I mean. I knew myself. I knew I was straight. But now I don’t know.”
“That’s OK, Berdly. It’s totally OK to not know what your sexuality is. I mean, we’re only seventeen. I figured it out kind of young, but I was questioning for years by that point! And trust me, my search history was so embarrassing back then.” Noelle giggled and shook her head. “I did like every am I gay quiz in existence.”
“I have attempted these assessments, but they do not seem to assist me,” Berdly said. “How am I supposed to answer questions like do you have more crushes on girls or guys when the only real crush I’ve ever had is neither!”
Noelle said nothing, but her eyes said she knew the answer.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Berdly smacked his wing into her face. “I’m not denying that I like them! I’m only—it’s the labels I can’t explain! That’s the problem!”
Noelle laughed and shoved his arm away.
“Alright, alright, I get it,” she said. “I’m just surprised to hear you say it. I mean… you really like them, huh?”
Berdly grumbled and hunched his shoulders down.
“They… are very cute when they laugh,” he mumbled.
“Aww, Berdly!” Noelle wrapped her arms around his shoulders and shook him affectionately. “I’m so happy for you!”
“Happy about what?” Berdly moped. “Every day I suffer grievously because of these feelings.”
Noelle burst out laughing, and pulled herself away so she could compose herself.
“I mean, yeah, I’m sure it feels like that. I remember when I was like that with Susie… it was so bad,” she said. “But at the same time, isn’t it nice, to have someone you like that much? To feel those fluttery feelings whenever you see them?”
“Hm… nice? I suppose that’s one word for it,” Berdly said.
“You’re so pessimistic,” Noelle teased.
“I’m realistic, Noelle! I cannot help it if my logic-oriented mind fails to see the quote-unquote ‘bright side’ of every situation,” Berdly said.
“Well, I think it’s a good thing,” Noelle said. “You two would be really cute together.”
Berdly sputtered at that, unable to form more than a few broken words before he gulped and cleared his throat.
“So, I take it, then, that… you do not think it would be strange for a monster and a human to…” Berdly gestured vaguely into the air.
“Be together?” Noelle finished his sentence. “No, of course not! That’s such, like, old-fashioned thinking.”
“Hm, I see.” Berdly wrung his hands together. “I was nervous… well, from my research on the internet, it seems that monsters who are attracted to humans are a niche group, and many still believe it wrong to mix the two.”
“Oh, right, that forum you were on. Do you talk to people on there?” Noelle asked.
“No, no… I’m not that brave. I merely read the messages and, ah, enjoy daydreaming that one day I could have a relationship like that with, well… you know who.”
Berdly looked away bashfully, and Noelle suppressed another bout of laughter.
“I don’t think Kris is against dating monsters at all, if you’re worried about that,” Noelle said. “I mean, they don’t even really know any humans, and when they were younger, they wanted to be a monster.”
“Yes, I recall the headband phase,” Berdly said. They hadn’t particularly been friends then, but they were all in the same kindergarten class together. As well as every other grade. It was a small town.
“Actually, now that I think of it, I don’t think Kris would like it if you, uh, like, make it about them being human? Your feelings, I mean,” Noelle said.
“How so?” Berdly asked.
“Well, I don’t think they’d like you drawing attention to it. They just want to fit in with us, you know?”
“Hm, I see… though I doubt I would ever get so far, you are saying, theoretically, I should tailor my compliments such that I do not highlight their human features?”
“You don’t think you’ll ever get the chance to compliment them?” Noelle asked.
“That is—I mean—I highly doubt Kris returns my feelings in any way!” Berdly said. “So I doubt flirtatious compliments would be appreciated regardless of which features I choose to highlight.”
“You don’t think—” Noelle laughed and shook her head. “Berdly. I can’t believe I have to say this… they definitely like you back.”
“Leave the pranks to Kris, Noelle, you don’t have the skill for it,” Berdly scoffed.
Noelle was too shocked to speak for a second, but then she grabbed Berdly by the collar of his shirt and shook him.
“I’m not pranking you, I’m being serious! They! Like! You!” she shouted.
Berdly’s eyes spun, dizzy from being rocked back and forth, but when he blinked and looked at her properly, he finally understood.
“You really think so?” he said. “I… I actually have a chance?”
“Yes! Yes, you do!” Noelle said.
“Wow, I… wow!” Berdly coughed into his fist and smoothed down his neck feathers, which had begun to plume up. “You’ve given me much to consider, Noelle. Though… this is also going to make it quite difficult for me to finish this essay. I don’t know how I’ll be able to think of anything else for at least the next week!”
“Ack, sorry!” Noelle said. “I know how that is, thinking about Susie used to distract me, um, a lot.”
“Hm. And yet, now that you two are a couple, she does not?” Berdly asked.
“Uh… well, kind of. I still think about her all the time, obviously, but it’s less… all-consuming. More comforting. Like, whatever I’m doing, I can always just hear Susie in the back of my mind encouraging me?”
Berdly nodded slowly, putting on a face of scientific fascination, though internally, he felt his chest burn with jealousy. The Kris in his head mostly mocked him. Although—the memories of those rare moments when Kris was genuinely kind to him were the scenes that flashed in his mind when he felt his heart pitter-patter like the wings of doves in his ribcage.
That’s how he knew his feelings for Kris were real. He’d never felt this genuine urge to just connect with someone before, like he was being drawn to them magnetically. That pull, that foreign and unstoppable force, must have been the ‘attraction’ he heard so many speak of without understanding for so long.
“In any case,” he said after a long pause. “Thank you for your encouragement, but I will have to postpone going down the romance route with our friend Kris until I complete my current quest: finals!”
“Faha, right, right. Junior year grades are the most important for colleges, so…” Noelle sighed, as did Berdly. Though neither particularly wanted to, they both picked up their books and laptops and trudged on with their papers. Such was the life of an A student.