Emerald Embers | Ninjago Greenflame OneShots

Aromantic(?) Lloyd - side story(pt2)

Third Person POV

As they reenter the living room, Lloyd approaches them worriedly.
"Is Kai alright?" he asks.

This...will be hard to explain...

-

Later into the night, the others had gone to bed, leaving Lloyd, Zane and Pixal in the kitchen to talk about what was going on.

"So...can you guys tell me now?" the green ninja asked again.

The bots looked at each other, still knowing there was no easy way to say this.

Zane clears his throat, looking for the right words. "Lloyd..."

He tilts his head in confusion. Pixal sighs, deciding to be blunt.

"...Kai is in love with you." she states.

His eyes go wide immediately."I-...what?"

~

It's been exactly a month since that happened.

Since then- starting once the words reached his ears, Lloyd hasn't stopped thinking about it.

Well- that's not entirely true.

Sure, he does of course stop thinking about it at certain times; taking a shower, on a mission, reading a comic, normal stuff on his own. But whenever he sees Kai and the saddened expression he seems to wear more often, the thoughts return, and the question of his sexuality appears in his mind yet again.

Yes, within the past few weeks he did feel comfortable identifying as aromantic, but now... with Kai... he feels different.

The most notable memory of something like a crush between them, was when Lloyd had woken up after 'dying' in the Oni attack.

For weeks after that, the master of fire was surprisingly very overprotective and worried about him. This hadn't happened at all since the blonde had returned after being possessed by Morro.

Is it a crush? It would seem so.

But...he's aro...at least that's what he thought.

-

All of this, his thoughts on his sexuality, are the exact things he voices to Pixal as they sit on the wooded steps of the Monastery.

The samurai thinks for a moment, loading symbols appearing in her pupils, before exclamation marks appear in both and she states,
"I believe I have an answer."

Lloyd nods, waiting for her response.

"You said that you genuinely felt aromantic, though now you seem to feel slightly homosexual?"

He nods again, a bit confused.

She sighs, "Okay."

"Okay..?" The blonde repeats. "So...what is it?"

"You appear to be abrosexual." she says.

"..abro?" Lloyd says again. "What..does that mean?"

Pixal turns her head towards the front, and a hologram emits from her eyes, like a projector though it seems to be on only air. On the screen is a flag with pink, white and green.

"Abrosexual is the sexuality in which a person's sexual orientation can change over time."

"...so- so it's not just that I was gay the whole time?"

"Correct. Your orientation simply changed to this."

With the sudden realization, he felt so much relief, and started laughing, "This makes so much sense now!" and as a final show of thanks, he hugged Pixal.

"Uh, you..are welcome..?"

--

A few days later, at around noon, the blue ninja sat at the counter across from Cole, ranting about anime even though the latter had his headphones in- when he heard a sudden thump on the porch.

He turned as soon as the sound was made and raced to the door, almost like a dog. "Oo, mail's here!"

Jay happily picked up the amazon box- without hesitation, skipping back to the kitchen.

The brown ninja took of his headphones, saying, "Why are you so excited?" To which, Jay rolled his eyes, still smiling.

"Lloyd's birthday? Duh!" He plants the box on the counter. "I ordered some manga to give to him, and I think they got here early!"

Jay walked a bit away to find something to cut the tape, and Cole finally read the address. Specifically, the name. "Oh, it's addressed to Lloyd?"

The brown ninja raised an eyebrow at the blue ninja. "Did you do that on accident?" he asked.

"No." Jay rolled his eyes again, but then thought for a second.. "At least I don't think I did-"

Suddenly, someone ran into the room, looking a bit paranoid. It was Lloyd. "Hey guys!" the blonde said, out of breath.

"...hey?-"

"Did a- uh, package come yet?" the blonde asked quickly.

"Uh, yeah, this one-"

"Okay, thank you!" he quickly snatched the box and went back to his room.

"Uhm..."

"Maybe he ordered a new flag?"

Jay shrugged. "Probably." 'he has one already though, right?'

~

The blonde got to his room and shut the door behind him, sighing that the box wasn't opened already, and sat it down on the floor to look for some scissors.

Luckily- for some reason, there was a pair under his bed, which were black with small bushes of white flowers.

Lloyd brought the blade to the tape, cutting it rather quickly- "Ow!" He flung the scissors to the floor, flicking his hand repeatedly at the pain.

After a quick trip to the bathroom for bandaids, he came back to the room and got the scissors off the ground. The white flowers seemed red now, and looking at it, he had one thought,

'tpn vibes'.

The blonde put them on his desk, and went back to the box eagerly. The took out the colored flag inside, bringing it up to the wall where his previous one USED to be, and put it in the wall with some pins.

Though he did indeed have a flag already, it was now made obvious that it wasn't the right one- which is why it's now in the trash.

Lloyd gave a final glance at the now-trashed fabric, and felt a bit worried.

It was had enough coming out to the others as aromantic, and even then not all of them understood (lookin at you JAY-).

He kinda feels like he lied to them.

'Wait, no. That's not it.'

As he has to keep reminding himself, technically he was aro then, he just didn't fully get his sexuality then.

But, now he does.

And- in a world where really anything happens and it seems like he can't control anything, not even his own powers sometimes- at least this, he can be confident about.

Now to actually tell literally everyone else, will be a challenge...

But he's got everything planned out- at least, when he's gonna come out.

Green marker in the shape of a circle surrounds a specific box on his calendar; March 23rd. And- despite what Nya thought when she went in there earlier, it's not just a reminder of his birthday in three days.

He sighs, sitting on his bed. 'Just three days...'

(TBC again!

Also siderant;
I didnt know how FUN it was to make sidestory stuff- like, stuff thats NOT focused on just the characters in a ship getting together- its actually really great! Because of this, this shot 300+ words LONGER than the first one- which im really proud of! 100 percent recommend :>)