A/N: Hey look, I wrote a fic about what I wish my coming-out would be like. In an ideal world, this is how my parents would take my asexuality. Including the bit with the cuppa.
"Dad?"
"Yeah love?" John's a bit distracted, reading the morning paper.
"Would you and Daddy be too terribly upset if I never… if I never had kids?"
A moment passes in which John quite clearly realized this is an important conversation; not one of the important ones that you can pretend aren't important, that you carry out from behind your newspaper while pretending to read it (often characterized by the reading material in question being upside down), but one of the important ones that needs to have every ounce of your attention, and know it. "I want you to be happy, and so does he. So if you're happy without ever having children, we'd be the most thrilled parents alive."
She blinks up at him, a little bit lost and a lot like the child she was before he met her. "Because… I don't know, but the idea of getting married, or really even dating… I don't want to. And I don't much want to have…" a pause that might be awkward, but somehow it wasn't, "sex, either."
John maintained his expression. It didn't even flicker. It was all fine. "If that's what you want, then go for it. It's not conventional, sure, but we aren't a conventional family. So if it makes you happy and doesn't hurt anyone else, I say why not?"
Sherlock spoke up from his corner of the room; how long had he been there? No telling, really. "I believe the terms you are looking for are aromanticism and asexuality. If you desire a label."
She smiled, a little, the weight of the world and her parents' disappointment gone. Or at least, dispersed enough to let her curiosity take the reins. "So, then, other people have it too?"
Sherlock spun, giving her the full force of his attention. "They are sexual and romantic orientations; some people are heterosexual and heteroromantic; they are the "norm", but there are vast numbers of people with other sexual and romantic orientations. The ones you just described aren't well known, which probably explains why you came in here thinking you were somehow defective and needed fixing." He glanced at John, then continued, "I am a panromantic demisexual, and John is a biromantic bisexual. Everyone has their labels. Yours are no better or worse than anyone else's. But they are not defects." Written on Sherlock's face, clear as a windowpane, was the determination that his daughter would not grow up thinking she was defective, she was wrong, she was messed up, a machine without feelings. "There's nothing wrong with you, you just don't desire sexual or romantic relationships."
A tear rolled down Astrid's face as her voice cracked. "It's just…No one else seems to feel the same way."
"You're perfectly alright, sweetheart. It's just you're a bit extraordinary is all. Not too everyday and commonplace. Same as everyone else in this room, so you fit right in." John opened his arms to her and she shuffled across the floor from kitchen to sofa, curling into him. As she cried, mixed tears of relief and tension and a little happiness, she missed seeing Sherlock leave the room. She didn't see him glide towards the kitchen or soundlessly open a cabinet. She never noticed his slight misstep as he carried the kettle to the sink to fill up, nor did she hear the cabinets open and close. What she noticed, a few minutes later, was her Daddy, holding a cup of tea made just the way she liked it, standing just in front of her.
"Tea?"
As she drank her tea and dried her tears, John continued where Sherlock left off. "And you know, just because you identify one way now doesn't mean you can't realize later that you were wrong. Your father would have told anyone that asked that he was completely asexual up until we met. Some things are just a bit confusing, and sometimes because of society's perceptions, we misinterpret our own signals."
Astrid just nodded. She didn't really care if she was misinterpreting anything, because what really mattered was that no matter what she identified as, her parents' response would always be, "alright. How about a cuppa?"