"Mmmmmm." It's been too long since anyone did that, and much, much longer since anyone did it gently. "I do want to." 

"I'm glad!" He's so gentle.

"I know I'm not anyone's first choice of someone to be with," he says, still petting Sasha's hair, "and you wouldn't be here if not for the money, but-- I do really want you to be happy here. I'll give you some money every week so you don't have to ask me before buying things. I have a cook and a maid and you can tell them what you want them to do, if you want, or you can do your own cleaning and cooking if you'd prefer that. If there's anything you want, anything at all, please tell me, I'll do my best to make it happen. And I don't want to-- to ask too much from you, or make you uncomfortable, or anything. Your time is your own, you can do whatever you want with it."

It was obviously a rehearsed speech.

How is he supposed to come up with coherent responses while Lev is petting his hair. "You're sweet."

Pause.

"I haven't had very much time to myself in —" he's not thinking about that — "a long time, it might take me a while to get used to. Tell me if I'm bothering you?" 

"You won't." Pause. "And you don't have to-- I mean-- obviously you can invite people over and things, I don't... have... friends but that doesn't mean you also have to not have friends."

He stretches out, moves so his head is closer to Lev's hands. "I don't have anyone I'd want to invite but I'll keep that in mind." 

"This is nice." Lev tries scritching his scalp.

Asjljjksdjfh ❤️. 

He flops into Lev's lap and purrs. 

He freezes up when Sasha flops into his lap and then very carefully starts scritching Sasha's scalp again. 

(He is definitely turned on, if Sasha is curious.) 

The purring doesn't stop; Sasha is not particularly turned on but gosh that sure would be easy for Lev to change if he wanted to. He is mildly curious about how Lev would react if Sasha moved just a little bit differently but not enough so to actually do that, given how emphatically Lev circled "no" for "have sex." 

Lev seems perfectly happy to just keep scritching Sasha and listening to him purr indefinitely!

His brain might actually have turned to mush by this point.

He is so so pleased with this turn of events and is definitely not going to end it. 

...he will, however, fall asleep with his head in Lev's lap. 

That is completely okay! 

Lev will spend a while watching Sasha once he's fallen asleep and then eventually drift off himself.

He wakes up after a couple of hours and very carefully gets up off the couch without waking Lev. 

What do the other rooms look like? 

The bathroom is a bathroom. Even billionaires have not come up with that many improvements on bathrooms. 

The study has the same carpet as the bedroom and another east-facing window. Every wall is covered in empty bookshelves. There's another extremely soft-looking couch and a desk with an oversized, comfortable chair. There are three laptops piled on top of the desk. 

The kitchen might be small in theory but it's definitely larger than the kitchens in, say, the average dorm room. The shelves and fridge are stocked with easy-to-prepare food. One of the counters has a ring of keys and a wallet on it. The wallet contains several credit cards in Sasha's name and a thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills. 

If he goes back through the bedroom, he can figure out what one of the keys is for. The bedroom has the only door that leads to the rest of the house, and it locks. 

He doesn't buy that Lev doesn't have a key, but that's a sweet gesture. 

He goes back to his bedroom; if Lev's still asleep he'll unpack as quietly as possible. 

Lev disappeared at some point in the looking-at-the-kitchen process!

Huh. Okay. Well, it's not like Lev doesn't have better things to do than wait for Sasha. 

He unpacks, doesn't particularly bother to be quiet about it. His clothes fill about one third of the closet and he has just barely enough small useless sentimental things (a piece of seaglass, a red glass heart, a ribbon with a scorpion charm on it) that the bookshelf doesn't look completely empty. 

Lev continues to be distinctly not here!

(In fact, he is in his office, having a panic attack.) 

Once he's done unpacking (which doesn't take very long, he doesn't have very many things) he paces around his room, tries to come up with something to do, fails, and then gives up and goes and looks for Lev. 

In the living room he finds a twentysomething woman on a laptop who looks up guiltily as soon as he enters the room. "Hello, sir! I'm Shelly, the maid. --You caught me on a break, Lev says I'm allowed to take my breaks in the living room, I'm not doing anything that's against the rules."

There was no way of doing this that wasn't going to be awkward. "Wasn't going to say anything. My name's Sasha, do you know where Lev is?" 

"He's in his office, sir. We're usually supposed to leave him alone but he says you should come in whenever you want."

...weird. 

Well. Lev can have better things to do than wait for Sasha but still be interested in interacting with him? Sasha hasn't known him long enough to say. "Thank you!" he says to Shelly, and finds Lev's office and knocks on the door. 

"You don't have to knock, you can just come in."

He comes in. "Hey."