Keeping track of how long it's been when he's working is not exactly Lev's strong suit. 

He does occasionally glance up at Sasha and bite his lip and feel a warm glow.

His work continues to be punctuated with Lev saying to himself "that makes sense" and "no fucking shit" and "oh, come on."

He's cute. 

When he gets halfway through the second book, he gets up. "I'm going to take a shower, if you want to stay here I'll come back but if you go somewhere else I can find you," he says, and kisses Lev's cheek. (He does remember to bring the books with him when he goes back to his own room this time.) 

Lev touches his cheek where Sasha kissed it. "I'll stay here," he says. "Feel free to interrupt me whenever you want, I kind of... get into a flow with work and stop noticing the existence of external reality."

"Yeah, I used to get the same way. See you." 

The shower is kind of excessively long; he's figuring that with Lev of all people he doesn't need to worry about using all the hot water. 

Lev closes his laptop and stares out into space.

He kissed Sasha. He kissed Sasha. He kissed Sasha and told him that he wanted to have sex with him and he, and he, and they slept in the same bed last night and they've known each other for less than twenty-four hours and he is already the most important person in Lev's life and Lev is not sure if he wants to cry or laugh or both at the same time. 

He's panicking. He's panicking but he's so happy because Sasha. 

It's all fake, of course, he has to remember that, it's all fake, he's paying Sasha to read in the same room as him when he does work, it's a pleasant job and it's well-paid and Sasha doesn't want to lose it but that doesn't mean that Sasha likes him. Of course Sasha doesn't like him, no one likes him, he's weird and awkward and embarrassing and he's said so many foot-in-mouth things in the past day and Sasha just smiled at him because Sasha is being paid to not judge him for saying weird things. 

He wants to make Sasha smile. He wants to make Sasha smile so badly.

(Sasha said he might want sex, at some point-- he doesn't want it now but maybe someday-- it would be fake, it would be fake, Lev would have to say 'no', but he imagines how wonderful it would be to have someone want him--)

He's all warm and melty when he gets out of the shower. He gets dressed — in purple leggings and one of the ridiculously soft sweaters that's large enough to fall off his shoulder, no shirt underneath it — and brings the book he was partway through back down to the library. 

Lev stuffs his panic attack down when he hears the door open, glances up, notices that the sweater is falling off Sasha's shoulder and he's obviously not wearing a shirt, and says "...I need to go to the bathroom, sorry, be back in a bit."

"Kay!" He picks a chair and settles into it. 

He sinks into the fetal position on the bathroom floor. 

He hates this, he hates this, he hates this and he doesn't want it to end--

Sasha has some suspicions about what might be happening in the bathroom. Unfortunately for both of them, he's completely wrong. 

He reads. 

The concept of interacting with a person who might possibly want to have sex with him is just so completely terrifying. 

He eventually calms down, stands up, heads back to the library, opens up his laptop, and starts reading. "Uuuugh."

"Everything okay?" 

"The guy I have working on mental health stuff is really good but he keeps wanting me to give money to psychedelic decriminalization and it's like-- I can see his arguments? Maybe this is a really good thing to be giving money to? But I don't want to and I wish he would stop mentioning it in his reports."

He nods. "Makes sense. Any particular reason why you don't want to?" His tone is genuinely curious. 

"I don't like politics. I just-- want to do noncontroversial things that everyone can agree on, like polio vaccinations or antiretroviral treatments, and not have to deal with-- protests and lobbying politicians and direct action and thinkpieces about how I'm a racist sexist capitalist homophobe and all the rest of it."

"Not sure I'd call antiretroviral uncontroversial, but yeah, you're not wrong, getting involved in politics is terrible."

"Antiretrovirals are controversial among assholes, maybe. But I dunno how many people are like 'you have to choose between your baby getting AIDS and dying of diarrhea because you don't have clean water for formula, maybe you should have thought of that before you got raped.'"

"I don't think anyone would phrase their position in those terms but I wouldn't be surprised if that was a position that in practice people held, they'd just come up with a justification for it somehow." 

"Well, then, they don't have to spend their billions of dollars on antiretroviral therapy, and I will spend it on keeping babies from dying. The nice thing about not doing politics is that we don't all have to agree on whether babies should die."

"This is true." He's not really in a position to touch Lev but he can move, and then he can put his head on Lev's knee. "I don't actually disagree with you, to be clear." 

Sasha's head on his knee!!! The concept of Sasha kneeling at his feet causes a bunch of feelings that he is going to deal with later because he is concerned they might make him a horrible person. 

Lev scritches Sasha's hair. "I know. I just... I like people, in general. I don't like having enemies. And mostly I don't? When I do Yenta I'm just trying to make the algorithms work better so people can find people they match with more easily. When I donate my enemies are, like, diseases. Or famines. Or the fact that we can't get meat anywhere except from animals who suffer a lot. And then people are like 'you should do politics' and half of America is my enemy and I don't like it." He sighs. "I don't vote." 

Mmmmmmmm hair scritches. He was already warm and melty and now he is much much more so. "Everyone I've known who didn't vote — not, like, didn't make it this one time, but didn't vote in general — had asshole reasons. You have the exact opposite of asshole reasons. It's kind of refreshing, honestly, I don't really do politics either anymore." 

"I'm not sure that I don't have asshole reasons. You should have the courage of your convictions, and all that. It's bad to be the sort of person who wouldn't hide Jews because they're afraid of confrontation with the Nazis." He sighs. "The argument could be made that I'm apolitical because the political beliefs associated with my beliefs that poverty is bad and equality is a good thing and such imply that my billions should be taken away by the government and redistributed, and then I would not have a pretty boy with his head on my knee whose hair I can scratch."

Soft humming sound. "When I say asshole reasons, I mean things like 'both sides are evil actually, voting is just buying into the system, the only morally correct thing to do is either that revolution we're always talking about but never working towards or planning for the aftermath of, or complaining about white men and beating our boyfriends when they point out that we are white men because that makes them a traitor to the cause apparently.' You do not have asshole reasons."

— Wow, he did not intend to get that personal when he started talking. "And in any case, you do put kind of a lot of time and money into stopping babies from dying, I wouldn't say you don't have the courage of your convictions." 

Lev was going to reply with something like "I'm not sure that a revolution would be wrong, actually, except that I'm opposed to this idea because I'm pretty attached to my head" but fortunately waits until Sasha has finished his thought and then is filled with an inchoate but fervent desire to commit murder. 

"People shouldn't beat you. Ever. For anything."