It's a cocktail party to help everyone in the Good Place get to know each other, and he does not want to get to know any of these people. 

He's wearing the same faded green t shirt and ripped jeans he wore everywhere in life; he sticks out like — well, like a homeless twenty-four-year-old at a cocktail party. He avoids the wine more out of habit than out of any particular preference; he doesn't, as a rule, trust drinks he didn't pour himself. (Maybe someday, now that he's here, he'll unlearn habits like that. It's a nice thought. He doesn't entertain it for long.) 

He has no preferences around food and also no shame, which might be the saving grace of the night; he can take as many of these whatever-they-ares as he wants and while someone might side-eye him nobody is going to stop him. 

Correction: there's one guy Sasha might want to get to know. 

He's also wearing ripped blue jeans. His T-shirt says "Ainsworth & Bem & Clark & Gibson & Linehan." He has a tattoo on one arm and three piercings on his other ear, and half his head is shaved.

He might also be interesting because he's saying "Sasha? Sasha? Is anyone here named Sasha?"

…huh. 

Sasha watches him for a few minutes before approaching. "Hi?" 

"Are you Sasha? I'm looking for Sasha."

"Yes, I'm Sasha. Is there a reason you're looking for me?" 

He glances Sasha up and down, in a gay sort of way, and then smiles enormously. 

"Can we talk privately for a sec?"

Well, this definitely won't be worse than anything else he could be doing. 

He looks the guy up and down, in a gay sort of way, and says "Course." before following him. 

When they're alone, the guy says, "I've been trying and trying to think of a way to say this that doesn't sound creepy and ridiculous, and I failed, and I think if the information is good I can say it the creepy and ridiculous way. Uh. A robot lady showed up and handed me a note that had my secret time travel password on it and the note said that I love you."

He skips over robot lady and secret time travel password to focus on the objectively more important part of this statement.

Everyone else here has been calling him Alexander. If the note says Sasha that's evidence right there. 

"Did it say anything about me?" 

"The note said my time travel password, and then it said that 'you love Sasha', and then it said 'You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled. You could say, Some years, there are apples.' which I don't know what that means at all--"

"— yeah, alright, I'll buy time travel shenanigans before I'll buy that you randomly guessed my favorite lines of my favorite poem. What's your name?" 

"Lev. --You are a really stupidly attractive person, gosh, future me has incredibly good taste. I'd probably think that, wouldn't I, because I'm me? Oh, crap, I'm babbling, sorry, I get like this around hot guys--"

"Lev." He says it the way he'd say cellar door, like the sound is beautiful even independent from what it means. "Don't be sorry. You're cute." 

"Oh god you think I'm cute. I mean, you would probably think I'm cute, because apparently I'm in love with you in the future, but it's still really nice to hear from somebody, like, I don't know, maybe I totally messed it up this time around-- sorry, the only way to get me to shut up is to kiss me, uh, not that I'm suggesting you kiss me, I mean I'd really like it because did I mention you are really stupidly attractive but I don't want to like make you feel like you have to kiss me if you don't want to--"

He can definitely see how he would be in love with Lev. 

He steps forward and kisses him before he can continue, warm and open-mouthed and inviting. 

Sasha is immediately teleported a foot away.

"What the fork. --Why the fork can't I say fork."

"— what purpose could that possibly serve?" 

"Fork, shirt, corkbucker, motherforker, peace, count, tights. --What the fork."

"Son of a rat —" he tries. "— okay, so we can still swear we just have to be creative about it. Who thought this was a good idea?" 

"Well, we don't technically know if you're bleeped or not yet. Maybe they're just mad about my bloody pottymouth."

"Fork, shirt, yeah it's not just you." 

"That's weird." He walks up to Sasha, tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear, kisses him, and is immediately teleported a foot away. "Okay, so it happens every time."

"It happens every time we kiss on the mouth, anyway." He tries to walk up to Lev and hug him. 

Hugs are allowed!

"Oh, you're soft. You smell nice," Lev says, and makes a happy little noise into his hair. "Do you mind if I go kiss my soulmate? I want to check whether this is an us thing or an everyone thing, and I didn't kiss my soulmate before because I had the note and I didn't know what you would feel about it."

"I don't mind you kissing your soulmate," he says. He's not looking forward to what'll happen when his soulmate expects him to kiss her, but he'll cross that bridge tonight. Or burn it. Whichever. 

"Okay, cool. --To be clear, I'd much rather kiss you than my soulmate, I don't really want to kiss my soulmate at all, but science makes demands." He disappears.

"And soulmates make demands," he says to the empty space, and waits for Lev to get back. 

Ten minutes later, Lev returns. 

"I'm pretty sure they teleport you away any time you kiss someone who isn't your soulmate. They might be trying to enforce monogamy? That seems like the sort of thing Heaven would do."

He can't say he's ever given much thought to the kind of thing Heaven would or wouldn't do. "Yeah." 

He hugs Lev again, closer this time. Tries, very cautiously, to kiss his cheek. 

Cheek kisses work. 

"I really want to ask you back to my place to figure out how exactly this teleportation thing works but I'm concerned that's too forward."

— he freezes for a split second before he relaxes himself and says, "You're very sweet, but maybe not on a first date." 

"Oh shirt, I'm sorry, I didn't-- obviously we're going to go as slowly as you want-- shirt, I'm sorry, I didn't even know if you were ace or anything--"

"I'm not ace, I just have a tragic backstory. You had no way to know." Lev gives very good hugs. 

"Cool! Cool. Uh. Me too, so that's something we have in common. --Goddammit why is my foot permanently stuck in my mouth around hot guys."

He's laughing into Lev's shoulder. "You're cute." 

"I guess it is inevitable that you would think this because apparently we're in love in the future! Baffling, but inevitable!"

"It is not baffling. You get all tongue-tied and cute because you like me so much." 

"Maybe I should stop stressing because if I just do whatever I would have done anyway, then you'll fall in love with me, because you're in love with me in the future, and so if I just act normally then probably you'll fall in love with me-- again? Time words are hard with time travel. Although the note does technically say 'you love Sasha' and not 'Sasha loves you', so it's possible I wind up accidentally mortally offending you and then we can't date. But if that's the case future me was really kind of an ash-hole to not provide instructions about how to avoid offending you. Did I just say ash-hole? Jesus."

"The censorship, on the other hand, is baffling. I'm pretty sure you can avoid mortally offending me as long as you don't act like I'm a girl." 

"Why would I do that?"

"Apparently my original birth certificate is extremely important to people, for reasons I wish were unknown." 

"But... you're a trans guy, so that means you're a guy, that's how being trans works."

He's so adorably clueless in the best possible way.

"Yeah, we're going to get along fine." 

"I think we should go back to my place though. Or your place. In a totally not-trying-to-seduce-you way, this party just sucks."

"I should probably talk to my soulmate before I go anywhere or bring anyone home, but I am very okay with leaving this party." 

"I can wait here, or go with you to meet them, whatever you want."

One more kiss on the cheek. "I'll find her." 

Lev is going to stare out into space grinning like an idiot until he gets back!

Cuuuuute. 

Now, where might Sasha's soulmate be?

Sasha’s soulmate is peering suspiciously at the restaurant selections! There seems to be rather a lot of things on sticks and yogurt (usually not combined).

There really does. "Hi, Faye. Um, I know this is kind of odd, but I met this guy at the party and I wanted to check with you before I went home with him?" 

She smiles at Lev but seems kind of vaguely panicky about the whole thing. "Um, if you want to do something, I don't want to stop you or anything. I--I know we're soulmates but we just met, it'd probably be kind of weird if I had some claim over what you do with your time? So, um, sure, I guess, if you want."

How about he just doesn't engage with the being panicky. 

"Cool, I'll see you tomorrow morning!" he says, and then goes back to Lev and says "Faye okayed it. Where's your house?" 

"Oh, it's right close by, we can walk there."

Lev's hand is conspicuously close to Sasha's hand, like he kind of wants to hold it. 

He will absolutely hold Lev's hand. 

"I don't know anything about you and I don't know what kind of questions to ask! Uh. I'm 26, I was a grad student in psychology, I worked a lot, I'm gay, my moms and sister are the best people in the world and I'll fight you if you say bad things about them, I like indie comics and shirty fantasy novels and bands no one else has ever heard of, my kinks are kind of hard to explain--" 

Cute. "I'm 24. I'm gay, I am definitely not going to fight you about your moms, I would have studied art history if I could have but my parents were wildly unsympathetic about the trans thing so I dropped out of college for financial reasons. I like poetry and fantasy novels where the author is clearly having fun. I'm tempted to say 'try me' regarding your kinks." 

"I'd say 'weird kinks' but whenever I say that people think I'm into balloons and I like normal BDSM-y stuff, it's just... it's like I'm a switch but I want to switch in the scene? Except not that, it's like"-- he gestures-- "I want to have power over you at the same time that you have power over me? Sort of thing."

"...I want to say 'like rolequeer but without all the stuff about how doms are evil and the point of kink is to deconstruct traditional heteropatriarchal constructs of power,' except that rolequeer is the stuff about how doms are evil and the point of kink is to deconstruct traditional heteropatriarchal constructs of power and I'm like ninety percent sure you don't mean that. If you do in fact mean that, phrases like 'deconstructing traditional heteropatriarchal constructs of power' is a dealbreaker for me with boyfriends, sorry." 

"What's a rolequeer? Why are doms evil? I'm pretty sure the point of kink is to get me hard actually, not anything about... deconstructing... sorry I took like one humanities gender studies class and I basically flunked it, I'm not sure I know what all those words mean in that order, if you want to talk about the biopsychosocial development of gendered behavior in children I'm your guy but I don't know what a construct of power... is." 

"Rolequeer is like lesbian separatism but for subs, with all of the associated ingroup-outgroup baggage. I, uh, did not have the best taste in friends when I was in college and kind of latched onto the first group of people I found who didn't misgender me all the time." 

"What? Why would anyone... this is why I never got involved in queer activism. Also, because I went to a meeting once and I called myself 'queer' and someone said 'no, you can't call yourself queer, because you're a cis gay man' and I was like 'I have definitely had that yelled at me from out of a car while I was holding hands with my boyfriend, what the fork is your problem' and then I decided that probably it was a better idea to improve the world through improving epistemic standards in psychological research instead."

"Smart choice! It's terrible. I can see why I liked you. Am going to like you. The English language is really not built for this, wow." 

"I think we should agree to use the past tense for our future selves, that seems like it would cause the least confusion."

"I can see why I liked you, then!" He squeezes Lev's hand. 

What's Lev's house like?

Lev's house is avant-garde. Each of the rooms looks like a star, with twelve or fourteen walls; each individual wall is smaller side-to-side than Sasha himself.

The walls are all adorned with posters: Science: It's Like Magic But Real; Never Trust An Atom, They Make Up Everything; Bill Nye's face with the caption Science Rules; Keep Talking I'm Diagnosing You; Don't Mistake Your Google Search For My Psychology Degree; The Curious Paradox Is That When We Accept Ourselves Only Then Can We Change. 

There are no bookshelves, but Sasha has to step around a dozen piles of books that have already accumulated. 

There are pullup bars over every doorframe, so that it's impossible to close any of the doors; some of them also have rings that you have to push aside if you want to walk through them. 

"That is possibly the most inefficient floor plan I have ever seen," he comments. The books are a nice touch, though, and he's not halfway-terrified of breaking everything like he is in his own house. (He's aware that it can probably be fixed with whatever magic caused it to be in the first place, but still.) "Your room?" 

"Yeah, I guess it makes sense that I have to live with my soulmate, but we have really different tastes in houses. For example, I want my house to have bookshelves for when I need to summon my entire to-be-read list from the magic robot lady. My room's this way."

More obnoxious posters. Shelves of neatly organized sex toys: floggers, rope, dildoes, lube, buttplugs, a violet wand. (You can tell they came with the house and wasn't from the magic robot lady, because they are organized and not on the floor.) The only furniture is a giant bed.

He ignores the posters and flops on the bed. 

"Oh it's soft," he says, and then looks over at Lev. "C'mere?" 

Lev lies on the bed, wraps his arm around Sasha's shoulder, and conspicuously does not touch any of his other body parts to any of Sasha's body parts.

He cuddles up to Lev, puts his head on Lev's shoulder. 

"I don't know exactly how much the teleportation thing will let us do but I liked hugging you." 

"I like cuddling you but I don't want to do things you're not comfortable with."

He chooses his words carefully. 

"It's not that I'm not comfortable having sex, it's just — it's been a really long time since I got to just cuddle someone. And I've missed it."

And also he has some feelings about having sex with Lev this soon after meeting him, but that's not related to whether he's comfortable with sex in general, that's — a whole other bucket of issues. 

"That's criminal. I'm going to cuddle with you a bunch. --Hey, wait, we're in Heaven, we don't have to do anything, we can cuddle for literally as long as you want!"

"You're so sweet." He nestles into Lev's shoulder and sighs happily. "You should touch my hair." 

Lev can do that!

He can also very cautiously kiss Sasha's cheek.

He kisses Lev's cheek and lets his fingertips run over Lev's back. His hair is very soft; he makes more happy noises when Lev touches it. 

(It's soft and warm and sweet and — he doesn't know Lev hardly at all, Lev knows his favorite lines from his favorite poem and almost nothing else about him, it's — he can't really feel safe yet. But it's soft and warm and sweet.) 

He makes soft little hissy noises at being touched. His other hand moves hesitantly down to Sasha's back. 

"You're beautiful."

That's a good place for Lev's hand to be. Sasha shifts closer to Lev, curls around him just a little. "Mmm. Thank you. — although hopefully I'll gain some weight now that I'm here." 

That's good, Lev will keep touching his back. 

"That is-- actually not the most worrying sentence I've heard today, my soulmate said that he 'hardly ever' had to jail people for disagreeing with him, but if it were a less weird day it would definitely be the most worrying sentence I've heard today."

"…I'm a little confused how he's here, then, but alright. I did mention the tragic backstory?" 

"You mentioned that it existed but not its contents. Not that you have to mention its contents. I'm not mentioning my tragic backstory's contents."

He presses into Lev a little more. "I probably can't avoid mentioning the contents forever, it kind of ended earlier today. But it's a tragic backstory thing and it's over now." 

"That's good." Lev strokes circles on Sasha's back. "If my soulmate is telling the truth, probably he's in the Good Place because improving your country from a low-income country to a medium-income country and saving lots of babies from dying of malaria and stuff outweighs jailing your political opponents and rigging the elections."

"…I guess that tracks." He keeps touching Lev's back, puts one hand in Lev's hair. "You're really nice to cuddle with." 

"So are you! I haven't gotten cuddled much since my last boyfriend and I broke up."

Lev is getting so very very cuddled. Sasha pets his hair experimentally. "Me either." It's an accurate statement. 

Lev makes a happy noise when his hair is petted. 

"My last boyfriend broke up with me for being a workaholic which is-- not a thing you have to worry about here. See?" He opens his mouth. His lips are moving but the only sound that comes out is inoffensively pleasant classical music.

"Oh no," but Sasha's laughing. He keeps petting Lev's hair. 

"I can't talk about any social science! Apparently they want me to 'rest' and 'not work.'"

"If they stopped me from talking about art that'd be horrible, I'm sorry." 

A kiss on Lev's shoulder. Does Lev like when Sasha uses fingernails? 

He makes a bitten-off noise when Sasha uses fingernails. 

"Well, it's not that bad, I have a mystery note from future me to think about instead."

He keeps scratching Lev, then, on his scalp and on the back of his neck and on his back through his shirt. "You do! I'm a little mystified that you told yourself the last two lines of my favorite poem but not literally anything else." 

"Well, I'm"-- gasp-- "in Heaven"-- moan-- "probably there aren't that many"-- sigh-- "problems for me"-- hiss-- "to solve."

Those are excellent noises. Sasha tries varying the pressure, turns his head to kiss Lev's cheek. "You aren't wrong." 

He likes being hurt a lot! The more pressure, the better, from Lev's point of view. It makes it difficult for him to hold a conversation. 

Sasha might notice that Lev's hard against his thigh. 

...he sure does notice that. 

It makes him more than a little bit nervous, but — Lev hasn't touched him in any way he didn't want, when he froze Lev apologized. He keeps scratching Lev but stops kissing his shoulder. 

Lev doesn't react to this decision in any particular way! 

He kisses Sasha's cheeks and his nose and his eyes and his jaw and his neck.

Cheeks and nose and eyes are fine, jaw is mostly fine, but when Lev gets to his neck he stops. 

"— actually can we not," a little bit too quickly. 

"--Oh, sure, sorry. Should have asked." Lev kisses Sasha's forehead and is scrupulous about only kissing his face in the future.

Good. Good, that's — good. 

He curls up on Lev and goes back to petting Lev's hair. 

After a bit, he asks, "can I pull your hair?"

...tentative nod. "I usually like it but if it's too much I'll tell you?" 

"Okay!"

He's very careful and gentle when he pulls.

Soft happy sigh. "You're so sweet."

After a while, Lev kisses Sasha's temple and says "excuse me for a minute?"

When he comes back he's all warm and cuddly and affectionate and he's not hard. 

Lev is so, so good. 

"Yeah," he says, very softly, and cuddles back up to him, "I can see why I loved you." 

"...because I got really turned on when you hurt me and had to go deal with it?"

"Because — you didn't mind going and dealing with it? You didn't even try to convince me." 

He's so so cuddly.

"I feel like that's actually just the normal decent person thing to do. You said you didn't want sex."

So much cuddle. "Well, I think you're sweet." A kiss on Lev's cheek, soft and quick and completely chaste. 

"I'm glad you think I'm sweet, although I'm concerned that your standards for sweetness are way, way too low."

He tucks himself into Lev's side. "Saying things like that isn't going to convince me that I'm wrong about you being wonderful." 

"I'm used to being called sweet when I write someone a poem or give them a present, not when I refrain from raping them!"

Sasha's a little bit in love already. 

He continues to make soft happy noises at Lev's hands on his hair.

"It'd make me really happy if you stayed with me tonight but obviously you don't have to if it would make you uncomfortable."

"I told Faye I wouldn't be back until tomorrow morning. Do you have pajamas or something I can borrow?" 

"No, but I have a magic robot lady! Janet?"

A magic robot lady appears. "Hi!"

It is probably rude to address her as 'magic robot lady.'

"Hi, can I get a set of pajamas?" 

"Sure thing!"

They're bright pink and have hearts on them; the fabric is shiny fake-satin. 

............ugh. 

"Can I get a large t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, please?" 

"Of course!" Janet is so perky. 

The boxer shorts are still pink. The large T-shirt says "Let's Have A Moment Of Science."

He can deal with pink, it was mostly the fake satin he objected to. "Thank you." 

"Heaven has terrible taste in shirts."

"I bet you could take the posters down." 

"I assume Asher likes them?"

He looks around dubiously. 

"If you say so. I should probably get changed," and he disappears into the bathroom.

Lev changes into pajamas while he's out!

Lev usually sleeps shirtless but he puts on a new shirt instead because it might make Sasha uncomfortable.

If Sasha knew this he would be extremely charmed by it, but he does not. 

He does go right back to cuddling Lev. "Does Asher know I'm here?" 

"Uh, no. I don't really talk to him because he was kind of a dictator and I am pretty sure I disapprove of dictators."

"...that makes sense. It's a bit of an odd choice of soulmate, though." 

"I dunno, maybe I'd really like him if I got to know him, but right now I'm much happier with future me's choice of bo-- people."

He catches the slip but doesn't acknowledge it. "Yeah. Me too, they put me with a girl, and she seems very sweet but I'm gay." 

"Maybe soulmates can be nonsexual?"

"Maybe they can be, but if they aren't going to let me kiss anyone else!" 

"Maybe we can ask the magic robot lady at some point."

"Maybe we can." He's a little nervous about what happens when the dictator gets back. 

Lev hugs him. "Are you scared of something?"

"I'm scared of a lot of things, but at the moment I'm mostly nervous about what happens when the dictator who doesn't know I'm here gets back and discovers I'm here.

Not enough to leave, or anything. But enough to worry about it." 

"I'd tell him but the Good Place doesn't have... phones."

"Yeah. I don't know why it doesn't, they're really useful." Snuggles? 

Snuggles! And sleep!

Yes. Good. 

Sasha sleeps more soundly in Lev's arms than he has in a long, long time. 

In the morning Sasha is woken up by the sound of a fire alarm and the smell of badly burnt eggs.

Augh. 

He drags himself out of bed and goes outside, where hopefully the fire alarm will be less loud. 

In the kitchen he sees a shirtless man staring at a frying pan that presumably at one point contained eggs.

"This looked a lot easier," he says mournfully to no one in particular, "when other people were doing it."

Lev is following Sasha, his hands over his ears. "You can get the magic robot lady to bring you food!"

He waits until they are outside to say "Eggs aren't even hard to cook." 

"I don't think he's cooked for the past, like, two decades."

"…I guess," he says dubiously. 

Hes just going to keep holding Lev's hand while they're out here. 

Hand-holding!

"I think we should try to find breakfast from somewhere that doesn't have fire alarms."

"I think I saw a bagels on a stick place earlier. I don't know why they have so many things on sticks. How'd you sleep?" 

"Pretty well! I always sleep better with people."

They can eat at Vincent Von Doughnut, or Garden of Eat'n, or the Egglectic Cafe, or Baguetteaboutit.

"I can't tell if I sleep better in Heaven or if I sleep better with you or if I sleep better now that I'm out of my tragic backstory or what." How about Garden of Eat'n, that sounds like it'll have lots of options. 

The Garden of Eat'n appears to specialize entirely in egg dishes. 

…actually how about Vincent Von Doughnut. "I have had enough eggs the morning after hookups to last multiple lifetimes and now that I can avoid them I intend to never eat them ever again." 

"Sounds like a plan. --I gather from your tone of voice this was not the fun and empowering sort of hookup."

"Some of them were fun! I would not however describe any element of the situation as empowering." Donuts! Presumably lots of them! He really hopes Heaven doesn't make you earn money, that would suck. 

The doughnuts are advertised as being "SPECIAL OPENING SALE! 50% OFF FREE!"

"I don't have much experience with it anyway, I had one profoundly ill-advised hookup in college before I realized I don't actually like sex unless I love the person."

That's a weird way to advertise but okay. He takes an objectively kind of ridiculous number of chocolate-glazed donuts and sits down with Lev. "It wasn't the sex itself, it was more the —" 

Yeah, he's not going to be able to explain what he's talking about without explaining the tragic backstory. "I was kind of sort of a survival sex worker? Like, not really, I was sleeping with people in order to sleep in their bed and eat their food and maybe use their shower, but pretty much. And sometimes somebody would be fun and a lot of the time they really weren't." 

"...fork. I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "It was better than my other options. But yeah, there's a reason I called it my tragic backstory." Is he going to start eating now so he doesn't have to say anything in response to whatever Lev says unless he wants to? Yes. 

"I. I know I shouldn't make your tragic backstory about me but I really wish we had lived in the same city and I liked casual hookups so I could have met you and let you stay in my apartment and then you would only have to have sex when you want to."

"— no, please continue to make my tragic backstory about you, that's an adorable way to make my tragic backstory about you." 

"I promise that if you decide you want to date me I will do my best to make sure you're safe and happy and only have sex you want."

"I get teleported apart from anyone other than my soulmate if I try to kiss them, if someone wants to rape me here they are going to have to be creative." He is not a fan of this decision but it feels — nice, knowing that. "Have I mentioned today how sweet you are?" 

"Well, someone other than your soulmate, anyway."

"—well, yes." He's really not looking forward to navigating anything to do with that. 

"You told me yours so I feel like I should tell you mine."

"If you tell me stuff like that I want it to be because you want to, not because you feel like you have to pay me back." Also, that's not even half of his tragic backstory. 

"--I was raped when I was a kid and please don't make a big deal about it."

"...I don't really know what making a big deal out of it constitutes but do you want a hug?" 

"Sure, I guess, just don't-- act like I'm broken and you need to walk on eggshells around me, I'm fine, really, it was just-- a thing that happened that sucked."

"Okay." He does hug Lev, though. "I won't act like you're broken if you don't act like I'm broken. Deal?" 

"Why would I act like you're broken? You're perfect."

"...I mean I also have kind of a lot of rape in my backstory." 

Hugs. "I-- want you to be safe but. I don't actually think that makes you less perfect."

"Is there a reason it would make you any less perfect?" 

"I question the idea that I'm perfect! I have massive anxiety issues and I'm afraid that everyone hates me and I have imposter syndrome and when people are wrong I tend to yell at them about it and I'm a workaholic and also I'm bad at everything."

Yep. More hugs. "You know I'm not perfect either, right? And if it's that obvious that I'm not broken I don't know why you'd be broken." 

Wow. A lot of people are staring at them in this doughnut store. 

"--Maybe we should save this conversation for when we're in private."

"— yeah. Good plan." He glares at one of the people staring particularly obnoxiously until they stop. 

It's like no one in Heaven has seen traumatized queer kids before. 

"I wonder what there is to do in Heaven."

"No idea. I should probably go back to your house and put real clothes on." 

"Yeah, we can check if Asher has burned down the place."

Asher has not burned down the place. He is eating a bagel, perhaps on the principle that it is impossible to burn bagels. 

"Hi, Lev. Who's that?"

It is definitely possible to burn a bagel. "I'm Sasha." 

"Nice to meet you. Were you here this morning? I was kind of distracted by almost setting the house on fire."

Asher is charming. He looks at Sasha like Sasha is one of the most important people in the world and he's fascinated by everything Sasha has to say. His smile is broad and joyous and makes you want to give him what he wants so that you might see it again. You can see why he was a politician. 

Sasha, as a rule, does not trust immediately charming men, impulses to give people whatever they want, or politicians' smiles. "I was." 

"Were you planning to talk to me about this at some point?"

"...No, not really."

"I am your soulmate, I think that really ought to mean that you at least talk to me before you fork someone else. --What. Why can't I say fork?"

"It censors swear words. We did not in fact have sex, although the position my soulmate took on the matter was that we had met yesterday and she had no particular claim on my time and I'm inclined to agree with her." 

"I don't want to be your soulmate because you are a dictator who imprisoned your political opponents!"

"I did what I had to do to make sure my country was stable and developing. I had a plan for transitioning my country to a liberal democracy before I was assassinated." Classical music starts playing; his mouth moves but no words come out. "God forking dime it!"

Okay, he's smiling a little bit. "That's not generally the axis on which people decide whether they want to be in a relationship with someone," he observes. 

"I don't know how I'm supposed to convince you I'm not evil if every time I explain why I did the things I did it turns my words into classical music."

He puts his head on Lev's shoulder and holds Lev's hand, which seems much more productive than trying to respond to Asher. 

"I think 'I don't want to date evil people' is a reasonable boundary."

"I'm observably not evil. I'm in the Good Place because I lived one of the best lives that could be lived. And the system selected me and you as the people in the world who are most compatible for each other, so can't you just give me a chance?"

"I mean, I'm not dating my soulmate either and she's not even a little bit evil. As far as I can tell, anyway." 

"Man, sorry I'm taking it out on you, Sasha, it's not your fault, it's just-- I didn't really get to meet people much when I was alive? Because I was busy running my country? And I sort of hoped when I heard about soulmates I would have a soulmate who... actually wants to interact with me. At all."

"I did make out with you for science."

"I'm always willing to make out with hot guys for the sake of scientific research! Also, not for the sake of scientific research. I'm easy."

He still does not trust people who can turn on charm. Rather than clarifying that Heaven won't let him make out with anyone but Faye, he leans a little heavier on Lev. 

Lev wants to say "Sasha's my boyfriend and I love him and you have to deal with it." But he thinks that that would probably terrify Sasha. Lev trusts his future self's judgment but Sasha has no reason to. 

Instead Lev says, "Come on, Sasha, let's go to your place."

"For sure." 

He goes back to Lev's room, puts his clothes and shoes back on, and then comes back out and says "Bye, Asher. Nice to meet you." 

"Nice to meet you too!"

He sounds so sincere!

Awesome. That sure does mean literally anything. 

The walk to Sasha's house isn't long. 

Faye answers the door like someone who has definitely gotten enough sleep and has definitely not been having a panic attack. "Hi again!"

"Hi! I'm Lev. It's nice to meet you!"

"I'm Faye! I'm, uh, Sasha's soulmate, I guess. It's nice to meet you too."

"If you're even half as great as Sasha is I'm sure we'll get along."

He's holding Sasha's hand in a slightly possessive manner.

...complimenting Sasha is good. She's just going to. Not think about the possessiveness in Lev's body language for now. "I make no claims as to my own greatness, but hopefully you'll end up finding me half as great as Sasha? I'm sure everything will get along a little smoother if we're all great. Though I guess we are in Heaven, so probably that's entirely likely!"

He squeezes Lev's hand. "Probably! Sorry I wasn't around last night, Faye," and the apologetic tone is at least a little bit real. More than a quarter but less than a third. 

The smile on her face becomes significantly less strained. "It's okay, really. Like I said, I just met you, I don't control you. It'd be nice to get to know you sometime if we're gonna be soulmates? But you don't have to be around all the time."

Lev is not even a little bit sorry that Sasha wasn't around last night. "Can we come in?"

"Yeah, of course!" She opens the door and beckons them in. The house is very large and very fancy; most of the things in it look fragile and kind of expensive, though at least in theory neither of those are a concern with Janet around.

"Oh, your place is gorgeous!" 

It is full of beautiful things. Like Sasha. 

"Thank you! It's still kind of weird to think of it as mine, but I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough. What's your place like?"

"I think my soulmate and I have really really different taste. All of the rooms are, like, this star shape? And there are no bookshelves and these absolutely ghastly posters. Maybe he'll burn it down and then we can get a new one."

At least Lev likes it here. "It's really very confusing as a house design."

"--Gosh. I can imagine it'd be rough to have really different tastes from your soulmate. Hopefully you can figure out a compromise or call in Janet to add some bookshelves or something, before either of you resort to arson?"

"I don't think he intends arson! He just keeps trying to cook and doesn't know how."

Sasha's soulmate seems nice. Maybe they can be friends. 

"Ohhhhhhh. Um, I'd suggest cooking lessons, but if you want the house to burn down..." She's giggling a bit, despite herself.

"I still don't know how you burn eggs that badly! They cook fast enough that you don't have time to get distracted doing something else!" 

"Well, apparently he didn't know that!"

Lev is a little bit staring at Sasha like he's the most wonderful person in the world.

"I want to say something about typical but I have had exactly one conversation with him so actually I have no idea what is or isn't typical." He squeezes Lev's hand again. 

"It's pretty typical. He's really hot and has saved a bunch of babies from dying and as far as I can tell has no other positive qualities."

"...None? Wow. I'm. Glad I got who I did, I guess."

"I'm sure he'd be very charming if I didn't already have a policy about trusting immediately charming people." 

"That's... Probably a good policy, honestly. I'm, um, sorry that you're living with him, Lev. Here's hoping he uses eternity to develop at least one positive quality."

"Well, that, or I find someplace else to live, one or the other."

Judging by the way he's looking at Sasha he has preferences between these options!

He can continue having these preferences but Faye is absolutely not going to invite Lev to live with her! She may be bad at setting boundaries but she is not that bad at it. Sorry, Lev. She's still smiling but it's pretty clear from her body language that she also has preferences between these options.

Lev is totally not paying enough attention to Faye to pick up on this, but if he were he would think this is pretty reasonable. Faye didn't get a message from her future self telling her that Lev was okay to live with. 

He's going to have to navigate this, isn't he. "As nice as that would be, I'm not sure whatever set up the teleportation would be a fan, this place seems like it really wants us all to be monogamous with our soulmates." 

...dang, Sasha got it and Lev didn't. She's just going to have to say things out loud, like a normal adult. This sucks. "Um, you don't have to be monogamous with your soulmate if you don't want to. Though I guess I already kind of said that when I okayed you going home with Lev? That said, I'd still rather not add anyone else to the house so soon, I'm still getting used to not living alone and adding a third person doesn't seem like it would help with that."

"...What? Yeah, I haven't known Sasha for a whole day yet, that seems like a bit hasty to move in, even if my alternative is an ex-dictator."

"Yeah, sorry, I thought you were implying--wait, an ex-dictator? How the fork did he make it here? ...Why can't I say fork?"

"It censors swear words, you can swear but you have to be creative about it. Apparently it's because if you're a dictator but also you save a lot of babies from malaria the math checks out." 

"He insists he did a good job at being a dictator but I really don't want to date someone who has ever subverted democratic processes! I honestly wasn't expecting to ever have this come up as a dealbreaker."

"....Yeah, um. Wow. I guess that kind of makes sense why he got here, but... wow. You really weren't kidding when you said he had no redeeming qualities, huh? No wonder you aren't enthused about him. I wouldn't expect it to come up either, but for the record, I for one have never subverted democratic processes. Or done any other dictator-y things. No violent crimes either? I... didn't think I needed to disclaim that, I figured that it'd be taken as given since we're in heaven. Wow. That's... a lot."

"Totally violent-crime-free here!" Lev says cheerfully. "I was a perfectly ordinary psych grad student until I died because I was reading while I was walking and ran into a car."

"Also violent-crime free. I'd say crime-free but alas, I did pirate music." 

"Yeah, there's a reason I didn't say crime-free. But there's a difference between that and, like, running dictatorships, or whatever, while doing enough good that the math cancels out."

"I smoked pot and did minor acts of vandalism and had sex in public when I was in high school? My boyfriend was a bad influence."

"Yeah, I think we're all just fine here. None of us have violated human rights or killed people or anything of that nature! It's a pretty low bar, but it's still good to be comfortable in the knowledge that we all clear it."

"...I think I might've indirectly killed someone but culpability is complicated and definitely none of us have ever jailed political opponents. Or had political opponents."

"My sister probably would have had political opponents at some point so I might have had them by proxy?"

"Sasha, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt on maybe-potentially-having-killed-someone but I admit to being kind of curious. I've never had any political opponents, by proxy or not, but if I did I wouldn't jail them. At least not for being my political opponents, I would jail my political opponents if they were also separately committing horrible crimes? I feel like this conversation has maybe gone off the rails a little." She doesn't sound unhappy about it.

"...I was kind of sort of a survival sex worker and I acquired HIV in the course of doing this and I tried not to spread it but I did not always have a choice about whether we used a condom or not and I don't know that anyone died but I also don't know that they didn't." 

Sasha is going to be extremely hugged. 

"That isn't your fault."

Faye is going to just... nod very fervently at Lev. "Sorry, didn't mean to bring anything up."

He's clinging just a little bit to Lev. "It's fine, you didn't know. And it's probably better if I'm not trying to hide the way my life went anyway."

"Your life is going to go better from now on. I promise."

Lev approves of Faye. She also seems to want Sasha to be happy. 

She is nodding fervently once again! Lev is being much more coherent than her at the moment and expressing pretty much the same sentiments she has. "Yeah. I'm. Glad you're not there anymore. And I'll, um, be more careful in the future."

Lev is going to cuddle Sasha a lot and not mention his opinion on this issue, which is that he hopes everyone who forced Sasha to have sex without condoms contracted HIV and then died in horrible agony. 

"Thank you. Both of you. — I've been calling it my tragic backstory but actually I'm pretty sure that if your tragic backstory ended when you died then you don't have a tragic backstory you just had a tragic life." 

"I'm sorry." I wish I could have been there. "I wish someone had been able to help."

Being cuddled by Lev is so so good. It's really a shame that Lev is the only soft thing in the house. 

'There were people who could have helped,' he doesn't say. 

"Yeah," he says, and tucks himself into Lev. "Me too." 

Faye is just going to be over here nodding some more!

“I’m... not happy that you died or anything but I’m. Definitely happy that you’re here now instead of in your tragic backstory.”

"Do you want us to change the topic, or do you want me to keep cuddling you quietly, or something else...?"

"I'm fine with quiet cuddling or a topic change but I don't especially want to keep talking about this. If we're going to keep cuddling we should maybe sit down." 

“Topic change sounds good to me. I can go get chairs, or we can head into the living room, or...?”

"Let's go to the living room. Maybe Faye can talk about her life on Earth, unless it is also incredibly depressing, in which case Sasha can talk about the poetry he likes."

Into the living room! It continues the trend of having everything be expensive and fragile and not at all soft. Sasha curls up half leaning on Lev and half in his lap on the couch. 

Lev is very happy to have Sasha in his lap and totally unaware of the connection to the furniture.

Faye sits down somewhere that is respectful of Lev and Sasha’s personal space! “Um, I wouldn’t say my life on Earth wasn’t depressing, but I was solidly out of my tragic backstory by the time I died, at least. I had a little apartment and worked at a warehouse. It was nice but I don’t really... miss it or anything.” She shrugs. “What about you, Lev?”

"I was a psych grad student-- this is normally the part where you'd hear about my thesis but I can't because every time I talk about work inoffensive classical music comes out of my mouth instead-- my moms are the best people in the world, my sister is a law student and she was lowkey going to take over the world and I was going to help, I'm gay, I like comics and fantasy novels and pretentious indie music..."

“That’s really cool! If you want you could try writing down stuff about your thesis? I’m a little unclear how writing could be obscured by classical music. But if you don’t want to that’s fine too! Um, other facts about myself... I like folk music and baseball, I like reading but I never really had the time and resources to actually read all that much, I’m a lesbian but I’ve never actually been with a girl, I spend too much time on the internet arguing about feminism, I keep a bunch of succulents in my windows because I like plants but I’m terrible at taking care of them, my coworkers think I should get out more...”

"Oh, good idea, I should try writing! Do you have a pen and paper?"

"I'm still so confused about why they thought a gay guy and a lesbian should be soulmates." 

Lev obtains a pen and paper from Janet and starts to write.

Faye leans over to see if she can read the words Lev's writing and does not comment on the soulmate compatibility of herself and Sasha.

...he doesn't particularly want to poke at Faye's facial expression. He cuddles up to Lev instead. 

Lev is producing a bland, semi-Impressionist sketch of a flower, of the sort you would find at a doctor's office. 

"...Is it just me or is this not a summary of the causes of schizotypal personality disorder?"

"...wow. 

I guess you can't say they aren't thorough?" 

"I can't actually draw."

"Well. I guess that doesn't work. At least you can draw now, even if you can't.... control what you draw? And you can listen to classical music or play it for people whenever you want."

"Maybe there's a correspondence between what I'm trying to write and what I'm trying to draw?"

The development of vision in infants produces a fruit tree. The availability heuristic produces a cat. If he tries writing about the availability heuristic several times, it produces several different cats. 

"I am so sorry." 

"Well, I mean, I can't talk about psychology or draw semi-impressionist sketches of cats, so at least you're still beating me there? And writing about the same thing gets the same drawing, so it's not completely random, even if it doesn't seem very related."

"It's cool! Probably I worked too much when I was alive anyway."

It is most definitely not cool.

Lev is getting very very cuddled right now. "Still. If they never let me talk about art again that would be awful." 

"Yeah. It... yeah. Maybe if the issue was that you would talk too much about work, you could ask Michael for some sort of... time-limited version? So you could talk about work for a certain amount of time per day, not long enough to be a problem but... still better than nothing? I know that's probably not enough, but." She shrugs.

"It is the Good Place? They probably know better than I do what's good for me? I wouldn't want to ruin everyone else's afterlife by being unable to shut up about" Light, tinkling classical music. "Oh god dime it."

"Well, I for one would want to hear you talk about —" and he mimics the snippet of melody. 

"That's usually the opinion people have before they hear me talk about"-- light tinkling classical music-- "and not afterward!"

"You'd know better than I would." More cuddles? More cuddles. "And I guess it's good that Asher can't talk about politics without it doing the same thing?" 

"I'd probably like him better if he could, honestly, I have much stronger anti-dictator principles when they aren't getting in the way of me getting to argue with someone about social science."

"....okay, that's adorable." 

This earns another giggle. "Without knowing what the thing actually is I have no idea whether I would be interested or not! I usually like listening to people talk about what they're interested in, even if I think the thing is boring, but with the whole" --she mimics the tinkling-- "I suppose I will just have to defer to the superior knowledge of you and of the Good Place on this."

"Maybe they'll let me talk about work once I've had a really long rest, and you can find out."

"That'd be nice! I guess we do have all of eternity ...Wow, we have all of eternity. I'm going to be a thousand. That's weird."

"I bet the neighborhood's going to be really weird once we're a thousand years old."

"Yeah. I think it'll be kind of cool though? We'll all have changed so much, and we'll have changed it so much--especially given that, um, the very cheerful lady who appears when you say her name can provide basically arbitrary things. Eternity is definitely super weird to think about but I'm kind of looking forward to it."

"...I have several thoughts and most of them are depressing. It's going to be great to have time to get to everything I would usually put on my to-read list." 

He puts his head on Sasha's shoulder. "Will you tell me about them?"

"The depressing thoughts or the to-read list? Answer's yes either way." 

"I was thinking of 'your thoughts on the books you read after you finished reading them,' but yes. I like hearing anything you want to talk about."

"I would love to tell you about my thoughts on books I read." 

Lev is delighted about this plan. And also about Sasha. Sasha is delightful. 

Lev is also delightful and should be snuggled more. This is not a surprise to him but it is definitely true. He'll figure out how to balance his reactions with Faye's when they've all known each other for more than a day, it's fine. 

Faye is just going to... not react to the snuggling. Yep. This seems like a great plan. "Lev mentioned that you like poetry too?"

"I do! My favorites are Gather and Monet Refuses The Operation, but my favorite that anyone's ever heard of is Inland, what do you like?" 

"I have not heard of any of those," Lev offers.

"Yeah, me neither. I... never really got the chance to read much poetry, really, when I was alive? I read some stuff that was passed around on tumblr, I guess, and the stuff they go over in elementary and middle school. Oh! I like this one poem--Power by Audre Lorde--I don't know if it's actually any good if you read lots of poetry and know what a good poem looks like, but I liked it." 

"Sasha should read us poetry!"

 Audre Lorde, huh. 

"Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit."

He puts particular emphasis on the last two lines.

"You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples."

"Gather. By Rose McLarney. — I have a lot of favorites but that one's near the top of the list." 

"It's beautiful."

You're beautiful.

“Wow. That’s—really good. You’re. Really good at reading? That probably sounds weird, but.” Her voice is genuine. “Maybe I’ll use eternity to get into poetry.”

"Me too! When you say the poetry, it actually makes sense to me."

...he's blushing now. He kind of wishes he wasn't but he totally is. 

"Thank you." 

"You should teach me about poetry."

“I could... Maybe... Come too? If that’s okay?” She sounds very unsure if she’s allowed to ask but also very hopeful; she’s trying very hard not to think about whether ‘teach me about poetry’ is intended to be a euphemism of some kind. 

"Oh, yeah, of course!" Lev says. "Afterlife poetry lessons for everyone Sasha likes."

"Afterlife poetry lessons sound great! And yes, Faye, you are definitely invited to them." 

Lev puts his head on Sasha's shoulder and entwines his fingers with Sasha's.

"I wonder if Janet has the things I wrote when I was alive."

"I wouldn't count on us being able to read them, but I'd be surprised if she didn't have them." He kisses the back of Lev's hand. 

Faye notices the holding-hands and the kiss but mostly she is thinking about how apparently she is a person that Sasha likes! Who is invited to afterlife poetry lessons! The Good Place: maybe actually pretty great! Maybe she should have figured this out immediately from the name but she spent the first day here having a panic attack and then learned that she's sharing the neighborhood with a dictator, so.

"We can always give it a try, it's faster to check than actually writing it all out and we did that test."

"Janet?"

"Hello!"

"Can you give us the stuff I wrote when I was alive?"

"Absolutely! Do you want to start with your dissertation, or your emails to your sister, or the love letters you wrote to your ex when you were drunk and never sent, or the Warrior Cats fanfiction you wrote when you were thirteen?"

"MY DISSERTATION," Lev says in a tone of panic. 

Poor Lev. "Just psychology papers, please." 

"Here you go!" 

Four books with neatly bound covers and titles like LEV'S WRITING ABOUT PSYCHOLOGY 2016-2017.

Do the books have words in them or just bland semi-impressionist sketches?

They have words! And a table of contents! And an index!

1. Tracking Colisteners’ Knowledge States During Language Comprehension

2. People Make the Same Bayesian Judgment They Criticize in Others

3. Are Bigger Brains Smarter? Evidence From a Large-Scale Preregistered Study

4. Sudden Events Change Old Visual Objects Into New Ones: A Possible Role for Phasic Activation of Locus Coeruleus

5. Volume Estimation Through Mental Simulation

6. Self–Other Agreement in Personality Reports: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Self- and Informant-Report Means

7. The Decoy Effect as a Nudge: Boosting Hand Hygiene With a Worse Option

Wow!

Faye is pretty sure she’s not smart enough to understand any of that, though; she hands the book to Sasha. 

He definitely doesn't understand any of that but it's more a case of lack of familiarity than not being smart enough. If he tries to read it, are there at least words? 

There are totally words! That form coherent sentences and everything!

"So as long as I never want to say anything new, we're okay."

"At least it'll let you read about social science? That's better than nothing, right?" 

"I'm going to miss teaching. It was the best part of my job."

"I'm sorry." 

If he curls around Lev more and squeezes his hand, does that seem to help any?

“Maybe you could still enjoy teaching something that wasn’t related to your work? Um, let me know if you just want sympathy instead of me brainstorming advice.”

"I bet I could but I don't know that much about things that aren't social science. I guess I used to do SAT tutoring, if anyone wants to learn high-school math I could probably teach them."

“I dropped out of high school, so. I don’t have a burning desire to learn high school math or anything, and I was kind of bad at it so I don’t know if I’d be a good student, but. I’m here if you ever miss teaching, I guess?”

"There's no such thing as a bad student, only bad teachers."

"I never liked math but I think that was at least half that most of my teachers barely cared. I'll teach poetry and art history and you can teach math?" 

"I'd love to learn about art history from you."

“I gotta say, I didn’t expect heaven to involve so much school. Not that I’m opposed! It seems like a good plan to me. Just, unexpected. Hopefully I do better here than I did in actual school. Not being in my tragic backstory will probably help, at least.”

"Tragic backstories do tend to interfere with school." Not that he would know anything about that. "And hopefully this will be more fun than actual school anyway. If it's not, tell me and I'll try changing tack?" 

“Gotcha, I can do that! I’d be surprised if it wasn’t, though. Poetry and art seem harder to make boring than a lot of subjects, because even if I’m not understanding anything it’s still pretty.”

A knock on the door. 

Faye opens it. “Hello? —Oh, hi, Michael!”

"Hello, Faye! Can we speak in my office for a minute?"

“Yeah, sure!” She calls back to Sasha and Lev letting them know she’s going to talk to Michael and that she’ll be back in a minute. 

And, poof, she's in Michael's office. 

"So, Faye, I wanted to know how you were settling in in the Good Place."

"I'm settling in well, I think! The first day was, um, rough, but first days always are, right? Today was definitely better. Sasha's going to be teaching me about poetry and art."

"Good! I'm so glad you're getting along with your soulmate. I like human poetry and art too, you know."

"That's cool! I don't actually know that much about it, really. Do you have a favorite or is it too hard to choose from, um, literally everything that humans have ever created?" She wonders absentmindedly if Janet can produce poetry and art that's been lost to time without a more solid description, or if she can do better translations. Maybe she'll suggest figuring that out in class? It seems like the kind of thing they'd be interested in, anyway.

"I like 'I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner.' The pathos! The yearning! Truly it captures the essence of the human condition."

"Oh. Huh." That wouldn't have been what she would have expected, but "not what she expected" seems to describe a lot of things about Michael, and about the Good Place as a whole, so... okay. "Is... that all, or?"

"No, I also like the creativity of the poem. Who but a human would think of wishing that they were a hot dog in order to be loved?"

"Huh. Yeah. That's... pretty cool, actually, to see an outside view on it? I never thought about it that way before. Humans, man." Faye has absolutely no idea what is going on but she thinks she might have so little understanding that she wrapped back around and genuinely understood his point? Maybe she needs some sleep, or processing time, or something, because probably she should not be agreeing that I Wish I Were An Oscar Meyer Wiener is a good poem in literally any way, but here she is.

"Humans are wonderful. No other species could have invented the flavor 'blue raspberry.'"

"It's delicious, too!" She was not expecting this to just be a conversation about how weird humans are but apparently that's what it is. She's enjoying it, though!

"One thing I've always wondered is how you know what it's supposed to taste like."

"It tastes like artificial sweetener and the color blue! Maybe in the future they'll do that with more... colors? flavors? and invent more fake fruits to go with them, that'd be so cool." She sounds entirely genuine about this.

"Humans know what blue tastes like?"

"I... guess? Not inherently, but society definitely taught me that blue tastes like, um, whatever artificial flavoring they use in blue raspberry flavored things."

"Fascinating! --But, in fact, I called you in for a serious purpose, Faye. I am sure it hasn't escaped your notice that your soulmate experienced a lot of trauma in her short life."

"Yeah."

"You were selected as her soulmate because of your compassion and your history of work with traumatized people. We believe that, of everyone in the Good Place, you are the single person best suited to help Sasha and Lev come to terms with the trauma they experienced in their lives."

That seems unlikely, because helping them seems really hard and so far all she has done is panic about it, but also kind of really sweet. Her throat closes up a little; she nods instead of trying to talk.

"So I've called you in to give you some information that will help you and give you the opportunity to ask any questions you have about them." He shuffles some papers. "How much have you learned about Sasha and Lev's pasts so far?"

"Um, I know quite a bit about Sasha's? I didn't even really know that Lev was traumatized. I try to stay open, but I don't want to pry too much if they don't want to talk about it, you know?"

"That is exactly the sort of kind attitude we chose you for! But more information will help you make decisions." Shuffles papers. "Lev's mother was raped by her father. His father encouraged his mother to let Lev's grandfather be alone with him, because his father believed it was important for children to have a relationship with their grandparents. Naturally, Lev was abused for several years until Lev's mother finally, with the encouragement of Lev's adoptive mother, divorced her husband and cut off her parents." He grows serious. "Needless to say, everyone involved in this clusterfork except for Lev and his adoptive mother is going to the Bad Place."