A man looks up from the book he's reading. 

"Are you all right-- Lily?"

He's not Lily. 

The stranger looks kind of like Lily, if you put Lily through three hours of photoshop and studio makeup, and also if they were a drawing come to life; humans do not generally have faces that symmetrical, skin that flawless, eyes that large and bright. 

"...I'm sorry?" he tries. 

"I'm sorry, you just looked a lot like my husband for a second there, but as far as I know he doesn't get doors. --I'm Lev."

He doesn't — Lev isn't Pretty, it's obvious, Sasha didn't know they let Uglies get married — he doesn't say that. He tries to stand up. The floor is spinning under him but he can get to a chair without falling again. 

"I'm Sasha." 

Lev helps him to a chair.

"That's... odd," he says, "that's my husband's name. Have you gotten a door to Milliways before? I've been getting them since I was a kid."

"I don't know what that means." From the sound of it, this isn't an unusual occurence. (His voice, if Lev is listening for it, sounds very like Lily's.) 

"Welcome to Milliways!" He gestures, indicating the bar. "So it turns out there's more than one universe. Some of them have magic, some of them have far-future tech, some of them are just alternate ways history could have gone. Sometimes people in all the universes open a door and instead of whatever they expected to find behind it there's this bar, where they can meet people from other universes. Your first drink is free. --Does that make sense or should I try to explain things more?"

"...I feel like that would have implications I'm not thinking of but obviously I'm not thinking of them. I don't know. I've never been here before, though." 

"I can go get you a drink. What do you want?"

"...something with cherries? Something bubbly, I don't know what the options are." 

"The options are literally any drink that has ever existed in any universe! It's a convenient bar like that."

"There's a place near my apartment that makes a thing called a green cherry. One of those?" 

Lev goes up to the bar and says, "I want a black coffee for me and a green cherry for Sasha. --Is it possible that alternate universes contain different versions of the same people?"

Yes, the bar napkins. They are called alts. Sasha is an alt of Lily.

"Thank you."

Lev collects the drinks and is somewhat puzzled by the fact that the green cherry is bright blue and not even a little bit fizzy. He sits down and says, "apparently you're an alternate universe version of my husband."

He takes the drink — doesn't seem surprised by either of these traits — and looks at Lev's face. It's kind of fascinating, how different Lev looks from everyone Sasha has ever seen. "I don't think I know an alternate universe version of you, but I might not realize it if I did." 

"Because you're from a"-- he gestures-- "very pretty species?"

"It isn't a species thing, everyone gets surgery. But yes, that is why." 

"Yeah, I'd probably be unrecognizable. --Why does everyone get surgery?"

He blinks, as if the idea of someone not going through the operation had never occurred to him. 

"Nobody wants to stay an Ugly kid," he says, as if this is self-evident. 

"...I don't think not having gotten extensive plastic surgery makes you ugly? Like, I realize I'm biased here, but Lily is in fact very very pretty."

"It's a noun, not an adjective, that's just what it's called." 

Well, that's fucked up. 

"Why don't they want to stay, uh, Ugly? In my world, if we were that good at plastic surgery, a bunch of people would still want to keep the faces they started with, and a bunch of the people who didn't would want to be lizardpeople or something."

"Would you want to be fifteen forever? Or — never move out of your parents' house, stay a little kid forever? Stay behind while everyone you know becomes an adult and moves on? That's what it would be." 

This society is very fucked up!

"You have to get surgery in order to be an adult?"

"That's just what you do when you turn sixteen. I don't know what would happen if someone tried not to, because nobody does. 

There are people who can't, but it's not — nearly everyone has a friend whose friend's boyfriend's parents' other child never leaves the building and that's why but I've never talked to someone who knows someone." 

Not that he talks to a lot of people. 

Wow, this incredibly pretty alternate universe version of his husband is incredibly pretty. It's kind of distracting. Lev keeps having intrusive thoughts about kissing him. 

"I guess that's not any stranger than Cascadia's norm of people having babies when they're sixteen."

"...you let —" not New Pretties, Lev's world doesn't have the operation — "sixteen year olds have kids?" 

"One of the ways my world is different from other worlds is that we have a pollutant called bitoxiphosphene, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist anywhere else. It makes people infertile. They're less likely to be infertile when they're really young. So in my home country, Cascadia, we really encourage people to get pregnant as young as possible. Of course, sometimes they're surrogates, not everyone wants kids."

"...I guess if it works for your world." 

This Lily is really really unsure of his opinions. It's weird. Lev guesses you shouldn't assume alts of the same person are the same in every way, but it's still strange.

"I really want Lily to meet you, I bet there's totally different poetry in your world."

"Does Lily like poetry?" 

He sounds a little doubtful. 

"Yes! I didn't like poetry much before Lily, but they taught me about how to read it so it actually makes sense. Sometimes they read it to me and it's really good."

(He is, clearly, so so happy when he talks about Lily.)

Not making sense has never really been a reason he doesn't like poetry.

"They sound great." He's smiling. 

"Do you speak English? I don't know how Milliways translation interacts with poetry."

"I'm speaking English." 

"Cool! Let me go talk to the bar for a sec and then I'll show you one of Lily's favorite poems."

He returns a few minutes later with a piece of paper that reads:

Monet Refuses the Operation
BY LISEL MUELLER

Doctor, you say there are no haloes

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don’t see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors: fixed

notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate

from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

the Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night to become

the fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don’t know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent.  The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touches,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals,

burn to mix with air

and change our bones, skin, clothes

to gases.  Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

and how infinitely the heart expands

to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

"— oh." 

That's beautiful. Sasha's fairly sure there's context he's missing — and he's not sure whether Lev is trying to make a point, given the title — but it's beautiful. 

Lev is staring at him adoringly. 

"Do you need things to be explained-- I'm guessing you're from an Earth because you speak English but I don't know if your Earth has a Monet or if you learned about him if it did--"

"I can tell there's context I'm missing but I'm not sure where to start. I did not learn about a Monet." 

"Sorry, I should have thought of this when I was getting the poem--"

Lev returns with a coffeetable book full of Monet's paintings and starts to explain who Monet is. He's smiling at Sasha kind of a lot.

He's... kind of cute. 

Sasha's eager to listen. Not just for that reason, but he'd be lying if he claimed that didn't factor in at all. 

"You might have to stop me before I show you all of Lily's favorite things."

"It's fine — I've. Never really liked poetry before." 

"Maybe you won't like Lily's other favorite poetry as much, then, I did show you their favorite."

"— if that's the kind of thing Lily reads I dont think I'll have any issue with their taste, it's just —" 

He's not sure what it's just. 

"I mean, you don't have to let some random stranger show you a bunch of poetry, it's just-- really exciting that I might get to see what Lily's reactions to discovering their favorite things would have been, if I had been there for them."

"I would like to, though. I think. 

If I showed you the kind of thing I've seen that might make it more clear what I mean?" 

"Sure!"

Maybe they should move to a table right next to the bar.

They can move to a table closer to the bar. Sasha doesn't fall; he asks for a book of poetry from his home city. 

He isn't really expecting Lev to like it.

"This isn't poetry. It's normal sentences with line breaks."

That's... kind of cute. Lev keeps doing things that make him have that thought. It's not a good idea but he keeps thinking it anyway. 

"I really dont think I'm going to have a problem with anything Lily likes." 

"...please tell me that not all your home world's poetry is like this."

"Not all of it? But this is everything that isn't really, really old." 

"What year is it in your world? It's 2047 AD in mine."

"2357. I dont know what A.D. means." 

"Our calendar is dated from the alleged birth of Jesus Christ-- do you know who Jesus is?-- but if you don't know what AD is we might have different calendar systems even if both of our homeworlds are Earths."

"Ours is too, I think we just dropped the acronym. I've heard of him but only in the context of history classes." 

"That is the first thing I've heard about your world that makes me like it."

"I come from a gorgeous shining city where everyone is beautiful and nobody has to work, does that help any?" 

"It would probably help more if my instant association with 'city' wasn't 'five minutes away from everyone dying in a nuclear conflagration.'"

He's glancing at Sasha's lips a slightly excessive amount.

"I've never worried about war in my life. I'm not trying to complain." 

"That sounds nice. --Can people work if they want to?"

"Plenty of people have jobs. I don't personally — pretty much no New Pretties do — but even just for New Pretties it's not unheard of, just a little strange." 

"New pretties are"-- he gestures-- "people who just got the surgery? Like you?"

"Yeah. After a while the bone structure softens and you look more mature, that's around the same point that more people start getting jobs and job training and planning for kids." 

"--Maybe I spend too much time around Lily but I'm not sure all the utopia is worth it if it makes all the poetry that bad."

He shrugs and doesn't comment on whether he considers his life worth living or not. 

"It's all I know," he says instead. 

"Actually-- hey, Bar, can you get all the books that are on Lily's Reader, but put them on a reader that's compatible with chargers from Sasha's world? Put it on my tab."

...Sasha is almost entirely unfamiliar with this feeling; it takes him a moment to identify. 

(It can't be the first time — but his memory is faulty, he knows it is —) 

"Oh," he says, very quietly.

"Oh?" 

"You. Look like Lily. When you're happy."

"...do you think Lily would mind if I kissed you?" 

"We're poly."

He's not really sure what poly means, but that can come after the kissing. 

Sasha is good at kissing. He's gotten a lot of practice in the last two years. 

Lev has had a lot of practice kissing Lily specifically, and it seems like the skill might generalize a bit!

Either it does, or Sasha and Lily continue to have similar taste. 

There are only so many places to go, from kissing; Sasha's fingertips brush Lev's sides under his shirt. 

Lev stops kissing him, rests his forehead against Sasha's, and says, "I'd rather not, sorry."

"...okay. Sorry." 

He tucks his face into Lev's neck instead. 

"It's not you, you're very pretty, I just-- like kissing cute people but don't really like going beyond that unless I love the person."

.....?

"I... don't know what's confusing."

"All of it?" 

He really would rather be kissing Lev than having this conversation. 

"...Please tell me you are familiar with the concept of not wanting to have sex."

"I am familiar with the concept of not wanting to have sex." 

"...okay. That's good, because if you weren't I would feel pretty uncomfortable about kissing you."

It isn't that weird as a thing, if he thinks about it. Plenty of people who are dating someone don't want to sleep with anyone else, it's just that Sasha has never previously had the opportunity to kiss one of those people. "I just don't usually kiss people who don't also want to sleep with me. It's not a big deal." 

Sasha must be pretty inexperienced if he hasn't encountered people who want to kiss but don't want to have sex. 

"It's a thing! It's just that I need to feel close to people before I get anything out of sex with them."

Lev puts a hand in Sasha's hair and then kisses him deeply.

Kissing is nice. And Lev is still cute, even if he is confusing. 

Sasha is really, really good at kissing. 

Lev is perfectly aware that if he tried to have sex with Sasha right now it would be kind of disgusting and unpleasant, like eating cold congealed eggs. That doesn't stop the thought from being tempting. 

Sasha is... maybe not super clear on where the line between "kissing" and "beyond that" is; he doesn't put his hands up Lev's shirt again, but he does rub their bodies together, pull Lev closer, bite very gently at Lev's lower lip. 

All of those things are fine!

Lev pulls Sasha's hair. 

Sasha moans and gasps — almost exactly the way Lily does; his hair is softer but it curls around Lev's fingers exactly the same — and definitely does not discourage this. 

"God, it's such a waste."

"Hm?" 

"It would be really nice to have a threesome with you and Lily, but I'm not going to stay in Milliways long enough to fall in love with you, and without that it... wouldn't work."

...his experience of love does not generally include things like "time," but if it works for Lev. 

He nods and tries to stand up and promptly falls. 

Lev has an arm around his shoulder helping him up.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, I just can't balance really at all, I'm — not really sure why." 

"That's-- odd, have you seen a doctor about it?"

"I've asked. She clucked her tongue a lot and suggested a surge that didn't help, and I didn't go back." 

"Surge?"

"Surgery. People mostly use them for cosmetic stuff, there's a thing lots of people are doing with their eyes right now, but they still exist for medical purposes. This one just — I can't tell if it made things worse or not but it didn't help." 

"I guess even the utopian future has untreatable neurological problems and incredibly unhelpful doctors."

"I guess," he agrees. Maybe they should sit down and then Sasha can cuddle Lev. 

"Milliways has private rooms, we might want to go up to one of those instead of being all PDA-y in front of the other customers."

"The extent to which I can handle stairs is. Limited." 

"There are rooms on the first floor."

"Then yes, let's." 

He'll keep leaning on Lev some, but while they're moving it's much easier to lean on walls and chairs. 

Fortunately, Lev likes it when Sasha leans on him!

He obtains a room key from the bar and then they have a little hotel room with a desk and a giant soft bed. 

He flops backwards onto the extremely soft bed. He has spent kind of a lot of time in soft beds recently but hopefully it'll be different when there's someone else there with him. 

Lev puts his head on Sasha's shoulder and pets his hair. "Tell me about where you're from?"

"I'm not really sure where to start — there's a thing lots of people are doing with their eyes right now, getting little jewel flecks implanted? They're not actual stone, obviously, but designed to look like that, I think it's kind of creepy looking but that's fashion I guess. You can't get surgeries for non-medical reasons until you're a Pretty, and it's mostly New Pretties that do that kind of thing — I think it's that everyone's getting their first taste of being able to do whatever they want to their face all at once so everyone kind of eggs each other on — is that the kind of thing you mean?" 

Lev kisses his temple. "You're smart, I like listening to you talk. You and Lily both have a-- way of approaching things?-- that is really interesting. So you could probably talk about anything and I'd like to hear about it."

"...thank you." He's glowing. "I don't think anyone's ever told me that. — I wouldn't necessarily know if someone had, though, my memory is kind of fucked." 

"...same reason your balance is fucked?"

"...yeah. Memory's fucked enough that I don't know for sure, but I don't think I was like this when I was Ugly." 

"...when they do the operation do they do it to your brain?"

"No. But — there's a couple people every decade who die from being under anaesthesia for too long, I don't know for sure but if I had to guess —" 

"Do you have... headaches, seizures, nausea, dizziness, trouble speaking, sensitivity to certain lights or sounds, ringing in your ears, insomnia, mood swings, depression...?"

"Yes, sometimes, sometimes, yes, no, yes, no, no, I don't think so but it's hard to tell, and I don't know what that means in this context."

"Uh, you're sad all the time, it's hard to concentrate on things or make decisions, you feel guilty, you kind of want to die a lot... since you're a Lily I'd guess you also don't eat enough..."

"I don't really feel guilty ever. But — yes." 

Lev hugs him really really close. 

"I think you have a traumatic brain injury. Except-- that doesn't make any sense, you're from three hundred years in the future, you guys get recreational plastic surgery for parties, how would people not notice that you have a TBI?"

"Because I'm a weirdo who stays in all the time and sleeps a lot and doesn't have friends. Who'd notice?" 

"But you went to a doctor...?"

Lev is not consciously aware of how tightly he's hugging Sasha.

Being very tightly hugged is good. "I don't know." 

"I mean, I'm not a medical professional or anything, probably the doctors who have three hundred years' more medical tech than my society does are right. But it definitely sounds like a TBI."

"You guessed a lot of things, immediately, without having enough other information to get them from. I think you're probably right. I dont know why the doctor wouldn't have recognized it but a lot of people have concerns right after the operation that clear up on their own within a month and never come back, I think maybe she thought that was what was up with me."  

"To be fair, like, 'nausea' is a symptom of a lot of different things, but together it's kind of alarming." Kiss. "You should go to the doctor and ask them about it, I bet the future has really good TBI treatments."

Kissing. Sasha's gentler about it, now, slower and softer and less wanting. 

"I can. 

Can I stay the night with you?" 

"Sure." Lev kisses him slowly. "Time doesn't pass in your world while you're here, so we could stay here as long as we want. But you do age, and I get doors often enough that that's something to worry about."

He nods and curls up against Lev's side. Without sleeping pills it takes him longer than usual to fall asleep, but it still doesn't take long. 

He's so pretty.

Lev contemplates how pretty Sasha is for a while, then falls asleep next to him.

When Sasha wakes up, he's — bubbly. Happy. 

And in bed with an Ugly. 

He looks way older than most Uglies, Sasha's not really sure why he slept with a forever-ugly but he really shouldn't be rude about it. And Lev's kinda ugly-cute, if you squint and ignore the fact that you can see every single wide-open pore on his face and also he looks kind of sick the way all Uglies do. Like those puppies with scrunched up faces. 

Sasha leans forward and kisses Lev's face. 

He opens his eyes and smiles drowsily and says, "Morning, Lily."

Lev's face is so weird. Sasha kisses it some more. "Morning!" 

His voice is chirpier than it was yesterday. 

Blinks. "Oh, sorry, Sasha."

"Don't be." More face kissing. 

(Sasha's eyes are very large and very bright; they're a lighter, warmer brown than Lily's, with little bits of gold. Today they're noticeably brighter than they were yesterday.) 

That's-- odd.

"I'm glad you're in a good mood."

An affectionate nuzzle. "Sorry about yesterday, I'm kind of a downer sometimes." 

"What? No. You were fine. I don't want you to go around with an undiagnosed TBI."

He's doing that really adorable ugly-cute smile again. Sasha kisses him some more. 

Lev kisses back, his hands in Sasha's hair.

He makes quiet little breathy sounds when Lev touches his hair — Lev's hands feel different, they have rough spots in weird places and the skin is a different texture and the shape is different from Pretty hands in a hundred subtle ways, and Sasha's — kind of into that? He rocks forward against Lev. 

Lev makes little whimpery sounds into Sasha's mouth. His hands touch Sasha's neck, his shoulders.

"You're so cute," Sasha says, very earnestly. "Bubbly. I like you." 

"I like you too. I assume 'bubbly' is a good thing?"

He giggles and kisses Lev on the nose. "It is. You're cute." 

His hands are — wandering. Lev's body feels so different. 

Lev freezes when Sasha's hands go up his shirt, then slowly and deliberately relaxes. He stops touching Sasha. 

Strange things Sasha might notice: body hair! pudginess! pasty pale skin! 

He does notice that! 

"You're soft," he says, still earnest. "...are you okay?" 

"Uh, yeah, this is just what... not-pretty people... look like."

"I don't mean that, I just — you stopped." 

"I told you yesterday-- I don't like going farther than kissing if I'm not in love with the person?"

— he'd woken up in bed with him — 

"Okay," he says, and he sounds — small. 

"I can if you want to, I just-- wouldn't get anything out of it?"

"No, that's not —" 

He reaches for words and comes up empty and kisses Lev again. 

Kissing is okay!

Lev made Sasha sad and he wants to fix it and he doesn't know what to do. 

Kissing is good. He doesn't think about how Lev doesn't want him. 

It — seems to solve itself; Sasha goes relaxed and shining-eyed and smiley again very quickly. 

Well, that works. 

Eventually Lev places one last kiss on his forehead and says, "I'm going to get you some breakfast. Do you have requests, or do you want to try something Lily would like, or do you want the Bar to pick?"

"I'll try something Lily would like." 

Lev returns with a tray and two plates: French toast with chocolate syrup and sausages, which he puts in front of Sasha, and eggs, hash browns, and bacon, which he puts in front of himself. 

There are calorie purgers back home, it'll be fine. He eats. 

His eyes have gone a little bit unfocused. 

"...are you okay?" Lev asks.

The unfocused vacant look doesn't go away. "Why wouldn't I be?" 

He doesn't know enough for this-- all he knows is how to figure out whether someone has a concussion and that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do when someone has a long-term traumatic brain injury-- but he has to do something--

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"

"Go ahead!" 

"I'm going to say some words, and then can you say as many of them as you remember back to me? Dollar, honey, mirror, saddle, anchor."

He tilts his head. "Dollar, honey, mirror, saddle, anchor." 

"--Uh, I'm doing a TBI test because your eyes are all fucked up, sorry, I probably should have explained that-- can you say the months of the year in reverse order?"

"February, January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June, May, April, March. I can see perfectly fine?" 

"I'm going to say some numbers and then you can say them backward, okay? So if I say 7-1-9 you'd say 9-1-7. Okay. 3-8-2."

"Two, eight, three." 

He does a few more digit strings of increasing length until either Sasha gets it wrong or can correctly do six numbers backwards.

He gets it wrong at four. 

"Do you remember the words I said before?"

"Honey, mirror, Saturn, anchor." 

"...Your brain isn't working right. You need to go home and see a doctor right now."

"...what makes you say that?" 

"A normal score on the test I just gave you is two. The score that means you should go see a doctor right now is five. You got a six, or maybe a five, and I skipped an entire section because I don't know how we'd agree what month or year it is."

"This is normal, can we go back to kissing?" 

"...it's normal for people from your world to have trouble remembering a list of words for a few minutes, or saying four digits backwards?"

"...yeah?" 

"Do you remember if you were like that when you were ugly?"

He tilts his head again. (His eyes haven't cleared.) 

"Why would I want to think about when I was an Ugly?" 

"--Actually, you're right, this is a dumb topic of conversation. Do you want to see some more poetry Lily likes?"

"Alright!" Chirpy again. 

Lev returns in a few moments with:

GATHER BY ROSE MCLARNEY

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.

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

"It's pretty." He sounds a little uncertain. 

"You sound not sure of that."

"....it's weird and I don't get it." 

Lev kisses his cheek. "Tell me about it?"

"Mm. I'd rather kiss you." 

Lev kisses him. 

He is, pretty clearly, distracted. 

That's okay! 

Lev is really good at this. Sasha can keep kissing him for a long time. 

Even if Lev is super-distracted there are certain physical reactions that happen when he's kissing an insanely pretty version of his husband for a long time!

Mm. Lev said he didn't want to so Sasha isn't going to but that would be so nice. He never gets to touch people when he's moping. 

...after a while longer he stops kissing Lev and pulls away, keeps his eyes down.

"Sorry." His voice is quiet and unemotive, compared to how he's been today. 

"...Oh, good, the Sasha I can talk to is back, what the fuck was that all about?"

"...I can think clearly about two-thirds of the time. The other one-third, I'm — like that. I can't really predict it, if I have a seizure I usually switch then but usually it's kind of random. 

That version of me is much, much happier, he can talk to people and doesn't mind not being able to hoverboard and enjoys meaningless empty sex, please don't get rid of him." 

"I'm not going to make changes to your brain without your consent and even if I could I can't do brain surgery and I definitely can't do it in a hotel room. --Do you remember if you were like this more when you were ugly?"

"I don't remember. —sixteen to twenty-five, thirty year olds are just like that. I'm the version that isn't normal." 

"...I'm 27."

"...your world is different, though, in my world Rusty civilization was wiped out about where you are and it really doesn't sound like you're headed for that kind of disaster. And we don't have — what did you call it? The chemical that fucks with fertility." 

"We might have gotten wiped out if not for bitoxiphosphene lowering world populations so much. But that's not the point, the point is-- in my world when my husband Asher was 16 he had a kid and when he was 18 he joined the military and spent four years handling classified material and learning to forage all his own food and when he was 22 he went to college to learn economics. When I was 16 I was teaching myself calculus and when I was 17 I had published three books and when I was 23 I was one of the most powerful people in the government. And-- Asher and I are unusual but we're not that unusual? We're not mutant child prodigies? And this isn't a 'Cascadia has resource constraints' thing, I don't think the other you could concentrate long enough to be safe around classified material or to solve a calculus problem or to write a book, he'd get bored halfway through and look for someone to suck off."

"He's not actually that sex obsessed, but we can't go to parties because we will inevitably get a migraine and possibly also a seizure and we can't play sports at all because of the balance thing and there's no other way to get contact, and he doesn't mind that the person he's fucking won't remember his name tomorrow and I do — I recognize that this is avoiding the actual topic, I promise I'm thinking about it." 

"...what? Uh, is there something weird you mean by the word 'contact'?"

"Substantial interaction with another human being?" 

"Um. Are you exaggerating for effect or are actually your only opportunities to talk to other people parties and sports and sex--?"

"I could in theory go to concerts or something, except, again, migraines. Or I could do the thing Littlies do where they walk up to someone and say 'hi, do you want to be friends.'" 

"Do you want to move to Cascadia?"

"...in theory I should ask more questions about what Cascadia is even like but it honestly can't be that much worse than sleeping 16 hours a day because I'd rather not experience the other 8." 

"I love Cascadia but it's definitely not for everyone-- you should ask more questions-- you're old enough and male enough to dodge the ambient social pressure to procreate, Lily was worried about that-- but you can go to a book club or a knitting club or a poetry reading or go on a hike with Asher or, or get a Tumblr--"

"First question, what's a hike." 

"You go out into nature and walk around and look at, uh, trees and flowers and stuff? The stars at night And talk about things with the person you're hiking with? Asher and I always end up arguing about economics but I think that's just me and Asher, not hiking in general. I don't know, I got enough nature by the time I was twelve, I really don't want to appreciate any more of it. --Lily really likes them."

"...stars aren't much to look at in my experience but I might as well try, I guess, on a good balance day. What is your tech level like, roughly?" 

"Have you ever been, I dunno, a hundred miles from a city?"

"I don't know how much a mile is but I've never been outside a city." 

"Please come to Cascadia, it might be two or three years before I get a door again but I promise you it will be so worth it, you will get to see real stars. --The light from the cities makes it so you can't see the stars."

"Yeah. Cascadia sounds worth it. — assuming I have, like, a place to stay and some way to acquire food, I won't have a job there and I don't know how feasible it would be to get one." 

"If I like you as much as I like Lily, then you can just live with me forever and not have to think about money, because I have way, way too much money. If I don't, you get a very small apartment and food stamps and health care just by living in Cascadia and you'd definitely qualify for disability so you could have some pocket money. If you wanted to work with scientists from the Cascadian government and let them study you, you could make the Cascadian median income just by doing that, or more if you're particularly useful. And there are-- other jobs-- but if you're on disability you'll have a vocational counselor, they'll help you figure out what kinds of jobs you can do around your disability, freelance writing or translating or programming or something--"

He nods. "I'm still kind of running on 'anything is better' but seriously, most things would be better." 

"I have a theory. About your world."

"What is it?" 

"I think they do something to your brains in the pretty operation that makes you-- happy and stupid? And they fucked it up when they did it to you and gave you brain damage."

That sounds... kind of depressingly plausible. 

"I don't know. It doesn't sound wrong, but — I don't know." 

Lev rests his head on Sasha's shoulder. "It really requires a lot of self-control," he says, "not to say 'I love you, run off with me to Cascadia, I'll take care of you and you won't have to worry about anything and we're going to be so happy.' Because-- you're so much like Lily, you're Lily with bigger eyes and different trauma who hasn't read good poetry or seen the stars and who had an entire society teaching you that you're stupid, and-- it would be really easy to just act like you're Lily? But you're not, you're your own person, it wouldn't be fair to you because-- because you're not going to be Lily and I don't want to set things up so you have to spend your entire life as a slightly inferior version of my husband instead of, like, a perfect version of you. If I love you I want to love you, for the person you are." He snorts. "Sorry about the big speech."

He curls a hand around Lev's head and holds him.  "...you use the word love in a way that I don't really get but that — I think I'm going to like once I do." 

"I am extremely upset about your entire society."

"I'm not unaware of the concept of romantic attachment, they aren't villains from a book. You just — use it differently." 

"Yes and it is very important to me that you get to experience the thing I'm using it for!"

He kisses the top of Lev's head. "You're sweet." 

He smiles maybe a bit more than is warranted by that. 

"You should ask me more about Cascadia probably. --Uh, one thing is that time doesn't pass in your world while your door is closed? So if you decide you want to go back to your world and you're a decade older that might be hard to explain. And I might stop getting doors at all and you'll be stuck in Cascadia."

He nods. "I think it's still worth it, though. What kind of tech level is Cascadia at?" 

"I'm not sure what sort of things you're looking for-- surgery is really expensive and basically permanent, we have self-driving trucks but not self-driving cars, we have the Internet in our pockets, we don't have uterine replicators?"

"...we can get blueprints for things on the way out." He leans over and kisses Lev on the cheek. 

"--Oh, Cascadian intelligence is going to love you." Kiss. 

"I'm not sure why, but I'm glad!" 

"Showing up with blueprints to advance our tech level three hundred years!"

"It's as much for my own convenience as anything else, holes in the wall are great. But — good." 

"...I assume holes in the wall are a tech thing?"

"Yes. It takes raw materials and prints things you ask for and you put them back in when you're done with them so it can reuse the materials, people largely use it for clothes — and needles if they're into that — but I can think of dozens of other things and you could probably think of hundreds." 

"That does sound useful. More so if they can be run off solar panels."

"— as opposed to — right, Rusties. We don't use fossil fuels for anything." 

He sounds vaguely disgusted by the idea. 

"I mean, as opposed to the power grid. --Fuck."

"Fuck?" 

"I have to... explain Cascadia. Uh." He thunks his head against the pillow. "I haven't had to do this with someone who doesn't know what Gileadites are."

"I'd ask questions but I don't know where to start either." 

"So... I'm not sure if this happened to the-- Rusties?-- in your timeline, but in our timeline America got taken over by extremist Christians who hate gay people and don't want women to work and don't think you should have sex before you get married and, like, censor all the media. And some states had a problem with this, so we left America and became Cascadia."

"I don't think that happened but I wouldn't necessarily know it if it did, everything anyone says about pre-collapse history is very broad-strokes. That set of beliefs is incomprehensible but I assume it was based on something?" 

"They think that's what God wants from them. --So they weren't super-happy about us leaving and they nuked us. Killed millions of people, disrupted a bunch of supply lines which killed even more people. You had refugee camps for years afterward." 

"I would definitely have heard of that." That's not the right response but he can't think of anything else to say. 

"I was in one of the cities that got bombed. I was a year old. I don't like talking about that but you should-- know. That I might not live to be very old."

"...how old is not very old, people in my world usually live to around two hundred —" 

"People in Cascadia usually make it to eighty. And-- it's hard to know, I could live to be 95, but I could get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow and have a year or two to live."

"Okay." He holds Lev a little closer. "Okay." 

"That's-- maybe a reason not to come to Cascadia, if you're giving up more than a century of life or having to watch everyone you know die."

"They've stopped giving me sleeping pills because I was requesting so many a day they thought I must be stockpiling them for a suicide attempt, and they weren't nearly as wrong as I would have liked. If I still want to be alive in eighty years that's better than I would have done, and if I don't then there's no problem, is there." 

Cling.

"If you decide you want to kill yourself and-- really mean it, not as a passing thing, I can arrange that."

He nods again and lets himself be clung to. 

"But even if you come to Cascadia you might want to arrange to become attached to people with... a longer life expectancy."

(He is clearly unhappy about this prospect.)

"...having one friend is new enough that I shouldn't bank on having two, I guess, but if there are as many ways to meet people as you said —" 

Hug. 

"You'll get to have so many friends, I promise."

"You're so cute." Sasha buries his head in Lev's shoulder. 

"Do you want to have sex?"

"Didn't you only want —?" 

"The other you seems really sad about not having sex with me and I don't want the first time we have sex to be with the other you? And-- I think I could, but I'd be running it a lot off being in love with Lily-- it's up to you whether that's something you're comfortable with."

"It really isn't about sex — it's the only way he knows how to get contact with people, remember? Turning down sex with him is basically turning down interacting with him at all. And we're both kind of desperately lonely. I like you a lot and would like to have sex with you but if you're only doing it because I'm lonely and it's only enjoyable because I look like your husband that just sounds depressing." 

"It's not that you look like him-- you actually don't look that much like him, because of the surgery-- actually, you should meet him, I think that might make you understand."

"...yeah. It's not like I haven't made my decision already." Hs shifts in Lev's arms. "Meeting Lily sounds like it would involve getting up and letting go, though." 

Kisses. 

"We should go get the blueprints."

"Yeah. We should." 

He doesn't want to get up but if he leans on the bed and then on the wall and then on the doorframe he can totally do it. 

"You could stay here and I could go outside and shout for him, if you wanted."

"You're very sweet, but you do kind of need me for blueprints." He can just keep leaning on the wall. 

"I'm sorry Asher's camping, otherwise he'd just carry you everywhere."

"He sounds great.

Bar, can I get blueprints for a hole in the wall — one of the early models, please — and a hoverboard and crash bracelets and a hovercar and —" 

Sasha has a list of modern inventions a dozen items long. 

"I'll pay for them," Lev says.

Then they can depart for Cascadia with a slightly ridiculous pile of blueprints! 

They step out into Lev's study. 

Every single wall is covered floor to ceiling with bookshelves; the bookshelves themselves are overflowing, with books packed sideways into every spare corner. There's a desk covered in so many papers that you can't see the wood; the floor is also covered in papers and books he didn't bother to shelve. A laptop computer is perched precariously on the desk. 

There are two places where the wall is not covered in bookshelf. One is a large bay window, looking out into a garden; some of the plants in the garden Sasha might recognize as vegetables. The other is directly in front of the desk, where there's a piece of corkboard with pictures tacked onto it: a man who looks very much like a foreverugly version of Sasha, who must be Lily; two women who look a little like Crumblies, except that they are far too wrinkled and splotchy; a long-haired person who might be a man or might be a woman; a black man who seems to be always smiling and who is the closest person on the board to a Pretty.