This crew is well-fed and organized and-- not clean, no one is clean these days, but cleaner.

...weird. 

The chance that this crew is going to be interested in him is slim at best, but he might as well try. 

"Hey?" 

Someone glances up. "Hey! We're from Eros. What crew are you from?"

He has to remind himself to say "Don't have one," and not 'Nova.' 

"Oh." She looks him up and down and seems to take in for the first time how small he is. "Well, if you like, you can travel with us a bit, that's twelve days of enough food even if Lev decides not to let you into Eros."

He'll take it. "I'd like. My name is Sasha Moon, what's yours?" 

"Loki. --I named myself when I was eleven."

"Yeah, so did I." Is there anything obvious that he can be helpful with? 

"Do you know how to read?" Loki asks.

"Yes, I do." 

"Can you go in there"-- she gestures to a bookstore-- "and figure out which of these they have, and if they have them bring them to the cart?"

The list consists of medical textbooks, survivalist books, guides to the identification of local plants, agriculture books, poetry, and fiction. 

He nods and takes the list and goes. 

They have a solid half of the list — Sasha pauses a couple of times to open the poetry books and copy out other poetry from other books into their margins — but they have more of the fiction than the medical textbooks and more of the plant identification guides than the agriculture books.

He emerges from the bookstore an hour later with twelve books. 

For the rest of the day, Loki has him repeat a similar process in various bookstores and clothing stores and toy stores, and clear out everything that isn't expired in various restaurants, food stores, and pharmacies. (They pick up ten days' worth of clothes in his size.)

He is not assigned to the group that has to deal with the forklifts.

...huh. So they are planning on keeping him, at least for a while. 

He continues to copy out poetry in the margins of other poetry; he's good at getting into and out of spaces that look too small to be gotten into. Some of the toys they aren't being assigned to get from the toy stores still have batteries in them; he takes those whenever it's even halfway feasible. 

Loki notices him collecting the batteries, congratulates him, and tells other people to do the same thing. 

Comfortably before sundown, they stop to eat dinner. Someone has caught a game bird, stuffed it with its eggs, and roasted it; they share that and some wild greens. 

Good! If he's getting congratulated for things that means that probably they'll continue wanting to keep him around! 

Dinner is really good. Possibly this is because he's been hungrier than usual since he started walking but it's still true. 

"If you have any questions you want answered about Eros, I can answer them," Loki says. "There are a lot of rumors. We aren't actually a sex cult."

"...it had not occurred to me to wonder whether you were a sex cult. I haven't heard the rumors, I'm from about ten days south." 

"Now I'm worried I turned you off us!"

"You look better-off than anyone else I've passed in the last ten days and you're sharing your food, it'll take a lot to turn me off you. What is up with Eros?" 

"We can fight the aliens." She eats a bite of her food. "If you've been walking you might have noticed that there aren't any drones around here, and we didn't set anyone to watch for them."

"I had noticed that." He'd thought — he isn't sure what he'd thought. That he'd been lucky enough not to see them. "How?" 

"We reverse-engineered the drones so that instead of the aliens crossing into our world we're crossing into their world." She eats. "Places in their world correspond to places in our world, and if you clear out the aliens in the area they can't send any drones to that area."

He does not need reminders to keep eating, but if he did need them, he would have needed one then. 

"Holy fuck." 

"I know, right? --The reason people think we're a sex cult is that when a pilot's in the dream world they make a giant robot out of love, and the robot works better if you've had sex with people you're in love with."

"...that sounds like a weird comic book premise but I followed a wandering waffle bar for a day on my way here so why not, I guess." 

"People are like 'ha ha, you're from Eros, you're slutty' and I'm like 'uh, I'm Catholic? Like half the people in Eros?' and they're like 'give us a blowjob.'" She stabs her wild greens. "The name doesn't help."

"I bet it doesn't. How big is Eros?" 

"Few hundred people."

"Wow." 

"We mostly grow our own food these days, so a big population is helpful."

"I bet." That'll be a change — if they keep him, he doesn't want to get too comfortable in the assumption that they'll keep him. 

"There's a whole speech I'm supposed to give you but most of it's obvious or dumb. Don't attack people or fuck with their stuff, don't shirk work, don't try to overthrow Lev."

"I will not attack people or fuck with their stuff, shirk work, or try to overthrow Lev," he agrees. 

"Are you Catholic?"

"I'm not, my family was Jewish and I'm — something, probably, but Jesus is not involved." 

"Oh. Catholicism is true, you know. God performed a miracle and now we have the pope."

"And Orion protects you from the Something in winter when the nights are long and it's bad luck to touch oleander, so what?" 

"Okay, but the previous pope miraculously didn't succumb to the bliss until he gave permission for a priest to ordain a nine-year-old a bishop, and then that nine-year-old survived until today. That's a solid miracle right there."

"And once we figured out to ask Orion for help the Something didn't get any of us all winter long any winter after that. You have your miracles and I have mine." 

"I guess." Loki, seeing that conversion is not going to work super well today, continues to eat in silence.

The food is really, really good. 

They've going to scavenge for two more days, then it's three days to canoe back.

He'll stick around for as long as they'll keep him around! He has not been in a canoe before but he can try to pick it up. 

Canoeing is not terribly hard and Loki is patient but it requires more upper-body strength than he generally has. He's going to be really hungry when it's mealtime. 

Yes, well, being useful enough to keep around is worth being hungry. 

He's not really sure where he's expecting Eros to be based out of but it has to be big. 

It's a prison!

There's a sign that says LAKE ERIE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY and everything.

Big, hard to get into, he doesn't know what prisons have in them but probably the answer is "a lot," that tracks actually. 

"...lot of space, that'll be a change." 

"Yeah, you get your own room unless you want to share."

He hasn't slept in a room alone in — he has no idea how long it's been since he slept in a room alone. "Wow." 

"It's really nice!"

When they land, Sasha will be directed to talk to Lev.

He goes where he's directed and doesn't stop himself from looking around. 

All the area around the camp is farmland, with various people intent on agriculture. A variety of children aged between three and maybe ten are playing; a woman is helping one of the older children identify a bug with a book. On the way to Lev's office, he sees a dad comforting a crying baby, some people hauling water to a machine while someone reads to them from Lord of the Rings, and a bunch of people churning butter and making cheese and drying meat while gossiping. 

He really, really hopes they let him stay. He's been hoping they let him stay this entire time but he really, really hopes they let him stay. 

He's left waiting outside Lev's office for a pretty long time. 

He is not going to be anxious about that he is not he is not. Loki was patient and he got batteries out of the toy store and he got them more to read than they'd asked for without increasing their carrying load and he pulled his own weight and he is not going to be anxious about that. 

Eventually the door opens. Lev has a very stressed aura. 

"Hi, I'm Lev. I assume you're Sasha? Sorry for keeping you waiting, I'm really busy."

"Hello. I'm Sasha, yes. Thank you for meeting me at all." 

"Well, we've got to get you a work assignment." Lev's office is full of bookshelves-- mostly economics and survival books, but there's a science fiction and fantasy shelf with a surprisingly complete Orson Scott Card collection. "The way it usually goes is that you work here for a week and if no one has any complaints-- and if you like it here, of course-- then you can stay, and if not you at least got some food and some parasite treatments."

He nods and leans forward. "I don't know how much Loki told you — I can sew, I can read, I was a scout for my old crew —" 

"Loki's very enthusiastic about you, she wants you on her scavenger team. We don't have much need for sewing, there's plenty of clothes in the stores, but reading is always useful."

"Scavenging sounds good, and I don't know what things I can do with reading but I expect I would like most of them." 

"Probably you'd get a turn as a bookreader on one of the teams that has one, but if you're smart enough you might end up switching into medical training later. Right now we need people on"-- he looks at a piece of paper-- "water purification, cooking, goat husbandry--"

"I can cook and I can learn how you do water purification here. Or be on Loki's scavenger team, or some combination of those things. — if I'm on the scavenger team I can copy things from books into the margins of other books and get more information per weight, I was doing that this time —" 

"That's a really good idea." 

"Thank you." 

He's still smiling. 

"If you're a scavenger you're gone one week a month and only have to work thirty hour weeks the rest of the time. I'll put you on cooking for now-- water purification is incredibly boring, and cooking's more flexible-- and as you talk to people and get more of a sense of things you can figure out if there's some other job you want to work and I'll reassign you."

"That sounds great." 

They're keeping him. — he hasn't gone the full week yet, they might still not keep him, but probably they're going to keep him. He can feel his shoulders relaxing. 

"If you need something, you want to write it on the whiteboard outside my office, or put it on a sheet of paper if it's private. Loki grabbed stuff for you, so you can get replacements if any of it is broken, and you can also make requests for things you want, although that's going to depend on how much space we have in the canoes. At some point in the next week you'll want to make an appointment with Rebecca, she's the pharmacist. Your room will be"-- he rustles a paper-- "221, in F block-- I'd let you pick but they're all identical. You can get Loki to show you where things are."

"Thank you." 

His voice is extremely sincere. 

"You might want to check out the library."

"I'll do that. — and copy what I have into the margins of your books, if that's okay?" 

"What you have?"

"...I have a paperback book, I've copied things into the margins to the point where it's getting hard to read, I can copy all of that out?" 

"I can get you paper for that, talk to the librarian. I'll wait to get you assigned to cooking until you're finished with that job?"

"Sounds good." 

"Do you have any questions for me?"

"...I'm a guy. I know I don't look like it, but I am. Is that going to be a problem, I was told you're like half Catholic — I can deal with it if it is —" 

He starts laughing. 

"I take it the answer is no, then?" 

"Chris Parker is trans and he's been part of Eros since we were wanderers. He runs half the government and he's terrifying. If you have any trouble, you can talk to him. --The pope has ruled that trans people are fine."

"Thank you. — seriously, there is no amount of thank you that would be enough." 

"No, thank you, for the first time in eighteen months I have a reason to wake up in the morning other than the fact that Asher would have been disappointed in me if I didn't," he does not say.

"If you want testosterone talk to Rebecca, we already get some for Chris, it's less potent than it used to be but you'll still probably wind up having to shave," he says.

"I think probably not, I like my voice where it is, but — thank you, again." 

"Anything else?"

"That's all that's urgent." 

"Then I'll get back to work. Loki is outside."

Sasha lets Lev get back to work and goes outside. 

When Sasha is gone, he stares at the door and says, "Fuck."

He follows Loki to room 221, F block. 

Room 221, F block, has a window and a bed and a closet and a desk. His new clothes have already been hung up in the closet; his bag is on the desk, next to soap and a toothbrush and some other basic supplies.

"You can ask for art on the next scavenger trip," Loki says, "art's light."

"It's so big," he says, slightly awed. "— I haven't slept in a room alone in ages, this is awesome." 

"You can get settled in if you want," Loki says, "or I can give you the tour."

"I'll take the tour." 

Tour!

The chapel is here. The dining room is here; there are snacks available all the time, and meals are served from six to nine, eleven to two, and five to seven. You can tell what time it is based on the bell ringing. (The bell rings four times while she says this; the sound does not in fact sound particularly like a bell.) The community calendar is here: it has things on it like "choir" and "breastfeeding support group" and "D&D game" and "MOVIE NIGHT!!!!!" You can vote on the movie over here; right now the Ender's Game movie is winning by a comfortable margin. Here are some of the rooms social things happen in. Rebecca's office is here (they stop here to figure out when she'll be free next). The library is here. 

The library has so many books.

The library has so many books. He makes mental notes of where everything is, thanks Loki and goes back to his room (his room!! he gets a room!!!) to unpack. 

He still has what's left of the supplies from Nova, half a can of whipped cream from the waffle bar, a slightly ridiculous amount of duct tape, a can of purple spray paint, some of his old clothes and a beat-up all-in-one Lord of the Rings paperback. It's not a lot to offer, but — he is objectively good at scavenging, he got them batteries and books and Loki was enthusiastic about him and Lev seemed happy, he'll be fine. 

(He still doesn't really believe that he'll be fine.) 

After a while, a knock comes at his door.

He answers it. "Hello?" 

"Hello, I'm Chris. Lev told me to stop by so you know who to talk to if someone is misgendering you."

He is about Sasha's height but otherwise looks pretty similar to a cis man; he looks compact but muscular, and either he's a very young old or he was seventeen before the bliss. He's not particularly someone you would want to cross.

This... seems like an inefficient use of Literally Half Of The Government. He does not say that. 

"Thank you." 

"I'm also technically your boss if you're going to do scavenging, although day-to-day you'll be managed by Loki and not me. But if you have complaints you can come talk to me, it's my job to handle things."

He nods again. He's doing a lot of that today. 

"You should also talk to me if you decide you want to be a pilot."

"Pilots... control the robots made out of love that they use to fight the aliens?" He really hopes he remembered that correctly. 

"Yes. Being a pilot has many advantages, such as the fact that you don't have to do any work other than piloting and are more likely to receive things you want from scavenger trips and you are wildly lauded as a hero, and one enormous disadvantage, which is that pilots seem to nigh-inevitably die or bliss or go permanently insane."

That sounds like a terrible tradeoff and he has no idea why anyone thinks he would make it. 

"Thank you for telling me about the option." 

"I will see you later."

He leaves.

He should really take this book and go down to the library and ask the librarian about copying out his margin notes. What he wants to do is curl up on the bed (bed!!!) and process everything that's happened in the last month. 

He takes the book and goes down to the library. 

The librarian gives him some paper and a desk in the corner of the library. 

She seems to be keeping a little bit of an eye on how much he works.

Lev takes the books Sasha brought to his office, discovers Sasha copied poetry into the margins, discovers Sasha has good taste in poetry, and repeats "fuck" for several minutes.

He writes quickly; he's had a lot of practice making his handwriting as small as it needs to be. Every few minutes he pauses to shake out his hand and then gets back to work. 

Eventually the bell will ring for dinner.

He's gotten through a significant portion of book by then; he thanks the librarian and goes. 

Having regular mealtimes is going to be strange. Having three meals a day is going to be even more so. He acquires food and — if he's going to stay here he should try to make friends — god he misses Nova — looks at the space where people are eating. 

He recognizes Loki and Chris and the librarian and the rest of the scavengers and some of the water purification people who were hearing LOTR get read to them.

Yes alright he knows Loki he'll sit near Loki. 

Loki is very polite and welcoming!

Lev comes in and sits three tables away from Sasha but within eyeshot of him. He brings papers and attempts to look busy.

Also sitting near Loki is a boy — maybe seventeen? not older — who smiles broadly at Sasha and introduces himself as Marlo. 

Sure, why not. Sasha smiles back. 

"Marlo's a pilot," Loki says.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

"Cool! I haven't heard a lot about it, what's the alien world like — if that's okay to ask —" 

"Different for everyone! For me there's a statistically bizarre amount of castles or things that are trying to look like castles but there's one guy who gets gorgeous glaciers even in the middle of a suburb and someone where the insides of buildings look like honeycomb." 

That is not a smile Marlo usually makes at cute people. It is a significantly happier smile than he usually makes at cute people.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

"Weird! When you say things that are trying to look like castles —" 

"Do you remember how Round Table pizza places were decorated? It's like that." 

"Weird." Also delightful! But mostly weird. 

He's just going to eavesdrop on this conversation.

It is his creepy, stalkerish life now.

"It really is — in general buildings tend to look like totally different buildings when you walk into them, and the people tend to be people you know, that's true for pretty much everyone. The castles thing is just me, though." 

Is he airbrushing away most of how the dream world works? Yes. Sasha almost certainly doesn't want to hear about how no matter how wide a space is the walls are always closing in on him. 

"So does it have anything to do with what your actual dreams are or no —" 

"At least some! We're not sure how much. — Loki says you're new to the area, where are you from?" 

"About ten days of walking south of here — I didn't know Eros existed, I just picked a direction and walked in it until I found someone who seemed like they might want to keep me, the first thing I heard about Eros is that it definitely wasn't a sex cult —" 

Marlo laughs. "That we are not! I can't imagine that was the best first impression, though." 

"Loki's team looked better fed than anyone else I'd seen in the ten days I was walking, it would have been hard to leave a bad one." 

"Fair enough. — it's good to have you." 

He means that. He's honestly a little surprised at how much he means that. 

"It's good to be here."  

Night falls and lanterns come out. He doesn't have to check for the Something.

Some people are singing, reciting poetry, or reading books out loud; other people are talking or playing with small children. (Lev appears to still be working.)

He still checks the window in his room three times, and then pauses and makes it nine (three times three, triple lucky) before he goes back out into a communal space and looks for a place he can share poetry with people. 

There's a poetry reciting circle over there!

Oh, good. He joins it, listens, and, when it's his turn — 

Immortality:

In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world. 
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
the cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords 
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge 
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission 
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.

As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene. 
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can't be changed
or broken, only interrupted. 
My attention was on the fly: 
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later. 

Oh no. 

...oh. 

Sasha sits down. 

Other people probably recite poetry but Lev doesn't hear it.

Sleeping is hard that night. (It's been hard since — since.) 

He works; it takes him several days to get everything from the book to the paper and after that he cooks. He misses the others from Nova. (He checks his window nine times every evening, never mind that he doesn't need to.) He sees Rebecca and gets anti-parasite treatment and assorted vitamins. He eats better than he's eaten in years. 

He keeps talking to Marlo; he doesn't get much chance to talk to Lev but he keeps an eye out for him. He adjusts, slowly, to sleeping alone. 

Lev doesn't talk to Sasha but he's... around. He works through dinner, but he sits at tables that are closer to Sasha than would be expected by chance; he often sits quietly and listens at poetry reciting circles and always passes when it's his turn.

Two weeks later, the fiction and poetry books the scavengers got are all from authors that Sasha likes.

...huh.

He reads in his spare time. He keeps a significantly closer eye on Lev. 

Lev does not give any discernible sign that he wants to talk to Sasha, but he does sit three tables away from Sasha a bit more often than one would expect by coincidence.

Okay. He's just going to let that be for a while. 

He spends more time with Marlo and doesn't mention it to anyone. What would be the point? 

And the next time they're alone together, Marlo tips his chin up and says, very gently, "Can I kiss you?" 

(He's smiling. Soft, still gentle.) 

"...yes," because he does like being kissed and he does like Marlo but there's something very wrong with the way Marlo is smiling, right now. 

Marlo is good at kissing; he's had plenty of practice. 

It's about ten seconds before Sasha pushes him away. 

"You don't want to be doing this." It isn't an accusation; it isn't a warning. 

"Yes, I do, I don't care about whatever you think would make me not want you —" 

"I'm not insecure, I am capable of reading body language. You weren't kissing me because you wanted to be." 

The smile crumples like an aluminum can. "I do want to kiss you, it's just —" 

He cuts himself off. 

He pauses, and then leans against Marlo. (...he's missed physical contact. He hadn't realized he missed it so much but he did.) 

"It's just what?" 

He pulls Sasha closer, half-unconscious of it. 

"The anima works better if you have sex with more people." 

"...how many people have you slept with who you didn't actually want to be sleeping with." 

"I don't know." 

Fuck. 

Sasha is so not qualified for this. 

"You're not going to do that anymore," he says, very firmly, and waits for Marlo to nod. "No sleeping with anyone unless you're doing it because you want to be sleeping with them, no kissing anyone unless you're doing it because you want to be kissing them." He waits, again, for Marlo to nod. "And you're going to hug me." 

Marlo doesn't pause before he hugs him. 

(The hug is tight and warm and solid and more than a little bit desperate.) 

Okay. That's — that's okay. 

(Sasha isn't sure when he started thinking of Marlo's well-being as his responsibility but he's pretty sure it was some time in the last two minutes.) 

He doesn't let go until the lunch bell rings, and then they walk into the dining hall together. 

Loki waves; Chris is talking to a handful of other pilots and anchors.

Alright. He is going to sit near Loki and he is going to have a normal meal and everything is going to be fine. 

Marlo's unusually quiet; every few minutes he glances at the group of anchors and then back at Sasha. 

Loki has never seen Ender's Game and she's really excited that they're going to wind up seeing it on movie night tonight!

Someone else, who has seen it, is complaining that it is a terrible movie and a complete waste of a movie night.

Sasha, who has read Ender's Game but not seen it, is happy to talk about the movie and not think about whatever Marlo is thinking about right now! 

After lunch Marlo thanks Sasha (he doesn't make it clear what Sasha is being thanked for) and then vanishes. 

Alright. Sasha gets to work and considers what he knows about what being an anchor involves (he doesn't know much, but the anchors that he's seen seem — more stressed than is usual) and curls up in bed that night and wishes he had someone there with him. 

When the next scavenger trip comes home, one of the scavengers brings him a sewing kit-- needles, scissors, buttons, a thimble, a tape measure, a seam ripper, and 24 colors of thread-- and a bolt of very soft purple cloth.

...yeah actually he's pretty sure that he cannot leave this alone. 

He doesn't want to use paper for this so he finds a piece of tree bark and writes Can we talk? — Sasha on it and slips it under Lev's door. 

The door opens up!

"— Hi," because he was not expecting it to be that fast, and he steps into Lev's office and closes the door. "Um. I am definitely not complaining but I know I didn't requisition any of the things you've been giving me and I'm pretty sure this isn't normal for new people, what's up?" 

"Uh."

Sasha has no idea how to respond to 'uh.'

"If there's anything —" 

"You gave me ideas for new writers to check out for whom the bookstores hadn't been totally picked over yet, and sewing kits are both light and useful. You can customize other people's clothes."

(He's lying.)

"That's true but that's not why you did that." 

"Yes, it is."

He opens his mouth. 

Then he pauses, and looks at Lev's body language and face. 

His face gets really tight.

"AndIwantyoutobehappy."

He steps forward and hugs him. 

Lev gives him a desperate clinging too-tight hug.

Yeah. Sasha's good at this. 

"I've got you," he murmurs, and adjusts around Lev as well as he can. 

And now Lev is very quietly crying into his shoulder.

Sasha keeps holding him, puts one hand very cautiously on the back of his head and keeps the other on his back. 

He has a lot of crying inside of him.

That's okay. 

"You don't have to do this," he says, still crying into Sasha's shoulder.

"I know I don't." But if Sasha doesn't hug him he's pretty sure nobody is going to, and that is — not an acceptable outcome. 

"I'm not trying to do some kind of-- fucked up hugs for sewing supplies exchange here." Sobbing.

"You really obviously need the hug." He rubs Lev's back. "...and I kind of need a hug too." 

That is a look of pathetic desperate gratitude!

Sasha holds him a little tighter. 

"Do you want to sit down?" 

"Yeah-- I mean, if you want to--"

Lev can figure out how to sit in the chair with Sasha into his lap while hugging him the entire time.

Yes. And then Sasha will be curled up in his lap with his hands on the back of Lev's head and neck, with more of him in contact with Lev than not. 

Lev whimpers.

Sasha leans forward, very, very slowly, giving Lev plenty of time to pull away if he wants to — 

— and then kisses him. 

Lev kisses back desperately and enthusiastically. 

Lev being enthusiastic about things is very good. 

Sasha keeps kissing him, tries to communicate you're okay, I've got you, I'm here with touch alone. 

He stops kissing Sasha, puts his forehead on Sasha's, says "I haven't-- since--", and then immediately starts crying again.

"I've got you," he murmurs, and "Since?" 

"My-- I don't know-- we were together for five years-- he blissed."

"I'm so sorry," he whispers, holds Lev tighter — he's not going to think about Nova, thinking about Nova can wait, Lev needs him now — "Do you want —" 

"I don't know what you're asking about."

"...neither do I, really. But if you wanted to talk about it I'm here." 

"I shouldn't be doing this."

"Why not?" 

"For one thing, I could have you exiled? There's a whole power dynamic thing. For another thing I don't know how old you are but you look really, really young--"

"I'm not that young, I'm fifteen. And it'd be pretty weird to do nice things for me, hide that you were doing them, insist that you were only doing them for practical reasons and it had nothing to do with me, tell me you were worried about having a power dynamic, and then exile me for turning down sex." 

"Fifteen. God. If it were before the Bliss us having sex would be illegal."

"Yeah. But it's not before the Bliss, it's now, and you want me and I want you." 

"You do?"

"Wouldn't have kissed you if I didn't." 

Ethical objections later, kissing now.

Yes. Kissing is much, much better than ethical objections. 

"You're so beautiful."

"Thank you." At some point he should stop putting off having feelings but the part of his brain that handles feelings keeps going not now, not now, and he's made a deliberate habit of listening to it, at least about its own purview. "You have a really good mouth — and a really good smile — and you're good to hug —" 

"Oh god," he says, and rests his head against Sasha's shoulder.

Sasha cradles him close and kisses his forehead. 

"I've never done anything with anybody except for Asher."

He thinks about it. 

"At Nova I had Damian and Ember and Moss — and I guess I kind of had Gwen and Jasper too — we all kind of had each other at Nova, depending on what you mean by doing anything." 

"I mean you're the second person I've ever kissed."

"You're the ninth." Tenth? No, ninth, Marlo does not count. 

This is too much conversation and not enough kissing. 

Yes. Yes, it is. 

Sasha is very warm and very cuddly and having affectionate physical contact is very very good. 

"Ugh, you have to leave tomorrow morning."

"I'll be back." A kiss on Lev's forehead, and another on his mouth. 

"You could stay. It's not like Loki was understaffed before."

"I have a job and I'm good at it and I want to keep being good at it." If I have a job I'm good at I'm safe.

"...can you stay with me tonight?"

"Yeah." He curls up in Lev's arms and puts his head on Lev's shoulder. "Yeah, I can." 

"I can get someone to bring us food, they do that all the time."

(Lev has been eating in the dining room for every meal since Sasha got here.)

"...I can't tell whether that means you only started eating in the dining hall when I got here or whether you're lying now." 

"The former."

He snuggles up into Lev. "Okay, then. Do you want to go to your room or would you rather stay in your office?" 

"My room has a bed. --Not that you have to do anything you don't want to, I just."

"It'll be more comfortable for two people to cuddle on a bed anyway. — I don't think I'm going to want to have sex tonight but I might wind up being wrong about that, we'll see." 

"I don't think I want to have sex with you tonight? Uh I mean if you wanted to we could but."

"Not having sex tonight fine by me, I just wanted to let you know that I still have — I don't know what the word I'm looking for is but I have those." 

"Trauma? Inhibitions? Boobs?"

"The boobs never stopped me before, but yes." 

"You're the first person I've ever wanted to sleep with other than Asher, we can take it slow."

"Mmm. Good." Taking it slow is good. Lev is very, very good. "Your room?" 

"Yeah."

Lev reaches out tentatively to hold his hand on the way there.

Sasha is happy to hold his hand! 

(He is maybe a little bit hyper conscious of who if anyone is looking at them, though.) 

A lot of people seem to be looking!

Lev has a double bed made of two twins pushed together. About half of the clothes in the closet are for someone visibly larger than him and in a style he does not wear, and there's a shotgun on the wall. 

...oh, honey. 

Sasha flops onto Lev's bed, does his best to ignore the contents of the closet, does his best not to think about how many people saw them and how quickly that news is going to spread. 

"Come cuddle me?" 

Lev is going to do that!

He is also going to start crying again.

Yeah, that's relatable. (It feels wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong not to go and check the window.)

Sasha cradles him again, holds him so Lev's head is on his chest. 

For the rest of the night, Lev is going to alternate crying on him, kissing him, and apologizing for crying on him and kissing him because he's fifteen and Lev could get him expelled from Eros and therefore both of these things seem pretty unethical.

Sasha alternates holding Lev while he cries, kissing him, reassuring him that no it really is okay, determinedly not thinking about how sad this room is, determinedly not thinking about what the general opinion of this relationship and Sasha as a person is going to be tomorrow, and suppressing the urge to run back to his room and triple-check the window. 

POSSIBLY it is also bad that he is making Sasha reassure him about doing all of this horrible stuff. That seems pretty mindfucky honestly. (After he expresses his opinion he starts crying too hard to make words.)

He stops with the verbal reassurances after that, mostly because Lev isn't saying anything, and instead holds Lev and kisses his forehead and rubs his back and doesn't say anything at all. 

Eventually he cries himself to sleep on Sasha's shoulder.

Having another warm body there in bed with him makes it so much easier to fall asleep. 

(He thought he'd gotten used to sleeping alone.) 

Lev has nightmares.

So does Sasha. 

He kisses Lev again when he needs to leave in the morning. 

He's so so grateful.

It's a shame Sasha has to leave, but — he has a job, it's a good job, he's good at it, he kisses Lev one last time and then goes. 

Chris pulls Marlo aside that morning. "Your anchor says you've stopped sleeping with him."

He has not been looking forward to this conversation. "I have." 

"What brought that on?"

He considers the wording before he says, "I... tried kissing Sasha, and he pushed me away and said 'You don't want to be doing this, or at least that's not why you're doing it,' and he was right, and when I told him so he said 'okay, you're going to stop having sex you're not having because you want to be having it,' and he was still right." 

"That does seem like a reasonable decision."

He settles on, "I'm glad you think so." 

"It seems to me that actually wanting to have sex may be an important ingredient in getting it to be Intimacy 5."

"That is... probably not incorrect." 

"Sasha is new, isn't he?"

"Yes. He is." He's fairly sure Chris doesn't need to ask that but he doesn't know what Chris is getting at by asking anyway. 

"Perhaps you should try spending more time with him."

He glows, quietly, just like he always does when Chris smiles. "I will." 

Chris considers him thoughtfully, in that I'm-seeing-straight-through-to-your-soul sort of way. 

Marlo doesn't look away. 

"Ask him about anchoring if you continue to get along, I suspect he'd be a solid candidate."

"I will." 

He doesn't say thank you, Chris. He doesn't know what he'd be thanking him for. 

"As always, it is my job to talk to you if you have any feelings or emotions you would like to talk about."

He nods. "Thank you, Chris." 

(He should figure out what his feelings are before he takes Chris up on that, probably.)

"You can go."

He goes. 

He finds — something to do with himself for the next few hours. 

Meanwhile--

"So, you and Lev, huh?" Loki asks.

"Me and Lev," he agrees. Talking about it is probably not going to be comfortable but not talking about it is really bad optics, so. 

"What is he like?"

He considers his answer. 

"He's... sweet. He worries a lot, he's very cuddly. — It's a pretty recent development, there isn't much to say." 

"He never talks to anybody." Loki paddles. "As far as anybody can tell he just works all day when he's not sleeping."

Sasha paddles with her. "That's more accurate than it isn't, he works a lot." 

"I think it's about time, honestly."

"Yeah." He remembers how desperately Lev had kissed him, remembers the closet half-full of what were presumably Asher's clothes. "I do too." 

"I guess I'm going to especially have to keep you alive. --Not that he'd do anything, you know, but you didn't see him after Asher died."

"I'd hope you were keeping me alive before!" He's smiling. "— more seriously, I might not have been here for it, but I... think I get it." The shotgun on the wall; you're the second person I've ever kissed. 

"Sorry, if you wanted to be on forklift duty, you should have started dating Marlo instead."

He debates talking about what happened with him and Marlo, and then decides to not do that. "Good thing I don't, I guess." 

Then they can talk about movies. 

Loki is outraged to have discovered that the Ender's Game movie was in fact bad.

Sasha has a whole bunch of opinions about the adaptation decisions it made and where exactly it went wrong! That being said the shots of Battle School from the outside were really really cool. 

(He keeps remembering what happened last time he left home to go on a scavenging mission. He does his best to distract himself but it doesn't quite work.) 

Loki gives no visible sign that she's noticed, but she's talking more than she did on the way in, and at dinner that night (various kinds of fish, roasted, the small ones whole and with the scales still on) one of the other scavengers suddenly acquires a fervent desire to hear him recite poetry.

That's really, really sweet of them. 

He recites poetry for them — not Inland, but Gather and Blackberry Picking and Monet Refuses The Operation and My First Peacock and the verses of The Old Astronomer that he knows by heart, they're a little out of order but that was never the point — and the image of coming back to Nova to find — what he found — is behind his eyes when he blinks and he is not thinking about that, he isn't, he has a task in front of him and he can concentrate on it and that will be okay, it has to be. 

His tentmate checks the zipper of the tent thoroughly, then says, "do you want to check?"

Yes. Yes, he wants to check, and then check another two times to make it three, and making it nine is a little bit excessive but he makes it nine anyway.

It — isn't really him he's scared for, though, he's not remembering nights spent with the Something waiting outside, he's remembering coming home to find —

It's summer and Orion isn't in the sky but he prays before he falls asleep anyway. 

That night, Lev goes to the sleeper room, walks through the narrow hallway that separates the two rows of sleepers, and holds Asher's hand. (Asher gets a bed, not a spot on the floor; unlike many sleepers, he gets visited regularly.)

"I'm sorry I didn't talk to you last night," he says. (Asher grins in his sleep and makes a soft happy noise like he just started petting a cat.) "But I think you'd approve of the reason. I met someone. His name's Sasha and he's so good. He knows lots of poetry and he's really smart and he-- thinks about things, like you used to. And he's really pretty and soft.

"He kissed me. I don't think he's going to want to kiss me again, I kind of cried on his shoulder for five hours afterward and I don't think that's very attractive. I know, you'd tell me to be more confident and that I'm really hot and anyone would want to date me. But it is hard to believe. I guess we'll see.

"It was nice to get to kiss somebody at all. Part of me feels like I should feel like I'm betraying you? I mean, we are monogamous, and it's not like you're dead, and it's not like you can tell me not to. But I think you wouldn't want me to not kiss anyone until you woke up. I think you'd want me to be happy. Maybe that's wishful thinking. 

"I miss you. I miss you so much."

He kisses Asher's lips. They're still warm, and it almost feels like he's kissing back.

The rest of the scavenger crew continue to not say anything about Lev or about Sasha's anxiety, but they do continue to try to distract him as best they can. Sasha learns the plots of several books he has yet to have read and a good deal of gossip. (Chris insists he's gay but is definitely married to a woman and they are definitely having sex. Pilots have extremely interesting and complicated sex lives, except for the three Catholics, who are all monogamous with their anchors. The eight-year-old bishop who is next in line for the papacy keeps announcing his plans for when he becomes pope, which he seems to believe will happen sometime in the next two or three years.) 

Sasha thinks that Chris's thing is not at all weird, and that having made out with Gwen and Nat and Ember a time or three or twenty-seven certainly doesn't make him any less gay. He does not contribute to the speculation as to why Marlo abruptly stopped having casual sex or even kissing anyone including his anchor; he's interested in the eight year old bishop's plans for once he becomes pope and the plots of several books he hasn't gotten around to reading. He doesn't explain what he's so anxious about. (He keeps himself busy, tries to keep his anxiety in check, mostly fails. He checks the tent nine times, triple lucky, every night.) 

He collects batteries from toy stores and copies information from books into the margins of other books and clears out stores and pulls his own fucking weight, anxiety or no. 

The eight-year-old bishop apparently wants to declare eating wild greens to be a sin so he doesn't have to do it anymore. The Catholics feel he will be guided by the Holy Spirit not to do this. The non-Catholics think that if the eight-year-old becomes pope it will be HILARIOUS but he will probably be guided by Lev to the same conclusion. 

No one asks what Sasha's anxious about. If he wants to tell them, he'll tell them. 

Loki makes a point of congratulating Sasha on his finds. 

They don't see any other crews or any drones. 

That's good. That's much much better than the alternatives. He's with the non-Catholics on this one, as funny as it would be for the eight year old to be Pope he's pretty sure he would be guided away from declaring anything too out of line with what popes are supposed to declare. 

It's not safe enough for him to have a breakdown out here, it's not, he can wait, it can wait. 

When they go back to Eros he makes himself sit still. 

Lev is kind of bouncing when he gets back. 

And Sasha hugs him very very tight and whispers "Your room? Please?" 

"Of course."

Once they're in Lev's room he kisses Lev and then buries his face in Lev's shoulder and finally, finally lets himself cry. 

"Shh," Lev says, "shh, it's okay. --Do you want to talk about it?"

"— Last time I left home on a scavenging mission I came back and everyone I knew was dead." 

Hugs. "I'm sorry."

Hugs. Hugs are good. "And I know me being there wouldn't have changed anything — they didn't forget to lock the windows or anything, the windows were broken, I don't know what happened but everyone was where they usually slept they just were —" and he sobs and clings to Lev. 

Lev rubs circles on his back. "I've got you and I'm going to keep you safe. I promise."

Lev's sweet. Lev's so so sweet. "It's not even me I was worried about, it was you, every time I blinked I'd wonder if everyone would still be here when I got back or if something would break and you'd all be gone and you —" and he stops, for real this time, cuts himself off and just holds Lev. 

"I'm not going to die. I'm going to live, fuck, I'm going to live to be older than the oldest person you remember maybe."

"The oldest person I remember is — I don't actually know if the rabbi was older than my second-grade teacher or not, but it'll be a while before you're older than either of them." He's not clinging quite so tight but he is still very much clinging. 

"I never do anything dangerous, I'm gonna live to be a hundred and three and still be working."

"You'd better," Sasha says, and then kisses him again. It's still wanting but it's less desperate, this time. 

"You don't have to scavenge. I mean, you can if you want to, and you have to do something, but you can cook or churn butter or farm or be my secretary-- god knows I need one--"

"...I don't know. I'm good at it and that's important but I was kind of low key panicking the whole week and I think I should maybe wait a few days before I decide." 

"Okay." Kiss. "For what it's worth, I try to avoid giving everyone jobs that make them panic, not just people I," brief pause, "want to kiss."

Kiss. "That's good." Kiss. "I'd be kind of concerned if you didn't." 

He's going to stroke Sasha's hair and kiss his forehead and hold him.

He nestles into Lev and closes his eyes and lets himself be held. 

It's good. It's really good. Lev is very good. 

"Someday we're going to spend time together and neither of us is going to cry. I believe in us."

"Yeah." He's smiling, just a little bit. "I believe in us too." Lev is very good for cuddling. 

He pets Sasha's hair. "I want to know everything about you."

"...I'd tell you but I don't know where to start, everything is kind of a lot of things." 

He nibbles on Sasha's ear. "Tell me something, then, and if you keep doing that eventually you'll get around to everything."

"Mmm. That's nice, you can keep doing that. — all that's coming to mind as a thing to talk about is — can I get you to ask questions and then I answer them, I don't really like the places my brain is going or at least I don't want to go there right now." 

"Sure." He keeps nibbling on Sasha's ears. "What books did you carry with you?"

Lev's teeth on his ears feels really, really good. This is good. "Paperback all-in-one copy of Lord of the Rings, it was the biggest book we had so it was the one I used as a notebook — Gwen's family had actual notebooks but we set those aside for record-keeping and I used the margins of other books for my thing, every time I filled up a notebook I would transfer my favorite things out of it to the new one so I would always have my favorite poems with me — I didn't really bring books to Nova? We were based out of Gwen's house and her parents had more books than mine did before the Bliss and I was eight, all my favorites were things like Harry Potter that she had copies of too." 

"Tell me something nice that happened. When you were a kid."

...he has to think about it. 

"Most of my good memories aren't, like, a specific thing that happened, they're just really strong sense memories — I have one of learning how to ride a bike, there was a park near our house that had hills and my uncle took me out there in the evenings and let me go down the hill until I figured out how to keep going on my own —" 

"That's nice," he says, twirling Sasha's hair around his finger. "I'm happy to hear about the sense memory ones too, I just." He kisses Sasha's temple.

"Playing with my hair is good. It's not that I think you don't want to hear them, they're just — harder to summarize, you know? I remember really liking Christmas lights." 

Kiss. "It's too bad we can't have them. Maybe indoors, in the summer."

"It's not really important to me, but you're sweet." Kiss. 

"I miss them too. Probably I miss more things than you, I remember it better." He rests his head on Sasha's shoulder. "Math contests and summer camp and video games and candy and movies and fanfiction--"

"Ice cream and cartoons and — I don't actually miss girl scout camp it was terrible, but even so —" 

He looks confused for a second then says, "oh, right."

"...I don't even look like a guy! I have boobs! You can see my boobs!" 

"I don't like girls."

"That's cute. You're so cute." Have they been kissing enough, Sasha thinks they have not. 

They should kiss more, and then Lev should curl up with his head on Sasha's shoulder and say, "some summer afternoons I used to get a huge thing of candy and watch like three movies in the movie theater, it was so wasteful."

"It was — oh, man, remember Halloween? I loved Halloween." 

"Yeah. My parents used to try to give me one piece of candy a day and I'd sneak into the closet and eat all of it."

"My parents let me keep thirty pieces of what I'd gotten but they took the rest the night after Halloween so I'd hide almost all of it in my desk drawers overnight — my best friend and I used to plan our costumes months in advance, it was great." 

"Man, you probably don't even know what math contests are. Or fanfiction."

"I am guessing a math contest is a contest where you do math, but no, I don't know what fanfiction is." 

"It was so great. People used to write stories about Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or whatever and post them online."

"That does sound great." 

"A ton of the stories were about how various characters are gay and having sex with each other."

"That does sound good — the erotica section at the bookstore was pretty thoroughly picked over by the time any of us were old enough for it to be interesting, all we had was what Gwen's parents had, which was pretty awkward for Gwen but she dealt with it —" 

"It's nicer when it's characters you know, too, at least for me. --I only really started having kinks after the Bliss, which is inconvenient, when I had an infinite supply of properly tagged porn all I wanted to read about was guys kissing, and now that there's a shortage of anything I like such a specific thing."

"I wound up imprinting on the chapter from a whole bunch of parenting books about the dangers of teenage parties, and also this one newspaper article, and also books about vampires. I'm not sure I want to know what I would have been into if I'd had infinite categorized porn." 

"People liked such specific things! And sometimes they failed to tag them!"

"Gosh." 

"There'd probably be lots of fic for. My thing."

"There'd probably be lots of everything. — what is your thing?" 

"--I haven't ever told anybody except Asher."

"...obviously you don't have to tell me, but I can't figure out a way for you to get it if I don't know what it is." 

"I don't like kids. I like-- adults who act in childlike ways?" He plays with Sasha's hair. "I like taking care of people and having them be dependent on me. I think about, I don't know, baking cookies with a guy and then watching him color and then snuggling while we watch cartoons. It's weird." 

"It's adorable." 

"Thank you." Kiss. "I missed you while you were gone."

"Mmm. Yeah." He turns his head to meet Lev's mouth. "I missed you too — missed here —" 

Kiss. "Probably better for Eros if you scavenge, I got so much work done."

— the smile fades. Sasha curls into Lev, puts his head on Lev's shoulder, wraps his arms around Lev, thinks about Lev's kinks and thinks about his own and does not think about that last statement. 

"I'm sorry?"

"...if you mean it it's fine but please don't say things like that if you're joking?"