A huge smile breaks out on Lev's face as soon as he sees him. "Hello, Alexander."

He usually doesn't say this so quickly but it's a little silly to be on a full-name basis with someone he might get married to. "You can call me Sasha. If you want." 

"Sorry. Sasha. --I guess we kind of got distracted and didn't finish the tour? Sorry."

"It's not a problem, I'm sure you have better things to do than wait for me, I'm just — not used to being alone. I can find something to do with myself if it's bothering you." 

"How could you possibly be bothering me?"

"...I could be keeping you from getting work done?" he tries, because he isn't actually positive why he's so sure that approaching Lev of his own initiative is bothering him. 

"And then what, I'd get fired from my own company?"

Oh no he's cute. "They told me you work ninety-hour weeks, I was assuming you didn't do that for no reason. So it's okay if I stay?" 

"Please do! --I work ninety hour weeks because I have no friends and also no life." Which is why I am paying you to be my friend, he doesn't say.

...right, this is the guy who is paying a ridiculous amount for Sasha to live with him and didn't (openly) ask for anything except a smart kind person who likes books and gives good hugs. He sits down crosslegged on the floor.  

He still doesn't own books but he has a phone, he can read on that if Lev is doing things. 

He is doing things! Specifically, he is having a very quiet and very subtle panic attack because he said that he had no friends and no life and then Sasha didn't say anything at all. If he clicks on things on his computer a lot it will look like he's working. 

Eventually he pulls himself together enough to ask, "do you want to be sitting on... not the floor?"

"The floor's fine — sorry, am I making it weird, I can —" he cuts himself off before he can apologize again. 

"Sorry, I just forgot to buy more chairs for the office, I can fix that. We can go to the library if you want? Or the movie theater? Or the living room but Shelly's usually working on her novel in the living room and when I'm out there she feels like she has to pretend to be working and it's really uncomfortable."

He can't think of how to respond to the bit about Shelly, so he doesn't. "The library sounds good?"

It comes out more tentative than he was hoping. 

"Cool!" He picks up his laptop and heads to the library.

The library does not resemble a library that a single person owns. It resembles the bastard offspring of the municipal library of a moderately-sized city and a university library's psychology section.

There are giant armchairs everywhere to curl up and read.  

The spines of the nonfiction books are marked with Dewey decimal numbers. The fiction shelves are labeled by genre by a person who thinks it is important to distinguish "cyberpunk" and "New Wave" but that all fiction set in the present day can be safely labeled "earthfic", and that "pretentious literature" and "extruded fantasy product" are both genre names.

That is a delightful way to organize a library and Sasha's going to find enough historical fantasy books to last him for the next forever. 

Lev is watching Sasha. He has enough self-control not to say "you're beautiful when you're happy". Unfortunately that thought is taking up enough of his brain space that he doesn't know what else to say.

That's totally fine! He doesn't have to say anything! He has a library and it has books in it and Sasha can read those books! He has been maybe a little bit starved for time, recently. 

When he's collected enough books to last him a week (normally that would only be one but he's pretty sure he's going to have lots more free time now so it's nine) he  puts them down on a chair and hugs Lev. 

Sasha is happy and Lev is being hugged and this is the best day ever.

"Tell me about what you're reading when you're done?" Lev says. "Uh. I mean. If you want to. Sorry."

He has books and free time to read them in and a place to stay and enough to eat and someone who obviously wants him around and this is the best day ever. "Of course!"

"I keep buying books even though I don't have enough time to read all the ones I have. It's a problem."

"Not for me it isn't." He hugs Lev tighter.

"You should read them and tell me which ones I should read!"

What if. Lev pets his hair while they hug. It's a crazy idea but it just might work.

Sasha melts against his shoulder and makes a soft pleased sound into Lev's neck. 

Cuddles are extremely great and he needs to be touched so so badly.

However, he probably should have anticipated that having a really hot person touch him of their own free will and make noises into his neck (!!!) would result in him getting really really horny. This was not really a problem he had anticipated having when he put in the application. Honestly he hadn't been thinking about much of anything when he put in the application except how nice it would be to hold someone's hand and also to know for absolute certain that if he died on Friday night someone would notice before Monday morning. 

Sasha seems willing to ignore it so maybe. they can just. keep ignoring it. forever.