"For a number of reasons I'm glad that is not the world we live in." 

"Yes. I like getting to have a beautiful boy who's mine."

He whimpers and lets his head fall on Lev's shoulder. 

"But, like, mine in a way where you can have sex with other people if you want to," Lev clarifies.

"I can't think of anyone I want to have sex with but you. 

…okay, if Daveed Diggs or Leslie Odom Jr asked, but they haven't." 

"Me either but it's like the thing with having a door that locks. Even if I'm never going to want to lock it, it's important to me that I have the option."

He nods. 

"Love you. Love being yours." 

"We can get married and then everyone will know you're mine!"

"We can," and he nuzzles Lev's shoulder. "I love you — want everyone to be able to see I'm yours —" 

Lev kisses one of the marks he made. "I love you too." He pauses. "What do you think about having kids someday?"

Lev sounds so hopeful. 

"It sounds like a nightmare. By which I mean I have literally had nightmares about it." 

"We'd get a surrogate, I mean, obviously, I wouldn't--"

"I know you wouldn't, I don't mean that, it's — I am intellectually aware that if I had a kid I'd love them but that is not nearly as sure as I would need to be to be okay with that kind of responsibility for another person." 

"That's okay." Lev rests his head against Sasha's shoulder. "I'd like to someday but... I think I'd rather have you than a kid?"

I'd like to someday.

I think I'd rather have you than a kid. 

I think I'd rather have you than a kid. 

He resists the urge to say "Maybe I'll change my mind someday." 

"You okay?"

"It's obviously important to you and I don't want to take that away from you, but also I know what kind of parent I'd be and that's not a person I want to become or a life I want to live, and also I generally have a whole bunch of issues around this that it'll take me some time to articulate." 

"--I love you and I intend to stay with you for the rest of my life regardless of what you decide about kids, and I don't want you to have kids if you think it would make you live a life you don't want to live, and if someday you decide you want to be a parent I would be so so happy to have a bunch of little Lev and Sasha babies, and if you never do I will be a weird uncle to Claire's kids, I think she wants like six."

"I love you. I'm so glad I'm marrying you." 

"It's... I like kids, I wouldn't want to have kids if I didn't like them but... my foster family when I was a teenager was a bunch of fundie anti-Semitic assholes, and I always hoped I could have a bunch of Jewish kids. Because fuck them."

"From the time I was nine until the time I was nineteen, whenever my family would get together it would be my job to look after all the kids who were older than two but younger than me, and people kept handing me their babies and expecting me to know how to hold them, and when I didn't want to babysit or when I didn't want to take my aunt's baby or whatever I'd be told that I needed to figure it out, I'd be a parent someday — I got grounded once for telling my aunt that when I was a parent I'd foist my kids off on random nieces who didn't want them since apparently that was an option — and it's not that I dislike kids but I'm always kind of uncomfortable around them and I definitely don't want to have any.

Maybe I'll change my mind like everyone said I would, I don't know, but I don't want to count on it." 

"...I can piss off my former foster family by having a bunch of gloriously childfree gay sex with my beautiful trans boyfriend?"

Sasha kisses him. "You're so good." 

"I don't think we should have kids unless you really really want them, and I'm okay if you decide that you never will."

"That's probably the best way to do it," he agrees, and he's glowing.