"I'm gonna fuck you with a werewolf dick! --Someday. We literally have all eternity."

"You're adorable." 

"--I don't think group is going to be very useful."

"Neither do I, although I guess it's as good a place as any to share the other half of my tragic backstory. — I'm really not thrilled about having been right about the one about accepting your body but at least I already vetoed it." 

"Other half?"

"The reason I was doing survival sex work was that I was running from an abusive relationship. This is also the reason I don't do politics and why I know so much about particularly obnoxious forms of queer activism and why Faye's taste in poetry makes me want to scream." 

Lev hugs him. 

"I love you and I want to keep you safe."

"I love you too." 

"I'd say 'at least he's not going to come to the Good Place' but..."

"Somehow I doubt that someone whose contributions to society amounted to talking a big game about a glorious revolution he never worked towards and coming up with increasingly abstruse theories of why societal privilege and power dynamics mean that it's a moral imperative for me to have sex with him, and who claims that both charity and voting are buying into the capitalist status quo, is going to wind up saving enough babies from malaria that the math works out." 

"Fifty years is a long time. And-- we don't know exactly how the calculation works but if they don't like poly and they don't like trans people and they don't understand that they're gay, we don't know what other ways they are screwy-- sorry. I realize this is a super-depressing topic of conversation."

"It really is," Sasha says, and hugs him. 

Lev's hand stills on Sasha's back. 

We don't know what other ways they are screwy.

Asher was a dictator. Sasha had unprotected sex even though he was HIV-positive. Lev is pretty close to amoral, except that helping his sister take over the world presents interesting intellectual problems, and 'helping someone take over the world' is the sort of thing you get dinged for anyway; he fucked up every relationship he ever had except for his relationship with his sister because the only thing he cares about is his work. Faye-- Faye is an anomaly, but he just met her, there's probably something--

It's weird to cockblock Lev and Sasha if you want them to be happy. It's weird to pixelate Sasha's chest. It's weird to pair Lev with Asher and then not let them talk about work when probably Lev would get along with him fine if they could talk about work. It's weird to not let Lev talk about work. It's weird to not let Lev have any bookshelves. It's weird to send Lev to therapy. It's weird to have a Baby Cafe and a Small Fuzzy Animal Depot separately, instead of in the same building, and it's weird not to warn Lev about Sasha's opinion about babies. It's weird to send Lev to therapy.

If you want them to be happy.

If.

It's exactly what you'd want to do if you wanted them to be miserable. 

He has a message from a previous self, like this isn't the first time, and he couldn't send himself 'you're in Hell' because he might tell someone and that would restart the loop-- but he could send "you love Sasha" because being with Sasha is the one thing that makes being in Hell okay--

"Do you trust me?" he hears himself saying.

"...I trusted you five minutes ago but in my experience people who want to know out of the blue whether you trust them are usually about to prove that you shouldn't." 

"--Honestly, I can't argue with that instinct."

If it's Hell, they're probably watching him-- if it's Hell they might be able to read his mind-- but if they can read his mind they know he figured it out and the only reason they aren't resetting him is because the process of figuring it out would be a better torture-- nope, that's not right, Lev knows himself, "an interesting problem" is not how you torture him. So they can't read his mind.

They're not omniscient. If they were omniscient, he wouldn't have figured it out, they would have carefully arranged something where he was maximally tortured but never tortured so much that it makes him suspicious. So they're very very powerful but they're not perfect-- 

The note might not be from his past self if they know his time travel password, especially if he thinks there might be multiple loops. Sasha is so very very his typ. But they'd make a guy who was so very very his type if they wanted to torture him. They'd-- make someone he couldn't help but hurt, they'd give the guy problems Lev couldn't fix and couldn't help but make worse and set something up so that he would be even more miserable if Lev left so Lev had to stay, hurting him--

"What would you say if I said 'actually, my past self's note was terrible advice, Heaven has some good opinions, I'm going to go monogamously fuck my soulmate, never talk to me again'?"

"I would say 'who's blackmailing you.'" 

Not a great sign. 

"If I were serious, though, if I thought they were right..."

"...then I would be really confused what had happened, because given all of the everything that's a really weird conclusion for you to suddenly come to, and if this is the thing where you're phrasing a real scenario like a hypothetical can we drop the hypothetical so I can ask what the hell happened." 

Goddammit.

Okay, think. 

If Sasha is a demon, then they should break up, because Sasha is a means of tormenting him.

If Sasha is not a demon, then Lev somehow got the note to Janet, which means that there's a place that the people in Hell aren't watching, which means he will be able to explain it to Sasha at some point-- but if they break up will Sasha trust him-- arranging a kidnapping would be suspicious-- he could arrange some sort of plotline where he tries the Asher thing and is miserable and eventually decides to get back with Sasha, that seems like the sort of thing that would get him a lot of Misery Points, possibly save them both from some other more unpleasant suffering--

A demon would object to him breaking up with them. A person that Lev loved in the past wouldn't-- he would be sad and heartbroken but he wouldn't want to date someone who doesn't want to date him--

....it seems really unlikely, given everything that came up in this conversation, but given the timing it's sort of impossible not to wonder.... 

....but no, he doesn't actually think he wants to know if Lev has decided that actually the Good Place is right and Sasha is a girl and they can't date because Lev is gay. If Lev decides that then Lev will break up with him, so Sasha won't have to date someone who's misgendering him either way, and then Sasha can just pretend that he didn't think about that implication and that'll be way less awkward for everyone, and if Lev doesn't decide that then they can have the conversation about this whole thing at some other time, when Sasha hasn't already admitted to three uncomfortable truths. 

It's a little suspicious but he'll regret it so much if he doesn't and it turns out Sasha is a demon or Sasha doesn't want to get back together with Lev--

Lev grabs the shirt and kisses him, thinks as loud as he can I'm sorry and I love you, and says, "I think I want to break up with you."

Fuck. 

"— okay," he says, and then, "thank you for telling me immediately instead of trying to hide it — is there anything you can tell me about what made you decide that, or —" 

Not a demon!

Fuck, hopefully no one noticed that-- think about the fact that you're going to have to be away from this person whom you love and who loves you for two weeks in Hell--

"I think it would be better not to talk about it too much," he says, and he doesn't have to fake how miserable he is, "sorry-- I'm really sorry--"

"It's okay." It's not really okay. "I'm gonna go back to my and Faye's house, then, have a good night." 

He gets up and puts his shoes on and goes.