"Well, he can hang around my lab whenever he wants to, I bet that's way more educational than kindergarten anyway."

"There's probably some...kid things he needs to learn. And like half the point of kindergarten is making friends with other kids, right?"

"....I guess for kids who speak English it probably actually does that," he says, very dubiously. 

"Well, I went to kindergarten for a week and they kept trying to teach me to read even though I already knew how. So my parents pulled me out and I had a nanny and I hung around my dad's workshop a lot and read a lot of books and played with the nanny's kids and their friends, and I ended up going to MIT at fourteen. So I think that worked out okay."

"...yeah, sounds good to me."

"Is he going to freak out that I'm going to torture him, though?"

"–yeah, it's...possible. He didn't like seeing Clint. Like...at all."

"He shouldn't object to Lev, so worst-case scenario we split off Stark Tower into two apartments."

He pulls his hood down.

"...you'd chop your apartment in half for this?"

"I have an entire floor. I, objectively, have way too much apartment."

"...okay, yeah, you're not wrong– I thought I'd seen most of it. I totally haven't seen most of it, have I."

"I'm going to have to cap the number of traumatized kids you adopt and move into my house at, like, twelve."

"I'm pretty sure I haven't seen all of it and I've had months." 

"...I'm gonna have to start looking for some sad kids."

"Fine. This can be Asher Stark's Home For Sad And Traumatized Children, Some Of Whom Are Dating My Boyfriend."

"You know you love it."

Asher gets a kiss on the cheek.

Does he now.

Z gets scooped.

Aaah he's still not used to that!

He only flails a moderate amount.

His boyfriends are so cute.

Asher and Z are very, very cute. 

He winds up staying the night (his parents have gotten used to him leaving at strange hours and not always being back by morning; he knows they worry and wishes he could say something to make them less worried but honestly things have been pretty worrying) and sleeping cuddled up to Asher, and in the morning Lev is here. 

"Hi!" He blinks. "You're here and you didn't sleep with me."

"I stayed with Asher." He cuddles up to Lev. "We talked, it was agreed that the thing he has is not 'sick' but 'depressed,' we decided to actually date, we kissed but agreed that having sex doesn't make sense for another six months or so, I told him to talk to Z and he did." 

"I'm happy for you."

...he kisses Lev on the cheek. "I'm still dating you." 

"Oh! That's good."