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He's learned how to walk without falling, in theory, but usually this door has a stair after it and suddenly it doesn't, and in short Sasha lands on the floor of somewhere that is definitely not his apartment.
He looks up, bleary.
Beauty is truth; truth, beauty.
if-snow-be-white
He tilts his head again. (His eyes haven't cleared.)
"Why would I want to think about when I was an Ugly?"
reactance
"--Actually, you're right, this is a dumb topic of conversation. Do you want to see some more poetry Lily likes?"
reactance
Lev returns in a few moments with:
GATHER BY ROSE MCLARNEY
Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples.
if-snow-be-white
That's okay!
Lev is really good at this. Sasha can keep kissing him for a long time.
reactance
Even if Lev is super-distracted there are certain physical reactions that happen when he's kissing an insanely pretty version of his husband for a long time!
if-snow-be-white
Mm. Lev said he didn't want to so Sasha isn't going to but that would be so nice. He never gets to touch people when he's moping.
if-snow-be-white
...after a while longer he stops kissing Lev and pulls away, keeps his eyes down.
"Sorry." His voice is quiet and unemotive, compared to how he's been today.
if-snow-be-white
"...I can think clearly about two-thirds of the time. The other one-third, I'm — like that. I can't really predict it, if I have a seizure I usually switch then but usually it's kind of random.
That version of me is much, much happier, he can talk to people and doesn't mind not being able to hoverboard and enjoys meaningless empty sex, please don't get rid of him."
reactance
"I'm not going to make changes to your brain without your consent and even if I could I can't do brain surgery and I definitely can't do it in a hotel room. --Do you remember if you were like this more when you were ugly?"
if-snow-be-white
"I don't remember. —sixteen to twenty-five, thirty year olds are just like that. I'm the version that isn't normal."
if-snow-be-white
"...your world is different, though, in my world Rusty civilization was wiped out about where you are and it really doesn't sound like you're headed for that kind of disaster. And we don't have — what did you call it? The chemical that fucks with fertility."
reactance
"We might have gotten wiped out if not for bitoxiphosphene lowering world populations so much. But that's not the point, the point is-- in my world when my husband Asher was 16 he had a kid and when he was 18 he joined the military and spent four years handling classified material and learning to forage all his own food and when he was 22 he went to college to learn economics. When I was 16 I was teaching myself calculus and when I was 17 I had published three books and when I was 23 I was one of the most powerful people in the government. And-- Asher and I are unusual but we're not that unusual? We're not mutant child prodigies? And this isn't a 'Cascadia has resource constraints' thing, I don't think the other you could concentrate long enough to be safe around classified material or to solve a calculus problem or to write a book, he'd get bored halfway through and look for someone to suck off."
if-snow-be-white
"He's not actually that sex obsessed, but we can't go to parties because we will inevitably get a migraine and possibly also a seizure and we can't play sports at all because of the balance thing and there's no other way to get contact, and he doesn't mind that the person he's fucking won't remember his name tomorrow and I do — I recognize that this is avoiding the actual topic, I promise I'm thinking about it."
