"I would definitely have heard of that." That's not the right response but he can't think of anything else to say. 

"I was in one of the cities that got bombed. I was a year old. I don't like talking about that but you should-- know. That I might not live to be very old."

"...how old is not very old, people in my world usually live to around two hundred —" 

"People in Cascadia usually make it to eighty. And-- it's hard to know, I could live to be 95, but I could get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow and have a year or two to live."

"Okay." He holds Lev a little closer. "Okay." 

"That's-- maybe a reason not to come to Cascadia, if you're giving up more than a century of life or having to watch everyone you know die."

"They've stopped giving me sleeping pills because I was requesting so many a day they thought I must be stockpiling them for a suicide attempt, and they weren't nearly as wrong as I would have liked. If I still want to be alive in eighty years that's better than I would have done, and if I don't then there's no problem, is there." 

Cling.

"If you decide you want to kill yourself and-- really mean it, not as a passing thing, I can arrange that."

He nods again and lets himself be clung to. 

"But even if you come to Cascadia you might want to arrange to become attached to people with... a longer life expectancy."

(He is clearly unhappy about this prospect.)

"...having one friend is new enough that I shouldn't bank on having two, I guess, but if there are as many ways to meet people as you said —" 

Hug. 

"You'll get to have so many friends, I promise."

"You're so cute." Sasha buries his head in Lev's shoulder. 

"Do you want to have sex?"

"Didn't you only want —?" 

"The other you seems really sad about not having sex with me and I don't want the first time we have sex to be with the other you? And-- I think I could, but I'd be running it a lot off being in love with Lily-- it's up to you whether that's something you're comfortable with."

"It really isn't about sex — it's the only way he knows how to get contact with people, remember? Turning down sex with him is basically turning down interacting with him at all. And we're both kind of desperately lonely. I like you a lot and would like to have sex with you but if you're only doing it because I'm lonely and it's only enjoyable because I look like your husband that just sounds depressing." 

"It's not that you look like him-- you actually don't look that much like him, because of the surgery-- actually, you should meet him, I think that might make you understand."

"...yeah. It's not like I haven't made my decision already." Hs shifts in Lev's arms. "Meeting Lily sounds like it would involve getting up and letting go, though." 

Kisses. 

"We should go get the blueprints."

"Yeah. We should." 

He doesn't want to get up but if he leans on the bed and then on the wall and then on the doorframe he can totally do it. 

"You could stay here and I could go outside and shout for him, if you wanted."

"You're very sweet, but you do kind of need me for blueprints." He can just keep leaning on the wall. 

"I'm sorry Asher's camping, otherwise he'd just carry you everywhere."

"He sounds great.

Bar, can I get blueprints for a hole in the wall — one of the early models, please — and a hoverboard and crash bracelets and a hovercar and —" 

Sasha has a list of modern inventions a dozen items long.