Being very tightly hugged is good. "I don't know." 

"I mean, I'm not a medical professional or anything, probably the doctors who have three hundred years' more medical tech than my society does are right. But it definitely sounds like a TBI."

"You guessed a lot of things, immediately, without having enough other information to get them from. I think you're probably right. I dont know why the doctor wouldn't have recognized it but a lot of people have concerns right after the operation that clear up on their own within a month and never come back, I think maybe she thought that was what was up with me."  

"To be fair, like, 'nausea' is a symptom of a lot of different things, but together it's kind of alarming." Kiss. "You should go to the doctor and ask them about it, I bet the future has really good TBI treatments."

Kissing. Sasha's gentler about it, now, slower and softer and less wanting. 

"I can. 

Can I stay the night with you?" 

"Sure." Lev kisses him slowly. "Time doesn't pass in your world while you're here, so we could stay here as long as we want. But you do age, and I get doors often enough that that's something to worry about."

He nods and curls up against Lev's side. Without sleeping pills it takes him longer than usual to fall asleep, but it still doesn't take long. 

He's so pretty.

Lev contemplates how pretty Sasha is for a while, then falls asleep next to him.

When Sasha wakes up, he's — bubbly. Happy. 

And in bed with an Ugly. 

He looks way older than most Uglies, Sasha's not really sure why he slept with a forever-ugly but he really shouldn't be rude about it. And Lev's kinda ugly-cute, if you squint and ignore the fact that you can see every single wide-open pore on his face and also he looks kind of sick the way all Uglies do. Like those puppies with scrunched up faces. 

Sasha leans forward and kisses Lev's face. 

He opens his eyes and smiles drowsily and says, "Morning, Lily."

Lev's face is so weird. Sasha kisses it some more. "Morning!" 

His voice is chirpier than it was yesterday. 

Blinks. "Oh, sorry, Sasha."

"Don't be." More face kissing. 

(Sasha's eyes are very large and very bright; they're a lighter, warmer brown than Lily's, with little bits of gold. Today they're noticeably brighter than they were yesterday.) 

That's-- odd.

"I'm glad you're in a good mood."

An affectionate nuzzle. "Sorry about yesterday, I'm kind of a downer sometimes." 

"What? No. You were fine. I don't want you to go around with an undiagnosed TBI."

He's doing that really adorable ugly-cute smile again. Sasha kisses him some more. 

Lev kisses back, his hands in Sasha's hair.

He makes quiet little breathy sounds when Lev touches his hair — Lev's hands feel different, they have rough spots in weird places and the skin is a different texture and the shape is different from Pretty hands in a hundred subtle ways, and Sasha's — kind of into that? He rocks forward against Lev. 

Lev makes little whimpery sounds into Sasha's mouth. His hands touch Sasha's neck, his shoulders.

"You're so cute," Sasha says, very earnestly. "Bubbly. I like you." 

"I like you too. I assume 'bubbly' is a good thing?"

He giggles and kisses Lev on the nose. "It is. You're cute." 

His hands are — wandering. Lev's body feels so different. 

Lev freezes when Sasha's hands go up his shirt, then slowly and deliberately relaxes. He stops touching Sasha. 

Strange things Sasha might notice: body hair! pudginess! pasty pale skin! 

He does notice that! 

"You're soft," he says, still earnest. "...are you okay?"