"I would look better in a giant floofy dress than my mom would."

He giggles. "You should put one on and prove it!"

Asher grabs a piece of paper. He writes:

TO DO LIST

--Put on fluffy dress.
--Exploit healing for otherwise unsafe leathersex.
--Rape (WITH SAFEWORD). 
--Meet my parents.
--Go to theme park.
--Get Tazalkyran to ask Ben out. 
--Optimize world (????).
--Get married.

"There."

...He looks at the list. He reads the list.

He grabs Asher and kisses him, very enthusiastically.

"I forgot one."

He adds:

--Play video games (Sugar Rush, Slaughter Race, others????)

"You are so good and I love you so much!!!"

"Now we can decide what we want to do."

"—I want to ask Ben out. And maybe do more magic, we were kind of in the middle of figuring out magic when I ruined everything by being a huge idiot. And play video games. ...I maybe just want all the things but those were the ones that came to mind first when I asked myself."

"Then let's go find Ben!"

"Okay!"

Ben is in his room. 

"Hi Asher! Hi Taz!"

—he blinks, surprised/confused. "Hi."

"Sorry, I hope you don't mind the nickname, your whole name is kind of long."

"I'm—it's all right I guess—I've never found one I liked. I don't like this one either but that's hardly your fault. —I called myself Taka yesterday, which is the five-year-old version of my name, because I was being a huge idiot, and I guess I don't mind that one since I am demonstrably a huge idiot."

Ben opens his mouth to say something and Asher interrupts with, "I don't like that name because in the future you are going to be not an idiot."

He laughs. "Fine, Takai then. There's no one I would've let call me that at home but I'm not at home, I'm with you and that's better."

"I love you, Takai."

"I love you too."

"So, you guys want to work on magic?"

"Yes!"

—he has to spend a moment exerting willpower to stop himself from suggesting that they empirically test whether he loves Ben. He is pretty sure he knows what the result would be, anyway. (That smile!!)

"Right now, what I think we should do is brainstorm ways we could in theory fix problems with magic, and then we can test whether they'll work. I don't have anyone to talk about it with except you guys."

"Sure. I have no idea what your problems are or how to fix them, though. Except I guess—Asher what was the thing you said I should do to Louisiana again—"

"Move all the black people and all their stuff to an island somewhere."

"That. I'm not sure how you test that, though. Anyway, couldn't they move to an island already if they wanted? Or is it that there's not an island and it doesn't have their stuff on it? Would I be making an entire island for this? Can I do that???"

"You are literally omnipotent, as long as you selflessly love Asher enough and want it for his sake enough and are close enough to him."