"That does sound great." 

"A ton of the stories were about how various characters are gay and having sex with each other."

"That does sound good — the erotica section at the bookstore was pretty thoroughly picked over by the time any of us were old enough for it to be interesting, all we had was what Gwen's parents had, which was pretty awkward for Gwen but she dealt with it —" 

"It's nicer when it's characters you know, too, at least for me. --I only really started having kinks after the Bliss, which is inconvenient, when I had an infinite supply of properly tagged porn all I wanted to read about was guys kissing, and now that there's a shortage of anything I like such a specific thing."

"I wound up imprinting on the chapter from a whole bunch of parenting books about the dangers of teenage parties, and also this one newspaper article, and also books about vampires. I'm not sure I want to know what I would have been into if I'd had infinite categorized porn." 

"People liked such specific things! And sometimes they failed to tag them!"

"Gosh." 

"There'd probably be lots of fic for. My thing."

"There'd probably be lots of everything. — what is your thing?" 

"--I haven't ever told anybody except Asher."

"...obviously you don't have to tell me, but I can't figure out a way for you to get it if I don't know what it is." 

"I don't like kids. I like-- adults who act in childlike ways?" He plays with Sasha's hair. "I like taking care of people and having them be dependent on me. I think about, I don't know, baking cookies with a guy and then watching him color and then snuggling while we watch cartoons. It's weird." 

"It's adorable." 

"Thank you." Kiss. "I missed you while you were gone."

"Mmm. Yeah." He turns his head to meet Lev's mouth. "I missed you too — missed here —" 

Kiss. "Probably better for Eros if you scavenge, I got so much work done."

— the smile fades. Sasha curls into Lev, puts his head on Lev's shoulder, wraps his arms around Lev, thinks about Lev's kinks and thinks about his own and does not think about that last statement. 

"I'm sorry?"

"...if you mean it it's fine but please don't say things like that if you're joking?" 

"Okay, I won't, but I don't know what 'things like that' is."

"'Eros would be better off if you were somewhere else.'" 

"I won't. --Also that's wrong, in the short term it's right but in the long term I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown and a lot of how I run Eros isn't documented and a lot of it relies on me being good at my job which other people won't be. Even if I have, like, six months to hold somebody and cry on their shoulder and pet them while they cry, that could probably get me another year or two without a nervous breakdown, which is enough time to get Eros to a system that isn't as reliant on me. And that's valuable enough to be worth feeding and housing you indefinitely even if you don't do any work at all. --Not that I'm going to do that, that's hard to explain on several different levels and will make people feel resentful, you do have to keep cooking or whatever."

......wow, that's — kind of a lot — 

"I... do kind of need a job I'm good at, even on top of the thing where it would be hard to explain and make lots of people feel resentful it's something I can point to and reassure myself that yes I'm definitely pulling my weight.

But. Thank you for saying." 

"...I'm sort of worried that will make you feel like you have to keep dating me even if you don't want to. Please don't, I don't want you to do that."

"That sounds like it would not even a little bit give you the thing that you need to be getting and would be pointless if not actively harmful. I'm not going to do it. It's just — good to know that even if it doesn't fill the entire 'useful work' slot I am still doing something useful this way."