Kiss. "I do feel pretty guilty about our relationship honestly," kiss, "but not enough to stop."

"I'm happy to be here," kiss, "and I'm glad you don't want to stop. I love you." 

"Before the Bliss I'd have gone to prison for this!"

"It's not before the Bliss." He snuggles Lev, puts a hand on the back of Lev's head. "And I love you and this relationship is helping both of us and I'm happy I'm here." 

"Yeah, but the justifications were all things like-- teenagers have worse decision-making capability and poorer judgment and their brains haven't fully developed yet, so it's easy for adults to take advantage of them. And you wouldn't expect that to change with the Bliss."

"I guess, but it can't be worse than having teenagers pilot and I trust you — and even if you think I'm not old enough to meaningfully trust you with sex I've already trusted you with my life, if I'm old enough to put my life in your hands I'm pretty sure I'm old enough to put your dick in my —" 

"We've been kind of doing a lot of ethically dubious things since the Bliss. And I love you, and you make me so happy, and it would be worse for Eros if I didn't have anybody who loved me. And I hope if-- if you're 25 and think I've taken advantage of you that you're going to forgive me."

"...if 25 year old me looks back ten years and can't see how much happier I am with you than I was without you, 25 year old me has forgotten a lot." 

"I'm going to try not to do things that your 25-year-old self will be mad at me about."

"I'm glad. — things like that are part of why I love you so much." 

"Like what?"

"Like — you care a lot about me being safe? You're good enough at what you do that I trust you not to hurt me on accident and I know you're not going to hurt me on purpose and I feel safe around you and I don't feel safe very often." 

"People always end up hurting each other on accident." He pets Sasha's hair. "But I'm going to try to fix it when I do."

"Yeah." He leans into Lev's hand. "I guess what I mean is — I trust you not to hurt me in a way you couldn't or wouldn't fix? And I trust you to try and I — care a lot about trying, with stuff like this." 

"It's objectively pretty silly to trust me because you've known me for less than a week."

"I'm pretty sure the person who cries for five hours about how he's worried he's going to rape me is not, in fact, going to turn around and rape me." He snuggles Lev. "...also, you've known me for exactly as much time as I've known you." 

"Technically, I was stalking you for several weeks."

"Oh? And what did you learn?" 

"You work hard. You have good taste in poetry. You like Lord of the Rings. You have a really interesting way of approaching things-- you noticed that Marlo didn't want sex right away and you figured out what to do about it, which Marlo's anchor couldn't, and you figured out that toys have batteries and grabbed them."

"I think he wasn't trying as hard to act, with me — I'm not really sure why but my best guess is wanting someone to call him on it — or maybe Tristan noticed but wrote off the thought as anima damage but I didn't know anima damage was a thing — and the batteries thing was Damian's idea, we'd all been doing that for years." 

"Still. There are a lot of people who wouldn't have done either of those things, and you did."

Sasha buries his face in Lev's neck. "I love you." 

"I love you."

In the morning, Chris collects Marlo and Sasha for Sasha's anchor training.

Marlo notably doesn't have the same smile as usual.