"Yeah. --The other you really really doesn't want kids but I haven't, like, poked at whether that's an aversion to creating people genetically related to him in addition to an aversion to having to change diapers and be responsible for small people you might fuck up."

"That seems like a weird thing to care about? Maybe if I was from your world I'd care about it more but it seems really weird." 

"Well, I want genetically related babies, it doesn't seem that strange that preferences might go the other way. --I have three and we are planning two more, that is probably something worth warning you about. Lily and Marlo live in a cottage in the backyard but with you here we'll probably have to move into a very well-soundproofed duplex."

He nods and curls into Lev. 

He gently tries petting Smolsha's hair.

He makes a soft happy noise and presses into Lev's hand. 

It occurs to him that he's cuddling with a touch-starved positive-attention-deprived gay preteen whose type he is and this might result in a profoundly awkward crush. 

But he's not actually capable of denying Smolsha something he so obviously needs.

Being held and having his hair pet is really nice. He hadn't realized how much he was missing it until suddenly he wasn't. 

"I should show you--" He pulls out his phone and scrolls for preteen pictures of Asher and himself. "Do you know any of those people? I don't have pictures of Marlo from when he was a kid, but he looks like this as an adult."

"I don't think so? Maybe they're a year younger than me or maybe a year older and in a different house or maybe my world just doesn't have them." 

"Only Lily and I speak Russian, anyway, although Asher'll pick it up fast."

"And probably learning English will go faster when the people around me know I don't already speak it. And when I can sleep." 

"I can try to teach you-- I'm an okay teacher-- or you can get lessons or you can just speak Russian, the reason I know it is that there's a lot of Russian immigrants in Cascadia."

"Being able to just speak my language would be nice sometimes but I'd like to learn. And not everyone in your family knows Russian." 

"I mean, the kids do, Asher can learn, and Marlo doesn't talk much anyway."

"Still!" 

"... I guess Gilead is a big downside."

"....what does that mean." 

"The USA fell apart and now it's five countries, three of which are run by sexist homophobic religious fundamentalists. Cascadia seceded. Gilead wants to conquer us."

"There are other countries I can go to if that happens. Right?" 

"Canada or half of Europe or Japan. China would give you a palace and a private jet and"-- he self-censors before saying 'a harem of extremely beautiful men to obey your every whim'-- "servants, but you don't want any of those things and really don't want to live in an authoritarian dictatorship, so."

"That's true, I don't." He's very very cuddly. 

"Asher could smuggle you to Canada if it happened. Canada's fine."

He hums. "Yeah." 

"Lovely place to live, incompetent at handling the fertility crisis. In a hundred years it'll be a colony of us or Gilead but in the meantime it's nice."