"Smells weird? I'm not used to thinking of people as having smells unless they forgot to shower."

"Maybe just a my universe thing, then. — it's weird, I can't really tell anyone's role, it's like everybody is using blockers." 

"I have no idea what a role is."

"....you know, the thing where there are men and women and also there are alphas and omegas and three-quarters of the world smells different from the other one-quarter, except apparently in your universe they don't smell different." 

"Those don't exist in my world. Uh-- we need different names for the Sashas now-- Spidersha, do they exist in yours?"

"Only as a fanfic trope." 

"Weird but awesome. And I go by Noonlight on the internet, you can keep your name and call me that." 

"We don't even have it as a fanfic trope. --How are alphas and omegas different other than the smell?"

"Omegas go into heat every couple of months, alphas don't, omegas can get pregnant, alpha women technically can but it's dangerous and they don't, there are different levels of risk for certain cancers...." 

"Is 'heat' the thing it sounds like?"

He makes a face. "Depends on what it sounds like but I'm going to take a stab at yes." 

"It sounds like you need sex a ton and have a hard time thinking about things other than having sex and also can get pregnant."

He winces again at the word pregnant. "I personally can't get pregnant, but all the rest of it, yes, that is a thing that happens to me some months. And to three quarters of the world." 

Lev makes a move like he's about to hug Noonlight and then stops. 

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine. Seventy-five percent of the world's gotta deal with it." 

Lev, who is married to Lily, will be able to tell that it isn't even a little bit fine. 

He digs his fingers into his palm. 

(He doesn't have a you-- it won't comfort him because he doesn't have a you-- it looks like him and he's sad and you want to hug him but it's a different person--)

"So there are Levs and Sashas and Ashers in different universes," Lev says, "I wonder if anybody else matches up. Do you have, I don't know, a Sandy Buford? A Marlo Lane? A Michael Way? A Joseph Lawrence?"

He brightens almost immediately. 

"Marlo's my boyfriend. I don't know any of the other names." 

"We have a Marlo Rogers, he's Captain America. Chris Parker, Z —" 

"I'm also dating Z but don't know a Chris." 

"Marlo's dating Lily and my Asher. I don't know a Chris or a Z."

"Marlo and Asher trying to date would go so badly. — they're doing their best to get along but neither of them likes the other, it's bad." 

"That's weird, my Marlo and Asher get along great. Asher was the first person other than Lily Marlo actually said multiple complete sentences to."

"That's..... weird, he doesn't talk a lot but he does talk ever unless he's really not okay." 

"He worked as a member of a homophobic authoritarian theocracy's secret police and fell in love with Lily before he'd realized he was gay. Lily kissed him, he confessed that he was a member of the secret police, and I pulled some strings and got Lily a visa to Cascadia before she got arrested. And then a year later Lily finally responded to his increasingly anguished texts to say that if he was really sorry he would send the Cascadian government everything he knew. He did and now he lives in a cottage in my backyard with Lily." He pauses. "He's. Not okay."

"Jesus." 

Marlo is not here and Sasha can't hug him but he wants to.