This plan is going to work brilliantly. Even if none of the alternate universe Levs have Lev's powers, they can still be used to reverse-engineer other worlds' technologies or even introduce entirely new superpowers. Nat is very pleased with it. 

She brings him to the lab and puts him in a swivel chair before she wakes him up. 

Power, on. He'll make Asher take him to an all-you-can-eat buffet once Sasha rescues him.

"This is the second time in my life I've been kidnapped and I don't like it much better than I liked the first time."

"Oh, don't worry, you aren't supposed to," she assures him. The machine she's working at has a truly ridiculous number of buttons in a truly ridiculous number of colors and light levels. "But it won't hurt a bit and there's almost no risk of your untimely death." 

"I feel very reassured. --You realize I'm dating Spider-man, right? There are so many better people to kidnap." 

"But nobody else in the world has your powers!" she says brightly. "Or at least nobody else near our research facility, and grants to search for mutants in China are much harder to come by." 

Fuck. 

"My powers are boring. I solve math problems."

She's smiling. "Don't lie, Lev — your name is Lev, isn't it? I'm so bad with names — I know what your powers are. And you could do the world a lot of good with them. It's almost like a moral obligation, if you think about it." Heroes love moral obligations, right?

Nat's fingers fly over the keyboard as she talks, and a whirring sound starts from behind Lev's head. 

"Math is not that important. And even if it did I'm not really a do-gooding sort of person. More like a do-mathing sort of person."

She laughs like that's the funniest joke she's ever heard and pushes one final large green button — 

— and the window breaks as a figure dressed in black and red breaks through it — 

— and the whole room goes bright green. 

Lev blinks.

"What was that?"

"No idea," Sasha says, and grabs him and gets the hell out of Dodge, office chair and all. He'll cut him out of the chair once they aren't in this office anymore. 

"I'm getting pretty tired of being kidnapped."

"Pretty reasonable thing to get tired of," Sasha says, and gets him out of the chair by means of breaking the chair. "Let's get home?" 

"Yeah. Unfortunately I didn't get enough to know what the machine is for. --Also, I'm really hungry, can we stop by a buffet."

"Course we can." 

"I think she knows my power is incredibly useful."

"...that's. An issue. Did she say anything else about it?" 

"Just that I could do the world a lot of good with them. Wait, let me check." He pauses. "She knows." He pauses for a bit longer. "Kingpin probably also knows."

"....fuck." 

At least there are buffets. And sweatshirts and sweatpants to wear over your suit so nobody looks twice at you. 

Lev gets a tray and fills up six plates until they're overflowing.

"Maybe we can get Asher to implant a tracker under my skin."

"Probably we can — I'll ask him in the morning, you can sleep —" 

"Okay," he says, and devours his six plates of food, and then falls asleep in Sasha's arms as Sasha is carrying him back.

Sasha puts him in his bed and cuddles him until he falls asleep too. 

Alright, let's do this one last time.

My name is Sasha Michaels, and I'm a digital artist and translator.

I live with my two boyfriends, who tolerate me for reasons probably, and I work remote jobs for a variety of reasons having mostly to do with the fact that the smell of another omega in heat gives me panic attacks. I'm still not over the tragic backstory, like even a little bit, but I have Marlo and I have Z and you know what -- I'm doing pretty okay. 

And then — 

— and then the world goes green and he's outside, still barefoot, in an unfamiliar city. 

"Hi, Sasha!" 

The person who knows his name doesn't smell like an alpha or an omega. This is probably less weird than the fact that all his skin below his neck is scales. 

— both of those things are pretty weird, actually, but yes. 

"Hi," he says. 

"You look older. Did you run into something weird?"

"...I have no idea what's going on, I'm not sure where I am, and I dont know who you are, sorry." 

"Okay, well, hi, I'm Chris Parker, you look exactly like this guy I'm sleeping with except a decade older."

"Hi, Chris Parker, I'm Sasha Michaels, I'm 25, what city is this?" 

"New York City. Weird shit central."

(As if to prove the point, a person who is on fire flies down the street. No one looks up.) 

"What the fucking fuck." 

"Yeah, that's one of the Fantastic Four. Not that fantastic, if you ask me."

"I..... guess. 

Do you have anywhere that I can stay." Preferably somewhere that doesn't have other omegas there but he'll deal. 

"Do you prefer a giant penthouse with a billionaire or the sewers with a bunch of homeless mutants?"

"....I'll take not the sewers and an explanation of what you mean by mutants." 

He starts walking. 

"...You're not from this universe, are you?"

"...everything went very green and then suddenly I was in New York and there's flying people on fire and I'm ten years younger here so I'm going to go with no I'm not."

"Mutants are people like me. We have a mutation on a gene called the X-Gene which makes us have powers. For example, I can heal other mutants, and I also resemble a lizard. Your other self's boyfriend Lev can find patterns in information. My girlfriend Rachel mind-controls people into being attracted to her."

"....cool." There are a lot of responses he could have but cool is probably the right one. 

"Are you dating a Lev? He's cute, he turns bright red and stops being able to speak English whenever I hit on him."

"My boyfriends' names are Marlo and Z." 

He makes a face.

"Is Marlo the sort of person who would take an experimental serum in order to turn into a supersoldier so that he could fight Nazis, and then they want to use him for PR and he's like 'no, fuck this' and starts single-handedly liberating a bunch of concentration camps?"

"....there's a lot to unpack in that question but it doesn't sound wrong?" 

"I mean I don't know exactly how people being the same people in different dimensions works but it is very possible your boyfriend is Captain America."

The chances of a Korean guy being recruited as a PR figure in World War 2 seem... low. "I don't know who Captain America is." 

"He's the most famous superhero in the world. He, like, helped defeat Hitler, and then he fell into the Arctic and was frozen for eighty years, and then someone found him and woke him up and he saved the world a bunch of times." He sighs. "I met him!"

"....my world does not have superheroes and if Marlo were a superhero I would know about it, but alternate universes are weird and anything's possible I guess." 

"That sounds weird. Did Hitler win?"

(Noonlight may have noticed by now that no one smells like alphas or omegas.)

He has noticed that but he's doing his best not to think about it. 

"He did not, but not for ....superhero.... reasons, just because invading Russia in winter is not a good plan." 

"I guess Marlo Rogers might have been less important than they said in school. --You're going to be staying at Asher Stark's penthouse, he's a superhero too. I live there. He's dating the other you."

That sounds like it'll be awkward as hell. He does not say this to Chris. 

"We should probably tell him you're here because he's"-- Chris waves a hand-- "a super genius science dude who can figure out how to get you back."

"Makes sense." 

Unless Sasha says something, Chris will be quiet until they get to the skyscraper with STARK TOWER written on it in enormous letters.

That's a lot. 

He is just going to figure out his feelings once he's in a place and can do that. 

"This the building?" 

"Yep."

The receptionist does a double-take at Sasha but waves them up. 

That's chill. This is fine. (Marlo and Z are probably worrying about him, somewhere where he can't reach them and tell them he's okay.) 

It's nice to be inside, his feet hurt. 

"Hey Jarvis," he says to empty air, "this is Sasha from a different dimension where they don't have superheroes."

"Greetings, Master Mikhailov," says a robot voice with a flawless Russian pronunciation.

"It's Michaels," he says. (Hopefully it'll be Lane, soon. He doesnt say that out loud.) "Nice to meet you, Jarvis." (Please stop with the calling me Master, he doesn't say.) 

"My apologies, Master Michaels."

"He read a bunch of P. G. Wodehouse when he was a baby AI," Chris explains, "and now he insists on calling everyone 'Master.' I think it's mostly because it annoys everyone."

"I would never choose to annoy my masters," Jarvis says. "I seek only to follow the rules of proper etiquette."

"Yeah, see, he does that."

"Okay. Is there a place I can sleep?" 

"Yeah, there's a spare bedroom over here."

(Asher's apartment has a lot of spare bedrooms for NYC, although maybe not that many for a place owned by a billionaire.)

Meanwhile--

Let's do this one last time.

My name is Lev Aarons, and I'm a survivor of the nuking of San Francisco.

I grew up homeless, but my mom taught me to read and write and do math and I spent lots of time in libraries, so the only long-term consequence was that I never ever ever want to interact with nature ever again.

My mom remarried when I was a teenager, so I had something approximating a normal youth. Then I went to MIT, where I hated a hot guy for two years straight and then got drunk and hooked up with him and now we're married. I have a job as a forecaster where I predict the outcomes of policies in exchange for way way way too much money, and that meant I could rescue my girlfriend Sasha from Gilead. Now I have three kids and two spouses and a rescue Gileadite and the best job in the world. Other than the fact that I'm probably going to die of cancer sometime in the next five years, I'm doing pretty okay.

And then--

The world turns green and he appears in the middle of New York City.

It occurs to him that this might be some sort of Gileadite plot. But New York City doesn't look like it's full of Gileadites; he sees two men kissing and a triad walking down the street holding hands and holy shit is that man on fire. 

Okay.

Shit.

So he's dreaming or hallucinating or in some kind of different world, where people are on fire, and he can't do anything about the first two possibilities so let's assume it's the third. He should try to figure out some basic facts about this world. (Fortunately, they seem to speak English.) He'll find a newsagent and get his bearings. 

Same basic selection of newspapers, minus the Gileadite ones. According to the New York Times, it's 2016, so he traveled a few decades into the past, which probably explains the men kissing, if not the people on fire. And-- why is there a person who looks like his husband on the cover of Wired magazine.

He opens it. The person who looks like his husband seems to be named Asher, which is a positive sign, even though his Asher's surname isn't Stark. And-- apparently Asher built a robot suit and now he fights crime. That definitely seems like an Asher sort of thing to do. 

"Hey, are you going to pay for that?" the newsagent asks.

Lev decides not to comment on how all his money is from thirty years in the future and a different country. "Do you know where Asher Stark lives?"

The newsagent looks at him like he's stupid. "In the giant building with 'Stark Tower' on it."

Yep, that sounds like Asher. "Could you give me directions?"

The newsagent gives him the 'ugh, tourists' eyeroll, but gives him directions he can follow to Stark Tower. 

On his way over, he thinks about what to say to the Asher from an alternate universe. By the time he gets there, he doesn't have anything better than the truth. 

"Excuse me?" he says to the receptionist. "I have no way of proving this, but I think I'm Asher Stark's husband from an alternate universe."

The receptionist doesn't blink. "What's your name?"

"Lev Aarons."

"Excuse me for a moment." She types something into a computer and a few minutes later says, "I'm sending you up."

Well, that was easy. 

Having a husband from an alternate universe wasn't even the weirdest thing to happen to him this year.

He's nervous when the door opens and then Asher Stark stands up and he moves like Asher and--

"You're a baby."

"I'm a what?"

That's Asher's smile. 

"You're an infant-- I don't think I'd even met you yet when you were this young-- sorry, in my home world you're 36 and we have three kids-- uh, this is awkward, sorry." He waves. "Hi! I'm Lev. I'm pretty sure I'm your alternate-universe husband."

"My Lev," he says, "is my sixteen-year-old ward. We aged up a picture of him and it looked like you."

"That's pretty fast, I don't think we can do that in Cascadia and we're thirty years in the future compared to you--"

"I'm very good."

"It is you! --Can you explain how I got transported to an alternate universe where it's thirty years earlier and people fly down the street while on fire without anyone caring and you're a billionaire flying a giant robot suit and the Gileadites don't publish magazines."

"What's a Gileadite?"

Lev sits on his desk. 

"You have no idea how lucky you are."

"The hobby of the dictator of Latveria is dressing up in armor and smashing parking meters into cars while shouting 'curse you, Reed Richards! DOOM WILL HAVE HIS REVENGE!'"

"Has anyone ever told you this universe is extremely weird."

"I have never met anyone from another universe and yet somehow I am not surprised."

"Okay, so, a Gileadite is a sect of Christianity. They became really popular after the fertility crisis because they decided that it was a religious obligation to--"

"Fertility crisis?"

"Yeah, the thing where we pumped a ton of bitoxiphosphene into the air and now most women can't have babies, or miscarry, or the babies are born with horrible disabilities and then die?"

"Not a thing."

"Well, that explains why you don't have Gileadites. --If someone tries to put bitoxiphosphene into the atmosphere, don't do it."

"Noted."

"Anyway, Gileadites are sexist homophobic assholes, and then in 2020 they did a coup and turned the United States government into a theocracy."

"Are you okay?"

"Don't worry, I'm Cascadian. --Uh, NorCal, Oregon, Washington, and complicatedly Hawaii seceded to become their own country. And we're not homophobic or sexist or ageist or any of that bullshit."

"I'm glad, I'm not sure how I'd respond to being part of a Christian theocracy."

"Gilead is okay on Jews, for values of 'okay' that mean that they make us all be ultra-Orthodox."

"Ouch."

"Before we talk more about my home dimension's geopolitics-- the people who are on fire? What the fuck?"

"So, there's a gene called the X-Gene, and when it's active you have superpowers. Like, some mutants have healing powers, or telekinesis, or telepathy, or the ability to shapeshift--"

"WHAT."

He spreads his hands. "I don't know what to tell you."

"THAT IS NOT HOW GENETICS WORKS."

"Everyone in this world is confused too."

"HOW DO YOU HAVE A PROTEIN THAT CODES FOR THE ABILITY TO HEAL AND ALSO FOR SHAPESHIFTING. HOW IS SHAPESHIFTING EVEN PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE."

"Physics in our world is kind of bullshit?"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA."

"Do you need a hug."

"YES."

He gives Lev a hug.

The tiny infant version of his husband from the universe with HORRIBLE BULLSHIT GENETICS gives very good hugs.

"So, the flying guy probably actually wasn't a mutant. He was probably Johnny Storm. It's much rarer, but people can also get powers from lab accidents or scientific experiments. Johnny Storm has pyrokinesis because he was exposed to cosmic rays."

"WHYYYYYYYYYY."

Asher pats his back sympathetically. "The amount of bullshit this universe is is hard for everyone."

"So, what, some mutant summoned me from my home dimension?"

"My guess is that it's probably a mad scientist doing some sort of experiment about quantum causality fields."

"That's not even a thing," he says, but his protest doesn't have that much heat in it.

"I don't know why you expect my universe to have the same physics yours does."

"Just give me some time to process, okay?"

He laughs. "All right."

Lev pulls away, looks at him, and says, "Sort of want to compare notes about alternate universes, sort of want to fuck the hot alternate-universe version of my husband."

"We can do both."

"As long as it's not weird that this universe's me is your ward."

"Nah, it's fine, I've had a crush on him for months but he's not into humans."

Lev sits in his lap and kisses him. 

He tastes like Asher.

Asher has no idea at all what Lev is supposed to taste like, but he does enjoy it.

In the morning, Sasha kisses Lev's forehead and gets up to ask Asher about the tracker and stops at the door. 

"What. — Also hello." 

"...Lily?"

"No? My name is Sasha, is your name Lev." 

He's significantly younger than Lily; he wears his hair longer than Lily did back in Gilead but shorter than Lily does now. 

"Yeah, I'm an alternate-universe version of Lev. --Why is everyone in this universe so young."

"Maybe we're in the past compared to your universe? I'm sixteen, how old is your me." 

"31. --We're married, she's my spouse. Just so you know."

"She? — not the point. Asher, Lev got kidnapped again last night, I grabbed him and we were back within two hours but this is getting out of hand, can he have a tracker or something. This was his idea." 

"Oh, yeah, sure," Asher says. He, unlike Lev, is not wearing a shirt. "Is it urgent, I was kind of enjoying talking to alternate-universe Lev. His universe is apparently full of fundie nutcases."

"Not especially. Can I hang out with you two?" 

"Yeah, sure. When-- we should name the Levs-- when Xenolev isn't busy you should ask him why Cascadilev is here so we can send him back to his two spouses and assorted adorable children." 

"...you know, given the timing I bet I can answer that. Did everything flash bright green?" 

"Yep."

"It's Doc Ock's fault. Also, she knows what Lev's powers are." 

"Great. Now everyone knows."

"What are Xenolev's powers? And why is he particularly xeno?"

"Other Lev is a mutant, which gives him the power to intuit the implications of datasets, which is the most stupidly OP thing ever. He's xeno because his orientation is 'mutants or aliens or monsters or science heroes.'" 

"I want that power. Why can't I have that power."

"I'm going to go make that tracker. See you in a bit."

"Love you," he says to Asher, and "Something something the X gene?" to Lev. 

"I thought I had the best job in the world and then it turned out there was a better job which is whatever job Xenolev is working with that power."

"He does social science and other predictions for Stark Industries. What's your job?" 

"I predict the outcomes of various policies for the Cascadian government. --I'm tied for second best in Cascadia. Fucking Aaron Way."

"I don't know him." 

"This universe has three good traits."

Lev fifteen years older looks deeply weird but he smiles the same. It's good. "What are they?" 

"No Gileadites, no fertility crisis, and no Aaron fucking Way."

"....you're cute. Also what is a Gileadite." 

"It is really, really nice to hear you say that. --Sexist homophobic fundie Christians who turned the US into an authoritarian theocracy. You grew up Gileadite."

"Poor other me, that sounds horrible. In this universe I'm not Christian even a little." 

"Well, Lily isn't an anything now, thank God."

"I'm glad for —her?" 

"It's complicated. If you ask her to put a label on her gender she'll say that Cascadians are obsessed with labels and people should just let things be complicated. But Asher and I call her 'she' and Marlo calls her 'he' and she's our kids' weird uncle."

"Weird. I don't think I have that thing but I'm not actually sure I'd notice if I did." 

"Well, try wearing skirts, see if it makes you really happy when they twirl."

"I'll have to do that sometime! You smile exactly the same as my Lev, it's cute." 

He bounces.

"You're cute too. You're so pretty."

That's adorable oh no. "Thank you." 

Meanwhile —

Let's do this one last time.

My name is Sasha Mikhailov, and I'm a wizard, apparently. I lived in the Soviet Union until I was ten, and six months after my family  escaped an owl brought me a letter that — so they tell me, anyway — said I was accepted to wizard school. I think that's about as weird as you think it is. 

I hate boarding school. I don't speak the language here, and I haven't slept for more than three hours at a time in the last two days, and I think I'm failing my classes but it's hard to tell because I can't read the language either, and people keep calling me words I don't know the meaning of but sure sound the way people sounded when they used to call me a kike. Most of my teachers hate me and all my classmates hate me except one. It's kind of a lot. 

But there's enough food and I'm not going to die or anything and apparently the hospitals here actually have resources, so I think I'm doing pretty okay?

And then — 

And then the world goes green and he's somewhere else entirely. 

His spot under the stairs was quiet. Hogwarts isn't near any large cities, he doesn't think, but he is loosely aware of what London looks like and he's pretty sure this isn't that. All the writing he can see is in English, or at least it uses English letters; he recognizes a couple of words from his textbooks. 

He's so tired. He's so so tired. But he can't sleep here; he starts looking for something to eat that he won't have to pay for, because now that he isn't in Hogwarts anymore food is going to be scarce.

"I'm sorry if I end up accidentally calling you 'she'. Force of habit, you know."

"It's fine!" 

Lev goes back into Asher's room and sits on the bed.

"I got Asher's summary of his life but he totally did not mention you."

"We met a while ago when he saved me from a death trap, he decided he wanted to date me — knowing I was Spiderman, not knowing I was fifteen — when I made a joke about Tolkien, we were flirty friends for a while after that, he offered to have sex with me, I said "I can't I'm fifteen," he went "well shit" and we did not have sex but we did stay friends until Kingpin mind controlled him into murdering me and he had depression for a couple months while we were avoiding each other and then my Lev told me he was really worried so I showed up here wanting to know what the hell was going on and we've been dating since then." 

"Okay, so he did mention you, he just only called you Spiderman-- wait what."

"Wait what what?" 

"Why is you being fifteen a reason for you two not to date?"

".....uh," which is maybe a little bit hypocritical given that he and Asher are in fact dating, but. 

"I mean, I assumed this was a pretty progressive universe, since people are being gay and poly in public?"

"...uh, New York in particular is a pretty progressive place, I'm not sure I'd say there's anything all that progressive about being poly, but none of that means we don't.... have..... an age of consent? Which technically we're still abiding by although not for that reason." 

"I mean, Cascadia has an age of consent too, it's not like I'm saying Asher should fuck a kid."

"Legally speaking I'm a kid. — which doesn't mean I'm a kid by any reasonable definition, I'm pretty sure once you've saved a city more times than you can count on one hand you're not a kid anymore, but that's not how age of consent works and nobody knows I'm Spiderman anyway, so." 

"That's-- bizarre. And Asher wasn't like 'oh, you're fifteen, but you're literally a soldier already, I guess it's fine to date you'?"

"I'm not a soldier! SHIELD can't hire me because I'm under eighteen, I'm an unlicensed independent menace. And no, he went 'I don't think I'm comfortable even not-quite-dating a fifteen year old, sorry,' and I went 'that's legit, we're still friends right?' and he said of course." 

"I guess if people grow up in an ageist society I can't expect them to, like, independently reinvent youth rights, even if I am married to them in a different universe."

".....that is a really bizarre statement in context but I'm just going to assume there's more context." 

"Well, I don't know, it's like finding out that Asher thinks racism or nuking people or sex work criminalization or something is okay! Part of me is like 'I expected better of my husband' and the other part of me is like 'well, most people don't outperform the societies they live in, this is pretty much what you should expect' and a third part of me is like 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.'"

"...that is again a bizarre way to conceptualize youth rights. I'm not sure I have an opinion on sex work but it is not in fact legal." 

"What's bizarre about it?"

"If I were going to talk about youth rights I'd talk about the unholy amount of things parents get to decide for their kids and making running away legal and fixing literally everything about how we handle child abuse and the foster care system and, I don't know, probably something about mutant rights but that's because it's my pet issue for reasons, and maybe something about public schools? I definitely would not talk about lowering the age of consent, although I might talk about Romeo and Juliet laws in states that don't have those." 

"I'd probably be horrified by those things too! They just haven't come up yet. What has come up is the fact that two people both really really liked each other and wanted to date and didn't because of the imaginary harm caused by being in love with someone who has had a couple more birthdays than you."

"I mean, most adults who want to date a fifteen year old are in fact a bad idea to date, it's just that Asher didn't know I was fifteen and we'd gotten to know each other in a context where age didn't matter? And that ever happens but it is really not common, most adults who want to date teenagers are creepy about it." 

"It is kind of horrifying if fifteen-year-olds and twenty-two-year-olds usually never get to interact in a context where age doesn't matter! --Also, I know how you mean it, but 'most adults who want to date teenagers are creepy' sounds to me like 'most gays are child molesters' or something, like, that's how bigoted it is in my home society."

"Fifteen year olds are in... school. And if they're doing extracurriculars it's usually a club that goes through their school, or something for teenagers, something where you wouldn't be interacting with the adults around on an equal level? There exist people who volunteer at the library or something but usually it's, like, the school math club or the swim team. So an adult who wants to date a fifteen year old almost never just met a cool person and interacted with them and wanted to date them, they're specifically going for someone younger and inexperienced and who they have power over." 

"I realize, like, Canada and most of Europe are like that but it's weird. It's super weird. Like, I get that no one ever goes off to college at sixteen in most of the world, but-- surely some teenagers stay friends with their friends when they go off to college, and some teenagers have jobs, and some teenagers participate in community theater or sports instead of special segregated Teenager-Only Sports where they aren't tarnished by talking to someone over the age of 18, and some of the people in the first three groups invite their friends to parties, and then sometimes people hook up at parties."

"It is almost stereotypically true that you lose touch with your high school friends when you go off to college, and seniors aren't really friends with freshman anyway so the age gap there is only like one or two years, and adult sports pretty reliably don't let teenagers in and community theaters usually have youth theater and adult theater separate, and you would not generally invite your adult friend to the sort of party people hook up at. I think, anyway, I don't actually go to parties." 

"Your entire society is weird and horrible."

"Maybe it is, but the age of consent being where it is does reflect a real thing that actually exists." 

"So I assume that's a 'no' if I hit on you."

"It's a 'let's interact with each other for a while first,' if hypothetically you were to be hitting on me, which of course you would not." 

"I will respect the strange and unusual ways of the culture I find myself in!"

"Cute," Sasha says, and snuggles him. 

Sasha wakes up and puts the clothes he wore last night back on and comes out. (His feet still hurt from walking around the city barefoot.) 

"Hi, Chris brought me — what the everloving fuck." 

"--are there normally two of you? Hi, Other Lily."

"There are not normally two of me, what the fuck." 

"That's what I thought too. And my name is Sasha, not Lily." 

"Hi! I'm Lev! I'm from an alternate universe. This is Sasha, who is from this universe. Apparently someone summoned us for some reason."

"We know a mad scientist did it and was aiming for something to do with this universe's Lev but we're not super sure what she was trying to do. Sit down?" 

He sits down. "I don't think I have a Lev but that sounds not.... great." 

"Asher says if someone managed to get us here he will definitely be able to get us home, so I'm not too worried."

"Good. — I hope it's soon, my boyfriends are going to be worried about me." 

Lev considers this statement and then decides that it would probably not be helpful to point out that there's no reason to believe time runs at the same rate in different universes so for Sasha's boyfriends it might be five seconds or ten years and either way the amount of time it takes Asher to reverse-engineer it won't be the deciding factor.

"My world has a fertility crisis and a ton of fundamentalist Christians, and no mutants or superheroes."

"My world doesn't have a fertility crisis or mutants or superheroes. — everyone here smells weird and I can't tell what that's about." 

"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. 

"Yeah it was. Not a great set of things that happened. --Marlo and Asher go out on camping trips and, like, silently observe trees together and occasionally bring home a deer or an elk. I don't know. I am not a big fan of nature myself."

"...glad he's got that, anyway." 

He's just going to curl up into a ball and that'll have to be fine. 

There are little white spots on Lev's palm from how hard his fingers are digging into it. 

"So, uh, fanfiction," he tries. "That's different in different universes."

A short person with curly hair wanders into the hallway.

"--Wait, what the fuck, why is there an Old Sasha."

"Why is Tiny Me so thin?"

"Lev, this is Other Lev, he's from an alternate universe where fundamentalists took over most of the United States and turned it into an oppressive theocracy, but he's okay because he lives in Cascadia which is hella progressive and big on youth rights, and this is Other Me, currently going by Noonlight to differentiate, he's me but from an alpha/omega universe like in fanfic. Guys, this is my Lev, he's thin because his mutant power feeds on calories." 

"Other Me is old."

"I think we're going by 'Cascadilev' and 'Xenolev', to differentiate."

"Why do I have to be named after my kink?"

"Ask Asher. --Was I ever that small. I don't think I was ever that small."

"Probably you were at some point! Lev you should cuddle me." 

This is a good plan! He does. 

"Oh good! You two are dating! --I am married to my Sasha," Cascadilev explains for what feels like the hundredth time.

Bounce bounce bounce. "He's SO GOOD."

Bounce bounce bounce.

"He really is!!!!"

"You're both adorable," he informs them, and hugs his Lev. 

"Oh god I'm so cute. How am I so cute. I can't believe I was totally unaware of how cute I was."

"I'm probably going to start feeling insecure about how much better you are than me."

"I mean, same, but just let me bask in the cuteness for a bit before I start worrying about how you've achieved so much more at seventeen than I did."

"Okay, but you don't have powers-- unless you do--"

"--I don't--"

"--so your accomplishments are real and the only reason I've accomplished anything is that I'm cheating."

"Your accomplishments are also real and I love you very much." 

"No, see, when I was seventeen I was a normal high school student, I wasn't helping run a superhero team and a major charitable foundation!"

"What are you doing now?"

"Tied with Asher for second-best forecaster-- uh, that's a person whose job is to predict the outcomes of certain policies so the parliament can make informed decisions-- in Cascadia."

"Why aren't we first best?"

"I ask myself that a lot."

"He's like this about most things," Sasha says to the other Sasha. "Are you okay?" 

"I'm okay. I miss my Marlo." 

"...I could hug you too if you wanted?" 

He pauses for a moment, debates whether he wants a hug more than being touched will freak him out, and curls up against the other Sasha's side. 

Lev notices that Noonlight is being hugged and his face gets soft.

"Do you want to see the project I'm working on?"

"Um, yes!"

Sasha lets go of Lev and does not let go of other Sasha. "Have fun." 

Asher, who has still not managed to find a shirt, wanders back into the hallway.

"I think I've figured out the tracker-- wait what."

"Oh hey I do know an Asher, we're friends sort of on tumblr. — hi, I'm going by Noonlight, I come from a world that apparently you guys have as a fanfic trope?" 

"He means A/B/O. Except from what I can tell they don't have betas." 

"Cool. Why is there an alternate-universe Sasha?"

"I think I got in the way of the beam while I was grabbing Lev." 

"It shouldn't be that hard to figure out a way to reverse-engineer it and send all of you home. --SHIELD wants me to come in and talk about this alien they found wandering NYC but I think I'm going to blow them off and focus on you guys, it's not like they have a shortage of alien experts."

"I love you lots but don't blow off SHIELD." 

"If I never blew off SHIELD I'd never have time to do anything but help SHIELD. --So am I an alpha or an omega?"

"Alpha. Dating a trans omega but you just call him 'my boyfriend.'" 

"Wonder who that is. And I bet I didn't include anything else about my identity."

"Not particularly but I can ask Cascadia Lev if any of the anecdotes I know remind him of anyone." 

"Maybe it's Z."

He laughs. "It's not Z, I'd know if it were Z, I'm dating Z. Also he isn't a trans omega, he's a gamma — catchall term for lots of different intersex things —" 

"You should tell the other me to date Z! Z is great."

"I can't, the other you is monogamous." 

"That's weird. I mean, I guess I'm bi, it's not that weird that I'd be another sexual minority."

"You got some discourse about it a while back and apparently your reasoning was that your boyfriend was just so good that you don't want to date anyone else." 

"Okay, yeah, that sounds like me. --It's just that Sasha and Z are both so good I don't want to date anybody else!"

"Well, I know it isn't him or me or Marlo." 

"I can't imagine me dating Marlo anyway. I annoy the shit out of him."

"Apparently the Cascadia versions get along great," and he keeps a hand on other Sasha's back. 

"Maybe they got off on the right foot."

He sits on the couch, a few inches away from Noonlight, so Noonlight can touch him if he wants to.

Noonlight doesn't especially want; he curls up against the other him instead. "Maybe." 

"Z's busy for complicated reasons but I can probably get our Marlo to come give you a hug if you want."

"— I have a tragic backstory and the things I need out of hugs are really specific and it would be weird. But maybe." 

"Okay. --I'll do my best to figure out how to get you back."

"Thank you. — you probably should deal with the alien, if there's no shortage of alien experts there's probably a reason they called you specifically." 

"Okay, I'll go talk to them."

"Bye."

He curls against the other him and tries not to think too much about anything. 

Let's do this one last time.

My name is Levva, and I'm a grey.

I'm clumsy and I have motion sickness and asthma and no pain tolerance and I'm too weak to carry much of anything and I hate all sports with a burning passion.

I was planning to get a desk job in the military but I flunked out of basic training. In theory I'm looking for new jobs but in practice I spend my days indulging my fetish for greys who are better than I am and updating my blog about economic policy, which I can't accept money for because I have no income. I love babies so so much but I'm so dysgenic it wouldn't be ethical for me to ever have one. And I'm Voan which just adds insult to injury. I hope someday I can swap to Anitam and live on their social services forever.

I'm not okay.

And then--

The world flashes green and Levva wakes up on an unfamiliar street corner that smells strongly of pee. He pulls his knees into his chest and cries.

An alien comes up and babbles to him in an unfamiliar language. He half-heartedly tries some Voan. The alien goes away.

About half an hour later an alien in some sort of uniform appears and babbles at him, and then talks into some sort of primitive everything, and then some other aliens in uniforms show up and babble at him apologetically and take him into a truck. He doesn't resist. He tries to tell the aliens he's polluted but they don't speak Voan. Probably the aliens don't care about pollution anyway.  

He ends up in what is recognizably a prison cell. There's a toilet in his room with him. He's polluted and in prison and they're going to execute him. He curls up in a ball and cries and goes to sleep.

Eventually he is woken up for some sort of medical procedure. He suffers through it, pollutes all the medical techs, and eventually goes back to sleep. Everything is less scary and overwhelming when he's unconscious.

"--are you sure the alien hasn't done anything but sleep since--" He pauses. "That's a Lev."

"A Lev?" the SHIELD agent says.

"It's not an alien invasion," Asher says. "Doc Ock the second summoned a bunch of copies of my ward from alternate universes for some reason. I guess this one is from a universe where he isn't human. Leave me alone, I'll try to talk to him."

Levva is woken up again and now a very attractive alien who spends way too much time in the sun and has a glowy blue thing in his chest is babbling at him. 

This is fine. 

A different primitive everything is placed in front of him and it shows him a picture. The alien clearly enunciates a word and then looks at Levva expectantly. 

Okay. They want to learn Voan. He can do this. Maybe once their machine translation learns the word for 'pollution' he can explain to them that everyone who's touched him needs to shower. 

The alien didn't seem to recognize him, and judging by his miserable expression Asher's presence isn't very comforting. He'll wait until Jarvis has learned the alien's language.

A few hours later the everything says in Voan:

"Hello, I'm Jarvis."

"Hi, Jarvis," Levva says.

Jarvis waits for a few minutes and then prompts him with, "I'm sure you have questions."

"Not really." 

"Do you want to keep talking to me or do you want to talk to Asher? I can translate." The screen shows a picture of the alien with a glowy blue thing in his chest.

"Don't care."

"Then you can keep talking to me," Jarvis says. "Do you need anything?"

"I'm polluted," Levva says. "I need a shower."

"I don't know what that means."

"I touched urine," Levva says. "And now I'm polluted, and people who touch me will become polluted unless I shower."

Jarvis shows some videos of aliens coughing and sneezing and throwing up, then an alien with sores on their skin. "Like this?"

"No," Levva says, "that's 'sick'. I'm polluted. It doesn't look like anything. You can't check for it with machines or anything. --I'm sorry, I'm not a theologian--"

"Is there anything you need for the shower so you won't be polluted anymore?"

Special soaps. But he doesn't remember the order of the soaps. "No."

(If they don't have a procedure for pollution already then everyone here is polluted-- everything here is polluted-- he can never know whether anything is clean or not-- he's going to be polluted for the rest of his life-- Levva tries not to think about it but he's always been awful at not thinking about horrible things he can't change.)

One of the uniformed aliens shows him to a shower and he showers and scrubs his skin until the sensation of being polluted, still present, subsides and he realizes that he's about to faint from hunger. 

He signals the alien and they take him back to Jarvis. 

"Is there anything else you need?" Jarvis asks. 

"Food," Levva says. 

"Our scans indicate that you can digest the same food we eat," Jarvis says. 

The food, when it arrives, is alien; he doesn't recognize it. It tastes pretty good when he manages not to think about the fact that it's probably polluted. 

As he eats, Jarvis explains, "Some people in our universe can travel to different universes. One of them opened a door to another universe and forced you through it. We are going to send you back soon."

"Okay," Levva says. At least he won't be polluted forever or executed. That's a comfort. Well, probably a comfort for the second one.

"The same people live in different universes," Jarvis says. "There are other Levvas. You might also know Sasha or Marlo or Asher or Z. There are versions of those people too. You can meet them or stay here."

"I don't have friends," Levva says. 

"Okay," Jarvis says. "You can meet the people who like Levvas from other universes, or you can stay here until we figure out how to return you."

"I don't care," Levva says.

"You're not... curious?" Jarvis asks, surprised.

"Why would I be curious?" Levva says. 

Asher, watching this, totally breaks all the rules of confidentiality and messages Sasha:

There's a third Lev, he's a depressed alien.

Jarvis just asked him if he's curious and he said 'why would I be'

oh god

I think he needs a hug

immediately

should I show up

I'm going to collect him

"You're going to leave this cell," Jarvis says, "and spend time with some other Levvas, and the people that like them."

"Okay."

"They're going to bring you an earpiece that has me in it, so I can speak the translation in your ear while they talk."

"That's fine."

And he gets the earpiece and walks outside.

"Hi!" says the blue glowy alien. "My name is Asher."

"I'm Levva," Levva says. "You're taking me somewhere?"

"Back to my house. I flew here but we can get a car back."

"Okay."

He is perfectly silent the entire car ride over.

Sasha's knee is bouncing repetitively by the time he gets there. 

"Hi," he says, keeps his voice quiet but warm. 

"Hi. Apparently you like a different me. I think I'm probably worse than him in every way so don't get your hopes up."

(English comes out of a little speaker on his shirt; the voice is Jarvis's best imitation of Xenolev.)

"...that seems really unlikely. My name is Sasha, what's yours?" 

"Levva." He touches his hair; it's grey, even though he looks younger than Cascadilev.

"Hi, Levva. — can I hug you?" 

He flinches. 

"I think everyone here is polluted."

"I don't know what that means, I'm sorry." 

"If you touch feces or urine or corpses or garbage or the caste that deals with those things, then you're polluted until you can take a long shower with special soaps."

"We don't have that. We also don't have castes." 

"Oh." He touches his hair again. "I'm grey"-- Jarvis transliterates the caste name instead of translating--"I'm the caste that does the military and police and athletics and sex work."

"I'm so sorry. — are you sure you don't want a hug." 

He's already polluted. It doesn't matter. 

"Sure."

Sasha hugs him. 

He's very familiar with what Lev likes in hugs; hopefully Levva is the same. 

He's polluted he's polluted everything here is polluted Sasha has probably touched garbage and he's just fine with it--

Poor Levva. 

This is fine. He should probably just try to get used to it.

(He wants to tear off his skin.)

This isn't helping. He lets go. 

"Do you want to use our shower, do you want anything to eat, do you want a change of clothes?" 

"All the clothes here are probably polluted because none of you seem to care about pollution."

...this probably won't work but it's worth a shot. 

"It's not that we don't care about pollution, it's that we don't have pollution. For anything here to be polluted it would have to touch those things back in your world." 

That doesn't sound right but Levva is really really dumb. 

"Okay. I guess I can wait on the shower then." 

....maybe it did work. He should still talk to Asher about the thing. 

"Okay. Is there anything else you need?" 

"I guess if you're not polluted then probably a hug is nice?"

Sasha can hug him again. 

That's better. 

Sasha is very warm. 

"I don't know a Sasha."

"There's another me here and two more of you, and the other me doesn't know a Lev. I'm not sure why some of us know each other and others don't." 

"If none of you are greys I wouldn't have met you."

"None of the others come from a world with castes, grey is the only caste I know of." 

"Castes have different hair colors. Blues have blue hair and own things and run the government, greens have green hair and do art and science, yellows have yellow hair and do office work, oranges have orange hair do childcare and teaching and medicine, purples have purple hair and do farming and manufacturing and service work, reds have red hair and handle pollution."

Once he mentions the hair colors, Jarvis starts translating the names of the castes as colors.

"...I think I'd be purple. I'm sorry you can't be green." 

Hair touch. "I'm not smart enough to be green."

.........he puts one hand on the back of Levva's head. "I'm sorry you have to be grey, then." 

"It's fine except that I'm too dysgenic to have kids."

....how about he just doesn't offer an opinion on the subject of eugenics and instead keeps hugging Levva. 

Levva assumes that this is sympathy for not being able to have kids.

"You're nice."

"Thank you." 

Levva has run out of ways to interact with people so he is just going to be really quiet and hope that Sasha doesn't think he's annoying.

That's okay. Sasha can just keep hugging him. 

He's so tired. He's so, so tired. He doesn't have any money and he's hungry and he can't find a safe place to sleep and he's about to crash on his feet when —

Alright, let's do this one last time. 

My name is Sasha, son of nobody as far as you're concerned, and I was raised by villains on the Isle of the Lost. I was the smallest kid in my gang right up until King Ben of Auradon decided it was a good idea to bring me to a fancy prep school in Auradon City and there went that. 

It sucked for a while — however much of an asshole you're expecting Fairy Godmother to be, she's more of one, and rooming with Harry Hook is really not an experience I'd recommend, but I formed my own gang now, and Chen and Kaleva and Asher are excellent, and I'm doing pretty okay. 

And then —

It's been about a day since everything went bright green and he fell on a city he didn't recognize. He doesn't have any money but hey, the food they throw out here is minimally likely to be poisoned, and — is that him?

....that's him. He's a little older but that's Sasha's face, what the — 

"Hello?" he says. 

Everyone else so far he's been able to understand but not other Sasha, apparently. "I don't speak that language," he says, and points at himself and says "Sasha," and points at the kid and makes a questioning face. 

...oh. Other him doesn't speak Russian any more than anyone else does. He probably shouldn't have expected him to, but. "Sasha," he confirms. 

Doing this without words is going to be hard, so instead he just takes the other Sasha's hand and takes a bag of some kind of chips from his jacket pocket and offers it to him. 

...oh. Food. 

He takes the chips and eats them and — smiles. 

Meanwhile--

Bounce bounce bounce. "New Lev!"

"You're very excited."

"Do you want to work with me and Cascadilev?"

Hair-touch, curling into Sasha's side. "I'm really dumb. I probably can't keep up."

"We're all dumb."

"Lev, I know you aren't dumb, and Cascadilev sure doesn't seem dumb, and I don't buy that Levva's dumb either." He hugs Levva tighter. 

"We're all dumb, so if we can keep up probably Levva can too."

"You're greens."

"They aren't anything, we don't have castes." 

"Maybe you don't officially have castes but the other me is definitely a green."

He doesn't actually know enough about greens to dispute that so instead he keeps hugging Levva. "I bet they'd still like having your help. — you're from a different world, you might notice things they wouldn't." 

They all think he's smart because the other hims are smart, and that's the only reason they're keeping him around, and if he lets them know how dumb he is he will go back to the cell with the toilet in the same room and he doesn't want to live in a room with a toilet even if this world doesn't have any pollution.

"I want to stay cuddling you."

"Okay. We can do that." He smiles over at his Lev and adjusts the way he's holding Levva. 

Levva cuddles Sasha until Sasha seems bored and then eats a meal and then showers for five hours and then eats another meal and then sleeps.

The Levs are so excited to be working with each other that they almost forget to feel bad about how much worse they are than the other one.

Sasha cuddles Levva until Levva wants to stop, and then he goes and hangs out in the room where the Levs are working, and then he eats a meal and curls up next to Asher and reads. 

He does a lot of reading. 

The Marlo in this world isn't his Marlo, they have the same name but not the same face. He can't find any reference to a Z but maybe he goes by a different name publicly or something.