He's blushing like a fire hydrant that just confessed something dreadfully embarrassing under fire hydrant social norms. "Do you want . . . ?" Not being able to reciprocate kind of sucks, and so does not being able to form full sentences about it, but he can't think of any other situation he'd rather be in.

"...maybe if your FUK gets high enough you'll be able to get me off without touching it."

"Well, there's one way to find out." He starts kissing Aarons' face and neck and stroking his back, murmuring about how beautiful he his, how pretty, how elegant and sweet and delicious.

She throws her head back and bites her lip and-- and her boyfriend loves her and thinks she's beautiful--

He does, he does love her, he doesn't dare say it but he's making it pretty obvious, with his tone of voice and the way he holds her; it's like he's forgotten the entire rest of the universe to pay more attention to her every detail.

"Love you," she whispers, and finishes.

Did Aarons just say what Bruce thinks he said or was he just imagining it. Probably it was real. Bruce is full of warm happy glowing feelings either way. He has an armful of beautiful amazing brilliant human being and everything is just so great, what a great day to be alive. He intends to snuggle about it. He bets he can make snuggles comfortable even in this random brick-walled alley.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa wave of post-orgasm shame and guilt and horror and self-hatred whyyyyyyy is he wearing makeup why did he let Bruce know all of this why did he say "love you" why did the Erogame let him say "love you" the inevitable consequences of this are not ero

maybe if he just pretends it didn't happen it will go away

Bruce is not aware of any of that! He's too busy holding favorite person and wondering if he missed the moment to say "I love you too," what if he has and saying it now will make it sound fake, what if it is fake, isn't loving someone supposed to come with absolute certainty that you love them, Bruce is pretty sure he's constitutionally incapable of absolute certainty about anything, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

But also he really wants Aarons to know he loves him.

"Love you," he says (well, whispers), without the "too", as if it was a side remark apropos of nothing and therefore cannot have been awkwardly timed. Because that's totally how human communication works.

aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

+1 FUK for getting someone off without touching their genitals.

+1 LST for getting off without anyone touching your genitals.

+1 BOD for having sex in a place where people totally could have just walked up to you. (You're welcome.)

Quest available: Even Educated Fleas Do It

Convince ??? Aarons he loves you. 

Success: +2 SED, life satisfaction, +20,000 XP
Failure: 'Loneliness' status effect, loss of ??????

Points points awesome points oh no Aarons doesn't actually believe he loves him. The level of crushing disappointment that produces is some evidence that he genuinely loves Aarons, but apparently his own potential lyingness wasn't what he needed to worry about. Maybe Aarons is just also unsure and wasn't, like, actively lying to mess with him. He has no idea how to accept a quest conditional on the truth of a statement, so he just lets the pop-up hang and tries to hide how much worse he's suddenly feeling.

"I'm sorry."

Cautiously: "Sorry for what?"

"I don't--" and then, instead of managing to say any of the things he's thinking, he wraps his arms around his legs and starts crying.

Bruce notes in the back of his mind that this is not the behavior of someone who was callously manipulating him a minute ago, but that's really not important compared to oh no Aarons is crying.

Hug? Slow cautious hug in case that's not what he wants. He can't honestly say "It's okay" when he doesn't know what it is or whether he can fix it, but he can say, "Hey, I'm here, what do you need?"

"...you are really much much nicer than I deserve."

"Everyone deserves to have people be nice to them. And you in particular are awesome."

What he should do is tell Bruce the truth.

What he wants to do is lean into the hug and pretend that Bruce is his boyfriend and loves him and Lev is capable of loving him back. 

"...I'm kind of being an enormous asshole to you."

"Can you tell me in what way? I can't promise not to make you regret telling me but I can promise to try really hard not to."

"Well," he points out, "you love me, and I--"

"It's. Okay. If you don't love me back. We haven't been together for all that long even. It's kind of ridiculous for me to love you already, you're being the sensible one here really. Um. In my defense you are very good."

Bruce's words sure are at odds with how much he looks like a kicked puppy.

"I want to, I just can't. If the Erogame gave you a quest reward where I fell in love with you you should take it."

"Uh." Aarons was honest and Bruce should be honest too. "It did give me a quest. Asking me to convince you you love me. But I don't want you to believe you love me if you don't, that would be awful."

And then his brain catches up to what he just heard. Aarons wants to love him! Aarons maybe sort of consents to be mind-controlled into loving him! That is arguably even more intimate and beautiful than an actual declaration of love and he needs to hug him about it. Fortunately he is already hugging.

"That's a weirdly specific language choice!"