When Sasha's break starts her coworker hands her a drink; Sasha takes it and drinks it almost absentmindedly. Some kind of cherry vanilla thing. It's good. 

And then he looks up at the barista who's on break and realizes, suddenly, that she is the most beautiful girl in the world.

He stares at his textbook and bites his tongue. She's too pretty to talk to him. 

At some point during her break she looks up from her phone at the boy in the corner and — 

— something falls into place that she hadn't realized wasn't already in place until right now. 

She goes over to his table. 

He turns bright red. "Hi."

Oh no he's adorable. "Hi," and she's blushing too. 

"Uh. I'm Lev."

God, that is such a stupid thing to say, she's going to hate him--

"I'm Sasha. Can I sit here?" 

"Yeah!" Sasha is the prettiest name in the world and she's sitting next to him and everything is so good.

He clears off the electrical engineering textbooks; while he's moving their knees brush together and it feels like electricity.

So normally she would say something very flirty and maybe implying that the person she was talking to should take her home when her shift was over but instead what comes out of her mouth is "You're so pretty." 

He says, "Really?" in a tone of surprise--

And then immediately cringes at himself.

She'd like to hug him but that's weird she can't do that — "Yeah. Really." 

"You're really pretty too! But probably everyone tells you that."

She thinks he's pretty, she thinks he's pretty-- the corners of his mouth hurt from smiling--

"Thank you." She's so sincere about it. (He's so pretty oh god this is not fair —) "— can I hug you is that weird —" 

He reaches out and clumsily hugs her.

It's been a long time since anyone has touched him.

It hasn't been very long at all since someone touched her, but it's been a long time since she got a hug. 

She's holding onto Lev maybe a little bit tighter than one would usually hug a stranger in a coffeeshop. 

That's okay. He holds onto her very tightly too.

"Is your break over soon--"

"It is. But, um, my shift ends at six —" 

"Do you want to maybe uh talk or something after?" he mumbles into her shoulder.

What she wants is to go home with him but she can ask for that after they've talked or something. 

"Yes." 

"I can't wait," he says.

The most beautiful girl in the world!!!! Wants to talk to him!!!!! It's so good!!!!!

"Neither can I," she says, and means it. 

Her shift goes so slowly but Lev is there at the end of it. (Sasha's backpack, which she pulls from under the counter, is weirdly large and weirdly full.) 

He tries to concentrate on his grading, can't, opens up a notebook and starts writing incredibly bad poetry in praise of Sasha's beauty. (If Sasha's paying attention, she might see him tapping out iambic pentameter to make sure his sonnet has proper scansion.) 

"Hi!" he says at precisely 6:01 pm, and bounces.

Oh no that's adorable. (Of course she's paying attention.) 

"Hi! Um, the library will still be open for a while I think —" 

He wants to take her back to his place and hold her and touch her hair and fall asleep in her arms. 

"The library's great!" he says, and reaches out to hold her hand. "Are you a student?"

"I used to be but I'm not anymore." 

"You graduated, or--? I'm a grad student. Electrical engineering."

"No, I dropped out, I was really bad at school." 

He squeezes her hand. "That's all right. I bet the teachers sucked."

She shrugs. "Some of them did, some were fine and I just couldn't ever get my homework done or my papers in." 

"That happens sometimes when I teach. I try to help as much as I can-- point people to ADHD accommodations, give them alternate assignments, that kind of thing. But it's hard, the system isn't designed to let you teach all your students in the way they learn best."

Her hand is so warm. 

He's warm too. 

"You sound like a really good teacher." 

She thinks he's a good teacher!!!!!! He bounces.

"I try. Mostly you have to actually care about people learning things."

Awww. 

"And you do!" 

Is it weird to kiss his cheek probably it is but that is not going to stop her. 

He touches the place where she kissed his cheek and then kisses her cheek.

Maybe once they get to the library and find a place to sit she can kiss him for real this time. 

What an excellent idea. She tastes nice.

Maybe he can pull her into his lap and touch her hair and kiss her.

Probably they shouldn't make out here but once she's in his lap there can be cuddles. (It's been so long since she got cuddles.) 

Cuddles!

"What kind of books do you like?"

"I like sci fi and alternate fantasy a lot? Pretty much anything with created worlds." 

"Me too!" They have so much in common, which is probably because Sasha is literally the best person in the world. "I was reading a book about a world where potions don't exist." 

Ah. Yes. Sasha's least favorite subject. "Did it do anything interesting with the premise, or —?" 

"Lots of weird stuff." Sasha's hair is so soft. "Balding guys were considered the hottest because there weren't any hair regrowth potions so it was considered a sign of wealth and status to be balding? Sex work was legal because you didn't have to worry about people dosing trafficking victims with sex pollen to make them enthusiastic, and you could tell who really wanted to be there. People left bad relationships more quickly because they couldn't just dose themselves with raspberry sweet and start loving and trusting their partner no matter what. --It was mostly a romance."

"Sounds cool." Lev's hair is soft too. "Maybe I should read it sometime." 

"I could lend it to you. --Man, the world would be a better place without love potions. Or at least if you could notice that you were on love potions if someone covertly dosed you."

"God, same — if you could think about it then maybe it'd be different, but —" 

"But as it is you can never really be sure about whether your feelings for someone are real or because they slipped something into your food. And-- most of the time it's fine, right, most people aren't abusive, but-- it's still pretty fucked up."

"...yeah. It's really good that most people aren't like that." 

"--are you all right?"

She gets a handle on what her face is doing as quickly as she can. "Yeah, I'm fine." Stuff like this is definitely weird to talk about on a first date at the library. 

Lev is so warm and so soft. 

"At least I know I like you for real," he says. "Because you're amazing."

"Yeah. You're really good." 

"You're really good." There should be more kissing. "The book is back at my place-- or we could find it here if you want--"

"Mmmm. Your place sounds good." 

"--I mean, I don't want to be creepy or anything, I know we just met--"

"I've been wanting to ask." She kisses him on the tip of his nose and then stands up. 

Spending ten seconds not touching Sasha while she stands up is literally unbearable. Fortunately he can grab her hand right away.

"It's near campus-- sorry, it's going to be a mess, I didn't know someone was coming over-- are you going to need to eat something--"

"I don't mind messy but food is probably a good idea!" 

"We can get takeout if you're going to want to stay that long-- um, I don't want to make assumptions, if you wanna go that's fine, I just kind of live on takeout and boxed mac and cheese--"

"I want to stay as long as you want to have me," she says truthfully. 

"Be careful," he says, "I might just want to keep you."

(See, if he says it as a joke, then if she freaks out he can just say he was kidding.)

She doesn't freak out. (Maybe she should, but it's Lev, he's so good.) She smiles and squeezes his hand and kisses his cheek and lets him navigate. 

They can talk about books while they go to his house!

Lev likes science fiction and fantasy and comics, and he reads a lot, and his taste in fiction is best described as 'abominable.'

Awwwww. (Maybe she shouldn't read the potion book, then.) 

More importantly than that, though, there is an entire bed for cuddling on. 

There is!

(He kind of thought they would cuddle on the couch but he's not going to complain.)

The apartment is, as promised, incredibly messy: the floor is covered in food wrappers and graded papers, old shirts and fantasy novels, wiring diagrams and half-disassembled machines, Legos and hairbrushes. He has to shove a pile of papers and most of Neil Gaiman's Sandman off the bed before she can get in it. 

Aww!!!! 

Once they're in bed she flops directly onto Lev's shoulder and starts playing with his hair. 

"You're so good." Kiss. "You should tell me about what you like."

"— um. I like architecture, I would do a ton of weird crafty shit if I had money for materials which I don't, I used to go to bead stores and get earring hooks and charms and make my own earrings because I didn't like any of the ones my aunt wanted to get me —" 

"I should get you materials for weird crafty shit, I bet your earrings would look great."

Ooh. Sasha has ears. An important discovery. He should investigate this with his mouth.

She gasps and clings and makes a very appreciative sound. 

Then he will continue the investigation down her neck.

The appreciative sounds are definitely not getting any quieter! 

He'll just do that for a while, then, kissing her lips and her face and her jawline and her ears and her neck, biting a little bit.

(This part was always really nice, and it's even nicer to do it to Sasha, who makes him feel so warm and soft and-- loving, almost.)

She kisses him back, in between gasps and little whimpery sounds, kisses whatever parts of his face she can reach. 

Maybe they can just keep doing this, then, and he won't have to acknowledge any of his body below the neck.

After a number of minutes of this between two and ten, Sasha isn't really keeping track, she reaches down to take her shirt off — and she's done this a hundred times before but with Lev it feels different — 

He stops her.

"I don't. Really like sex. Can we just kiss?"

"Yeah." Affectionate nuzzle. "Yeah, we can." 

"I mean. I can eat you out if you want, I just."

She pulls back and looks at his face. "...not if you're making that face about it." 

"I... like making people feel nice?" he tries.

The stupid gross thing has opinions about Sasha being pressed close to him and she can probably feel them and he wishes it would not.

"You don't have to." She tries touching his hair again. "I don't want to make you feel like you have to." 

Mm. Hair-touching is nice.

"...I feel like I should just tell you. I-- haven't told anyone before but. Whenever I look at you I just feel so safe."

She makes a soft curious sound and doesn't take her hand away from his hair. 

"I have a paraphilia."

"....I'm pretty sure most people have at least one?" 

"Well. Not my exes, at any rate. --I can't get off unless I'm thinking about being a girl."

"Okay." She kisses Lev's forehead. "— that's really cute, is that a weird thing to think —" 

"I don't care if it's a weird thing to think." Sasha thinks his paraphilia is cute! This is because Sasha is literally the best person in the entire world and every new fact he finds out only makes this more obvious. "So I can like sex but only if someone is calling me a woman the whole time which... most women don't want to do... it's fine if you don't want to have sex with me if you know that, I just. Wanted to tell you. Because it seems like you wouldn't judge me."

"...I wonder what kind of noises you would make if I called you a pretty girl." 

The answer is a whimper.

Oh no, that's adorable. 

Sasha kisses him again and whispers "Prettiest girl." 

Now it's actually a moan and a profoundly stupid grin.

It's not stupid. It's perfect. Sasha's not going to stop. 

She's writhing around on the bed-- "Leia," she says, "call me Leia-- Sasha, you're so beautiful, you're so kind, I--"

"Leia," and her voice is very soft, "Leia, Leia, you're so good, Leia —" 

And then she gasps and clutches onto Sasha like she's drowning and there's a dark wet spot in the front of her pants.

"I love you —" Sasha kisses Lev Leia whatever and looks down and kisses Leia again. "...we should probably get you to the bathroom and cleaned up so that doesn't stain." 

"I love you!"

Moving sounds terrible. He doesn't want to move, he wants to hold Sasha.

"Okay you're cute but seriously, c'mon —" 

He pulls off his shirt and his pants and throws them on the floor. (All of his body hair has been carefully removed; his legs are as smooth as silk.)

"I can get new ones-- come on, I want to touch you--"

Yeah, okay, she's persuadable. 

(She hasn't had a bathroom it makes sense to shave in in ages but Lev is so soft —) 

Sasha has on too many clothes and should, instead, have fewer.

He is very good at unhooking bras one-handed without looking.

That's good, that's really good, as soon as her clothes are off she's in Lev's lap kissing him again. 

"I love you," he says, and touches her breasts gently, a little worshipfully. 

"I love you." Kiss. "Bite me?" 

"I don't want to hurt you."

"I like being bitten, though. It's not hurting me, not the bad kind." 

"Okay." He gingerly bites her shoulder, barely a brush of teeth against skin.

"Harder than that," and you can hear the way she's smiling, "you can leave a mark if you want —" 

Hesitantly, he bites down.

She gasps, very softly, and whimpers when his teeth sink in further, and clings to Lev. 

Oh, that's nice. It feels so unimaginably good to make her happy, better than anything else he's experienced in his entire life--

He kisses the spot he bit, bites down further up her neck, starts touching her breasts with his hands. 

Sasha makes a wide variety of sounds when she's bitten, none of them easy to transcribe, all of them very pleased. 

Mm. Maybe he should bite her and touch between her legs, then. 

He — definitely should do that — 

She isn't loud, but she does not stop making whimpery noises and clinging. 

This is the part of sex he likes even when people aren't calling him a girl, even when the person isn't ✨Sasha✨, and it's so much better when the sound of her voice calling him Leia is echoing in his head, when it's Sasha who's trembling under him, when he's doing everything right and making her so happy--

And she bites down on his shoulder when she comes, partly to muffle the sound she makes and partly because she can't not, and she — 

— loves him so much — 

And he pulls her on top of him and kisses her nose while laughing and says, "I love you so much."

"So much!" 

"It's so weird that we only met a couple hours ago, it feels like I've known you forever."

"Yeah." Sasha's head should be on Lev's shoulder now. "You're so good." 

He runs his hand down her side. "Every new thing I learn about you is even better than the last thing I learned."

"You're the sweetest. — I'm probably going to fall asleep on you pretty soon." 

"You should probably have some dinner first. We got distracted."

"Mm. Yeah, probably." 

Uncuddling is hard but he can make even this great a sacrifice for Sasha (✨Sasha✨), and then there is boxed mac and cheese with beef hot dogs. 

Uncuddling is extremely hard but she can and will make this sacrifice for food, and also to get a clearer look at Lev's face. 

He has shoulder-length curly brown hair and soft dark eyes and a big nose and he smiles a lot, although it is unclear how much of that is Sasha!

(It is, in fact, one hundred percent Sasha.)

"I don't have a lot to do tomorrow. I mean, I guess I have a lot to do because dissertation, but no one will notice if I ignore it for a week. Do you?"

"Usually I'd have work but my manager said she'd had to move shifts around for a thing and she'd text me if I had one and my phone hasn't buzzed, so no." 

"...I hope that doesn't make you low on money."

"...I mean, it does, but it'll get made up at some point in the next two weeks, mostly it means I'll have to work more on Thursday or something." 

"I can cover you for now if you need it."

💜!!!!!!!

"— you're paying for my food and giving me a place to stay already, though, you shouldn't have to —" 

"You're paying me back by smiling at me."

She's blushing furiously. "That's too cute, it's not fair." 

"See! There! You're doing it!" He pulls her close and kisses her and then he processes something she said. "...do you not have a place to stay?"

"...I can usually find somewhere, it isn't as bad as you're thinking —" 

"Being homeless is pretty fucking bad-- do you need help finding an apartment--"

"....I don't know. It'd be good but there's — other stuff too." 

"...do you want to tell me about it? You don't have to, I just--"

"I'm running away from someone and I'm worried a permanent address would make me easier to find and I haven't lived alone ever and I'm just generally scared of everything except you?" 

Sasha needs hugs. 

"I'll keep you safe, I promise-- do you think it'll help if you're not on the lease--"

She does indeed need hugs. "I don't know. I'm sorry. — I love you." 

"We don't have to figure it out right now." He kisses her forehead. "You can always sleep on my couch. No matter what."

She ducks her head. "Thank you," maybe a little worryingly sincere. 

He wraps his hand around hers and kisses the back of her hand. "And tomorrow we can do something fun. I bet you haven't done anything fun in a long time."

'Spending time with you was fun,' she wants to say. 

"Yeah," she says. "Before today it'd been a while." 

Awwwwwwww.

He kisses her forehead and then tragically has to extricate himself to go turn off the light so they can fall asleep.

Falling asleep on Lev is. Really, really good. 

(Feeling safe while she sleeps is really, really good.) 

He can make morning pancakes!

...He can attempt to make morning pancakes.

Sasha wakes up to the smell of something burning.

Oh no. 

"Hey! — uh, maybe I should do the cooking." 

"I was trying to surprise you!"

Several of the pancakes are practically edible.

"And it's adorable! But, in the future, it might be better to have someone who knows how to not make whatever mistake you made with these?" 

Kiss. "Or you could teach me how."

"I can!" 

Maybe they should start with the teaching right now, in fact. 

That sounds like an excellent plan. 

Cooking, it seems, is not Lev's strong point.

That's okay, Sasha's pretty good at it. 

"...Can I tell you my really dumb shameful secret?"

"Yeah. Course." 

"...I hate electrical engineering. Despise it. It bores me to tears. Every so often I remember that I'm going to get my PhD and stop teaching and have to do electrical engineering all day and then I think about throwing myself off a bridge."

Okay Lev needs hugs right now immediately. 

"Than why are you doing it?" 

"Immigrant parents. They care a lot about me being successful. And it's not really like I'm going to be happy either way, so..."

"— please don't spend your life on a career that makes you want to jump off a bridge just to think about." 

"Well. I don't know what else I'm going to do."

Sasha doesn't know what else Lev can do either but she does know how to hug him more and tighter and better. 

"--here, I'll show you."

Lev tugs Sasha into the bedroom.

She follows, and tries not to be too worried about whatever it is she's going to find there. 

Lev pulls out a large plastic box from under the bed!

Much of the box is filled with the accouterments of crossdressing: wigs and breastforms, panties and bras, dresses and miniskirts, stockings and makeup, shoes and jewelry. Lev's (Leia's?) taste runs towards the sexy, the skimpy, the glittery, and the bright pink; it is unclear whether he can assemble an entire outfit from his collection that neither clashes nor is so tacky that the average Vegas showgirl would turn it down. There's a small collection of dildos and buttplugs. 

And there are books. 

Books with titles like Personality Disorders and the Five-Factor Model of Personality, Third Edition, or Psychology And The Department Of Veterans Affairs: A Historical Analysis Of Training, Research, Practice, And Advocacy, or Critical Thinking About Psychology: Hidden Assumptions And Plausible Alternatives, or The Social Neuroscience Of Human–Animal Interaction. The titles are dry and universally about psychology; the books themselves have been clearly well-read and well-loved. The covers of some of them are falling off. 

She doesn't know what to say. 

"We need to get you better clothes than this" is obviously wrong, and besides that Lev (Leia?) is a grad student and Sasha's homeless. 

"....they look like good books," she tries. 

"That's a nice way to say 'they look really boring and your shameful dark secret is kind of dumb.'"

"I don't think I could get through them, but I'd like to hear you talk about them to me. And it doesn't look like something to be ashamed of but I'm assuming you have a reason, I'm not going to immediately assume things that are important to you are dumb." 

"Well. It's not like you can make much money, being a psychologist. --This is what I do, when I'm not working. I put on women's clothes and read about psychology and pretend I'm someone else."

She doesn't know what to do except hug Lev again. 

".....I still think you don't have to be ashamed of liking psychology."  

"...When I'm around you I don't feel like I have to be ashamed of anything."

"Good." 

"...It's okay, really. I'll get a job and save most of my money and then quit and get an apartment somewhere cheap and spend half my time writing books about psychology like Judith Rich Harris and half my time getting fucked in drag."

"....I'm glad 'psychology and getting fucked in drag' is somewhere in that plan, anyway." 

"It's in the rest of it too. Interspersed with my boring terrible job."

"That's good." Nuzzle. 

Maybe... there should be kisses.

Maybe there should. 

"I haven't been with a girl in a long time."

"And I've had a bunch of hookups in the last year or so," and holy hell is that an understatement, "but it's been a while since I dated a guy." 

"Me too." Kiss. "--I'm straight it's just. Complicated."

Kiss!! "I'm bi. It's a little complicated too but not very." 

"I've slept with way more guys than girls, it's just-- there are lots of guys who are into men in women's clothing and not a lot of women who are. And I can go to San Francisco and get on Grindr and line up three guys in a day to fuck me in panties and makeup while they're calling me a girl, and I don't think I met any girls who would do that before you."

....she doesn't know what to say about that either so she's going to try hairpetting. 

"Glad I met you, then." 

"Yeah." He looks at her with a soft expression. "It was nice though, I'll miss it."

"I'm happy to fuck you while you wear women's clothing and call you a pretty girl," she says, and kisses him again. 

"I meant I'll miss the men but that sounds awesome."

".....are you sure you're straight?" 

"...yes? I mean having sex with guys is hot at the time but I feel kind of weird and empty afterward."

"....some people just feel that way about casual sex but I don't think I've ever met a straight guy who would say 'I'll miss having sex with other guys.'" 

They should be on the bed cuddling.

"My kink is kind of sexist. Actually, really sexist. Having sex with guys is hot because it's a thing that girls would do and that's hot."

She thinks about it as she settles into his shoulder, and then kisses the patch of skin nearest her face and says "That is kind of hot, honestly." 

"I have a lot of fantasies like that. I fantasize about getting a manicure in a beauty salon, or having someone braid my hair, or being with other women in a locker room and belonging there, or knitting..."

(The ugly gross thing is having a reaction.)

"You can just knit, you know, knitting is for everyone. And I doubt the nail salon would turn away a customer, and your hair is long enough to braid if I try hard and believe in myself." 

"I don't really want to do things in front of people if I'm getting off on them. It feels creepy."

"....I don't think it's creepy to get your nails done.

And if, I don't know, I wore a really tight hair clip in public and it was pulling my hair the whole time, I dont think that would be creepy either unless I made it creepy, and people who wear cat ears aren't creepy unless they make it creepy, and I knew a girl who got a cake labeled eat me tattooed on her inner thigh and now she just goes around in public knowing that that tattoo is there and I don't think that's creepy either." 

"Maybe you can take me?"

"I'd love to take you." 

"You know those ASMR videos where a woman is whispering while she puts on your makeup?"

"....you're so cute." 

"I had a girlfriend who didn't like porn so I stopped using it and, well. Even once we broke up the ASMR videos are often better."

"Probably they look less like their skin is made of rubber and sound less like they're faking every noise they make, I'm not that surprised." She kisses him again. 

"And, you know, who wants their sexual fantasies to actually have sex in them? Not me."

Sasha leans on Lev and tries to think of a something to share that would feel symmetrical and runs into the problem that she doesn't so much have deliberate sexual fantasies anymore. 

"Maybe, like, five percent of my sexual fantasies have any actual sex in them. More if you count ones where sex presumably happened somewhere in the background, like the ones where I'm pregnant or it's my wedding day."

It's... weird to tell Sasha this. He's never told anyone, and he's known her for less than a day. But whenever he looks at her he knows she's a safe person to tell. She'd never judge him or freak out. He loves her so much.

"If you keep it up I'm going to run out of ways to tell you you're cute." 

"...I guess you probably don't have similar things because, you know. Real girls don't."

"....back when I had sexual fantasies at all they mostly involved me getting tied up and mind controlled, or alternately being a designated free-use person in a world where there were vampires and it was socially totally acceptable to pin me to a wall and eat my blood, or sometimes instead those things would happen to a fictional character I liked, sometimes they had sex in them but just as often they didn't." 

"You're amazing. Are you sure you're real."

"Mind control and vampires aren't even that weird as kinks! There's an entire literary subgenre about this!" 

"Most women don't! --Do you not have sexual fantasies anymore?"

"I am pretty sure that actually most women do —" 

— abruptly her face crumples. "Not really, no." 

Hug. "Are you all right? --I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me anything-- how can I help--"

".......so a year ago I ran away from an abusive relationship and have been hooking up with people to use their beds since then and it has not been great but it's pretty much fine and way better than I was before it just doesn't really leave me with a ton of. Time. Or privacy or for that matter leftover sex drive." 

"I'm so sorry. That he hurt you and that you had to-- I'm so sorry--"

"She. That she hurt me." 

She's just going to bury her face deeper in Lev. 

"Oh. --I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed, I. Sorry."

"It's fine, you didn't know." 

Something occurs to him.

"You don't have to have sex with me to stay here. Just. So you know."

"I do know. You wouldn't." 

"Never. Never ever. And you don't have to-- put up with my stuff-- I love you, I want to take care of you and let you be happy, it's the most important thing in the world--"

"Lev, I'm not putting up with anything, except possibly burned pancakes which are totally worth it. I love you." 

"You can put up with all kinds of burned things! Also I throw up on roller coasters and you might ever have to talk to my parents, just so you know."

"Is there something I can do to... help, I don't know anything about helping people who have been abused--"

"You're offering me a place to stay where I won't have to worry about being found. You are helping. — if you want to help more you can cuddle me." 

Well, he's already doing that.

"I want to help you until there's nothing else I can do to help you more. Because you're really important."

She nods. 

What do you say, when someone has just declared that protecting you is the most important thing in the world? 

Lev kisses her.

"You're so good."

"You're so good." 

"We can talk about it. If you want. Or we can talk about what you want to do today. --I just want you to smile at me a lot."

That gets a smile! 

"We can talk about it, I'm never sure when or how much to share so I kind of default to not and that's probably not great for me." 

"Well. I want to know everything about you."

"Everything is a lot of things. — I think it'd be easier to answer questions, probably?" 

"Are there things I should be-- sensitive of? That might remind you of it?"

"Most of the things that set me off are, like — politics stuff? She had a lot of 'oh, women could never hurt each other, no man will ever love you like a woman can, bi women are attracted to women because women are great and men because we make bad decisions,' and long story short I stay miles away from lesbian tumblr now. Uh. She put nutella in everything and now I can't eat hazelnuts." 

"Uh. I don't... really do politics... but I do basically think women are better. Sorry. I can like. Not bring it up."

"...not bringing it up is probably fine. I love you." 

"I mean everyone would be a girl if they could."

"I'm...... pretty sure they would not? I specifically spent a good deal of my adolescence wishing to be something else?" 

"...I am worried that if I talk about this it would make you sad."

She considers this. 

"...if it's making me sad I will tell you and we can stop? Right now I'm just confused." 

"Women are prettier and they have softer skin and they smell nicer and they get to wear better clothes. They can have multiple orgasms. They can carry babies and give birth to them and feed them from their own bodies. On average-- like, there are exceptions, obviously, but most of the time-- they're kinder and more in touch with their feelings and they have more empathy. They are less violent and they take fewer risks and get in fewer accidents. And they usually aren't as-- gross, sexually, as men like me are, and it would be better to be like that. And if they were gross like me then they would get to be slutty girls and-- that's just a really good thing to get to be. Most men would want to be really slutty girls, if they could. Mostly really slutty lesbians."

"Girls are pretty and guys are also pretty. Guys are taller and you get to put your head on their chest and it's a good feeling. Men don't have to worry about getting pregnant, ever. Men are allowed to take more risks and do more things and they don't  have to worry as much about stepping on toes, and nobody tells a boy to stop sitting that way, someone might try to look at your underwear. Girls are just as capable of being hurtful and cruel as any boy, the girls I knew were crueller, and what's more they were cruel on purpose and not just because they didn't think about it. 

Also I didn't want to be a boy I wanted to be a selkie, except for the times when I wanted to be an amorphous cloud of fireflies." 

"I always just wanted to be a girl."

She holds Lev closer. "....I don't think that's as common as you think it is. I'm sorry you're in a body you don't like." 

"...Sorry, we were going to talk about you and we wound up talking about my fetishes again." He doesn't mention that Faye would have called it male self-centered ness. It doesn't seem likely to help. "What... did she do to you? If that's not too triggering."

"...um." 

Yeah, okay, she really should talk about this. And Lev is safe and warm and good. 

"I... got hit a lot, sometimes when I wanted to get hit and sometimes when I didn't, and she'd say something about how I like getting hit sometimes, how was she supposed to know — I had a tracker app in my phone, she'd flip her shit and hit me and then say she just got so worried and I'd scared her and cry and then I'd be comforting her even though — uh, there was kind of a lot more sex than I would have said yes to if saying no didn't get me hurt, most of it wasn't technically rape but —" 

She can feel herself detaching; she cuts herself off. 

"If you're saying yes because no would get you hurt it's rape. Actually."

"I know it is, I said technically for a reason, which is that legally nothing would happen." 

"Because the legal system sucks." He kisses her hair.

Hair kisses are nice. "Sentences with technically in them don't feel as immediate." 

"That's fair. I love you." More hair kisses. "You were really uncomfortable about potions before. Was it--"

"Yeah. It was." 

"Oh god that's so awful."

"Pretty sure I would have loved her anyway. At least in the beginning." 

Hugs. "Still. It's. For me it would be the worst thing, to have someone invade my.mind so I'd have to love them no matter how much they hurt me. And not to be able to think around it... My mind is mine. Someone making it so I can't think about things is the scariest thing I can imagine."

Hugs. And very gently petting Lev's hair. "Yeah. All of that." 

"At least I know I love you for real."

"Yeah," and she nuzzles into his shoulder. "Love you so much." 

"Love you so much too. --I am tempted to spend all of today cuddling with you in bed and telling you how much I love you."

"We can do that! — with breaks for food, and also movies." 

"I'll warn you that I talk way too much during movies."

"Good, so do I." 

"What's your favorite movie?"

"I like the Nutcracker parts of Fantasia, and I like Howl's Moving Castle, and I like The Royal Tenenbaums, and I don't like Star Wars." 

"It's a good thing I love you or I'd break up with you for that comment about Star Wars."

Howl's Moving Castle!

"I didn't say it was bad, I just said I don't like it!" 

Howl's Moving Castle! 

As promised, he talks a lot during movies. 

As not at all promised, about fifteen minutes in he starts kissing her neck and nibbling it a little bit.

She gasps and shivers and tilts her head so he has more skin within reach and whimpers when he finds somewhere especially sensitive. 

Mm. Maybe he should touch her breasts then. 

(Howl's Moving Castle keeps playing, mostly ignored.)

The gasping and shivering doesn't stop; she whimpers louder, squirms in Lev's lap. 

"You're so beautiful," he says into her neck, "I just can't stop touching you."

He kisses down her collarbone and to her breasts.

Her hands fall to the back of his head; her fingers curl in his hair — she stops herself from pulling more than a little — 

He reaches up for her hair and does not stop himself from pulling more than a little. He keeps licking gently.

Eventually he says, "sometime would you want to-- see me in makeup, or panties, or a skirt--"

"Ah — yes, please — don't stop —" 

He's not sure if that is an actual yes or a "just keep doing the thing I want you to do" yes but either way he is definitely capable of following instructions. Especially instructions that involve putting Sasha's breasts into his mouth. Those are really good instructions.

They're the best instructions. 

(Sasha can't come just from this — but she can get very, very close —) 

Lev doesn't know that she can't come from it, but he also doesn't know that she has an orgasm denial kink, so it works out okay.

What if he tries biting. 

This is an experiment. 

It's an extremely successful experiment, assuming that what he wanted was for her back to arch and for her to make a long string of sounds she'd be embarassed by if she could hear them.

Hm. Replication is important to make sure your experiment has validity.

Oh, it replicates — and it'll keep, on, replicating, until Sasha stops being able to think and puts a hand between her legs, at which point the variables are hopelessly confounded. 

Lev moves her hand away and then kisses down her stomach, pauses at her cunt, and then starts kissing her thighs.

"You're so good," and her hands go right back into his hair. 

He begins to kiss and lick her cunt.

He is really really good at eating girls out, the kind of skill you get from having multiple years-long relationships in which you hoped that if you gave your girlfriend enough orgasms she would forget about your dick existing.

At this point he doesn't have to be good at it. 

Well, it's very flattering either way.

Mmm. Good. 

"Do you want," she says once she's back on Earth. 

"I could keep going," he suggests.

"I'm sure you could but that's not what I meant." 

"I don't... really... like people touching my dick? So normally when I have sex with girls I kiss them and touch them and make them come as much as they want and then we are done."

"Okay," she says, and then pulls Lev up to her face for kissing. "Then we can cuddle?" 

Cuddles!

He is really hard. Possibly Sasha will just ignore this.

He said he didn't want to be touched; what else would Sasha do? 

He keeps almost touching her breasts and then thinking better of it because she is done even if he is not.

He also makes little hissing noises whenever she brushes against his dick.

"You can keep touching if you want," she says after the third time he pulls away. "'S nice." 

Then he will definitely keep doing that.

(He wants-- but sex is supposed to be about other people, and anyway he's kind of gross, and he loves Sasha so much and he wants to make her so happy and the best way to do that is not to bother her with all his disgusting perverted stuff--)

(Maybe they can get a strapon, and he can fuck her, and for her it would be practically the same anyway except that it never got soft awkwardly after two minutes, and she wouldn't have to think about why he liked it.)

"I like how soft your skin is," she says, very quietly. 

He gasps. 

"I like how soft your skin is, and I like how gentle you are with me, and I meant what I said about wanting to see you in a skirt." 

"--oh-- love you--"

He looks up at her with such an expression of utter gratitude.

"I love you. Love you so much." 

She wants to see him in a skirt-- he can't stop smiling-- he cuddles her close and kisses her and touches her breasts and bites her shoulder and tries not to think about how much the horrible thing really wants to be touched--

She gasps and lets herself be pulled closer and — she's not touching his dick on purpose but sometimes her thigh will rub against it and she doesn't pull away from Lev —

He makes little whimpers whenever she does and tries to just think about Sasha, about her skin and her smell and the sounds she makes and her eyes and how much he loves her and nothing about what is going on with their lower bodies.

"I have the best girlfriend," she says, at least half to see how Lev reacts. 

She whimpers and-- can't quite stop her hips from grinding against Sasha's thigh--

"Good girl," kiss, "best girlfriend, you're so pretty you're so good —" 

Whimper whimper whimper.

Maybe. Maybe Sasha should be on top of her.

Maybe Sasha should be on top of her. 

Grinding against her is. Really nice. 

"Keep talking?"

Yeah, she can do that — "Leia, Leia you're so pretty, you're so good, you're so sweet to me I love you so much, I'm so lucky —" 

"Do you want to-- see me dressed up--"

"I'd love to." 

When she looks up at Sasha it seems realistic that Sasha would look at her in a dress and makeup and think she's beautiful.

Plausibly the blood flow downward is biasing this belief somewhat but she has a hard time caring.

The smile and the way Sasha's whole face goes soft when she looks at Leia can't hurt, though. 

She grinds up against Sasha, kisses her, and gasps into her mouth.

"Good girl — my good girl — fuck you're gorgeous — 

— you have such a pretty clit —" 

That's too hot to make words.

Please accept this facial expression instead.

It's a very good facial expression. 

Maybe Sasha should rub her thigh against Leia's clit just a little more. 

She throws her head back.

"Yes-- please--"

She can do that more. 

She will do that more, won't stop talking, even though she's only halfway aware of the words coming out of her mouth. 

"Yours, yours, yours," she says, "your girlfriend, your Leia--"

"My Leia, your Sasha, my — ah —" 

Oh god she's so close she wants this so much she loves her Sasha so much-- she whispers incoherent words of praise into Sasha's hair--

Sasha kisses Leia's neck and reaches down and rubs her finger in little circles over the head of Leia's dick, as much like she'd touch her own clit as she can manage. 

Oh, that's--

--it's her clit, it's her girlfriend touching her clit, and it's real, she doesn't have to run a story in her head about what she wishes was happening, she's not going to feel sad and cold and alone afterwards, she's a girl and she's sleeping with her girlfriend and then afterward they will snuggle and she's so warm and happy and loved--

"I love you," very soft, she doesn't stop moving, "I love you, I love you, my sweet girl —" 

"--oh," she says, and for the first time in her life comes while having her dick touched by someone else.

Sasha licks her hand off — it's Leia, she'd have said if Sasha might catch anything, and she can't look at Leia's face and not feel safe — and curls up with her head on Leia's shoulder. 

"Good?" 

"Love you. I've never--" She He rests his head on Sasha's chest. "I've come with people before but. When I was jerking off. Or when they were inside me."

"...I'm honored." Nuzzle. 

"Normally I don't like having it touched at all, it's. Gross."

"Nothing about you is gross. But I can get why you wouldn't want anyone to touch it anyway." 

"...You do?"

"...yeah? Dysphoria sucks." 

"...what."

"...you know, when your brain's idea of what your body is supposed to look like and the physical arrangement of your flesh don't match up? It's awful, I had it through all of high school and I didn't want anyone to touch me or look at me either, it makes sense that you wouldn't like having people touch the parts that don't feel like you're supposed to have them." 

"...I'm not trans."

"You don't have to be. But — you like imagining yourself as a girl more than you like sex, you relaxed when I called you your girl name, you relaxed when I called you my girlfriend, I've never seen you look as happy as when I was calling you a girl, and you really clearly have physical dysphoria about your genitals, are you sure." 

"I'm not a woman trapped in a man's body. I played with boy toys as a kid and I have male interests and I like casual sex and I'm argumentative as fuck. Nothing about me is like a woman."

".....so what you're saying is that girls don't play with boy toys or argue or have male interests or like casual sex? Because as someone who as a kid got yelled at for climbing trees in dresses that might rip and argued with all my teachers and slept around, I think I'd disagree with you." 

"Unusually masculine women exist, especially if they're attracted to women, but that does not mean that some random straight man with a fetish is a woman."

"......Leia." 

"What?"

"Mostly I just wanted to see if you'd go all soft and smiley when I said it. And you did." 

"If I'm an anything I'm a man trapped in a man's body."

"Then I want you to be un-trapped and in a body you like." 

Snuggle.

"...I've thought about going to Thailand. They have surgeons there who'll give a vaginoplasty to anyone with the money. But. I didn't want to give up on getting a girlfriend ever."

"There are girls who'd like that. — I do mean me but I don't just mean me, I mean it when I say girls plural." 

"Are you sure? It might be just you. I've never met anyone else like you."

"Super sure. I haven't talked to Gwen in a while but if her first response weren't 'oh cool how do you feel about getting fucked with a strap on shaped like a tentacle' I would eat a hat." 

"...I'm not sure I want that!"

"So we'll find you a girlfriend who likes people with vaginas and has zero investment in weirdly shaped strap ons. Somewhere in this whole wide world there must be one. Or somewhere in this room, if you don't feel like being ambitious." 

"I love you so much!" Kiss. 

"...I don't want to do fetish things in public. It's creepy."

"....I'm not sure I think it is creepy but obviously im not going to drag you into doing fetish things, that would be awful." 

"But. You can call me a girl in private. If you want to. You don't have to, it's just. You seemed to like it? And you can. If you want to. It'll just kind of make me want to have sex with you a lot."

"I still don't have that much sex drive but you make the best faces when I do it so I'm probably not going to stop." 

"I can jerk off. --I used to think I didn't have much of a sex drive but uh. You're really pretty."

"Thank you." 

Maybe... they should be snuggling again. 

Snuggles. Best girlfriend.

Maybe they should try to finish Howl's Moving Castle.

Yeah. And actually watch it this time.