“Oh. Yeah. That... makes sense.” He shuffles a bit, considering. “Do you want a hug?”

"...I wasn't hugging you out of pure altruism. But, uh. Yes."

Oh good more hug!

More hug!

A kind of unrealistic amount of self-control exercised in not whimpering unprofessionally or breaking into tears!

Martin is ALSO not doing these things. They are both being very impressive today.

Martin is pretty sure that none of this is acceptable workplace conduct, especially from his boss, but Lev is very very soft and good and he can’t really bring himself to care. 

"...probably I should go back to learning about library science," he says eventually.

Martin unhugs. “Right! Right, yeah.”

And Lev does NOTHING BUT LIBRARY SCIENCE for the rest of the day.

Martin reads more of the book Lev gave him, but after a while his attention starts to wander. “I’m going to look through some old statements, do some follow up?”

He opens his laptop, makes a valiant effort to do this for about five minutes, and then opens up a new tab and googles “Asher Kane”.

The first result is actually Google wanting to know if he meant to look on Google Scholar for Asher Kane's papers, "Well-posedness in Gevrey function space for the three-dimensional Prandtl equations" and "Global Solution for the Spatially Inhomogeneous Non-cutoff Kac Equation."

The second, third, and fourth results are various glowing reviews of Asher Kane's ballet performances, with headlines like "meditative focus and fiendishly exposed balances show off company's strength, finesse."

The fifth result is actually Google wanting to know if he meant to look on YouTube for Asher Kane's performances. The stills show a person doing things that really should not be possible if they were not capable of levitation. 

The sixth result is Asher Kane's obituary.

The seventh result is an announcement that Asher Kane won the Emerging Poet Prize for new poets. 

The eighth result is his Instagram. 

...He is pretty sure that some of these are the wrong Asher Kane. The obituary is almost definitely the right one; the Instagram will at least give him an idea of which one is the right Asher. He clicks on the Instagram. 

The Instagram almost certainly belongs to Dancer Asher Kane, judging by the number of videos of him with his leg over his head spinning on one foot, or leaping in the air, or similar. Dancer Asher Kane was also Lev's boyfriend, as there is a video of him tossing a laughing Lev in the air and catching him. 

Asher Kane posted a lot of shirtless gym selfies, from which Martin can learn that Asher has enough muscle definition that you could use him as a teaching tool for an anatomy class. Asher also went to quite a lot of parties and nightclubs and events with a variety of extremely fashionable and attractive people. Both of those pictures usually have dozens of comments. In defiance of all concerns for his personal safety, Asher Kane attached strings to something, lit it on fire, and spun it around in circles, somehow without hitting himself in the face and causing third-degree burns. 

Lev isn't in any of those pictures. There's one picture of him sleeping on what must be Asher's thigh, and another picture of him reading a book, but either Lev didn't go to parties or he was very camera-shy or both. 

Asher has tagged another Instagram account, knowledge-is-prediction, in a lot of extremely sentimental pictures-- ones with sentiments like "isn't it amazing how people can feel like home" and "I tried counting the freckles on your skin but lost count every time because I found constellations on your body" or "I find pieces of you in every song that I listen to." knowledge-is-prediction comments on these with 🙄 or ❤️ or sometimes, when the spirit particularly moved him, ❤️🙄.

Asher Kane went to Burning Man! Here he is next to a Tesla coil. Here he is next to a giant sculpture of a psychedelic lion. Here he is spinning the fire things again. Here he is grinning in a floofy skirt. Here he is in the orgy tent. Here he is with one arm around an excessively handsome naked man and one arm around an excessively beautiful woman who has misplaced her shirt. 

knowledge-is-prediction has commented on every single one of the Burning Man pictures with sentiments like "I don't have playa foot" and "my tent did not go cartwheeling down the playa like a tumbleweed. I in fact am currently staying in an apartment building. With air conditioning" and "I was not sexually harassed by a naked woman rolling on molly" and "I went out and bought food. With money. As we normally do in a capitalist society which takes advantage of division of labor and gains from trade."

Okay. This is.... fine. Martin should really not be feeling jealous of Lev’s boyfriend who is dead, who Lev is mourning.

(AAAAAAAAAAA.)

He should get back to work. Instead, he clicks on knowledge-is-prediction. 

knowledge-is-prediction is Lev! He doesn't post on Instagram. He seems to exclusively exist to comment on Asher's posts. 

...aw. That’s... really cute, actually. 

On a whim, he goes back a few pages, clicks on the announcement of Asher Kane winning the Emerging Poet Prize. 

That sure is a picture of the same Asher Kane!

The poem is, unfortunately, very very good. 

Of course it is. At least he got a good poem out of it? 

(Ugh. He should really really not be this jealous of someone who is dead.)

He closes the tab and goes back to researching the statement, trying very hard not to think too much about Asher Kane and his muscles and his friends and his poetry and Lev sleeping on his thigh and okay maybe he’s not doing a very good job of not thinking about it. 

Lev is talking to the introduction to library science textbook. Mostly "no!" and "really?" and "huh" and occasionally frantic scribbling.

(He could check if the Asher Kane who did math is also the same Asher Kane. Probably the obituary would say.)

After a while longer of trying to work, he opens up the tab again to read Asher’s obituary. 

Asher Kane was born at such-and-such a place and disappeared a few months before the publication of this obituary! He is presumed dead. He was a dancer for this company and this company and this company and this company and received these awards and honors for the excellence of his dancing. In his spare time he wrote poetry and published two papers about mathematics. He was about to retire and had been accepted to the London School of Economics, where he planned to study Econometrics and Mathematical Economics. He is survived by his parents and his fiance Lev Aarons. In lieu of flowers please donate to this charity that does research on public health interventions in the developing world. 

Augh. Is Asher actually perfect. ...Except for the being disappeared-presumed-dead, but still. 

(And he was Lev’s fiancé.)

The day passes very, very slowly for Martin.

Lev gets in a groove on studying library science and winds up falling asleep in the office on top of his textbook.

Fortunately for him, his textbook was not owned by Leitner at any point.

...that’s really cute. 

Martin debates on whether or not to wake him up, ends up tucking a blanket around him before leaving. 

The first person to come in the next day for work is Tim, who seems to at least be sympathetic. “Good morning, boss! Rough night?”

"Grrrarrrgh," Lev says eloquently.