He falls into a spiral galaxy about fifty times as large as he is, except the space between the stars is for some reason green.

The stars attach themselves to him until he is quite covered, and then explode.

Okay, yup, he's super dead, nobody knows what the moment of going to Hell is like but this is definitely not him landing unharmed at the bottom of the hole. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Bruce falls through a well and continues to fall up for another thirty seconds before gravity suddenly remembered how it was supposed to work and made him fall flat on his butt.

He is in the middle of an incredibly beautiful forest:

There are no signs of any humans.

This . . . is not everlasting fire, so relative to expectations it is the best surprise he has ever gotten. He sits very still for a while for fear that the non-fireyness of the situation will change if he does anything to it, but eventually curiosity gets the better of him and he stands up and starts walking.

A mouse wearing a shirt and trousers climbs down from the tree and chirps at him. 

Possibly he did land alive at the bottom of the sinkhole, just on his head. He really hopes so. "Hello," he says to the mouse, because there's no scenario he's aware of where that's likely to be worse than not saying it. Then he tries using prestidigitation to change the color of his watch strap, since if it works that's a little evidence that he's alive.

The watch strap changes color!

...The mouse makes a frightened noise and runs back up the tree.

"Sorry? I didn't mean to startle you." He really wants to know what the fuck, so he'll wait a bit to see if the mouse is going to come back and explain before he keeps walking. 

The mouse continues to stay up in the tree.

Okay, he'll just keep walking in his randomly chosen direction, then.

He worries for a bit that the mouse is going to tell on him to his parents about the magic and turns his watch strap back to hide the evidence, then realizes that that is not any of his top three problems and is probably just more evidence that he has lost all his marbles and the bag they came in. 

This forest looks potentially bigger than the one he was in earlier, and that actually might be one of his top three problems if it turns out to be big enough. 

The woods open up into a glade, and there's a curlyhaired boy lying on his stomach reading a book and taking notes in a notebook. He occasionally reaches over to pluck a berry off a nearby bush and eat it. 

Bruce stays hidden behind a tree for a while, watching. On the one hand, it doesn't seem too unlikely that the boy is a demon, given that he's in the middle of something very weird happening, and Bruce would really rather not interact with any unfamiliar demons. On the other hand, he looks like a normal human, and not a particularly dangerous one. And it's not as if he has any better ideas for finding out where he is. Possible doom or certain confusion, possible doom or certain confusion . . . 

Eventually Bruce steps out from behind the tree and says a very quiet "Hello?"

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

The boy looks around desperately for an escape, fails to find one, and says back "hello."

"I'm sorry to bother you but can you tell me where I am? I'm very lost."

The boy does not look any less uncomfortable. 

"You're in Riisitunturi Forest."

"That's not in Iowa, is it." At least it sounds more like a human name than an Infernal one; Infernal has fewer vowels.

"It's in Weselton. I don't know of an Iowa. --Uh, sorry about the weird question, but did you just fall through a well?"

"I fell in a sinkhole. Is that . . . common?"

The boy breaks into a grin. "You're from a different world! What is the government like there? Do you have a king or a parliament or a council or what? What kinds of catastrophic weather do you get? Do you have one calendar or lots of different calendars? Can you mass-produce your spells or magic items?"

"--uh, sorry."

"Different world? Wow, I thought that only happened in stories." He sure hopes that's it, it would beat the shit out of being dead or concussed. "Uh, we have a President but some places have kings or parliaments, we have earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes and firestorms and tidal waves and, what else, volcanic eruptions, and one calendar--it's the year of our Lord 2019." Better pretend to have forgotten that last one just in case.

Bounce bounce. "I'm going to make first contact with a new world!"

"--sorry. I'm Kaleva, Duke of Weselton. This is Auradon."

Probably a demon would not bounce like that. That is some very human bouncing. "It's pretty exciting! Except I guess if this is a new world I'm supposed to save you all and I'm a really bad evangelist. Maybe I'm just supposed to get you in touch with people back home who are better at it." Or maybe this is the kind of story where he gets saved himself, but if he's supposed to be saving them then admitting he isn't saved isn't going to help so he had better not mention it. 

"Save us from what? All the bad people are on the Isle of the Lost. How do you know you're supposed to save us if you didn't know you could go to other worlds?"

Oh dear, he's doing this all out of order. "Well, have you heard the good news about Jesus Christ?"

"...no...? I think they worship him in France."

"And they haven't spread His Word to all corners of the earth? I guess I don't know what year it is here, maybe they haven't had time yet." But also theologians have been debating the question of whether, if multiple worlds exist, Jesus was incarnated in all of them, since someone first came up with the concept, and now he knows the answer!

"Uh, it's the year 22? Since the founding of Auradon."

"Wow, young country. Though I meant how long has it been since Jesus died and rose from the dead."

"Uh, maybe seventeen hundred years? Or something like that."

"That's odd. The Gospel had definitely made it to at least half the world by then, in my history. Probably I should learn more about this world before I try to guess what the problem is." He really hopes he's saying that because it's actually the sensible thing to do and not because he can't face the thought of all the people who must be dying unsaved here.

"I think the problem is that before twenty-two years ago any time someone tried to cross from one country to another they might run into a fairy that turns them into a frog or curses them with eternal sleep or something."

"Well, that would do it. Uh, bit of a language confusion, are fairies servants of God who rebelled against him? I guess maybe you wouldn't know since you don't know about Jesus either."

"...no? They just sort of spontaneously happen. --Not all fairies are bad, the King's most trusted advisor is a fairy, but they all care about... random things? Some fairies care a lot about hospitality, some fairies like dancing, some fairies are into one particular river, some fairies are just trying to be as evil as possible..."

"That really sounds like demons. Uh, except for some of them being good. But like I said, I don't know enough." Even if he was willing to admit to knowing one, he isn't sure that one is actually friendly and not just more interested in DnD than in hurting people.

"Different worlds have different species. There's all kinds of weirdness in Wonderland. Neverland has fairies but they're six inches tall and die when you say the opposite of 'I believe in fairies' and don't curse people for not inviting them to their christening. And Earth has giant dragons made of metal that people ride around in."

"Wow, that's a lot of worlds. Mine is also called Earth, which is confusing, and we don't have dragons--unless that's an analogy for airplanes; we have airplanes."

"Prince Edward was very sure they were dragons and not airplanes. --Auradon does have airplanes."

"Huh. There's prophesied to be a dragon in my world eventually, but none right now. How did it come to be safe to get between countries? I assume it's either a cause or an effect of the founding of Auradon."

"King Beast and Fairy Godmother invented the anti-magic field. They put the fairies in the anti-magic field and transported them, along with all the other villains, to the Isle of the Lost. So now it's safe to travel and the only fairies you're going to run into are ones where it is very well-documented how you anger them and it's easy to avoid doing that."

"Huh. Clever of them. So, does that mean magic is a well-known thing here? If we have magic outside of stories it's not common knowledge." That's technically true, even.

"Yeah! Lots of species can do it-- fairies, trolls, mermaids, gods... And humans too, if they're descended from fairies. Technically I guess all Auradonian humans can do magic, because we wake up animals that we're around. And of course everyone can do true love magic."

"That is so many kinds of magic and I want to learn about all of them!" Yes, they're probably all evil, but he is already damned and can't get any damneder, and he is going to get as much interesting knowledge as he can while he's alive.

Kaleva is noticeably relaxing as the strange person from the other world seems to want him to chatter at them about things. 

"Well, if animals are around an Auradonian human, they become sapient. It's a big problem because people used to not know, so they would eat sapient animals' meat or poison them or all kinds of horrible things like that. And if you truly love someone-- a family member or your one true love-- and you're truly desperate and need something for their sake and not your own, you can basically do anything. Break curses, end famines, heal the sick, even bring back the dead."

"Oh wow, that's really different." And extremely reassuring, actually, because raising the dead with the power of love sounds way more like divine miracles than demonic witchcraft. "So does everyone eat only plants, then, if farm animals turn into people?"

"Nope," Kaleva says. "King Beast ordered that all meat animals be raised in intensive confinement so they don't interact with humans and become sapient. Milk and eggs of course you can just get from consenting animals."

"That's--better than what my world does, I guess, because we do that for milk and eggs too, and it's definitely better than eating people." It's still kind of sad, though. He knows man was given dominion over the beasts of the field, but he would still rather not kill and eat them when plants are right there.

"...you don't think we should hurt nonsapient animals?"

"I mean, people need to eat. But it would be nicer if nobody had to kill animals for it." Shrug. "Some people think that in the garden of Eden there was no death at all and even lions ate plants. Oh, hey, did this world have a garden of Eden too, or were humans created somewhere else?"

"I have never heard of a garden of Eden. I don't think anyone knows how humans came to be. When the gods and the fairies started existing we were already here."

"Huh. Maybe the French have a Bible that explains it. What are . . . the things you call gods . . . like?"

"Well, there's twelve gods, and they live on Mount Olympus and Zeus throws lightning at people when he's mad. One of the gods was Hades and he ran the afterlife, but we put him in the Isle of the Lost because he's evil. Now the Underworld is just like Auradon, except there's more people and you can't die or have kids obviously."

"The Underworld--it's all one place? Not a separate Heaven and Hell? Do the Christians in France believe that too?" That would be an incredible relief, if it's true and not some pagan misconception. He's been assuming that humans from all worlds went to the same Heaven and Hell when they died, or possibly to separate but identical ones with the same God supervising all of them. But if the nature of the afterlife is different, maybe original sin and salvation are different here too? It's a fascinating question even apart from how there might not be thousands or millions of local people destined for Hell.

"I don't know," Kaleva says. "Religion's never been my strong suit. Do you want to go back to my castle and look it up?"

"Okay--wait, you have a castle?" Oh no, a rich and/or government person. At least he hasn't been acting the way Bruce would expect people who live in castles to act.

"Um. Yes? I'm Kaleva, Duke of Weselton."

Oh shiiiiit he already said that and Bruce was freaking out to hard to process the "Duke" bit and now he has offended a powerful person and also made himself look like an idiot. "Sorry, um, your grace?" He really hopes dukes are your grace in this world; he isn't even totally sure he has that right about his own world. (He is unconsciously trying to make himself look smaller.)

Kaleva also has an extremely uncomfortable face and is trying to make himself look smaller. "It's fine, uh, sorry."

"Anyway. It would--be very nice of you to show me your castle?" It occurs to him that he has no idea where he's going to sleep tonight or for that matter where his next meal is coming from, but he is going to put that question off as long as possible.

"Okay," Kaleva says. "Um. Yeah. Okay. It's, uh, this way."

He stands up, looks briefly yet longingly at the berries, decides that is Probably Not What A Duke Would Do, and starts walking in a direction.

Bruce follows. After a bit he gets over his nerves enough to look at the otherworldly scenery.

It continues to be a very beautiful forest full of pine and fir and birch trees. Bruce eventually starts to see houses, and it gradually turns from a forest with occasional houses to a city with occasional forests. The city is brightly colored with widely spaced streets and resembles a medieval city out of a historical drama, except for the power lines and the street lights. 

They cross a bridge and approach a castle.

Kaleva has not become ANY LESS UNCOMFORTABLE.

The combination medieval/modern aesthetic is pretty cool. The castle is pretty but imposing. Bruce is not at all sure why Kaleva is so uncomfortable except that he's probably the cause somehow, and that's rather nerve-wracking.

"Um. Do you want to get food first? I don't know what kind of food you eat in your world."

"Um. Food would be nice, thank you. I eat, like, bread and fruit and vegetables and nuts and stuff? Probably we have the same foods, we have the same trees and we're both humans and stuff. And whatever you have is fine."

Kaleva leads him to the kitchens. 

"You didn't want meat, right? Do you want porridge?" Kaleva steals some rye bread off a table and hands it to Bruce.

"Porridge would be lovely, thank you." He tries the bread. It looks pretty similar to bread at home.

Kaleva finds two bowl and the pot of porridge and serves some for him and Bruce. It has berries in it.

It is a very busy kitchen; people are shouting at each other and knives are clanging and people are rushing through with hot liquids. No one seems to pay much attention to Kaleva or Bruce.

Bruce pays quite a lot of attention to the knives and the hot liquids and generally to staying out of everyone's way, ideally with a wall at his back. Nobody noticing him is good. Once they have porridge hopefully they can go somewhere calmer to eat it. 

Yes, they can. 

They can go to the library, which has lots of books. 

"We, uh, might get interrupted suddenly," Kaleva says. "Because I kind of was hiding from my tutor in the woods. But I think if there's a person from another world this is novel enough that I can use it as an excuse to skip school?"

Oh wow otherworldly library. He should not try to eat and read at the same time and risk getting food on the books; he starts eating as fast as he thinks he can get away with without it being rude. "Sorry for interrupting your hiding. And that you don't like your school." School is a mixed bag, in his opinion; math and English and science are fun, history is eh, ethics and gym kind of suck because he's very bad at them.

The porridge is full of strange and strong-tasting berries.

Kaleva does not have these compunctions about eating while reading; he puts the porridge down, looks through the shelves, and returns a few minutes later with a book called Catholicism. "I think this will answer our questions." He flips through. "Afterlife... afterlife... it looks like the church hasn't offered an official teaching on it yet, but some people believe that the Underworld and Hell are the same place? And some people think only Catholics go to Heaven and Hell and the Underworld is for everyone else."

"You said the Underworld is just similar to Earth, right? It's not--lakes of fire and burning deserts and demons? And what is the difference between a Catholic who goes to Hell and someone who isn't Catholic, is it about pretending to have accepted Jesus when you haven't?" Possibly Bruce needs to stop pretending he has accepted Jesus when he hasn't! For several reasons! But also he has spent quite a long time pretending and isn't totally sure how to stop.

Kaleva relaxes noticeably. "Well, it used to be that all the souls got trapped in the river Styx only half-conscious-- like, the way you feel before you go to sleep? I think Hades just didn't want them to bother him. But then we captured Hades and freed the dead from the River Styx and now it's a lot like being alive."

The idea of humans being able to change what the afterlife is like, on the grand scale, is very novel. Bruce is going to need a bit to digest it.

Eventually, "That's--good. Good for you. Assuming it actually happened like that. Not that I think you would lie! Just, people believed all sorts of false things before they heard the gospel, and Satan is always trying to decieve us. No offense."

"Who is Satan?"

"Satan is the most powerful of the demons, who started out as angels--spiritual beings created to serve God--and rebelled against Him out of pride and were cast out of Heaven. Demons try to tempt humans into disobeying God so we'll go to Hell, but putting your faith in Jesus Christ will protect you." This all has the tone of something recited by someone who would rather borrow someone else's words than try to assemble his own.

"...I am pretty sure we don't have one of those. And if we did we would trap him in the anti-magic field and put him in the Isle of the Lost and that would solve the problem."

"I am pretty sure that believing you can control demons except by driving them off with the strength of your faith is the sin of pride and also how you end up getting eaten by demons, but maybe that's only true back home? I really need to figure out how original sin works in this universe." He read a sci-fi once about an alternate universe where Eve ate the fruit and Adam never did and all their descendants were half-perfect half-sinners who lived a thousand years and could work miracles, and this probably isn't that but it could be something just as strange.

"So you... think that God exists really hard... and that drives the demons away?"

"So, I am not nearly faithful enough to drive out demons, and this world really should have gotten someone better than me, but my understanding is that it's about--realizing you're not enough on your own, that you need God, and trusting that He'll protect you, and then He drives the demons away. But I am really bad at theology."

"That's stupid. He should just drive the demons away whether or not you have faith in him, if they're trying to get you to disobey him. People who don't trust God or understand that they need him are probably going to be the most easily tempted to disobey him."

This statement appears to make Bruce utterly miserable!

"I'm sorry," says Kaleva, with the tone of someone who has a hammer and has yet to find anything he can't treat as a nail.

"No, I'm sorry--it's my fault--why did God send you me it should have been anyone else--" he runs out of words like a train running out of rails and hides his face in his hands.

............aaaaaaaa Bruce is making faces and it's scary and Bruce is sad and-- and Kaleva is sixteen and he's not supposed to need hugs anymore but when he was a kid he used to get them from his mom when he was sad and he doesn't know what else to do, they don't teach you how to comfort sad people in Advanced Chivalry and if they did he skipped the class, and being hugged was warm and soft and nice and it helped and Bruce is sad and Kaleva needs to help.

So he wraps his arms around Bruce's shoulders. 

That is warm and soft and nice, and that is in itself a problem, because if Kaleva understood what was going on he would not want to comfort him and now he has to explain it.

He takes a couple breaths. "That thing you said--with how God should just get rid of demons whether you have faith or not--that's the sort of thought I have all the time and--and it'swhyI'mgoingtoHell. And now I've done it to you too and I don't know how to fix it and I'm really sorry."

"You're going to Hell? Where you're going to be tortured for eternity?" His voice is angry and he hugs Bruce more tightly.

"I know I should have told you earlier. I'm sorry. I know that doesn't fix it."

Kaleva is holding him hard enough that it might actually hurt.

"No! The problem with you being tortured for eternity is not that you didn't tell me soon enough! The problem is that you are going to be tortured!"

It does kind of hurt, but Bruce's awareness of his body has been pushed thoroughly off the front page of his brain by several different emotions. Kaleva thinks it's bad that he's going to be tortured, which is nice. But it shouldn't be nice, because it's a sign of Kaleva doubting God's goodness and means Kaleva's going to get tortured too because Bruce is a terrible missionary. Bruce really ought to explain that he deserves to go to Hell and that Kaleva needs to get saved. But what he selfishly wants, right now, is to sit here and be held by someone who knows he's damned and wants to hold him anyway. 

Kaleva loosens up a little bit and puts his face into Bruce's hair.

"You smell nice."

"Thanks?" That feels like a bit of a non sequitur but it's better than him smelling bad. He leans on Kaleva and sighs.

Mm. Hugging Bruce is extremely good. All of Kaleva's thoughts have departed his head except for the ones about how Bruce is soft and warm and has a heartbeat and a nice smell and is touching Kaleva (!!) and Kaleva is very relaxed and never wants to move again. 

Bruce is still having quite a lot of thoughts. The one that is "wonder at the concept of not being alone" gets its day in the sun, but is eventually pushed aside by "needing to make sure Kaleva is going to be okay". 

"I should try to tell you about Jesus. Maybe find a French Bible first in case any of the important stuff is different here."

Maybe he can do this without letting go of Kaleva. That would be nice. 

"Mmmmmokay," Kaleva says, not moving. "I wanna hear about not Jesus."

"It can wait. You gotta promise not to die though."

Dying sounds terrible because if he died he would not get to hug Bruce anymore.

"Okay. No dying."

"I want to read all your books but I don't want to get up."

"Thought this was what servants were for. Except if I summoned a servant I'd get in trouble for running away from my chivalry teacher." 

"What do you study in chivalry class?"

"It's all about how you're supposed to be brave and courteous and honorable and gallant towards women, and protect the weak and never back down from a fight and seek glory and not care about money or reward."

"Huh. That sounds sort of like ethics, except with more fighting and less piety and chastity."

"...what's chastity?"

"Uh, not doing lustful things? Like, not staring at pretty girls or looking at impure art or dressing provocatively or anything. And there's more stuff like that for married people but I'm not married so I don't know about it."

"Oh, we have that, I think? You're supposed to honor and respect women and put them up on a pedestal."

"Yeah, that's the same. Women are morally and spiritually purer and men are stronger and better leaders and a man and a woman together can run a godly household."

"I don't know if women are different than men psychologically? I think you are just supposed to put women up on pedestals because they're weaker and more likely to need rescuing."

"What sort of thing do people commonly need rescuing from?"

"Uh. Dragons, fairies, villains, curses...? --There's not any of that anymore," Kaleva rushes to say. "We put all the bad people on the Isle and now no one has to rescue anyone from anything. But you're still supposed to act like you might have to."

"I'm glad it's safe here now." He doesn't sound a hundred percent convinced. (He really really really doesn't want to die.)

"Weselton didn't really have any of that anyway. All we have is trolls up in the mountains and they're totally harmless. Unless you take their romantic advice."

"Is it just really bad advice? Also, wow, you have a lot of kinds of people."

"Terrible advice. They sometimes think you should get married to someone you just met that day. --It always seemed like the normal number of kinds of people to me."

"There's some debate, back home, about whether if there were multiple mortal species God would have had to be born and die for each one."

"I think the Catholics believe he only died once, but I'm not sure they knew about trolls or gods or sapient animals, and it seems like fairies have a different thing going on. It would be really weird to tell Maleficent-- that's the fairy who wants to be as evil as possible-- that being evil is a sin and she should accept Jesus into her heart."

"Sometimes humans refuse to repent of their sins too, but I haven't heard of any who were definitely sinning for its own sake and not just because they wanted to do specific sinful things or because it's in our nature."

"Yeah, fairies are really weird psychologically." Gosh. Cuddling Bruce is nice. He wants to do it more. Entirely without ulterior motives, he says, "we should figure out a place for you to sleep tonight."

"Yeah. It would be nice if I could sleep on your couch or something, if that's alright with you and your parents and stuff."

"The castle has plenty of rooms, the problem is that getting you a room involves bringing someone's attention to the fact that I exist, which historically has not worked out well for me."

"You could give me directions to a homeless shelter or something? Also, what bad thing happens if people notice you exist, is it that you'd get in trouble for skipping class? I could pretend to show up here after your class is supposed to be over--no, wait, a bunch of people saw me in the kitchen, that won't work."

"--I'm not going to send you to a workhouse, I'm not a monster."

"Are the ones here really bad in some way? Also why are they called workhouses, is it because they employ a lot of people directly?" He knows there are some countries that do that; the US ones mostly just help people look for jobs elsewhere. Possibly the ones here are really strapped for resources because of being menaced by dragons and whatnot until recently.

"Poverty is caused by idleness and lack of virtue, so the solution is to put the idle hands to work and teach them about how to be good people. And if you are disobedient they can confine you in a cell or give you a diet of only bread and water or beat you. And they're crowded and dirty and-- I don't know maybe they're the right thing for some people but you're idle because you just got here and I would really rather you, uh, continue to be idle. With me."

"Yeah, that's--I should get a job at some point if I can't get back home, I'm almost an adult, but I'd really rather stay with you for now if we can manage it."

"My bed is huge," Kaleva says. "If you wanted to just. Sleep in it. At least for a while."

"That would be really nice of you, if it's not too much bother. I've, um, never shared a bed before, I hope I'm not awful at it." By which he means he wakes up with nightmares multiple times a week and they're never loud enough to wake his parents but he has no idea if he can hide them from Kaleva.

SUCCESS.

"I haven't shared one either but I don't think it can be that complicated."

Tiny nervous smile. "Okay then. And, um, I take it I should avoid your parents?" He's no stranger to sneaking around avoiding people's parents, he has to do it every week for DnD, but doing it in another universe and while staying somewhere overnight feels like it will be a lot harder.

"My dad. My mom's dead. And-- my dad doesn't like paying attention to me either so it'll probably be a lot easier than you're expecting. As long as you don't bring yourself to his attention he'll just assume you're another servant."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry about your mom. I really hope she's alright."

"I mean, she's... in the Underworld?"

Kaleva seems to consider this a weird response to someone's mom being dead.

Bruce is still not sure if the Underworld is as Kaleva thinks it is. He really hopes so. "How did people find out about the Underworld? Is it possible to communicate with it at all?" Nobody can communicate with Heaven and Hell but the people in both aren't very communicative; maybe it's possible with people trying on both ends.

"We asked the gods about it. Some people can see what it's like or visit, like fairies and part-fairies and gods and demigods and anyone they want to bring along. So we don't know everyone goes there-- there hasn't been a census and there are kind of a lot of people and before twenty years ago they were all floating in the River Styx-- but we do know more-or-less what it's like."

That's a lot of people who probably aren't all coordinating on the same lie; even demons back home can't all agree on the same lie and the beings here seem even more varied. "Okay, that makes--wait, part-fairies and demigods? Do those words mean what they sound like they mean?"

"Does it sound like 'a god or a fairy fell in love with a human and they had babies together'?"

"Yup. Does that still happen? Back home angels or demons and humans used to be able to have children, but not since the Flood."

"Not very often, but sometimes, and of course the child of a partfairy or a demigod is also a partfairy or a demigod. --What's the flood?"

Bruce's voice takes on the tone of someone reciting something. "Ten generations after the first humans, God saw that humans had become wicked. So He sent a great flood to destroy all the humans and animals on earth except for one righteous man and his wife and his sons and his sons' wives and two of each kind of animal, and when the floodwaters receeded they repopulated the earth."

"Please tell me you are aware that genocide is wrong."

"Well obviously it's wrong when humans do it! I'm not going to kill anyone!"

"If it's wrong when humans do it why the heck would it not be wrong for gods."

"Because God created us and that means He can do what he wants with us."

"I've probably uplifted some of the rats in the forest by now and it would still be wrong for me to murder them."

"Yeah, because you can't judge their souls and determine whether they're deserving of death. I assume."

"None of them are deserving of death! Because they're people and people don't deserve death!"

"I agree with you but I'm still worried you might go to Hell if I don't convince you otherwise! I'm sorry I'm such a shitty liar!" Ah fuck fuck that was supposed to stay in his head.

Kaleva is suddenly full of WEIRD and CONFUSING and ODDLY NICE feelings. The feelings are about how Bruce's face moves in a really interesting way and his eyes are this really pretty shade of brown and holding Bruce was always really nice but now it is nice and also kind of electric? Especially when Kaleva touches Bruce's naked skin. And they are going to share a bed and this is the most fascinating thought that Kaleva has ever had.

After a probably unreasonable amount of time he realizes that he was probably supposed to say something. 

""Sokay."

"I really hope you're right about the Underworld."

For some reason he really wants to lean on Kaleva and stare at him. This is very different from his normal response to horribly awkward interactions, which is to run away. Possibly this is because Kaleva is a very good and kind and non-frightening person. If this were a story then probably Bruce would see the light of God in his fellow man and be redeemed and then Kaleva would be redeemed too and then Bruce would have an awesome testimony about being saved by the virtue of a heathen, but nope, Bruce is an unsuitable fiction protagonist and therefore still convinced that the Flood was bad actually.

"I think," Kaleva says, "instead of trying to get me to go to Heaven when I die we should try to get you to go to the Underworld when you die."

Bruce has hair. This is a very interesting fact. It looks soft. Kaleva reaches out and touches it.

"It would. Be really nice. If that were possible. I don't deserve it but I want it anyway."

Having a hand in his hair is very strange and unfamiliar but possibly? Strange an unfamiliar things can be good? He closes his eyes to examine this new sensation in more detail and observes his desire to make a small happy noise about it. Then he makes a small happy noise about it.

"I want to give you nice things even if you don't deserve them," Kaleva says, and then there is a small happy noise and Kaleva promptly forgets all about whatever they were talking about. Bruce's small happy noise makes him feel electric like touching Bruce's skin does, except it's much more intense, there's a jolt of it all through his body, and he is full of an incoherent desire for-- something.

What if he can make Bruce make more small happy noises?

He can if he keeps touching Bruce's hair! Also Bruce will tentatively reach up and pet Kaleva's hair back, as though Kaleva is a cat he's trying to befriend.

Oh no Kaleva has no more brain his brain is a small pile of mush.

If he can't have a brain at least he can have soft hair.

Bruce has been through kind of a lot today and also for the several years before that and if nothing stops him he might just fall asleep on this couch.

Kaleva nudges him awake.

"Bruce," he says, "if you're going to sleep you have to sleep in a bed."

"Wha--sorry. Sorry. I'm awake now. What time is it here anyway?"

"Like six pm but it's fine if you're jetlagged. Come on."

He pulls Bruce up and starts to guide him to Kaleva's room. Possibly handholding has to be involved.

Handholding doesn't have to be involved but Bruce certainly appreciates it.

Kaleva pushes Bruce back down onto the bed and cuddles him. "Good night."

Bruce was expecting, from the "my bed is huge" comment, to be able to put some distance between them for sleeping, but he doesn't want to uncuddle juuuuust yet, he can move in a few minutezzzzzzzz.

Kaleva's arm is asleep and he can't find a comfortable position and it is too early for him to go to bed and he is SO HAPPY.

After a while Bruce curls his sleeping body into the tiniest possible ball and starts whimpering. "No, no, nononopleaseno . . ."

Oh no. Bruce is suffering and this is the WORST THING POSSIBLE.

"...Bruce? Are you okay?" He shakes Bruce.

Bruce sits bolt upright, eyes wild, takes a couple seconds to orient to being 1) alive 2) in this bed 3) in a new world, then turns crimson with embarrassment. "Was I. Um. Was I being some kind of annoying?"

"No, you were curled in a ball and whimpering 'no' and I thought-- I don't know what I thought."

"Auugh. Sorry. I--can we just pretend that didn't happen?"

"...we can if you want to but I was going to offer you a hug? And ask what you had a nightmare about? And, um, my mom always used to rub my back and sing to me when I had nightmares and I could do that?"

"A hug would be nice."

"It was. About dying. And." Fuck it, he does not want to talk about how he still has nightmares like a middle schooler, he wants a hug. Hugs are nice because you can hide your face.

Kaleva hugs him and rubs his back and starts singing softly, "Shlof zhe mir shoyn yankele mayn sheyner, di eygelach di shvartzinke mach tsu. A yingele vos hot shoyn ale tseyndelekh, Muz nokh di mame zingen: ay lyu lyu..."

(His singing voice is extremely good.)

This is pretty nice. Kavela's singing voice is nice, and not being able to understand the words means he can just focus on the pretty sounds. It's better than his usual solution for getting back to sleep after especially bad nightmares, namely taking his pillow and blanket into his closet and hiding in it. (Obviously God can still see him when he's in the closet, but it still feels safer.)

Now they should be cuddling horizontally, actually. To help Bruce go back to sleep.

Kaleva keeps singing until Bruce is safely unconscious.

He doesn't wake up again for a while.

In the morning, Kaleva says, "do you want to get some breakfast and then go to the library? --Or, uh, riding? Or promenading in the city? Or hunting-- I guess not hunting--"

"The library would be great! If that's okay with you."

Kaleva bounces and then he looks self-conscious and stops. "Yeah! Uh, I'll show you to the library and get you some bread? Normally I take books to the woods so that no one can make me go to lessons but um I think I have something I want to research actually."

"Okay. I want to read as much as I can about recent history and how your afterlife setup works, and see if the French Bible is the same as ours if you have one."

Lev collects bread and cheese and berries from the kitchen, with extra cheese for Bruce and sausages for Kaleva, and then disappears into the stacks. 

Bruce eats his berries first so that he cannot get any on the books and then dives into the stacks himself. How is this place organized? 

By topic, although the organizational system is different than the Dewey Decimal System!

Here's Religion, and there's a section on Christianity; a few shelves over is History.

(Kaleva is not far away looking at Psychology.)

What have they got on Christianity? He really wants to see if their Bible is the same, especially genesis so he can figure out if they had something different going on with their Fall and what the implications are for their salvation if they did.

Books about Christianity include:

-Christianity: The First Thousand Years
-Twelve Hard Questions For Christians
-Cold-Case Christianity: A Detective Investigates The Case for Christianity (by Basil of Baker Street)
-A History of Christianity in France
-Faith Hope Love: The Essentials of Christianity
-How Christianity Saved Civilization... And Why It Must Do So Again
-Exploring The Pagan Roots of Christianity

Genesis matches up almost perfectly except that it takes place in Peru and keeps referencing llamas. 

Some of these look like they might have written by heathens. But of course a country of mostly heathens wouldn't know to ban books that threaten their citizens' souls. He's very curious what heathens write, now, and he can't actually get any more damned, and nobody here is likely to arrest him and nobody at home is going to find out, and he's very curious . . . he's definitely going to read all of these, but he starts with "Twelve Hard Questions for Christians." He finds a corner in the back of the stacks to read it, where he should be able to hear anyone coming before they can see him, and sticks it inside the copy of "Faith Hope Love" just in case.

The twelve hard questions for Christians are:

1. Why do the gods exist, why weren't they mentioned in the Bible, and why do they claim the world was created in a way totally unlike the way Christianity claims it was?
2. Why do people go to an afterlife nothing like the described Christian afterlife?
3. Where do stars come from?  
4. Why is it possible to be mistaken about what God says?
5. Why doesn't God concretely act in the world?
6. Why didn't God tell everyone about His plan for salvation?
7. Why does God command in the Bible actions well-known to be evil?
8. Why do Christians perform actions well-known to be evil when they are commanded by God?
9. Why did God stop performing miracles as soon as miracles could be studied?
10. Why do reliable studies show that prayer has no effect?
11. Why does magical study show that Communion is identical to bread?
12. Why are there Christian priests on the Isle of the Lost?

Okay yup this book was definitely written by a heathen. It's like the feeling of skipping class to go birdwatching times a thousand. Also he doesn't have any paper to take notes on but if he goes looking for some then someone might see him, and that would probably be fine but nope.

1: Either the "gods" here are demons, or they weren't involved in the events of the Bible, but the latter is weird because the Bible covers a lot of time and you'd expect any powerful beings around to get involved somewhere. Really it's very odd how much of the Bible is the same when everything else is so different.

2: Bruce has no idea and really wants to know! 

3: Is there some reason why God wouldn't have created the stars here? What? This makes no sense and he needs a book on astronomy.

4: It's always possible to be mistaken about anything. People are mistaken about things all the time. Sometimes people pray and think God is guiding them to do a thing and actually it's just their own selfish impulses.

5, 9, and 10: What???? Does God not act in the world here??? That's extremely weird and kind of disturbing, does that mean if someone gets an incurable disease there's just no hope for them at all? Maybe the author is just making things up.

6: It is pretty weird that Christianity didn't spread effectively here, but if there are actually no miracles--no healings, no gifts of languages--then maybe missionaries would have had a harder time.

7: Someone who actually had faith in God's goodness would have the immediate response that the author is wrong about what's evil. Bruce just has uncertainty and pain.

8, 10, and 12: Humans are fallen and do evil. Being saved doesn't make you not a sinner, unfortunately; it just makes you forgiven.

11: What would Communion be if it wasn't bread? It's bread. And wine. Wasn't there some obscure early heresy saying that a miracle happened every time it got consecrated? Maybe the author talked to a heretic and got confused.

Bruce puts Twelve Questions back on the shelf and starts Christianity: the First Thousand Years.

Christianity: the First Thousand Years is a history book! The author describes Christianity as originating as an obscure Jewish heresy and speculates extensively about whether there was a historical Jesus. The New Testament is characterized as a book that was put together over the course of hundreds of years, instead of being written by the Apostles; manuscript texts are mentioned, and the author occasionally says that a mistranslation of a verse was probably the original version. It describes theological findings as happening more-or-less as political compromises instead of by a process of divine inspiration. The hierarchy seems very different here; there's a person called a "pope" who's the Bishop of Rome in Italy and everyone has to pay attention to him. (In practice, since locations keep getting cut off from each other by fairies, the local Archbishop is usually the most powerful member of the hierarchy.) Reading the Bible was forbidden because people will misinterpret it; the Bible was translated by heretics. If you pay the church money it will sell you an indulgence and forgive your sins.

The author believes, as a matter of course, that murdering everyone who won't convert to Christianity is evil, and that the Inquisition is evil, and that torture is evil, and offhandedly refers to Hell as an absurdly immoral doctrine.

Oh wow this is a heathen book too, he somehow failed to expect that.

Jesus was definitely a Jew and preached to Jews first, that's the same. Everything else is weird. The part about the New Testament being compiled over centuries would be a very strange thing to make up, at least in Bruce's world where the original manuscripts, in consistent handwriting and miraculously protected from decay, are on display in the great museum-church in Jerusalem.

The church here seems both more centralized and less coherent; again a strange lack of divine guidance. Forbidding people from reading the Bible is awful, but not beyond his imagination; people have done similar and worse things back home. Even selling forgiveness of sins was tried once, briefly; if he remembers his history textbook correctly it lasted about three months before the earth swallowed up everyone involved.

Murdering people who don't convert to Christianity is definitely evil. Even if they're threatening to lead a greater number of people astray it's the lesser of two evils at best; you're supposed to convert them if you possibly can. This world seems to have had a worse Inquisition than his, because there were more heathens around, and it looks like it might have escalated farther than was necessary to protect people even worse than the one back home did, which is awful. He wishes he knew why God didn't make His word clear to everyone here like he did at home. Maybe some of the books by Christians will explain what these heathen authors are getting wrong and it will all make sense, not that everything has ever made sense before.

Does the author say what they mean about Hell being an immoral doctrine? If it exists, how can it be immoral to believe in it?

Torturing people is evil! Worshiping someone evil is also evil!

The idea that if God is evil worshipping him is also evil is novel and disquieting. He spends a while thinking it over, but keeps getting stuck on "If morality isn't another word for what God wants, what actually is it?". He looks through Faith Hope Love: The Essentials of Christianity next. That one definitely sounds like it was written by a Christian and like it might give him some clue about whether there are really fewer miracles here than back home.

Faith Hope Love appears to be under the impression that Christianity is less an actually true fact and more a helpful story you can tell yourself to feel happy and be a good person. It is also pretty clear that Hell is a mistaken doctrine, because God is a God of Love and no God of Love would eternally torment everyone. Obviously.

Wow. What. This is . . . he didn't realize it was possible to think you were Christian and be mistaken. Not even "think you're saved and be mistaken"; this author doesn't seem especially concerned with their own salvation at all. Even if it was legal to publish this at home, nobody would buy it because it's just wrong about the facts. Which, in a roundabout way, does sort of suggest that the other book's thing about the absence of miracles might be true. If there were no prophets to reiterate God's doctrine, no divine hand guiding theologians to truth and striking down those who speak falsehoods in His name, who knows what sorts of confusion could build up over two thousand years? God, have You truly forsaken this world? Why? It's the closest he's come to praying in years; he thought he had given up asking why. He certainly isn't expecting an answer.

Do any of these books appear to have been written by actual Christians, as in people who believe that a good God created the world and sent His Son to redeem it and have accepted that redemption?

The only one that even appears to be trying is How Christianity Saved Civilization... And Why It Must Do So Again and that's mostly focused on why enslaving nonhumans and keeping the children of villains on the Isle is a good idea. 

Does it have a theological or practical justification for either of those? Presumably the right answer on both of those questions is whatever makes it easier to spread the good news to the nonhumans and children in question.

Enslaving nonhumans is good because God only saved humans and He created the nonhumans to be our servants! Keeping the children of villains on the Isle is good because God's justice involves punishing the evildoer even unto the fourth generation.

Kaleva hesitantly sits six inches away from Bruce.

Bruce is lousy at ethics but he kind of suspects everyone in this world is too, and the idea that there are souls that don't have the option to accept Jesus is suspicious. Except the people who died before Jesus didn't get the option in a different way, so, maybe? Even if enslaving nonhumans is right he'd still kind of rather not, but that's not news, he's unrepentantly sinful. 

"Oh. Hi Kaleva. Say, do people who believe in the Underworld think dead nonhumans--animals and fairies and whatnot--go there too?"

"I don't think anyone knows? --Uh. I was reading about nightmares."

Ah, crap. "Okay."

"I found this book," Kaleva says, "and it says that you can help with nightmares by imagining a happy ending to them during the day? So your brain builds an association between the nightmare and the happy ending and when you're having it the happy ending happens."

"Huh." He's not sure he can come up with a happy ending to his nightmares that makes sense even by dream logic. Or, no, maybe dream logic is the way to go, there. The dreams usually end with him falling towards a lake of fire and waking up just before he lands; maybe if he imagined suddenly landing in a clearing in the woods instead he won't wake up? "It's worth a try, I guess." He kind of doesn't want to, because that involves thinking about the nightmares a lot while he's awake, but he needs to not be waking Kaleva up in the middle of the night, so.

"Um. I thought it might. Help. If you don't want to it's fine."

(He looks like he's desperately resisting the urge to do something.)

Bruce isn't sure what it is so he can't really help there, but he desperately needs a change of subject. "What are the stars like here? I saw something in a book that makes it sound like they're different from the ones I'm used to."

"They're hot balls of gas millions of miles away, which are reincarnated fireflies. Gods sometimes rearrange them into constellations to honor heroes."

"Reincarnated fireflies as in, they have minds? People ones or tiny firefly ones? Our stars don't have minds that we know of, and they're even farther away than that. Trillions of miles, way out at the edge of the universe." Tiny smile because outer space is cool.

"They might be trillions, let me look--" Kaleva looks it up in a book in the astronomy section. "I was wrong. Apparently the nearest star is forty trillion miles away. They have minds, and they're nonsapient if they were nonsapient before and sapient if they were sapient before. I think the sapient ones are telepathic or something? So they can still talk."

"Forty trillion? Wow, how big is your universe? It must be several times as big as the one I'm from at least!" He still doesn't see what any of this has to do with Christianity but it's very interesting.

"Thirteen billion light years which is, uh, a hundred and thirty sextillion miles. I think."

"Wow. Wow. Big universe." And very different. "Is the edge still a crystal sphere?"

"No? I think it's... curved, sort of? Like the surface of a balloon or an orange. If you somehow walked to the end of the universe and kept going you would just wind up back where you started. --But there's no inside to the balloon."

"That's . . . hmm . . . yeah, I think I can visualize that. That's so cool." Also, if this world is that fundamentally different from his own, that sort of suggests that other things might be different too. But he keeps getting hung up on the fact that the Bible is the same, and where would they have gotten it if not from the exact same God? He seriously needs to talk to a Christian and figure out what's really up with miracles. And learn more about the magic here, since it's probably connected somehow. "Do you have any books on magic? Not ones that teach part-fairies how to do it or anything, just, like, descriptions of what's possible and how it works."

"Yeah! The magic section's over here. Do you wanna get some books and go out into the woods?"

"Sure." Maybe in the woods he'll feel a bit less like an adult is about to sneak up behind him and ask him what he's reading. He scoops up his remaining Christianity books (mainly the detective one) and goes to take a look at the magic section.

There are several books with titles like Introduction to Magic, Principles of Magical Theory, Magic For Beginners, and Understanding Magic: A Guide For The Non-Gifted. 

If nobody stops him he's going to take all four of those. "Should we get, I dunno, a picnic blanket or something to keep the books on?"

"Yeah, give me a minute."

A few minutes later Kaleva returns with a blanket and a basket full of food. 

And between them they can get it all outside and set up wherever Kaleva thinks is a good reading spot.

Once they do, Kaleva lies down so that his head is almost but not quite touching Bruce's thigh.

Bruce starts reading the book by Basil of Baker Street.

Once it's been a few minutes and Bruce hasn't objected, Kaleva moves his head so that it is actually touching Bruce's thigh.

Bruce is pretty absorbed in this book! He was hoping for a sensible, detailed, clear-headed laying out of the situation regarding Jesus, miracles, the afterlife, why some people say they're Christian but act like they're pretending without knowing what they're pretending about, etc, and that's what he got. Aaaaand unless it's a very detailed fraud, about things that anyone who grew up here would be able to call out as a fraud, the world looks exactly how you would expect it to look if people had just appeared out of nowhere at random and some of them had written the Bible by the same processes that made heathens come up with stories about heathen gods, and actual God had had no involvement. He remembers another science fiction story, this one a horror piece about a world where God withdrew entirely from the universe after the Fall and the Bible never existed. Maybe something like that happened here: a world whose Creator lost interest in both the living and the dead.

He props one elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand to think about it. His other hand goes absentmindedly to pet the soft thing next to his other leg.

Mmmmm. Kaleva's evil plot has SUCCEEDED. 

He scoots his head up so that it is in Bruce's lap and pretends to read but is actually just flicking his eyes over the same sentence over and over again. 

Pet pet bizzare sense of potentially not being watched pet pet waitasecond. He realizes what he's doing and freezes for a moment, but apparently Kaleva doesn't object. "This is a very different world," he says softly, letting his hand come to rest on Kaleva's head again.

"Yeah," Kaleva says. "Your world sucks."

"Yes. Yes it does. And . . . I think this one might not." 

"Yes. We put all the bad people on the Isle and now there are only good people."

"And you have a better afterlife, and lots of kinds of people, and some of them have magic . . . " He trails off, looking like he wants to say something else but can't.

"Yeah."

Kaleva should maybe participate in this conversation more but his head is being petted and that makes things hard to process.

Bruce doesn't get any better at saying whatever it was he wasn't saying and starts reading one of the magic books instead.

Some days pass and Kaleva is the happiest he has ever been, probably because he has a friend.

Kaleva can hold Bruce whenever he wants to, and he wants to kind of a lot; he hasn't been touched by much of anyone in the past eight years and this is a problem he wants to fix immediately. Kaleva and Bruce read books together and go on long walks talking. Jesusland is terrible and hearing about it gives Kaleva an ache in his heart; he wants Bruce to be safe and okay. At night, when Bruce has a nightmare, Kaleva holds him and sings until he goes to sleep, and then usually watches his face for a little while before drifting off himself.

There are a few lessons Kaleva does not successfully avoid, but Bruce seems to be okay reading books during them. 

Bruce is the most interesting and important person in the world and Kaleva would do anything to make him happy.

Bruce reads, and holds Kaleva; he hasn't been touched much either and it's so nice to have a friend he can casually hug. At night he goes to the window to look at the stars and think about how big and wonderful the world is. He's the happiest he's ever been, because he has a friend and because the more he reads the more he thinks he might be safe here. He's learning more from the library than he ever did in lessons; the constant dread was making it hard to pay attention and now he has so much more room to think.

He never ever wants to go back; his parents will miss him but if they knew the whole story they would understand. Even better, Kaleva understands. He knows Bruce for who he really is, like nobody ever has before, and wants to spend time with him and wants him to be happy. Kaleva is an amazingly good and kind and clever person and Bruce can't imagine a better first human to have met in this new world.

And then one night Bruce wakes up to an asleep Kaleva clutching him and making whimpering noises. His dick is hard.

That happens when you're a teenage boy and asleep. Bruce does the polite thing and shifts away a bit and wonders why this feels like a much bigger deal than an accidental glimpse of junk in the locker room. Probably because Kaleva is alseep and it's ruder to invade someone's privacy in their sleep. He runs a hand over Kaleva's shoulder and mumurs, "Shh, everything is fine."

Kaleva whimpers and says, "Bruce, Bruce--"

"I'm right here," he says softly. Kavela doesn't seem to be having a nightmare, just talking in his sleep, so Bruce doesn't try to wake him up.

"Bruce," Kaleva says, and his mouth becomes an O and he gasps and then he cuddles up right next to Bruce, still asleep.

Weird. He wonders what Kaleva was dreaming about; it seems plausible that he was a character in it. Bruce rolls over and goes back to sleep.

In the morning Kaleva wakes up to discover that he has had one of the Nice Dreams where he's touching people and then wakes up with soiled pants, and (he recalls vaguely) the person he was touching was Bruce. It probably makes sense. He's cuddling Bruce all the time during the day, of course he'd cuddle him in dreams.

Kaleva gets up to deal with his pants, puts on a clean pair, and then returns for Morning Snuggles.

Bruce is confused why you would change pants when you're just going to get back into . . . Oh.

What on Earth is he supposed to say about this. "I think you might be having sinful dreams but sin may or may not have any consequences?" "I'm sorry for tempting you to unnatural lust?" Nothing, and hope Kaleva doesn't remember anything? He's a lot more tense than he usually is during cuddles.

"...is everything okay?"

"Did you . . . have any odd dreams last night?" If he doesn't remember then Bruce can blame the question on his own dream-addled memory and try to forget all about it.

"Um. Not really? I guess dreams are always kind of odd."

"Okay." 

Argh, he feels dishonest now. 

"You said my name in your sleep a couple times; wondered if I was in your dream. I guess if you don't remember then we'll never know." That's a bit more honest, at least. It's not like he knows anything for sure. Sometimes people talk in their sleep and it has nothing to do with their dreams. It's none of Bruce's business and the fact that he's acting like it is reflects poorly on him. He forces himself to relax and act like nothing is weird.

"Um. I dreamed about touching you? Which makes sense because we cuddle all the time?"

Kaleva does NOT want to have a discussion about mysterious disgusting bodily fluids thank you. 

"Yeah, makes sense." See, it was a totally normal dream. Bruce needs to stop having thoughts about Kaleva having impure thoughts, that's a step on the road to having impure thoughts himself and Kaleva deserves better than that.

"So, what do you want to do today?"

"It's getting colder, we could go in the sauna?"

"Okay," he says before he processes the sentence, since any change of topic is a good one. "Uh, if you have a second bathing suit, I guess." He's been borrowing Kaleva's clothes for lack of money and an identity with which to buy new ones; they don't fit super well but if anyone's noticed the increased laundry throughput they haven't said anything.

"...bathing suit?"

"Uh, clothes you wear for swimming? Or is a sauna not a kind of swimming pool? Honestly it's pretty lucky we speak the same language at all; both of our worlds have lots of 'em."

"Oh, no, a sauna is a room where you throw some water on hot stones and then the room fills up with steam. It's nice, especially when it's cold out."

"Oh! Okay, that sounds fun."

Kaleva starts to take him to the castle's sauna. 

"I guess you don't have saunas in America? Because it's not so cold?"

"Not as cold as it gets here, yeah. It does get pretty cold in the winter, but we have furnaces in our houses that blow steam or hot air through pipes in the walls into all the rooms and that keeps them warm."

"We have that too! But it's pretty recent so we haven't gotten out of the habit of saunas. --It's weird to think other people don't have them."

"I don't know if we didn't invent them or if I just never happened to run into one."

Kaleva leads Bruce to a small room with shelves; there's a glass door separating it from a wood-paneled room with a bench, which is presumably the actual sauna.

Kaleva takes off his shoes and socks and puts them on a low shelf; then he takes his shirt off, neatly folds it, and puts it on the shelf.

Bruce takes off his shoes and socks and hesitates. It's not like Kaleva is likely to be surprised by anything under his shirt, they share a bed, if Bruce was going to be embarrassed about his appearance he should have started a long time ago. He takes off his shirt and stores it next to Kaleva's.

And then Kaleva takes off his pants and underwear and folds them neatly and puts them on the shelf next to his shirt.

Bruce is not sure what to do about this! On the one hand it's not like Kaleva is going to be surprised by what's under Bruce's underwear either. On the other hand what if they have sinful thoughts about each other. On the third hand he can't actually say "I'm worried we're going to have sinful thoughts about each other because that would be an awful thing to accuse Kaleva of and he doesn't want to admit to it himself either. Really he should just take his pants off and make the choice not to have sinful thoughts but making the right choices about what thoughts to have is the thing he is the very worst at out of a whole world of things he is bad at. And now Kaleva is going to notice that he's standing frozen staring at the wall, shit.

"...are you okay?"

"Fine. Sorry. Just, uh, woolgathering." He is still not taking his pants off, why is he still not taking his pants off.

Kaleva shrugs and goes into the sauna. 

As he pours some water onto the rocks, he notices himself staring at Bruce's chest. It's a very interesting chest. Kaleva is... jealous, probably? It's weird to be jealous. Bruce isn't muscular like the boys who go swimming naked down at the river. (Kaleva has spent up to several hours in a tree looking at them with jealousy and pretending to read a book.) Maybe it's because Bruce is his friend and he wants to know which of them is more handsome. The answer is obviously Bruce.

Once Kaleva's back is turned Bruce can pretend this is a gym locker room and he's about to put on gym clothes and that gets him to the point of getting his pants and underwear off. He follows Kaleva into the sauna and catches himself staring at his shoulders. He hasn't really noticed that shoulders could look good before, but they do. They're a very nice shape. Is that a sinful thought? Maybe. Maybe he's just noticing that the human form is fearfully and wonderfully made, which is supposed to be fine. He stops staring at Kaleva's shoulders and goes to stand next to him and stares at the steam instead, just in case.

Kaleva is not staring at the steam. He sits on the bench and looks at Bruce, who has shoulders (!!!) and a stomach (!!!) and thighs (!!!) and arms (!!!) and the fact that people don't wear clothes in the sauna has never been this interesting before. He physically cannot tear his eyes away. His heart is racing and it's not all from the steam.

Jealousy...? Bruce is very well-put-together so it makes sense that Kaleva would be jealous.

Bruce keeps accidentally looking at Kaleva and thinking about how nice he is to look at. He never really saw the appeal of looking at pictures of celebrities but celebrities all look boring and Kaleva looks interesting. Fascinating, even. And every time he looks over Kaleva is also looking at him, and Kaleva wouldn't be doing that if it was wrong, because he's good, so maybe he can just look and think about how good it is that a person as smart and kind and generally excellent as Kaleva is also very aesthetic.

Next time Bruce looks at Kaleva he can see that Kaleva is hard.

WHOOPS should not have looked there, should not have looked there. It's probably just the heat, it's very hot in here after all, but now Bruce is getting hard too and it's definitely not just the heat and is a whole bunch of sinful thoughts, some of which are incoherent images and some of which are impulses to reach out and touch. He should do something; he should get up and leave; if he did he would have to explain why. Kaleva knows he's not a good person but he didn't mean to be a bad person at him.

Kaleva, who has no idea that anything of note at all is happening, puts his head on Bruce's shoulder and makes a happy noise.

It seems unfair to Kaleva not to tell him the truth. He's going to notice sooner or later and he can at least not compound his awfulness by lying and letting Kaleva think everything is fine.

"Um."

"Yeah?" Kaleva says vaguely but happily.

"I'm sorry and you probably don't want to be doing this because I'm. Uh. IjustrealizedI'masodomite." He finishes in a very quiet mumble Kaleva only stands a chance of hearing because his ear is right by Bruce's face.

"...I don't know what that is," Kaleva says. 

Does that mean they aren't allowed to cuddle anymore. Naked cuddling was very interesting and good and Kaleva is now distracted from whatever Bruce was saying by the fact that he can press his whole entire side and leg into Bruce's side and leg and their skin can touch and this is very interesting. 

That is really interesting and that in turn is awful. Bruce pulls all his limbs in and hides his face in his knees. 

"Means I'm an awful person and I want to do awful things with you. I'm sorry. You'll probably want to avoid me and that's fine." He doesn't know what he's going to do if Kaleva very reasonably decides he can't have a man uncontrollably lusting after him in his house but he'll think of something.

"...um? I don't think you've done any awful things to me so far? And I like you and don't want to avoid you."

Oh no he did something wrong and now Bruce hates him.

"I haven't done anything yet but I'm trying to control my thoughts and it isn't working."

"Okay but what is the thing you want to... do? Hit me? Call me names? Run away and never see me again?"

(Kaleva looks like he's on the verge of doing the second thing himself and is stopped only by immense curiosity.)

"Kiss you."

Kaleva looks much less worried. Mostly he looks surprised.

"Guys can kiss other guys?"

"Yes. It's perverted and wrong, but it happens sometimes. . . . I promise I'll do everything I can to avoid it." 

Kaleva sits in Bruce's lap and kisses him.

Bruce involuntarily melts into the kiss for a fraction of a second, then jerks back. "What--but--you're okay with, with this??"

"--possibly this conversation should happen not in the sauna," Kaleva says. 

"Yes. Yes. Definitely not." Bruce gets to his feet and flees walks at a reasonable brisk pace back to his clothes.

Kaleva puts his clothes back on. "I didn't know that boys could kiss other boys."

Both of them being clothed makes Bruce feel about 1% less at sea. "They can't. I mean, it's physically possible, obviously, but. It's wrong. It's disgusting." It's nicer than disgusting things have any right to be.

Kaleva says, "I love you. I didn't know that guys could love guys-- maybe Auradonians can't, maybe it's a your-world-only thing and it's contagious-- but I love you and when you love someone you're supposed to kiss them."

"Guys can't love each other in my world either. It's just a perverted lust."

(So why does hearing Kaleva say "I love you" feel like seeing the sun rise?)

"...I don't think I know what either of those words mean."

Bruce makes solid eye contact with the floor. "Perverted means---it's like--" aaaaaaa why does he have to explain this out loud "some people--in my world, maybe not here--some men are interested in other men, or animals, or, or kids, the way they should be interested in women."

''...What's wrong with-- oh, I guess animals in your world aren't sapient."

"Yeah. Does that--do you understand the problem now?"

"--uh, I'm not sure I understand the problem? In our world two men can't be in true love with each other but that's... why men don't want to kiss other men. If they do want to kiss other men presumably they are in true love?"

"But I don't love you, it's like--messed-up fake love. It's like being hungry for toothpaste instead of food. We can't get married or have kids or do any of the things that love is for."

"...I am pretty sure that love is for love. It is an end in itself."

"Maybe it is here? In my world love is for coupling the strengths of men to the strengths of women, to form strong families that can bring up children well."

"...no, the purpose of love is to find someone who wants to spend time with you and take care of you and be taken care of by you and build a life with you, and to whom you are the most special and important and best person in the world."

"That sounds really nice. I hope you find someone who can give you that." Kaleva is so good and deserves to be loved by someone good.

Kaleva kisses Bruce's cheek. "And normally you don't want to kiss people unless you're in true love with them."

Bruce flinches. "I don't understand how you could love me. Even if men from your world can love each other." He hopes Kaleva does somehow love him, which is an awful thing to want on top of all the other awful things he wants; Kaleva should love someone good who can make him happy.

"I don't think they can normally but I do want to kiss you. --I don't think there's a reason for love? It just sort of happens."

"Oh, crap, maybe it's contagious. That would explain why it's so important to protect people from hearing about it."

"Maybe? But I'm in love with you now. So we should kiss."

A horrifying possibility occurs to Kaleva. 

"Unless you don't love me in which case, um."

"I told you I can't. I wish I could, you're great and someone ought to love you, but all I have is lust. I'm sorry." 

Bruce really really wants Kaleva to hug him, but he can't ask for comfort from the person he's sad about having wronged, so he doesn't say anything.

They return to Kaleva's room and Kaleva sits on the bed. He looks like he's about to cry.

"No, no, it's fine. You don't. Have to love me."

Kaleva is sad, which is The Worst Thing, and it's his fault, which is even more The Worst Thing. "Do you want--a hug, or me to fuck off, or what?"

"--no don't go."

"Okay. Not going anywhere." It's weird that Kaleva isn't too fed up with him to want to be in the same room, but he's glad of it. He sits on the bed too, far enough away that he can't end up touching Kaleva unless Kaleva moves toward him.

Kaleva is not going to bother Bruce by asking for hugs.

Instead he is going to curl up in a ball and cry.

Bruce is going to do the same thing, actually. As quietly as possible, because it's pathetic and obnoxious to cry about a situation that is entirely his own fault.

"Why are you crying?"

"Because I'm gross and I made you sad I don't know how to stop."

"You're not gross."

"I want to believe you. But I don't want to convince myself of something that isn't true and let myself do wrong things because of it."

"I wouldn't love you if you were gross and I love you so therefore you are not gross."

The other half of this statement is left as an exercise for the reader.

Bruce cannot do any exercises because he is wedged between the implausibility of someone loving him and the implausibility of Kaleva being wrong about something important. He should really come up with some sort of response, though. "Thank you?"

Kaleva should hug Bruce and cry on him about how Kaleva is so terrible that even when he is in love with someone that person won't love him back.

"No, you're good, you are so good, I don't love you back because I'm terrible. I went and got my awfulness all over you and I didn't--no, I did mean to, I wanted you to like me but I didn't mean to hurt you with it. I thought I could have one friend without messing everything up." He knows he's babbling but he can't seem to make himself make sense.

"How did you get your awfulness all over me?"

"You didn't used to want to. Do things. With guys."

"I didn't want to kiss anyone because I wasn't in love with anyone."

"And if I hadn't shown up you would have fallen in love with a girl and got married and been happy."

"Probably? But I don't want to be in love with a girl. I want to be in love with you."

He looks absolutely miserable.

"But . . . why? All I've done is make you sad."

Kaleva hugs him. "No. You've made me so happy. Getting to read books with you and talk with you and just be around you is the happiest I have been in my entire life."

Bruce hugs Kaleva back like he's afraid he's going to dissolve into mist at any moment. "I'm r-really glad to hear that. Because being with you is the happiest I've been too."

"...maybe you do love me and you are just confused."

Bruce is silent for a long moment.

"I think maybe the reason I don't believe that is because I can tell I really want it to be true."

Kaleva kisses him. 

This might or might not be evidence of anything, but it does feel nice. Bruce makes a tiny surprised noise and relaxes just a little.

"Now," Kaleva says, "in Auradon, if you love me, then when we kiss your heart will fill with song and you'll want to spend forever with me in bliss and-- if we're both men who rescues whom from the dragon?"

"I do want to spend forever with you but I think my heart is too full of anxiety that I'm doing something awful to you by being in the same room for it to fill with anything else. Also I have no idea how to rescue someone from a dragon; should I know that?"

"Well, I don't know how to rescue people from a dragon, I sort of hoped it wouldn't come up. Anyway, I think if I got kidnapped by a dragon you are supposed to want to rescue me."

"I think I would try but I am worried I would turn out to be a coward. Please try not to get kidnapped by any dragons and I will try to be the kind of person who would rescue you if you did."

"The same for you."

"...so what I think happened is that in Auradon men don't want to kiss other men because they can't fall in love with them, and in your world men want to kiss other men but don't fall in love with them, and then when the two worlds met it interacted weirdly and we fell in love."

"That sounds super fake and probably I'm just turning you to sin. But as far as I can tell it's a lot easier to get away with sin in this world and I don't think I'm going to figure out being good any time soon, so I kind of want to try being in love anyway. And maybe it'll turn out that you're right and everything will be fine."

Kaleva reaches out and runs his hands though Bruce's hair. "Well, I love you, so you probably love me?"

Mmm hairpets. "I want to love you. I hope I love you. I hope that's close enough. I hope I can be sure someday." He leans into Kaleva's hand.

Now that that's all settled Kaleva kisses him again.

Kisses! Being evil has never felt this good.

Kaleva thinks they should cuddle on the bed and kiss. Cuddles and kisses are even better than regular cuddles.

Kaleva is so right. Kaleva is usually right. Also Bruce should pet his hair right back.

Mmm that is such a good idea. Has Bruce considered that he is ALSO usually right.

(Kaleva's penis is doing things again.)

Bruce is trying to ignore Kaleva's penis, but his own is decidedly not cooperating with that plan.

Kaleva is vaguely aware that he wants Something, in addition to never leaving Bruce's arms and having Bruce tell him he loves him, but is totally baffled about what thing he could possibly want.

Whatever it is it seems to make him make odd whimpering noises into Bruce's mouth.

Bruce is aware that both of their bodies seem to think it's time to have marital relations with a woman, but there's no woman here and he doesn't want there to be and it doesn't make much sense. That's the sort of thing that happens when you decide to act against God and nature, but it's very frustrating. He makes little noises back at Kaleva and pulls him closer, their thighs almost brushing against each other.

Eventually Kaleva has kissed Bruce enough to pull away and smile at him and hold his hand and say "I love you."

He's not sure, but he's never been sure of anything and maybe he never will, and he wants so badly to just open up his mind and let Kaleva see everything in it--

"I love you too."

"And now we will be together forever and ever and--"

Some problems have occurred to Kaleva. "How am I going to tell my dad? --How do two guys have kids?"

"I assumed we would have to keep it a secret. I think it's probably impossible for us to have kids and also I would be a terrible parent but I guess we could adopt? Or, uh, you could adopt and I could hang around in secret or something?"

"Why would we have to keep it a secret? Auradon doesn't have men who fall in love with men. We are a new thing."

"People will think it's weird? Even if they don't think it's wrong they probably won't like it because it's weird. Is my guess, I mean, it's your world, maybe people here don't mind weird as much."

"I mean being weird is bad and probably villainous but we are in love so I think that outweighs it?"

"Then, I guess we can tell your dad? Or tell someone else first to see how they take it, but then maybe they'd tell your dad . . ."

"Yeah but my dad doesn't know you're here. I'm not really... fond... of telling him things..."

"Uh. Hm. We could tell him I exist and then wait a month and then tell him we're in love?" Or we could run away to another country that is a stupid idea and never works.

"--or we could run away to Auradon City and try to tell people there."

"You think that would work?" 

"Well, I am Duke of Weselton, I assume they would have to let me talk to the king and explain that you're from another world?"

(Kaleva sounds less convinced of this as his sentence continues.)

"Is there a reason it needs to be the king in particular." Governments that aren't Kaleva are still scary.

"I, uh, think the king handles things like contacts with new worlds?"

"I guess? I feel like it's not really a big enough deal to get a king involved over unless you think more people from my world are going to show up, but probably the king has, like, people who decide if something is important enough to bother him about?"

"Well, probably the king will want to do something about all the people being tortured for eternity. It seems like the sort of thing kings would care about."

"That's--he's not going to--it won't work and he'll probably end up damned too! But it's very brave of him."

"Don't worry, in the worst case scenario true love will fix it. True love can defeat anything."

"The examples in your books are pretty impressive, but that's all in this universe that God seems to be ignoring for some reason. I just--it's--" he's scared shitless of God starting to pay attention to this universe and him in particular and it's absolutely affecting his judgement, is what it is.

Lev kisses him.

"I love you so we're going to figure out how to keep you safe."

Kiss. "I hope so. I think I'm more scared now than when I had nothing to lose."