Then Lev will watch him sleep!

(Skipping a bunch of sleep with stims so that you can stare at the person you're in love with is totally a reasonable and sustainable strategy. Right? Right.)

As long as you don't mind being kind of bored. 

Sasha wakes up at a time that is less ridiculously early than usual, and then they can go to museums. He is very enthusiastic about the museums and has possibly forgotten that other tourist attractions exist. 

Staring at Sasha sleeping is absolutely not boring! (Possibly that's the moda talking.)

"We could also go to the giant store full of M&Ms," Lev points out.

"We could! Or we could stay far away from Times Square, which I don't expect either of us to actually like, and instead we go to the Met."

"I would like a store full of M&Ms," Lev complains, but he goes to the Met.

The Met is enormous. Like, Sasha knew abstractly that it was going to be enormous, but that is distinct from going there and seeing for yourself that holy shit, this place is enormous. 

There are brightly lit rooms full of statues and dimly lit rooms full of paintings and there's entire rooms of decorative art and there's a sarcophagus bigger than he would ever have imagined and Sasha is over the moon. 

What about the ENTIRE EGYPTIAN TEMPLE?

Lev really wants to make sure that Sasha has seen the ENTIRE EGYPTIAN TEMPLE.

He's seen the ENTIRE EGYPTIAN TEMPLE now!! 

Lev also likes the arms and armor exhibit, because of who he is as a person.

The Arms and Armor exhibit is excellent! 

Sasha has a possibly-surprising amount of opinions about the paintings — this one was making a political point about westward expansion, see the light coming from the right of the painting and going towards the left — and stands perfectly still for multiple minutes in front of the stained-glass window in the American Art room. 

Lev wants to know every opinion Sasha has about paintings. He asks a lot of questions and tries his very best to make "but how do you know the light didn't just look like that?" sound like a sincere question but not a gotcha. 

Lev briefly looks at the stained glass window in an attempt to figure out what Sasha is getting out of it, but eventually decides to just look at Sasha looking at it instead.

Well, if it was any one thing in isolation then sure, maybe the light just looked like that, and maybe the horse-and-wagon just happened to be traveling left, and maybe the left just happened to be wild and gnarled while the right just happened to be cleared and orderly, but all together it's clearly organized that way on purpose to make a point and given the time period he's pretty confident that that is in fact the point it's making. He isn't actually able to do this for every painting but he's able to do it for a lot of them. 

He keeps glancing at Lev, wanting to share how happy he is to be here with Lev. 

Over the course of the day Lev shifts from "Sasha is cute when he's happy and doing something he's interested in" to "Sasha is incredibly smart and knowledgeable about this topic and it's impressive" to "let's LEARN some fucking ART HISTORY."

He asks good questions.

He does ask good questions! He asks great questions! Sasha hadn't gotten a chance to talk about this to someone who's interested — he keeps making sure Lev is interested, keeps a careful eye on the tone of his questions and the look on his face — in what he's only just realizing has been way too long. 

(He is so, incredibly, deliriously happy.) 

Lev has completely forgotten that he's supposed to be interested because he's in love with Sasha and is instead just interested because it is interesting. 

Good! Then he'll keep explaining it, sometimes pulling examples from other paintings in the same room. He's not the best teacher but he's very very passionate about this subject. 

Having things explained to you by someone who is passionate about the subject is the best thing in the world. 

Then he will just keep explaining until oh whoops the museum is kind of closing. 

Whoops they might have totally forgotten to have lunch. 

"Where do you want to eat? --We can eat at one of those fancy places but, fair warning, I fundamentally do not understand them on any level."

"Honestly I just want a burger and a milkshake." 

"Okay, but next time we're getting pizza."

"I'm told New York is pretty good at that!" There's gotta be a burger and milkshake place between the museum and their hotel, right? 

There totally is!

Lev is going to try to spend all of dinner talking about art.

Sasha is so happy to spend all of dinner talking about art. 

And then they can go back to their hotel room and take off their clothes and TALK MORE ABOUT ART.