"...what's going on," is the first thing out of his mouth, when he sees the looks on his parents' faces. Maybe he should already know, but — he doesn't.
Lev is adorable.
(There's — nothing wrong with noticing that, it's true, it's not like Marlo is thinking about how much he wants to hold him and kiss him and —)
Lev keeps talking to Marlo for all of dinner and all of free time and he says "one more thing" so many times that Clayton throws a pillow at his head and tells him to shut up.
It turns out, once you get Lev to start talking, it is impossible to shut him up.
He listens and occasionally asks questions for all of dinner and all of free time and until Clayton throws a pillow at Lev's head, at which point he laughs and apologizes to Clayton and goes over to his bed o the other side of the dorm and definitely does not dream about how good Lev's smile is and how soft his hands are and how good it would be to kiss him.
That's very strange because Lev absolutely does dream about how good it would be to kiss Marlo. And also other things.
Asher concludes that it is important that Raine get enough sleep and so they should not have sex tonight.
It is a very disappointing conclusion.
And Sasha falls asleep thinking about his boyfriend (his boyfriend!) and gets a better night of sleep than he has since their first day here.
The next afternoon, group therapy is about finding and submitting to your Higher Power.
There is therapy homework.
Lev sticks close to Marlo when they come out.
"I'm not super thrilled by this homework."
"Is there a reason you can't list your own God?"
His voice is open, honestly curious.
"The things Christine was talking about were-- really, really Christian? You can't just take evangelical Protestantism and then ctrl+F to replace 'Jesus' with 'your Higher Power' and get something I'm comfortable doing."
"Searching and fearless moral inventories are just... not really what God wants me to do, actually."
"I'm going to have to either make something up or write down something really weird, I'm religiously complicated and the thing where this camp thinks Protestantism in a weird hat is secular is really not helping."
Marlo makes a face at the idea of submitting to the higher power of a doorknob. "If it's what works for you."
He shrugs. "In theory. I had a bar mitzvah because not having one would have meant a three-year fight with my parents and I know most of the prayers and I think the Song of Songs is gorgeous, I go to a seder every Passover and we do a Shabbat dinner when my parents are both home on Friday night, but I'm not particularly observant and turns out that when you spend your Saturday evenings learning a pagan ritual in secret you get kind of sincere about it even if it was originally for drama class.
And my school still hasn't unbanned the Bacchae, so I'll probably be spending next year sneaking out to a field to teach the freshmen."
"You're really not supposed to do pagan rituals! The entire Tanakh is about this!"
"Does it help to think of it as being basically like cheerleading for drama kids? I'm pretty sure I'm going to put Dionysus as my higher power but I'm like seventy-five percent joking."
"I am pretty sure you are not supposed to do pagan rituals even if you are joking!"
He shrugs again. "Then I'm not Jewish, I just sometimes do Jewish things because my parents want me to and it's not worth the fight."