Lev pounces on him and kisses him.

"I love you."

He laughs and falls backwards against the ground and lets himself be kissed, kisses Lev back. 

"I love you!" 

"We can have so many babies. Fourteen babies."

"We might want to start off with fewer than fourteen," but he's laughing. 

"Babies," Lev announces, "are like potato chips."

"Are they now?" 

"Yep. You can't have just one."

Lev is very very good. "Fourteen is still a lot." 

"Okay, maybe not fourteen."

"I love you," he says, and kisses Lev's forehead and then sits up so Lev is in his lap. 

"I love you!"

No matter how much she tries to make the time drag out, the end of step three is sooner than it should be. 

Asher wakes her up. 

"Let's go. I want to see you when you look like you."

She gets up and gets dressed-enough as fast as she can. 

There's no point in being subtle; she stays by Asher's side. 

He clings to her on the entire car ride.

"Once I get home we can send emails," she says quietly. "And I can try to come up to New York, it won't be often or anything but there are trains —" 

"I'll wait for you, I promise. Until you tell me to stop."

"I love you." She's clinging. "I love you — I have two email addresses, the one you know is the one my parents don't, I'm good at hiding things you can send me anything you want —" 

"I love you. If you decide you want to run I'll figure something out to take care of you."

She nods and pulls her knees up to her chest and leans heavily on Asher's side. 

When they get to Ron's, Asher says, "I want pictures of you."

She kisses him and gets dressed, takes special care with her makeup. 

Her shoulders still relax, when she looks like her, but — it's different. It's more desperate. This is her last chance in, fuck, her last chance in months. 

He snaps pictures of her with his phone. 

"You're so beautiful."

"I love you." She's smiling. "I love you," and she drapes herself across Asher's lap and puts her head on his shoulder. 

He kisses her. "I want to go out dancing with you sometime."