He stands up and collects Raine and sits again with her in his lap. 

"Tell me what he said?" 

Now she relaxes. (Fuck, what does that say about her, that her boyfriend holding her made her feel trapped but Marlo feels —) 

"He wanted to know why I'd done it and then he said he didn't get how fucking someone like that would make me feel like my body was mine and he said could I maybe not express my ownership of myself through making stupid choices and — when he could tell I was upset he stopped and hugged me but —" 

"Yeah," Marlo says, softly, and adjusts the way he's holding her, cards absentmindedly through her hair. "I get it." 

She's spent a lot of time with her head on Marlo's shoulder and his fingers in her hair, these last few weeks. It's — nice. Familiar. 

"And — he wasn't. Wrong? It was a stupid choice I shouldn't have made, I should have figured out something else to do that wouldn't fuck me up so bad, I just —" 

"...Raine, it is not your fault that you got raped." 

A distressed sound. 

"It wasn't — I didn't say no, ever, and I —" 

He holds her closer.

"Would you have? If you'd been able to breathe, if you had thought he would stop?" 

That same tight too-quick nod. 

"We have a word for sex you don't want to be having but can't end. That word is not bad decision. That word is rape." 

She nods again and then all at once goes limp. 

"...yeah," she says, quiet. "Yeah." 

And he keeps petting her hair, keeps cradling her, keeps being there. 

He did something wrong, he hurt Raine, he doesn't know what he did wrong, he has to fix it but he doesn't know how--

Lev wakes up, shakes his head, and immediately dives back into the Research Pit.

"I'm going to get food, do you want some?" he says to Raine. 

She actually pauses to think about it before she says "I'm not hungry but maybe in a few hours?" 

"Alright," and he puts her down and goes out to the kitchen. 

He stays in his bedroom with the covers drawn up over his knees. 

(He wants to apologize-- but she left--)

...he pauses, debates for a moment, and then knocks on Asher's door. 

"You can come in."

(Maybe it's her--)

It's not her. 

"Hey." 

He is visibly disappointed. 

"Hey. Is she okay?"

"She's doing better than she was half an hour ago, but in general she's about as okay as you'd expect from someone whose boyfriend just got mad at her for having been raped." 

"She didn't tell me."

"She didn't tell you what?" 

"That she was raped."