Oh, now he can talk.

"Raine, you're so beautiful-- I love looking at you and talking to you and touching you so much-- oh, that's so nice, oh-- I love you-- you're so beautiful--"

"I love you," she whispers, "I love your smile, I love your voice, I love that you use my name, that you care about what words I want — Lev, I love how much you care, I love listening to you, I love touching you, you're so soft, I love your cock, I love your mouth, kissing you is so good, hugging you is so good —"

"Ah-- oh god--"

He finishes.

He should leave. He should run. 

But he's been miserable for so long and Raine is smiling at him and he wants to stay.

She licks his come off her hand and pulls her pants back on and puts her head on Lev's shoulder. "Love you." 

"Stay for a bit?"

He sounds desperate. He kind of hates himself for it.

"Course." She shifts in a way that it would not be incorrect to describe as a snuggle. "I mostly came out here to have some space to think anyway. 'Nd you're warm." 

"I can be quiet and let you think?"

(He does not want to be quiet and let her think.)

"Or you can think out loud at me, sometimes it helps. —you might want to pull your pants up in case someone hears." 

"All right." He does up his pants. "--You're a girl, right? At least sort of."

"At least sort of — if I got to choose what I wore and whether I had makeup on and how long my hair was, I'd look the way I did at Ron's house all the time." 

"So if I kiss you it's probably like. Progress in being straight? --Although Christine won't see it that way."

"I have no idea whether us kissing is straight. I call myself gay even though I'm kind of a girl and I only kiss guys? It's complicated." 

"Well, even if it's only kind of straight, that's definitely an improvement on the 100% gay I was achieving alone. --Also I'm biased because I want to kiss you."

"I want to kiss you too," she says, and does. 

When he's kissing Raine he doesn't hate himself.

--Which is maybe a sign that kissing Raine is filling unmet emotional needs and therefore it's gay? Goddammit.

"This is the first thing that's made me feel okay since Sunday," she murmurs when they pull apart. "I love you." 

Suddenly it is very very important that Raine be okay. And-- it's not like he's stopped caring about being a good dad someday, or about Christine telling his parents he's still gay, but-- those just seem really far away and unimportant when Sasha is sad right here.

Is this how Marlo feels all the time?

--Fuck. He should really talk to Marlo. 

Lev holds her. "Is there a way I can make you feel okay without having sex with you?"

"...You use my words," she says, trying to arrange her sentences so they make sense. "You call me my name — I asked Christine to use my name — Sasha, I didn't tell her about being Raine obviously, but being called Alexander makes me want to cry — and she said maybe we could come to a compromise, she wants to call me Alyosha, and you just, use my name, like you hadn't even considered doing anything else. You care about whether I want you to call it my dick or something else. You call me beautiful." 

"It's your name, of course I'm going to call you your name." It occurs to him that Raine has hair and he can stroke it. "And you're so beautiful, it's hard to not tell you that all the time."

She sort of wants to cry again, but in a good way this time. "Thank you." She leans more heavily on his side. "Thank you." 

"...I don't know why but it's just. Really important to me that you be happy."

"You're a sweetheart." She nuzzles his shoulder. "And it's important to me that you be happy too." 

His muscles get tense when she says that.

"...are you okay?" 

"...I'm not sure you can get what you want. Maybe you could ask for something easier, like the moon, or one of my toes."