Jan looks very apologetic! 

Sinead does a lot of laughing at things he says that sound vaguely like they might be jokes, touches his arm a lot. 

This is literally the most horrifying experience of his entire life and every time Sinead touches his arm his skin shrivels up like a salted slug. 

What if he just. Doesn't talk. 

Then she'll do the talking for him and eventually the Allotted Sinead Talks To Her New Heterosexual Crush time will be up and they can both be done. 

aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa

"Lev, I'm not sure you're really giving Sinead a chance."

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

"I'm so sorry," Sinead mouths, and then she smiles winningly at Serena. "It's all right, there'll be other chances for us to talk! I don't want to interrupt group therapy too much." 

There are LITERALLY FIVE OTHER GUYS she could have picked. He ALREADY HAS A GIRLFRIEND. TWO GIRLFRIENDS. 

Also the concept of touching Sinead makes him want to die. 

"All right. Today, we're discussing sex education."

(Serena's opinion on sex education is 'don't.')

Sinead listens raptly to Serena's opinions on sex education! 

Lev is. Not sure if he is supposed to be acting interested in Sinead? He alternates looking at Sinead, sending apologetic glances to Jan, and contemplating how honestly having Raine and Asher and Marlo all in bed with him when he marries his future wife doesn't seem remotely as bad as Serena is making it sound.

He listens to Serena and entertains brief fantasies of having Lev in his bed every night for the rest of his life. 

When group is over, Lev is just going to. flee in terror. This is fine.

"Oh no," Sinead says, and makes no real attempt to follow. 

Poor Lev. 

It's all right. That night they get to push their beds together and Lev gets to wrap Raine up in his arms and hold her.

Lev is soft and warm and good and being held by him makes Raine feel — safe. 

She hasn't been sleeping much, since — since, has only been eating with Lev watching her, but. Lev's there. She falls asleep quickly tonight. 

He stays up as late as he can to watch her sleep but eventually drifts off.

Eating is — still hard. She stops talking in group, spends as much time as she can with Lev or Marlo. It's not as bad as it could be; she could still have to talk to Harry, or Christine could have been angry with her, or, or. 

She stops taking showers in the middle of the night; she uses free time for that instead. The idea of sex with anyone makes her feel a little bit sick but having Lev hold her at night is — good. She misses Asher. (She doesn't tell Asher — she isn't sure what she's scared of but she's scared of something. She doesn't poke that feeling.) She just has to keep going. 

The only way out is through, she writes on the bottom corner of one of her binder pages, and then she tears the corner off and rips it into tiny bits before anyone can see. 

Marlo writes to Asher. 

He doesn't share the details of what happened, only that Raine tried to sleep with one of the girls, and got seriously hurt and is still hurting; he tells him that she and Lev have been cuddling at night, that she's been making herself eat but it looks like she hates it more than ever, that Christine helped rather than hurting her more but even so. 

He does his best to ignore how tight his chest feels when Lev talks about Jan — it's not fair, he doesn't feel like that when Lev looks at Raine, Lev has made his choice and it isn't Marlo's place to decide he should make a different one — he doesn't succeed. He tries to hide it. He thinks he manages. 

He's made his choice and Lev has made his and Marlo can't imagine turning away. It still hurts. 

He doesn't get a letter back from Asher.

Lev is-- okay.

He avoids Sinead. He holds hands with Jan and kisses her. It's... nice. It's not thrilling, but it's nice, and he hardly ever thinks about Raine. 

He worries about Raine. He holds her tightly at night and tries to say through the way he holds her, I'll protect you, I'll keep you safe. But he can't, not really; he's small and weak and nerdy. 

Serena talks about how men should ask women out. After all, women, don't you want a man who will slay the dragon outside your tower and be willing to come rescue you?

He manages to get all the way outside before he throws up. 

Marlo smiles at him a lot when he talks about Jan. Sometimes Marlo's shoulders are hunched. He's really good at hiding it but Lev pays a lot of attention to Marlo. Lev's hurting him, the fact that Lev is with someone else and not with him is hurting him, it's not going to stop hurting him, and Lev is too selfish to set him free.

Raine thinks a lot — more than she should, maybe — about being trapped in a tower.

In her dreams the dragon outside shifts its face; sometimes it's Christine, sometimes Harry, sometimes some abstract thing she can't put a name to. Sometimes the knight is Asher and sometimes Lev and sometimes Ron and sometimes — when the dragon is Harry — Christine. Sometimes there is no dragon, only the tower and the certainty that she cannot leave it. Sometimes the dragon is slain and the door is unlocked and she can go free; sometimes the tower is destroyed to rubble and she and her knight left in its dust; sometimes the tower is destroyed and she is destroyed with it. Sometimes the dragon is slain and she is left in the tower, the doors still locked and her window hundreds of feet above the ground. Sometimes the dragon is Asher and they fly away together and leave the tower far behind. 

Once she dreams that the dragon (the shifting abstract thing this time) is slain and the door is unlocked and Lev comes into her tower and locks both of them in, and says that they're safe from the dragon now and they have one another, and there's nothing she can say or do to convince him that the stale air and too-small spaces aren't worth it, and Raine wakes in Lev's arms and tries not to cry. 

She's taken dozens of showers since — since — but she still doesn't really feel clean. If there's anything you need, Christine said, and rules can be bent, but Raine can't think of what she would ask for. She tries sewing again, and scratches herself with a needle by accident and freezes up and then she stops. She tries not to pick at her scabs. SLUT fades and the scab falls off after a few weeks; FAG and CUNT remain. 

The only way out is through. It's just until February. It's just until the end of camp. She'll be let down from the tower eventually, and the cuts will heal and she'll — and she'll. 

Jan gets condoms from some place Lev doesn't ask about and they sneak off and have sex. Kissing is nice. Eating her out is fine. It's sort of slimy and disgusting but she makes soft happy noises and it's easy to focus on making her feel good and on being wanted. The specific details of the act are unpleasant but he doesn't mind doing something unpleasant to make Jan happy. 

She tries to blow him but he pulls her off after a minute; it's too similar and not similar enough, if she'd kept going he would have gotten soft.

He lasts a long time when they have sex. He closes his eyes and thinks a lot about the sensations, about making Jan happy, about how nice it is for someone to want to have sex with him at all. And when she seems to be finished he--

(-- a dark room, men lined up for him to suck off, his jaw aching, and every time one of them finishes there's another one-- drugged so that he doesn't even know how many people have fucked him or when they switch, all he knows is that he's full and used and wanted--)

comes.

He keeps dating — "dating" — Graham. She's nice enough. She doesn't want to have sex with him; he doesn't want to have sex with her; they do all right. 

He keeps an eye on Lev, keeps track of how he's doing; he worries. When Lev comes back from doing — things Marlo doesn't especially want to think about — with Jan, he's visibly sadder than usual; Marlo stays close to him, offers hugs and cuddling and praise, tries to hide just how worried he is.