"Do you remember how Round Table pizza places were decorated? It's like that." 

"Weird." Also delightful! But mostly weird. 

He's just going to eavesdrop on this conversation.

It is his creepy, stalkerish life now.

"It really is — in general buildings tend to look like totally different buildings when you walk into them, and the people tend to be people you know, that's true for pretty much everyone. The castles thing is just me, though." 

Is he airbrushing away most of how the dream world works? Yes. Sasha almost certainly doesn't want to hear about how no matter how wide a space is the walls are always closing in on him. 

"So does it have anything to do with what your actual dreams are or no —" 

"At least some! We're not sure how much. — Loki says you're new to the area, where are you from?" 

"About ten days of walking south of here — I didn't know Eros existed, I just picked a direction and walked in it until I found someone who seemed like they might want to keep me, the first thing I heard about Eros is that it definitely wasn't a sex cult —" 

Marlo laughs. "That we are not! I can't imagine that was the best first impression, though." 

"Loki's team looked better fed than anyone else I'd seen in the ten days I was walking, it would have been hard to leave a bad one." 

"Fair enough. — it's good to have you." 

He means that. He's honestly a little surprised at how much he means that. 

"It's good to be here."  

Night falls and lanterns come out. He doesn't have to check for the Something.

Some people are singing, reciting poetry, or reading books out loud; other people are talking or playing with small children. (Lev appears to still be working.)

He still checks the window in his room three times, and then pauses and makes it nine (three times three, triple lucky) before he goes back out into a communal space and looks for a place he can share poetry with people. 

There's a poetry reciting circle over there!

Oh, good. He joins it, listens, and, when it's his turn — 

Immortality:

In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world. 
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
the cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords 
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge 
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission 
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.

As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene. 
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can't be changed
or broken, only interrupted. 
My attention was on the fly: 
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later. 

Oh no. 

...oh. 

Sasha sits down. 

Other people probably recite poetry but Lev doesn't hear it.

Sleeping is hard that night. (It's been hard since — since.) 

He works; it takes him several days to get everything from the book to the paper and after that he cooks. He misses the others from Nova. (He checks his window nine times every evening, never mind that he doesn't need to.) He sees Rebecca and gets anti-parasite treatment and assorted vitamins. He eats better than he's eaten in years. 

He keeps talking to Marlo; he doesn't get much chance to talk to Lev but he keeps an eye out for him. He adjusts, slowly, to sleeping alone. 

Lev doesn't talk to Sasha but he's... around. He works through dinner, but he sits at tables that are closer to Sasha than would be expected by chance; he often sits quietly and listens at poetry reciting circles and always passes when it's his turn.

Two weeks later, the fiction and poetry books the scavengers got are all from authors that Sasha likes.

...huh.

He reads in his spare time. He keeps a significantly closer eye on Lev. 

Lev does not give any discernible sign that he wants to talk to Sasha, but he does sit three tables away from Sasha a bit more often than one would expect by coincidence.

Okay. He's just going to let that be for a while. 

He spends more time with Marlo and doesn't mention it to anyone. What would be the point? 

And the next time they're alone together, Marlo tips his chin up and says, very gently, "Can I kiss you?" 

(He's smiling. Soft, still gentle.)