She's not really sure what to do with that facial expression. 

"Good, we've all had more than enough of hearing about how evil and degenerate our lifestyle is." 

"Even if I were inclined to convert you I'd be better served by being saintly and happy in your general direction, I'd think. I mean I can't because I'm not full of the joy of Christ's love, but all the research suggests it's best achieved by showing that Christians are kind and the Christian life is appealing. And calling you evil and degenerate seems like neither of those things. --Besides, sins of the flesh are the least bad, it's not like you're me."

"...I mean I'm also an atheist pagan and Lev and Asher are atheists and Marlo is complicated but rounds off to agnostic, but the chances of any of us deciding to give that up and go be evangelical Christians are at this point approximately zero, so. Not like you how?" 

"Oh, I'm too intellectually proud to accept Jesus into my heart as my personal savior. So I'm going to Hell. It's much worse than anything you can do by spreading your legs."

Hell isn't real, they just made it up to keep people in line, you're not too intellectually proud to accept Jesus you're too intellectually honest to lie to yourself about him, hell isn't real, hell isn't real. 

"...can I hug you?" 

"Probably shouldn't."

"Yeah, fair. Just." 

"Not much point being upset about it, really, there's nothing I can do about it."

Nodnod. (She's going to hug Lev extra much when she gets home.) 

"...is he happy? The other me. What's he like?"

"He's okay. — he was really, really miserable when we met, I don't think he had ever had a friend and he was constantly tearing himself up about his parents' expectations for him and he was still Jewish at that point and not being able to have arguments about whether his beliefs were right or not was just really bad for him. And now he has us and he's an atheist and he's so much happier, he bounces and it's adorable, he's so interested in things that I can listen to him talk about something he's researching for hours and hours. 

He's happy and he's very good and I love him very much." 

He curls up a little.

He... didn't expect to be envious, when he heard that. He knew how polygamy was supposed to work. People were treated as interchangeable, things you assemble to get an ideal boyfriend made out of a little of Person X and a little of Person Y. There was always jealousy simmering under the surface, and hatred and competition, because people weren't secure in knowing that the people they're with loved them and only them. He thought the other him would have been settling for the best that he could get. 

He didn't expect that Raine would sound so much like she loved him, and... it hurts to hear that. There's another him somewhere out in the universe who does everything wrong and is loved and he, who was trying so hard to be worthy of love, is not loved at all.

He doesn't know what God's playing at.  

"It... sounds like you do."

"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "....offer of a hug is still open if you change your mind." 

"Yeah," he says. "Okay."

He doesn't move.

Raine gets up and stands behind his chair and hugs him. 

He breathes out slowly.

"You smell nice."

"Thank you," very quietly. "Your hair is soft." 

He stands up clumsily and gives Raine a full-body hug.

"You're warm."

"You're warm too." 

On impulse he kisses her, a quick peck on her lips.

She pulls away, just a little bit, so she can get a look at his face. 

He looks happy at first--

and then he says "Sorry, did you not want to, I thought--"

"I don't not want to, I just happen to know that you're an evangelical Christian with a lot of weird ideas about how my relationships in specific and also relationships in general work, and I feel like we should maybe have some conversations about that if we're going to be kissing." 

"That makes sense."

(She doesn't not want to!)

"..what do you want to talk about?"