“Yeah! I mean, of course, yeah.” He reaches under the table to take Lev’s hand and squeeze it. “I love you.”

"I love you! It is really inconsiderate of things to keep happening so that we have to worry about them and I can't spend all of lunch telling you how good you are."

“Yeah.” Sigh. “You’re really good too. Like, really good.”

"Clearly you should tell me more about how good I am."

“You’re really good, you’re smart and handsome and sweet and curious and a good teacher and you have nice hair and a nice face and nice—everything else—and you like me.” Kiss. 

Lev is basking in praise!

...Lev is also kind of squirmy about praise.

Awwwwww. "Probably we should not make out in a restaurant, no matter how much I want to? You're very cute, though."

"It seems like a good idea to me." His tone is joking.

(Apparently, when Lev has decided he wants to have sex with you sometimes, he also looks at you like you are the best and most important person in the world and he admires you so much and wants to learn everything about you and is pretty sure you are utterly flawless.)

Handsqueeze. “I love you.”

"Found a non-digitizable statement today that was... very story-shaped. Like. They found a calliope, and the statement-giver mentions offhandedly that you can hear the sounds of one from a mile away, and then in the last paragraph someone is haunted by distant calliope music that keeps getting closer, and the last sentence is 'after all, they say you can hear one from a mile away.' --The Watchful Thing is a pretty good horror writer. Honestly gave me the creeps."

(He pronounces it 'kah-LEE-oh-pee.')

“Huh. That’s... kind of cute? Especially since it does it to the provably false ones, too, like... It just wants to tell us good stories, you know? I mean. I’m sure it’s got an ominous motive or whatever for everything, just.”

"If it really wanted to be cute it could give us some romantic comedies or something."

Small laugh. “Fair point! I wonder if it takes constructive criticism?”

"I think that would mostly just annoy Elias."

Another laugh. “Yeah, probably.”

Walking back to the Institute!

"Did you know that calliopes are named after the Muse? It took me a really long time to figure that one out."

“No, I didn’t! That’s really interesting.” 

"In my defense she's not even the muse of music? That's Polyhymnia. Or, uh, what's her name, starts with an E. Euterpe." (He pronounces 'Euterpe' 'YOU-tehr-pee.') "Calliope is the muse of epic poetry and I have not ever heard of a calliope that recites poetry either epic or lyrical. --I guess 'Euterpe' is kind of a terrible name for a musical instrument."

"I dunno, maybe it would seem normal if we were used to it?"

"I dunno, I think it just sounds awful. And then people would start pronouncing it 'YOU-terp' which is worse."

"Yeah, that's fair. I've definitely heard calliope pronounced differently, but at least those mispronunciations don't sound that bad." (He's mimicking Lev's pronunciation carefully.)

"I mean I don't think it's a mispronunciation really? The instrument and the Muse are actually, like, different? And it makes sense to pronounce English words according to the rules of English. I'm just a nerd."

Oh good he hasn't been messing up too badly. He nods. "Yeah, that makes sense. And you're a great nerd."

"I was once stuck in a car for two days with nothing to read but Edith Hamilton and the names of every Greek deity are burned into my head forever."

“That’s—unfortunate probably but also really cute?”