He pulls back and looks up at Lev's face. "I'm sorry — do you want me to stop —" 

"I don't, I don't know--"

Stupid, stupid, you can't have a panic attack in front of people, they'll know, stupid stupid stupid--

"Okay," he says, soft, "hey, it's okay, I'm stopping, I'm not going anywhere." He gets up and moves, very hesitantly, into Lev's lap. 

To Lev's complete and utter humiliation he starts crying. 

"Sorry, I don't-- don't usually let people see me like this-- I can go--"

He's holding onto Sasha very very tightly.

Oh, sweetheart. 

"You don't have to go." He holds Lev, puts one hand on his back and the other on the back of his head. "You don't have to be sorry. I've got you." 

He cries into Sasha's shoulder for a bit, but his breathing slows and deepens and he murmurs into Sasha's shoulder "'s nice."

(stupid, stupid, he'll never like you now, stupid--)

He keeps holding him, presses a kiss to his forehead. "Panic attacks?" 

"I assume. Haven't been diagnosed or anything. Sorry."

He doesn't know what he's apologizing for.

(stupid stupid stupid)

He nods. "Me too. 

Do you want to talk about it? It's okay if you don't, I'm not going anywhere." 

"You... too?" he says cautiously. 

Intellectually, he had been aware that he was not literally the only person on the planet to ever suffer from a mental health issue. But emotionally he was sure that only he did, because he was stupid and pathetic and everyone hated him and they were right.

He nods again, rests his forehead against Lev's. 

"Mostly it's politics stuff that sets it off — I used to have a tumblr, I stay off it now — but some of them are totally random. The taste of hazelnuts — he used to put nutella on everything, for a while I couldn't eat chocolate at all. Plato's Allegory of the Cave. There's nothing wrong with having brain bruises." 

"I don't have a reason. I'm just-- like this. Have been since I was a kid."

Sasha could be making it up, could be pretending so that Lev would feel comforted about his (stupid stupid pathetic) panic attack, but being paranoid is hard and Sasha is soft and warm and he just wants to rest and be held. 

"You're wonderful."

"....You told me last night you didn't want to talk about your childhood because it was horrible. I bet there's a reason." 

He's happy to hold him. 

"I could bribe all the grocery stores a mile around us not to carry hazelnuts, you know."

"You don't have to bribe grocery stores into not carrying hazelnuts. I don't want to eat them, I don't care whether anyone else does." He very cautiously pets Lev's hair. 

Lev makes a happy noise about having his hair petted. 

"You're no fun," he complains. "I like making stupid grand romantic gestures."

Then he can have his hair petted more. 

"Do you know what set this one off? If you don't know, or don't want to think about it, that's fine." 

"I have. Issues. About sex," he mumbles into Sasha's shoulder.

Another nod. "Makes sense." He keeps petting. "There's probably a way to work around them. If you want to, and want to talk about it, of course." 

He takes a deep breath and presses his forehead into Sasha's shoulder and tries to put his thoughts in order. 

"I've never had sex before. I'm scared of people seeing me naked because I don't want them to be grossed out by me because I'm ugly. I'm scared of other people touching my dick. I'm scared that I might do something wrong and hurt them or bore them or make them uncomfortable. I don't want sex unless I have... feelings... and I'm scared of having feelings for people. And I am really really scared that you're pretending to want to have sex with me because you think it will make me happy. I think that's everything."

"I'm definitely not pretending to want to have sex with you, the pretending to want to have sex with people phase of my life was terrible and I'm not going to artificially extend it. There's plenty you can do while keeping your clothes mostly on. Other people touching your dick can be worked up to, it is totally normal to be scared of that when your first kiss was yesterday. You pay a lot of attention to the person you're interacting with in non-sexual contexts and I'd expect that to extend to sexual ones; I'd actually be really surprised if you hurt me by accident. Being scared of having feelings is, again, totally normal; I'm less sure how to help with that, but having any experience being around people will probably not hurt. That's not perfect but it's what I can think of off the top of my head." 

"The problem is that you'd say 'I'm definitely not pretending to want to have sex with you' whether or not you were pretending to want to have sex with me," Lev says miserably. "And I don't know what you could do that you'd only do if you actually wanted to have sex with me so I don't know how to resolve it one way or the other. --Oh, I forgot that also I'm scared that I'm going to be another person in the line of horrible people who have hurt you, I keep having these flashes of a future where you're telling someone 'I was in an abusive relationship and then I was homeless and had to have sex for a place to stay and then I was with this creepy billionaire and he fucked me up even more'--" and he's crying into Sasha's shoulder again. 

"Sorry. I don't want to make your problems about me."

This seems like it calls for more hugs and more hairpetting. 

"No, hey, it's fine, brains have bruises, it's not your fault what they are. You're not creepy, I have a really good creep radar and you are one of the least creepy people I've met in a long time — and that's including, like, coworkers, I know what you're thinking about sampling pools and while you're not wrong to think it it's not in fact correct. You treat the staff well, you generally care about the effects of your actions on other people, you don't want to get involved in politics so you give to non-controversial causes like polio vaccines, you care about the possibility of maybe hurting me,  you're not going to be horrible." 

"I think caring about the possibility of maybe hurting you is a low standard."

Lev is skeptical about how good Sasha's creep radar can be if it is not hella pinging on him but that does not seem like a good argument to get into right now. 

"You're not wrong! But — you pay attention, you care, you don't actually want me hurt, I am very confident that if I told you something was hurting me you would stop."