"Uh, yeah, this is just what... not-pretty people... look like."

"I don't mean that, I just — you stopped." 

"I told you yesterday-- I don't like going farther than kissing if I'm not in love with the person?"

— he'd woken up in bed with him — 

"Okay," he says, and he sounds — small. 

"I can if you want to, I just-- wouldn't get anything out of it?"

"No, that's not —" 

He reaches for words and comes up empty and kisses Lev again. 

Kissing is okay!

Lev made Sasha sad and he wants to fix it and he doesn't know what to do. 

Kissing is good. He doesn't think about how Lev doesn't want him. 

It — seems to solve itself; Sasha goes relaxed and shining-eyed and smiley again very quickly. 

Well, that works. 

Eventually Lev places one last kiss on his forehead and says, "I'm going to get you some breakfast. Do you have requests, or do you want to try something Lily would like, or do you want the Bar to pick?"

"I'll try something Lily would like." 

Lev returns with a tray and two plates: French toast with chocolate syrup and sausages, which he puts in front of Sasha, and eggs, hash browns, and bacon, which he puts in front of himself. 

There are calorie purgers back home, it'll be fine. He eats. 

His eyes have gone a little bit unfocused. 

"...are you okay?" Lev asks.

The unfocused vacant look doesn't go away. "Why wouldn't I be?" 

He doesn't know enough for this-- all he knows is how to figure out whether someone has a concussion and that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do when someone has a long-term traumatic brain injury-- but he has to do something--

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"

"Go ahead!" 

"I'm going to say some words, and then can you say as many of them as you remember back to me? Dollar, honey, mirror, saddle, anchor."

He tilts his head. "Dollar, honey, mirror, saddle, anchor." 

"--Uh, I'm doing a TBI test because your eyes are all fucked up, sorry, I probably should have explained that-- can you say the months of the year in reverse order?"

"February, January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June, May, April, March. I can see perfectly fine?" 

"I'm going to say some numbers and then you can say them backward, okay? So if I say 7-1-9 you'd say 9-1-7. Okay. 3-8-2."

"Two, eight, three." 

He does a few more digit strings of increasing length until either Sasha gets it wrong or can correctly do six numbers backwards.

He gets it wrong at four. 

"Do you remember the words I said before?"