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Mordred says that Lev is supposed to go off his medications and tell Mordred if he's not feeling well and needs to taper down more slowly.
Obviously, the thing this means is that Lev is supposed to taper down as quickly as possible and hide the tremors and headaches and sweating and light hypersensitivity from Mordred so that he isn't upset by them.
Lev manages to do this for almost two days.
Mordred comes back into the apartment after a meeting with Mrs. Winston-Rogers about Douglas Henslowe.
Lev is curled up on the bed making whimpering noises. He sounds in pain.
Mordred goes up to him and says "are you okay, do you need --" as softly as he can.
Lev looks up at him and says something in a language Mordred doesn't speak. His hands are trembling and he's sweating.
Maybe Yiddish?
"I'm sorry, I don't speak that language," he says softly in English.
He's delirious.
Mordred thinks for three seconds that maybe Lev should go to the hospital, thinks what Lev's reaction to that idea would be, and says "hey, hey, it's okay, we're in New York, I--" as gently as possible.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I got confused-- I--" Lev tries to stand up and get out of bed and then immediately falls down.
"Okay, I promise."
When Mordred gets back he's out of bed and fallen on his face.
Mordred helps him back into bed and holds him so that he can't try to wiggle out and starts to read.
Mordred just... pets his hair and says "I love you, sweetheart," and lets him believe it's coming from whoever it is he wants it to be coming from.
Nobody has ever said that to him who didn't mean it in a Family Way. And as far as he's concerned nobody is ever going to and he has to be fine with that.
Mordred goes back to reading.
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