"That-- makes sense."

Mordred has two thoughts, one of which is that Lev is good, and one of which is that he wishes Lev had been doing anthropology for the last ten years and not rotting in an asylum.

Lev is so excited by the museum.

He grins about everything that has changed since he was a little kid and sparkles when he finds his old favorite dinosaur.

Mordred watches him fondly the whole time.

"Do you remember what you liked when you were a kid?"

"...I didn't come here when I was a kid."

"Oh, that sucks. I think being eight is the best way to see it."

Lev is uncertain how disingenuous he feels like being here. The problem with needling Mordred about being a posh boy pretending to be from New York is that if Lev is unsubtle then Mordred will notice and then Lev will be stuck selling apples on the street corner.

"Yeah, it's the kind of thing I would have liked."

A few days later, Lev and Oswald are listening to the radio.

"You know, I've never listened to most of these in person."

"You could go out dancing."

"It just never interested me. The dance halls are loud and full of people and I've never really liked -- the sort of girl you meet in them."

Lev flops back on the bed, his hands behind his head.

"What kind of girls do you like?"

Oswald sits for a moment and bewilderedly considers the question.

"Alice Brooks," he says finally. "In junior high. She wrote good essays."

Lev is going to be very good and not laugh at Oswald.

...okay, maybe a little bit.

Lev thinks about it a little bit, considers the possibility that Oswald will murder him, concludes that Oswald is probably queer and definitely safe, and says, "...what about boys?"

Oswald considers explaining that he doesn't like the sort of man who fucks the sort of boys one finds in bars and considers explaining-- exactly what Samson did to him-- and  considers saying that he doesn't know how people know these sorts of things except now he is thinking about Lev and trying to sort what this feeling is against how he feels about his sister and how he imagines Samson to have felt and how he distantly remembers feeling about that girl in junior high.

In practice, he goes contemplatively silent for so long that it becomes moot.

Oh no he broke Oswald.

Finally, Oswald says, "I don't want to be -- that sort of man, the kind that goes after pretty boys in bars. I don't want to..." More quietly: "I don't want to do that to anyone else."

Instead of commenting on most of this sentence, Lev says neutrally, "most of the pretty boys in bars like it."

"Do they? It's... painful. And, and there's so much all at once except also nothing at all and once it's started you can't -- and nobody will... there's no one who... Maybe it's different. If you deliberately put on rouge and walk into a bar. I don't know. I've never been. I've just..."

Lev says, very casually and without showing the dread in his stomach, "Who did you do it with?"

If he whispers "it was Samson" very quietly then perhaps that will make it less real.

"..............Me too."

"...ah."

He's gone very curled in on himself and hasn't met Lev's eyes in a while but he reaches for his hand and squeezes it and doesn't let go and leans in a way that both brings him closer to Lev and directs his gaze squarely at the mattress.

"Ramon was my lover."

"Oh. -- Was it -- was he --"

What if in lieu of figuring out what question he's even asking he attempts to telepathically provide comfort and instead just leans harder against him, even tho surely at some amount of pressure it stops being comfortable for Lev.

"I love him. Loved."