Lev knows that Mordred hates it when he cringes back and looks afraid but he can't stop himself-- even if Mordred is queer it's not safe, there's not anything more dangerous than rich trade that doesn't know that they're trade and is going to take it out on you-- 

He is obscurely pissed off that he survived the Lower East Side and his bad tricks and the draft and the Spanish flu and Ramon and Samson and Gol-Goroth and Dr. Keaton only to die because he made a bad judgment about whether sucking a particular cock would make him safer.

(His judgment was bad because he wanted to-- and Mordred keeps making him feel like it is safe for him to want to and now he is going to die about it--)

All that flashes through his head but his mouth says, "It's okay sorry I think maybe I misunderstood--"

"— it's okay, you didn't do anything wrong, just, Gale is Catholic and we've never — and I don't know if I want — I'm sorry —"

...oh. This interaction might be less fatal than previously suspected.

The words that come out of his mouth without him really meaning to say them are, "Do you want a hug? I won't do anything I promise."

"............Yes please."

Lev gets up on the bed and hugs him.

"You're really good. I'd... want to."

"Thank you. I think."

"I wasn't offering for-- sometimes you offer that for food and a place to sleep. And I was offering because I want to. Just so you know."

Mordred is going to interact with that at some point that is not now. He thinks this about a lot of things but it's fine probably.

Right now he is going to lie back on the bed with Lev's arm around him and Lev's head on his shoulder. Agravaine is not particularly tactile and Gale is — he isn't going to think about that right now — and Mordred does not get to be held like this often. It's nice.

Meanwhile-- 

Lev is not really familiar with delaying sex with men. He understands that sex with girls is a thing where the man tries to go as far as possible while the girl tries to stop him, but this was never the thing he did with girls. When Ramon tossed him one of the less pretty starlets he played a different game where he tried to delay sex as long as possible without the girl realizing he's a queer.

With men, Lev is pretty sure, they take you out and then they expect payment afterward and if you attempted to keep any gates they would take the payment anyway so it was best to go along willingly. That's assuming, of course, that you didn't drop to your knees in front of them before learning any of the niceties like their name.

But Oswald does not at all seem to be pressing him for sex, and he luxuriates in this feeling for nearly a week before he says, "you should hit me."

Lev was not really sure if he wanted to say this, because if you tell a guy he can hit you he'll hit you whether you want to be hit or not, but Oswald is very handsome and often looks like he might murder you and this is a particularly attractive sort of face for him to have in bed, and Lev has never really been one for self-preservation. 

"What-- I don't-- I mean-- you--" Oswald manages after some time to form a complete sentence which is, admittedly, "Why?"

"I'm a sick and disgusting pervert."

"No, I have met perverts before, they want the opposite of that. If I had for some reason started with that concept I would still be confused."

"I mean I also want to hit people."

"Well, getting hit seems easier, but hitting seems less painful, so I am really not sure which I prefer," Oswald says earnestly. 

"You don't have to do either of them."

"No, no, I want to know what you're getting out of it."

"Getting hit feels nice sometimes. Not always. And it is nice to know someone has me utterly in their power and can do whatever they want with me. As long as they only want to do things I want them to do, which is admittedly pretty picky of me."

"Well, I am definitely defaulting at any given moment to the assumption that you won't like getting hit. Please inform me when this changes preferably out loud because I am bad at picking up on things."

Oh. He's very good. 

"Is this going to change if I like getting hit during sex a lot?"

"I might start asking instead of waiting for you to tell me every time??? In general I am nervous about Getting Things Wrong. I can't just make unilateral decisions about people I want happy, I don't have an internal sense for these things, what if I get it wrong and pick a bad time and you're upset! That would be bad!"

"Oh, well, normally men just hit me whenever they feel like it."

"I don't know if your other lovers were better at this than me or anything but I really don't like ending up wrong about whether any particular thing I do will make other people happy and when I let myself guess I get it wrong a lot."

"I'm not sure that men typically care whether it makes me happy."

!!!!!!

"I care so much about that!!!"

Oswald can very tentatively hit him.

Then there can be more guidance about exactly where and how hard to hit, at least until Lev is making too many incoherent noises to be much help at all with this problem. 

It turns out that there are many sex acts which Oswald previously conceived of as unpleasant and degrading that a person is capable of being extremely enthusiastic about.