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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.
His response is mostly just to watch, slightly curious and slightly fond.
Then Lev can translate. This is the bit about candles. These are the blessings on bread and wine. This is the bit that he would sing to the woman of the house praising her virtue, if there were one.
"Oh. Me too. I just-- Or I guess I'm not an atheist but I don't believe in, you know. The god I'm praying to."
Mordred nods and hesitates and then says "...if you're an atheist why do you pray? If that's okay to ask, sorry."
because Mordred wanted him to for reasons that are really unclear to him "You're supposed to. Even if you don't believe in God."
"Huh." (Mordred - still doesn't get it, really. But he doesn't really have to.)
"Even if you don't believe in God you can believe in Jews, I think. Also at the hospital I couldn't light candles. But I could pray very quietly to myself, and. That was mine." He feels sort of uncomfortable with opening up that much to Mordred. It is a weakness that Mordred could take advantage of. But he is... tired of being on his guard around someone who seems to just want to read him books.
Mordred wishes very much that he had gone further in ruining Keaton's day. (Year. Career. Entire field, if he's being honest.) "...that makes sense. Do you want me to read to you tonight?" Mordred says, instead of any of that.
(He thinks, but does not say, that on Shabbat you are supposed to spend time with your family.)
The next day--
Lev visits Oswald's hotel room. He is very very very quiet.
Oswald has had a recurring problem where if he's not in physical contact with someone they don't feel quite real but if that contact is making it harder to potentially run for it in any way he starts panicking. Today he's threading this needle by leaning his head against Lev's shoulder.
Lev has had practice over the last few days with arranging himself so that Oswald doesn't feel like he's going to hit him.
He has a tendency to fall silent for long periods of time, and the break the silence with random questions. Today: "What kind of research was it? That you were doing, when it all... I don't know much about the different kinds."
"I was researching cults. The survival of pagan cults into the present day. Have you read Margaret Mead?"
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