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. 

Lev smiles brightly. "Oh! George. Sorry, I didn't know why--"

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.

"If we're in New York why are you speaking English?"

"....I'm Mordred. I only speak English."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I got confused-- I--" Lev tries to stand up and get out of bed and then immediately falls down. 

"Please stay in bed-- do you want me to read to you--"

"Yes. And cuddles," Lev says decisively. 

"You have to promise not to get out of bed until I get a book."

"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. 

"Warm," Lev announces to Mordred's shoulder. "Soft."

Mordred tries not to think about it and keeps reading.

Lev gazes up at him adoringly and says, "I love you."

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.

"Love you, George," Lev says. "Missed you."

Extremely pained face. "I missed you too."

"You were gone for a really long time. Are you going to stay now?"

...............

"Yes. Yes I am."

"That's good." Lev sighs in contentment. "I love you."

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. 

About twenty minutes later, Lev starts thrashing. 

"Mouths-- mouths, there are mouths, there are mouths everywhere, there are so many mouths-- teeth and, and breath and tongues and-- all over me--"

"Shhhhh, it's okay, it's okay--"

Mordred doesn't want to restrain Lev but he doesn't want him to hurt himself either. Maybe if he just sort of... holds him. In a way that isn't quite a restraint but at least stops him from clawing at his skin to try to get the mouths away.

When he's held, Lev quiets and starts crying. 

"Scared of mouths."

He's just going to hold Lev and make soothing noises. 

"Scared, scared, scared, so scared--"

Eventually he calms down enough to be still, and then he falls asleep. 

Once he's asleep, Mordred gets up to stretch and get some food to leave by the bed and some more books to read to Lev.

Eventually Lev wakes up and curls up on Mordred's shoulder and says "love you, Ramon."

"...Love you too."

"I love your library. Is that a dumb reason to love somebody? But it's like I can see your whole brain spread out. All the books you made an effort to get and all the notes in the margins... All the things you care about. It's so good how much you care about things."

"I don't think that's dumb at all. You're very good."

"You have such a good way of looking at things. I like people a lot. You look at people and you see that they're beautiful just like I do. Every person is their own entire world..." He trails off.

Mordred pets his hair. "That's beautiful. You see the world beautifully too."

"And you can look at other things, like the old gods, and when you explain them to me I see how beautiful they are, even though they aren't to me on their own." He's so sincere. "I love you. Thank you for showing me how beautiful Gol-Goroth is."

Mordred isn't sure what kind of face he's making but he does his best to stop making one. "You're very good."

"Mmmm no you. Pull my hair?"

Mordred is incredibly gentle about it. It's really more petting than pulling.

Lev makes happy noises and then seems to get lost in thought. His hands are trembling still, and he sweats. 

After a while he says, "I went out with a sailor last night after school."

".......Oh?"

"Yeah. he took me out to eat and got me a hamburger and we went to the movies. And then we went to the back room of the saloon and I sucked his thing."

Mordred has acquired some new details about how gay sex actually works which he is trying not to think about in too much detail because it is off the table as an option for him.

".........I'm. Happy for you?"

"He's going to take me to Coney Island next week and then I'm going to let him put it in me."

What does he even say. How is he supposed to respond to this.

"That's great."

"I don't like it as much as some other girls do I think. It's kind of weird. And clinical? But it's nice to go to the amusement park."

His pulse is racing and he looks very unhealthily pale. 

???¿¿?¿??

Other girls??????

"And it's nice to make them happy I think. It's good that I have this easy way to make people happy and all I have to do is turn off my brain and put their cock in my mouth."

Con... cern?????

Lev sighs contentedly and then says, "I feel like I want to throw up."

"........should I get a bucket?"

"Probably a good idea? Also my legs hurt."

"If I go to get a bucket will you stay in bed."

"Yes."

Mordred goes to get the bucket.

When he returns Lev is collapsed on the floor.

Arrrrggghhhh. 

Mordred arranges him so that he can access the bucket and also can't stand up without Mordred stopping him. 

"Do you know where my rouge is? I don't know where it is. And I can't afford to buy more."

"...I put it in the bathroom, I'll get it for you later."

"Okay, good. I'll need it for my date. He wouldn't like it if I looked like a normal man."

"Mmm." He pets Lev's hair.

A tremor moves through Lev's entire body. "You're a good friend. How are your dates going?"

"Fine, I guess. I don't really go on dates."

"Oh." He looks sad. "Maybe I can introduce you to my sailor? He's-- good at all the things normal men are supposed to be good at-- but he's really nice. He doesn't talk very much. He likes listening to me talk about books."

"I'm doing alright I think. I'm glad you have your sailor though. He sounds nice."

Casual sex as a queer sounds terrifying and he does not understand it.

Lev throws up all the contents of his stomach into the bucket which, since he hasn't been eating, are mostly stomach acid. 

...Lev should probably eat something.

"I have a thermos of soup, do you think you can try to eat it--"

"I can try? Maybe I should wait until this stomach flu is over. I have lots of flab anyway."

You're emaciated, Mordred doesn't say.

He helps Lev sit up, takes the thermos, pours some of it into a bowl, and gives the bowl and a spoon to Lev.

Lev's hands are shaking so much that he spills the soup on himself the first three times he tries to scoop some out.

...Mordred takes the spoon and feeds him.

It feels uncomfortably intimate.

"Sorry. I don't know why I'm--"

"It's fine."

Once half the soup has been consumed, Lev puts the bowl to one side, says, "I should go get my rouge and get ready--" and tries to stand up.

Mordred stops him. "No."

He doesn't like having to restrain Lev, it makes him feel uncomfortably like Dr. Keaton, but it wouldn't help anything if Lev fell on his face again. 

Lev looks up at him blearily and says, "do you want to have sex with me?"

"No. Just focus on getting better."

Lev presses his back up against the wall, eyes darting back and forth. 

"Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry I'll do better sorry," he says all in a rush.

"It's okay, you don't have to be."

What does he do. 

"Please don't hurt me I'll do better I'll think more carefully about what you want."

"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. You did great."

Lev looks suspicious. "I did?"

"Yeah. You did."

"I don't... remember...? Sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry." What is he not remembering - oh well it's fine he's not panicking anymore it worked.

"What did I do to make you happy? Sorry. I should know-- so I can do it again--"

"I'm really proud of you for asking for things you need."

"What."

"I know it's hard and scary to ask for things when you need them and I'm so proud of you for doing it."

"...........what. That's not what I was supposed to do at all." He presses himself up against the wall again. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'll do better I'll figure out what you want."

"You don't need to be sorry. It's okay. You're doing great and I'm proud of you."

Extremely suspicious look. "I'm sorry that I'm so-- anxious and in pain and my hands keep shaking-- I don't know what's wrong. I'm trying to hide it. I'm sorry that I can't hide it I know I should be grateful to you I know I should--"

"You don't have to hide it. I would rather know than not know. And you don't have to be sorry for being in pain."

"And I keep breathing fast and my head hurts and there are flashes of light and my skin is crawling and the light being on hurts my eyes. And I'm trying to... not... and it's hard and I know there's no excuse for failing but. I should be grateful because you love me and you're taking care of me and you're making me happy. And I'm yours."

"I can turn it off. Promise you won't try and get up?"

"I won't get up."

Mordred gets up and turns the light off and kind of expects that Lev is going to try and get up.

He does try to get up but when Mordred is close enough to the bed to stop this.

Yeah then Mordred stops him (and feels a little bit bad about it but also Lev please stop doing things that will predictably end with you falling on your face).

"You're so nice to me, Ramon. Thank you for not being mad."

Mordred winces.

"It's easy to be nice to you."

"Not for most people."

When Mordred tries to stop cuddling Lev, still close enough to stop Lev if he tries to stand up, Lev has hallucinations about mouths and monsters and Dr. Keaton and Samson Trammel and something that Mordred can't tell what it is because it's in Yiddish. He screams and cries and pleads incoherently in several different languages.

So Mordred... accustoms himself to the idea that he's going to spend the next couple days in bed with Lev. Gets Agravaine to bring them food and water, which he does with a minimal amount of eye-rolling. This is both easier to deal with and, on another level, immeasurably harder for reasons he does not feel like examining. 

When he's being held, Lev is happy and says "love you" and "you're pretty" and asks Mordred to read to him and also asks him when he can go to the library or when class is or whether he should be working on his thesis and occasionally propositions him for sex. "No" is usually fine when it is from George and terrifying when it is from Echavarria. Mordred tries switching from "no" to "maybe later," which is much more likely to result in Lev making happy noises and trying to curl up on his thigh and much less likely to result in Lev crying and begging Mordred to tell him what he did wrong so he can fix it.

Lev shakes and trembles and throws up more food than he's capable of holding down; he complains about light and noises and pains all over his body; he sweats and he's uncomfortably pale.

And then when Lev is otherwise normally asking Mordred about his research, he smiles at Mordred and kisses him.

...Mordred pulls back and says "maybe later."

"You're very good. I like you."

He tucks Lev's head under his chin so he can't do that again.

"I like you too."

A short nap later--

"Making me have sex with girls is fine," Lev says, "but I do not want to be lent out to Samson any more."

His voice is kind of shaking and his muscles are tense and it looks like he is barely holding himself together.

"You will never be lent out to Samson Trammel ever again."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Oh thank you thank you thank you-- I love you-- I knew I was important to you."

Mordred is keeping his voice very carefully stable and his face very carefully calm. "You should never have been lent out to Samson Trammel in the first place."

"Because I'm your thing and I'm precious and Samson-- breaks his toys."

Because NOBODY SHOULD EVER BE GIVEN TO SAMSON TRAMMEL FOR ANY REASON EVER.

"Yeah. Because you're good and precious and lovely."

"I like it when you say nice things about me. Because I've done a good job. I've made you happy." Lev's so happy. "I'm glad I'm yours."

Mordred winces. "I'm glad I can take care of you."

Lev leans over and throws up stomach acid into the bucket. 

"My head hurts."

"I know. It will be over soon."

Lev returns to cuddling Mordred and occasionally murmuring affectionate things about how much he loves George, and intermittently Ramon

And then he sits up and kisses Mordred on the lips.

Mordred has -- no idea what to do with that. He took this -- anything like this -- off the metaphorical table and off the metaphorical menu years ago and hasn't revisited that decision since, and Lev is very sweet but he is not Gale and he almost certainly doesn't know it's Mordred he's interacting with and -- Mordred has no idea what he thinks or feels at all, and no idea how to respond.

So mostly he doesn't respond, until he manages to stop overthinking long enough to push Lev gently away, and put his chin on top of Lev's head so Lev can't do that again.

"Maybe later."

"Okay."

He rests his head on Mordred's shoulder and falls asleep again. He looks healthier than he did before, less pale, less sweating.

That's good.

Half an hour later he wakes up and his eyes focus on Mordred's face and he says "Mordred" with what is easily recognizable as affection. 

How about he just doesn't react to that in any way.

"Mordred, you are really nice to me and I love you. And good. And soft. And pretty. You're really pretty. You should kiss me."

".........You're very easy to be nice to. More people should be nice to you. And maybe later."

"Okay. You should kiss me later." He thinks about this a bit and then frowns. "But I want you to kiss me now.  Am I pretty."

"You are very pretty."

"Soft," Lev announces. "Warm and soft. Want to keep cuddling you."

"Sure, okay, we can do that."

And a few hours later Lev wakes up from a nap with bleary memories of being held by George and Ramon and Mordred and his high-school best friend, all of which are completely ridiculous, but he enjoys the warmth of the dreams for a little bit.

--And then he wakes up a bit more, remembers exactly what he was doing before he fell asleep, and thinks: Fuck.

Very cautiously he stands up, finds Mordred, and says, "I'm sorry about the past few-- hours? Days? I don't know how long it was."

"Days. And you don't have to be, are you okay?"

When he hears 'days' Lev very quietly wants to die.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, it was an accident-- I thought I was fine before I was too sick to notice whether I was fine at all"-- this is a blatant lie-- "I hope I didn't bother you too much?"

His eyes are flicking back and forth and his muscles are tense; he's good at hiding his feelings but not that good.

"You were fine," Mordred says, and... is not sure whether to elaborate on what exactly happened so he's not going to.

Lev is scared shitless about this but he is not going to push. He is going to go pick up a book and then discover to his surprise that he can read the words without them swimming in front of his eyes.

Mordred finishes making lunch and puts out a plate for himself and one for Lev.

As soon as he smells the food, Lev is ravenous, possibly because he hasn't eaten in two days. 

He eats very very slowly and does not ask for seconds.

:/

Well, he can have more food anyway.

Wow.

...Lev is going to see how long this continues.

Mordred really wants to just give him food until he stops looking so badly like he wants more food but he's concerned that eating that much after two days of eating nothing will just make Lev throw up so instead he gets two and a half meals or so.

Ah. This Is The Amount Of Food He Gets.

"If you're still hungry in a bit I'm happy to make more food I'm just worried you won't be able to keep it down if you have too much at once."

??????

What is the catch here. Lev is suspicious.

"Sure. I'll ask for some."

(He will not ask for some.)

Mordred is still going to make more food if in an hour he hasn't thrown up. He is familiar with Lev's not-asking-for-things ways.

The next day--

Lev takes one of the books Mordred got him, Coming of Age In Samoa, and takes it to Oswald.

"Hi. I noticed you were sad so I got you this book? Mordred got it for me. But I haven't had a chance to read it yet."

"Oh, uh, thank you. It's about Samoa? That's in... the Pacific, right?"

"Yeah. There's been a lot of anthropology published while I was. Gone." He shifts his weight awkwardly. "I hope it's something nice for you to read."

"Thanks. I, I haven't had much to distract me these past few, uh."

"Okay. Uh. ...Do you want to go to the library or something? We can get books?"

"Sure! If you want to! ...I mostly haven't, uh, been out. Anywhere. Since we got here. I went out walking at one point."

"Oh. We can go to the library and maybe get lunch? At a lunch counter? I haven't been to the library in ten years."

Oswald does not know why he is drawing attention to his problems while Lev has much worse problems right there. On the other hand, he doesn't have to figure out how to care for himself if this is for Lev instead. 

"Yes, definitely, let's go to the library then."

Lev is not supposed to have preferences but he is so bad at not having preferences in libraries. 

He pulls book after book off the shelves and asks Oswald if he has read them. His to-be-read pile grows. His favorite authors have so many more books out!

At every single book, Oswald says, "No, I haven't, please tell me about it!"

Lev is really hesitant and keeps apologizing and saying "sorry, I know this is really boring."

"I don't know if you've noticed this about me but I'm a boring person. I like boring things. I balanced ledgers for a living and I honestly enjoyed it."

"Oh. Okay. You'll stop me if you don't want to hear about it--"

"Of course."

Lev lights up about books.

He bounces excitedly while he explains that the British had problems establishing chiefdoms among the Tiv. They are an egalitarian people who believe that power comes from a substance that grows around your heart, and people can become more powerful by eating other people's hearts. Witches are, apparently, very fond of this. So every time that the British made someone a chief the Tiv concluded that they were evil cannibal witches and killed them. This seems like a silly belief to white people but it's important to look at the role this plays in Tiv society. People are naturally powerhungry, so of course they try to get power, and you can't maintain an egalitarian society if everyone is constantly backstabbing each other for power. So the Tiv decide that people who seek power are witches and this dissuades them from seeking power. Every society is functional in its own way, if you think about it. Lev is very offended by how anthropologists tend to think of primitive people as being stupid and superstitious instead of understanding why they do what they do and how it makes their society work. Some primitive societies are much older than ours, you know!

He's so wonderful and passionate.

Oswald is also supposed to be getting books. He gets one of the books lev points out that looks maybe moderately accessible and something dry and practical on music technique.

(He is pretending to himself that he is going to be motivated to think about his hobbies.)

They go back to Oswald's room and Lev chatters about books and they sit on Oswald's bed and without Lev really noticing they wind up cuddling while Lev chatters at him about books.

The hotel room is kinda depressing.

For Oswald. It is depressing for Oswald. Because he had briefly existed in a disconnected fantasy world where nothing was real and now he's back in his life again.

But Lev somehow hasn't vanished and he's still full of color and light so that part is still good.

"Can I come over tomorrow?"

Oswald gestures around his nearly-empty hotel room.

"I don't have other plans."

On Friday Lev steals a candle from a store and announces that he is going for a walk and goes where no one can see him and sings the prayers by himself and-- it shouldn't be comforting, he does not believe in a God who is watching out for him. But for the past ten years he has had his choice of the Southern Baptists or the United Methodists and he has had Dr. Keaton explaining to him that he shouldn't mind, it's not like they're not the same God, Jesus died for him too, and-- it is good to have something that is his. 

When he closes his eyes he can almost hear his family singing around him. That shouldn't make him feel better, he hates his family, he moved to Los Angeles as soon as he could to get away from them. But the thought of Jews throughout New York singing the same prayers gives him some feeling he is having a hard time naming. 

A few days later, Mordred says, "So, uh, I don't super know how to bring this up, but do you want to go to synagogue since they have those in New York?"

"Uh, if you want me to?"

"I don't have opinions about it? It just seemed like it might be something you'd care about."

It is frustrating but, honestly, not that unexpected that Mordred keeps pretending that he doesn't care what Lev does-- Dr. Keaton did the same thing, it's a way people act when they don't want to admit to themselves that they want to control you. But Mordred wants him to go to synagogue and listen to him read out loud and read about anthropology, and that's... a very good set of things to want. Lev hasn't met anyone else who wanted things that matched up so well with-- Lev flinches away from "what he wants"-- what it is easy for him to give.

"Sure, I can go."

Mordred doesn't know how to get it across that he actually for real doesn't have an opinion on whether Lev goes to synagogue and just wanted to make it clear that it was fine if he wanted to. 

Lev very cleverly does only the Jewish things he wants to do anyway. He orders meat without milk and watches carefully for Mordred's reaction. He lights candles in Mordred's room and sings. 

Mordred is so affectionate about him doing this.

His eyes keep flicking to Mordred to see what his response is.

His response is mostly just to watch, slightly curious and slightly fond.

"Do you. Want to know what I'm singing?"

"Sure!"

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. 

Awwwww.

"Are you. Christian?"

"No, I'm an atheist."

THIS IS CONFUSING.

"-- the rosary is Gale's, he worries. But I'm an atheist."

"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.

"Yes."

Then Mordred will read to him.

(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?"

"No. Should I?"

"If you want to. Her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe showed that the persecution of the witches was actually persecution of a real religion that worshiped the Horned God. So when I was studying Echavarria's cult I thought I was studying another survivor of an old religion. He was descended from Indians, you know. There's a lot of old cults people practice. And it was so-- fascinating. To get to witness the rites and rituals of a genuine surviving cult from before the arrival of Europeans. I didn't think it was real."

"And you were... going to things, and taking notes on what they believed and what they did, then? And reading, I don't know if that was a different thing. You spent a lot of time in his library, you said."

"He had so many rare books. Well. You know. You stole half the valuable ones."

He makes a noise that might be laughter. "I didn't leave that house with anything. Zoe did all that."

"Still." He says reflectively, "It was beautiful. It was so beautiful."

He sits up some, looks at him. There's a distant searching look in his eye that he so often gets, though it's somewhat unclear even now what he's reaching for. "Tell me about it? What fascinated you. Not the, the opportunity, the -- the details."

"Ramon had-- a way of looking at things. He made them beautiful." His voice is soft and warm and affectionate, reminiscing. "You can see that in his movies, even, the movies he produced are luminous. He looked at things and saw beauty and when he talked you could see what was beautiful about them too."

"I wish I... I could've met him."

"You would have liked him, I think. I did." Does Oswald want someone to idly play with his hair

He is confused at first and then figures out what's happening and relaxes a bit. It's nice. "I like hearing about it. The way you talk. It makes it all feel... shining." And something about the way Lev's face lifts when he's reminiscing that he can't quite figure out how to say.

"It's just. The vastness of the universe. The way it doesn't care about us, how small we are in the face of it. Every single star is a sun, and around each star is a dozen worlds, and on those worlds are thousands of alien species that live and die... And we will never meet them or know their stories. Their struggles and their hopes and their wars and their gods, so important to them. And we know nothing of them, as the universe knows nothing of us..."

"You'd think it'd be frightening," he says softly, a little amazed that it isn't.

"It was once. And then Ramon talked to me, and explained, and I-- could see the way it looked through his eyes-- The Forgotten God we worshipped, who was worshipped by the great heroes of the Hyperborean Age, tens of thousands of years ago..."

"I didn't know there were those kinds of civilizations, that long ago."

"Human history is much longer than you'd expect. We refer to primitive tribes but they're not? They are as complicated and sophisticated as any European nation."

"What were they like?"

(Oswald is willing to let him talk about what anthropological knowledge they have of ancient civilizations for a while. It's so nice to listen to him talk about things.)

Lev can maintain a conversation on this topic by himself with limited input from Oswald.

He is animated. He gestures.

He's so good.

(Though occasionally instead of a relevant question Oswald will ask a seeming non sequitur about something from earlier like "But how do we know there's life out there, among the stars, while also having no knowledge that they exist?")

"Well, I saw Gol-Goroth. And if he is not from the stars he is from another dimension. And either way he is most certainly alien."

"That's true." ...They have already compared notes on the terrible mouth encounters but he can go pensive about it for a while. And ask out loud, more wondering than curious, the difference between an alien and a god.

"Power. Or whether you worship it or not. I'm still-- there is nothing in the world that is mysterious, there is nothing in the world that in principle cannot be explained. The gods are just beings we do not understand. Perhaps ones we cannot understand."

"But something can, somewhere. In principle."

"Perhaps we can, if we knew more and were wiser and more powerful. Echavarria certainly thought so. He was no Samson. He didn't just want power, he wanted to know--"

"How do they-- how do they get power? Lacie said she was going to be His Queen. But it doesn't really make sense to me."

"By selling drugs they source from magical mouths. Apparently."

"That's not a -- that's not a knowledge kind of power," he says, his face twisting in a kind of almost-grin. "I was doing that and I don't understand anything."

"Echavarria believed he could cast spells and perform rituals that would give him things he wanted. Alter the weather, or cure the sick, or curse his enemies... Of course I thought they were-- hysteria and hypnosis and expectations. Nothing supernatural. But."

"Who knows. Anemone did catch on fire, no telling what else could be set up. And -- if there's kinds of beings we cannot yet understand, maybe there's kinds of actions and consequences that we can't understand. It's a vast universe, and all that."

"Yeah. Imagine how magical a radio would seem to a hunter gatherer. Or the eldritch rituals you would perform to turn it on..."

"Especially the strange acts you'd need to complete if it was broken. And radios are odd, they'd seem like nothing until there was a broadcast to pick up. A single radio on a planet wouldn't make any sense to them at all." He leans into him. "I wonder what's out there."

"Me too. Is it strange to want to see, even though--"

"I don't think so." Quieter: "Or, at least -- I hope not."

Lev reaches down very carefully to hold Oswald's hand.

He grips it tight. Not so hard it hurts, he trusts some that it's not going to disappear if he lets up, but enough that it feels solid.

"How was-- yours."

"It was -- it felt like my head was on fire. Sort of. I don't know. Maybe like... everything was screaming. And then my head stopped swirling into chaos and I was on the ground and she was there."

"Yeah. It's like that. It feels like-- it's made up. Like a story you read. Except for the parts that are so real you can't stop thinking about them."

"I'm not sure it's really stopped feeling like that. I think -- I think seeing Lacie there was the last time anything felt real."

"Well, nothing horrible has happened since then. If you start drowning it will feel real again. I think that was Dr. Keaton's treatment strategy."

"...Drowning you?" Surely that's a metaphor for something but he can't work out what it could possibly be.

"Hydrotherapy. It's a shock to the system. Resets the psychotic and turns them normal. --It didn't work, obviously."

"I don't... think I... have... that response... to being in danger. Or. Uh. In the moment it's like screaming but I don't remember much afterwards. --Did he throw you in the water and see what would happen???"

"There was, uh, medical equipment. I assume there were precautions taken such that I did not drown."

"I -- I would hope so?" Contrary to what he's just claimed this does seem to be an effective philosophy. For instance this terrible absurdity he's just been presented with has shocked him into turning his brain all the way on.

"It would be a grave setback to Dr. Keaton's research and the reputation of the hospital if I died." It is unclear to what extent he is joking.

"Well from what I'e heard from the others in the end his reputation got awfully set back anyways, so..." he was going somewhere with this but he's not sure he has a non-terrible ending. "...I'm glad you're here now."

"I am also glad I am here. It has been several weeks and no one has tried to drown me or hit me which suggests that this might be much less common in this living situation than in previous ones."

"I don't think anyone's ever tried to drown me, if that tells you anything." ...He reaches out and knocks on wood.

More quietly: "I don't want you to get hurt."

"Well. We have something in common."

He squeezes his hand tighter, presses his arm against Lev's arm where he can. "This feels real. I think."

"In this world there are people who hurt others and people who get hurt. And we both are the kind of people who get hurt. So it's safe here."

He smiles, small and uncertain and private and directed down at his own chest. His voice is shaky. "Yeah."

"And out there it's scary and dangerous and-- we can't be in here forever. But right now."

He lays his head on Lev's shoulder and breathes in deep and lets himself close his eyes, just for a little bit. Quiet, half to himself: "Yeah."

That night, Mordred and Lev go to the movies. There's a rerun theater playing a western, which Mordred doesn't care about, and Duck Soup, which Mordred loves. 

"...where is the organist?"

"There... isn't one?"

"...Why. Or, you know someone to play the music? I know there's the Depression but."

"-- right. it's been ten years. you wouldn't know about talkies. The movie has sound in it already."

"What."

"You don't need someone to play the music. Wait for the trailer to start."

Blink blink blink blink.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"How do they do this, Mordred?" 

(He says this at a normal volume.)

"Shhhhhh."

"Oh. Sorry," he says quietly, not entirely sure if this is a Rich Person Thing or a Talkies Thing.

A few minutes later, he says very quietly, "Mordred. Mordred. The cartoon is in color, Mordred."

"It is!!!"

"Are all the movies in color now?"

"No, just the cartoons."

Lev is DELIGHTED by the good cowboys in white hats heroically battling the evil cowboys in black hats and DELIGHTED by the slapstick and DELIGHTED by the Marx Brothers and EXTREMELY UNHAPPY about the Nazis in the newsreel!!!

Yeah, he is also extremely unhappy about the Nazis in the newsreel.

"There was so much dialogue!!! And dancing!! And singing!!!"

He looks amazed.

"There was!!!"

And then he glances at Mordred to check that this is Allowed Happiness.

It is not only allowed but shared.

Mordred seems to want him to be happy about things????

He will try to be Happy and Grateful.

That is not really the sense in which Mordred wants Lev to be happy about things but okay he guesses??

This is a big improvement on the previous system because Mordred does not want to make Lev miserable and also Lev gets to be happy about movies and being read anthropology books, which are much easier to be happy about than Southern Baptist church services and baseball.

Time passes. 

Lev's life falls into a sort of routine. He spends his days with Oswald, who panics when he feels like he is restrained in any way, and figures out how to hold him so as not to panic him. They listen to jazz on the radio, and Oswald tells him all about the jazz that has come out in the past decade. He talks to Oswald about anthropology. Sometimes he reads, with his arm around Oswald's shoulders. And sometimes they talk, elliptically and not very coherently, about the people they love who are part of the cult, and about their shared experience of Samson. Oswald can't say very many complete sentences about what happened but it's obvious they experienced the same things. 

Oswald is... handsome, and it would be a lie to say that Lev hadn't noticed that, but he doesn't know at all what he wants to do with it. And perhaps more importantly Oswald is the only person in the world who can really understand what it's like-- to be part of the cult and sort of know what is going on and not be as good at lying to yourself as you'd want to be, to be in Samson Trammel's power, to know exactly how bad a person you are, to love someone who loves a God. 

In the evening, Lev returns to an apartment with Agravaine and Mordred, or a bit later to a hotel room with just Mordred. Mordred continues to be wonderful. Lev knew he was kind and gentle and patient and willing to rescue him from mental asylums. To this he adds intelligent and insatiably curious and good with languages and an excellent writer. He's a good liar, which is a trait Lev both appreciates and shares, and a good person, which is not a trait Lev has at all but still one he admires.

At night Mordred reads to him and he sits at Mordred's feet not close enough to touch. 

And Lev... watches. Notices how good Mordred is at picking up new phonemes. His carefully dropped r's, too-consciously distinguished 'lot' and 'thought', the conscientious way he pronounces 'voice' and 'verse' the same; the loudness, Lev thinks, is natural, Mordred always talked loud and fast like a New Yorker. Agravaine's prep-school vowels and elocution-class consonants, the kind of accent no one has unless they're taught it. Mordred mentions going to college and... it's not just rich people who went to college, Lev went to college... but Mordred has a job and a tiny apartment of the sort a journalist in New York City has and he could probably afford to buy Lev's entire tenement growing up. 

He watches Mordred and Gale. He watches the way they almost-not-quite touch; he watches the way Mordred's face lights up when someone mentions Gale, and how happy Gale seems when they're together; he watches the feelings that flash across Mordred's face too quickly for Mordred to even notice them. He knows Mordred and Gale love each other. He does not know if they know. To both of them he drops hairpins: says gay in the right tone of voice, expresses an interest in red ties, suggests visiting a teahouse; the only thing he gets out of it is a red tie and a box of quite bad black tea. But perhaps the words have changed; everything else has.

(The Slide has closed, and there are no more balls, and his favorite cafeteria doesn't have a single fairy there anymore, and in the Lower East Side he cannot find a single man in makeup, and the bathhouses are open but he's never been the sort of fairy who goes to bathhouses, and they won, the purity crusaders won while he was gone, you can drink again but there is not a single place he can go if he wants to meet people like him for anything other than a quick fuck.)  

It's been a matter of safety that he track the things he's tracking about Mordred, what does this person want from me and is he in a bad mood today and what can I do to keep the peace. Lev is conscious that if Mordred stops paying for his food he would be selling apples on the street until he starves. Perhaps ten years ago he could have gotten factory work, but he is clumsy and slow and has never worked with his hands and there are dozens of men for every job; perhaps ten years ago he could have sucked dick for money, but he is fifteen years too old to be a punk however babyfaced he is, and the Slide is closed and he doesn't want to try until he knows exactly how likely it is he'd wind up in Riker's. Now he has one hope, a queer who may or may not know he's queer and old money who desperately wants everyone to think he's not, and all he seems to want is for Lev to be happy and Lev knows how unlikely that is.

On Fridays he lights the candles and sings and prays.  

Hugging is good but being hugged is bad. Leaning is okay except when it's not. Sometimes the weight of someone slightly on top of him is comfortingly real and sometimes it gives him a panic attack and then sometimes it's both and he sits very still and lets all of it flow over him.

Oswald mostly knows about classical music, though you wouldn't guess it from his tastes. It's been getting excitingly modern lately, there's improvisation and atonality and he even heard a sound montage once, literally just a bunch of recorded sounds strung together. Jazz is the good stuff, though. There's a reason jazz is the part of all this you can tune into on the radio.

Music is easy. When words fail him all he has to do is turn a knob and demonstrate. He doesn't have that, for anything else. There's no radio station that will get across an emotion he can't describe, no quick notation for the twisted knot his understanding of what he can and cannot think has become, no book he can hand Lev to do the work of picking apart what Samson Trammel did to him. It is perhaps the worst field to have to pioneer.

But Lev is right there with him. Lev who has seen his breakdowns and understood them, Lev whose hands are gentle and warm to the touch, Lev who talks about love and knowledge and the whole world and glows with it, glows so the world feels not just colorful again but radiant--

Oswald does not make commitments easily. He has spent his life caring for exactly one person, very deeply and to no small sacrifice, and in the end he couldn't even keep his promises to her. But there is something very desperately lonely inside him, grieving and lonely and in need of something to protect, and he wants--

He has never been good with words.

"The natural history museum has a temporary exhibit that looks interesting, do you want to see it?"

"Yes." Mordred's so good! His expectations are so easy to fulfill.

"I haven't been since I was a kid. Did you go?" Lev says, which is not not calling Mordred on his accent.

"It's been a while but not as long as it's been for you."

Then they can go!

The museum has interesting rocks and fossils and dioramas of Primitive Tribes Of The World. Lev reads about the fossils and rocks with great interest and has STRONG opinions about the dioramas, mostly about how the arrows come from a completely different pygmy tribe than the loincloths do and WHO does this museum think they are fooling. NOT LEV.

"Ugh, they're talking about primitive African tribes. I would like to see how well the curators of this museum survive on the Serengeti."

Oh no Lev is very good.

"The thing is that it doesn't even make sense to say one culture is better than another culture. It's like saying that one kind of animal is better than another kind. They're all adapted for their particular environments and technological levels and staple crops and all the rest of it. Biologists don't try to rank animals from Most Developed to Least Developed. They don't say snakes are superior to lizards, which are a primitive species. And yet when we talk about humans suddenly it's all primitive tribes this and superior Western civilization that. It's profoundly unscientific. Darwin has taught us that there is no Great Chain of Being which ranks whites higher than Asiatics higher than Negroes."

Lev is very good.

"And even if we are going to judge cultures morally-- which is terrible scientific practice-- I feel like leaving eighteen-year-old boys to choke to death on mustard gas is far worse than anything any so-called primitive tribe got up to."

He says this with venom.

Mordred remembers Lev's sailor and does some mental math and thinks: ah.

What he says is, "Can't say I disagree."

Does Mordred want to hear ALL ABOUT the customs of this tribe in Papua New Guinea because he is going to hear about it WHETHER HE LIKES IT OR NOT.

He does.

(Lev is so good??)

"Did you know the Inuit are one of the few societies that are both polygynous and polyandrous? en who are terrible hunters share one wife and men who are good hunters have many wives."

"I did not know that."

"Yeah!!! It makes a ton of sense because you don't wind up with excess men, which tends to lead to cultural instability."

He is bouncing.

Oh no he's so good.........

Some time later--

"You know what is terrible about these people talking about 'civilization'?" His tone suggests his skepticism about this concept. "Farming is actually worse than being a hunter-gatherer. Look at their bodies. A first-year undergraduate can tell."

"Oh?"

"Farmers are six inches shorter than hunter gatherers. Their teeth show signs of malnourishment, their bones show signs of disease. Bone lesions, porotic hyperostosis, enamel defects... Farmers are sick."

"Huh."

"And if you study current hunter gatherers they work far less than farmers at a similar tech level. Less disease because they're not crowded together, less starvation because if one plant encounters a blight they can just eat a different plant. No parasitic kings and priests eating up your food without doing anything. Everyone works. Hunter gatherers have fewer kids, the one advantage of farming is that you can pump out the babies and crush the hunter gatherer tribes. Assuming you don't have a potato blight and starve."

Mordred nods.

"White people kidnapped by Indians mostly went native, and Indians kidnapped by white people constantly tried to go home. But farming lets you have babies and specialization and that lets you have armies, so..." He trails off.

"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."

"Did he deserve it?" Oswald says, very hypocritically.

"I don't know that I love people because they deserve it."

"Me neither, really. I'm sorry. That -- that he -- or that --

"I'm sorry."

"He was very good and very insightful and he made beautiful things and he had a way of seeing the world so it was beautiful. And if I made him mad he hurt me. But everyone's like that."

"I wish they weren't. I wish-- It sucks. Losing people."

"It does. --Are you one of us. A queer. Or just--"

"I don't. Know? How do you... I don't know how I'd know. I've never been. Out. Anywhere. I mostly, uh, I mostly keep to myself. I don't, I don't seem to want... anything that anyone else wants. If I knew what they wanted, I guess. Or what I want."

"...Do you want to try kissing me?"

".......................Maybe?"

A little confused and a little terrified and mostly dizzy and telling his racing heart trusttrusttrust almost subconsciously at this point (already it's the life preserver he's been clinging to every day, what's a little more weight) and thinking about how Lev talks about love.

Lev kisses him.

His brain is kind of having to fight to stay online.

His standards are in the Earth's core but that doesn't make it less true how revelatory it is that it just keeps not getting bad. He knows how kissing works; you sit still and close your eyes and let your mouth open a bit and respond to his movements. Except usually it is better to let his awareness drift off at this point and now he is trying to focus in and he hasn't stopped being a little terrified but he is not scared of the person kissing him at all.

In fact, the opposite of that.

Lev pulls away. "Was it nice?"

He says "yes" by rote and then remembers they were testing something and pauses to give this an excessive amount of thought first.

"I think so."

He's very cute.

Maybe they should kiss again.

Lev has such good ideas.

"Uh, normally when you have sex with men, you wind up like feeling sick or wanting to die or floating a little bit to the left of your body. At least sometimes? And if that happens you should tell me to stop, I won't be mad. I don't want to have sex with you that you don't like."

Solemn heartfelt nod. "What if it's incidental weirdness? I spend a lot of my life feeling like I'm floating a little bit to the left of my body. I could try harder to stay with it and see if this is separately bad maybe?"

"I guess if it is normal then probably it is okay? --Or like if you start thinking about how my dick is just skin that you're touching and it's not different than any other skin because if you think about it as sex you will get overwhelmed and want to throw up. Then probably stop instead? I won't be mad if you ever decide you want to stop."

The quietest most secret thank you in the history of the phrase.

"I know this is kind of weird. But I don't want you to be sad especially when we're fucking."

"I'm not sure I quite know what it is that's objectively special about being sad when fucking. But -- I really appreciate it."

"Uh it makes me feel gross and it isn't-- sexy."

"This makes sense ...Please also let me know if you get upset. So long as we are making promises."

"OK, if you won't be angry."

"Of course."

More kissing?

Yes.

Much to Oswald's surprise, it continues to be nice. 

The next day Lev has decided he is going to take Oswald out on A Date. 

They will go to dinner and a movie. 

:D

Lev wants to take care of Oswald. He wants to open doors for Oswald and take his coat and light his cigarette and pull out chairs for him and pay for his dinner and then hold him afterward.

oh

All the gay bars are closed and anyway Oswald doesn't like them, so after dinner they can dance to the radio in his hotel room. 

Oswald doesn't know a lot about dancing, but he knows how to waltz, and Lev doesn't know current dances anyway.

Lev is very clumsy and steps on his feet.