Kliment's voice shred flesh with its violence. "What, Yuri, too delicate? Quit whimpering like a dog and hold still." Yuri's whole body seized up at the command, and he sucked in a breath and held it. Kliment thrust his hand out and gripped the boy by the forearm, sending a spasm of discomfort needling across the young man's skin. In his grip, the arm felt gentle, wiry with young muscle and warm with life. He felt younger just touching it.

A muscle in his back suddenly relaxed, and Kliment exhaled out his mouth. He couldn't help it, and it irritated him to no end to stand there, panting like dog over this boy, but—another muscle came to life, this one deep in the thorax, and there was that insubordinate exhalation whistling through his pharynx again, that groan of a long day's work being drawn off the back like a sweaty shirt before a shower. That horrid stiffness in his spine finally—finally—cracked like a glacier and splashed into the ocean, and some ill-disciplined remnant of his younger self wanted to leap into the sky or hurl a discus or kill—well, someone. He inhaled sharply, shook his head, cleared his mind.

At last he hummed in resigned understanding, and nodded slowly. "Yuri Dmitrich, it is I who can help you, after all."

When he was a child, Dasol had touched the stove when it was hot. It seared the flesh on his finger so badly that he couldn't even feel the water running over it as he screamed and wailed in his mother's arms. He'd buried his face in her bosom and sobbed while she murmured at him and held his little hand under the lukewarm water, checked it over, dressed the wound for him. Told him he was an idiot and not to touch the stove and her heart couldn't take hearing him in so much pain. The grip on his forearm felt the same: hot, unbearable, then suddenly dull. He squirmed despite himself in the grip, and for a moment he thought to press his face to the man's jacket, disappear in sobs and let the pain overcome him. He shuddered instead, and stood still as the pain subsided into a steady, throbbing misery rather than a scalding agony.

"Does it still hurt?"

"A little, Kliment Ilyich, but I can handle it."

His mouth twitched into a frown involuntarily; he compensated by forcing it into an avuncular smile. "That is the bravado I would expect of a young man," he replied with a freshly-baked-cookie chuckle. "You should call me Klim, Yura. No point in formality when you're naked."

Dasol turned to look at where the man was still gripping his arm. It made his head swim a bit. "I read on the internet that it was supposed to feel good if you touched another one."

"It does," Kliment replied, releasing the grip and walking over to pour a glass of water. "Your backlash appears to be allodynia. That is to say, you process all stimuli, or at least most of them, as painful rather than neutral, so the pleasant sensation is either drowned out for you or falsified as pain. It will take testing to determine which." He sighed, and released his grip. "It will be impossible to know, really, while you are still in your long night—well, the websites you were looking on probably called it 'hell week.' A rather crude term. The West's decadence has denied them any poetic sensibility." Dasol grimaced with suitable false remorse for the implication of his transgression, and Kliment agreeably let it drop.

"The good news is that this will be over in roughly the next two days or so. The bad news is that when it happens again, the damage will be permanent unless you get proper help from another of our kind." He couldn't resist: "As you no doubt read." Another grimace, and an accompanying shifting of the feet. "Finding someone at even our trifling level of compatibility is difficult, though through the grace of the state bureau, we can match you to someone who can truly remedy your condition." He held out the glass of water indicatively. "For now, though, you must be so thirsty that you cannot think."

What point was there in denying it? The only thing keeping him on his feet was how painful the floor felt.

"You know, I spent my долгая ночь scratching regrettably florid threats into my bedpost and grinding my teeth so hard that this one cracked." He indicated a premolar. "When I ran out of bedpost I went after the wall. Scared the life out of my poor mother. When my time ended, I was so ashamed to have upset her, it was all I could do not to jump in a creek. I think she may never have painted over them. She couldn't bear to enter the place after all that. Funny to think: there's a little apartment in Nizhny with a madman's ravings all over the walls of a small room just off the kitchen." He smiled toward the window. "She moved, of course. With the bureau pension she was able to afford a much nicer place in the city center. Got new silverware, a mink coat. A stupid little Pomeranian named Apfel, after a character in one her sitcoms." He lingered like this, in silence, listening to Yuri's breath, letting it synchronize with his. He turned his head, slowly, and found Yuri's eyes.

"What do you think your parents will do with it? The money, I mean. Do they like your little town much, or will they want to move somewhere? It has its charms, and this house would be lovely with a new roof." He swirled the glass of water in his hands, and then drank it with a performative sigh of satisfaction.

"I hadn't, um... they'd stay. They like it here."

"They'll want to get that roof replaced, then. Your signing bonus will cover it completely, which will be a load off their minds. And knowing you're in good hands, too. I'm sure it will be nice to know that you're not suffering like this anymore."

Another pause. Resynchronizing breath. A half a smile. Same as he did every time.

"I'll take you to the hospital—the good one, the military hospital in Khabarovsk. We'll get you hooked up to fluids so you don't need to eat or drink. When you are feeling better, we can discuss your enlistment with the bureau, if you want, and find you a way to manage your symptoms when they crop up again." 

He frowned, and bobbled again on his toes. Standing on them subconsciously this whole time left him swaying awkwardly, and he was already dizzy. "I can't, I don't... My father says I'm not cut out for the army."

"Yura, you're dying," Kliment tittered. He stood so quickly that Dasol became dizzy and stumbled back a step. "We're not a part of the army, anyway, we're a separate entity, but—oh, we can discuss this when you're healthy, when you can think straight. After I've arranged that nice recruitment bonus to be wired to your family. If you say no after I've already arranged for it to be sent there's no legal means to recover it, you know. You can sit in a warm bed that doesn't feel like it's about to strangle you—naked, if you like—and we can discuss all this over tea that doesn't feel like it will burn your insides. Just let me help you." He turned his palms upward. "I know what you're going through, truly. I wouldn't want to make a decision here, like this, when I was ill and vulnerable. Let's fix you up first and we can talk it all over later."

"Thank you, Kliment Ilyich. Klim. I cannot even get into clothes right now."

"You don't need them in a hospital, anyway. I'll drive you in my car. You turn the heat as high or low as you want the whole way. If anyone says anything, I'll have them hauled into the bureau basement."

What an irritating backlash. Normally he'd touch the boy here, let the natural fellow-feeling do some of the work, but—oh! he didn't like working this long. His back was acting up again, and that desire to find a rope or a knife was creeping along the interior of his skull. Vanya was in the car, he thought. Hold out a little longer. He needed to get back to her—not until this one was following, though. He didn't fail. He didn't fail.