"Just the thought of a needle right now is making my head swim." The itching feeling on the soles of his feet where they touched the floor had returned with a vengeance now that the distraction of... whatever that had been had subsided, and he rolled up onto the balls of his feet again.

Kliment's eyes flashed with annoyance. "What, child, does the thought of blood upset you? Too delicate even to be doted on in a hospital?"

Dasol bobbled backwards on his toes. "It's just very painful—"

"Grow up!" Kliment scoffed. His eyes had stuck in their wider disposition, giving him the feral air of a baited bear. "It's pain, Yuri, nothing a Russian man ought to be so unseated by. Or is that why you're hiding where your balls ought to be so carefully: haven't you got any?"

"They're bigger than yours!" Dasol spat, surprising himself. "What the hell is your problem all of a sudden?"

"I am on a schedule, Yurka! I have places to be and dossiers to analyze and payments to authorize and young dead men's mothers to console and apparatchik asses to kiss so the Esper program can fight another day for this country and I do not have time to be sitting here doting on some scrawny, needle-pricked brat who won't last a day in a proper dungeon, feeding him like some cuckoo's fledgling instead of getting on with it." He slammed down the glass of water, grabbed a handful of marinated carrot shreds, and raised it near his mouth.

"Is that what it will take to get you to shut up and help me save the world, Yuri? Are you just so weak and so frail without your mommy's yummy food in your belly that you can't even walk twelve steps out to the car? Do you need Father Bird to chew your morkovcha for you? I will do it, you watch me!" He lunged forward as Dasol lurched back.

Dasol scampered as best he could, but the man moved with preternatural grace and he moved like a drunken squirrel, zigzagging haphazardly. Kliment seized him by the wrist, and an pulse of pure, honey-textured relaxation flowed down his arm as Kliment's voice took on it's warmer resonance and he said—

"Hold still, little chick. I'll take care of you."

—and for just a split second he believed it so fully that he stopped moving and looked up into the stern, paternal face with guileless eyes and asked, "Will y—"

But there were lips in the way, and half-mashed morkovcha in his mouth, and frosty bolts of pleasant, cool relief dancing across his face and across his back where an impossibly firm hand held him. They found his spine and battled against the stinging heat, slid upward to do battle and die near his neck, slid down as Kliment's hand drifted to the small of his back, then lower and deeper and—

"Факмий!" he exclaimed the moment he had swallowed enough to do so. He was getting hard?! His eyes flew open and he stared in terror at the man slowly pressing another morsel of spicy carrot mash into his mouth. Maybe he wouldn't notice.

Kliment didn't even open his eyes. "If you are going to curse, kindly do it in Russian rather than mimicking American obscenities," he drawled gently once all the carrot was safely passed off. "Especially ones that might be so readily misinterpreted when you are naked and physically aroused. Or were you blindly aping the music without knowing the meaning, foolish mockingbird?"

"You noticed," Yuri said, obligingly cursing in Russian this time. "I'm so sorry, Kliment Ilyich! It's not what it seems like."

"Relax, boy. It's an involuntary reflex, triggered by the strength of the gradient between us. You will trust me when I say that it's something we have all experienced at one point or another."

He raised an eyebrow. "'Yuri Dmitrich.'"

"Ah, I mean: Klim...ka?"

"See? Much more natural in this setting. Especially given your penchant for mewling insubordination." He laughed in an inviting way, sharing a joke. "I hope you can forgive my brusqueness earlier. Maintaining my good work when I cannot see those affected is remarkably taxing, and I'm liable to become surly. It is a character flaw I still grapple with, to my lasting shame. Now," he said, taking Yuri by the hand, "shall we get you out to the..." he trailed off, brow furrowed, staring at Yuri's suddenly wan face. He followed the eyes behind him, toward the far end of the room, where a pale light spilled through the open door and—

"Son. What are you doing with this man?"

Kliment Ilyich Konstantinov stood up very straight, wiped some of the spittle from Dasol's mouth with a thumb, and put it to his mouth. "This is going to hurt," he muttered as he stared down the slowly reddening patriarch.

"I am afraid that your son required an immediate intervention," he said, breathing calmly, palms open, smile slight and grave. Before him, Dmitri Yun wavered, fist clenching and unclenching, neck muscles dancing. Kliment focused harder, and Yuri could see the muscles in the man's back spasm and seize. "If you wish to learn more, I can direct you to resources. I'm going to take him to the hospital where he can be looked after without the need for such things until he has recovered."

Kliment felt the crack before he saw the tears. "The window, Yuri. Jump."

"Get away from my son!" Kliment didn't recognize the term that followed, but he could guess.

"The window, Yuri," he repeated calmly as the elder man came at him, swinging wildly. "Out the window." He had given up on the father now, let the full force of his anger breach the surface.

After all, on some level, didn't he deserve it? He sidestepped a wild swing, caught the man's arm, spun him harmlessly away.

Yuri was still frozen behind him, and the pressure of his indecision stuck like molasses in Kliment's teeth. He pushed past it, felt that familiar twinge in his thorax. Discretion was a dwindling resource. "You are naked and erect in a room with two men and no excuses. Which of them are you more afraid of?"

Yuri opened the window as his father screamed "stop!" He swung one leg out, hissing at the cold wind against it. Couldn't he at least have gotten clothes first? He heard a crash and then felt a hard shove, and he yelped as his balls scraped against the sill and he stumbled out the window, hopping in indignant pain. At least the sack-shot muted the stinging all along his skin. With the sun down, it was well below freezing. He turned back toward his home, and saw that Kliment had instead elected to take the door as his exit. He stared as his father came to the window and leaned out of it.

"Come back here, Yuri Dmitrich! You come back here and I will beat your hide until it falls off!" He put his hands to either side of his head. "Jeung-hui was right, your mother never should have breastfed you! Look what you've become!"

"Yuri? Yuri! Come back!"

"Dasol! Dasol!"

Kliment had instructed the car to pull off the road, around the side of the house, and opened the door as Yuri approached. "There you are. Get in before the wolves get you," he said curtly, and soon the plaintive howling of his father was fading into the night as they zipped along well above the speed limit. Government vehicles always traveled a bit faster; the rumor was that they had a different software package operating them, too, built ground-up in the motherland, even though the body was a Porsche.

"I have the heat set to the maximum, though given your symptoms we can lower it once you are no longer in imminent danger of frostbite," he said, almost to himself, as he flung an arm around Yuri and drew him close. After a moment of silence like that, he settled into a more somber tone. "That was my fault, Yurka. I lost track of him while we were having our discussion. He shouldn't have seen you like that.

"I'm sorry."

"Would you like some music? Something light? I always favor Goedicke, personally, but just about anything can be called up if you like."