"How are your symptoms? Are you comfortable? I included a stop at a grocery store in our itinerary to grab some bottled water. With electrolytes. Do they carry premade morkovcha around here? I assume so; it's all the rage in Moscow. At any rate I'll grab something for you—if they let me in without a shirt, anyway." He laughed. "I jest. There's a spare one in the trunk. I'd offer it to you but you couldn't wear it anyway, and besides, the skin contact is better for symptom management."

He shifted awkwardly. "You can lean more against me, you know. It will feel a bit better than the carseat in your condition, I assume."

"I'm fine."

Kliment sighed. "Try not to worry too much, Yurka. I have a very good colleague, Yekaterina. She'll talk to him for you. It will turn out fine. You're hardly the first esper to have such a misunderstanding." He tugged the young esper toward his chest. "Come on, Yurka, you're clearly uncomfortable and it is wounding me not to be able to help. Talk to me."

"I'm uncomfortable? I'm naked in your car! And your pants are—I can see everything, you know!"

Kliment looked down. His pants indeed hid nothing, the way that his shaft was laying along his thigh. He groaned in annoyance.

"Grow up, Yuri! Have you never used a gym shower? If it bothers you that other men have bodies, too, learn how to ignore it and look elsewhere!"

"Don't shit me. You're hard. You're hard because you like boys and you're going to fuck me and now I'm going to enjoy it because the es—"

"Because I'm an esper!" Kliment cut himself off and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"My god, Yuri. I have an—I am that way right now because of an involuntary, preconscious, normal physiological reflex upon sudden relaxation, nothing more, alright? I told you that you weren't the only one who had that happen when they encountered a strong esper gradient, did I not?

"It's a fact of life. You get in the gym shower after a workout, the water hits you just right, you let down your guard because it's finally time to relax, and certain things are bound to happen. But it is infinitely worse if everyone points it out rather than doing the decent thing and carefully ignoring the obvious until it goes away."

That does happen, he nodded along to himself with a limp sigh of relief. "It's easy enough when you're just changing and trying not to look at anyone but—yeah, it's a lot tougher when you're rinsing off and the shower's a good temperature."

"It's just like that. You are achy and stressed and suddenly you have a ton of pleasant, relaxing stimulus, and everything in you just unknots."

"And your friends are chatting around you about the pitch and horsing around and whatever, and you have your face directly in the spray and drift off while rubbing soap over your neck..."

"The bustle kind of fades away and your skin feels like it is glowing from the heat of your exercise, and you feel every little water droplet hit you and slide down the skin." He shrugged. "Heaven forbid anyone be already talking about their girlfriend or whatever when you're in that state, but even if they aren't, you kind of feel that prickle of sensuality under the surface simply from the awareness of the nudity. Sometimes just the awareness is enough."

"Yeah, once this guy Vanya in the grade above me was showering beside me after soccer practice and wouldn't stop complaining about how his new jock was too tight and how he was happy to finally be out of it, so I look over and he's swinging a fucking cricket bat down there. Probably scarred me for life."

"'Scarred?' It's just a dick, Yurka, don't you see your own every time you piss?"

"Ha! You know what I mean." He giggled and then crossed his legs to hide his reaction to this line of conversation.

"You're just making it more painfully apparent when you do that, Yurka. Don't bother. It's nothing I haven't seen before—and I don't scar so easily as you." He pulled the new esper sideways, so that the whole of his back was against Kliment's chest. "Come here—there, now I can't even see it. And you can't see mine."

"Didn't see it, didn't happen!"

"That really ought to be the bureau motto, I think," Kliment said, and they both laughed as he tapped a digital readout to call up music and drown out their respective clouded thoughts.

Kliment had been right; his chest was much more comfortable than the carseat. Even so, the cushion under him made his itch. He shifted and spoke again to distract himself. "What is this we're listening to?"

"Oh, it's a playlist of pastoral orchestra. I often listen to it when I'm backlashed and need to relax," Kliment replied. "Or do you mean this song in particular? It's, let me see..." He braced Yuri's head against his chest with a hand as he twisted to look at the screen. "Ah, the Berlin Philharmonic, Concerto No 6 in B minor 'Letter to a Young Lov—' actually let's skip this one."

"Which one? I didn't see anything." He twisted to grin up at Kliment.

Kliment smiled back and shrugged winsomely. "Then I guess it didn't happen."