"Da." His face hardened; the question had annoyed him. As expected, really: it also prompted him to talk. "Would you care for a coffee or a tea, Kliment Ilyich? Surely you are cold after having tramped all the way out here. You must have better places to be."

"Ah, but you misunderstand. I like this job. Delivering news of deaths in dungeons is a dreary job," he shifted forward, slipped a hand into his jacket, and brought out a diminutive bottle, decorated with delicate blue flowers and cursive ideograms. He set it with authoritative gentility on the table. "Today, we celebrate a birth."

"Did Matya sell that to you? I hope you didn't spend your own money on that! I don't think anyone in the whole district can afford that soju except the importer himself." He put a hand out. "I can't accept that, Kliment Ilyich."

Konstantinov pulls another bottle from within his jacket. "That is very well, though I had intended it as a gift to your lovely wife. You struck me as sharing my sensibilities, Mitya." He turns the second bottle over in his hands, revealing the word samogon vodka. "But I didn't want to invite myself to a meal just to toast your good fortune."

He was mollified. Once again, as expected. "You do not need to bribe me, Kliment Ilyich. We both know why you are here."

"And why is that?"

Dmitri Dmitrich was silent.

"Have a drink, Dmitri Dmitrich. You seem tense."

Dmitri stalked to the side table, where a few glasses sat in a wooden tray. Everything was kept fastidiously clean, even if the materials could have been dug from the ground out back. He put a glass down for his guest beside one for himself, gesturing for the officer to fill them. After KIiment obliged, he raised one in a silent toast and knocked it back. "How did you find out?"

"Mitya." It was a paternal tone, the I-caught-you-looking-at-the-wrong-websites-on-a-vpn-and-I-understand-but-what-would-your-mother-say-young-man tone. "You told me yourself. I make it my business to check in on any young man who—" and here he started counting on his fingers— "misses school for a several days in a row; shows up at the hospital with unspecified symptoms; is discharged immediately on the insistence of the parents despite aggravating distress; whose father installs a VPN a day later; whose recent searches of the wider web including things like 'online Esper diagnosis' and 'human survival without drinking' and 'vodka cure Esper symptoms'—it doesn't, by the way." He settles into the couch with a sarcastic smirk. "But I don't really know, you know, until I get to the house and see how they react." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the wife duck away from the door, and heard a sound like a gasp.

"We don't know—"

"I will be able to tell you for certain in a few minutes, when I go up to see him."

"He cannot receive guests in this state! He is indecent."

"Your son may be in acute danger, Dmitri Dmitrich. Don't you want him to receive proper medical attention?" He let that question hang in the air. "If he is indeed an 'esper,' your family will receive a stipend of no less than two-point-three-four million rubles annually, plus a signing bonus of half that. He will of course receive his own allowance, once he has completed his training and the like. It's a precious gift to the motherland, Mitya, and she supports your generous family in turn."

"The Draft Laws make it mandatory, anyway." He held his head in his hands.

"What, his enrollment in the service? No," Kliment shook his head again, his face angelic in its sympathy. "The Provisions for Enlistment for Unique Services mandate only that you be compensated should he decide to join us. It's a unique opportunity, Mitya. His condition is delicate, and it will be for the rest of his life, but he will receive the highest quality of care and training. He will make our homeland strong again. Our homeland," he repeated meaningfully. "And he will support your family, as well. It's a meaningful sum, I'm sure you'll agree. Certainly, if nothing else," he tapped the bottle of soju on its lid, "you and your wife can enjoy a few more bottles of this in his honor every year."

"Speaking of, why don't you take it to her? I need to see to your son now." His smile was gentle, his eyes were kind, his voice was warm, and none of it implied that there was room to negotiate.

Whatever Dmitri Dmitrich wished to say, he thought better of it. Instead he sighed. "You shouldn't see him like this."

Kliment stood up and nodded toward the wall, where a wooden cross hung. "That bottom crossbar: the Christ writhed so hard in his agony that he twisted it askew. I'm sure Mary felt every twinge as strongly as her child." He lifted the bottle of soju and placed it in the father's hands, curling the fingers around it. "I understand, Mitya. I remember my mother's face when it was my turn. Pray that there is salvation amidst suffering." But stay out of my way.

His face collapsed and suddenly he was just Yun Ba-wool, father of a hapless son. Kliment felt the tears more than he saw them. Frustration, pain, shame, a soupçon of impudent hope, all tamped down like gunpowder in an old musket. Kliment's sociology workbook had called it Han. Kliment himself found it supremely sympathetic, not that he would say so. Ba-wool walked ahead, gestured at the doorway where the victim hid, made to knock, but Kliment cleared his throat and shook his head. Ba-wool's eyes flashed with that helpless gunpowder look again, and then hardened, and then softened; he sighed.

"I will speak with my wife now." The husband headed to the kitchen to console his wife, the recruiter headed toward the bedrooms to catch his prey.

No voice responded when Kliment knocked on the door, or so he thought at first. By the third, insolent "what?" he realized that the man within was calling repeatedly, voice so hoarse and broken as to be indistinguishable from the settling of the house. He opened the door and stepped through. The light was off, and it took a moment to adjust to the dim, diffuse light of the grey sky filtered through the lone window on the opposite wall. He closed the door softly behind him and regarded his charge-to-be silently.

If front of him, a thin young man faced away from him. He was standing on his toes, legs apart, hips jutted forward, arms stretched out and down, head lolled back—and stark naked, Kliment realized suddenly. He allowed himself the tiniest inhalation as he processed his surprise. That would explain why his father had called him indecent. The young man had twitched as Kliment entered, so he was aware of the presence, but he made no motion to turn around until Kliment spoke.

"Yuri Dmitrievich Yun," he intoned, and like a spell, the voice tore through the naked boy, sending him shuddering and seizing with surprise at the sound of a stranger. He whipped around, eyes wide with fear. Kliment did not react as the young man tried to cover his nakedness with his cupped hands, held awkwardly away from each other and the object of his shame so as to be comically inefficient. Kliment kept his eyes level and waited for Yuri to find them with him.

"I can't take it." The words were the wrong ones. He wanted I can't see anyone now. He tried again after a theatrical gulp and two careful breaths. "I'm sorry, I can't—" he choked on his spittle.

"You are dehydrated," Kliment said. "And I'm guessing you can't drink like this. Right?" There was a pitcher full of water and a glass on a tray in the corner, along with some long-cold toast and a small bowl of neglected morkovcha. Kliment indicated them.

Dasol just gaped. He tried to swallow a few times—tried to ignore that his tongue felt feverish and his saliva tasted of rust and his lips burned when he wet them—and eventually he got enough liquid in his mouth that he could produce speech again, but in that time the man in his room has just watched him impassively. No flinching, no jokes, no polite and studious consideration of some corner of the room so as to avoid staring at a naked man, just flat, professional observance, and it steadily eroded what little composure Dasol could manage in this state. Now that he had the physical capacity to speak, the words themselves had left him.

"Yeah," he finally said.

Kliment smiled a paternal smile. "Yuri Dmitrich, you must be on the brink of collapsing. It's been how many days?" He shook his head with sympathy. "I am Kliment Ilyich Konstantinov. The state sent me to check up on you." He waved his hand dismissively toward the young man's poorly covered groin. "Don't bother with that. I've seen so many in my army days they scarcely register. Just move however makes you comfortable until we can get you sorted out. Aren't you cold? It's winter out."

Nothing made him comfortable with this stranger watching him while everything hurt. "Thank you, I'm fine," he whimpered. "It's been—four days. I'm very thirsty but I can't. Drink. It burns."

Kliment tilted his head and took two steps forward, and Dasol whimpered again. "Everything burns. The floor burns and my breath burns and my hand against my own skin burns." He was too tired to resist crying as he explained, but luckily he was also too tired to cry, so instead he managed an exasperated, plaintive sigh. "And my bedsheets feel like razor wire."

"You look like I could knock you over by blowing hard, Yurka. You need help." He stepped closer again, and his eyes glittered. "I think one of my friends might be able to help you. But you might just waste away if you go on like this." He reached out with a gentle hand, toward Yuri's shoulder.

Dasol recoiled. "No! Kliment Ilyich, please don't touch me. Your skin will be too warm."

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 a 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."

"Вы очень добры. That's very kind of you." He waved his right hand weakly, to ward the man away, and then suddenly remembered that he was still naked and pulled it down to cover himself. He turned halfway away, so that he was facing the door, and spoke to it rather than his visitor. "In all honesty, Kliment Ilyich, it's very tempting. I want to go back to the hospital again, if only so they can sedate me. I miss sleep." His throat started to tighten, but he was still too exhausted for tears. "It won't happen, though. I can't even get into clothes or sit without feeling like my skin is coming off. I cannot make another three-hour drive like this." He shook his head, gently at first and then sharply. "I can't! I can't!" He swung his head back again, and the room lurched the opposite way, spun rightward and upward, and then split in two. He tasted bile in the back of his throat, but there wasn't anything inside him to vomit properly, so instead he made an indignant croaking sound and pitched toward the sky.

The stranger in his room caught him on the way down, awkwardly, and he was too bleary to protest as the fine fibers of his coat dragged along the flesh of his back like burrs. "Oh," he said, instead of, "Спасибо."

"Alright, that is quite enough. You need to lay down."

He had put on his very finest I'm-serious-son voice and still the brat pogoed upward immediately, bobbling obscenely and careening sideways as he tried to find his feet. Kliment guided him downwards again as gravity took its course to no avail. "Very well! This is absurd!" he groused, ripping open his jacket and then his shirt. "Here, here! Wrap your arm under the fabric—damn you, boy, I'm trying to help! Are you utterly incapable to following basic instruction? Your dossier said that you performed perfectly fine in school."

Dasol barely registered any of this diatribe. Once he had started to tip over, he couldn't right himself fully again—and yet staying on the floor was impossible, too. The cold floor felt like lying naked in two-day-old snow, with that sheen of slick ice melted by the sun and refrozen into a hard crust. The recruiting officer was shouting at him, and the words entered his head at the wrong angle to make sense. He flinched away when the man grabbed him and told him to touch more of the boiling-oil skin.

Suddenly he was wretching from the nausea, and all he could think was that the man would surely leave something so abjectly pitiable as this. He considered tipping forward on purpose, trying to land on his head, to put himself out of his misery, but even that was too much effort. He leaned into the recruiter's grip despite himself as his legs went slack.

"Stand still, for the Christ's sake, before you injure something the doctors can't put back together, and let me help—Enough of this!"

He darted away to the bedside table and seized the carafe, pouring its contents wantonly toward his mouth until it was full, and twice that amount was dripping down his chest and matting the hair into an unsightly mass. He shrugged off the open shirt and the jacket onto the bed and leapt back to the boy, who fought with a prey animal's abandon against being seized. Kliment grabbed the delicate jaw in three fingers, squeezing and tilting until the lips parted, and ducked his head. How dare you make me stoop to this! Their lips met and he spat through them.

His eyes were closed when Kliment Ilyich released him spinning into the darkness, and still closed when the man grabbed him again. He crumpled uselessly against the man's chest. At least the lecturing had stopped, but the wet and matted hair felt like swimming through seaweed on his overly sensitive skin. He kicked in protest, and caught Kliment's shin so weakly that the man didn't even flinch. Dasol felt a honey-cake pressed to his jaw, sticky and flaccid, and lifted his mouth to protest, but suddenly there was another mouth there, and then a warm sensation as warm water flooded into him.

Warm, but not scalding: more uncomfortably hot cocoa than molten steel. He swallowed out of surprise, and it slid down his throat with only the most desultory of peristaltic protest. The second gulp was easier: novelty set off the pain more than sustained contact. By the third gulp he had his arms around the man's neck, dangling from him like obscene jewelry. He moaned in relief as the water hit his stomach, and then this man moaned back, and suddenly he was acutely aware of how much of their chests were in contact. He started to pull away in embarrassment, and Kliment snaked and arm around his back and pinned him in place. By the time their lips parted, his cheeks were hot enough to make the fingers touching them feel cool. He opened his eyes and was staring into Kliment's.

A muscle in his jaw flexed, but otherwise he did an admirable job of impassivity. "Do you think you can stop whinging long enough to have a useful conversation now, Yurechka?" he said, practically spitting the cutesy nickname. "Or do I need to pre-chew the morkovcha for you as well?"

He did not, however, loosen his grip.

Well, actually...

"That was rhetorical. Please do not confuse this for genuine affection."

"I'm fine, Kliment Ilyich. I was just startled."

"We are both entirely too naked for that level of decorum. You especially. If you call me 'Kliment Ilyich' again, I shall take offense." He said it in the back of his throat, as though suppressing a chuckle, even though his face remained schoolmasterly in severity. Without a single muscle twitching in his face, he cocked his head slowly to the left. "You still seem surprised. Did your frantic consultations with SERG.AI not mention that saliva and the like transfer the volatile energies that make us what we are? Or was your father borrowing your account?"

"If you know about that, then you surely also know that the topic is censored."

"I only receive alerts about unusual spikes in esper-related search activity to cross-reference with hospital data and the like. I do not personally view the query transcripts. I didn't realize... I suppose it's for the best, really. We would hardly want the thing hallucinating about esper habits, given how they... might appear to the untrained eye." He cleared his throat. "Bodily fluids from compatible espers can act as a transfer medium. It's the only reliable method for dispersing the accumulated buildup of energy, alongside skin contact." He looked up, out the middle distance. "The bureau posits an electrochemical effect, but efforts to isolate the phenomenon and obviate the messier organic methods of backlash dissipation have stalled." He broke apart from Yuri and returned to the carafe, this time pouring the water into a glass rather than going straight to his mouth. "Which is to say that, for now, we are reduced to scrounging for what solace nature has afforded us." He swirled the glass meaningfully. "Only for so long as it takes to get you to the hospital, you understand. From there an intravenous drip will preserve both your health and propriety."

"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."

"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."