Page 8 of To Clutch a Razor
He shrugs off the guitar case and leans it up against the half-rotten table Ala keeps on her back porch, then perches on the edge of it, next to the pot of petunias. They’re the pink-and-white-striped kind. Hideous.
The back door opens, and Dymitr steps out of the apartment, his feet bare, wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt that’s too big for him. His hair is mussed. Niko wants to run his hand through it, but instead he just crosses his arms and says, “Dobry wieczór.”
It’s intentionally formal.Good evening,like they’re from another time.
As if he can’t quite stop himself, Dymitr steps closer—too close. He touches the side of his nose to Niko’s jaw and breathes in. The first time he did this was in Ala’s kitchen,right after he woke as a zmora, and Niko assumed the fascination with his new nose would fade, in time. So far, it hasn’t—not where Niko is concerned, anyway. And he’s not complaining. There’s something… appealing about the way Dymitr takes those deep breaths of his skin. About how attentive he is.
Niko is counting on it today. Anna O’Connor ran a perfumed finger across Niko’s shoulder at the boxing ring earlier, and he wants to see if Dymitr can smell it—and if he can, Niko wants to feel Dymitr’s jealousy. He’s a strzygon, after all, and anger—and all its many shades—is his sustenance.
He can tell when Dymitr notices it, his head dropping to Niko’s shoulder as he breathes in again, only… there’s no cold spill of jealousy. No anger at all, in fact.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” Niko says, though he runs a hand through Dymitr’s hair anyway, scratching at his scalp with the blunted-talon fingernails of a strzygon in human form.
“What is?” Dymitr says, his head heavy against Niko’s shoulder.
Niko was the one to point out to Ala that Dymitr was in pain. He’s good at bearing it, so the signs were subtle, but the way even the briefest comfort—Niko’s fingers in his hair, for example—makes him sag with relief, the way he rubs at his chest when he thinks no one’s paying attention…
“I have someone else’s perfume all over me, and you don’t feel even a little bit jealous.”
Dymitr looks up at him, an eyebrow raised. “Youwantme to be jealous?”
“Can you blame me for being curious what it feels like?” Niko smiles a little. “I am what I am, after all.”
“Some people would call that a red flag.”
“The fact that I can turn into a deadly monster in an instant should be a much bigger, redder flag.”
Dymitr gives him a small smile in return. There’s a crease between his eyebrows that Niko wants to smooth away. So he does, pressing his thumb right between Dymitr’s eyes, then brushing the tension away with a sweep of his hand.
“I’m not jealous because I’m not entitled to you,” Dymitr says.
It should be reassuring, maybe, or noble, but to Niko it only seems sad. Sometimes anger is entitled and jealous, but sometimes it rises up to demand what you feel you deserve. And Dymitr feels he deserves nothing and no one.
Niko doesn’t know what to say, so he kisses Dymitr instead. Lightly, at first, but soon Dymitr’s hands are clutching at the lapels of Niko’s jacket, and Niko is pressing Dymitr back into the brick wall. He tastes something familiar—the old, dusty mints that his grandmother keeps in a dish outside of her apartment—but he brushes that recognition aside in favor of…this,this frantic need toburrow under Dymitr’s skin and stay there forever. He leans closer, pinning Dymitr against the wall with his own body, to feel the warmth of him, the solidity of him.
He’s been careful, over the last few weeks, to slow himself down whenever he’s with Dymitr. His life is always a breath away from ending, thanks to his role as zemsta, and Dymitr barely knows what he is right now, let alone who he wants to spend time with. And it’s far, far too easy for Niko to drink Dymitr down to the dregs.
But this time, when he tries to move away, Dymitr holds on, breathing fast and shallow against Niko’s cheek. Too fast. Too shallow.
“Hey,” Niko says. “Are you all right?”
Dymitr nods, and Niko studies him for a moment—his eyes are closed, his brow furrowed.
“I don’t believe you,” Niko says.
Dymitr looks up at him. “It was a difficult day.”
Niko thinks of the mint he tasted on Dymitr’s breath. “You saw my grandmother.”
“The cost of not having the sword is high, but the price Baba Jaga has named for it is higher than I’m willing to pay.”
“I see.” Niko smooths down Dymitr’s T-shirt, but doesn’t pull away. “Do you know how many times my mother went to her to ask her to make me into a strzygon?”
Niko remembers every one. The first time, his mother told him to sit on the top step outside of Baba Jaga’sapartment. That’s when he tried the mints, popping them in his mouth one after another until his tongue hurt. The next time she dragged him in with her, hoping the sight of him would spark some sense of familial obligation or sympathy. He’s not really Baba Jaga’s grandchild—more of a great-great-great-grandchild—so he was too far removed from her to make much of an impact. Until later, anyway.
“Four,” he says, answering his own question. “Each time before that, my grandmother demanded more than my mother could give. But the fourth time… that’s when my mother showed up with something of value to bargain with. Understand?”
“I have nothing,” Dymitr says. “A passport. A name. A body. That’s all.”
