Now that he's opened up that doorway, let himself follow this grayish-black connection and draw close to it, more things start filtering through. He realises his thread with Louis, at least on his end, has a flicker of two of gold, too. (Things happen; thoughts, snippets of sensation. A name?) Konstantin stares, unsure if what he's hearing and feeling is a whisper in the wind or a phantom of his own thought or someone else's entirely. There's a flicker of something unpleasant, something faintly disgusted, and he wants to flinch back from it. This all feels a little like a bad dream.

But he stays there, eyes dark and intense, facing whatever this is. Facing these questions. He's quick to answer the last, head giving a kneejerk half-shake. A condition. Just how much does Louis know? What exactly happened? And what's wrong with this man before him, too?

"No, he doesn't— I'm— What's wrong with me is... something that happened just before here. Just to me. I'm very sick."

....To say the least. He winces, cold in the night air. A flood of emotions comes leaking out of him like he's been cut open — guilt, guilt, guilt. "He's seven by now. Maybe eight. I've never met him in person."

That's something he's told less than a handful of people. It's one of his worst truths laid bare. But it's a necessary truth to reveal now, in this context, because somehow he has a physical tether to Aleksei even though he's never met him before. The same kind of physical tether he has to Louis. It has to mean something.

'Means it's complicated.'

(What if it's something worse, something like hate or fear? Maybe Aleksei's heard about him by now, back home. Maybe he knows what his father is. Maybe he's terrified of him—)

"Are you afraid of me?" he asks fast, and he knows it's another strange thing to ask, but he has to know.