Nika's eyes widened, wondering for a moment if they hadn't miscalculated, if Cyril was more impulsive than they'd originally bargained on. They'd let him get to this point too, with their own knife, with their own hand wrapped around it too. How silly it would be.
Did they even care?
Then the pressure on their throat lessened, and Nika no longer needed to answer that particular question. They filed it away with the other things they preferred not to think about. "Distractions can be beneficial sometimes, whether it's sex, or poetry, or food. Otherwise I obsess, the mind spins in circles, tries to tear itself apart. It's not very fun." Nika had to admit that they suffered from that, they were in possession of a mind that refused to be hospitable to them. Still, it only bothered them in their worse moments. "Distractions are only temporary. I always end up back here." They made a small, flippant gesture to the streets around them. "My trade, as you so neatly put it, is the only thing that truly catches my interest."
They frowned slightly as Cyril pocketed their knife, and it deepened slightly when Cyril asked about their house. Now, Nika was rarely against taking interesting strangers back to their house, especially ones that looked like Cyril, but as it was, they had to be a little bit more careful. They closed their eyes for a moment, leaning against the wall for support. "We know far too much about each other already." Did Cyril have a plan? Perhaps it would be easier to kill Nika at their house, stage a suicide, or a break-in. Or else, he was looking for insurance, more information he could hold against Nika to ensure that they didn't speak of him to anyone else. "What do you want to do, Cyril?"