K is capable of sitting for hours without speaking, barely moving; he's comfortable in it. More comfortable sometimes than speaking with anyone, it must be said. No one can punish him or degrade him or be suspicious of him with thoughts he keeps to himself. He doesn't have to struggle to put anything he's thinking or feeling into words.
He finishes the current cigarette, lights a third off of it and smokes that one down, then a fourth - not frantically, not in distress, but steadily. Methodically. He fidgets with it in his hand occasionally, flicking ash off with his thumb or just idly moving it up and down, doesn't look at Jesus, doesn't look at anything if he's not actively doing something with his hands. The smoke curls up from his nostrils, from his mouth, in even, measured breaths.
Finally he puts out the last one, deciding Janus has been trapped in his jar long enough. The morning is well under way when he stands up, turns to open the window a little bit wider to let more of the smoke clear out, then sits down again where he was before.
"When Drake told me you thought you were protecting us," he finally says, and his voice is low but the tension from earlier has smoothed out of it. "All I could think was - what did I say? What have I done, or not done, that makes people I love think I want some flimsy illusion of safety instead of them? That it's something you have to do for me, that I can't for myself."
no subject
He finishes the current cigarette, lights a third off of it and smokes that one down, then a fourth - not frantically, not in distress, but steadily. Methodically. He fidgets with it in his hand occasionally, flicking ash off with his thumb or just idly moving it up and down, doesn't look at Jesus, doesn't look at anything if he's not actively doing something with his hands. The smoke curls up from his nostrils, from his mouth, in even, measured breaths.
Finally he puts out the last one, deciding Janus has been trapped in his jar long enough. The morning is well under way when he stands up, turns to open the window a little bit wider to let more of the smoke clear out, then sits down again where he was before.
"When Drake told me you thought you were protecting us," he finally says, and his voice is low but the tension from earlier has smoothed out of it. "All I could think was - what did I say? What have I done, or not done, that makes people I love think I want some flimsy illusion of safety instead of them? That it's something you have to do for me, that I can't for myself."