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This time K does open his eyes, and he does pull back enough to be able to read Jesus's features better. To not force either of them to say the difficult things right now, things - in K's case, the loss fresh and still feeling like nothing so much as an imminent crash he can't stop or turn - that he might not even mean when he's calmer.

He has no idea what to do about it, but he can't say no when Jesus is saying his name like that, telling him that he's needed, looking at him like that. He has no idea what to do, but he can't just say no either.

He kisses him instead.

He knows this is probably going to end the same way: with K in prison because it's the only way he feels he has freedom of choice. And he knows he can't ask someone to give that up.

So for now he kisses K back, careful at first and then with a ferocity that surprises him. But all that pain has to go somewhere, and K at least understands it.

It surprises K a bit, too, but he adapts quickly - it feels better, anyway, than the great yawning hole he'd only just started to build over and now finds himself plummeted back down into, finds himself sinking faster.

It feels a bit like a lifeline, this touch when everything else hurts, this connection. So he's surprised a moment and then he straightens up to meet it, to be here now anyway, deepening the kiss and easing closer to Jesus where they're both sitting.

Don't go.

He's silently asked this of K before, and just like before he already knows he's just going to support whatever K decides to do, no matter how it hurts.

What matters is he has K right now, so he lets the kiss deepen and he lets himself cling to K in a way he normally wouldn't.

Please don't go, too.

He'll never tell, never mention it again, at least not in the conversations they have with words, with voices; but that's not now. Jesus is the one who first showed him how to do this, how to let another person pull him in despite his better judgment, and K is an excellent student.

He has a month of a Dominant he didn't know before yesterday and two months of uncertainty after that, but that's not now. Now, he reaches as much to pull Jesus to him as hold on himself, and he takes his time with this kiss, and does not stop until Jesus signals that he needs to.

He has all but crawled onto K's lap at this point when he breaks for air, his fingers still tangled in K's hair.

"It's going to be okay. I'm going to make sure we're okay," he murmurs.

And K is only too happy to welcome him, to pull him closer, to steady him against him with arms wrapped around tight. When times are better, times are calmer, he's in awe that Jesus lets him be this close; now, he tries to wrap himself in that privilege, to breathe in this space Jesus makes for him beside him.

"I'm trying," he promises, licking his lips as he catches his breath. "I just don't understand how."

"One thing at a time." He kisses him again, lighter this time, because he doesn't know exactly how either. You feel it, you absorb the loss, and you keep going.

He can offer the thing that's going to keep himself moving.

"I need your help. But it's okay if you can't right now."

K keeps wishing there were something he could do, some caseload to work on, some patrol shift to pick up or evidence to catalogue. Instead he's just sitting here waiting, hurting, with nothing he can do to influence it either way.

The kiss is welcome, in a way he would be shocked by himself for feeling only a few months ago. He's stroking his thumb along the inside of Jesus's wrist when he says that though, and he immediately focuses on something he might be able to actually do like a lifeline.

"Tell me what you need," he says without hesitation.

The way K snaps to is familiar, and he nods to himself, certain he's doing the right thing by asking.

"I'm going back to Veracity to look for more clues about the abductors. I need someone here to gather the intel as I send it back--someone to keep it safe so it isn't all kept in a central location. My partner has someone he'll be sending information back to the same way. But you're good at this--this was part of your job, right?"

Yes," he answers just as promptly, relieved that what Jesus is saying is readily achievable for that very reason.

"Analytical programs and equipment wasn't always available to me in the field, so I'm used to processing and recording data internally until such time as I can commit them to an official server." When K talks about anything to do with his former occupation, the uncertainty he's plagued by in Duplicity almost constantly vanishes; this he's comfortable with, this he knows he's good at doing. He was made for it. "I'd offer to go with you, but I think it would cause more problems than it would solve."

"No, I need you here," he shakes his head. "I'm used to getting in and out alone. I'll be fine. I just need to know the information is getting back to someone who can keep it safe."

"I can do that," he promises. He will do that.

"What are you looking for? Who are you going with?" It's so much easier to focus on some other problem than what's going on inside these walls.

"When I was there with Vrenille I interrogated a man who seemed to be near the top of things. At the least, he had a lot of information we didn't have time to go through. I'm after that." And there's a focus to him, a vibrance at the chance to be doing something for this place.

"I heard most of those people were taken in by the SIN guards and the city officials." And misses being able to just go and look up those results.

"And that the city itself is unstable."

He frowns. "Unstable how? Duplicity has had two civil wars--could they be on the brink of that?"

"No - physically." He can at least imagine a toxic city under the ocean. There was a neighborhood like that in Los Angeles.

He frowns and considers a moment. "If you end up needing help and call, I'll come anyway."

"I know you will." He thinks back, grins, and it feels good to smile. "I remember you breaking out of prison. Pretty sure not much could stop you if I called. It didn't hurt, did it?"

"No," he answers, distracted by the sudden grin, unsure what it means in practice. It keeps him from withdrawing too much as he considers Jesus's face.

"I don't... Like to do that. Sometimes people are scared by it."

He shakes his head slightly; he wasn't frightened by it. "Impressed, I'd say. For me, anyway. It made me feel a little better about your choice...knowing you weren't stuck where you didn't want to be."

"It's part of why prison doesn't worry me." He could even still get out again, he thinks, if he was willing to do real harm to the guards. He's not for just himself though.

"If I'd known it could make it better for you I'd have said." Another, not so direct apology.

"I didn't know what would've made it easier on me. I was just trying to support you." Which is what he'll do again in three months, when K will likely reach the same conclusion he did the first time around.

"Where are you going to be staying?"

"I was told I could stay here for the month," he answers, automatically glancing towards the door again, towards Nibbles, and then back at a man who probably doesn't realize that support is such an odd word to K that he doesn't know what to do with it.

"I don't have anywhere besides the Down housing to go anyway. Not that won't cause problems."

It's odd how empty this place seems without V, even though V hadn't decorated or done much to make the space his own.

In the end, he was only asking so he'd know where to go to find K.

"I can stay here tonight. If you want."

K is quiet then, his gaze still scanning over Jesus's face, lingering at each feature; the shape his hairline makes and the pieces of it that always fall loose of how he ties it back first; the shape of his eyebrows; the blue of his eyes; the curve of his nose, the way it comes to a fine point; the fullness of his beard, and the way his lips form his smile, the way they frame the flash of his teeth when he talks or grins.

He brushes his fingers along the slope of his neck. "I want you to," he says, delicately, clearly, "But I'm not allowed to have visitors. I don't want you in trouble."

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