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His hand splays gently against K's cheek, fingertips into his hair, and his brow furrows. "What does that mean?"

K shakes his head, gently so as not to dislodge Jesus's hand, leans into it faintly after.

"It won't mean much," he's sure. There's no reason it would. "Something I use to - something I use."

His fingers slip further back into K's hair and they're forehead to forehead, and Jesus wants to just keep him like this a while.

"Tell me about it? Please." He wants to know. He wants to know what it means to K, even if he never knows the original meaning behind such a cryptic phrase.

In its way, it's an easier topic than V, than Duplicity, than contracts or pets or relationships. It's steady and known, indelible and fixed.

He doesn't answer right away regardless, swallowing as he relaxes against where they're touching now. He still has one hand shadowing the movement of Jesus's on him, and the fingertips of his other hand brush his knee every bit as lightly.

"It's from my baseline script," he does finally offer, though. "And dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played. It means... a lot of things. It's the last line."

Baseline. He remembers K talking about it before. He can imagine that it's comforting, in its way.

"What did it mean just now?"

"It means thank you." Which is true. He licks his lips and tries again: "It means something going right."

It means he is filled with dread for the month ahead, but Jesus is still here now.

"I always liked that it ended on the only thing that felt hopeful in it."

He wonders if the people who wrote the script had any idea K would find something hopeful in it.

He smiles, thinks he'd fight through a lot of people to give K a little more hope.

"I'll take care of Nibbles. But as soon as you have a place of your own, he belongs with you. No one else is going to make sure he has the right number of sweaters for winter. He needs you, K."

K's brow furrows, but he doesn't open his eyes again to check how serious Jesus is being. He already knows.

"I know you don't think that's true," he says, dully. "You said he'd be fine inside. I have to go back to the Down soon and I don't know who they'll put me with. Then I'll have two months to find another contract."

And they both know how that went last time.

"K," pleading softly, but he can't bring himself to finish that thought. So he switches to something else, something even harder to say. "V isn't the only Dominant who needs you. He's not the only person who needs you on the outside."

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?"

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