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[konstant]

                                                                 

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[hippie_ninja]

He holds gently onto K and then his hold is firmer, his arms all the way around him, the two of them tucked in together. Nibbles jumps back onto the bed, sniffs at K's ear and offers an inquisitive meow.

[konstant]

The noise K makes in return is clearly one Nibbles is used to from him - low, soft, almost a word but not quite - because he comes straight over to where K lifts a hand to invite him. He meows again and K offers a murmured, "I know," and rubs his ears. This is how the cat settles where he stands then, draped across both of their hips, curled up and purring.

"He misses him too. He keeps looking."

[hippie_ninja]

"Oh, Nibbles..." He hadn't considered this until K says it, and now he sees it and it pains him. He pets the cat, cooing to him nonsense sounds.

"He has both of us. And I don't care what your Dom says, it's not going to keep me away from you."

[konstant]

There's something soothing about watching Jesus doing the same thing with Nibbles that K does; the genuine fondness despite the way K sees Jesus looking at him sometimes, the thread he can't quite place.

It doesn't matter. K trusts him, and he proves why in the next moment.

"He says I'm an unruly Submissive, and I need stricter rules to be successful." K has no idea what to do with this information, it's so far from what he's used to - and yet, he knows, true enough from a program perspective. "That I can earn back the freedoms I've taken advantage of so far with obedience."

[hippie_ninja]

Of course. Of course that's what the Dom said. "If you want to obey his rules, we will. But if you don't, I'll be here however many times you want."

[konstant]

"I don't want the rules to get worse," he hedges.

But he also adds: "This is against them, now. I'm not supposed to have visitors here either." He doesn't care as much as he once would have.

[hippie_ninja]

"Tell me what you want, and I'll do it," he says, but makes no move to get up until then.

[konstant]

"What I want isn't anything to do with this place," he says after a moment of groping after an answer. The fingers of one hand curl tighter into the fabric of Jesus's shirt under them.

"I'm worried it's part of what got V into trouble. Got him removed from the program."

[hippie_ninja]

He strokes K's back. "How could it be? You obeyed his rules. People just vanish here, K...a lot of people. It's like death."

And that makes it perhaps too easy for Jesus to accept.

[konstant]

"You didn't hear how hard he pushed to get me to consider signing with him. Some of the things he said."

Things that K isn't sure even now he believes, but that he'd been willing under the circumstances to give it a chance. To let V prove he meant them, and now he's gone.

"He was in open defiance of the program. In a prison run by it."

[hippie_ninja]

Jesus frowns. "He didn't trick them, K. They saw your contract. They approved it. This is not your fault."

[konstant]

"I've worked for the government. I've seen what gets through sometimes until it makes it to the desk of someone who gives a shit." It used to be him.

But he's not actually trying to argue. He tucks his head closer to Jesus's chest.

"I just don't want it to happen anymore."

[hippie_ninja]

"I don't, either." And they're both helpless to change it but he holds onto K as if that will make a difference, tucks K's head closer, chin atop K's hair. "You have me right now."

[konstant]

K turns his face into the warm pocket made by Jesus's shoulder, neck, and jaw and closes his eyes, just listening to him breathing, feeling the syncopated beat of their hearts.

"I'm glad you came," he confides to the safe space created between them, breathing in the specific mix of skin and sweat and earth and liquor and something else that's uniquely Jesus.

His lips brush the tendons of Jesus's neck, first just proximity, then a deliberate, grateful kiss.

[hippie_ninja]

He strokes K's neck, his back, holding onto him. He doesn't have to think as hard as some others might, to remember the earliest and heaviest losses he'd felt. There's the mission coming up but, "This is where I want to be."

[konstant]

They share that. K isn't coded like a child, he doesn't throw himself on the floor and scream out his rage and hurt, but he's still rocked by something so momentous that he's never felt before. He's used to death. He's made to kill his own kind - an act humans have a completely separate name for, they consider it so heinous - but he's never lost people he cared more deeply about than he does any citizen of Los Angeles.

His hand follows the line of Jesus's arm up until he can slide their fingers together, hold on firm. "If he comes back, we'll tell him you were here to borrow something."

[hippie_ninja]

"I'll hear him coming." He checked that the door was locked; he'll hear the key in the door with plenty of time to hide. "He won't see me."

[konstant]

"I don't want to get you into trouble," he says again, and he means it. If Denis tries to hurt Jesus, K honestly doesn't know what he'll do.

[hippie_ninja]

"I don't want you to be alone right now." It's worth the risk. It's worth a night in jail--but it probably wouldn't even come to that. It's worth paying a fine, repaying Drake for it.

"I don't want to be alone right now."

[konstant]

This first, K might have argued, or at least continued to discuss. The second, though, is not something he can push back against, is not something he wants to push back against at all, so he falls silent after the breath he takes initially.

"Then we won't," he finally settles on. "The apartment is usually too quiet to sleep much anyway."

[hippie_ninja]

"It's too loud here for me," he's so used to the near silence of a rural camp, especially one made up of people who have to be quiet to avoid drawing the attention of walkers. "I keep thinking I'll get used to it."

[konstant]

"Even up here?" The suite is twenty floors in the air, and the windows are thick and soundproof. It reminds K of his apartment in Los Angeles, except there's a view outside the windows.

He traces an idle finger over top of Jesus's shirt, following the line of one of his ribs like it's a line of Braille in the dark.

[hippie_ninja]

"It's an artificial quiet. I hear it and when I start to fall asleep I hear footsteps." Shuffling, dragging footsteps, nails on the walls.

It's strange to have that thought, that admission, juxtaposed with the way he arches slightly to let K have all the access to his ribs he likes. But he's used to horrible thoughts being paired with something pleasant, and this almost makes him feel at home.

[konstant]

When K reaches the end of his easy range of motion over Jesus's side he splays his fingers to feel the way the other man's breathing expands his ribcage, the way the bones pull closer again on the exhale. The way he lives under K's hand.

"I wish I could do something to change that for you. To let you get some rest."

[hippie_ninja]

"You do," he says, a little surprised that it isn't neon obvious to K. But then, Jesus does wake up several times a night, and K has been there when Jesus has got up to check the doors and windows--even though he's already done it before they ever fell asleep.

"When I wake up and see you, it's easy to fall asleep. To know we're okay." Most of the time, at least.

He strokes his fingers through K's short, soft hair. "It's worth risking a fine or some time in the Zoo to have nights like this with you." Under his ribs, K will feel how steady his heartbeat is. How calm.