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Re: Voice

[konstant]

Okay.

It's unlocked.

[hippie_ninja]

It's early morning, just before dawn when he lets himself in.

"K?"

[konstant]

Mango is over at Sara's, so the apartment is quiet in the weak grey morning light coming in through the window. K is on the couch, working slowly on a cigarette, Janus safely in a jar in the closed bathroom so the smoke won't hurt him.

He looks over when the door opens, but it's exactly who he was expecting, so he just takes another draw and taps ash into the tray in front of him.

[hippie_ninja]

He looks at K and it's a knife in the chest, every doubt he has being driven right back home. "Drake said he wanted to talk to you first. So I hope he has because I couldn't wait any more."

[konstant]

K knew it was likely something like this would happen someday; he'd told Drake as much. He knew that Jesus would want to talk to him, and he said that too.

He's having enough trouble with his own emotions right now, so he doesn't look up to meet Jesus's eyes just yet. He can't.

"He has."

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm sorry. I'm having second thoughts, I did the second it happened but I just- I don't know what to do. I don't know what I'm doing, K." And that, for Jesus, is terrifying.

[konstant]

"It didn't happen -" he points out, his voice low, calm as it ever is, but cool on the consonants, crisp in a way that disappears when he's relaxed.

"You made a choice."

[hippie_ninja]

"You're right. I'm trying to distance myself from it and I shouldn't. I did this." And he's desperate right now to make it right, but again, there's no sense of which way is up or down or what is right or wrong.

[konstant]

K watches the orange glow of the cigarette slowly eating its way down the paper, watches the dead grey ash gathering on the opposite side; Jesus said he was sorry. K believes that. He believes he's having second thoughts, believes he doesn't know what to do.

Problem is, neither does K. He taps off the ash, takes another long, deep lungful of smoke, breathes it out slow through his nose.

"Have a seat, if you want."

[hippie_ninja]

He does. Carefully, like K might change his mind in a moment.

"Have you ever been afraid of feeling safe?"

[konstant]

K doesn't move, except to hold onto the ashtray in case Jesus's weight on the couch shifts something. That, and to shake his head.

No, of all the myriad things K has been afraid of in his life, he has never been afraid of feeling safe.

"It must be difficult."

[hippie_ninja]

"It's not. Because I never feel safe." He's watching K, heart in his throat. "But I did with you."

[konstant]

He knows.

He knew then.

Do they teach you how to feel, finger to finger? Interlinked.

"Then why?"

[hippie_ninja]

It's not my role.

I don't belong with you.

And he hears Rosita's voice and he fights those answers back. "Because it scares me. And it's not the kind of fear I know how to think through. I always ran before; I ran now. But it feels wrong."

[konstant]

K drops his head forward, cards his free hand back through his short hair, scrubs it forward again. He flicks ash into the tray, then sets the cigarette in it, sets the whole thing aside.

"Drake said you told him you were trying to protect us."

[hippie_ninja]

"It would be easy for the city to use him against me. It's what I was afraid of to start with--having to make that choice again." Between the job, the mission, and a person.

"But it didn't feel like I was leaving you at the time. Not until I was running and trying to make it make sense to myself."

[konstant]

What K hears is that Jesus wasn't thinking about him at all; the moment after that he tells himself there's no real reason he should have. The contract is between Jesus and Drake, and K doesn't have anything to do with their relationship or vice.

Except the part of any of this that hit K the deepest, that he didn't see coming, that he doesn't know how to just set aside and remind himself that he already knew.

He finally, finally looks up, eyes somber in the half-dark, features wounded - and his voice is very, very soft when he says, "You said we'd be in this together." When there are no right answers, sometimes it helps to just have someone with you.

[hippie_ninja]

He did say that. He meets K's gaze--he owes him that much.

"And I wish I hadn't run." He's not the same person who once crawled out a window to escape a boyfriend. He's clearly not the same person who chose to end relationships secure in knowing he was right.

"If I came back could you ever forgive me?"

[konstant]

"It's not that simple, Jesus," he says, not unkindly, not harsh - but there's not much strength to it either.

"Because I already have. I'm not angry anymore. I can't hold fear against you. You've never lied to me, not intentionally."

[hippie_ninja]

"You can. Most people would." Have. Do still. "I wouldn't blame you if you did."

[konstant]

"I -" He leans into it, firm, certain of this much: most people might, but he is not most people.

He's not even a person, and sometimes lately, he thinks that's better. "Won't do that."

[hippie_ninja]

He believes him. He doesn't know what to do with that, with someone who doesn't offer him a wall of anger and resentment.

"Would you let me try to earn back your trust?"

[konstant]

"Do you want to?"

It's an earnest question, and K's eyes are on Jesus's now, unblinking, studying and searching for whatever it was that he might have missed before, if indeed there's anything.

"Do you want to risk feeling this way in another couple of months? Maybe always?"

[hippie_ninja]

Maybe always. Maybe he will always want to run.

"It's different this time. Every boyfriend I've ever dated, I've left, K. And I never felt guilty about any of them. I just felt relief. But I don't now. All I want is to go back to yesterday and undo what I did, and I can't, so I'm trying to find a way forward."

[konstant]

"Boyfriend."

Jesus has never used that word with him; K has never pressed for it, never needed it. Replicants can't be equals, can't be partners, so he just never expected it. That isn't to say K doesn't know he's important, or that Jesus is any less important to him, but - Jesus says it now.

K echoes it back, just to make sure he heard.

"Why do this now? What changed?"