"What do you want me to do right now?" Stay, go. Keep talking, shut up. He has no idea what he's doing still, only what he wants to do, but K is the one who was hurt; K has the right to decide where things go.
"Could we just -" It comes out sharper than K ever is, frustrated with them both, with the situation, with the fact that he's already established there's no one to really blame and yet.
And yet. He sucks down a third of the new cigarette in one draw, catches himself, forces himself to let it out slow. The edge is gone when he speaks again.
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."
"I made a decision that wasn't really mine to make," Jesus says, watching K.
He stays sitting, stays still, giving K space to move or have distance as he needs. "Back home we learn you can't make choices for other people. It's what I wanted my community to be built around: everyone gets a choice. And I took that from you and I'm sorry and I want to make that right. I want to never do that again. It wasn't fair to you."
There's a note of desperation that creeps in when he says, "K, I'm so sorry."
It's the desperation that keeps K quiet, that stops the rest of what he was going to say - that makes him wonder if it matters. Really, on the whole of it, does it matter - and when did he start thinking that it did?
Jesus made a mistake. He's already here trying to fix it, and K already knows he doesn't want to stop seeing or talking to or knowing Jesus, so the choice becomes obvious. Why does it still feel like trying to use a dislocated joint, then?
Probably because it's new, he thinks. Probably because this is just part of it he doesn't understand, but he looks at Jesus, he listens to him talking about choice and saying he's sorry, and he already knows where this ends up.
So he swallows the rest down, he nods, and he says, "It's okay."
K is not unaware of the magnitude of someone that he didn't feel comfortable naming a date a date around suddenly saying that he loves him. He doesn't miss it, but it seems like the sort of thing that he shouldn't try to grab hold of either. It's not a surprise after all. Not to K, who has been watching Jesus love him for weeks now.
Not that this means it's nothing. It's the reason he can say again, "It's okay. I don't know either, but it's okay."
"I don't know either." This is a placeholder, not a verdict. A verbal hand held up to reserve space while he tries to come up with something more substantial, more helpful.
"I know you're not lying, now or then. And I've known for a while you sometimes feel... conflicted. And sometimes not." He can always tell, which is the gift and the curse of the Voight-Kampff modification combined with his intimate knowledge of Jesus specifically.
"And I... ignored. What I knew, because things are different here. Because I can usually see what you're feeling but not why, not the intention. For those I have to trust what's being said, and - I do. And this still happened."
"What would it have looked like if you hadn't ignored it?" But more importantly, "I'm hearing that you feel- fault, maybe, for being hurt by this. There's no fault on your end."
A muscle in K's jaw tenses and releases, his eyes still lowered.
"I don't know. I don't know if what I'm feeling is what anyone else would feel or if it's... Some flaw, some warning spark in me. I'm not made to do this. I'm not made to be this."
He swallows. "Love isn't something you can choose or predict. It just happens. So I don't think there's any way they could make you around those parameters, K."
"What's it like to hold the hand of someone you love?" K quotes, his voice taking on that hollow, mechanical cadence it does when he's referencing the baseline script.
"Do they teach you how to feel finger to finger? Do you long for having your heart interlinked?" Scan said you don't look like you on the inside. Miles off your baseline.
He runs his hand back through his hair, shakes his head and looks away when he says, guiltily, "Interlinked."
"They gave you a baseline because they know you are capable of love," he points out. "If you weren't they wouldn't have needed to watch you so closely."
K can't really blame Jesus for being unsure, for being afraid; K certainly doesn't feel as confident right now as he had at the carnival, after Thanksgiving or Tumenalia. He feels more precarious than ever.
Is this really what they were watching for? Or anger? Righteous, destructive, unstoppable hatred was what K was developed to deal with in other replicants. He was never told what he was meant to deal with in himself.
He doesn't have an answer so he doesn't try to give one.
He watches K. He thinks he should go--part of him thinks K wants him to go--but he doesn't move. "Me saying it to you doesn't mean you have to feel anything back."
This brings K's eyes around again, landing on Jesus, studying features he's studied over and over and over as he slept, talked, laughed, kissed, and any of the dozens of things they've done for sex.
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And yet. He sucks down a third of the new cigarette in one draw, catches himself, forces himself to let it out slow. The edge is gone when he speaks again.
"What do you want to do?"
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"Could we just what?"
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"Could we just... sit here, for a bit. And not talk." Just be, and let K think.
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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."
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He stays sitting, stays still, giving K space to move or have distance as he needs. "Back home we learn you can't make choices for other people. It's what I wanted my community to be built around: everyone gets a choice. And I took that from you and I'm sorry and I want to make that right. I want to never do that again. It wasn't fair to you."
There's a note of desperation that creeps in when he says, "K, I'm so sorry."
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Jesus made a mistake. He's already here trying to fix it, and K already knows he doesn't want to stop seeing or talking to or knowing Jesus, so the choice becomes obvious. Why does it still feel like trying to use a dislocated joint, then?
Probably because it's new, he thinks. Probably because this is just part of it he doesn't understand, but he looks at Jesus, he listens to him talking about choice and saying he's sorry, and he already knows where this ends up.
So he swallows the rest down, he nods, and he says, "It's okay."
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"I love you, K. And I'm not sure how to love anyone yet. But I want to know. I want to figure out how to be good at it."
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Not that this means it's nothing. It's the reason he can say again, "It's okay. I don't know either, but it's okay."
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"If you were in my position. What would you need?"
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"I know you're not lying, now or then. And I've known for a while you sometimes feel... conflicted. And sometimes not." He can always tell, which is the gift and the curse of the Voight-Kampff modification combined with his intimate knowledge of Jesus specifically.
"And I... ignored. What I knew, because things are different here. Because I can usually see what you're feeling but not why, not the intention. For those I have to trust what's being said, and - I do. And this still happened."
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"I don't know. I don't know if what I'm feeling is what anyone else would feel or if it's... Some flaw, some warning spark in me. I'm not made to do this. I'm not made to be this."
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Jesus isn't a replicant but oh, the ways he empathizes with that way of thinking.
"Made to be what?"
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"Or to love."
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"Do they teach you how to feel finger to finger? Do you long for having your heart interlinked?" Scan said you don't look like you on the inside. Miles off your baseline.
He runs his hand back through his hair, shakes his head and looks away when he says, guiltily, "Interlinked."
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Is this really what they were watching for? Or anger? Righteous, destructive, unstoppable hatred was what K was developed to deal with in other replicants. He was never told what he was meant to deal with in himself.
He doesn't have an answer so he doesn't try to give one.
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This brings K's eyes around again, landing on Jesus, studying features he's studied over and over and over as he slept, talked, laughed, kissed, and any of the dozens of things they've done for sex.
"I do feel something back."
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Maybe he's asking more for himself than for K, but they both have so many reasons not to trust love or attachment.
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