. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[konstant]

There are parallels K can draw on his own. He wasn't LAPD's most effective blade runner, though, because he imposed his own assumptions over what people told him.

It stings and aches right now to remember that, but he focuses on Jesus, focuses on the curious streak.

"How so?"

[hippie_ninja]

"Because to hear about this place, you'd think love would be the last thing anyone could find. Everything has the quota putting pressure on it." Even Jesus feels it and he knows K does, too. He wouldn't have slept with him if not for the city reframing everything. He wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for K.

"But people are happy together. We're all up against the same wall, but I've had people tell me they've found love like they never had at home."

[konstant]

K has never had a friend like Jesus, but odds are good they could have known each other for years without it even occurring to him to make a move. Maybe not, with the combination of interest and respect, but it certainly wouldn't have happened already. He's thought about this before.

He thinks about it often.

"One of the first people I spoke to here, one of the first to help me, insists that this place is more what people make of it then what the officials try to sell it as. He insists there are people here he wouldn't know how to live without now." K isn't a skeptic, but he does happen to think that perhaps it's being romanticized a bit as a coping mechanism.

[hippie_ninja]

"Your friend isn't wrong. You have to make a place bearable somehow. Usually, the only way to do it is with other people." Everyone he talks to is horrified to learn what his home world is like, but he misses it. He misses Hilltop, he misses Aaron and Alexandria, he misses the road.

"But it would be very easy to use this place as an excuse to become angry and bitter. To just use people. Instead, they make connections, deep ones."

[konstant]

"Vrenille," K offers while he digests the rest of that. They both know Vrenille.

Finally he smiles, a little sad, and nods.

"I should try to shower if we're going anywhere today."

[hippie_ninja]

Vrenille. He likes him, he likes that K talks to him.

"All right." He'll brush his teeth and his hair, get ready, hold down the fort while K does.

[konstant]

The light still hurts, but not anything like it has the day before; it feels like walking around outside the biome for short periods of time, and he can tolerate that. The shower wakes him up, makes him feel more focused - which he absolutely takes advantage of to keep his mind from wandering too much as bits and pieces of memory come back.

When they're ready to head out, K sticks very close to Jesus's side and stays alert, collar flipped up but not fastened, hands deep in his pockets and his gun riding his ribs.

[hippie_ninja]

Jesus usually moves through crowds like water, but with K beside him he's slower and more willing to take up space. He keeps his hands free, and he watches those around them--starting first with the way they walk and then, when nothing is alarming, he'll offer little smiles or nods if they meet eyes.

"You said you'd found a lot of books around here. What do you read?"

[konstant]

K is comfortable in crowds usually but when he's fresh off being hunted, being retired, he's grateful to have someone familiar with him. Someone he trusts.

He doesn't hear the question at first but he is paying attention. He is able to piece it back together and takes up the distraction eagerly.

"Anything. Physical books are rare, but there are still a lot of digital copies of the ones that survived the blackout. I like Westerns."

[hippie_ninja]

Westerns. He wouldn't have guessed those even still existed in a world where blade runners exist. He smiles at K and leads him around a corner. "What do you like about them?"

[konstant]

"They're very dramatic," is his immediate answer, ready to hand. "I like both the books and the movies, but they have such distinct characters that are always doing such interesting things for reasons that make no sense to me like having shootouts and robbing trains. And there are always horses, and cows. Sometimes chickens, or buzzards."

[hippie_ninja]

Of course K would read a western and be captivated by the buzzards. Jesus smiles, picturing K's face as Lonesome Dove played--K seeing nothing as clearly as the cows.

"You've never been around them, have you?"

[konstant]

He shakes his head.

"No. There aren't any animals left except in the richest households, and those usually aren't real."

Deckard had a dog, he remembers. It barely seemed alive. "I did see some insects once. I don't know what they were. They were loud."

[hippie_ninja]

"If we were back home I could teach you." He knows every bug, every type, that exists in Virginia by now. He'd started out reading pilfered books about which ones were edible, and the rest of the knowledge filled in by osmosis.

[konstant]

It does draw K's attention over.

"Are you interested in insects?"

[hippie_ninja]

"Anything living," he agrees easily. Plants, bugs, animals, people. "Sometimes the only things around for miles were the bugs. Made sense to get to know what they were."

[konstant]

"These were where nothing living was supposed to be. The city had been irradiated, and there was no biome to protect or normalize it afterwards. I don't know how they were surviving."

And he had no one to ask, unwilling to risk Joi being targeted, unable to call the station analysts.

And honestly unwilling at that point anyway.

[hippie_ninja]

"Could you draw one?" Irradiated bugs might be simply monstrous versions of those he knows, but who knows? They could just be the same cockroaches said to survive nuclear winter.

[konstant]

"Yes. Remind me when we get back to the housing and I'll try."

He's watching where they walk, marking the streets as they pass them - and, notably, relaxing the further they go without incident.

"You're making a lot of friends."

[hippie_ninja]

"It's easy to do here. Everyone I've met so far has cared about helping me settle in." It's unlike any community he's ever been in before. He does have the advantage of being extroverted, and being used to building bridges, though. "...Are they that way with you, too?"

[konstant]

K nods.

"It's... New." He's capable of speaking to strangers when he's filling a clear role. This has been much, much harder.

"And more difficult, probably. But yes."

[hippie_ninja]

"It's hard for me, too." He's glad for it, but it's still jarring. "Different reasons, I know."

[konstant]

"You don't show it," he answers, and honestly that's one of the things K admires most about him. People are important to him even when they're not easy for him.

"It took even me a while to spot it."

[hippie_ninja]

"All I wanted for years was to build a place that was safe for people to have their families. Whatever the families looked like. This place somehow has given that to a lot of people. It's easy for me to just be happy for them."

It makes it easier to accept their kindness that way. "It just doesn't help how outside of all of this I feel."

[konstant]

There's something startling about hearing something so familiar come out of a completely different person's mouth, unprompted, word for word in their context instead of his own and yet identical. K wanted Los Angeles to be safer, to be better, and he worked for that as best he could. It was limited, and nowhere near enough, but he did work for it.

And he was never, ever going to be a part of it. He looks over at Jesus, wishing with such clarity and force that it aches that he knew how to make a space at his side that Jesus would feel welcome in - but he doesn't.

So instead when they have to slow for a person in front of them to navigate a line out the door of a bar, he lets his hand brush Jesus's wrist. That's all, just a touch, but it's the best that he has.