. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[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.

[konstant]

Everything feels more complicated now; in Los Angeles life wasn't simple by any means, but he understood why things were the way they were. He didn't blame anyone.

Here, he hears Jesus say that and knows it for the truth; he's certainly seen it, and he sees it now. But it still feels precarious, given the consequences hanging over their heads for seeking out too much comfort with one another, as if they should be able to just find it with a contract partner instead.

"I wish I could offer this more often then," he amends; that they didn't have to worry about fines or the Zoo. "But then - that's part of the challenge for you, isn't it?"

[hippie_ninja]

Jesus has spent his whole life dodging the law. Sometimes it caught him and sometimes it didn't, but it's never occurred to him to simply follow laws that don't make sense to him. Arbitrary rules put in place by a Dominant don't register at all.

"Hm? What do you mean?"

[konstant]

"Finding ways around the rules the program sets out," he answers, finding the dropoff where bone stops and it's only muscle protecting Jesus's body from the outside world. He doesn't say it like it's a bad thing, just something he's noticed.

"Finding loopholes to defy the Dominants and the guards."

[hippie_ninja]

"Some of their rules make sense." And he obeys them. He pays for his coffee, he goes to work.

"But there's no reason you and I shouldn't be allowed to stay together if we want. We obey all their other rules. We even have sex sometimes. I'm better in a lot of ways when I'm with you."

In the dark he smiles, though, the mischief maybe lost between them. Or maybe not. How well can K see? "But yeah. I don't mind finding ways to make our lives easier even if it bothers them."

[konstant]

He can see it. Even if he couldn't, he'd be able to hear it. For a moment he just soaks that in, tries to let it salve the hurt wrapped around his heart like barbed wire.

"I don't know how much easier it makes things for us," he hedges, because he knows how missing quota has gone, how housing violations might go, how tonight might end if Denis comes in before he has been the other two nights, "But you do make my life better. I prefer that."

[hippie_ninja]

"If you ever don't want to take the risk, we won't." Nothing they can do to him here compares to the horrors of home. He doesn't want to be forced. He doesn't want any of the things they can and will do to him to make him comply. But the punishments aren't like what he's come to expect.

He doesn't have the right to decide what K risks, though.