. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[hippie_ninja]

"Yes. I do, very much." And he knows that will matter to K, whatever else he's thinking.

It's just all those unknown thoughts that worry him. "Does it change how you see me?"

[konstant]

"No."

How could it? He's human. He's being human, enjoying being human. K can't blame him for that, for working from the knowledge and experience he's lived.

He looks down at the collar again, and when Nibbles bumps his hand for more attention, he eases back a step but looks back up to meet Jesus's eyes when he says again, "No, it doesn't."

[hippie_ninja]

"What does it make you think?" Because he knows the way he and Vrenille see it is necessarily very different than how a replicant would.

[konstant]

It's not. K knows this too, and would never have thought to offer any kind of opinion on it but Jesus is asking. K isn't sure why, and that occupies more of his attention than what he thinks about any of it. He glances away, taking a deep breath.

"I know it means there are rules in place. Agreements, contracts, guidelines, whatever participants have established. I don't know what yours are and that's between the two of you, but I know for most it places one in authority over the other. That the expectations are obedience or submission, and a right to consequences if those expectations are not met."

His voice is calm and even as he speaks. Impersonal.

[hippie_ninja]

He nods, very slightly, worried. "And I know you've had stricter rules than I have. Or Vrenille has. And I know that might color how this looks to you."

[konstant]

K trusts Vrenille. They're friends, and he cares about him, knows he's cared about in turn, has concrete examples of times Vrenille has taken extra care with him that he was not obligated to take.

But there's something deeply rooted in K that doesn't know how to definitively connect that to this situation. To this unasked question, and he's quiet a long few breaths, barely responding to Nibbles' demand for continued attention.

"Do you want me involved somehow?" he finally asks.

[hippie_ninja]

"No. That's not what this is." He closes the little box and tucks it into one of his pockets.

"I know you've been owned before. I don't want to make you uncomfortable with this."

[konstant]

Now, finally, K looks back at him and just looks at him, no idea what he's supposed to say here. What Jesus wants him to say besides that it's okay. That he's not uncomfortable, that he doesn't have any negative feelings about watching two people he cares about toy with a concept a bare step away from what he's been trapped in his whole life, short as it is.

He could lie. That's a thing he does now, a thing he can do.

"What about it do you enjoy?" is what he settles on, even if it is a bit more imploring than he intended.

[hippie_ninja]

This is better, he thinks. K asking the questions instead of Jesus floundering for what to explain. "When I put it on it starts a game. He makes up the rules. The first time, it was that I couldn't come until the party. The rules change every time. At the Lunar New Year party, it was that I couldn't drink until after the club was closed."

[konstant]

Jesus loves games. K can see why that would appeal to him, why he would find pleasure in it.

He also feels a vague twist in his gut that he remembers from his conversations about contracts with V, with Drake, with Jesus himself.

"And if you did?"

[hippie_ninja]

"We've never said. I'd be disappointed in myself if I failed, though."

He wins the game by meeting the challenges; Vrenille's pleasure in him obeying is its own form of reward.

[konstant]

K nods. It's very, very different from what he knows, but the hardest part perhaps is that he does understand. He understands the pride in a job well done, in knowing he's safe from repercussions. He understands disappointment in not meeting the standard.

There is very real fear in him, but there was once an eagerness to please, too.

Mango is sniffing along the couch, pulling a pillow down onto the floor. K lets himself be distracted with going to pick her up, with carefully putting the pillow back where it goes, smoothing out the pinched corner from her too small mouth.

"I'm glad you're having fun."

[hippie_ninja]

Nibbles hops off, and Jesus watches him go up the stairs, then turns his attention back to K.

"Then it's okay with you?"

[konstant]

"I'm not involved," he points out.

"You're not asking me to be. Why would it matter if it's okay with me? Why is that even an option?"

[hippie_ninja]

He could answer a dozen ways and they'd all be vaguely true. But they wouldn't be the core of it, so he's quiet, picking at his food, thinking.

"I know how you were treated in Los Angeles. And I don't want you to see me as being like them. The people there." The humans there.

[konstant]

One more question then - one more because he's still unsure of the shape of this, of the fact they're talking about this at all but all he can see on Jesus's face is a vague sense of unease and loss of direction and something else K doesn't have a name for if there even is one.

"Like them how?"

[hippie_ninja]

He spreads his hands. "At all, really. Like it doesn't matter to me what you think. What you feel about things. How I affect you."

[konstant]

Mango is wriggling in his arms again, having spotted Nibbles; he's strong enough to hold her but she keeps trying to lick his face too, and he wants to focus on this. He wants to solve this.

He reaches up to close the door to the loft, and sets the puppy down again. She whines at the slats but she doesn't bark. K leans against the arm of the couch, close enough to intervene, far enough he's off her radar for now.

"I don't like it. I don't understand it. But it's not my business who you sleep with or what you do with them. I wouldn't want to even try to influence that, as long as you're choosing it. Choosing them. And you are. Vrenille is. What else is there to say?"

[hippie_ninja]

He watches K, taking the momentary distraction of the animals to breathe a little. They talk about the people they sleep with sometimes; this is different. It's different in ways he doesn't know how to quantify.

"What don't you like about it?"

[konstant]

"It feels dangerous to me. It feels..."

He sucks at the back of his teeth, arms folded deceptively loosely for how he's worrying at the fabric of his shirt with his fingertips hidden between his elbow and ribs.

"It's not actually any kind of fun to belong to anyone. To be something that can belong to anyone."

[hippie_ninja]

He listens, feeling a pang as he catches those little motions of K's fingers.

"Does this make you think I don't take that seriously? What you've been through?"

[konstant]

"I don't know?" He swallows, starts to look away, but stops with his head turned so he can still see Jesus.

"No? I don't -" He's never been in this position, he's never had to articulate anything like this.

"I wouldn't think what you both are doing has anything to do with me. With anyone else, and that's part of the point. But you keep asking me like it does, like I can tell you anything other than I don't understand, like I can want anything other than to be somewhere else when I see that you're wearing it."

[hippie_ninja]

"Then I won't wear it when I'm around you." It's a small thing. They don't work every shift together, and as Vrenille and Sara have noted, Jesus's attention is usually on K when they are in a room together.

[konstant]

It doesn't, just now, feel like a small thing; if it was as simple as not wearing it around K, it would have been as simple as not saying anything at all, wouldn't it?

"And if that's the rule?"

[hippie_ninja]

"It never would be, because Vrenille would never do that to you." Something he'd hoped K would know by now; this conversation is due in part to Vrenille's concerns over how K sees this.

"But if he didn't realize you'd be there, I'd tell him, and we'd change it."