. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[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."

[konstant]

This is where there's a critical, vital split: K believes Jesus, trusts Jesus, trusts Vrenille.

He doesn't believe this concept that Jesus is presenting to him. He does not believe that he alone, his protest alone, is enough to stop anything from happening. He does not believe that his discomfort, his unease, makes a difference at all to something he's not even involved with.

And he has no idea how to reconcile these two things, so he falls silent instead.

[hippie_ninja]

There's something in K's expression that Jesus knows: the disbelief clashing against the little bit of trust that's there. He knows that feeling and he also knows where most people land when they're pushed to choose.

"K, please," he steps toward him, reaching up to touch his face and then not. "Talk to me."

[konstant]

It's good that Jesus doesn't reach for him just now, especially his face; K manages to stay still while he draws closer, tracks the hand coming towards him without flinching, but for just this moment he can't tolerate a third stressor.

Jesus's hand lowering allows K to switch his attention back to his face, to see the plea there as much as hear it in his voice, and his own eyes soften a bit, too. His own coping mechanism that shuffles him ever closer to the automaton he was always accused of being breaks down a bit.

It doesn't mean he has any better idea what to say or do.

"I don't know what you want from me with this, Jesus," he admits, quietly, a bit helplessly.

[hippie_ninja]

He reaches up instead to stop Nibbles from batting at Mango through the slats. It gives K a little more distance.

"I just want your thoughts. What are you thinking right now?"

[konstant]

Just thoughts. It's a dangerous question, at least when the thoughts K is having are personal - when they might go against what he believes is expected from him. Jesus is upset that K is upset, and he wants to reconcile it; the more he pushes though, the more K wants to push away in turn. The more the distress sinks in deeper, makes what thoughts he does try to string together disjointed.

K doesn't want Jesus to be upset either though, so he curls his fingers into his shirt and tries, even though it feels like the worst thing he can do.

"I don't like it. I don't like thinking about it, I don't like seeing it, I don't like worrying what happens if you're wrong and there's more to it than you think. I don't like that you're asking me what I think about it knowing both that there's no way I can like it, and that I don't expect that to change anything. Vrenille is trustworthy. You both enjoy it. It's different for you and it's between you. So - I don't know."

[hippie_ninja]

"It's between us." And he doesn't need K to like it. Jesus likes it; Vrenille does; that's ultimately what decides if it continues, so it will.

Just not around K.

"It's hard for you, isn't it? Knowing that we care enough about what you think to adjust what we do in public."

[konstant]

"Do you know what happens to replicants who care too much about the wrong things? Who care in opposing directions from humans?"

Everyone here tells him it doesn't matter that he's a replicant. That he's as real as he needs to be.

An entire life is harder to change, though.

[hippie_ninja]

"They'd retire you." Using K's word, which is such a soft word for what it really is. He almost said the other word, the real one, execute. But he wants K to keep talking and he wants to understand on K's terms.