. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[hippie_ninja]

It's not my role.

I don't belong with you.

And he hears Rosita's voice and he fights those answers back. "Because it scares me. And it's not the kind of fear I know how to think through. I always ran before; I ran now. But it feels wrong."

[konstant]

K drops his head forward, cards his free hand back through his short hair, scrubs it forward again. He flicks ash into the tray, then sets the cigarette in it, sets the whole thing aside.

"Drake said you told him you were trying to protect us."

[hippie_ninja]

"It would be easy for the city to use him against me. It's what I was afraid of to start with--having to make that choice again." Between the job, the mission, and a person.

"But it didn't feel like I was leaving you at the time. Not until I was running and trying to make it make sense to myself."

[konstant]

What K hears is that Jesus wasn't thinking about him at all; the moment after that he tells himself there's no real reason he should have. The contract is between Jesus and Drake, and K doesn't have anything to do with their relationship or vice.

Except the part of any of this that hit K the deepest, that he didn't see coming, that he doesn't know how to just set aside and remind himself that he already knew.

He finally, finally looks up, eyes somber in the half-dark, features wounded - and his voice is very, very soft when he says, "You said we'd be in this together." When there are no right answers, sometimes it helps to just have someone with you.

[hippie_ninja]

He did say that. He meets K's gaze--he owes him that much.

"And I wish I hadn't run." He's not the same person who once crawled out a window to escape a boyfriend. He's clearly not the same person who chose to end relationships secure in knowing he was right.

"If I came back could you ever forgive me?"

[konstant]

"It's not that simple, Jesus," he says, not unkindly, not harsh - but there's not much strength to it either.

"Because I already have. I'm not angry anymore. I can't hold fear against you. You've never lied to me, not intentionally."

[hippie_ninja]

"You can. Most people would." Have. Do still. "I wouldn't blame you if you did."

[konstant]

"I -" He leans into it, firm, certain of this much: most people might, but he is not most people.

He's not even a person, and sometimes lately, he thinks that's better. "Won't do that."

[hippie_ninja]

He believes him. He doesn't know what to do with that, with someone who doesn't offer him a wall of anger and resentment.

"Would you let me try to earn back your trust?"

[konstant]

"Do you want to?"

It's an earnest question, and K's eyes are on Jesus's now, unblinking, studying and searching for whatever it was that he might have missed before, if indeed there's anything.

"Do you want to risk feeling this way in another couple of months? Maybe always?"

[hippie_ninja]

Maybe always. Maybe he will always want to run.

"It's different this time. Every boyfriend I've ever dated, I've left, K. And I never felt guilty about any of them. I just felt relief. But I don't now. All I want is to go back to yesterday and undo what I did, and I can't, so I'm trying to find a way forward."

[konstant]

"Boyfriend."

Jesus has never used that word with him; K has never pressed for it, never needed it. Replicants can't be equals, can't be partners, so he just never expected it. That isn't to say K doesn't know he's important, or that Jesus is any less important to him, but - Jesus says it now.

K echoes it back, just to make sure he heard.

"Why do this now? What changed?"

[hippie_ninja]

"I never felt love before the world ended, K. If I did it was just-" It always ended when the foster families inevitably returned him to the system, until he was just stuck in a group home until he aged out.

"But I learned how, I started to, when I had to think about putting all of my friends down if a mission went wrong. And then I came here where no one dies. No one is ever going to reanimate into a walker. I'm free here to just experience it, to just feel love, and I do. And I realized that's what I'd been feeling for you, for Drake--even with deeper friendships like one I have with Rosita or Vrenille. And I panicked. I was past the point where I was always safe in my relationships before."

[konstant]

They've talked about this before. K has mentioned that he sees that it's hard sometimes for Jesus to be around him, that it's hard to settle with him, and they moved past it.

K wants that for him. He wants him to find whatever it was he was missing before, because the truth is that K loves him, too.

K has no idea what to do with it either. "And are you still panicking now? Is that what this is - wanting to reverse it, wanting to undo it?"

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm not panicking." He knows what panic feels like. If he knows any feeling in the world it's panic. "This is me wanting to fix something I broke."

[konstant]

K isn't angry - not at Jesus anyway, not specifically. He doesn't resent him or blame him for wanting to protect himself. All of that was true.

But there is still something broken, something shifted from where it was before even if K doesn't have a name for it. He has a name for so few things when it comes right down to it.

Dreadfully distinct against the dark.

Distinct. "I just don't want to keep doing this, Jesus. I don't know what I'm doing, either."

[hippie_ninja]

"You won't have to." His word doesn't mean much right now. He knows that.

[konstant]

It doesn't. That he wants to say it does, that he means what he's saying does, and K can see that he does: he looks for them and every single marker is there, and not a single trace of dishonesty. K knows how to look under a person's skin, find the pieces of them they're trying to hide - replicants, yes, that was what it was built for, he was meant to find the barcode printed under a subject's eye if it was there to find in their mannerisms, their delays, all the ways that they were close to and yet not quite human. But he learned more than that too.

His original cigarette is out. He picks up the pack off the table in front of him, pulls another out, lights it and draws on it in silence. He has no idea what to say, no idea what to explain, so he doesn't.

He just doesn't.

[hippie_ninja]

"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.

[konstant]

"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.

"What do you want to do?"

[hippie_ninja]

He deserves this. He hears the heat in K's tone, something that has never been there before, and accepts that.

"Could we just what?"

[konstant]

He wants to reach up and rub the bridge of his nose, the corners of his eyes. He doesn't.

"Could we just... sit here, for a bit. And not talk." Just be, and let K think.

[hippie_ninja]

He nods, expression worried but guarded. Of course they can. As long as K wants.

[konstant]

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."

[hippie_ninja]

"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."