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[konstant]

                                                                 

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[hippie_ninja]

"Is it? It doesn't feel okay," he says, almost gasping the words, and he looks down at his hands to steady himself.

"I love you, K. And I'm not sure how to love anyone yet. But I want to know. I want to figure out how to be good at it."

[konstant]

K is not unaware of the magnitude of someone that he didn't feel comfortable naming a date a date around suddenly saying that he loves him. He doesn't miss it, but it seems like the sort of thing that he shouldn't try to grab hold of either. It's not a surprise after all. Not to K, who has been watching Jesus love him for weeks now.

Not that this means it's nothing. It's the reason he can say again, "It's okay. I don't know either, but it's okay."

[hippie_ninja]

"What can I do?" To make this up to him. He'd do anything.

[konstant]

"What would you want?" he says after a long moment of considering.

"If you were in my position. What would you need?"

[hippie_ninja]

He shakes his head. "Time. To see you prove it. But I don't know what would prove it to you besides me just being present."

[konstant]

"I don't know either." This is a placeholder, not a verdict. A verbal hand held up to reserve space while he tries to come up with something more substantial, more helpful.

"I know you're not lying, now or then. And I've known for a while you sometimes feel... conflicted. And sometimes not." He can always tell, which is the gift and the curse of the Voight-Kampff modification combined with his intimate knowledge of Jesus specifically.

"And I... ignored. What I knew, because things are different here. Because I can usually see what you're feeling but not why, not the intention. For those I have to trust what's being said, and - I do. And this still happened."

[hippie_ninja]

"What would it have looked like if you hadn't ignored it?" But more importantly, "I'm hearing that you feel- fault, maybe, for being hurt by this. There's no fault on your end."

[konstant]

A muscle in K's jaw tenses and releases, his eyes still lowered.

"I don't know. I don't know if what I'm feeling is what anyone else would feel or if it's... Some flaw, some warning spark in me. I'm not made to do this. I'm not made to be this."

[hippie_ninja]

A flaw. A warning spark.

Jesus isn't a replicant but oh, the ways he empathizes with that way of thinking.

"Made to be what?"

[konstant]

"Loved," he answers after a moment, low, almost too low.

"Or to love."

[hippie_ninja]

He swallows. "Love isn't something you can choose or predict. It just happens. So I don't think there's any way they could make you around those parameters, K."

[konstant]

"What's it like to hold the hand of someone you love?" K quotes, his voice taking on that hollow, mechanical cadence it does when he's referencing the baseline script.

"Do they teach you how to feel finger to finger? Do you long for having your heart interlinked?" Scan said you don't look like you on the inside. Miles off your baseline.

He runs his hand back through his hair, shakes his head and looks away when he says, guiltily, "Interlinked."

[hippie_ninja]

"They gave you a baseline because they know you are capable of love," he points out. "If you weren't they wouldn't have needed to watch you so closely."

[konstant]

K can't really blame Jesus for being unsure, for being afraid; K certainly doesn't feel as confident right now as he had at the carnival, after Thanksgiving or Tumenalia. He feels more precarious than ever.

Is this really what they were watching for? Or anger? Righteous, destructive, unstoppable hatred was what K was developed to deal with in other replicants. He was never told what he was meant to deal with in himself.

He doesn't have an answer so he doesn't try to give one.

[hippie_ninja]

He watches K. He thinks he should go--part of him thinks K wants him to go--but he doesn't move. "Me saying it to you doesn't mean you have to feel anything back."

[konstant]

"But I do."

This brings K's eyes around again, landing on Jesus, studying features he's studied over and over and over as he slept, talked, laughed, kissed, and any of the dozens of things they've done for sex.

"I do feel something back."

[hippie_ninja]

"It doesn't have to be a bad thing, does it?"

Maybe he's asking more for himself than for K, but they both have so many reasons not to trust love or attachment.

[konstant]

"It doesn't feel bad." That's not entirely an accurate statement right this exact moment, but K is capable of understanding that some things are temporary.

Hopefully. "It hasn't, for me."

[hippie_ninja]

"It hasn't for me either. It's been amazing, K." So why did he run? Because it was overwhelming. A wave crashing over him, something he couldn't just breathe through.

"I can't promise I won't make mistakes again. But it won't be this one. I won't run from you."

[konstant]

"I don't need you not to make mistakes," he says, quietly, and it's almost a sigh but he means it. He does. "You're human. It happens."

I won't run from you.

"It's okay. We'll be okay."

[hippie_ninja]

He doesn't deserve this sort of forgiveness but he can make damn sure he earns it.

"Can I touch you?"

[konstant]

He doesn't realize until Jesus asks that he has any opinion on it either way - and for a brief, weighted moment he wants to say no.

But he doesn't actually want to push Jesus away either, doesn't want to hurt him, so he nods.

He nods, and he turns his nearest hand palm up.

[hippie_ninja]

He starts to reach for him but he saw that hesitation.

"You can say 'no'. I understand. It's okay. I won't be hurt." He understands needing space after pain.

[konstant]

"I said yes," K points out instead, a stubborn edge to it that he eases off in the next moment.

"Maybe not always, but this time, it's okay."

[hippie_ninja]

What Jesus wasn't prepared for is that he's afraid to touch K now. But he steps forward and tentatively wraps his arms around him, lays his head against him.