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From:

konstant

"You can use the bathroom if you need to," K offers by way of reply. It's been two days, Jesus is probably already settled, but it's there. "And borrow some of my clothes. I don't know how much good I'll be for... a while."

He still wants to try with the sandwich, but he also wants to sleep.

From:

hippie_ninja

K can't have any idea what those little gestures mean in the context of Jesus's world. He tries to take them in this context, so they have the meanings K intends. But he also hopes that he himself never takes for granted what it can mean when someone offers their roof, their bed, their clothing. He doesn't want to become so used to this world that those things don't still stir things up in him.

"You just have to rest." And eat. "I'll just be here."

Keeping watch, dozing, listening. He doesn't want to leave until K has recovered from whatever this is.

From:

konstant

He's not as clueless as someone from a living planet might be; K always had enough thanks to being government property and an expensive piece of equipment, but he saw how much a single meal off a street cart meant to some people. He gave away clothes before.

It's no accident that anything he has, he'd share with Jesus.

"Try to sleep, too," he suggests, sighing gratefully as he eases down onto his side, back to Jesus. There's not much hope in him for that one though.

From:

hippie_ninja

"I'll try." He is tired. He's aware of how much sleep he needs, too, to recover from a weeklong mission.

And he does try. He gets four hours, and he wakes peacefully from a dream where he and K are sitting and watching a blank television. K is dead, most of the skin peeling off his face, exposing his molars, tearing at the corners of his lips when he speaks.

It means when he wakes he spends a very long time just studying K, watching him breathing.

From:

konstant

Another reason K wasn't concerned about taking the floor: he sleeps like the dead should, completely unaware of wherever it is he's actually laying. Jesus has slept beside him before and K is usually quiet, usually still, but also very readily able to be woken. This time he's not disturbed at all by the attention on him, and his breathing is deep, even, and slow; he doesn't move a single muscle once he's out, which was almost immediate after he closed his eyes.

He sleeps for several hours past when Jesus wakes up, until the dawn light starts creeping in through the drawn shades. It's not much here in the Down, it doesn't actually touch K, but the silhouette comes close and it brings the entire room up an important few shades. He wakes all at once, and hard with a deep, gulped breath and a push for upright that would work a lot better if every muscle in his body weren't half dead to him from sleep.

He breathes a word that sounds like cells.

From:

hippie_ninja

He doesn't watch K the whole time. He tries to sleep again and can't, so he listens to the city instead, identifying sounds he knew in the old world and imagining what it will be like to live here. (How long?)

He instinctively sits up when K stirs, used to having to block a bleary, panicked blow when people wake that hard.

From:

konstant

K doesn't strike out, though his head turns and he automatically tracks the sudden movement beside him; he squints, blurry, and it takes a long few moments before recognition breaks across his features, but break it does.

He winces, getting a hand behind him to hold him up, and shakes his head to clear it.

"Jesus," he mutters, half to himself, half to signal he knows him, his voice croaking again with disuse. He groans and sits forward to rub at his eyes. "'d I wake you?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"No, I'm okay." He settles his back against the wall. He hasn't been asleep in hours, so his voice is soft, clear. "How do you feel?"

From:

konstant

Like Sapper Morton put him through another wall.

He takes a moment to answer, giving himself time to adjust to being awake - being alive. The grogginess is already lifting, taking with it the lingering, creeping claustrophobia from sleep, and if he doesn't feel normal he at least feels hopeful for the first time since waking up in the bathtub that whatever this is seems to be fading.

"Better," he finally says, and when he drops his hand away from his face and looks up at Jesus, his eyes are clearer. "When did you -" No, he remembers the gun, remembers bits and pieces of their conversation, remembers Jesus talking about dreams and being human. It's just the time piece that's missing. "How long?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"Hard to say. You've had four or five hours since I woke up." A solid eight or nine, maybe, all told. "You don't look as bad. I'm not tempted to call a doctor."

From:

konstant

Since I woke up.

"You slept?" he clarifies, relieved, pleased - even as he stretches his limbs trying to get feeling back into them faster, trying to make that feeling into something more comfortable.

"How are you feeling?"

From:

hippie_ninja

He wasn't expecting K to have any reaction to the fact of him actually getting rest. The relief in K's voice makes him grin, self-conscious at the unexpected affection it implies.

"I'm all right. Better than when I got here." Not ready, just yet, to leave. "You probably don't feel up to going out tonight, do you, yet?"

From:

konstant

He glances at the outline of light on the wall, doubtful, but the truth is he doesn't know. The truth is he's still working out what he feels.

"Is there something going on?" he hedges.

From:

hippie_ninja

"Nothing special. I just thought we could go to a magic show or find some music." Is he asking K on a date?

He didn't come here planning to do this, but there it is.

From:

konstant

Helpfully, without really thinking about it, K has picked up the sandwich he fell asleep on last night when he noticed it, settling his shoulders against the nightstand so he can still see Jesus.

He's more focused on considering their options for leaving this room - and what it means that Jesus wants to leave it with him considering his own past week and how it ended - and what it would take to make him confident in doing so.

"I don't know that the blade runner is really gone," he cautions. Or how he'll react to being outside again. "But I think I'd like that."

From:

hippie_ninja

"My friend thinks it was the locals. I haven't seen any walkers in a few days... If they're gone, the blade runner probably is, too." But he's willing to stay in, too, if K feels safer that way.

"I met someone in prison who runs a club for creative types. Poetry, singing, it's a little more laid back than where we work."

From:

konstant

He can't stay in this room forever. He doesn't even want to, not really, and despite that he doesn't want anyone else around him hurt - ever, but especially not Jesus - he finds he does feel better about the prospect of having someone with him when he tries.

And he glances up, immediately interested, when he hears about the club.

"Is that something you think you'd like?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"I really like poetry," he admits with a little grin, a tiny shrug. "I like the quieter places, it's just not everyone's go-to."

Meaning yes, he would really, really like to take K there.

From:

konstant

The grin, the veiled giddiness, make K smile. In Los Angeles, quiet places had been few and far in between outside of his cruiser; he's curious about what it looks like here.

"I'm in," he says, not as easily as he might have a few weeks ago, but still interested. "Do you have a favorite?"

From:

hippie_ninja

He isn't surprised K agrees. It seems like something K would enjoy too, or he wouldn't have asked, but he's still glad. "I was reading Ovid's Metamorphosis back home. But books were so hard to come by, I never did find a favorite. Maybe I will now."

From:

konstant

K shakes his head; he's not familiar. So much was lost in the blackout, and some of what's left is still off limits to replicants - but much of it isn't.

"There are books everywhere here." And he's still a bit awed by it honestly. "What was Metamorphosis like?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"It's a history of the world, told in myths and legends. I didn't get to finish it, but maybe I will here. The last part I read was Hades being shot with Cupid's arrow so love could infiltrate Hell." He gives the window, the strange city they're in, a wry look. "Seems fitting now."

From:

konstant

There are parallels K can draw on his own. He wasn't LAPD's most effective blade runner, though, because he imposed his own assumptions over what people told him.

It stings and aches right now to remember that, but he focuses on Jesus, focuses on the curious streak.

"How so?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"Because to hear about this place, you'd think love would be the last thing anyone could find. Everything has the quota putting pressure on it." Even Jesus feels it and he knows K does, too. He wouldn't have slept with him if not for the city reframing everything. He wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for K.

"But people are happy together. We're all up against the same wall, but I've had people tell me they've found love like they never had at home."

From:

konstant

K has never had a friend like Jesus, but odds are good they could have known each other for years without it even occurring to him to make a move. Maybe not, with the combination of interest and respect, but it certainly wouldn't have happened already. He's thought about this before.

He thinks about it often.

"One of the first people I spoke to here, one of the first to help me, insists that this place is more what people make of it then what the officials try to sell it as. He insists there are people here he wouldn't know how to live without now." K isn't a skeptic, but he does happen to think that perhaps it's being romanticized a bit as a coping mechanism.