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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.

From:

hippie_ninja

"Your friend isn't wrong. You have to make a place bearable somehow. Usually, the only way to do it is with other people." Everyone he talks to is horrified to learn what his home world is like, but he misses it. He misses Hilltop, he misses Aaron and Alexandria, he misses the road.

"But it would be very easy to use this place as an excuse to become angry and bitter. To just use people. Instead, they make connections, deep ones."

From:

konstant

"Vrenille," K offers while he digests the rest of that. They both know Vrenille.

Finally he smiles, a little sad, and nods.

"I should try to shower if we're going anywhere today."

From:

hippie_ninja

Vrenille. He likes him, he likes that K talks to him.

"All right." He'll brush his teeth and his hair, get ready, hold down the fort while K does.

From:

konstant

The light still hurts, but not anything like it has the day before; it feels like walking around outside the biome for short periods of time, and he can tolerate that. The shower wakes him up, makes him feel more focused - which he absolutely takes advantage of to keep his mind from wandering too much as bits and pieces of memory come back.

When they're ready to head out, K sticks very close to Jesus's side and stays alert, collar flipped up but not fastened, hands deep in his pockets and his gun riding his ribs.

From:

hippie_ninja

Jesus usually moves through crowds like water, but with K beside him he's slower and more willing to take up space. He keeps his hands free, and he watches those around them--starting first with the way they walk and then, when nothing is alarming, he'll offer little smiles or nods if they meet eyes.

"You said you'd found a lot of books around here. What do you read?"

From:

konstant

K is comfortable in crowds usually but when he's fresh off being hunted, being retired, he's grateful to have someone familiar with him. Someone he trusts.

He doesn't hear the question at first but he is paying attention. He is able to piece it back together and takes up the distraction eagerly.

"Anything. Physical books are rare, but there are still a lot of digital copies of the ones that survived the blackout. I like Westerns."

From:

hippie_ninja

Westerns. He wouldn't have guessed those even still existed in a world where blade runners exist. He smiles at K and leads him around a corner. "What do you like about them?"

From:

konstant

"They're very dramatic," is his immediate answer, ready to hand. "I like both the books and the movies, but they have such distinct characters that are always doing such interesting things for reasons that make no sense to me like having shootouts and robbing trains. And there are always horses, and cows. Sometimes chickens, or buzzards."

From:

hippie_ninja

Of course K would read a western and be captivated by the buzzards. Jesus smiles, picturing K's face as Lonesome Dove played--K seeing nothing as clearly as the cows.

"You've never been around them, have you?"

From:

konstant

He shakes his head.

"No. There aren't any animals left except in the richest households, and those usually aren't real."

Deckard had a dog, he remembers. It barely seemed alive. "I did see some insects once. I don't know what they were. They were loud."

From:

hippie_ninja

"If we were back home I could teach you." He knows every bug, every type, that exists in Virginia by now. He'd started out reading pilfered books about which ones were edible, and the rest of the knowledge filled in by osmosis.

From:

konstant

It does draw K's attention over.

"Are you interested in insects?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"Anything living," he agrees easily. Plants, bugs, animals, people. "Sometimes the only things around for miles were the bugs. Made sense to get to know what they were."

From:

konstant

"These were where nothing living was supposed to be. The city had been irradiated, and there was no biome to protect or normalize it afterwards. I don't know how they were surviving."

And he had no one to ask, unwilling to risk Joi being targeted, unable to call the station analysts.

And honestly unwilling at that point anyway.

From:

hippie_ninja

"Could you draw one?" Irradiated bugs might be simply monstrous versions of those he knows, but who knows? They could just be the same cockroaches said to survive nuclear winter.

From:

konstant

"Yes. Remind me when we get back to the housing and I'll try."

He's watching where they walk, marking the streets as they pass them - and, notably, relaxing the further they go without incident.

"You're making a lot of friends."

From:

hippie_ninja

"It's easy to do here. Everyone I've met so far has cared about helping me settle in." It's unlike any community he's ever been in before. He does have the advantage of being extroverted, and being used to building bridges, though. "...Are they that way with you, too?"