. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[hippie_ninja]

He looks around and shakes his head. It's a fairly busy night, though the atmosphere is different. "Want a coffee?"

[konstant]

He does want a coffee, although he lets Jesus pick it. He's just enjoying being here.

This place is like nothing he's ever seen, nothing in Los Angeles; there is no place this quiet, this calm, this lacking in neon lights and electric hum and the sound of air filters. If there is he's certain he wouldn't be allowed in it, and if he were he wouldn't be able to sit quietly and undisturbed while people move around him like he's just another person in the middle of it. He feels more isolated than ever, newly so in a place that has people insisting he's part of it both in his best interests and not, but no one pays him any particular mind sitting here at this table with Jesus.

He doesn't speak through several performances, watching them intently, memorizing details almost automatically, methodically sipping his coffee; watching the people around them and the way the staff move through the tables when there's no one actively performing something. He's never heard an acoustic guitar played well. He's never heard a soft, emotive voice with no augmentation over a staticky microphone and large, physical speakers.

It has the peculiar effect of making him feel both more settled and more homesick, and when the latter starts to settle in he leans closer to Jesus.

[hippie_ninja]

He leans closer when K does, subconsciously at first. Then when he realizes, he glances at K and smiles softly, and lets his foot rest against K's under the table out of view.

"I liked that last one."

[konstant]

K doesn't answer right away, well aware of that subtle point of contact while he watches around them, idly turning his empty coffee cup slowly between his fingers.

Then his gaze returns to Jesus, resting there for several moments before he finally says, "I like all of it."

[hippie_ninja]

It's a warm weight, it makes him smile. "So do I." And his hand brushes K's as he takes his cup and sips from it.

"Do you sing?"

[konstant]

The question catches him off guard, and he starts to answer it but stops, smiles a bit - embarrassed - before smoothing out his expression again.

"I have vocal cords, I can -" Does he? Yes, sometimes, he has before. Does he? No. Not in front of anyone. "Do you?"

[hippie_ninja]

That answer means Jesus's interest is now intensified.

"I play guitar a little. I can sing, I guess." He lifts an eyebrow and nods at the stage. "If there was a song we both know, I'd ask you to come sing it with me."

[konstant]

K starts to warm to the idea - until Jesus includes the stage, the audience, a performance in it. That's too much for him right now and he had unconsciously leaned forward a bit more but he draws back that short distance now.

"I'd try. With you," he says slowly, an uncertain glance at the stage himself and then back.

It feels like a failure of some kind to say, "But - not here? Today?" The spotlight isn't bright but it's bright enough, and the idea of all that attention on him feels like an invitation to have him singled out and shunned.

[hippie_ninja]

It's hard to say what part of it is being shy and what part is the lingering effects of what happened to him. Jesus might nudge him through shyness, but he's seen how bad K had been feeling.

"Next time," he says, which has the added bonus of being a request for a second date. Or whatever this is. "Maybe I'll find a guitar by then."

[konstant]

K's brow clears of concern immediately, relieved by this compromise.

"Next time," he agrees readily, as much because he does want there to be a next time as because he's not up to it now, too. And, quietly, "Thank you."

For not pushing him this time, when he isn't exactly afraid but he doesn't feel solid either.

[hippie_ninja]

"I haven't played or sung anything in years," he admits, his smile soft. "Maybe we're better off practicing privately together first anyway. What's a song you like?"

[konstant]

"You're right, maybe you're horrible," K comments dryly, not at all seriously. He's quite certain that if one of them should be practicing first, it's not going to be Jesus.

"I don't have just one. I like - classics. Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters, Nickelback, the Monkees."

[hippie_ninja]

It makes him laugh. The way K's humor shows up isn't so unexpected anymore, but it's still new enough that it delights Jesus an extra bit to hear it.

"I could learn an Elvis song," he muses. "I'll get a guitar if you pick the song."

[konstant]

K's thoughts go immediately to one specific song, rolling through a years long empty lounge, crackling in the neglected sound system and skipping between punches until Elvis himself was there, white and shimmering and cutting, blinding, through the dark.

He smiles and says, "Hallelujah," instead of that one.

[hippie_ninja]

K's expression is best described as neutral, but Jesus pays attention, and he's seen flickers here and there of something else under the surface. He always wonders what K is thinking in those moments, but he doesn't ask. You don't ask things like that in a public space. You generally don't ask at all, anywhere, where he's from.

So instead he pretends to have to think about that one. "And you'll sing with me?"

[konstant]

"I'll sing with you," he agrees, anchoring himself back in this here and this now.

"I like that one. I don't understand all of it, but I like it."

[hippie_ninja]

"I haven't heard it in years," he shakes his head. "What are the lyrics?"

He doesn't have to sing them. But he could.

[konstant]

He clears his throat a bit, drinks some of the water he asked for and glances, briefly around them at how close the other tables are.

"The ones I don't get are -" He licks his lips, stalls again, and then does try. His voice is low but that's hardly surprising considering his speaking voice, and it fits well with the bare bones of this particular melody when he offers, pitched soft between the two of them, "Your faith was strong but you needed proof, you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you; she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah."

[hippie_ninja]

"Did you ever read the Bible?" Is where the answer to that starts, but like everything in the Bible there are layers beyond it.

[konstant]

K shakes his head; he's read a lot of things and not all of them are predictable, but not that.

[hippie_ninja]

"Samson was a great warrior, undefeatable as long as he kept his hair long." He grins, flicks his own back. "He fell in love with a Philistine woman--the enemy. She was hired to find out what gave him his supernatural strength, so she seduced him and convinced him to let her cut his hair off. Then he was defeated."

[konstant]

He watches the movement, the way Jesus's hair falls, and listens to the story with calm attentiveness; he's not entirely aware of the very faint curve at the corner of his mouth for just a moment.

"Then he shouldn't spy in women's bathrooms, maybe," he points out. "Seems like a moral lesson."

[hippie_ninja]

"Right? I always thought she was a hero for her people," he chuckles. "Samson hated the Philistines. He killed a lot of them. The song sort of implies he thought it was worth it, though. Maybe he was tired of fighting."

[konstant]

That's an interpretation he likes, too. There's something he finds agreeable about choosing to be overpowered by something gentle enough to be worth it.

"Is that okay? You like that one?"

[hippie_ninja]

"I like it," he nods. "I think it suits us better than Blue Suede Shoes. Me, anyway."

He likes the theme, he likes the tempo. He'll be able to pick up the song easily if he can find a guitar.

"Why did you pick it?"