. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[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?"

[konstant]

"It's... complicated." Not the explanation, the song itself.

"There're a lot of emotions in it that other songs or poems often try to make out as simple, but they're not. They're tied up together and they continue when they shouldn't. They're messy, but the song isn't."

Anything real should be a mess.

[hippie_ninja]

"It's why I've never liked love songs. The real thing shouldn't be simple. I'm not even sure real love should make any kind of sense."

He is, of course, an outsider looking in, but he's never bought the glitzy, sugary storefront window version of love. Nothing that can break people so thoroughly and so easily could possibly be summed up the way sonnets imply.

[konstant]

"There's a line in one of the verses," K starts, almost hesitant, but he's watching Jesus and Jesus has always wanted to hear what he has to say before.

He watches, and the moment he sees any concern - or doubt, or disgust - start, he'll stop.

"All I've ever learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you. And I know most people have heard that as love being vicious, as having to get in the first shot before someone else can hurt you, but the pronoun says you. Like maybe even if something hurts in the end, that love carries over and makes you want to defend them from others anyway, but it's also the other. It's complicated."

[hippie_ninja]

He'd never heard it that way but it speaks to him: a need to protect someone he loves even when he's given all else that he can to it.

"Any good song should be complicated," he murmurs, but he's watching K, smiling softly.

[konstant]

It's that gaze, something he sees there, that makes him glance down for a moment; it would have made him smile, before the blade runner, before he was retired for a second time, and rose again from it.

He's aware now, though, of a faint twist in it, like maybe he's lying, like he's deceiving Jesus somehow. He watches his thumbnail, rubbing a fingertip over it.

"I know I haven't - felt that. Love, not really. But sometimes when I listened to that song it seemed familiar anyway."