. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[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."

[hippie_ninja]

"I've never been in love either." Platonically he's loved people yes, many people. People he would kill for. People he did die for in the end. But not the sort of love that leads to giving up your supernatural powers and your throne.

"In that song you hear about wanting to defend someone even if you've been hurt, though. I like that about you."

[konstant]

He believes him. He doesn't even need to look up and read Jesus's face to know he's telling the truth, and K believes him.

It's just harder to know how to settle that on his own shoulders, on reconciling that with who - with what he knows he is.

He glances up again and asks, "How long did you want to stay here?"

[hippie_ninja]

"We can go." They've been here at least a couple of hours now, and K wasn't feeling well to start with. "Are you okay?"

He's not just asking about K's recovery, but about that quiet before K asked.

[konstant]

He nods, quirks his lips again when he looks up even though it fades again as his smiles are wont to do. He's not surprised Jesus noticed - he's perceptive - but it's not anything he wants to talk about even here.

And, genuinely, he is tired even though it takes a lot for him to admit to that part of it.

"I don't want to rush you."

[hippie_ninja]

He shakes his head and pushes his chair back. "I've had fun. You should rest." They have next time, after all.

[konstant]

K follows him, and as soon as they're outside he pulls a cigarette out of the tin in his pocket and lights it up. He gives himself the time it takes to smoke it down to nothing before he says anything else, walking alongside Jesus and both smoothing the wrinkles out of his own mood and steeling himself to admit what he knows he needs to regardless of the consequences.

"I - didn't make quota," he offers, quietly, when it comes to choosing which direction they'll go: towards Jesus's apartment, towards K's, or separate. "One of the messages on my phone is to report to the SLUT center for injection, or I'll be taken there anyway."

[hippie_ninja]

He looks up at him, troubled but quiet. They cross the street toward K's apartment. "It might feel like the aphrodisiac we tried," he offers. He hopes it won't hurt. It's awful enough on its own without being painful. "What are you thinking about it?"

[konstant]

He wants to shrug, wants to refuse to take responsibility for having an answer like real people do sometimes, but that's not an option for him.

"I haven't been, but - if it's not like that, I don't know what it'll be like. And I'd understand if you'd rather not be around me until we know for sure either way."

Even on a normal day, but he'd also seen the way Jesus held himself decidedly separate instead of simply not thinking of being closer.

[hippie_ninja]

They're at a corner but he stops them in a more decided way, turning to face K directly. "I don't want anything that happens between us to be for any reason except we want it. As much as we have any say on that." Because he likes K in a way that borders on the old world, and he's afraid of muddying that in any way.

"But I'd rather be there for you however you want me to be."

[konstant]

As a rule, K doesn't show much emotion in his expression, ever; but for just a moment when Jesus stops them here, when he takes the time to look directly at him - furthermore when he looks at him like that, there's a moment when the look in K's eyes fractures open just enough. He has absolutely no idea what to do with that offer now if he ever did, no idea if it would be better - for both of them, for Jesus - to ask him to stay, to ask him to go, to leave the choice in his hands. No hope in this moment of ever knowing, because they don't have a say in it, and he's certain that if they did have a say this wouldn't be an issue. Replicants don't have a place with humans. Not as equals.

But that's not true either and he knows that every bit as confidently as he does the other; for the first time since Joshi told him to erase all evidence of a miracle he wishes desperately that someone would just tell him what to do, and it shows in the way he looks back at Jesus before he shuts it down and pushes it all away.

Dreadfully distinct. "Okay," is what he says even though it doesn't mean anything, even though it's just a noise his mouth makes while he draws himself up straight again.