hippie_ninja | IC INBOX

His reaction is immediate: he pulls his hand back, sets it back in his lap. He doesn't know what he said but he's watchful, cautious of that distance.

"I meant - if you don't want something, I'm not going to insist. I don't want something we don't both want." The word has been repeated too many times and he shakes his head, tries to find another way to say it.

"I won't put myself before you. Not in this."

"We're equals in this." Maybe it needs to be said out loud. "I know that's not how things work where you're from. But I need that to be true here. It's a friendship, a partnership."

K's brow furrows, unsure; he'd thought he understood. He'd thought that's what they both were saying.

Now he's not so sure. "What does that mean to you?"

"That what you want matters, too." He studies K, reaches for his hand, will only take it if K allows. "I'm not more important."

Which wasn't what K had said, but he knows that's what K was built to believe: Jesus, as a human, matters more.

He turns his palm up as soon as he registers what Jesus is doing, relieved that he does; he is good at reading people but sometimes he gets it wrong.

He doesn't want to get it wrong with Jesus.

"You've already shown me that."

He pulls K's hand to him and kisses his palm, watching him. It isn't a bid for more, just a little show of relief that he's allowed to do this.

K's fingertips twitch faintly in response, and K himself lets his shoulders relax.

Then he flexes his fingers a bit more deliberately, brushing Jesus's cheek lightly, experimentally.

He smiles, head turning just so as to catch more contact with his fingertips.

The last time he was here he hadn't wanted any contact at all but now, maybe in part because of how careful K is, he wants to feel K's fingers on his skin, even just his cheek or his hand.

K doesn't take any of it for granted - not that smile, not this touch. He shifts his hand in Jesus's, spreading his palm out over the other man's, and brushing the edge of his thumb just along where Jesus's beard starts from clear skin.

Resting, as gently as the sun through shade, at the edge of his lips where that smile begins or maybe ends.

These are the sorts of things K does that are uniquely K. Other people would touch his lips, and he'd enjoy that; K touches his smile and no one has ever done that before.

"This is the first time I've felt relaxed since I got out."

Finally K smiles, though it's a little saddened by that fact too. It makes him want to pull Jesus close and keep him there a while longer, to let him relax and know K will do anything he can to preserve this.

"I want that. For both of us," he murmurs, and smooths his touch carefully along the edge of Jesus's lip, unwilling to press either of them for more and break this truce.

He doesn't know what K is thinking but he can sense a sort of openness, something like a soft invitation.

"Can I stay tonight?"

"I would like that."

They're going to run into trouble eventually, there's always trouble, but just now it feels worth the risk even to him.

"I want that."

He closes his eyes, the relief the only sign that he'd been prepared to be turned away.

"We don't have to do anything, but can I just" this is hard to ask, "stay close? Like this?"

Touching. Not just near, but touching.

It's not a request K would have anticipated, not one he would have made; not because he's opposed, but like emotions, he's still learning what the options even are. Furthermore he hadn't invited Jesus here because he expected them to actually do anything, even this - the echoes of losing control of himself to the injection are still very much on his mind - but now that he's said it, now that it's on the table, K is aware of a much more subtle pull of want.

He pulls his hand back carefully, slowly, not because he wants to but because he needs it to settle further back on the couch where he is. He moves the chocolate safely aside, and makes sure he's comfortable. Then he holds that hand back out to Jesus in invitation - anywhere he wants, as close or as far, as much of him touching or not as he's comfortable with in turn, K is willing to offer.

It only takes him a moment to decide. Then he's crossed the little space between them, and he's sitting next to K, touching at the shoulder and side and hip. To make it more comfortable he pulls K's arm around him, then looks up at him, silently asking if this is okay.

K takes a bit longer to settle, though mostly because he's letting Jesus move him where he wants him. He makes one small adjustment to how they're sitting that ends up leaning them a bit closer together, but then his frame relaxes into where they are.

Yes, it's okay. Yes, he likes this.

He's holding himself up, tensed for K to adjust them or change his mind. Instead K arranges them so they're even closer, and finally, finally the taut-wire wariness in him releases and he lays his head on K's shoulder, up against his neck.

K doesn't rush with anything, but especially anything important; they're negotiating now, though they don't speak or make any other sound or gesture. It's a conversation of bodies, Jesus making the request, K making the offer; Jesus's opening bid and K's adjustment, and now both of them deciding if they're comfortable with the agreement.

Jesus relaxes and rests against him so close K can't see his face anymore, not really; K closes his eyes, fingers curled naturally around Jesus's arm, and lets both of these facts sink in. Then he relaxes, too.

"I'm happy I get to know you," he murmurs, sincere and soft.

"I am too." The unexpectedness of it still catches him when he's with K: how easy it is. How difficult it usually is for him. "You're one of the good parts of being here."

It means a lot.

"I'm still looking for a guitar."

"We have time."

Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but what K really means by it is that they have more than only their plans for music.

"If nothing else, this place gives us time."

"I'm not used to that." He should be. Hilltop has been at peace for several years now, the biggest worries are neighbors complaining about each other. But that's part of why Jesus never settled into the community: he's never been able to let go of the thought that there just isn't enough time to relax.

He's trying now. He's relaxing right now, for however long he can manage.

"Tell me something else about this place that isn't hard. Or if it is, that's worth it."

"The sky," K says immediately, because he has a list of things that he could love, that would enamor him of this place and this city without exception if he could only choose how he engages with it.

It's simple, but he means it: "I'd never seen it before I came here. Or, well. Sometimes outside the biome of Los Angeles I'd catch glimpses but it was always soupy and dull, like muddy water. Or the sun was too bright and hot and would burn anything it touched. But there are clouds here, and stars, and the sun is... nice. And there's wind that doesn't make you want to hold your breath."

He speaks with quiet reverence, means every word of it and more that he's not saying.

Stars were one of the things he was grateful for in the early days, after all the cities went dark. He grew up in the DC area, where sodium vapor lamps choked the Milky Way into a uniform darkness overhead. He tries to remember the last time, though, that he stopped to take in the constellations overhead and he can't.

He will tonight, he decides. Even if it's just for a minute or two.

"What was it like inside the biome?"

"Crowded," he chuckles, but like there is a part of him that was programmed to be angry with rogue replicants to do his job better, there's a part of him that is forever attached to Los Angeles as his city.

"The biome was built to keep the conditions inside it hospitable for human life. You can hear the air purifiers constantly, and the vent systems controlling the temperature. There's a shield to stand in for the ozone layer and to keep out radiation, and walls all the way around to support all of it. So the air always smells the same, and feels the same, and no one that's saying anything knows where the ash that falls all the time now comes from - probably a by product of the vents. There are storms sometimes that get through but who knows what you're standing in."

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