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"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."

"I can imagine it. But I don't think what I'm picturing is anything like what it was like." He shakes his head slightly. "I remember smog. I remember there were days the air seemed thick and yellow with it sometimes."

"What city was that?" Jesus has seen one of K's memories but that doesn't sound like this now. That wouldn't be a memory he'd expect Jesus to talk about.

"Washington D.C." He looks up at K and adds, "Before the walkers. When we still had traffic. When we still had cars."

"That was the first major city to collapse in my timeline," he offers, no opinion about it either way. That was before he was activated. It's a name on a map and a handful of surviving pictures.

"That was where you lived?"

"I don't remember which one fell first." They'd all fallen in the same week.

"I was born there. I grew up there. But before this, I lived in a small farming community. ...I think you would've liked the farm."

He hears farm and thinks of the miles and miles of uniform white tents on gray, wasteland sands in northern California. He knows it's not what Jesus means, but like the biome in reverse, he can't really picture it.

"Tell me about it?" Then, remembering that he's seen at least part of it, and remembering how Jesus had reacted outside the Listening Room: "If you want."

"We had cows and horses. We were the first place for more than a day's drive that did. We grew our own crops, corn and beets and turnips. When I first moved in I liked to wake up early and walk around. I could smell the dew on the leaves and it smelled different than waking up in the forest."

He's homesick and it hurts, but he swallows it down for the chance to share the imagery with someone who lived behind walls, away from anything remotely green.

K sighs gently, a slow deep inhale and a soft exhale as he thinks about it. Pictures it, or tries to anyway. He has no idea what corn and beets and turnips smell like; he's only just getting used to dew on leaves.

But Jesus is leaning against him and he feels that hitch of movement, and his fingers squeeze ever so slightly around the other man's shoulder.

"I've never seen a real horse. Or cows, but -" The horses catch his attention. "I used to see them in movies. I always thought I'd like seeing a living one."

"I wish we could leave the city. I'd stay in the program, maybe I'd even have an easier time with it, if they'd let us get out into the country." The noise and the crowds make him jumpy sometimes where they never did before. He doesn't want to think about it right now or it will start him listening for trouble where there is none and he knows there is none.

"You like Westerns?" He's not sure how many other types of film feature horses.

"I know someone who has a home outside the city. He let me stay the night there when I first arrived." It had been the most miraculous, unlooked for blessing, even if it would have been too quiet for him to sleep if he hadn't been half dead still.

"Yes. Westerns." Not that he'd forgotten the name but he wasn't sure it would be recognized the same. "They're very dramatic. I like the animals in them."

"My friend lives out there. It's beautiful, his house and the land. I almost wish I could contract with someone who had that freedom." It might make all this a little more bearable.

He smiles, a little when he remembers that they have some of the same friends so there's a non-zero chance it's the same friend.

What he focuses on though is, "Why couldn't you?"

"I wouldn't want to get him in trouble even if he could contract with me. I'm waiting on someone who won't be collateral when I get into trouble." Or who will be acceptable collateral, rather.

"But why couldn't it be someone else that lives away from the city if not him?"

Just to be sure he's not missing anything.

"Everyone who lives out there seems to be established. They don't want new subs." Especially not troublemakers, he's pretty sure.

K nods, letting it go. If they were in Los Angeles he'd have more resources, he'd know who to ask. Not here.

"Are you talking about Vrenille?" he asks instead.

"He's my friend out there," he nods. "Why?"

Edited 2022-08-29 23:19 (UTC)

K smiles.

"That's the person I was talking about, too," is all.

"He takes good care of people," he says, a note of admiration in it. "And he's been here for years. I hope I'm like that when I've settled in."

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konstant - 2022-08-29 23:24 (UTC) - Expand