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[hippie_ninja]

This is Jesus. Leave a message.

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[konstant]

"I'm not a good option to ask." We're all just looking out for something real.

Is it real? I don't know, why don't you ask him?

K lets his fingers rest, briefly, over Jesus's pulse point in his wrist. He feels the beat of his heart immediately, strong, steady. Real. Then he lets go.

"What do you mean by it?"

[hippie_ninja]

He frowns, trying to find the words. "Once you create something, it isn't really yours anymore. You don't get to decide how it's affected by the world, or how the world interacts with it. The greatest pieces of art in history always mean something different than the artists intended. Think of the song we talked about last time I saw you. It means something different to you than it did to Elvis. You heard something in it that I never had before."

[konstant]

He listens. He does. He takes in the tone and timbre and inflection of Jesus's voice and follows the words along to the concept they're describing.

He hears. It makes him smile just a bit and say, "Rebellion for sure."

[hippie_ninja]

"Well," yes, he grins a little and shrugs. "I didn't exactly turn out how my parents wanted, either."

[konstant]

"I like how you turned out."

K likes... quite a lot about Jesus, and he's learning more every time they talk.

It feels dangerous to him, too, but in a different way than he's seen Jesus himself balk at, he'd wager. "I like you a lot."

[hippie_ninja]

And dammit but he's grinning to hear it.

The thing is, hearing it now--after what K told him just moments ago--makes him hear it a little differently. "They would have retired you for that, wouldn't they?"

[konstant]

K nods, pulling one leg up under him for something to do, something to put his attention on while he admits to something he never would have been able to before.

"If they found out, yes. If it altered my baseline too much."

[hippie_ninja]

"It must make it hard to get close to people here." With a whole lifetime behind him spent effectively isolated from too much contact, from being able to confide too much in anyone.

[konstant]

"Everything is hard here," he can say with confidence, not completely oblivious to the inherent double entendre, but it's not what he means all the same. Not really.

"But it's easier one on one. For now." Jesus has seen him at work, when he's not knocked off balance by something else; he's not uncomfortable there, when he has a role to fill and a job to do. It's only when it's just him, just K, that he fumbles.

[hippie_ninja]

"It's hard for me. But it always has been." It seems only fair to tell this to K, someone he is in fact getting closer to.

"You said you were worried that not fighting quota will change things between us."

[konstant]

"I can see that sometimes," he admits. It's part of why he's careful, but not the main reason or even a particularly large one.

"It's just... always going to be there, now. It's inherently attached to sex here. It's something to report to someone else."

[hippie_ninja]

"Unless I just don't report that I've been with you." They know if he hasn't met quota, they know if he lies. This is just a little stubborn, pedantic streak in him talking. "If I had sex with three other people and you--I could keep what I do with you to myself."

[konstant]

"What if you don't make quota without me included?" K can be pedantic if the mood strikes, but just now this is more indicative of scenarios he's been thinking about.

"Or one of us uses them and one of us doesn't? Is that some kind of betrayal, is that tension we don't need? Do we have special times and quota times? And even if none of it actually becomes an issue, it's there, always."

He's been worrying about his relationship with Jesus a lot.

[hippie_ninja]

He watches K, his expression softening as he realizes. K's right, of course: it will always be there. It will always be counted in their tally, and if they put too much pressure on it, it will become a tension. He doesn't want that.

"Then let's have something else that's just ours. The sex can be whatever it is for us in the moment."

[konstant]

At least when they agreed neither of them would make quota, it was an automatic nonissue; but K can't stomach the thought of potentially being in a position to hurt Jesus if the injections get stronger. He doesn't want to avoid him for a week every month. (He doesn't want to feel like that ever again.)

So, a compromise; he glances up at Jesus.

"Do you have an idea?"

[hippie_ninja]

Here the problem is that he doesn't know what he's allowed to ask for.

"You're the only one I sleep around. Who I have sex with." He sleeps around Rosita just fine. There's just a level to it that he likes with K, that he hasn't had with anyone else. "It doesn't have to be that--I'm just thinking of things I'm comfortable with you that I haven't been with anyone else."

[konstant]

"So - we wouldn't sleep, literally, with anyone else? As an example."

Jesus could ask him for almost anything, honestly but just now he's genuinely trying to work out what the other man has in mind.

[hippie_ninja]

"If that's what we decided. I don't know," a laugh, helpless, a little self-conscious. "I just want something that feels like not making quota with you did. I liked that. It's not really about excluding anyone else--if you wanted to sleep with someone after you slept with them, I wouldn't care."

[konstant]

That laugh is a sound that matches how K feels, and it makes it easier for him to relax. It means neither of them have a good answer, but he agrees with what Jesus says: he liked that too. If they could find something else, then maybe -

"I... can't imagine doing that, honestly," he admits. He'd tried to get away from Vrenille as fast as he could - with limited success, but he never even considered staying tangled up with him.

[hippie_ninja]

"Yeah, I don't usually stick around," he admits, and feels as guilty saying it as he does whenever he pulls on his clothes and makes excuses about early meetings. He'd done it even with boyfriends in the old world, sometimes. "And the rules here about where we can stay just make it easier to leave."

[konstant]

"Why stick around with me, then?"

And they are in open defiance of the rules about where they can stay, although K is a bit worried about that in the long term as well.

[hippie_ninja]

The shrug this time is accompanied by a little smile. Why indeed? His answer won't be satisfying with how simple it is. "Because I like being around you."

[konstant]

It's simple, but it's honest - and it's easier to smile back.

"I'm happy that you do." He likes being around Jesus, too.

"I... missed not being around you. The week you were gone, the week I had to be."

[hippie_ninja]

"I missed you, too," he says, feeling younger--or maybe not younger, but more like a version of himself he hasn't been in years. "I worried about you. And when I was in the Zoo... I don't want you to end up in there."

[konstant]

K doesn't want to end up there, but it's likely inevitable. That isn't why he lingers on the mention of it.

He watches, instead, like he had when he asked earlier. Like he should have been when Jesus was first released from it, but he didn't.

"I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend while you were there. I did think of you often." He did answer messages when he could, but of course there was the stretch of time when he wasn't anywhere, let alone capable of answering his phone.