hippie_ninja | IC INBOX

K shakes his head, picking up his plate and leaning his hip against the counter.

"Public quarters in the Down. I haven't seen my roommate yet."

He picks at his food. He tries and fails to put aside the question he's sure K can see in him.

"Have you thought about signing with Drake?"

K doesn't answer right away. He chews a mouthful of biscuit much longer than necessary so he doesn't have to speak.

Then he nods, picking at his own plate.

"Some. But not - since whatever the festival was doing to me stopped. Not much."

"He's a great partner. A good ally to have." And. There's more, but he struggles to hold it out as an offer. "You could have an apartment near me. We could see each other without the Zoo as a threat over our heads."

He hears that struggle, that fear lurking behind the hope. He dusts off his fingers, and reaches across to kiss the other man, slow and deep. If he says no, it is not at all because he doesn't want Jesus. Not for a moment.

Which, really, is his answer, isn't it?

"Okay," he breathes on the exhale.

He kisses him back, expecting this is going to be followed with K explaining why he can't. He kisses K, fully expecting that soon K will simply go back to prison and Jesus won't be able to see him anymore.

Instead he says that, and Jesus needs a moment to catch up, and then he's grinning but he's trying to contain it. To be as respectful of K's wishes as he can possibly be.

"Are you sure?" Never mind that he still has his arms around K, that he's still looking up at him close enough to just go back to kissing him.

It's a long, long moment to K's perception, a moment during which he goes back and forth twice before the grin breaks and K lets it warm and steady him, too. He's going to need it, because it's one thing to agree to it here and now and he's sure it will feel like another when he's sitting down across from Drake and trying to hash out details. When he's holding a contract in his hand and being asked to sign.

"No," he answers, honestly, hand resting warm alongside Jesus's neck and eyes meeting his. "But you are, and I'm only hurting people I care about by being afraid to try."

"You can use my contract as a template if you want. My friend helped draw it up... She's more protective of me than I am. It's a good template." He is looking up at K, into those blue eyes, and he's certain and excited. "Thank you. For being willing to try."

His smile is smaller than it was, but he takes his time absorbing what he can see there, the excitement that warms Jesus's whole face.

He leans his forehead against the other man's and breathes out.

"We have time. I want to try to do it right this time, not - I don't want Drake to go." Like V.

"What happened with V was not your fault." He knows saying it won't convince K, but he'll go on saying it if only to be a voice against whatever K is holding in his head.

"I didn't help," he counters, but it's not a real argument; maybe if V had had another option, someone the city hadn't already labelled a problem, it might have shifted the scales just enough. Maybe not.

He had K, and less than even a full month later he was gone. K sets his plate down and turns so he can rub his face with both hands, trying to shake it off. Doesn't matter.

"You're almost up for renewal. Are you going to? With Drake?"

"Yeah." He runs his hand along K's side and sets his plate down, then urges K to come sit with him on the couch where Nibbles is lounging. "He's a really good partner to have. I like him a lot."

K is happy to follow over to the couch, and he takes a long several moments to devote to crouching down eye to eye with Nibbles to murmur to him warm, fond nonsense while he rubs his ears.

Then he moves up to sit on the couch properly, glancing sidelong at Jesus.

"Did you come out of Tumenalia alright?"

He sits with a groan. "I came out of it very happy. And very sore."

He was in a fight at the end, the remnants still showing on his face in the shadows of bruises and a scab on his lip.

"Are you okay with everything that happened?"

The comment gets a quirk of a smile out of K, and a long moment of watching him settle, watching that happiness where it sits in his bones - how it's different from before, how it's the same.

"I am," he says, lest that be in question. There's nothing he came back to himself wishing was different, certainly not with anyone he actually knows, even if he wouldn't exactly jump into another orgy now.

"It's - I needed some time. To think."

"What did you end up thinking?" He studies K, knowing that processing doesn't always lead to regret, but knowing too that K has had a lot of negatives in his life lately.

"Because it wasn't entirely me - whatever effect the tattoo and the festival had, or the charm, they changed me. But they didn't change me too much. I needed time to work out... how. And what was different, so I would know how it was and wasn't who I am."

He needs the time now to work his way around to it, to try to explain. To try to convey how important it is to him that he does know who he is now.

"And I decided it was mainly this... otherness I always feel. It doesn't mean anything to you that I'm a replicant, but I view everything through that filter. I expect others to do the same, it's just how I relate to the world."

"I understand that," he nods slightly. He may not be able to understand what a replicant sees, or what K expects him to see when he sees a replicant, but he knows it impacts every angle of K's life.

"But it was different for you during the festival? How?"

He nods - it was different. Even before the festival, just with the talisman, it was different.

"I... knew I was an equal. To you, to Vrenille, to - everyone. Anyone. And not just because you had given me that right, not because you chose to treat me that way. Because it just... was true. Inherently. And no one could change that."

"It was. For me, it's still true." He doesn't reach out to touch him, doesn't want to influence him any particular way right now. "Does it still feel that way for you? Even just here with me?"

"Yes - and no." He shakes his head.

"I've never had the chance to be around someone that doesn't think of me differently. I believe that you mean that - I don't know what that looks like, what it will continue to look like. Does it last until you're bored with me? Until you're angry with me? Until you find someone you like better? How does it change then? How will it feel?"

Which is a question he's never had to ask of himself before: how will it feel?

Do you feel that there's a part of you that's missing? Interlinked.

"And I trust you. You and I don't have a contract. It's worse for me when those aren't true of someone else - when I can't know that everything I like about living here isn't dependent on someone else... if not allowing it, then not actively opposing it."

"I can understand that. If I wasn't able to provide for myself, I don't know that I'd have been able to settle in like I have." Such as it is. He feels a little less settled every week he's here.

"K...I worry about that, too. If you'll get tired of me. If you'll be done with me if I hurt you unintentionally. Those are normal things to worry about but I think they might be harder hitting for you because you've never been free to have attachments before. You've never been able to test them. You're trusting something that's so new to you..."

"I know."

That smile again, a small, swift quirk of one side of his mouth. He hadn't been able to tell what the similarities were and what was specific to him though, not until now.

"That's what was different: I knew that even if any of those things happened, it wouldn't change me. That my value was inherent. That I had the ability to... defend my own worth. I wasn't a person because you treated me like one, although I liked that. I just was."

"You still are." He's smiling though. "A lot of people go their whole lives never learning what you learned, K. Most of the people in the old world I knew never learned about intrinsic worth."

"I'm still learning," he offers, because that doubt - that fear - came right back when it was all over. That's what he learned, too: it's not reliant on people like Jesus treating him well. It's a shift somewhere in himself.

"I can't just stop being afraid of something like that. Especially when it has been true - it has happened."

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