hippie_ninja | IC INBOX

It could be overwhelming if K let it, honestly. What he can read like Jesus is shouting at him in the moments before he's kissing him again, the intensity pressing through the lines of him as they lean together, and the staggering relief of realizing that Jesus understands exactly what K is saying - the magnitude if not the details - are all almost just a bit too much.

But he stands under it regardless, hands resting lightly at the other man's hips, and he sinks into that kiss too, taking his time to take some comfort in being seen.

"Thank you," he murmurs, staying close.

"Are we going to get in trouble if you stay tonight?" He murmurs, because it's a risk, it's near the end of the month and their free nights have surely been spent. But he wants K here. He wants to keep him close, as if that can make his promise more sturdy.

"No." He'd stay anyway, because it's the kind of thing he's already lost patience for as far as he's concerned, but this answer happens to be true:

"I stayed with Sara all month. Just the one other night with you."

The memory of that night makes him smile, makes him steal another quick kiss, but it's almost an apology. "I'm...I'm pretty worn out from the festival, I don't think tonight will be anything like that night. I just want you close."

"Sex isn't even close to the reason I'd want to stay," he chuckles, smoothing hair back from Jesus's face - even if his smile quirks playful, too: "Although you're doing an excellent job of converting me."

He tips his head towards the couch anyway. "What can I do to help?"

"Good because I'm going to try to lure you over here for it sometime," he promises with a grin. He leads him to the couch where he sits with a sigh. He's sore from fighting in the last part of the fog, too.

"Help me take care of Nibbles? I need to get him out of his sweater for the night. He'll just sleep upstairs with us--he likes the blankets."

K starts to get back up in anticipation of needing to change water or put out food, but then he hears what Jesus wants him to do and he folds down to sit next to him, too.

"Nibbles," he calls, soft, with a gentle chuffing sound that brings the cat's ears up from a dead sleep. A few moments later he stretches to his feet and then comes trotting amicably over to investigate K's lap.

And K straightens out his sweater, smiling with simple, wordless pleasure as he rubs the cat's ears.

"He looks wa," is his final assessment. "Thank you for taking care of him. I had to leave Janus with Sara for now."

Nibbles is a friendly, responsive cat, but he reacts to K much faster than he ever does when Jesus calls him, and Jesus smiles to watch them.

"Janus?" He knows about Mango, but he's only been to K's place with Sara once. He doesn't recall any other furry little companions there; all the puppies had food names.

K doesn't look up from Nibbles for more than a moment, letting him sniff his hand and decide to rub against it in his own time. This is when he starts working out how best to pull the sweater off as asked.

"Did I not show you him?" He does glance up now. "He's going to turn into a butterfly."

Nibbles is growing used to the process of undressing and dressing, and butts his head against K's hands, tugging against him to help get the sweater off.

"No, you didn't," Jesus is smiling, his eyes warm. "You have a caterpillar for a pet?"

"He's in a cocoon now." K hesitates a moment, brow furrowing: "I don't actually know that Janus is a male, but the name could go both ways."

He shakes his head, smoothing down the fine, short hair that does actually cover Nibbles' skin to make sure it's not bothering him after the sweater. "I was told the cold might harm him, and that if I gave him a safe place to metamorphosize, he could be released when it's warm again. I have pictures."

"I want to see them." He's never considered having one as a pet. He's never considered having a pet at all until K asked him to watch over Nibbles, but 'caterpillar' wouldn't even feature on the imagined list.

At least not until he sees k talking about it, about the little bug he named.

K takes a moment to fold the sweater neatly and set it aside, also crooking his arm to give Nibbles a place to settle down, which he begins the process of immediately; it makes K smile even as he fishes out his phone and starts flipping through the gallery.

He's taken a lot of pictures. The vast majority of them are of plants and animals he's seen around Duplicity, with a whole series that he holds out to Jesus that shows a fuzzy, black and orange striped caterpillar working its way along a twig with autumn-colored grass and leaves in the background. He flips along until there's another series - over a dozen, from all different angles and lighting - of a pearlescent blue and teal chrysalis hanging from the same twig, but in a jar on a shelf now.

"I've never seen one before, not a real one. Amelia says he may not be the same colors when he comes out and probably won't, but she didn't know what kind he is."

"I've never seen one in a chrysalis. If I did I had no idea what it was." It's beautiful in a strange, alien way.

He turns the camera on and takes a picture of Nibbles nestled there against K. "That cat loves you."

"Sara promised to call me if the chrysalis starts to move - I'll call you too, if you want," K offers, then blinks up from where he was rubbing Nibbles' nose gently with his thumb when he realizes what Jesus has done.

"We just spent a lot of time together. You know. Before V -" His expression darkens for a moment, but then he shakes his head and holds his hand out for the phone back.

"I'd like that. I've never seen a brand new butterfly."

He kisses K lightly, as if to soothe the grief he knows is there--the grief he feels, too. And then he leans against K and takes a selfie of the three of them, and then he gives the phone back.

It was what K was going to do, so the pleasant surprise of it does shake the moment off exactly as Jesus had intended. He switches over to the gallery once he has the phone back, looking over the resulting picture, his smile settling subtle but deep as he leans his shoulder into Jesus.

"I'm sorry this place is the way that it is, but - I'm glad I get to know you, Jesus."

"It's worth it." To have this. To have the friends he has, the food that just keeps coming, this space that isn't going to be burned to the ground or overrun with the dead.

But the rest of it, the things he hates about this place: it's worth it for moments like this.

"I don't know if I could have let myself have a friendship like this if you'd met me back home."

K knows that he wouldn't have; the fact that they're both dead or retired aside, K wouldn't have been able to talk to a human this way, to spend any kind of appreciable time with a human this way.

He tips his head and regards Jesus, though, stroking Nibbles' head as he kneads his paws into K's leg.

"Why not?"

"This place has forced me to open myself up to people in ways I never let myself back home. Not after the fall." It's hard to explain without explaining all the ways he's always shut himself off from people, though.

The question is there on the tip of K's tongue, of course, until he glances over and sees Jesus's face. His mouth presses into a line instead as he considers that.

"I hope I don't make you feel forced with me," he settles on. "I don't want that. Even during the festival I didn't want that."

"No," he says, looking up at K, trusting K can decipher the truth in this. "Everything with you happens so easily. This place forced me to rethink how I was engaging with people; everything with you has been so...easy. So right. I never second guess myself with you. And I always second guess when I get close to people."

He does know that, or he wouldn't keep showing up; he sees something uncomfortable sometimes, but while he's always on the lookout for the kind of fear that turns into fight or flight, he's either missed it or not seen it.

Now his eyes meet Jesus's, searching. "Does it worry you that there's something about this place doing that, then?" If he knows he second guesses himself, and he's not with K, is that a problem for him?

He frowns. "I think I phrased it badly. I had two options when I got here: I could adapt or I could suffer. I chose to adapt by getting close to people, when I never did back home. This place didn't force me to do anything with you. This place could take away my choices. I know that. But so far it hasn't. I hate the things like- like the fog, or the drugs, but right now there's nothing I can do except avoid them..."

He's rambling, just a bit, thinking out loud about things he's pushed aside to keep going.

"Sometimes it does scare me how much I like you, K. Historically it doesn't go well for me. But I'm happy when I'm with you, and happiness is a rare thing. I want it while I have it."

Jesus is rambling but K pays quiet, steady attention anyway, quietly collecting private fears and the way he rationalizes them; he lets the other man decide where and when he stops, what he says, and he bears witness.

And what he finishes on is something that... doesn't scare K, but doesn't not, he doesn't know what the feeling is it leaves with him, except that it starts deep in his gut and roots there. It's a big responsibility, what Jesus is saying. His smile fades, but he's watching still.

"That's... intimidating. But you're still choosing it."

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That was supposed to be warm

OMG FINALLY a chance to tag

Just in time for notifs to come back!

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