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[hippie_ninja]

This is Jesus. Leave a message.

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[hippie_ninja]

Last night, technically. For three hours or so, until Rosita woke up hard. Then he hadn't been able to steady again.

"It's been a while," he admits, because he knows what K is asking and that the letter of the law doesn't apply.

[konstant]

K nods.

"If you want, you could crash in the spare bedroom," he's sure. He stops, shakes his head. "My room." But they'd already been doing that so the offer stands, if Jesus wants it. If K hasn't hurt him too badly for that.

"Or the couch. V's been sleeping a lot."

[hippie_ninja]

"Oh. Thank you." He's polite but uncertain. "I'm okay."

He's not, but he doesn't sleep well when other people are around, and he can't sleep with someone who needs him to watch their back. So he'll suck it up.

[konstant]

K catches that uncertainty, and he's not surprised, he accepts the sting of it as just desserts. He hurt Jesus. He hurt a lot of people, and chances are good he will again. It's not something that can just be picked up again where they left off.

But it does still sting and he nods, glancing over at where Nibbles is licking out their soup bowls.

"Okay," K agrees.

[hippie_ninja]

He sees that. It hurts to see, to know roughly where it comes from.

"I slept better with you."

[konstant]

"You said as much," he agrees. "I liked it too."

He isn't having the same trouble Jesus is with turning off, but he'd still liked the novelty of a warm body beside him, one he trusted, one that could be trusted.

"Which means I must really have some reparations to make." It's not accusing, not condemning, just a fact: if Jesus is forgoing it now, K must have really hurt him.

[hippie_ninja]

"K..." He turns to him, reaches out and touches his arm. "I don't hold your choice against you. You did what was best for you, the best thing you could have done at the time. I support that. You don't owe me anything."

He had hurt him, but that isn't why Jesus is reluctant. It's just the opposite: he feels safe with K, too safe to trust it.

[konstant]

K looks back at the touch, looks up to meet Jesus's eyes, taking his time studying them in this moment, in this light. He believes what he's saying - K and Jesus both. It's just that K doesn't know what to do with it, quite.

Doesn't know what it means, what the right next step is, if there is one considering they both know the contract will expire again someday.

"It would be okay if you did," K says slowly, trying it out. Trying to find how it fits. "I understand that's part of making choices. That there are consequences. That they very rarely effect no one but yourself."

[hippie_ninja]

He shrugs slightly. "I didn't expect to be a factor that weighed against your decision. I supported you, anyway. I don't like seeing you hurt and I don't like seeing you locked up but I trust you to know what's best for you more than I do."

[konstant]

His brow furrows, still searching Jesus's face.

"Why wouldn't you be a factor?"

[hippie_ninja]

It's Jesus's turn to be confused. "Why would I be?" He hadn't been.

[konstant]

"You're my friend." Probably a little more than that, he does think, but he doesn't know what else there is and anyway - it's not like K has had a lot of those. It's not like they're any less important to him than whatever the next step up is that he definitely doesn't have.

If Jesus had asked him not to do it, he wouldn't have. "What you think is important to me."

[hippie_ninja]

"I want you to do what's best for you," he says, helpless, completely at a loss for what this means. "I want you safe and you weren't in there, but some things matter more."

To some people. Not always to Jesus, not anymore. Maybe he just wants to protect the fact that K can still weigh those options.

[konstant]

"I don't know what's best for me," he admits. Jail hadn't been as upsetting for him in and of itself as most people seemed to have expected it to be, but there were some things he hadn't accounted for that have nothing to do with what was going on outside the bars. What was happening with his friends.

"I'm doing the best I can, but I have no idea what to do here."

[hippie_ninja]

"You want to know the truth? I have no idea what you're meant to be doing here either. I don't know what I'm doing. The only time I knew was back home when I had a mission, a purpose. Neither of us has that here." He wishes he had better answers.

[konstant]

"I don't expect you to have those answers for me," K answers slowly, but carefully. K is a replicant. There's some overlap between them - the mission, the purpose, their status as submissives - but they are different.

"I don't have them for you either. What's more important to me right now is that we can still talk to each other."

[hippie_ninja]

His hand is on K's shoulder, then gently on his cheek. "That never changed." Hence checking in every hour when K was in prison and Jesus was in the tunnels.

[konstant]

K's eyes slide half closed and he tips his head ever so slightly into the warm touch of Jesus's hand; it quiets the vast majority of the uncertainty trying to build up in him after everything. If they can still start here, then they can still coax something worthwhile out between them.

He reaches up to touch the back of Jesus's hand, to close the circuit, to keep his hand there.

"Then let's just focus on that, and we can figure out the rest as we go," he suggests - asks.

[hippie_ninja]

He sighs softly, relieved to have a question answered he hadn't quite been ready to ask out loud. K is much taller than he is, so instead of touching their foreheads together he leans his head against K's chest. "I missed you."

[konstant]

K lifts his chin to set it lightly atop Jesus's hair, and after a moment of hesitation, lifts his other arm to pull him in close, careful, wanting to be closer but also ready to back off if it's too much, too soon for any reason.

Full of care with nowhere else to go, always. "I missed you too." Jesus already said he wouldn't stay, wouldn't sleep here anyway, so K doesn't say more than that, but this is already more than he had dared hope for over the past few minutes.

[hippie_ninja]

His hand on K's cheek slides back into his hair. "I need to take care of some other people right now. But when I'm ready to take care of myself, could...could we go back to spending the night together?"

This is such a bad idea, but leaning here against K, smelling his skin and the tobacco he smokes, and he wants so badly to just fall asleep with him like he had before the prison took K away.

[konstant]

K breathes out, quiet but they're close enough it's unmistakably relief nonetheless.

"I'd like that," is the first thing he says, but it's followed by a promise: "When you're ready, I'll be here."

[hippie_ninja]

He smiles and, despite himself, nestles in closer. "You don't make it easy to leave."

[konstant]

"Then don't," he suggests, and tips his head without lifting it or pulling back. His fingertips trace a small, slow circle on the back of Jesus's shoulder.

"Sit with me a while. No one will bother us in here."

[hippie_ninja]

"Just a little while." He still has a lot to do, and he doesn't want to leave Rosita for long.

But he is bone weary, and sitting a while, near enough K they can reassure each other, is too much to pass up.