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[hippie_ninja]

This is Jesus. Leave a message.

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[konstant]

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."

[hippie_ninja]

"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.

[konstant]

"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."

[hippie_ninja]

"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?"

[konstant]

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."

[hippie_ninja]

"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?"

[konstant]

"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."

[hippie_ninja]

"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..."

[konstant]

"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."

[hippie_ninja]

"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."

[konstant]

"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."

[hippie_ninja]

"You want to know the truth? It's something I'm afraid of, too. That if I cause too much trouble or argue too much, people will leave." Because they have in the past, multiple times.

[konstant]

It's not the sort of thing that people can just tell him not to worry about anymore; K knows that from his own experience. People keep trying to tell him it's alright, he's safe now, but it doesn't take. He doesn't relax, or doesn't think about it the next time.

"When did it start?" he asks instead. "Do you remember?"

[hippie_ninja]

"My mom left me for the first time when I was three. I don't remember it much, but probably it started then." He says it with a lopsided, resigned smile. It's been with him his entire life, is what he's saying.

[konstant]

"Was there ever anyone you trusted? Anyone you knew wouldn't do that to you?"

K's too, but he doesn't try to compare them. He was never a child, never three years old, never had parents - even though he remembers all of that on a truncated timeline, too.

[hippie_ninja]

His expression flickers, just the tiniest bit, betraying just the smallest hint of a pain that doesn't ever quite heal.

"No." Never anyone who stayed. "There were kind people along the way. But no one who stuck it out."

[konstant]

K smiles back, a bittersweet expression of his own along the same vein.

"For me, either," he does offer then. They're both starting from scratch. They're both batting a thousand.

[hippie_ninja]

"We're doing pretty good, considering." He reaches up, touches K's cheek. "You are."

[konstant]

"We are," he agrees, emphasis ever so slightly on the we.

He reaches, too, to set his fingers along the back of Jesus's hand on his face.

"Are you okay with everything that happened during the festival?" Which is a slightly different question than are you okay.

[hippie_ninja]

He considers it and all the implications. "Yes. I loved being with you, K. I would want to do everything we did again. Are you okay with it?"

[konstant]

"I love that you loved it."

Which is perhaps not a great answer. He turns it a slightly different way: "The fear is back. I could've been retired for being a replicant taking advantage of a human from a position of authority. I don't know how to get back to that place, but I like thinking about what happened."

[hippie_ninja]

"We were in the same position. Vrenille was neutral." So in Jesus's case, at least, there's nothing K could have been retired for.

[konstant]

"Sweeting," K murmurs, turning his head, kissing his palm. "You're human."

Which doesn't mean anything to people from worlds where humans are the only creatures that have laws, that obey social structures in cities and systems.

"Any replicant caught out of line with any human has retirement to fear, if things go wrong, or just change."

[hippie_ninja]

It's like being tugged in two very different directions, hearing that endearment and how it always makes him anime, and what K is saying and what that means for them. For every possible way K can interpret things.

"But you are here," he points out, processing. "Which means you trust that things won't go that way with me."

[konstant]

"I trust that if you change your mind, you won't take it out on me," he agrees.

"I trust that if you want me here, you'll tell me, and if you don't, you'll tell me. I trust you."

Enough to follow him into a contracting process that he doesn't trust at all.