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[hippie_ninja]

This is Jesus. Leave a message.

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[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.

[hippie_ninja]

In most respects, Jesus is a very trustworthy person. He's loyal, but he's honest; he'll tell you what he thinks, and what he wants, even if he knows it's unpopular.

But K is a different sort of friend. K is a friend he is more and more romantically involved with, and that's where Jesus tends to falter. But K trusts him.

K trusts him, with something that goes straight to the core of who K is.

He leans up and kisses him again, this time with so much emotion he can't even speak through it. So he kisses him to try to express even a tiny bit of the gratitude and the affection and the fierce determination he has to not let K down.

[konstant]

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.

[hippie_ninja]

"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.

[konstant]

"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."