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[hippie_ninja]

This is Jesus. Leave a message.

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[hippie_ninja]

That tugs hard at something in his chest. "I want to be a good friend. I want to make sure you're not pulled in anywhere you don't want to be."

[konstant]

"But this is what you're going to do, regardless," he says slowly, confirming.

[hippie_ninja]

"There's no other way to get a firsthand look in the prison. But I'd hear other ideas if there are any."

[konstant]

"I used to be a cop. Someone I know thinks I could be again," he points out. But more importantly his point is: "My options become be okay with what you're doing, or don't talk to you or be around you."

[hippie_ninja]

He doesn't like those options. He doesn't like that he's put K in this position. But it still has to be done and he still thinks he's the best person for it.

"Can I make it up to you?"

[konstant]

"There's nothing to make up right now. We're just talking." And maybe nothing happens in the end. Nothing worse than already has anyway.

"And maybe you'll need to adjust."

[hippie_ninja]

"You're worried. That's something to make up for." He shifts uneasily. "I'm not used to anyone- ... People don't really worry about me."

[konstant]

"Is it part of what's making this place harder for you?"

It's not that he's never worried about anyone. But it's never had stakes and weight like this before.

[hippie_ninja]

"...Yeah." It would be so much easier to do all of this if he didn't have anyone worrying about him. "But I like it, so it's hard to want to give it up. Maybe none of this would be worth anything if I had to give up letting people care about me."

[konstant]

K is quiet a moment, considering that, weighing it with his very, very limited experience.

"The only... connection I ever had with anyone that went both ways," he starts slowly, clearly for all of that, "I was always very, very aware she was programmed that way. That didn't make it any less real for her, you understand. But it wasn't really fair."

She didn't really have a choice, not in loving him, not in what she passed back to Wallace.

"This is different. Either of us can choose to walk away, and I know... people do. When things get hard or complicated." He'd understand, is what he's trying to say.

[hippie_ninja]

People do. Most of the time, people do. It's a fact that Jesus holds no bitterness over. If he resented people serving their own interests, he never would have survived this long. Sometimes it's the only thing you can do.

"I don't want to be a reason you get hurt. And if you ever think I am, or I will be, I understand if you do what's best for you. But I'm not afraid to hurt for a friend." He doesn't plan to cut and run.

[konstant]

"I was built to be a protector."

The way he says this is ever so slightly different from how he usually mentions the things that went into his creation, his purpose; there's no casual dismissal, or faint bitterness, or subtle tension. This part of it, he always liked. This part, he never felt conflicted about except when it crossed with the retirement portion of his blade runner cases.

It's easy to carry this part over still: "I was custom made to hurt so others wouldn't have to. I don't run."

[hippie_ninja]

Custom made to hurt makes him flinch, ever so slightly.

"I don't want you to hurt," he protests, but he also wants to kiss him now--the idea of someone who has been hurt repeatedly who still doesn't run, who doesn't seem to hate those he was told to suffer for. It's impossible. It should be, anyway.

[konstant]

"I don't want to either," he can admit with perfect sincerity, but gently when he sees that reaction. That wasn't his intention.

This was: "But I'm not afraid to, if it comes to that." He doesn't hesitate.

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm not either," he says, studying K. His hand moves--little more than a twitch, really, as he thinks about reaching up to touch him and then doesn't. "But that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I just wanted you to know."

[konstant]

K watches both those impulses spike and subside - or rather, be suppressed. The urge is still there. He doesn't know what he said, doesn't know what it means to Jesus specifically, but he sees the effects.

Instead of answering, his eyes tick down to that movement and rest there in the moments before he reaches over - slowly, carefully - to brush his fingers against the side of Jesus's hand.

[hippie_ninja]

He's just as careful in returning that smallest of contacts. His fingertips trail over K's; he doesn't look away from him, doesn't break eye contact.

[konstant]

K coaxes Jesus over as painstakingly as he might try to collect a spiderweb in his hands, untorn; he draws his hand to his lap, to where he can study the details that make up Jesus Rovia, and let himself be studied in turn.

"It's okay," he offers, softly - permission, and reassurance.

[hippie_ninja]

"What's it like for you?" His fingers stretch, gently flex under the attention. "If you were made to protect humans, and now you have one wanting to be your friend?"

Wanting more physically, too, sure; but K is good looking. Jesus doubts he's the first human to notice. He doubts K's looks were randomly given to him, if he was built.

[konstant]

He is most assuredly not the first to notice, and after years of working alongside Joshi and seeing the way she looked at him, the way she talked to him, he is also very aware that it's no accident.

He captures one of Jesus's fingers under his thumb, slowly caressing from knuckle to pad, feeling the way the natural tension in the tendon resists without resisting while he considers his answer.

"Being made the way I am isn't the... hard part," he explains. "I can see it, you know. The way a person looks at another person is different from how they look at a car, or - an animal." Though that's new - knowing how people look at animals, real animals, not synthetic recreations. "I'd see it sometimes when children looked at me, too young to know yet what a replicant is. But I see it all the time here."

[hippie_ninja]

He's watching their hands, part of his mind fixated on the warmth of K's fingers, the other half filling in context for what K is sharing.

"I think that would be confusing for me." Not knowing what to expect. Not knowing what other people expect. How can you assimilate into a new place without knowing either of those things?

[konstant]

He doesn't answer while he traces the miniature crescent of Jesus's nail, rubs back along the slick surface of it to the first joint of his finger, lightly back along the line of the crease.

"It feels like balancing on a rail, and not knowing when it will give." People are clearly trying to befriend him; people clearly expect him to be human, and everything that entails. They expect him to be real.

And he expects that once they understand, like every other human he's ever been around, that will all change.

[hippie_ninja]

He understands. For different reasons, coming from a vastly different background, but that same feeling... He understands.

"You're still willing to take that risk," he points out.

[konstant]

"How can I not?" Finally he looks up from the paths his hands are tracing, meets Jesus's gaze steadily.

"It's..." Not all he's ever wanted, but a significant portion. "Vital. And if people change, if they decide they don't actually want anything to do with me, or that I'm of better use somehow else - that's one thing. But if I'm the one that refuses them? Refuses you? How can I claim you were ever important?"

[hippie_ninja]

He exhales softly in what is almost a shudder. A person can't just say things like that and mean them.

"That's why I was afraid to tell you. I didn't want you to think I was trying to get you to do anything for me." Because yes, he heard that: of better use somehow else. As if it's a foregone conclusion that Jesus is using him.