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K pushes it a little further every day.
Jo knows that he’s mostly just curious as to where the actual limit is, the point at which someone — company or fandom or society at large — will put their foot down and say That’s too far, that’s too much. He probably won’t actually stop there, of course, once he knows. Disrespecting limits is one of K’s many hobbies.
And if he won’t stop, then it’s up to Jo to stop him. Be sensible, be prudent, avoid upsetting people and inviting backlash. Et cetera. Do the smart thing. Do the right thing.
Jo won’t.
It’s not even a decision, really. He doesn’t weigh it all up and consciously choose to defy all sense and reason in favour of a long and unsteady tightrope walk across a chasm with no visible far side.
There’s just no actual choice for him. There never has been. He’s going to follow K as far as K feels like going, and savour every second of the treacherous journey, because he loves K so much more than he fears the fall.
The thin black tie is silky, but K yanks on it hard enough that it might still leave a mark even without the abrasion rougher fabric would have provided. He pulls Jo so close. So perilously close.
Jo can’t look at him. He knows, at least roughly, where the limit is, and if he meets K’s dark, unsmiling gaze right now, he’ll crash through it without grace or foresight and ruin everything.
K’s standing in just such a way that he’s a little shorter than Jo, about the same amount as Jo is usually shorter than him. Just the slightest bit less lofty, less larger than life, less unattainable. He’s put himself, very deliberately, within reach. At the mercy of Jo’s response, whatever it is.
It’s so, so close to too far. Just a few millimetres away from the line. Just a moment’s eye contact would do it. Every single move he can make in the moment would be wrong.
What was it about the moment that had triggered this? Jo wonders to distract himself. K had suggested that Jo try the glasses on too, and — not wanting to stab Jo’s eye out trying to do it himself, for which Jo was grateful — released the grip he already had on Jo’s tie and waited impatiently, free hand twitching in mid-air, as Jo plucked them awkwardly from K’s face and resettled them atop his own nose.
Something about that. Somewhere in there. When the glasses had caught a little in K’s hair and he had tilted his head back to help them come loose, but kept his eyes fixed on Jo’s the whole time. The smile that had crept into the corners of his mouth.
Jo has seen the usual playful, self-possessed intensity K has when up to seductive mischief for the camera or the audience many times. Everyone has. It’s one of his calling cards. There’s something actually dangerous about this, though, that he has not seen much of, and certainly never aimed at him at point-blank range like this.
Yes, this is for the audience and the cameras, of course it is, but it’s also for Jo, and he really, really can’t afford to think that through any further while standing up here with so many eyes on him.
K is the one all the way out on the frontier testing the integrity of the border right now, but he’s clearly trying to push Jo over it ahead of him. It’s very unfair. Jo should probably be mad about it. He might be, later.
In the moment, though, he has no capacity to spare for that. It’s genuinely all he can do not to grab K by the back of his neck and let himself rise to the provocation. He wants to so, so badly. But not here. Not on camera. Not as a test. Not even as a gift.
If K wants to cross the line, he’ll have to do it himself.
But as always, Jo will follow.
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