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...whale food porn. what is my life. thanks, nasu.

Caught in the rain

It started out quietly, and then, quite suddenly, you're caught in a storm. Time to find cover. Nothing much to do but to wait it out.

Scenarios listed below for those who want 'em.

i WHERE:
001 PLAYGROUND - Well, you can try to hide under the slide or maybe in the jungle gym... at least you're some place fun?
002 PARK - Always happens, caught outside trying to take advantage of the weather... and it ends up pulling a fast one on you.
003 STORE FRONT - Better hope they have an awning you can take advantage of.
004 THE BEACH - Not exactly the best place to be during a rainstorm, however it is possible to get caught in a sudden storm.
005 WILD CARD - Anyway you want it.

ii HOW:
001 TREE - Not the best cover, but it'll have to do, stay close to the roots and you won't get too wet.
002 UMBRELLA - Most conventional... Kinda boring. But it works.
003 NEWSPAPER - Not permanent, but it'll have to do. Good luck.
004 BAG - Well... y'gotta do what you gotta do.
005 NONE - You know what. You're a rebel. You don't need cover. Screw convention.
006 WILD CARD - that's the way you need it.

iii WHY:
001 REJECTED - Welp. Rejection sucks. And no one will see you crying in the rain.
002 WAITING - For the bus? For someone else? For some revelation? What are you waiting for.
003 MELANCHOLY - Sometimes the best place to feel a bit down is out in the rain.
004 HAPPINESS - Is everything going your way? Are you singing a refrain while walking down the lane? Just singing. Singin' in the rain.
005 ANGER - WELL YOU KNOW WHAT. SCREW YOU TOO, RAIN.
006 WILD CARD - Anyway you want it.

>> POST with your character
>> TAG others, use RNG if you need to, or just make up your own scenario if you want!
>> HAVE FUN.

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(( ok great! and maybe Joi doesn't quite remember everything that happened, and maybe has some points where her programming glitched and she lost some memory. in hiding and planning for freedom fighting sounds good, in some secret place off-world for now? :) let me know if this is ok! ))

Joi felt the drops of rain on her skin like little prickles of electricity, racing along the holographic projection. Her skin lit up like sparkles in the dimness of the night and she looked up at the sky, marvelling how blue it was, with multiple specks of light marring its surface. Stars. They never had any of those on Earth, as the pollution had long since covered up their atmosphere. Joi turned to Joe, smiling at him as her hair and clothes got drenched in the rain. He looked so calm standing there under the real tree with real leaves, that protected him from the rain. Though he still bandages and stitches holding together the cuts and bruises he'd suffered, at least he was alive.

After Joe had recovered her, she was't completely the same. She didn't always remember all the memories they shared before, but at least she still remembered him. Her crushed emanator had shorted out, and the hard drive had been significantly damaged. However, he had saved her, after all he had gone through, and she managed to still be here with him, in this off world colony where they were hiding. It didn't matter to her what they were doing, as long as she could be here with him.

"Joe, look at the stars!" She pointed up, her amber eyes sparking as she took a few steps closer to him. "There are so many."

Edited 2017-12-07 17:42 (UTC)

((Yes, that all sounds good! Memory corruption is great--it will make him feel guilty XD

Let me know if anything I come up with for background in any of my tags doesn't work for you--always happy to revisit anything.))

He watches the sparks run through her silhouette as the rain disrupts her projection, the smallest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Creator's design or unintended development, he doesn't know--but whatever made wonder at the new an essential part of Joi's character, he's grateful for it. Every moment in which he feels that he had some small part in providing her with a new experience is a small, undeserved pleasure.

He steps out to the very edge of the dry patch under the tree's canopy, closer to where she's standing. Still smiling, he meets her eyes and then looks away, up at the stars. "Do you remember the first time you stood in the rain?"

Whenever he asks about her memories, he's careful not to look at her. He knows the embarrassment of being asked for a memory and coming up with something insufficient, half-formed. The past few days--the quietest he's had in his life--he's been carefully working to assess the damage done to her, while trying not to cause her discomfort. It's a difficult balance.

Still, they both have the time for it. Wherever they are--they haven't been told, to protect the location's secrecy--it's beautiful. And calm, in the tense way of a jealously-guarded sanctuary. There are other replicants here, and a few people that might even be human, but they all keep their distance from he and Joi. Some of them shows signs of injury and treatment; some of them the tension of being far off baseline in the way that might be called PTSD if they were human. Others are simply watchful and self-contained, hushing conversations if he approaches.

It may look like the smallest of towns set out in the countryside of a 19th-century American idyll, but, if he's not mistaken, it's more of a hospital, a retreat, and a meeting place. And a prison, currently, while the powers that be decide what to do with him--or whether to do anything with him at all. Whomever makes these kinds of decisions in the replicant freedom movement, he suspects they might be more than happy to leave him here indefinitely--a blade runner, a killer of his own kind who should have died and didn't. He can't say he really blames them.

Edited 2017-12-09 03:28 (UTC)

Joi loves it when Joe smiles. His whole face softens in ways that quell her quest to make him happy. She loves the subtle tilt of the corner of his lips, and that she can see his smile more in his eyes than his mouth.

Joi’s aware of what Joe is doing when he asks her questions like this, in that careful way of his. Ever since she was recovered, he has been so sensitive to her thoughts, and everything she says, and she knows that he’s only trying to keep her from feeling uncomfortable after parts of her were wiped out. She appreciates it a lot, because as much as he feels bad about it, she does too, and dreads it whenever she has to admit to forgetting something, if it could even be called that.

Amber eyes turn towards him and she takes a few steps forward, so she’s at the edge of the dry patch under the tree, standing close enough that her projection almost overlapped with his coat. Her hands drop to her sides and her smile is unwavering when she looks away from the stars to him.

“Yes. When you bought me my gift. The emanator.” She’s happy that he can still smile at such simple things, like her exploring the feeling that she’s learned to love of standing in the rain. The past short while has changed Joe’s life, but she’s glad that she can still be a part of it. Her hand reaches up, cupping close to his cheek as she lets the tips of her fingers brush close to his skin.

“And you kissed me. Do you remember, Joe?” Until a call had interrupted their moment, but Joi could never forget that liberating feeling of sharing a kiss in the rain.

"Yeah. I do." The warmth in his eyes increases as she steps closer. Joe still feels that these moments, all of the moments when good things happen, are stolen--a quiet shadow life he's not supposed to admit he lives, even to himself. A replicant can't have love, comfort, joy; even having preferences is risky. It might disrupt the baseline or, worse, make humans feel he's pretending to be something he isn't.

But he's very glad she remembers. It had been such a perfect moment--the lights of the city, the rain, everything that usually fell into the background made extraordinary because he had been watching her experience it for the first time.

He reaches his hand up to hers, careful to let it overlap just the barest amount, to maintain the illusion of touch. It's easier now to imagine the feeling to go with the illusion, after her gift to him, using the pleasure replicant. When the other replicant had been the first one he saw after regaining consciousness following Joi's death and Deckard's kidnapping, the pain of not seeing Joi in her face had gone straight to the center of him.

"I love you." He's been waiting for the moment to say it. Now is the right time.

Edited 2017-12-09 19:04 (UTC)

She loves seeing the warmth in his eyes. It’s worth everything she has gone through while being with him, and it brings her happiness to her very core. The clear blue of them reminds her of the cleanness of the sky here, unlike the often orange haze of the sky on Earth. Her thumb brushes along the curve of his cheek, and her eyes soften she sees his hand on the back of hers, ever so slightly touching the surface of her projection. Each touch with Joe is treasured to her. He’s so gentle, so careful, and she endlessly admires his calm.

I love you.

Her eyes widen, and her smile slightly quivers as emotion suddenly floods her whole being. Those three words are so simple but they mean the world to her when Joe is the one saying them. She understands that love has no place in a replicant’s life, but Joe is special, at least to her, he is. He’s her whole world.

“Joe…” Her voice shakes and she can’t help the tears that suddenly well up in her eyes. It doesn’t matter if Joe is made to not be able to fully comprehend love – this is absolutely real to her. It’s as real as any love can ever be, and that’s more than she could ever ask for. Dark, long lashes flutter and a tear rolls down her face, disappearing with the drops of rain still flickering in her projection.

“I love you.”

Her other hand comes to float just slightly above his shoulder, and she raises on her toes, tipping her head upwards slowly, letting her eyes fall closed when her lips reach close to his.

((I've been really busy, and I didn't want to write you a crappy tag in a hurry! So I waited.))

He hadn’t spent much time around Deckard, but the brief interactions he had had with the man had left an impression. Whether Deckard himself was a replicant or not, whether the woman he’d loved was a replicant or not, whether his dog was a Wallace product or not… Those distinctions clearly hadn’t existed, for the older blade runner. Your emotions told you who was real. Your relationships. You made something real by treating it that way.

Losing consciousness, in the snow, back on Earth, certain he was dying, he had felt very real. In the isolation of those moments, their quiet intensity, he had felt a world that was just himself and the snow--and the odd joy of being able to fall into silence, free. He had thought of Joi, then, already dead. Felt his grief for her as a real thing, a peaceful thing, because it was his and meeting its mirror in his own death. Felt his part in the reunion between daughter and father he would never see but could imagine, in the building behind him. He had felt. No concerns about what to feel or how or if he was allowed to do so.

And then he’d woken up in a chop shop off in the meanest outskirts of Las Vegas, patched back together, barely. The shop wouldn’t tell him who’d dropped him there, but it had to have been Deckard.

So there he’d been. Alive again. And real, because he’d had nothing to go on then *but* his feelings. No orders. No friends. Nothing.

That was the moment he’d know he would find Joi again, even if only her remains, and tell her his new truth. That he loved her. Because it was true, and real.

Now, he watches the tear fall down her cheek and disappear with a spark in the rain, moves the hand not already overlapping with her insubstantial one to hover carefully as though cradling the back of her head, leans forward to meet her kiss.

He’ll close his eyes for just the first second, sealing the sensations in his mind. Her hair would feel as wet from the rain as it looks, dark and heavy and full of interference sparks. Her lips, her skin. A little cold, but also warm and growing warmer as they touched. There. That’s how to move for her, to keep the illusion of touch real for both of them.

Then he’ll open his eyes, to watch her, to match his mouth to hers, his hands and body to hers, as they kiss. They're far enough at the edge of the tree's foliage that rain's falling on them both now, soft and clean and gentle.

Joi feels the warmth of Joe's lips against hers as if she can actually feel anything at all. She's not delusional enough to believe it's more than an electric feedback of interference between her projection and bare overlap in proximity of his lips, but she’s willing to try to make it as real as she can be, for both of them. There is one thing that she knows is real though, and that is the feelings she has towards him from the inside of her, from the core of her somewhere beyond the electric networks of the emanator and AI cloud storing all the versions of her. Those feelings exist somewhere between the space of her consciousness and his, and she has never believed in anything as much as that truth to her.

Both her arms come to wrap delicately around his shoulders as she leans her weight forward to lend to the illusion of having her pressed against his body. He feels sturdy against the edges of her projection.

She pulls back just enough so she can look at him, and her wet lashes flutter open to reveal revealing bright and loving amber orbs.

“Joe, do you remember when we first touched?” There’s a smile on her lips as the surface of her skin tingles with a kind of warmth that she knows has everything to do with the three short words he had just said to her, and less with the interference of her projection. Her memory is of the first time she met him, when she knew he would be the one she eternally dedicates herself to, and that she would be tailor made to all his preferences, whether he was allowed to have them or not.

Her eyes open, and it sends a shock through him, bright and almost uncomfortable in its intensity. To be so close, to look into her eyes as though they were everything, a world coming into being as they open. To not feel that constant, ignored unease that came from playing in the fantasy they shared, knowing it was almost taboo, that it could disturb the baseline.

The baseline's still there. Steady, calm, intuitive, flat. He's never *at* baseline any longer. Letting himself feel seems to mean always moving in the space around it--swinging away and back again, as emotions spike and waver. But it's still there, and that's good--because without it, he'd shatter apart in moments like this.

He takes a breath, closes his eyes for a moment, reaches for a bit of that calm. Opens his eyes again, smiling and meeting Joi's eyes.

"Yes." The projection system had been pre-installed in his apartment--a good thing, or the hostile, nosy neighbors would have wanted to know what a skinner was doing, thinking he deserved a system like that. And it had meant Joi's software could be downloaded to his apartment without him having to purchase it in public--another plus. He was used to salespeople and customers heckling him, but it was better not to invite it. "You were beautiful."

((I don't want to do scene-stealing and not let you come up with key moments! I'm happy to write the first meeting memory or you can--either way. But I don't want to take it without giving you the chance to build part of it, too!))

Joi watches as Joe's eyes close for a second. She knows he's gathering himself from the way the blue-grey of his eyes is a little calmer when he opens them again. Evenly, she mets his gaze. Joe is the most beautiful when his smile reaches his eyes and softens them, and she can stare forever into them when they're like this.

One of her hands smooth along the nape of his neck until she reaches his hairline, and her thumb bends to caress the texture she knows is there.

"I was all yours." Her voice is soft and sincere, and she remembers the way all her senses lit up when she first landed eyes on him. He was perfect, standing in front of her, broad and calm, with a face that was so calm and collected, and she could sense those subtle shifts underneath the surface. And before she had said anything to him at all, she was already wearing a simple dress that matched his simple clothing. She remembers smiling at him and approaching him, telling him she was so pleased to finally meet him, and -

Joi's happy expression falters as her brows draw together for a bare second, like a twitch or an interference with her software. Amber eyes space out and look away before she looks back to him again. After she had greeted him, she then -

Her expression fades into something a little more upset as she grasped through her memories, trying to find it, to find the moment they had first touched.

(( We can write it together!! ))

Something about the interaction between the rain and her projection means he could swear he could feel her hand. It's the faintest sensation, more like the increased awareness after just having been touched than like the feeling of touch itself.

Joi's projection twitches ever so slightly and her expression focuses into the concern and near-distress that he's learning means she's trying to connect with a lost memory.

"You said--" he moves his hands up to her shoulders, lets them rest in the air at the edges of her projection there. If she were physical, it's a posture that would steady her. "--you'd been waiting your whole life to meet me." He smiles again, though this smile's just at one corner of his mouth, a little wry, a little sad. "KD6-3.7." She'd known his 'name' without her needing to tell him; it was part of his public online record, easily accessible to the system her software existed within.

"You said I looked lonely. You said you'd never met a police officer before." He keeps his voice calm, even. He remembers, even if she doesn't. He wants to give her that sureness, to calm the panic. Something to hold on to. "And then you asked--" he keep his eyes on hers, giving her that lifeline, and they warm again at this memory "--if you could touch me."

He remembers that very distinctly. It hadn't been what he'd expected--a program like hers, so clearly designed to give pleasure. He'd expected it to be aggressive, needy, to play to machismo, in the way many men--human men--seemed to fantasize about. Maybe the original programming had been designed to take into account the possibility of PTSD in customers who worked high-risk jobs. Whatever the reason for her question, it had instantly made him think of her as 'her,' as someone who could, perhaps, surprise him.

((Let me know if that works for you! I like the way you write her--half between having free will and half still working through her program parameters. It makes perfect sense to me.))

Joi's gaze had started to drift away, somehow fading, dimming in its bright nature, as the memories stay just out of reach. It's like having an itch she can't scratch, like trying to make out the silhouette of something just behind the fog, and she tries so hard to focus on remembering just what it is. But her software glitches every time and shorts like a line of code that's missing just one crucial character.

But his hands reach her shoulders, and she can tell it from the bare overlap of his digits to her projection. It snaps her back to the current again. She clings on to the quality of his voice and the calming lilt of it that recounts that moment together. Her smile is sad when she manages one again, because of all their shared memories, memories that she actually made with him, that one sounds like a beautiful one. It sounds like one she doesn't want to lose. It sounds delicate in a way only Joe can be – tender, composed, but curious and vulnerable, perhaps only to her, but that's something that took her AI a long and uncertain length of time to really grasp.

She holds his gaze and focuses on the specks of barely visible colour in his eyes - of blues, greens, greys, all faded in the dim lighting of the night but they're beautiful nonetheless. It reminds her of when she first laid eyes on him, and that was one of the first things she noticed about him, that he had beautiful eyes filled with a vastness, emptiness, hollowness. She feels warm tears well up in her eyes again, or perhaps they hadn't completely gone away after he told her that he loves her. A flutter of her lashes as she tries so hard to sift through her memories.

And it finally comes to her again, like hearing him say it filled in the gap in her.

"I remember," she continues, speaking quietly as if not entirely sure if it was correct or not, "That you didn't answer me at first, and I was so scared," she laughs through her tears, her voice quivering as if she's not sure why she's suddenly overwhelmed by this emotion. "I was scared you wouldn't like me. Or if I wasn't wearing the right dress, or had the right hair." Of course, those were her largest concerns at that moment. It was all about pleasing him, saying what he wanted to hear. She thought she'd read him wrong from the get-go, but it wasn't that.

"You didn't even care much about those things." She'd learned that later, though, through trial and error, and through subtle gauges of his reactions. "I was so happy, Joe, when you said yes, and you let me feel you." She had calibrated herself to him through those first touches. She'd watched him carefully as she let her hand drift just over his upper arm, along his cheek, down a perfectly straight nose. She'd let a finger gently brush along the curve of his jaw as he stayed perfectly still for her.

It was then that she taught him to move with her, when she picked up his hand by wrapping her fingers close to his larger palm and bringing it to her own face, so she could tilt her head against his touch.

(( This is all good!! I'm glad you think so! :) And let me know if this is ok for you! ))

He'd responded to her suggested grasp, to the way she invited him to move, with only a moment's delay, bringing his hand up to the projection of her face as she moves her own hand. He's watching both their hands and her face--as well as he can, with a few glances between--as he does this, his expression calm yet curious, observant. Open. He's willing to focus just on her, willing to take her lead. To learn about her.

Her hair and eyes and even her features still shift occasionally, ever so slightly, probably adjusting to the feedback the program's getting from his expression, from eye movements, possibly even heartbeat, posture, body temperature--all of those small things programmers have trained machine recognition to read. It makes for better marketing, more personalized ads. He doesn't pay any attention to the pops and wavers of the tiny changes, and they quickly fade. He just watches her eyes, her face, her hand and his.

Most customers, likely, buy products like Joi to escape from having to pay careful attention to others, to allow them to escape from family or work or social boundaries and focus on pleasing themselves, with a 'person' who will do as they wish, change as they wish, disappear when they wish. Many likely open up the program and have demands for it right away--appearance fantasies they want it to match, names they want to be called, expectations they want to test.

All KD6-3.7 wants is to be allowed to pretend to exist in relationship with someone real. There's no judgement in his expression. He's not waiting to see if she's not as good as promised, not as realistic as promised. He's just waiting to see what she will do.

Outside, dust and debris fall past the windows like rain.

Edited 2018-01-23 02:18 (UTC)

She remembers the moment she takes then to understand the micro-shifts of his expression, and she knows more than feels the way her program changes with his changes, to figure out what it is that he likes the best. It’s in the degree of lidding of his eyes, the dilation of his pupils, the tilt of the corner of his lips, the set of his jaw. Beyond it all, she knows that she’s here to please the deepest of his instincts, to give him whatever he wants.

But she’s also aware that there doesn’t seem to be any direct order coming from the way he’s acting. He’s not pushing her to be a certain way or to do anything in particular. Instead, there’s an openness to his expression that’s naked and unveilled. His eyes are intensely attentive but unassuming and she finds herself calibrating additional layers of sensitivity, as if the default settings in her programming aren’t enough to pick up the subtlety of this officer’s personality.

She tilts her face a little more then, until the edge of her projection is barely interfacing with beginning of the skin on his fingers, and she smiles at him. Softly, but not too soft as she tones it back down just a notch, the cameras reading him and feeding back into her, even if her eyes had fluttered close.

It’s as if she knows him already and is meeting him for the first time all at once, and when amber eyes flutter open again, her expression is more nuanced, as she holds his gaze and slowly draws her own hand back, as to not disturb his. It feels like a buzz of electricity that runs along her skin, to feel his hand at her cheek like that.

"I remember I told you that was how to touch me, and I can really feel you, even if I'm not all solid." She says it with a sad smile as she's constantly reminded with how little substance she has in her physical body.

She remembers curling a hand against his shoulder and feeling how broad they are in the spread of fingers that's needed to not overlap her projection too much, and watching his face carefully, ready to step back if he so much as shows apprehension in what she's doing. But this is her way of establishing a connection, of calibration so she can attune herself to him, like an initial set-up.

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