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It’s not that replicants can’t crush your skull between their palms like soda-can, it’s that bio-engineered pavlo-programming makes it kind of difficult for them. At the core, down to the bones and structures, they’re very human after all. That’s the point. The problem. The appeal. All of those things together and trashing the concept top to bottom, but the point in this particular case is that physically abusing a replicant is still risky because replicants have nerves and nerves are wired to reflexes and reflexes – even in replicants – can be involuntary. So even if it seems like you can order a replicant up against a wall – you can – they might still knee-jerk and kick your spine out through the top of your skull.
But a staple of humanity is, of course, their tolerance for risk.
K gets roughed up regularly. Not by civilians, of course, he’s LAPD property and LAPD property still ranks above civilian in the hierarchy of bio-programmable shit-giving. If a drunk woman with a lead pipe charges him in an alley, he’s allowed to ignore her command that he ‘eat-shit and die, skin-job’ and just arrest her. Rank plays into it. Blade runners are expensive, so when you get one commissioned, you don’t let every swinging dick on the force have all-access clearance to order them around on the off chance someone co-opts them for a doughnut run three states over.
Or, you know, worse.
Sergeant Leary has a fist in his hair and his face pressed against the concrete wall of a mid-level storage room. Nothing’s happened yet. Sergeant is just high enough the chain of command that Leary can get away with… well, this, but not much else. Technically, he’s frisking him. K’s internal clock tells him he’s got ten minutes until he’s late for a meeting with Joshi, so five minutes until the meeting with Joshi becomes more important than Leary telling him to ‘hold still’.
“Hold still,” Leary says again, his mouth against K’s ear.
He has coffee breath. Also, a hard on. K checks his internal clock and wonders if Joi will want to watch a movie (like Joi might ever in any circumstance tell him ‘no’ on anything). And then Leary runs his hand up under K’s jacket, along his ribs, feeling up past his gun holster toward his pectoral. K decides he’s not going to watch a movie. He’ll read to Joi until he’s tired then ask if she’ll sing to him. Well, not sing exactly. Hum. Right. Leary grabs at the front of his jeans, gets a handful and K jolts out of his evening fantasy about Joi back to the sweaty mat smell of this storage room. The overheads keep flickering.
“I have a meeting with Joshi,” K says.
“She’ll get her turn,” Leary says.
K hopes not.
“If you make me late, I’ll have to explain why when she asks.”
Leary starts to go for K’s belt.
“That’s not a frisk if you do that,” K says reasonably, but Leary stops because what K actually means is ‘if you do that, I can and will put you in a wrist lock and it’s gonna hurt’.
Leary shoves his head against the wall, leans his weight against K’s neck. “Almost forgot,” he says. “Thanks for the heads up. Now, spread your legs, skin-job.”
K shifts his right boot a whole additional inch to the right and ponders what Joi will say if he buys her a new book.
K arrives on time to his meeting with Joshi.
He kind of likes Joshi. 95% of the time, she makes completely efficient use of his time and abilities and conducts herself with the long-time impatience and professionalism that her experience and rank has afforded her. She’s got a politician’s smile, but a beat cop’s mouth, an instinct for damage control and an eye for detail. She notices when something bothers him. She even asks him to speak up about it. Mostly, she just leaves him alone because he exists on her peripheral. Like a coffee machine.
First and foremost: She gets things done. He’s had other Lieutenants. Joshi is the best. And, not that it matters, but Joshi smells nice and doesn’t smoke. Which should be a complete non-issue invisible to him within the topography of her identity if it wasn’t… relevant from time to time. It’s rather like being relieved that the mugger in your apartment building doesn’t piss on you while they take your money.
“You need to stop getting banged up on every run,” she says, not looking up from her computer screens.
“I agree. But my targets really want to bang me up,” K says.
Joshi sips a glass of what is probably not water from a glass on her desk.
“Sounds like a you problem,” she says, still mostly ignoring him.
She’s got a fresh haircut. Her nails are trimmed and painted with neutral colors. Her pant suit is an old favorite for mid-week wear and K thinks she’s lost weight. He didn’t used to so closely monitor the minutia of his commanding officers but now it seems necessary.
“Your numbers are good, K.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Good is not great, K.”
“Understood, ma’am.”
She looks at him, finally, over the top of her screens. “What the fuck is wrong with your hair?”
He blinks, slowly. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“It’s sticking up. You sleep on it funny?”
He reaches up to smooth it down. “No.”
She sighs. “Go home and comb your hair and get some sleep. If I have anything additional, I’ll drop it off at your complex.”
A slight spike of adrenaline hits his system. “I can come to you if that’s easier,” he says, mostly on reflex, to avoid the imagined threat in Joshi coming to his apartment in the night.
She looks at him again, more intently, and he realizes this was the wrong thing to say. The opposite of what he should have said. He remains completely neutral in expression, devoid of any signal but he can see her pondering his phrasing for additional layers of meaning that are there, but not what she thinks. Joshi, at her core, views him as equipment. Equipment with emotional bandwidth and nerve endings, which is more than some cops factor in, but equipment at the end of the day.
“Hmm, I’ll call you if I want you come by. Stay available.”
That makes it an order.
“Okay.”
Captain Bryant can get away with basically anything.
He catches K as he’s leaving and instructs him to follow him. Says he’ll give K a ‘lift home’ and K braces immediately for what’s coming. It’s raining outside. Bryant holds the door for him. K isn’t sure why that makes his teeth grit, of all things. Worse than Leavy in the store room. Once they’re in the air, Bryant puts the vehicle on auto pilot and pushes his seat back. The windows he blacks out. K would point out that a good scan can penetrate most black out shields on their standard issue vehicles, but Bryant doesn’t even wait long enough for that.
“Take off your jacket, K.”
K takes off his jacket.
“Come here.”
That’s ambiguous. K… kind of leans across the aisle between their seats, like he’s going to change the radio station. Bryant makes things un-ambiguous by grabbing the back of K’s head and pulling his face down into his lap, holding him there by the back of his neck. Bryant at least doesn’t pretend at anything when no one’s watching. K doesn’t move or pull away, just braces one hand against the dashboard while Bryant spreads his legs a little and grinds his very apparent erection against K’s chin and mouth. Unbothered, apparently, by K’s total unresponsive stillness.
“Open your mouth.”
K does this, but only just.
“Atta boy.”
Bryant uses the hand at K’s neck to pull himself out of his briefs. He then uses the same hand to run his fingers back and forth through K’s short uniform regulation haircut. It takes him a moment to realize.
“What are you waiting for?” When K doesn’t move he says, “Oh, right. Hold still.”
K’s spine goes rigid, a reflex, but he doesn’t bite down. Not even when Bryant forces his jaw wide, like you pry the jaw of a dog open, and starts to skull-fuck him in earnest. He does pull his lips over his teeth, for no other reason than to stop the man slamming his head into the dash like he did last time. K’s eyes burn on reflex. His throat spasms around the blockage, triggering a rush of animal fear – like being choked. But he knows he’s not. He’ll live. Bryant smells like a day of ball sweat and detergent. He fucks K’s throat until he comes. K’s mouth is immediately full of vile, body-warm fluid, but he doesn’t spit it out. Bryant grabs his chin and pulls his face up.
“You’re the prettiest model they’ve come up with.” A grin. “A real angel.”
There’s a part of him, and there always is, that pavlo-programming did not weed out. The part of him that just screams over and over ‘Spit in his fucking face. Just do it, then throw him through the fucking –!‘ but then Bryant says, “Swallow.”
So…
***
People in his apartment complex don’t like him generally.
For a while, no one knew he was a Replicant because you can’t generally tell at a glance who is and who isn’t but after a while it becomes apparent and because, legally, if someone asks him if he is one he has to say ‘yes’. So once everyone knew he was a tin-soldier, that’s what they called him. Three attempted murders later, most of the people in his building leave him alone A: because they realize he’s LAPD property and legally can use semi-deadly force and B: K keeps the kill-bangers out of the building.
Kill-bangers are exactly as their name might imply.
K punched his hand through one banger’s spine a year back and sicced LAPD beat on the rest. Since then, K’s building has never had an issue which the locals now contribute to his living in there. No one touches K now. Sure, they still call him a ‘skin-job’ and ‘skinner’ and ‘tin-soldier’ and ‘a murderous piece of fucking hardware’ but that’s okay. Cat-calling on his way up the stairs is fine. Much better than getting a belly of buckshot, which is what happened to his predecessor.
“Hey, hey, Ken-doll. Why the long face?” says someone in informal Japanese.
K’s three flights from his flat, trying to scoot around a group of people cooking hotdogs in the stairwell. He glances sidelong at the speaker, a girl with a holo-band over her eyes and a crop-top T-shirt. She pushes off the wall to intercept him so he backs up a step. The girl has a gap in her front teeth when she grins and a few other people in the stairwell chuckle. She’s physically blocking his path now and moves to keep blocking him when he tries to, wordlessly, bypass her.
He sighs. “Excuse me,” he says more directly.
She ignores him. “Why don’t you stop and talk to your neighbors, Ken?”
“You should call me K,” he says, also in Japanese.
“Ken, I’m curious,” she says, switching to English for the benefit of her audience. “Do police skinners have cocks? My buddy is convinced you don’t have anything down there. Like a Ken-doll. See?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” K says.
“That’s what I told my buddy,” she says, pulling out a mobile phone. She starts recording and aims it at him.
“Don’t do that,” he says, moving a hand up to block her camera.
“But I need proof, Ken.” She moves back so he can’t take it. “C’mon and whip it out for me.”
“Stop recording. Let me pass, please.”
“Let me pass, please,” she says in a mocking falsetto. “Dick pics to pass.”
K gives up on being polite about it. He grabs her shoulders and physically moves her aside. Gently, but in a way that broaches no arguing. She just uses the opportunity to push her hand between his legs and grab a passing feel. He sighs and keeps climbing the stairs, leaving his neighbor laughing in the stairwell with her friends. He pulls his collar up a little higher and listens to them comparing video. He’s fairly sure they have a web-stream of some kind where they upload their harassment. That’s dangerous. Locals know he’s their friendly neighborhood skin job, but a watcher…
“Don’t post that stuff, Miko,” he says loudly, over his shoulder.
Laughter.
“Hey, a dude from a snuff site wants your room number, Ken.”
More laughter.
“I think I’ve seen your model on those sites before.”
Louder laughter.
“I can send you the video, Ken. You look super fuckable with no clothes on.”
Uproarious laughter.
K climbs the rest of the stairs.
Joi can usually tell when he’s had a bad day. Even if K tries to hide it.
He has a script in his head when he comes in the door and he rolls it out like usual. “Honey, I’m home.” And “What are you making? That smells great.” And “How was your day?” And Joi is effervescent and sparkling. Literally, in some cases, because her holo emitter is prone to flights of fancy and so is she – assuming a K-Pop go-go dancing outfit, then a wool-knit sweater, then a pink pencil skirt. She settles on the wool-knit sweater and, he thinks, something in his face must have signaled to her that was the one he like best. (It was.)
K takes a seat on the couch, slowly, dropping his body into the cushions and he’s not sure why he feels so sore.
Joi tilts her head at him. A little sadly, but warmly somehow, she says, “You have a day, K?”
He tries on a smile for her. “No. Just glad to be home.”
She folds her arms and bends low, nearly nose-to-nose. “You can tell me anything you know.”
She is, he knows, always scanning him for cues. Biometric tells and triggers. She’d be a decent lie-detector if her programs didn’t build in walls around what she can react on. On some level, she knows everything about him down to his heartbeat and skin temperature. On another, level though, here, she can’t call him on anything that would seem…. Inhuman. He’s not sure if he’s grateful for that or not. K smiles again for her and starts to tell her, once more, that he’s okay.
And that’s when the door buzzer goes off.
Joi straightens. Her eyes take on a tiny flicker indicating she is checking the exterior camera and says, “Lieutenant Joshi is at the door.” She tilts her head, trying to read the situation. “Work?” she guesses, looking at him.
K doesn’t move.
“Social?” she says, brightening in a way that might please most male owners of this product.
K’s hands clench.
Joi’s smile flicks away. “Oh, K…”
“I have to answer the door. Please go offline, Joi.”
“It will be okay,” she says. “I’m right here with you.”
“Thank you. Please log off.”
Joshi, to her credit, does bring a casefile and for an hour sits in the living room, grilling him on the finer details of their plan to bring down the next mark, the methodology and the clean-up. She’s worried about this one. Rebel replicants, real rebels, not just runners… they’re dangerous to more than K’s personal well-being. K sits in his chair, a repurposed desk from a decommissioned school down the block while she goes through the file on the table before him. She leans her weight on one hand on top of the desk. Her other hand flicks through the file.
She pours herself a few glasses of his vodka. Then another.
“He’s a big fucker,” she says. “Think you can take him?”
“That’s my job,” he says.
“Still baffles me they didn’t make your type in a larger frame.”
“Size doesn’t make a difference when I’m built military grade. We all cap out at the same ceiling.” He’s said this before, but it bears repeating for no other reason then it’s possible she could decommission him and ask for a bigger blade runner. K bends over the file a little more. “Smaller means more versatile.”
One of Joshi’s hands lands on his shoulder.
“Well,” she says, patting him, “you are that, at least.”
He tenses. Joshi is drunk though, so she doesn’t really pick up on it. Sober Joshi would pick up on it, but that’s why she’s not sober, he thinks. It’s easier to smooth this whole thing out into something it isn’t if liquor blurs it a bit.
“I feel like you could use some leave, K.”
“That’s okay ma’am.”
“Maybe a weekend, like a nine-to-fiver?”
K hesitates. Time off does not exist for blade runners of his build. Two whole days to himself? Joshi’s finger nails are sliding through his hair, along his scalp and if he pulls away now, even if Joshi is drunk, it will break the facsimilia she’s building. He tries to think of an excuse – he’s tired, he’s sick, he’s got a case, but... a weekend? He thinks of Joi, logged off somewhere in the console, passively data gathering and thinks two days just lying around the flat, listening to her talk to him about anything and everything. His face must show a little of what he’s thinking.
“Was that a bit of a smile?” Joshi says, tilting her head.
Was it?
K doesn’t think so, but that doesn’t matter. “A weekend would… be nice “
“Then you’ll get one. After this job, a weekend. How about it?”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Joshi reaches down and picks up her vodka, finishes the glass. Then she says, “Celebrate with me a little, K. That’s an order.”
And then the command takes hold of him and it’s almost a relief, sliding into it and letting the electricity possess him and guide him. She kisses his mouth, his jaw, then nips his ear just a little with her teeth and, objectively, it feels nice. She doesn’t try to hurt him. Not like Leary or Bryant. She smells nice, like perfume and deodorant and he inhales a little, closing his eyes and imagines, maybe, Joi somehow. A miracle. Joshi runs a hand down his chest, to his stomach, over the outside of his jeans. She’s used to him never being hard at the start of this stuff.
‘You’re not a pleasure model,’ she’d said to him the first time, like it was a kindness.
Also means, she knows he wasn’t really built for this shit, but does it anyway.
This time, his Lieutenant puts him on his back. She tells him to lie still while she pulls his belt open, pulls his pants down to the middle of his thighs, pushes his shirt up to his collarbone. She uses her fingers and K grits his teeth and grips and comforter. He looks toward the home projection unit overhead. He tries not to grimace or make a sound, even when it hurts. After a few minutes of Joshi’s careful coaxing, she climbs on top of him. She has nothing on under her skirt and as she slides down around him, cupping his neck in her hand, her mouth against his jaw he just thinks, That was presumptuous. But then again, maybe not.
K never comes during these encounters, but Joshi doesn’t seem to notice.
He waits until she’s gone, then strips the sheets and puts them in the laundry. Then he takes a shower. Joi comes back online as he’s getting dressed again.
She tries to read the situation. “Did you have fun?”
The defaults in her programming always seem to assume men having sex is fun.
“No.”
Her parameters recalculate and, he thinks, a more real reaction comes through. “I thought not.”
Kay lies down on his stripped mattress. His arm curled under his head and Joi kneels by the bed, folding her arms so they appear to lay atop the sleeping pad. She rests her head on her forearm, gazing at him. From this angle, he can’t see through her at all and the faint static warmth of her holo-projection field feels a little like being near a flesh and blood person. He thinks of Joshi with her mouth against his throat and squeezes his eyes shut, shoves that down, and then it’s okay again. He opens his eyes. Joi reaches for him, fingers ghosting near his face.
“What do you need?”
“Can you sing?” he asks.
“I’d love to sing.”
“You don’t have to say that,” he says, his voice catching hard. He clears his throat. “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
“K, I want to. Are you okay?”
He nods.
K clears his throat again. His hands are shaking. He can shrug off a gun fight, a stabbing, a mob of rioters with machetes, the violence and mania of people at their worst. Strangers attacking strangers in the streets. That all makes sense to him. Joshi straddling him in her pencil skirt, Bryant holding his head down, Leary in a storage room – that makes so much less sense to him and he thinks the people who built him somehow didn’t factor that kind of trauma into his wiring. They didn’t imagine a blade runner, even one with built in loyalties, was open to this kind of violence. He’ll get used to it, of course, he already is.
But still… seems like a flaw in his manufacture.
“You are my sunshine,” Joi says, smiling, “my only sunshine…”
She hums the rest.
K closes his eyes.