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Jackie, against all odds, lives.
He comes to, drenched in cold sticky sweat, silly off of intravenous pain killers, and immediately gags clear bile over the side of Vik’s ripperchair.
For a few blissful moments after waking, Jackie forgets the circumstances that landed him here with his side split open.
Then it all returns, piece by piece: The heist. The relic. Dexter DeShawn. Saburo fucking Arasaka. The thermoregulated case, cracked in three spots and losing temperature fast. Too fast for them to do anything about it.
He’s back on the streets within the week with a pat on the shoulder and a hug from Vik.
Life doesn’t go back to normal. Of course it doesn’t, ‘cause that’s not how shit works. He tries his damndest, though, to slip back into something of a routine. Even though his side still hurts if he moves funny, and he still doesn’t have full range of his right shoulder.
It’s almost poetic, though: the bruises heal. Red and angry and swollen, to a pale purple, to a sickly yellow, and then nothing at all.
So Jackie does what he’s always done: he works.
Padre keeps him fed with jobs. Wakako calls too, sometimes, and Jackie has a sneaking feeling that when she does, it’s because she’s run out of better options.
There’s humiliation he feels at that. Shame. It seems to be the constant undertow in his life these days.
It’s stupid, he knows this, even a little pathetic: Some nights, he thinks a clean, spectacular death would’ve been easier than the quiet aftermath of Konpeki. What had Dex told V that one time? A blaze of glory. Yeah. That would’ve been nice. A drink with his name on it at the Afterlife. Stories traded by young, hungry mercs, uttering the name Welles in the same breath as Blackhand.
But now, he’s just Jackie. Doing the same old runner jobs for scratch. And he’s still gotta pay off that stupid fucking bike.
He tells Misty this—that maybe he shoulda died. It’s probably one of many reasons why she dumps him.
Jackie doesn’t see much of V these days, either.
Okay, yeah, they still kick it. She still comes over for dinner with his mamá, they get drinks at El Coyote. They’ll go for drives in V’s car, and they’ll talk until the sun comes up over the skyline.
But they don’t work together anymore. There’s a whole other part of her life that he doesn’t touch now. She’s gotten calls from a guy in Pacifica. Mr. Fingers, or some ridiculous name like that. She’s also picked up some gigs from that nomad lady out in the Badlands. Not once does she invite him along.
He doesn’t blame her, not after the shit he alone dragged her into. But it still hurts his feelings, just a little. He misses her, he’s pretty sure. He knows for sure he misses the days when it was just the two of them. Waltzing into a gig with her as his tall, slinking shadow, that beautiful Nekomata rifle slung over her shoulder.
When he does see her, it’s a shining light at the end of the goddamn tunnel.
Now, it’s been two months, a week, and four days since Konpeki.
Two months, a week, and two days since he woke up in Vik’s ripperchair.
Two months, a week, and a day since V zeroed Dex in his hotel room before he could get to them. One bullet square in the center of that fat chest, another in the neck, and a final one fired through his cheek, where V’s shaky hand had missed his forehead.
A month, a week, and one day since Misty dumped his sorry ass. Said she loved him, but couldn’t deal with the reckless shit that he pulled at Konpeki. Told him he should take some time for himself to heal.
(Bullshit. Bullshit. Total bullshit.)
Three weeks since he first slept through the night without waking up convinced he was still bleeding out in that Delamain.
Most days blur together, but this one doesn’t.
It’s evening. They’re in his garage, doing absolutely fuck-all.
She’s slouched across his sofa, absentmindedly picking at her nail beds. He’s working on his bike, but the task has lost his attention twenty minutes ago, so now he’s just lying on the ground, staring up at the ceiling.
V sits up rather suddenly.
“You want a break from that?” She gestures toward the bike, the mess of tools scattered around him.
“Why not?” He hikes himself up on one elbow.
“Let’s go for a ride,” V says, and tosses Jackie her key card.
He drives ‘cause he wants to, and she’s perfectly content to sit with her legs up on the passenger dash and watch the city roll on by. They ride through Westbrook for a bit, then Santo Domingo, before she taps the dash and tells him to take the 5 west, straight out into the Badlands.
They stay quiet, but it’s not the awkward kind. The only real sound is the tires scraping out an even note against the sandy, cracked asphalt. The desert unfolds on either side. Dusty, rocky nothingness, broken by the occasional rusted-out turbine and long-abandoned billboard.
Jackie keeps one hand on the wheel, the other on the shifter, tapping out the rhythm from a song on the radio.
He doesn’t make it out here often. Work rarely takes him beyond the dense urban sprawl of the city, and when it does, he’s in and out as quickly as he can manage. Jackie doesn’t like the way the wind picks up the sand, how its course grains always seem to wheedle their way under his nails. He hates the agoraphobic, empty nothingness that opens on all sides, and how sometimes the city disappears behind a hill like it doesn’t even exist.
V breathes easier out here, though. Even with Raffen Shiv prowling around every dusty corner. It’s the closest to home she can get, he supposes. She was a nomad, once. You could argue she still is. And the part of her that was born in the bed of a Thornton pickup still clenches up inside the city.
They’ve turned off onto an unpaved side-road when V begins to speak.
“Got a message from my sister,” she starts. “A couple of days ago.”
“She’s still running with the clans, right?”
“Yeah. Or—well. Sorta.” V shrugs her shoulders. “She linked up with a group callin’ themselves the Aldecaldos. Out near Reno. Good folks, she said. Solid rigs, ya know? Real family shit.”
“Oh. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Good for her.”
“They’re passin’ by Night City soon,” V says. “Couple nights. Pickin’ up supplies, seein’ some folks.”
“You gonna go see her?”
“Yeah. Think so.” There’s a beat, as if V has to consider what to say next. “I’m thinkin’ I’ll go with them. When they leave.”
That makes him look at her this time, an eyebrow raised. Not long—just long enough to get a glimpse at her before he looks back to the road. She’s turned towards the window, jaw set, reflection of the dash lights glowing against her skin.
Huh.
“Leave?” Jackie asks, like there’s even a chance he misheard her.
(He did not.)
“Yeah.”
“Like. For a bit?”
He can hear V pondering how to answer. She shrugs sheepishly. “Dunno yet.”
“What’s that mean? You dunno?” Jackie’s laugh comes out sharp and derisive. “You comin’ back or no?”
“I said I dunno. Might be a while.” Her voice is bordering on defensive.
“And your sister?”
Jackie wants to be mad—needs to be. Probably because the alternative is that hollow drop in his gut, the kind that makes his throat burn. Disappointment, maybe? Heartache?
“She wants me with her. Says there’s room. She told me they could use another driver, another gun. Another set of hands, ya know?”
How reasonable. How practical! Somehow that makes it worse. How could he blame anyone for following the scent of good, honest work to lead them out of Night City?
Jackie raps his hands nervously on the steering wheel. “Okay. Preem. So when were you gonna tell me?”
“Now, I guess.”
His pulse kicks up—he can hear it in his ears. An uncomfortable heat crawls up the back of his neck, under the collar of his jacket. Jackie rolls his shoulders once, trying to shake it off, but it only makes it worse. He can feel an angry sweat starting to bead along his hairline.
This is where he grabs onto it. That familiar anger.
He tells himself it’s about timing, about respect, about people counting on her. Fuck her for leaving him behind.
“Must be nice.”
“Huh?”
“Get to just roll out, huh? Leave me back in NC just to clean up the mess.”
It sounds meaner than he intends, but there’s no rolling it back now. And V? Caught entirely unawares. Her eyes go wide, then narrow, mouth pulling into a tight frown as it clicks: Jackie is pissed. V stiffens, like a cat with its back arched, and shifts in her seat to face him.
“What the hell are you talking about—”
“No, hold up.” He cuts her off. “We—“ Jackie takes a hand off the wheel to gesture emphatically to the space between them “—don’t just walk away from Konpeki like nothing happened. Fixers still talk, V. People are still askin’ me questions. That shit’s gonna follow me forever.”
Her mouth falls open at that name, appalled at the implication of his words. Her expression—if Jackie didn’t know better—could almost be mistaken for hurt.
Did he know better? Really? ‘Cause he can just barely see the trembling of a lip.
“You think I’m f—” she cuts herself off, disbelieving, and tries again. “Oh my god Jackie, that’s not fair!”
Jackie slows the car abruptly, rocks crunching under the tires as he pulls onto the unpaved shoulder. He’s not even parked for a second before he swivels his shoulders towards her, his upper lip curling over his teeth.
“Sure. We can talk about fair. Why the hell not? You get to disappear into the desert with your shiny new clan, and I’m the one left explainin’ why the job went sideways. I don’t get to leave. That’s not fair. Fuck that.”
V blinks silently at him.
“And since when do Nomads pick up strays?” he adds. There’s something nasty in his voice. “No offense, V, but those clans don’t work like that. They don’t just open the door ‘cause someone asks nice.”
“Okay. First of all: they’re not ‘shiny and new,’” she spits. “Secondly: I’m not some stray—that’s my fucking sister. What the fuck is wrong with you, Jack?”
“Sorry, sorry. Just feels real convenient.” His hands are still tight on the steering wheel. “Suddenly you got an out.”
“Is that so bad?”
That is not at all what he wants to hear. He clenches his jaw so hard it hurts.
“Yes!”
Jackie’s not naive. He knows people fight and claw their way out of this city, kill for it. He just hoped that it wouldn’t be her. They were meant to climb their way out of the shit together, right?
The words what about me? echo on repeat in his head. He does not dare say them, though, for fear of coming across as desperate. Or worse, worse, worse still: that he has terribly overestimated his role in her life.
“I tried, Jackie, I did. I served my time. And surprise, all I ended up with is a bullet in my leg and not even three hundred eddies to my name.”
“So that’s it? You’re gonna delta at the first shit gig?” They both know he’s downplaying the shit out of it, ‘cause V gives him this incredulous sideways glare that would have him cowering in his seat if he weren’t so hyped up on adrenaline.
V jabs an unkind finger into Jackie’s chest and he can’t help but flinch back. “The only reason we’re still kickin’ is pure, dumb luck, choom. Not ‘cause we’re special. Not ‘cause we’re any better at what we do than the next scop-brained gonk with wet dreams about the big leagues.”
Ouch.
She turns away suddenly. Jackie keeps his eyes forward, pretends he doesn’t see the way her shoulders hitch, the quick, angry swipe of her wrist across her cheek.
Now that—that makes his blood run cold. It’s enough to snap him out of that intoxicating, self-righteous anger.
“I gotta delta the fuck outta this city before that luck runs out. This shit ain’t for me, choom. You know that. You knew from the beginning I wasn’t built for this big city shit. I wanna go home. I miss my sister. I miss my Galena. I miss life on the road.”
She swallows hard. Shakes her head. “And if you’re trying to get me to stay, you’re not being real convincing, ‘cause you’re being a massive dick right now.”
And with that, she’s gone. V slams the door so hard behind her, it rattles the whole car. Dust swirls up around her boots as she stalks away from the car, hands fisted at her sides.
“V—“ he starts.
Jackie watches her as she moves out of the headlight beams into the darkness. In his head, he counts the time. Three seconds. Then ten. Then thirty. And she still isn’t coming back to the car.
Great. Thanks, Jackie. You really handled that one with grace and decorum. You’re a real class-act.
He curses. He kills the engine. He climbs out after her.
He finds her just out of the cone of the headlights, the back of her a shadowy outline against the moonlit landscape. But he can see that her head is bowed, one hand braced on her knee. Her other hand scrubs hard at her face.
Jackie slows his steps. He’s never seen her like this. Bleeding, yeah. Angry, more often than not. Exhausted. But not like this, never crying.
It’s a weird sight. The kind that makes his stomach twist. Jackie doesn’t know what to do with this information, or how to even look her way without feeling like he’s intruding on something deeply, deeply private.
He stops a few feet away, hands hanging useless at his sides. Shit, what does he even do in this scenario? He can’t think of anything he could do that wouldn’t end up with her fist in his face. Not that she’d ever hit him before, not seriously, at least, but fuck, he wouldn’t blame her one bit for starting now.
“Hey,” he says. “Chica.” As if endearments could patch up this astronomical fuck-up.
She doesn’t turn. Her shoulders rise and fall with each erratic breath.
“V, c’mon—“
“Don’t,” V snaps. Then, calmer: “Just—gimme a sec.”
“I’m sorry,” he says anyway after a moment. “I shouldn’t have come at you like that. I wasn’t thinkin’.”
She lets out a breath that could be a laugh or a sob. “Yeah, no shit.”
“Look, I’m not mad ‘cause you wanna leave. I mean—I am, but that ain’t the real thing. I just—I’d be real sad if you left. I dunno.” Jackie shrugs sheepishly.
He’s never been good at this. Putting words to the feelings. Naming what’s tying his gut into knots.
Maybe it’s learned behavior, he thinks. Growing up in the Welles household, feelings weren’t something you talked through. They were something you swallowed down or something you learned to dodge when Raúl Welles lost his temper. His old man never explained himself when he was angry. He didn’t have to, ‘cause the metal end of the belt explained just fine.
Jackie hates that about himself. Hates that anger comes easier than honesty. Or maybe he’s just stupid, which, frankly, is an easier pill to swallow.
She turns to face him head on, bleary-eyed, tired, and hurt.
He continues. “Shit, choom. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I ain’t never had a friend like you.”
Everything he says feels inadequate. A fraction of a fraction of whatever the fuck he has going on in his head. He wants to say he loves her. He wants to say his mamá would worry herself sick if V left, that she already asks too many questions when V doesn’t come around for dinner. That the idea of getting midnight noodles after a gig with anyone else makes his stomach turn.
That every version of the future he pictures—vague and half-formed as it is—has her in it every time.
And it’s embarrassing, loving someone this much when you’ve known them for less than a year. How quickly she’d wormed her way into his life, his routines, his plans. Fuckin’ embarrassing that he’s standing out here in the dirt with his heart in his hands, wanting to tell her more than anything he can’t think about tomorrow without her there.
V doesn’t say a word. She does, however, bite into her bottom lip so hard he fears she might bleed.
“V, hey.” Jackie crosses the distance between them to touch her shoulder. “Hey. I’m sorry.”
She flinches, jerking her shoulder away. No surprise there.
What does surprise him, however, is that she then she pushes herself against Jackie, burying her face in his jacket, grabbing at the sleeves to press herself closer. He doesn’t think. His arms are around her, his chin comes to perch on her head.
Relief washes over him, because at least she won’t leave hating his guts.
“Fuck!” She shouts and the sound is muffled by his shoulder. “This fucking sucks.”
“Then don’t go!”
“I can’t do that.”
V will heave his heavy, dying body all the way into Vik’s clinic. V will bury a bullet into the head of the fixer who intended to do the same to Jackie after the shitshow at Konpeki. V will spend every waking moment with Jackie until he can walk on his own, piss on his own, stand for more than a minute without wanting to double over.
V, however, will not stay in Night City for Jackie. Simple as that.
Damn.
He runs his hand over the lower half of his face to cover up the way his mouth quivers.
“Right. Yeah. I know.”
“I’ll miss ya too, choom. More than you know. You’re the only one keepin’ me here now.”
She’s looking up at him, cheek pressed up against him, with these big sad eyes. Jackie lifts a hand without thinking and cups her face. His thumb traces the edges of her cheekbone.
“Mamá’s gonna be heartbroken.” A gentle tuck of a hair behind her ear.
“You think I haven’t thought of that? What am I gonna do without her tamales?”
“I dunno. You’ll have to come back for dinner one day.”
“Yeah.” She nods and sniffs.
“She’ll probably pack you two dozen to go, too. So you don’t go hungry.”
“They’d be gone in a day.”
He leans in, then, to kiss her on the cheek. It’s familiar enough that Jackie doesn’t think twice about it. Muscle memory, maybe, from too many late nights, him laughing too loud, and draping himself over her shoulder at El Coyote. A little tipsy, warm and harmless.
But V—V cradles his jaw, thumb clumsily brushing the corner of his mouth, and kisses him straight on.
What else is there for him to do? He kisses her back with a sharp inhale through his nose. More reflexive than anything, like the way your body pulls your hand away from a hot stove before your brain knows what’s happening.
Huh. Okay.
‘Course, it’s only half a second before he remembers it’s V.
Oh fuck.
“Whaaa—?” Like the fucking gonk he is, Jackie breaks away with a panicked laugh, already stepping back with his hands raised. His ears burn. Thank fuck it’s too dark to see them. “Hey—“
V mirrors him immediately, any and all tears replaced with this look of bewilderment on her face—or, a better word for it: mortification. “Shit, I’m sorry choom.” The words tumble out too fast. “That was a gonk move. I didn’t—I thought you were—I misread—“
“V, chill. It’s cool.”
He steps forward, closes the space she just put back between them, palms bracketing the sides of her face, and kisses her. For real this time.
Oh fuck!
Jackie’s too eager. He knows it. He can feel it in the way he crashes into her mouth. They keep knocking their teeth together, ‘cause he can’t slow down, can’t get enough. He angles his head, tries to open her up, and she meets him just as hungrily with parted lips.
Their lips slip, catch, slide again.
Oh fuck.
Adrenaline shoves Jackie forward, and he lets it, even when the rush makes him a little light-headed.
The both of them are tugging and dragging and pulling and pushing. Her hands slide from his jaw to his shoulders to his jacket, gripping hard enough to bunch the fabric and pulling hard. But there’s nowhere for him to go, pressed up tight, tight, tight, until his thigh is pushed up between her legs (Oh, and this gets a noise out of her, Jackie notices giddily.)
Jackie’s able to get his fingers at her waist, then her ribs, then higher to palm gaudily at her breasts through her shirt, both hands touching just to touch just to touch.
They’re noisy, too. Embarrassingly so. Not just the wet, breathy sounds of their mouths, but also the way they keep exhaling into each other. Soft sighs, low grunt swallowed by the other before they can escape.
It’s the hottest thing Jackie’s ever heard.
How long are they there for? A minute? Two? Ten? A thousand years? He’s not really keeping track. Jackie needs—something. What does he need? He doesn’t know what. He’s lost the language to even piece together this all-consuming urge. He needs her to push him down and ride him in the dirt. She needs to crawl inside his skin, or fuck—anything.
He needs her to stay in Night City and be his best choom and stay up until sunrise watching bad sitcoms.
He needs—he needs—he needs—?
Then it’s over.
Jackie’s not sure who makes the executive decision to end it, but they break apart with a gasp. Jackie stumbles back a step, then another. His heart is thump-thump-thumping a thousand miles a minute. He can feel it in his eyes, his throat, his dick.
There’s spit on his chin, his nose, a little on his cheeks.
V stays where she is, breathing hard, lips swollen. She’s got this dazed look on her face, like someone walloped her over the head. Wide-eyed, wired as all get-out, not sure which way is up.
“What—“
“Do you wanna—“ they both blurt out at once.
They freeze.
“Sorry,” Jackie says, scratching at the back of his neck.
“No, you go.”
“Um. Did you mean to do that?”
“No.” Then, “Kind of?”
He shifts his weight, steps half a pace closer without really meaning to. “Okay. ‘Cause I was gonna ask if you wanna—”
“Yes. Fuck yes. Please.”
They’re back together again—hands, hips, mouths slotting back into place.
He breaks from her mouth to kiss along the hinge of her jaw, the soft spot beneath her ear. A trick he’d learned a thousand years ago from a ‘Tino girl he was screwing when he was just nineteen. She tilts her head without being asked, breath wavering, and he takes that as an invitation enough to follow the line of her neck with an open mouth.
Jackie stops, looks at V with a knit brow. “Here?”
She returns the look—only hers is laced with impatience sewn into the tight purse of her lips. “Well, yeah?”
He turns to look around them. Now that his eyes have adjusted to the darkness, he can see the road on one side, and beyond the road is the same expanse of desert that surrounds the two of them on the other side. He can see the glow of night city like some faux sunrise peaking over the next hill.
It’s not the strangest place Jackie’s ever gotten laid, not by a long shot. The bathroom at Red Dirt. That one time on Vik’s ripper chair (which he still tries not to think too hard about.) Compared to those, the open desert under the stars is downright romantic.
Hell, he’d do it right here in the dirt, if it came down to it—if he weren’t, allegedly, a gentleman.
Then again, if he were a gentleman, he’d’ve told her how he felt months ago, before it even got to this point. He would’ve taken her out proper. Bought dinner somewhere nice. Flowers, maybe. Something normal.
V deserves a bed and a shower. V deserves to wake up to breakfast being made. V deserves things done the right way.
But it’s happening right fucking now. She kisses him again, as starving as before.
There’s no time for roses and wine and fancy chocolates in those heart-shaped boxes. She’s walking him back across the desert floor, then the pavement of the road. And though he stumbles on a rock once, then twice, his hands never leave her side.
Somewhere along the way, the back driver door opens, and he’s laying her down across the seat. The dome light catches her face, pinked from the kissing, hair spilled out and under her head. It’s uncanny—she looks like she could be one of the painted angels lining the church walls, with those soft cheeks and fixed gazes, watching him from above while his mamá squeezed his shoulder and told him to pay attention.
“Mírate. Qué hermosa. Pareces un ángel. ¿Cómo pudo alguien dejarte marchar? ¿Cómo pude yo dejarte ir?”
Jackie doesn't slow to wonder if her translator’s catching any of it, nor does he check her face for comprehension. These words aren’t for understanding. They just need to be said, he thinks. Put out into the world, somehow.
He’s never felt this way about a girl. Ever. Maybe it’s some wires getting crossed—the friendship chemicals in her brain (Do those exist?) bleeding into the ones that make him want her. Bad. Does that even make sense? He doesn’t know. He just knows his chest feels too tight, like something sitting behind his ribs, pushing.
Misty, who he loved—still loves—could never make him this sick with want. Misty was gentle and warm and the sweetest girl he’s ever met. She was home. But holy fuck, she wasn’t V. He never felt like he was going to split open around her.
He’s tugging down the front of her tank top without really deciding to, and he’s grabbing at her tits like some kind of animal, and she’s arching up towards him, and he’s sucking her skin, at her nipples, and any remaining logic evaporates.
There is a wordless agreement. Terms are exchanged through a half-lidded glance, and they move. Her pants: peeled down and discarded. His face: comfortably nestled between her thighs, deeply, greedily inhaling the musky, wet fabric there, nosing at her clit.
He’s got one foot on the desert ground, a knee perched awkwardly on the seat. He adjusts, his shoulders wedged under her legs, his hands spreading her open with a familiarity that borders on cocky.
Humility has never been one of Jackie’s virtues, for better or for worse. He’s good at plenty of things, and he knows it. Talks well. Shoots well. Drives like a fucking superstar. And one more thing: Jackie Welles eats pussy like it’s nobody’s business.
He licks a long, solid stripe up her slit after he pulls the crotch of her panties aside. Jackie knows how to tongue at her clit, to suck gently until she’s gasping his name—Jackie, Jackie, Jack, oh!—until he’s spit-slick down to his chin, dribbling down his neck and his Adam’s apple and the collar of his shirt is damp.
Eventually, he gets annoyed with the fabric rubbing up against his cheeks, and when he tugs those off, he’s freed up a finger or two to fuck into her with these careful gyrations of his wrist.
A thought appears through the haze of sex: Even now, with her thighs bracketing his skull, her hands scratching aimlessly at his scalp, and her mouth in the shape of his name, there is not a world where she would be his.
In one world, he’s dead—probably bled to death in the back of that Delamain. In another, she’s the one who’s kicked the bucket, her brain fried so hard by that biochip, it’s leaking from her ears. This world is stranger. This one lets her be here. Just once—or maybe for the remainder of her time in Night City, God willing. A narrow slice of time that’s already closing.
She’ll leave Night City. That part is fixed. When she does, time will pass until this moment becomes a hazy memory, until it barely counts as something that happened.
Oh, that one hurts. The thought burrows its bloody path to his heart, forces his abdomen to seize, just momentarily, before V even notices.
Not that she would notice, ‘cause her legs are shaking something awful, hands grasping painfully at his hair (somehow pulled from his bun in the chaos), and she’s begging him not to stop, telling him how good it feels, to do it just like that, right there, right there, right there. And Jackie, ever the people-pleaser he, does exactly what she says.
And how could Jackie ever feel that sad when she’s coming against his tongue?
“Hoh—fuck. Hohfuck. Oh—oh—” She’s wound up tight, tight, tight, stomach muscles drawn and undulating as she grinds her pelvis against his face in one last, uncoordinated push. Exhales coming out in these whining pants—and then—and then her voice cuts out entirely. He can feel her fluttering rhythmically around his fingers. Her mouth is open, lips wrung into a silent ‘o’, jaw working in tight circles. It’s a good five or so seconds until she breathes again. It comes out as a laugh.
“Motherfucker.” V takes this deep, ragged breath, lets her head loll back until it hits the door. “Oh my god.” The back of her hand covers her eyes.
Her thighs loosen, finally, easing their deathgrip on the sides of his head. Jackie’s ears are still ringing from it. He rests his head against the inside of her leg, and pulls his hand from her (still sticky) to slide slowly up and down along the back of her thigh.
“You good, mamita?”
She lifts her head up, only for a moment.
“Jackie that was—holy fuck.” A gulp. A nervous laugh. “I think I’m in love with you.”
She says that last part like a joke. He thinks it’s a joke. Probably.
(He loves her too. This, Jackie knows in his heart of hearts. Doesn’t matter if it’s romantic, platonic, familial, sexual, whatever. He’s loved her a dozen different ways already, long before tonight. He’s lucky to have even known her.)
(He can’t tell her this. The thought of it makes his stomach churn.)
He feels content and cocky and just about every other synonym for the word smug. On top of the god damn world. Floating on cloud nine.
“Think about it Jack,” she says, as if continuing an on-going conversation she’s had entirely in her head. V tugs at the hem of his tank, helps him shrug of his Valentino jacket, half-distracted. She pulls him up to her face, so she can catch his mouth in a quick, messy kiss. He knows she can taste herself on him and shivers at the thought.
V pulls back just long enough to keep talking. “If you came with me. Out on the road.”
She busies herself as she speaks, fingers worrying at the buckle of his belt. “We could do this every day, ya know. Under the stars and shit.”
Oh, it’s better than any kind of dirty talk, this impossible fantasy. The words every day opens up a whole other world in his head. Gas stations at dawn, cheap beers shared at campfires, a life measured in miles instead of blocks. It also births version of himself in his mind that isn’t welded to Night City or Heywood—an intriguing yet uncomfortable thought.
He’s harder than he’s ever been in his life.
“If I went with ya? With the nomads?” he asks dumbly.
“Yeah. Yeah. Would you?”
Fuck. Has never been this gone on a hypothetical, a maybe. It could have something to do with her hand pressing down the front of his jeans, palming his cock through his boxers.
“Dunno. Would you be mine?” He kisses a wet line from her cheek, to her jaw, her neck, her collarbones.
“Yours?”
“Yeah,” his voice comes muffled from between her tits. “Would you be my girl? If I went with you?”
She’s sliding his pants down over his hips, then plucking at the waistband of his boxers—he’s gotta help her get ‘em over the jut of his painfully erect cock. Her palm feels red-hot against the silky skin there, working him with these soft, slow motions that make him almost choke.
The door’s still open. Jackie couldn’t care less about the cold desert air, or how anyone who happens to meander down this dusty backroad will get a spectacular view of his pale bare ass.
“Yes,” she says, breathless. “Oh—yes, yes. Your girl.”
If the prospect of it weren’t so horrifically, catastrophically humiliating, he could come right here, right now.
And oh man, he should really, really be wearing a rubber right now. Maybe he should ask if she’s been tested recently, or if she’s on any kind of birth control, or—
The thought flickers through his head and is gone just as fast, snuffed out by the way she guides the tip of him to her entrance, by the heat of her body and sure pressure of her hand. Whatever higher reasoning he’s got left shorts out entirely. What’s left is something prehistoric, that caveman, chimpanzee part of his brain that only knows fucking and eating and shitting. He grabs these huge handfuls of her ass, her thighs, and pushes forward on instinct alone. He misses blindly once, twice, before landing home.
It’s a tight enough fit that it forces him to slow down and makes him work for every inch. But, oh, how nice it feels. Warm and wet and soft. Jackie could die here. Would die here. He hopes—dimly, sincerely—that V understands that.
Each careful roll gets him a little further, the sensation pulling a low, grunting sound from him whether he wants it to or not. She’s doing the same—this staccato whimpering sound with each push that Jackie has never once heard from her. What he would do to hear it again and again and again for the rest of his life.
“Oh—fuck?” It sounds more like a question, the way the end pitches up.
“You gonna take it all?” It’s stupid and porny, but he can’t help but ask. He’s gotta know.
“Uh huh. Uh huh.” She’s focusing hard.
And she does take it all, like a fuckin’ champ. The muscles of his hips finally pressing into the backs of her thighs, legs hitched up around his waist. She’s red in the face, down to her chest, panting hard from the sheer effort of taking his dick. Sweat beads along her skin and collects in her collarbones, the divot between her breasts. It’s unbearably hot.
Jackie, on the other hand, probably looks like shit—hair sticking this way and that, belt buckle jingling with every movement of his hips as his jeans hang on for dear life about his knees.
Jesuchristo, he just wants to know how it feels. To feel so full, your eyes gotta roll back a little in your head, mouth ajar and drooling at the corners, like how V is doing now.
Jackie looks down, at the place where they are joined. He sees the way he glistens with each withdrawal, the way her stomach tenses with each push. He tries to consolidate the way he’s feeling now (so wired up it’s not entirely out of the possibility he’ll come and then immediately die), the way he feels about her, the physical sensations. It’s too much for his horny monkey brain to take, so he lets out this stupid gurgling noise.
Somewhere far away, V says something to him.
“Huh?” Jackie asks dumbly.
“Jackie. I’m yours. I’m—ahh—yours.”
The rephrasing of her answer from before. Not would, nor could, nor some future-tense promise he doesn’t quite trust himself to believe in, nor her to follow through on. Present tense. Active and certain in this moment. And if he’s lucky, for a few moments more.
His.
His. His. His!
His!!!!!!!!
Her hand cups his cheek, thumb clumsily slipping into his mouth past his teeth, and all Jackie can think to do is suck. He fucks her with these stuttering, slow movements, scared if he moves too fast it’ll be over soon
Jackie comes to a conclusion: this is the only way he could ever fathom leaving Night City. Maybe life on the road wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe the desert wouldn’t be so empty, not with her beside him.
Maybe they’d marry. A little common-law ceremony in the desert. They’d exchange rings that don’t match. His máma crying on a glitchy holo call, crossing herself and telling him he looks so handsome, mijo, even though he’s sunburned and dusty and grinning like an idiot.
Would it be safer to raise kids on the road than in good ol’ Heywood? Would he let her raise ‘em with the fear of God in them, just as his mamá did him?
It’s way, way, way outta pocket. Even with his little fucked-out caveman brain, he knows this. He indulges it anyway, gladly and wholeheartedly.
There’s the steady rocking of the car that brings him back, the sound of a Thornton gunning it the next hill over. All the while, her mantra continues: yours yours yours yours.
Jackie talks right back—he can’t help it. Always been a talker, ever since he was a kid. Doesn’t know half the shit that comes out of his mouth, it just does.
So he tells her she’s his, that he’s hers. A few times, really. Corny shit he’d never say out loud if he weren’t like this. Jackie makes her look at him when she says it back, holding her face between thumb and forefinger. He’s gotta see it on her face to believe her, he tells her, and she looks up at him with that fucked-out furrowed brow and mouth ajar. He tells her she’s gonna kill him dead with the way she looks right now, all drunk on his cock. Tells her what she does to him—now, and, humiliatingly, all the times he’s fucked his hand in the shower just thinking of her.
She giggles at this, soft and airy, until he fucks a groan out of her.
Jackie does try to rein it in, maybe for that little prideful piece of himself. He can feel it coming, in the tightening of his balls and the warmth in his gut and the little pieces of his voice slipping into each breath. He tries to slow down, but it feels so good he doesn’t put up much of a fight when both of V’s hands land on his ass, urging him on.
He can hear himself, a voice not his own, thin and pleading through gritted teeth: “Ah. Ah. Valerie. Valerie. I’m gonna—Lo siento, no puedo—¡Maldita sea!”
Eyes clenched shut. Teeth grinding down.
He barely manages it, his hand scrambling at the seat back to hoist himself up as he pulls free at the last second. His breath shudders out of him, caught on a groan, as he spills across her in a messy, sticky arc, from the dark vee at her waist, up to her shirt.
“Ah, shit. Sorry.”
“It’s all good, choom.”
She kisses him. And suddenly he’s human again.
He feels guilty. For the cum on her shirt, for screwing her in the backseat of her car. He’s still got that inherent Catholic guilt his mamá baked into him, the kind that always rears its head when he comes. He helps her clean up with the napkins in her center console.
When they’re done, they both climb into the front seats. She’s in the driver seat this time, with Jackie in the passenger. Their clothes are back in place, more or less, but their hair gives them away. Jackie’s especially, some of the hair from his top bun pulled loose and hanging over the sides of his head.
V leans over and pops the glove box, digging until her fingers catch on a crumpled pack. She taps out two cigarettes, keeps one in between her lips and offers the other across the console.
Jackie doesn’t really smoke unless he’s halfway in the bag, but he takes it anyway. He even lets her cup a steady hand around the tip as she sparks the lighter.
He watches her watch him, eyes wide and curious, warm yellow light dancing across her face before it’s snuffed out. V’s eye makeup is smeared a little. He finds it endearing.
He is so, so, utterly fucked.
The drive back to Heywood is surprisingly short. The city feels half asleep in the dead hours before dawn. Only a lone NCPD bust stalls the flow, two cruisers angled across the Ringroad in Westbrook, blue lights strobing against empty lanes as they pass. Beyond that, the roads are open, the air strangely cool through the cracked window.
Jackie’s hand finds V’s thigh early in the ride, splayed lazily against the worn fabric of her pants. The heat of her leg bleeds into his palm until it tingles. She doesn’t shift away, but he doesn’t bother pretending it means anything more than the moment allows either.
They don’t think about what comes next. By the time they hit the bridge into Heywood, the possibility of him going with her has dissolved entirely.
In the quiet days that follow, the subject never comes up. Neither of them want to dive into that disappointment. They both understand it’s a fantasy, thin and stupid. He’s got a mother who still leaves the light on for him, cousins who still call at inappropriate hours. And nomads don’t take in strangers without history or purpose, and the most certainly wouldn’t take him.
Still, Jackie shows up when V starts packing. Her life fits into embarrassingly little space. One scuffed duffel and a backpack with a broken zipper. He helps her methodically sort through her clothes, picking out the ones she actually wears. She takes some iron with her too, the guns she knows won’t jam. Everything else—knickknacks, clothes she stopped liking, the little pieces of her life in Watson—Jackie helps her haul to the curb on Bradbury. They spill across the sidewalk in a sad little pile, and by evening half of it is gone, scavenged by neighbors or passersby or whoever needed it more than she did.
There’s something he wants to feel. Resolve, maybe. Only a dull ache settles behind his ribs.