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It had been a long as hell day. The sun had set over the horizon past Night City by the time V had brought them back to her H10 apartment, exhaustion written in every line of her face. She'd quickly showered, downed a smoothie, and collapsed into bed.
Fuck, had he ever looked so young and so old at the same time? He had nearly a decade on her, but had anyone seen them side by side these days…
Which wasn't an issue, because no one could see him, except V. And maybe the skinsack she called a cat.
Johnny exhaled digital smoke out the open window, straddling the ledge with one leg propped up to support his chrome elbow and the other dangling to oblivion. The cat (Nibbles, sure) chirped as it leapt up to the ledge alongside him, stepping carefully into his lap in a graceful swish before settling into a purring lump. He still wasn't sure how in the hell the thing saw him—didn't want to think too hard about it, actually.
Nights like this, back when he was actually a kid, there would be the whining chirp of crickets and cicadas—probably even here, trickling in from the badlands or the park, if humanity hadn't seen to that little problem, nature. Now there was just the sound of the occasional traffic, the hour too late for even the addicts to be up roaming the streets.
V shifted, getting his attention. When she was out cold, he'd sometimes study her—not like he had a lot to do. Try to figure out, even knowing more about her than anyone else ever would or could, what really made her tick. The real reason for the stubborn, self-sacrificing altruism, beyond the naive hope that if she helped enough starving orphans and homeless vets, someday someone out there would help her when she needed it most.
But like most nights, her sleeping face didn't tell him anything new, much as he liked to look at it. The merc might be a bitch half the time, but she wasn't exactly hard on the eyes. Most of the time, though, he kept thoughts like that to himself, except when he could use them to make her blush and stammer and change the subject.
Disturbing Nibbles from her perch, Johnny slipped back inside the apartment. Banishing his boots to cyberspace, he padded over to the cubby that housed her bed and got comfy against the headboard next to V. Smoked a cigarette she couldn't complain about and thought as his eyes roved over her, this roommate—this host—he'd never asked for.
Dark hair streaked in waves over her pillows like ink, face turned toward him and tucked into the crook of one arm. Bare legs tangled in blankets unconsciously shoved away, restless in the heat. She'd decided to wear shorts her ass practically fell out of to bed. Not that he was complaining—about them or the Samurai tee she'd cropped to just below her tits, leaving the expanse of her muscled stomach exposed. Since he'd taken her to the Pistis Sophia, she'd worn his tags around her neck, even to sleep. That part of her outfit in particular did things to him.
Unaware of her audience, V frowned as she murmured something he couldn't make out against the pillow, fingers twitching like they wanted to form fists as she huffed a sigh through parted lips. A nightmare, maybe. Even he couldn't always see into her dreams; they were there, sure, but too hectic and piecemeal for him to process. Most of the time, he just got general vibes if he cared to dig.
They'd come to an arrangement about that, and a hell of a lot else. Had become something like chooms—better ones than he'd been with most people, and worse ones than the people she had left. The chick tended to pick up friends like he did groupies, and the way things were headed, he wasn't gonna be around much longer, unless some miracle tech decided to appear out of the ass end of nowhere.
But all of it made shit complicated.
Like the fact that he was sitting here on her bed, close enough that when V rolled onto her stomach, hiking one leg up and arching her back with a sigh as she settled with the pillow beneath her chest, the movement left her half-bare ass pressed against his leg. He could've glitched away to a safe distance—or hell, been in his usual spot on the couch in the first place—but he was in absolutely no rush to move.
The only thing he could touch was her, and he wasn't sure he'd want to any less if that weren't true.
How long things had been like that, he couldn't remember—was it watching her take down a dozen Maelstrom easy as crossing the street? Choking out that one scav with the fucker's head crushed between her thighs and imagining himself between them instead? Hearing her mutter the words to "Chippin' In" while she squinted to see out the windshield of his Porsche through a sudden downpour and knowing she was driving extra careful to keep from denting it?
Fuck, or routinely getting his own private stripshow when she stood in just the right spot by the shower to give him a perfect view from the couch. He'd started to say something but the words died in his throat the first time, when she'd bent over to peel strappy lingerie over the curve of her ass and tugged her top off to let her tits bounce free. And after that, well.
It had taken a hell of a lot of effort to keep his feelings about any of that from bleeding into their shared thoughts—and keep his dick from getting any ideas, because she'd know about that, too. Not that he hadn't caught flashes of her thoughts about him here and there, before she'd smothered them—or missed the looks she thought he didn't notice.
Beside him, V whimpered—there was no other word for it, the quiet whine she'd just let out—and shifted again to face away from him. Must be one hell of a nightmare if she was this restless. Not that sharing circuits with the digital ghost of a rockerboy who was incidentally slowly turning your mind into so much scop was gonna give anyone pleasant dreams, but—
"Mhhm… c'm back t'bed." The merc's hand searched haphazardly behind her before landing on his inner thigh and gripping it with limp fingers.
Johnny choked on his cigarette.
But his quiet wheezing turned to a grin when he realized that the merc was talking in her sleep. After a second's consideration, the desire to fuck with her, to see what would happen, won out over self-preservation (because she still had plenty of the blocker pills somewhere).
"Yes, ma'am," he muttered, too soft to wake her as he chucked his cigarette away into nothing and scooched down behind her, propping his head up on his 'ganic hand and still grinning. Probably going to flatline him when she woke up, if he decided to stay, but it would be worth it when there was so little to keep him entertained before the day got going.
What he hadn't expected was for V to move again, wriggling against him until her back was flush against his chest and the ass he'd been admiring from afar was pressed against his suddenly very interested dick. As if for good measure, she ground against him with small, rolling shifts of her hips, getting settled, until she fell still again with a faint, contented-sounding hum.
It was only knowing she was asleep and had absolutely no idea what the fuck she'd done that kept him from grabbing her hip in his chrome hand and pressing her even more tightly against him. This wasn't… they didn't… do this. Didn't bring up this unnamed thing between them—and sure as shit didn't act on it.
(That, and he'd done a lot of downright questionable shit in his life, but somnophilia wasn't on the list. He preferred his hookups willing and conscious, if not entirely—or even close to—sober.)
For several long minutes—fifteen or thirty or more, he had no fuckin' idea—V stayed still, until another quiet whine escaped her throat into her pillow: his name.
He'd heard chicks say it with less enthusiasm when he was eating them out, for christ's sake. Was that what she was dreaming about?
He needed to wake her up, but now something other than curiousity made his chrome hand slip around her waist, fingers splaying over her bare, taut stomach, somehow muscular despite the sheer quantity of garbage she housed on the regular. The touch of his cyberware didn't make her shiver, with no temperature of its own against the warmth of her skin, but the contact earned him another grind of her hips against him, making his dick twitch and throb.
Fuck, was she wet for him, underneath those thin little shorts?
The desire to find out, to let his hand slip under her waistband and between her thighs, to discover what other sounds he could drag out of her with his fingers, hit him like a withdrawal craving.
It took a couple tries saying her name aloud before he felt the rippling brush of V's consciousness against his own. She turned her face to blink at him blearily in the faint light.
"Johnny? Why're you…"
"Told me to. Pleasant dreams?" he murmured.
In her confusion, with her defenses down, her mind broadcast what she'd been dreaming about to him loud and clear: a chrome hand, his hand, caressing her tits. His head dipping to press his mouth to her neck… his cock sliding between her slick thighs, slipping into her inch by inch until she felt more full than she ever had, until she came gasping and shaking …
"Jesus," Johnny breathed as her desire hit him like water cresting over a dam.
V froze, eyes widening as she realized that not only had she'd been dreaming about fucking him, she'd just as good as told him.
Neither of them moved. He wasn't sure if it was his heart he could feel pounding in his chest, or hers, as her gaze pinballed around his face, darting down to his mouth and then back up again.
But just when he expected her to snap out of it and shove him away—maybe even go for the blockers like the day he'd given her shit about the cop hitting on her—V did exactly the opposite.
Rolling over to face him, she threw a leg over his hip, tugged him closer with a heel dug into the back of his thigh, grabbed his face in her hands, and pressed her mouth firmly to his.
Fuck.
Instinctively—maybe it was instinct, maybe it was living inside every inch of her mind, as intertwined as a single-loop circuit by now—Johnny's chrome hand slid down to grip her ass, hoisting her closer so the swell of his still-denim-clad cock slotted between her thighs. He kissed her back, returning the pressure with a self-satisfied hum, sliding the tip of his tongue along her lower lip only to nip its plush curve seconds later. The bite made V gasp, her hips jerking against him before she tore her mouth away to deliver an answering bite to his ear.
He could sense her hunger like it was his, and maybe it was: everything mixing between them like he ended where she began and she couldn't be where he wasn't.
When that mouth he'd tried not to think about moved to suck at the pulse in his neck, Johnny groaned. He was happy to let her do the work if she wanted—and like she'd heard him, because of course she had, V rolled her hips against his again.
"That what you want?" he muttered out loud to her, sliding his chrome hand from her ass up the smooth expanse of her back, reaching around to brush the curve of one of those gorgeous tits with his 'ganic thumb. "Gonna ride me like your ARCH?"
As V flushed, humming brokenly in reply, the ghost of sensation reached him through their connection: a pulsing throb inside her, an ache to be filled that was only made worse by the teasing of her swollen clit against the friction of her shorts.
As he rolled onto his back, pulling her up to straddle him, he felt V hesitate for the first time since she'd woken up. She pulled her kiss-bruised mouth away from his.
"How… I mean, is this—" gonna work? Her thought finished itself in the connection between them.
Can feel me enough now, so… He punctuated his point with a thrust of his hips, gliding his still-trapped cock against her pussy through her shorts. The friction made V gasp, eyes fluttering closed as she didn't quite bite back a moan. …think I'm gonna give you that ride you want until you scream my name.
Johnny helped her with her shorts, taking advantage of how the movement pushed her tits into his face, because he could happily suffocate like that. (If he had to breathe, which he didn't.) As V's hands started to scrabble at his pants, he just chuckled, turning to bite down on one peaked nipple at the same time he sent his clothes to fuck off wherever.
V cried out, her hips jerking forward to press the folds of her slick, swollen pussy against the base of his cock. When he did it again, V leaned closer, raising herself up on her knees so he could continue as she dragged her wet slit up the side of his shaft.
She brought her hips down to glide herself back and forth over just the tip of his cock until they were both panting shallowly and he was ready to be inside of her already—but every time he tried, she pulled back until he settled down and let her continue.
If her plan was to edge him to death, it was working.
Goddamn tease, he thought at her, letting go of one hip to grab her by the chin and crush their mouths together in another deep, filthy kiss.
And he might be so many synapses firing from the Relic in her brain, but it was clear by the sound V made as she finally sank down onto the first inches of him that she could feel everything just as well as he could.
He knew it had been a while since she'd fucked anyone—and certainly not anyone with a cock like his, thanks—so he fought the instinct to take control. But she could tell he was holding back, of course, and let her eyes open to meet his as she impatiently pushed herself further with another gasp. She was so wet he could feel her dripping around him, and the way her thighs were already shaking…
"Fuck, you're so big."
Any other time, he would have thought she was fucking with him, taunting him for his ego or whatever, but she sounded anything but sarcastic with half of his cock inside her. And the look on her face as she took the rest of him? He'd remember that look for the rest of his life, digital or otherwise.
He'd fucked countless chicks in every position you could think of, in bars and dressing rooms and alleys and even his own damn bed every now and then, but this was… How the fuck could you describe being inside someone in every literal and metaphorical way?
As she started to move, guided by his hands on her hips, he managed to speak (a little breathless, if he was being anything like honest). "Good girl."
V froze (well, most of her, because he could feel her pussy clenching and throbbing around him in a way that he knew meant a chick was already close to coming), then shook her head wordlessly.
"Don't like that? Hm. Should I try… princess?" He emphasized each suggestion with a thrust up into her. "Baby?… Sweetheart?"
With a moan, V planted her hands on his chest and shoved herself upright, hair falling in mussed waves around her shoulders and eyes fluttering shut as she began to fuck herself on his cock.
"Y-yours…" she managed to say, pale face flushing beneath the chrome lines above her cheeks, before another panting cry wrung itself out of her.
Surprise—and something darker, something possessive—shot through him. Urging him to grip her harder, to fuck her faster and deeper, so she would feel him inside her for days. So that she'd know that no one would ever make her feel this goddamn good. He met every downstroke of her hips with those faster, deeper thrusts, savoring how undone his uptight merc was becoming because of him.
That what you want, Val? To be mine?
"Yes!" Her voice was thin and broken, hands kneading her tits, hips grinding down desperately for friction against her clit, so goddamn tight and slick around him— "Please, I— oh fuck, oh fuck, I'm 'onna come!"
Jesus, he was picturing it, and that was enough to send her over the edge. V threw her head back, letting out one wordless sob after another as her orgasm ripped through her.
It was too much, the staccato pulsing gripping his cock. He managed another half-hearted thrust or two, then that was it. A hoarse grunt punched itself out of his chest as he came, shooting hot and thick into her while V still shook and gasped, come already leaking out of her around him to spill across his hips like any of this, any of him, was real.
Johnny huffed a laugh, trying to catch his breath as his heart pounded in his chest. When his wide, dazed eyes finally focused, V was staring back at him with a look he figured was probably the same as the one on his face. Like she wasn't sure what the hell to do now, her thoughts told him. Like she wasn't sure if this made her the same as the nameless, forgettable groupies he'd fucked backstage, now that they'd gotten what they wanted from each other.
Like she wasn't sure what the hell she was going to do if he treated her like everyone else.
Looking anywhere but at him, she pulled herself off his softening cock to sit on the edge of the bed, only turning back when she smelled the smoke from the cig he'd summoned for himself.
Even if it would probably piss her off, Johnny couldn't help smirking. "Didn't know you could sing."
"What?"
"Hit a pretty high octave just now. Neighbors should be impressed, since you left the window open last night."
V went bright red, opening her mouth, but he sat up and pulled her in to kiss the incoming argument and everloving daylights out of her.
"Don't worry about it. Liked hearin' you beg me to call you mine."
But she was already trying to shove him away, to escape his grip around her waist.
"Fuck you. Don't fuckin' tease me. Knew this would—" Her voice was harsh, like she still wasn't sure if she could trust him after everything they'd been through. (And hell, maybe he could be more sincere now and then, if she couldn't tell when he wasn't just giving her shit.)
" 'M not. Wouldn't've used your name if I didn't mean it. Know how you feel about people callin' you by it."
"What?" She blinked back at him, lost for words.
"You're mine, Val. Means you're stuck with me."
Until they figured out the Relic, until maybe that wasn't true anymore—but he shoved the thought away, because right now it didn't matter. Because that wasn't what he meant. Johnny felt the realization sink into her—what he was saying, in not so many words. What he felt about her, the merc who'd accidentally brought him back to life but deliberately kept him around. Who was trying her goddamn hardest to save both of them.
Warmth—fragile and cautious but so goddamn bright—crept into their connection, as V reached out to cup his face in her hand and kiss him again. "Same, asshole."
Later, when she'd cleaned up and climbed back into bed, she fell asleep curled around him, head cradled on his chest and hand resting where his tags used to sit, before he'd given her the real thing. He hadn't worn them since.