Chapter Text
V was tucked into a booth in the corner of Tom’s Diner. It was a small place by Kabuki Market, and Jackie had mentioned that Misty and Vik ran a shop nearby.
It was entertaining to watch Misty and Jackie talk. They carried the conversation themselves, and V rarely needed to comment or add more than an occasional laugh to satisfy them. It seemed like their friend Vik knew this about the two as well. While he had more specific jokes and commentary, he coasted through it like V did.
She didn’t bother hiding that she was looking him over. He’d done it to her at the gym, but she took the opportunity to do it now, over her milkshake.
V was surprised that Jackie and Misty kept company with someone who probably had an easy twenty years on them. But from what she observed since leaving Houston, age hadn’t much mattered for most regarding friendships.
Vik was big, too. He had a barrel chest and strong arms to boot. V imagined that his biceps were bigger than her head. In imagining those biceps, she let her eyes wander the illustrations in his arm. A round caller, boxing bell, and other fighting iconography climbed until they disappeared under the purple sleeve of his T-shirt.
She glanced to the other arm, clean of tattoos but large and defined with muscle and veins leading to his hands. His arm was partially wrapped, and just below his shirt sleeve, V saw the track marks from what she assumed was a stimulant he used for work.
Vik set down his drink, a spunky monkey, which drew V to look away from her examination. He was undoubtedly watching her back, and the side of his mouth was quirked in a smile. He had sunglasses on, and a dark eyebrow arched over the rims.
“I got blood on me or something, kid?” Vik asked.
V set her own drink down and sneered back at him, “Kid? I’m almost thirty.”
Vik just shrugged, “Not blood then? Maybe some ketchup.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin he’d crumpled beside his plate.
Misty and Jackie laughed about something, temporarily pulling V from her discourse with Vik.
“Wha-at?” Jackie shrugged, “Wakako is fucking terrifying. But five husbands? She’s got to be a bit free-“
Misty, lit by laughter, slapped the table,” Jackie!”
“She works on Jig-Jig!”
“What’s Jig-Jig?” V asked before bringing the straw of her synthshake to her mouth.
Misty’s head fell into her hands next to V, and Jackie leaned conspiratorially across the table, “Where you buy love by the hour,” he laughed.
Half pushed back by Jackie, Vik rolled his eyes.
“Like prostitutes?” V asked. In Houston, prostitution was illegal, but she had uncomfortably intimate knowledge about the underground market there.
“Si, si,” Jackie listed on his fingers, “joytoys, sex shops, sex dungeons, strip clubs, X BDs, dealers. I heard there’s a ripper there that installs doll chips-,”
A grunt came from Vik at the mention of the ripper, just as V suppressed a flinch at the mention of a doll chip .
“That gonk is a piece of work,” Vik huffs, “real shithead. I get his handiwork in sometimes, and it’s a fucking nightmare.”
Misty nodded along with his sentiment, “Those are sad cases,”
V pursed her lips and looked down at her own cramped chrome, “S’probably cheap,”
Before V could clarify that she definitely had no intention of visiting Jig-Jig, Jackie cut through the air with a stern hand, “Ni a putas, V,” he clamped a hand on Vik’s shoulder, “You go to Vik- only Vik. He’s the best ripper in NC.”
Jackie’s slap to Vik’s shoulder shook him a bit, “Or just don’t go to Fingers?” Vik shrugged. His eyes darted to where V had rested her arm on the table. She’d caught it, though, and dropped it against her lap.
Misty nodded along, ignoring Vik’s comment, “For sure, if you need any work done- Vik’s the best. Not that I’m biased or anything,” she grinned. Jackie grinned back, sharing a joke with each other.
V continued to stare at Vik, and when he finally looked her in the eye again, she raised a brow. Vik shrugged one shoulder, “Misty and I work together,”
“You do?” she looked to Misty beside her and struggled to put her in the context of a medical setting. V had only been in the sterile operating rooms of the team’s doctors, except for her last visit in what was basically a dusty van somewhere in Texas. Misty didn’t look like she belonged in either of those places.
Misty smiled back at V and nodded before pressing the straw of her milkshake to her lips. V returned her gaze back to Vik, whose eyes had narrowed.
“What?”
Vik's mouth pulled a bit up at the side, and he tipped his head down to look at V over the rim of his glasses. “I could take a look at that arm of yours if you’re curious.”
She didn’t bother with acting confused, but she’d considered it. She didn’t exactly trust ripper docs; the only one she’d dealt with had been the one from the van. But she’d been warned about illegal rippers, and most had been spoken about around her like the trio had been talking about Fingers. But V wasn’t signed to a pro-soccer team anymore, and she didn’t have access to eddies to go to a medical center to have her arm looked at. She also knew that whatever that van ripper had done to her kept her from being found so far. If she wanted her arm fixed, she’d either have to find out how to do it herself or go to a ripper like Vik.
Before she could change her mind, she threw her arm onto the table between them like a hunk of dead metal. To be fair, besides a few electric tingling, was what her arm felt like.
“Her arm?” Jackie looked between Vik and V.
Neither Vik nor V answered him, but the group was now zeroed in on V’s offer.
Vik leaned over the table and examined the underside of her forearm. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. " Do you mind if I touch it?”
“I don’t,” V nodded, “go for it.”
His hands wrapped around her extended one, confidently running his thumbs down her wrist to the gap left between the outer plates and the organic flex of the inside of her elbow. The electric tingling started as his thumbs moved closer, and her fingers began twitching. She couldn’t feel the touch of his hand, but as his thumbs came upon the gap, she felt their soft pressure on the other side.
He turned her arm over and began examining the other side of the implant, holding her in one hand and pressing along with the other. She wondered what his hands would feel like if she hadn’t lost the ability to feel it.
He interlaced his fingers between hers and pushed her hand back, stopping the tingling in her fingertips. “Do you feel any of this?”
V pursed her lips and shook her head, “Nope, sometimes my fingers feel like static,”
Beside her, Misty spoke, and V looked over to see her typing on her Agent, “Sounds like a malfunction in the wrist, so no brain work-” she looked up at Jackie, “just means that her brain is trying to talk to her hand, and is mostly able too, but the actual cyberware is junked.”
“Damn, does she need a new one?” Jackie leaned across to decipher whatever Vik and Misty were figuring out.”
Vik carefully set V’s hand back on the table, which she thought was funny since they’d just established she couldn’t feel anything. He pulled his own arm back to his side of the table, “Probably not; it seems operational; V can tell it what to do, and it responds for the most part. Just need to fix up the connection it has to the nervous system, probably clean it, add some oil…” he trailed off.
Misty nodded and turned her phone to Vik, “You have time today,”
Despite looking utterly confused, Jackie hung on the two’s words and scanned the Agent's screen much like Vik was now.
“I do,” Vik said, and his eyes returned to V, “wanna get that fixed?”
V’s face warmed from shame, “I don’t have the credit for that.”
Jackie, reclaiming his bravado from earlier, “I got it hermana, no big deal-”
Vik interrupted Jackie before V could start chanting no, “It’s a quick fix. I won’t charge you this time. But if you need more work done, you come to me.”
Vik, Jackie, and Misty all turned to look at V while she rolled the concept in her head. She wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if anything terrible happened, Vik would have to deal with Jackie and Jackie with Mama Welles.
“Sounds good.”