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roads-rise-to-meet-me · 2 years ago

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CP277NYEx: Scenes From A Watson Diner

Decided to step out of my comfort zone and signed up for the Cyberpunk 2077 New Year’s Exchange, and was very excited to see @just-a-cybercroissant’s name in my assignment! Writing for Johnny is a whole new ballgame for me, but I gave it my all and I hope I did him and Valerie justice for you! I hope you like it, and have a Happy New Year! ♥ @cp77nyexchange

Nearly every corner you turned in Night City, there was another stark reminder that living here was, among other applicable descriptors, disgusting.

And it was probably the reason Valerie’s apartment was kept near immaculate. If you were lucky enough to land a spot that wasn’t overrun with roaches, condemned three times prior, previously used as a drug lab, or a concoction all three, you held onto that place and treated it better than you treated yourself. Because everywhere else you went carried the inherent risk of stepping in some other gonk’s bodily fluids. Blood or…Something else. Not to mention the trash, or the smells. NC’s iconic street corner garbage piles were like hydras. Pick up one bag and move it to the nearest dumpster out of the kindness of your heart, then two more were sure to replace it by the time you turned around. And the air was always laden with a miasma of exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke.

To outsiders, it was shocking…If Takemura’s constant, full-hearted bitching was anything to go by. But to V, it just blended in with the rest of the scenery.

She was standing on the sidewalk underneath an overhang after the rain had started to fall. The kind of rain that made the smoggy air turn soupy, and the sky a sickly shade of red. Blood rain was hardly anything new; it and all the other interesting weather phenomena of NC were here long before she had come along. And if V stayed on her current trajectory, it was going to be here long after she was gone. It was a far cry from ideal, but it was also just a side effect of the place she called home. So she saw no reason to waste her energy complaining about it.

However, her other half always seemed to be in search of something to complain about. V didn’t need to turn and look when the rockerboy flickered into existence; she could feel him leaning against the wall behind her as clearly as if it were her own body in place of his. Perhaps it technically was?

“Told you it was gonna rain. Could feel it…In your bones.”

It was as monotone and condescending a statement as ever, but sometimes monotone and condescending seemed to be just about the only things Johnny had a solid grasp on. He never really managed to completely stick the landing when he was trying to be sympathetic, and choked on his apologies before he could get the last word out. There always had to be a bit of a bite to everything that came out of his mouth. But oftentimes his words were betrayed when V felt emotions begin to well up in her chest that she knew were not her own. And this time, they were accompanied by a playful flair that brought a grin to her face.

“Spoken like a true fossil, Johnny,” V teased right back, and she could sense his delight at her picking up the other half of the joke. Though she never turned to face him, she could see the toothy smile on his features that perfectly mirrored hers.

She reached out from under the overhang, allowing a few drops to land on her hand. Sometimes the term blood rain seemed a bit on the dramatic side for what was actually falling from the sky. More often than not it was nothing more than the same old contaminated water with an added rust colored tint. However, that was not the case this evening; and even V found herself recoiling in mild shock at the rich crimson color of the water that had started to pool in her palm.

“Nasty,” the engram grumbled, stealing the word right off the tip of her tongue.

V shook the water from her hand and did her best to ignore the slight stain it left behind on her skin. Much to her annoyance, the previously light shower appeared hellbent on evolving into a torrential downpour as it slowly began to drown out the sound of passing traffic; already the gutters and potholes were beginning to fill to their brims. And though it all resembled a scene from a horror flick, all she could think about was how her building was just a stone’s throw up the street. Sure, she’d be in desperate need of a shower by the time she walked into her apartment. But if she was quick…

V was about to step off the curb and attempt it until a hand roughly landed on her shoulder, pulling her back underneath the shelter of the buildings. It was still a strange sensation to feel herself begin to buckle under the weight of something that wasn’t actually there. And maybe that’s why Johnny’s grip seemed a bit heavier than what he was intending, as he softened it quickly.

“Oh come on, V. Don’t just walk out in that shit,” the rockerboy scolded. With his chin tilted up and his aviators shielding his eyes, it made it impossible for her to gauge his expression when she turned to face him.

“Well, I gotta get out of this storm, don’t I? What do you want me to do? Stand here and twiddle my thumbs until it passes?” V inquired, gesturing out to the bloodied street before them.

The same hand that had stopped her from venturing out into the storm came to rest on his belt as he spoke. “Could do that. Could even stand here with your thumb up your ass. Or you could wait it out in the diner you’re standing in front of. Just a thought.”

Ever since this whole debacle had started, scrambled was probably the most effective and blanketing term she could use to describe her thoughts. Keeping all her leads straight was enough of a challenge without Johnny’s endless commentary, especially when a chatty brain tumor apparently wasn’t enough to excuse her from merc work. Still, the fact that she’d forgotten how close Tom’s Diner was to her building was alarming. And it was difficult to tell just what was exhaustion, and what was the chip carving its way through her grey matter.

She had to admit, it was a more enticing option than walking home looking like a mass murderer. And it didn’t take much consideration for her to turn and start walking towards the door of the restaurant. “I guess that is a better idea, isn’t it?”

“Slightly,” Johnny retorted, apparently having the decency to not flicker completely out of existence as he turned to walk beside her; the flat tone of his voice was contrasted by the satisfied smirk that tugged at his lips.

---

The greasy heat of the diner mingling with the outside humidity caused Valerie to feel as though she’d just stepped into a sauna, and she did her best to ignore the way her shoes seemed to stick to the floor with every step she took before her and Johnny slid into the nearest booth. The window grabbed her attention immediately when Johnny leaned back against it in the seat across from her, as waves of deep red water swept down the glass. She did her best to try and convince herself that whatever was causing the gory pigmentation was just sediment.

Her rockerboy passenger was strangely silent on his side of the table. Night City was always a menagerie of interesting people, and the inside of Tom’s Diner was certainly no exception. But even as they people watched, Johnny suddenly seemed to be fresh out of his usual deprecating play-by-play; choosing instead to idly tap his hand against the table. But despite his silence, his mind was still going. Not that it ever really stopped. He was always scheming somewhere in the back of her head. The exact details, however, were fuzzy. And perhaps best left undisturbed.

Still, it had a way of making his silences rather uncomfortable. So she voted to instigate another wordless conversation to fill the rapidly expanding void.

“Nice of you to stop me out there. Kinda surprised you didn’t just let me go so you could laugh at me later.”

The tapping never stopped, but she wasn’t left without a response. “Plenty of other ways to die in this city without walking home with a mouthful of toxic water. Hardly a fitting end for a merc; even one of your caliber.”

“Well, thanks for looking out for me…I think?”

Johnny finally stopped tapping on the table long enough to force himself to sit up a little bit straighter posture, however it was subsequently ruined when he reclined back and lifted his legs to rest them across the table. It was a strange callback to the last time they’d been here. “Besides. You’ve got eddies in your pocket, right? Could eat a horse right now.”

Finally, the pieces were beginning to click in her mind. V rolled her eyes before leaning over the table and resting her head in her palm. “Ahh, I get it now. We’re only here because you’re hungry.”

“You’re fuckin’ starving. And if you’re starving, I’m starving. If we’re out of cigarettes, the least you can do is indulge me with some shitty diner scop.”

There was always room for him to put it a little more politely, but he certainly wasn’t wrong. Sometimes it was difficult to remember to not let herself run on fumes while she was chasing down leads all over the city. Plus, in recent days she’d gained a whole new understanding of the term “worried sick.” But despite his harsh sounding words, Johnny was hardly frustrated with her. In fact, he seemed to be in a unusually good mood. And because of their lovely little feedback loop, it was contagious.

Valerie couldn’t not chuckle at him, and his convoluted way of avoiding the dreaded word please. “Right away, your majesty.”

---

If it was shitty diner scop Johnny wanted, shitty diner scop was exactly what he was going to get. And she figured that the biggest plate of french fries the diner offered sitting in a lake of grease would satiate her outspoken tapeworm.

V waited for the waitress and her stained apron to walk away before gesturing to the plate with a triumphant little smile on her face. “A mountain of the finest fries Tom could dump out of a plastic bag and into a fryer. This good enough for you?”

The wave of approval she felt from Johnny told her that yes, this was exactly what he had been looking for. However, she doubted his actual answer would be that concise. “Fries…Don’t you mean frites?”

“You do realize that I wasn’t born in France, right?”

“You do realize that I can see all of your memories too, right? I know you weren’t born in France, V…But you’ve got expensive taste for a Heywood kid.”

Valerie raised a questioning eyebrow at him, hardly noticing as her left hand reached for the salt shaker at the end of the table and dumped about a quarter of its contents all over the fries. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The pastries. It’s all you’d eat if it wouldn’t kill you; especially the custard ones. Hard to find shit like that outside of some extortionate corpo joint.”

V shrugged as she took a small handful of the now salt encrusted fries and lifted them to her mouth. “Well, what do you want me to say? They’re good. Have good memories attached to them.”

She took a bite, and in a second realized she’d severely misjudged the amount of time she’d given them to cool as the roof of her mouth suddenly felt as if it was melting. It was a sight that was apparently humorous enough to warrant a genuine laugh from the rockerboy, and somehow his shiteating grin only grew wider when she lightly glared at him past all of her distressed panting. “Laugh it up; you won’t find it as funny here in a few moments,” she warned silently. Like he had said, the sensory delay was significant. But the burn would reach him too…Eventually.

He was still grinning when he turned his attention to the window again. It had already been growing dark when they’d entered the diner, but the only light outside now emanated from the neon signs and market stalls out behind the building. However, it was still more than enough for both of them to see that the violent looking rain was now being washed away by clearer water. Still dirty, of course. But perhaps not as toxic as it might have been when it first started falling.

“Well, would you look at that? Looks like I can walk you home now,” Johnny spoke before pushing himself to sit up straight.

“Such a gentleman,” V replied, making sure to blow on her food this time to spare herself another burn.

---

Valerie was parched by the time she was done eating; no doubt due to Johnny’s apparent desire for an obscene amount of salt with his grease. But, her need to get home before the weather had another chance to turn biblical was stronger than her desire for a NiCola. The rain was still coming down in buckets as she stood underneath the overhang again, and she had no doubt that the gutters and potholes still looked like pools of blood. But at least it was now too dark to be able to tell, and the signs and billboards of the nearby shops lightly illuminated the wet asphalt. Oftentimes many characteristics of NC needed to be sugar coated to make tolerating them easier. Romanticized, even…But she never found it difficult to romanticize a neon lit street during an evening rainstorm.

“Not even going to take your umbrella out for me?” she questioned in jest as her passenger walked up alongside her.

“My bad. Looks like I may have left it at home,” came the monotone response, and out of the corner of her eye she could see that smile again. She couldn’t recall one time tonight where it had ever actually disappeared.

Finally, she stepped into the street and started towards home without interruption. Johnny walked with a bit of extra speed to overtake her, and she found herself caught off guard that he still had yet to vanish, the way he always did.

It was odd. He was being odd. The fantastic mood was strange; usually she could always feel him brooding under the surface; like a pot of water preparing to boil over. And really it was no wonder, as he’d made it clear this situation was just as uncomfortable for him as it was for her. His good moods were few and far in between, and rarely came along on their own without him doing everything he could to really push her buttons. But he was downright jovial tonight, and it didn’t even seem like he was being agreeable because there was something in it for him to gain.

So what was the reason?

The lull in conversation between them seemed expectant, like there was more that needed to be said. Rarely was this ever the case; but he still hadn’t disappeared yet, and he actually was walking her home despite how unnecessary it was. The ball was on her side of the court, even if she had no idea what kind of court it was.

“You know, this has been a…Strangely nice night. Wish it was always like this,” she cautiously piped up as they walked. It would be a shame to spoil the mood now.

“And why’s that?” Johnny inquired, keeping his eyes firmly on the sidewalk in front of them as they inched closer to her building.

“Well, you’ve been in a good mood. Haven’t tried that hard to piss me off. Wish I knew the key to keeping it like this all the time.”

The rockerboy responded quickly. Perhaps a little too quickly for his own liking. “Well it’s not the first time a date has tried to poison me or burn me; at least you only did it by accident.”

Both of them came to an abrupt stop at the same time as they registered exactly what he had said, and the heart-dropping sensation in Valerie’s chest was only magnified by Johnny’s own dread. There was no doubt in her mind that she’d heard him correctly; there wasn’t any room for her to doubt it. But it didn’t make his words any less stupefying.

“Hang on, hang on. Did you just call me your…Date? Johnny?” V questioned as he finally turned back towards her.

He went out of his way to not look her in the eye. And his hand rested on his hip for a few moments until he suddenly spun on his heels and stormed into a nearby alcove. And she reached out for him, leaping forward as if to grab his arm like it would be enough to stop him from running. But he was gone; flickering out of existence once more like an apparition vanishing into a wall.

But they both knew that wasn’t enough to let him hide, because she could feel an amalgamation of emotions swirling in her chest separate from her own shock and awe. Frustration. Mortification. Her blood was running cold on his behalf, but at the same time she felt almost weightless. Relieved. Like she had just told a damning secret that she’d no longer have to shoulder the burden of alone.

And somewhere underneath everything else…There was adoration.

Valerie had a hunch that his reticence was to be expected after that exchange, so she didn’t waste her breath pushing and prodding him to speak again. It would come up again sooner or later, after all. He was tethered to her, and her to him…

But she allowed a pleased grin to take over her features as she resumed the walk back to her apartment, with a newfound pep to her step.

#cp77nyex #cyberpunk 2077 #johnny silverhand #cyberpunk oc: valerie v attal #johnny silverhand x v #female v #streetkid v

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