March 2, 2007 ~00:10 - Watson, Chrome Dreams

  Lizzie's was packed solid. They pushed deeper into Watson until acid-green letters spelled CHROME DREAMS. Bass hammered through smoke while bodies moved like one organism.

  Zara claimed a corner booth, dark enough for secrets. Kai spread his chemical arsenal while Diego mapped exits.

  Raven slid in last, her usual fluid grace seemed somehow exaggerated. Zara watched her with curiosity, she didn’t expect the net runner to actually follow them to the club.

  "Tequila. Real agave." Zara flagged the waitress. "Leave the bottle."

  She shifted on her seat feeling the pressure intensifying again low in her belly, annoying and impossible to ignore completely, getting uncomfortably insistent by the minute. Zara scanned the room looking for a bathroom, the sign was barely visible in the farthest corner. She shifted and crossed her legs. The friction sent sparks through nerve endings, which carried barbs that almost made her wince. She uncrossed her legs, pressed palm to her hip, rubbed small circles.

  "Boss lady's got ants in her pants tonight," Kai observed, already sampling his own chemical creations. "You sure you don't want some glitter? Might help you settle."

  "I'm settled." The words came out harder than intended.

  The drinks arrived before Kai had a chance to add anything.

  "To the Neon Phantoms," she toasted, raising her glass. "And to our biggest score!"

  First shot burned clean. She poured another immediately. The alcohol helped, dampening the weird sensations enough that she could focus on the music, the lights, the energy of the crowd.

  Raven lifted her glass, made a long seemingly absentminded sip. The netrunner’s gaze followed the crowd - silver eyes tracking patterns, mapping behaviors. But then her eyes slid back to Zara, focusing somewhere at her throat, making Zara realise she had sweat beaded in the hollow of her collarbone.

  "Dancing." Zara stood. Movement sent familiar heat of anticipation spiraling through her core, but the heat highlighted the pressure, amplifying the discomfort shortly. "Time to show these wannabes real moves."

  She grabbed Raven's wrist – noting again how surprisingly warm chrome fingers that brushed against her base skin were – and pulled the netrunner to her feet.

  "I don't dance," Raven protested, but she didn't resist.

  "Tonight you do. Everything's different tonight."

  The dance floor was a maze of bodies moving to synthetic rhythms. Zara pushed into the crowd, still holding Raven's wrist, feeling the netrunner's pulse racing.

  The music was industrial, all grinding bass and sharp edges. Perfect for losing yourself in the movement. Zara let the rhythm take her, hips swaying, arms raised, becoming part of the living machine that was Night City's underground. But every few beats she'd pause slightly and press thighs together, chase the sensation that felt right and wrong in equal measure.

  A corpo kid collided with her, hands finding her waist. She laughed, pushed him off, but his touch left her skin electric. Wanting more.

  Raven stood frozen in the crowd's center, chrome fingers opening and closing at her sides.

  "C’mon, move!" Zara called over the bass.

  Raven's mouth moved in response but Zara couldn’t make anything out.

  A girl with neon tattoos pressed against Zara's back, matched her rhythm. Contact sent liquid fire through Zara’s lower belly - want pulsed hot, tainted with barbed sparkles at the edges. Zara ground back, chasing the pleasure, while noting the unfamiliar sharpness.

  Raven's right hand curled into a fist.

  Another dancer claimed Zara's front, fingers mapping her hips through fabric. Previous urge forgotten, each touch was filling her with a different kind of need. She felt her core pulse stronger and focused on the pulses, shrugging off the nagging foreboding that something was off, like a menacing sharp edge of broken glass hiding in a soft carpet.

  When the second dancer leaned closer, breast sliding against Zara’s, body responded with warm wetness spreading between her thighs.

  "Smoke," Raven said, loud enough to cut through the music, and turned, shoving through bodies toward the exit. Zara thought she might have seen netrunner’s shoulder catch the doorframe as she stumbled through the entrance into Night City's neon haze.

  Zara kept moving between strangers whose hands sent contradictory signals through her system. Want and unfamiliar barbed sharpness braided together. The dancers pressed closer, their touch making Zara desperate for more contact and desperate to escape in the same heartbeat.

  ***

  The dancers pulled Zara toward a shadowed alcove where the bass thrummed through exposed pipes. Chrome Dreams' architecture created pockets of relative quiet, spaces carved from industrial bones.

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  The girl with neon tattoos pressed Zara against synthcrete, lips finding her throat. Heat bloomed instant and electrifying, Zara's body responding with familiar hunger. But as the heat raised, barbed sparks bit deeper. She kissed back, seeking to get lost in building momentum, hands tangling in synthetic hair, chasing sensation that felt like silk wrapped around razor wire.

  The other dancer moved behind her, breath hot against her neck. Her hands mapped Zara’s ribs while the first girl's tongue traced her collarbone. Zara's core ignited with tight pulses, wetness between her thighs spreading further, but each pulse going through her brought sharper edges, almost making her breath catch.

  She ground against them both, chasing contact, feeding the hunger, following the sweet pull of need. But the apex of the tantalising ache that pulsed through her had developed a serrated quality. The silken wave of pleasure catching on invisible thorns.

  ****

  Zara noticed the moment Raven stepped back in returning from Night City's night. Saw her scan the crowd, tracking movement patterns until enhanced optics in her silver eyes locked onto the alcove.

  Onto Zara pressed between two bodies. Hands exploring. Mouths claiming skin.

  Raven's right hand clenched. She turned towards the bar and Zara lost sight of her, as it got blocked by the revelers’ bodies.

  Next time Zara found her, she saw Raven raising and draining a shot glass in one swallow, then gesturing for another. As if she could feel being watched, her head turned and for a second their eyes met through the distance. Then Zara arched against the girl's holding her, head thrown back in abandon. When she straightened, Raven was no longer looking at her. She held another shot in her chrome fingers.

  ***

  Relentless pressure in Zara's bladder grew to the point where it felt genuinely painful, like a fist clenching tighter with each heartbeat. Trying hard as she could, she was unable to lose herself in the dancers' touches. Her body was screaming a demand that couldn't be postponed.

  "Bathroom," she gasped, pulling away from eager hands.

  "Don't be long," the girl purred, neon tattoos pulsing in the strobing light.

  Zara pushed through the crowd toward Chrome Dreams' rear corner, where vandalized signs pointed toward facilities. The ache was evolving into something sharp, growing more unbearable by the second.

  A line stretched from the bathroom door - six people deep, all shifting impatiently. The bass from the main floor felt like hammer blows, each pulse making the ache in her pelvis even more insistent.

  "Fucking move," someone behind her muttered.

  Zara squeezed her thighs tight together, pressing her palm against her lower belly. Too much alcohol, too much dancing, too much everything.

  Standing still made it worse. Each minute in line crawled agonisingly slow, the urge becoming desperate. By the time she reached the door, she was biting her lip, hand pressed between her thighs, legs clamped tight in an awkward position one over the other.

  The stall was a disaster - toilet paper scattered across wet tiles, obscene graffiti covering every surface. Zara barely noticed, she fumbled with her pants, desperately trying to keep the pressure in. The latest moment before release was the worst. She pulled the fabric down and doubled over finally able to—

  Fire.

  Pure liquid fire came tearing through her urethra like someone had poured acid inside her. She released the air through gritted teeth, as the burning sensation clawed through her most sensitive tissues.

  This wasn't normal. This was wrong. Very fucking wrong.

  Stress. Drinking too much synth shit. Holding too long. And too many fucking chemicals in her system. Fuck Kai and his “recreational” experiments. She sincerely hoped he'd be getting the same experience in full.

  The fire ceased slowly, only to return at the end, each final drop feeling like molten metal. A tear leaked from a corner of her eye as she finished. Not quite empty, but she couldn't bear the thought of trying to squeeze out anything more. She pulled her pants back up, fastened the fastener, breathing slowing.

  Outside the stall, she splashed cold water on her face, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Green eyes stared back, dark with chemical enhancement, pupils so big the green rim was barely there.

  Any residual pain had receded. Everything was fine. Just fucking stress and chemicals. Zara resolved to cut down on liquids intake though. Just in case.

  Just as she pushed open the bathroom door and stepped through it, Raven stumbled into the hallway, shoulder almost catching the wall. Actually stumbled. Zara watched her make several more steps, moving past. The netrunner's usually perfect balance was definitely off. Zara caught Raven's eyes - the look in them unfocused and glassy, as if straight after a deep dive.

  "Interesting," Zara said, the words coming out louder than intended. "The ice queen gets sloppy drunk."

  Raven stopped, chrome fingers gripping the opened door behind Zara for stability. She turned, looked back at Zara for a long moment. Her mouth opened as if to speak, then closed. She pushed through the door frame and disappeared into the bathroom without a word.

  The door swung shut behind her, leaving Zara alone in the hallway.

  Zara pushed back through the crowd toward the alcove, where neon tattoos pulsed against pale skin. The girl reached for her immediately, hands sliding around her waist, fingers tracing the curve of her hip.

  "Thought you'd abandoned us," she whispered, breath hot against Zara's ear.

  Zara felt her smile going predatory. Contact sent familiar electrical current through her nervous system. But she couldn't quite shake off the awareness of the hidden serrated edge.

  She leaned into the touch anyway, pushing past any wrongness, chasing the promise of clean pleasure beneath.

  The girl's mouth found her throat again, tongue tracing salt and sweat. Each kiss should have been pure soothing mint and honey which Zara caught in the girl's breath. Instead she felt her body bracing in the anticipation of the razor wire hidden in the smooth silk. But the hunger, the need were all there. The want sent a pulse through Zara's core once again. It made her breath catch. Wrong, corrupted, tainted with singes from that burn she experienced in the atrocious bathroom stall.

  "Mmm, you taste good," the girl murmured, hands sliding lower.

  Zara lowered her body, grinding against her, desperate to reclaim the sweet fire she'd felt an hour ago. But every pulse of arousal came laced with thorns, pleasure that bit back instead of building. Her body demanded more contact while rejecting what it received.

  The girl's fingers found the hem of Zara's top, started pushing upward. Contact against bare skin sent lightning through nerve endings, but lightning that burned and scorched instead of electrifying. Zara kissed deeper, trying to overwhelm the wrongness with intensity.

  Nothing worked. Just more beautiful agony.

  Movement caught her eye over the girl's shoulder - a familiar silhouette emerging from the bathroom hallway. Raven walked with her usual precise steps, shoulders rigid, chrome fingers oh her right hand tracing patterns in empty air. Back to perfect control, like the stumbling and looking drunk Zara observed mere minutes ago had been a glitch.

  Zara pulled back from the kiss. "Gimme a sec. See that woman by the bar? That's my crew. Gotta check something with her."

  The girl followed her gaze, shrugged. "Don't take too long."

  Zara pushed through bodies toward the main floor, using Raven as an escape route from her body's betrayal. But as she got closer, something in the netrunner's posture made her slow her approach.