Viktor Vector x fem V! reader ,, ˖ . ݁𝜗𝜚. ݁₊
word count- ~2.6k
The cool hum of the generator was a constant, low thrum, the true heartbeat of Viktor’s clinic. For V, it was more comforting than any expensive white noise machine or sleep synth could ever be. It meant power, it meant clean needles, and it meant Vik was here. V sat heavily on the primary chair, the recycled leather already worn into the shape of their back. Their latest gig had ended with an entirely predictable amount of chrome damage and dermal trauma,, a knife wound that had gone too deep and too wide across the ribs.
They were tired down to the bone marrow, but they kept their shoulders squared and their expression rigid. No point in showing weakness. Viktor, a massive silhouette against the soft, diffused light of the monitors, didn’t look at V right away. He was prepping the scanner, his movements deliberate and quiet. He knew better than to rush V, knew they needed a moment to re-sync with the real world after the adrenaline crash. When the scanner whirred to life, Vik stepped close, his eyes focused on the ribcage area. The cold, sterile air from the scan emitter made V tense. “Lift your chin, kiddo,” Vik murmured, his voice a low, steady rumble that bypassed V’s overstimulated nervous system and went straight to the core. Vik’s touch, when it came, was professional. One massive hand rested gently on V’s shoulder to steady them as the automated arm moved over the wound. But V was already keyed up, the pain from the fresh trauma a live wire. As the cold scanner ghosted the edge of the injury, V couldn’t suppress it,, a tiny, involuntary micro flinch, a tremor that barely registered but sent a ripple through the muscle under Vik’s palm. Vik’s head didn’t move, his eyes still fixed on the screen, but his hand instantly went softer. Slower.
The pressure on V’s shoulder lessened, becoming a gentle anchor instead of a brace. He stopped the scanner’s arm for just a beat. “Easy there,” he said, the bass of his voice dropping even further, quiet enough that the clinic hum almost drowned it out. “I got you. No rush.” He didn’t ask if it hurt, he simply acknowledged the pain and promised patience. In that quiet second,, the cold metal paused above their skin, the scent of antiseptic and leather in the air,, V felt a sudden, profound lurch of feeling. It wasn't love, not in the way the poets on the vids described it. It was a raw, primal certainty, they’d die for him. Not out of duty, but because Viktor was the one person in all of Night City who saw the fragile, human meat suit beneath the chrome and didn't try to exploit it. He saw the flinch, and he went soft. The habit of the hand hold was an accident of necessity that had evolved into a ritual. It began weeks ago, following a major overhaul of V’s optical unit.
After the procedure, Vik always ran through the standard checks, pupil dilation, focus speed, retinal response. V would be sitting back, still foggy from the anesthesia and the sheer sensory overload of new chrome settling in. This time, Vik was reading the final diagnostic file on the wall monitor, his back partially to V, running through a list of aftercare codes and nutritional instructions. V, still slightly out of it and desperate for a human tether, had simply reached out their hand without thinking.
Viktor, mid sentence about bio enhancers, had stopped talking, glanced down, and his own hand had lifted, seemingly by reflex, settling V’s palm firmly in his own. He hadn't even looked away from the data stream. He just continued talking, and his thumb, large and calloused, began absentmindedly tracing little circles on their palm.
He didn’t even notice he was doing it. It was just habit now,, a subconscious reassurance, a steady beat of skin on skin contact that grounded V in the moment and allowed them to focus on his instructions, or simply exist without spinning off into the digital haze of their new implant’s calibration.
Months passed, and the gesture remained. V would sit up on the med chair, sometimes with Vik looking over scans, sometimes with him just scrolling through databanks on his own arm. When he talked in that calm, low voice, V just naturally held out their hand. And he would take it, tracing the lines of their life with his thumb, the motion as mundane and unconscious as breathing.
V started collecting rings. They weren't expensive or flashy, just smooth silver bands, black enamel loops, and one heavy, braided bronze ring that looked like it had been salvaged from some forgotten corpo vault. V didn’t particularly care for jewelry it was just extra weight, extra risk. But they liked the ritual that came with it. Anytime V needed serious work done,, deep cleaning, implant removal, or a major system flush Viktor insisted on removing all external contaminants. That meant the bracelets, the watches, and the rings. It was the only time V felt truly precious. As V sat down, before the prep was even finished, they would extend their hands. Vik would lift the first hand and start with the pinky ring. He’d pause, his gaze intense as if studying the engineering of the cheap metal. Then, slowly, gently, like handling something ancient and fragile, he would work the ring off.
He’d slide the heavy bronze one off last. His hands,, powerful hands that could disassemble a military grade cyberdeck or re-route critical arteries,, were utterly focused on this minute task. The movement was deliberately unhurried, a stark contrast to the rush of Night City. He wasn’t just removing jewelry, he was stripping away the last layer of V's armor, preparing them for vulnerability. V would just watch his face, watching the concentration flicker in his eyes. The skin to skin friction as the metal slid over their knuckles was a small, necessary pleasure. They started wearing more rings, specifically because they liked how Vik’s hands felt when he took them off before patching them up. Slow. Gentle.
“Now listen, kid,” Viktor lectured, scrolling through the diagnostic results, “you need to keep this shunt clean. No high-impact jobs for at least a week, and I mean it. You don’t want that seal blowing out. You got four doses of the antimicrobial-"
V was slumped in the consultation chair, their body thrumming with the dull ache of post-surgery calm. The neon glow from the street outside painted the clinic in shifting, synthetic blues and oranges. V had heard the spiel a dozen times; they knew the instructions by heart, but the sound of Vik’s voice, the steady, authoritative cadence, was narcotic. V’s head was heavy, their eyelids weighted with exhaustion. They nodded once, a sharp, definite movement, only to have their chin immediately drop to their chest. The last word V heard was “antimicrobial…” then the hum of the generator took over, and they were gone. Viktor paused, hearing the change in V’s breathing. He glanced over his massive shoulder. V was completely out, curled slightly into the chair, their head resting awkwardly against the back cushion. He sighed, a low, weary sound that echoed the burden of caring for every idiot merc and reckless soul who stumbled into his clinic. He ran a hand over his head.
“Dammit, V,” he muttered, but there was zero heat in it. He pushed away from the terminal and walked over to the back room. He returned a moment later, holding his faded, heavy, personalized clinic jacket, a gift from the Animals’ mod crew years ago. It smelled faintly of synth-oil, antiseptic, and something uniquely Viktor.
He didn't wake them. He simply leaned down, careful not to jostle them, and gently draped the heavy jacket over V’s slumped form, tucking the collar up around their neck. Then, he went back to the paperwork on the terminal, the gentle thud of his mechanical finger on the keys being the only sound.
Totally normal. Happened weekly. The quiet of the clinic was broken only by the light static hiss of the main power conduits. The work was done, V’s latest augment was secured, calibrated, and the internal tremors had subsided. Now, all that was left was the fine tuning of the neural interface. Viktor was leaning over V, who was still reclined in the chair. His massive fingers, surprisingly deft, were tapping minute commands into the debug console embedded in V’s neck socket. The position was close, their faces only inches apart, Vik’s concentration focused entirely on the flickering interface.
V could feel his breath, warm, familiar,, on their forehead. The proximity always made V feel both exposed and perfectly safe, a strange duality that only existed here, in his orbit. “Right,” Vik muttered, squinting at a recalcitrant sub-routine. “I need you to run a level three diagnostic on your internal chronometer. On my count. Just breathe, kid, and focus on the time sync." V inhaled, already preparing for the mental strain. “Okay, sweetheart,” Vik commanded, the word slipping out, soft and quiet, purely by accident. He didn’t hesitate,, the word was simply there, a sound that had no business being in his professional vocabulary.
The silence that followed wasn't just the absence of sound, it was a physical thing, heavy and absolute, freezing the air between them. V froze entirely, heart slamming a hard, impossible beat against their ribs. The chronometer diagnostic, the time sync,, it all vanished. V’s mind only registered the single word. Sweetheart. It was too much, too intimate, too unguarded, coming from the most guarded man in Night City. Viktor’s fingers halted instantly on the interface. His eyes flickered up, meeting V's for the first time, and he froze too. The realization hit him like a shotgun blast. He hadn't used that word since he was a kid himself, maybe talking to a stray cat or a broken piece of tech he couldn't fix. It was a phantom limb of a forgotten past.
His face, usually impassive and set like concrete, was a sudden, confusing canvas of shock and a flicker of something close to mortification. He cleared his throat loudly, the noise a deliberate, harsh interruption to the moment. “I—uh,” he stammered, pulling back slightly, breaking the physical barrier between them. He grabbed his water bottle and took a long, exaggerated pull, putting his focus anywhere but on V. “Right. Chronometer diagnostic. Focus. Let’s… kid. Let’s get this wrapped up.”
V pretended they didn’t hear it. They took a deep, shaky breath, their focus now razor-sharp, but not on the clock. It was fixed on the man who had just slipped.
The next week was spent on the edge of the world. V was doing high-stress scouting runs for the Aldecaldos, relying on the clean work Vik had just finished. The clinic incident had faded slightly, buried under miles of desert sand and the urgent demand of the next job, but a new awkwardness lingered between them whenever V returned for a check-in. Then came the firefight in the docks, which resulted in a catastrophic cascade failure of V’s basic motor functions. V made it back to the clinic alive only because Jackie had seen the signs and carried them in, limp and useless, just after sunrise.
V woke up in the chair again, but this time, the recovery was slower, the pain sharper. The chrome was fine, but the nerve damage was real. Vik had bypassed the need for a full re-install, but the clean-up was excruciatingly delicate. Vik was bent over V’s arm, his brow furrowed in concentration, working with miniature synth-fiber threads and a laser cauterizer. He was talking V through the procedure, a necessary distraction. “You’re lucky, V. You let that trauma go another hour, and you’d be dealing with permanent motor ticks. Now, hold still. The thread is going in deep, this is going to be the worst of it. Tell me if I need to back off.”
V clenched their teeth, determined to show zero reaction. The thread, fine as spider silk but agonizingly sharp, felt like fire tracing a line down their arm. They took one massive, shuddering breath, eyes squeezing shut.
Viktor didn't need V to tell him. He saw the tension in V’s jaw, the slight spasm in their shoulder muscle. He saw every micro flinch, every desperate attempt to stay silent. He paused the cauterizer instantly. He didn’t lift his head; he just stayed bent over the arm, his large form blocking the light, giving V a moment of darkness. He reached up with his free hand, and without looking at V’s face, found their hand where it was gripped tightly to the chair arm. He held it, the pressure firm but soothing.
“Easy there,” he repeated, the mantra familiar and safe. “I got you. No rush.” He waited for V's grip on the chair to ease. When it did, he continued, the motion slower, more deliberate, the focus now split between the delicate procedure and the pressure of V’s hand in his. He kept the soft contact, tracing the line of V’s knuckles with his thumb, anchoring them to the reality of the chair, the safety of the clinic, and the quiet promise of his voice. The pain faded, replaced by the profound, exhausted calm that only came after the storm. Weeks later, V was back in the chair, not for maintenance, but for a check in. They were still sporting the braided bronze ring on their index finger, and a new, chunky chain bracelet on their right wrist. Vik was looking at the diagnostics, the hum of the generator providing the usual ambient noise.
“Okay, V, everything’s holding up. Your blood oxygen saturation is still a little low, but that’s the pollution. I’m giving you a script for the cleaner tabs, and I want you taking them. Twice a day. Got it?” V nodded, listening to the familiar instructions. The fatigue of a recent, successful job was settling in, heavy and warm. They were still wearing the jacket Vik had thrown over them during the last late night clean up , it had mysteriously found its way into V’s rotation of comfort wear. Vik turned back to the terminal, and V leaned their head back, suddenly finding the low, steady sound of Vik’s voice absolutely irresistible.
“...and make sure you’re drinking enough water. Not chugging, actual filtered water. The dehydration is- are you listening to me, V?” V didn’t answer. Their eyes had drifted shut. The combined sound of Vik’s deep, lecturing voice and the thrum of the generator was the perfect lullaby. V’s breathing evened out, slipping into a deep, drugless sleep.
Vik sighed, the familiar sound a mix of annoyance and resignation. He shook his head slowly, knowing the script was useless now. He stood up, stretched the stiffness from his cybernetic spine, and walked over. He looked down at V, their face soft in sleep, the heavy bronze ring glinting on their finger, the collar of his worn jacket pulled high around their neck.
He reached out, his hand pausing inches above their forehead. Then, instead of waking them, he simply adjusted the jacket, pulling it more snugly around their shoulders. He pulled a heavy blanket from the supply cabinet and gently draped it over their legs.
He walked back to the console, pulling up his own personal databank. He had hours of paperwork to do, receipts to file, and inventory to check. V was safe. V was here.
He grabbed a synth coffee and settled in for the long night, his own jacket warming the most important person in his life. It was just another Thursday night in the clinic, totally normal. It happened weekly. The deep, necessary bond between the fixer and the fighter was the quiet engine that kept them both running in Night City.