Chapter 10: New Vice
The hideout became her world. Val moved a thin mattress into a curtained alcove off the main bay, a space previously used for storage. It was just large enough for the mattress, a duffel bag of Jasmine’s few clothes, and a single bulb dangling from a wire. Home.
That first night, after the camera’s red light died, the adrenaline that had fueled Jasmine’s performance curdled into a deep, hollow shaking. The tattoos were a throbbing, angry map across her skin. She sat on the edge of her new mattress, staring at the concrete floor, feeling the ghost of her badge’s weight on her belt.
Val entered the alcove without a word, holding a small, hand-rolled cigarette between her fingers. It smelled sweet and acrid, nothing like tobacco.
“This’ll help the sting,” Val said, her voice softer than usual. She lit it, took a shallow drag, and passed it to Jasmine.
Jasmine hesitated for only a second. The old rules were ash. She took it, inhaling deeply as she’d seen others do. The smoke hit her lungs like a hot, expanding cloud. She coughed, a harsh, ragged sound, but held it in until her vision blurred at the edges.
Val took the cigarette back, watching her. “Again. Slower.”
The second pull was smoother. A warmth spread from her chest outwards, a liquid comfort seeping into her muscles, dulling the sharp edges of the pain on her skin and in her mind. The third pull made the single lightbulb seem to pulse gently, like a slow, benevolent heart. The weight of the day—the needle, the words, the camera—began to feel distant, like a bad movie she’d watched once.
Val took the last drag and stubbed the joint out on the floor. She unzipped her jeans, her cock already stiffening in the dim light. “Lie back.”
Jasmine obeyed, the mattress rustling beneath her. The world had become soft and malleable. Val moved over her, not with the rough dominance of before, but with a heavy, inevitable purpose. When she entered her, it wasn’t a violation; it was a filling of a void Jasmine hadn’t fully acknowledged. The weed smoothed the physical stretch into a deep, pervasive fullness.
“You belong here now,” Val murmured, her rhythm a slow, grinding wave. “With me.”
The words coiled around Jasmine’s drugged brain. They felt true. More true than her oath to the city, more true than her dusty apartment. This aching fullness, this scent of leather and sweat and Val, was reality. She wrapped her legs around Val’s hips, meeting each thrust with a weak, needy roll of her own.
“I do,” Jasmine slurred, her voice thick. “I belong to you. I love you.” The declaration spilled out, unguarded and sticky as syrup.
Above her, Val’s rhythmic motion hitched for a single second. A low, soft chuckle vibrated through her body and into Jasmine’s. “Oh, piglet,” she said, her pace resuming, somehow both gentle and inexorable. “You’re just high. And full of cock.”
But she kissed Jasmine then, a deep, claiming kiss that tasted of smoke and herself. When she finished, spilling inside her, she didn’t pull away immediately. She stayed buried, her weight a comfort, her breath hot on Jasmine’s neck.
After a long moment, Val withdrew. She tucked herself away and stood, looking down at Jasmine’s sprawled, marked, and glistening form. She reached out and patted her freshly inked cheek, right over the word ‘FUCK’.
“You’re a good whore,” Val said, the words devoid of malice, sounding almost like a benediction.
A wide, dopey smile spread across Jasmine’s face. It was enough. It was everything. Her eyes fluttered shut as Val drew the curtain, leaving her in the warm, private dark.
One month dissolved.
The change wasn’t overnight, but a slow sedimentation. Jasmine’s cornrows grew out a little, her scalp no longer tender. The tattoos healed from raised, scarlet wounds into flat, stark illustrations. She learned the rhythms of the hideout: who liked their coffee black, who was cranky before noon, whose bike needed a specific fuel mix.
Her old life receded like a tide. She stopped jumping at the sound of sirens. The remembered weight of her service weapon felt alien in the ghost-memory of her hand. Instead, her hands grew familiar with other tasks: rolling joints, mixing cheap drinks, cleaning smears of lubricant and cum off the chrome furniture.
She spent her days in a state of soft-focused utility. If a futa pulled her into a shadowy corner by her hair, she went willingly. If someone pushed her to her knees in front of a couch, she opened her mouth. The acts weren’t violent anymore; they were transactional, habitual, like breathing. The gang called her “Juggs” or “Piglet” or, most often, just “Whore.” She answered to all of it with a vacant, cheerful smile.
The drugs helped. A little smoke to take the edge off the morning. Something stronger in a shared syringe to make the afternoon blur into a warm, colorful haze. It made the fucking easier, turned it from a series of physical actions into a sensation she could float upon. She laughed more, a high, giggling sound that sometimes echoed off the metal walls.
She was useful in unexpected ways. “Hey, Whore,” Raker called one afternoon, twisting a throttle cable in his hands. “Cop radios. They still use that digital encryption? The… Prophet system?”
Jasmine, wiping down the bar, didn’t look up. “Prophet Two-Way,” she mumbled, the terminology surfacing like debris from a shipwreck. “Yeah. Encrypted. You need a department-issued key. But the dispatch channel for this precinct is always chatter on sub-band 7. They think it’s secure. It’s not.”
The bay went quiet for a moment. Then Vesper snorted. “Useful pig.”
A warmth that had nothing to do with drugs spread in Jasmine’s chest. She beamed, polishing the same spot on the bar until it shone.
Her relationship with Val settled into a pattern. Val was rarely tender, but she was possessive. She was the one Jasmine shared a bed with most nights, the one who decided when Jasmine got a new tattoo (“A bar code on your ass, I think. Our inventory number.”), the one who handed her the first hit of the day. Jasmine’s professed love was never mentioned again, but her devotion was a constant, visible thing. She watched Val move through the space with a kind of worshipful slackness, eager for a glance, a touch, a command.
One evening, as a synthwave track thumped through the speakers, Jasmine was curled on the floor near Val’s boots, her head resting against Val’s calf. She was pleasantly numb, her body humming from a cocktail of substances and recent use. She played idly with the laces of Val’s boot.
Val looked down at her, her blue eyes unreadable in the shifting neon. “You don’t miss it?” she asked, her voice cutting through the music.
Jasmine looked up, her green eyes glassy. “Miss what?”
“The badge. The… order of it all. Being the one in charge.”
Jasmine thought about it. The memory was there, but it was thin, like a photograph left in the sun. She remembered the frustration more than the pride: the paperwork, the arrogant superiors, the endless parade of human misery. Here, everything was simple. She knew her purpose.
A slow smile spread across her face. She nuzzled Val’s leg. “Nah,” she sighed, contentment a physical warmth in her veins. “This is better. I’m a good whore, right?”
Val’s hand came down, not ruffling her hair, but resting on her shaved scalp with a heavy, final weight. “Yeah,” she said, her gaze drifting to the graffiti-strewn wall. “You are.”
Jasmine closed her eyes, the bass from the speakers vibrating up through the floor and into her bones. She was home.