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They’re at Antonio’s, beaming and more than a little bruised after their last round against the newest line of Kane Bots, when Julie realizes this is probably the best her life is ever going to get. Which-- yeah, might seem kind of messed up to a third party (if Claire’s sighs of disapproval are anything to go by), considering they all look like they were dropped off the side of a cliff, but even though she’s pretty sure she has a concussion, they’re alive. And there’s pizza. And they’re making a difference, and things are simple, and good.
Across the table, Mike is talking about rescuing the next load of refugees from Deluxe. His nose is still bleeding a little but he doesn’t seem to notice or mind, and Chuck hands him napkins every once in awhile, almost absently, like this is routine. Dutch is quiet, like he always is after missions, nursing his burger the way most men nurse their whiskies, and to her left, Texas is warm and buzzing against her side, interjecting with suggestions to make things bigger, better. Julie knows she should probably be paying attention, so she can reign him in, but she’s also fairly sure she’s lost hearing in one ear, and-- yeah, okay, that molar is definitely loose. She just squints a little through the faint haze at the corners of her vision as Texas grabs the salt and pepper shaker to try and demonstrate some needlessly complicated car flip, whilst Dutch rolls his eyes and Mike smiles and shakes his head.
One of the lids of the shakers pops off and sprays salt everywhere, and Chuck screams a little, which somewhat of an overreaction considering the last time she checked, she was pretty sure he wasn’t part slug or part freaky mutant Terra plant. She says so, too, and Texas laughs, the sound sudden and loud in her ear, but for some reason Julie can’t seem to bring herself to mind. All of a sudden, her chest feels ten times too tight, and she doesn’t really realize she’s staring until he turns and grins at her.
“What?” he says, and tips his cap up a little so he can see her better. “I got something on my face?”
That’s somewhat of an understatement. She debates telling him he’s got half a pizza’s worth of tomato paste at the corners of his mouth, but instead, she just grins back at him and shakes her head.
“Nope.”
“Uh, yes he--” Chuck starts, but someone (maybe Dutch, maybe Mike-- maybe both of them) kicks him under the table, and Julie can’t help but laugh as she settles back and slides Texas’s plate over to finish off his fries.
--
It’s stupid. It’s not like Texas is even really her type. Not that she even really has a type, but if she did, it definitely wouldn’t be him.
The thing is, he’s just really easy to be around.
Okay, so he’s not the easiest person to be around-- he’s loud and obnoxious and has no concept of personal space. A lot of the time, Julie isn’t sure if he forgets her name just to mess with her, or if he’s actually brain-damaged, and honestly, he’s probably a little too into bedazzling his car. And sometimes, if she’s honest with herself, it kind of bothers her that they still don’t really know his actual name.
But despite all of that, he’s easy. He’s easy to understand. He’s solid, and funny (sometimes even intentionally), and Julie knows on a cellular level that he’d do pretty much anything for any of them. He’s honest-- probably the most honest out of all of them-- and sometimes, in the quiet moments, Julie wishes that he’d been brought up in Deluxe instead, so she’d be able to look at him and not have to feel that feel that familiar, crushing weight on her solar plexus. She hates herself afterwards, shoves the thought down deep into the dark, sticky recesses of her mind, because if there’s one things she’s learned from doing this, it’s that people like Texas never survive in a place like Deluxe. Their spirit atrophies. They either disappear, or they go crazy. Sometimes both.
Still. It doesn’t stop her from wanting it, sometimes.
So she says yes, when Texas asks if she wants to watch one of his stupid kung fu movies even when all the other guys have turned him down. And she says yes when he offers to try and teach her the Texas Twister, even if he follows it with some stupid disclaimer that it probably won’t work because, let’s face it, Babs, Texas has more muscle in his left calf than you have in your entire family. And she says yes when he offers to drive her back up to Deluxe when 9Lives is in the garage and out of commission, (even though he takes corners way too sharply and the inside of Stronghorn always smells vaguely of leather and Muscle Mulch.)
And when he leans in, and calls her Julie for the first time in what feels like years, she says yes to that too, and tilts her face up to kiss him.
They don’t really talk about it afterwards, but they also don’t really need to. She’s not stupid. She’s pretty sure half of Motorcity saw that one coming a mile away, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from beaming at her with a smile that’s usually only reserved for his car, and even though she knows better, she can’t help but smile back at him. For a second, she thinks about telling him the truth-- Texas, my name is Julie Kane, Abraham Kane is my father, I’ve been lying to you, I’m so sorry-- but then he puts his hand on her knee and his foot to the pedal, and in moments like these, with the city melting into a blur around them, it’s easy to forget that neither of them know their real names.
--
“Okay, first up,” Claire says, when Julie finally tells her a week and a half later. “Seriously, Jules? Of all the guys in Motorcity, you pick the one guy who’s four foot five? What if you want to wear heels? You’ll look ridiculous.”
Julie groans into her pillow. “He’s not that short,” she says. “And I do wear heels, and-- and you’re missing the point. What do I do?”
“Uh--.”
“I’m not going to dump him, Claire. We’re not even technically going out. It was one kiss.”
Claire makes a sound not unlike a cat throwing up a hairball, and Julie feels fairly justified in throwing a pillow at her stupid, perfect face.
“Hey!” Claire says, and hits her back gently. “ If you didn’t want my advice, why did you even ask?”
Which is a fair question. Julie shakes her head and covers her face with her hands for a second, before exhaling and tipping back onto her bed.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, Claire. He’s just different.”
In her peripheral vision, she sees Claire pull another face, before her shoulders drop and she sighs, too, as she settles down beside her. “Uh, yeah, if by different, you mean brain-damaged. Girl, you might as well be dating Tooley.”
“Thank you for that mental image.”
“I’m kidding. Obviously.”
“Mm.”
There’s a pause, before Claire nudges her again, and this time, her voice is a little softer, a little gentler.
“You know you’re going to have to tell them who you are eventually, right?” she says, and Julie feels her stomach seize, the way it always does whenever the conversation turns to this. “I mean--. All it’d take is for someone up here to recognize you, or for your dad’s creepy little toaster assassin to actually, like, put two and two together. You can’t really afford to start dating any of them. It’s just going to hurt more when they find out.”
And she’s right, of course she’s right, and Julie hates her for it for a second. It’s not that she thinks she’s actually going to get away with this. She’s always known that the guys were going to find out eventually, that there was no way this wasn’t going to come to a head. Growing up the way the guys did, they don’t trust easy. Mike might understand, he grew up under her father, but the others--.
The others--.
“He’s going to hate me so much,” Julie says into her palms, and beside her, Claire makes this small sound at the back of her throat, like she’s honestly, genuinely sad for her.
“Yeah, probably,” she says, but her voice is quiet and uncharacteristically without judgement. They sit there in silence for a moment with nothing but the hum of the city around them, before the bed dips again as Claire shifts her weight, and when she curls an arm around Julie’s shoulders, all Julie can do is close her eyes and lean into it.
--
She tries not to think about it too hard.
Instead, she throws herself into her work. She knows it’s just a cheap fix, that nothing she does down here could ever possibly make up for the things her father has done, but the roar of 9Lives’ engine is enough to block out that tiny little voice in the back of her head telling her it’d be so easy, so easy, for someone to blow her cover, that all it’d take is for Jacob’s denial to finally buckle under the weight of having to look at her and see her father. That one day, Claire could get sick of keeping her stupid secret and just like that, it would all be over. Sometimes she wonders if might be better that way. It weighs her down, like a different kind of gravity, and she can’t remember the last time she got a full night’s sleep. Mike tries talking to her about it, because-- well, he’s Mike. He’s sensitive to nearly a fault, but drops it after the eighth attempt, and Julie feels kind of bad for lying through her teeth, but it’s funny how the sting of it dulls through repetition. Every time he asks, it gets a little easier to just smile and nod.
If Texas notices something’s wrong, he doesn’t mention it, and she kind of loves him for it. They still don’t really talk about what happened, and she still doesn’t know his real name, and he still gets her name wrong more often than not, but he makes it easy to forget that any of that matters. Sometimes, when they’re at Antonio’s, his hand will find hers under the table, and she’ll feel kind of bruised on the inside. Like it doesn’t matter if he hates her later, because he’s warm and solid and wants her right now. And this really is the best her life is ever going to get.
.