Archive of Our Own

Every morning, he wakes up in the same place.

It's different now from how things were when V was still around, 'cause they never knew where they'd wind up sleeping from one night to the next, and that was when they slept at all. They spent a couple of nights in shitty motels with neon signs that blinked through the blinds and made their eyes start stinging, one or two on Judy's couch under a blanket that smelled like stale smokes and spilled tequila, more than that in the front of V's car with the seat pushed back like all the chrome he'd put inside the body they were sharing could make numb hands and a crick in their neck any less of a sure thing come morning. Sometimes it was even V's own apartment, with his crappy bed and his crappy porn and more maybe-stolen guns and clothes than the two of them could use in both their lifetimes, assuming they'd had them both to live out separately. But they slept where and when they could 'cause they knew the next time might have been the last time, fucked as that was. Things are kinda different now.

As much as Johnny likes to bitch and moan about Kerry's corpo sellout playboy mansion, he has to admit it's not the worst place that he's ever lived. And, every morning, that's where he wakes up. Sometimes Kerry's still in bed with him 'cause somehow the notion of purchasing a second bed has passed them by, or he's downstairs making coffee, or he's already outside, on the patio in some twisty-ass yoga pose Johnny couldn't copy in a hundred years, not even if he wanted to - and he absolutely doesn't want to. Today, Kerry's outside, so Johnny goes outside to meet him, down the stairs and through the door and out into the mid-morning NC sun he's come to love to hate. There's a couple of chairs by Kerry's mat and Johnny wanders over to sit down on one, in a pair of sweats that might be his and might be Kerry's. At this point, though, he's not sure if the distinction really matters. He's not sure it ever did.

"Hey, you remember that place we had in Watson?" Johnny asks. "Y'know, back in the day. Pre-everything. The real shithole."

Kerry looks at him from the mat, flat on his back, Corpse Pose or what-fucking-ever though he's ironically not the one who's been to death and back, one pretty blue eye cracked open as he rolls his head to the side. Johnny's half sure he'll never stop giving him shit about those eyes, even though they kinda suit him. He's all the way sure Kerry'd be disappointed if he did stop, 'cause that's just how things are.

"That doesn't narrow it down a whole lot," Kerry replies. He turns onto his side, both eyes open now, head propped up on one hand. He raises one eyebrow and fuck, lounging there on his overpriced designer yoga mat in his painted-on designer yoga pants, sun on his skin and shining in all of that gold chrome he has, the son of a bitch looks like he just stepped out of some bright screamsheet wet dream. Johnny's not sure when Kerry got so sleazy rich guy hot, but it must've happened sometime after he died. He sure hadn't been there to witness it.

"You mean the place behind the meth lab, or..."

"The hotel."

Kerry laughs. He gets up with a groan like he couldn't do cartwheels all around the garden if he wanted to, though how the fuck he got all fit and almost-semi-healthy is beyond the understanding of any part of Johnny's brain. He sits down on the chair next to Johnny's and stretches out with his feet up, once he's retrieved his sunglasses; he leans over to the table that's sitting in between them and he starts to put his rings back on, one by one. He's torn at least three mats with them since Johnny's been living there, at least one per month - he curses a blue streak and sends his assistant out to buy him a new one, makes do with the treadmill for the morning while he waits and really, fuck the treadmill; Johnny gets why he tries to remember to take them off.

"Sure, I remember that place," Kerry says. "Most people were paying by the hour and Jesus, fuck, you could hear straight through the walls." He pulls his glasses down the bridge of his nose with one forefinger and he flashes Johnny a grin. "I started out horny all the time and by the time we left I was pretty sure I never wanted to see another dick for the rest of my life."

"Sure," Johnny says, "but if I'd offered you mine, you'd've been on it in a microsecond."

Kerry shrugs. He smiles again, easily, and he lies back on his chair. "Jesus Christ, you're a smug son of a bitch," he says, but he looks kinda fond instead of irritated and besides which, he doesn't deny it. They both know it's true anyway, so there's really no point to him saying it's not.

Kerry doesn't ask why he's asking. Kerry doesn't say anything else at all, in fact; he lies there in his skintight sportswear in a shade of nearly-neon orange that suits him so badly it would've made V proud, and Johnny wonders, as he does sometimes, what the fuck he's doing here. He wonders how the fuck it came to this.

But then again, he guesses he knows.

---

It was maybe 4am when he got to Kerry's place, not just night anymore but not really into morning. He knew he was pushing his luck, if he had any luck at all, not that he believed in it. He just knew he couldn't keep doing the shit he'd been doing, not if he wanted to make it through another year.

"Well, fuck," Kerry said, when he finally opened the door. It wasn't like he had a doorbell on the house itself, and it wasn't like Johnny had rung at the gate like he guessed visitors were meant to; he'd slipped in over the fence and hammered on the door with one fist while the security bots scanned his ass to determine if he was friend or foe. He had a gun tucked into the back of his pants and was still a good enough shot to take them out before they turned him into mincemeat there on Kerry's front step, but it turned out Kerry hadn't gotten around to purging V's stats from the system. It was late, or it was early, and he hadn't come there looking for a firefight, so he took the win.

"Fuck, V, I thought you ghosted me," Kerry said. He made a face, half relieved and half awkward, as he smoothed the tiny robe he was wearing down over his chest - it wasn't tied straight, and Johnny figured he'd gotten him out of bed, so the only real question was whether he was alone or had company; he knew which thing he'd prefer.

"I thought maybe you didn't make it," Kerry added, and Johnny couldn't help but grimace. But before he could say he didn't, he saw the realization dawn on Kerry's face.

"Oh," he said. He straightened up and the relieved-awkward look turned into something harder, something disappointed, halfway sick. "What can I do for you, Johnny? You know what time it is?"

Johnny shrugged. "Hoping I can stay awhile," he said, feeling fucking absurd.

"Here? With me?"

"It was this or get on a bus," he said, but Kerry seemed to hear what he was really saying, underneath that, loud and clear: Johnny was fucked and he had no place else to go. So he stepped aside with a kind of grimace-smile, gestured at the doorway he'd left empty and said something like mi casa es tu casa, except Johnny wasn't sure when the hospitality would run its course. He figured he'd take that, though, better than nothing, better than another night in V's bed, or in someone else's who'd never known V at all. Better than a shitty motel with a bottle and a glass he didn't even bother using. He went back to the car he'd parked halfway onto the curb outside the gate, drove it up the fancy lit-up driveway, and got his shit out of the back. The laundry basket came first.

"Is that a cat?" Kerry asked, when he got back to the door. Johnny had pretty much expected him to just head back up to bed and leave the door wide open or some shit, but there he was, leaning and waiting.

Johnny lifted the basket in his hands till it was chest height. Nibbles sat up inside and peered at Kerry, all yellow eyes in the mostly-dark.

"Kerry, Nibbles," Johnny said. "Nibbles, Kerry. You mind?"

Kerry eyed the cat. The cat eyed Kerry. Then Kerry reached into the basket, lifted Nibbles out, gave Johnny a weird sideways look and then went back inside without another word about it. By the time Johnny had ditched the now empty basket in the back seat of the car and gone inside after him, the damned cat was sitting there on Kerry's lap, purring like a motorcycle in need of a good tune-up. Kerry was smiling at him - at Nibbles, not at Johnny - like he'd never seen a cat before. Johnny was pretty sure he had, just maybe not inside his house.

"Cat was V's, right?" Kerry said, then he looked up at Johnny.

"Yeah," he replied. "Cat was V's."

"Kid had a big heart."

"Like you that way. Taking in us waifs and strays."

Kerry snorted. "Yeah, well, jury's still out on that," he said. "I mean, sure, I'll keep the cat..." He leaned down and Nibbles headbutted his chin like the definition of adorable. Kerry looked fucking delighted, which was pretty great for 4am.

"Well, shit," Johnny said, and he gestured at the two of them. "Is that what it takes? You want me to sit on your lap and purr?"

Kerry winced. It was only for a second before he went right back to playing with the cat, but Johnny saw it and he was pretty sure he understood; maybe in the old days he'd've laughed and said, fuck, of course you'd like that, maybe he'd've shooed the cat away and settled down on his knees on the couch, straddling Kerry's thighs. He'd always known how to get under Kerry's skin just like a goddamn needle and Kerry would've hated it and wanted it and hated that he wanted it. Johnny would've turned him on in the space of ten to twelve seconds then stood back up and left him there while he went to grab another drink. All he did then, though, was dump his bag by the door and go join the two of them on the couch, side by side and not over him. He reached out and Nibbles rubbed his head against his hand then yowled at him, plaintively, and Johnny sighed.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "I'm not him."

Nibbles blinked at Johnny like he agreed about that, then he jumped down from Kerry's lap and wandered off to who the fuck knew where. Johnny watched him go then sank down lower on the couch till he could rest his head against the back of it. He closed his eyes and he wondered if this had been such a great idea after all. Maybe he should've dropped the cat with Misty and queued for the bus, or headed out to the Pistis Sophia like he had done once or twice before. It'd been a month. V was gone. He still wasn't sure how to handle that.

"So," Kerry said. "You want a drink or something?"

Johnny turned his head against the couch. He cracked open his eyes. "Nah," he said. "I'm really fucking beat." He patted the couch with both hands either side of his thighs; the thing looked like something out of a magazine but felt like it was made of cement under pretty upholstery. "You have anyplace I can sleep that doesn't feel like a slab?"

"Fuck you," Kerry said, without a whole lot of venom. "The bed's fine. C'mon." He stood. He made for the stairs but then paused and turned back, his hands on his hips, when Johnny didn't get up and follow. "Jesus Christ, Johnny," he said, "I'm too tired for this bullshit. Bed's big enough for all three of us: you, me, and your heterosexuality."

Kerry left and maybe ten seconds later, Johnny picked himself up and he followed. Kerry was wrong, though - not about the space in the bed, 'cause there was plenty of that, but about the problem Johnny had with it. He didn't give a shit that Kerry tossed his robe on the floor and got into bed in a pair of really small briefs. He didn't care that Kerry watched him strip down to his tank top and underwear then join him in there underneath the sheets. It wasn't like they'd never shared a bed before. It wasn't like they hadn't seen each other wearing less.

As Johnny lay back and Kerry turned out the lights, he knew exactly what the problem was: he remembered V being there, and all the shit he'd done with Kerry. He had all of his own memories up to 2023, then that.

V should've been there, not him. And that was the kind of shit that weighed on you.

---

In the morning, maybe closer to the afternoon, he woke up in Kerry's bed.

The six fucking thousand floor-to-ceiling windows in Kerry's overengineered farce of a home apparently did some kind of tinting shit instead of him putting up blinds like a regular guy, so Johnny hadn't woken up at dawn with bleary eyes and a weird lack of hangover. He could almost feel one lingering behind his eyes, though, haunting him like the ghost of hangovers past, but he hadn't touched the booze in a couple of days - long enough that he wasn't still drunk but he maybe wouldn't've called himself sober.

Kerry was still asleep next to him, snoring like a drain like he always had, so Johnny guessed maybe all the fancy chrome hadn't really changed a thing. He'd slept through the snoring, too, like he'd trained himself to do in the first couple of weeks after they'd first met - they'd pretty much moved straight in together, Johnny only recently arrived in Night City and Kerry like a new puppy, bright-eyed and eager to please him. Seemed like what had woken him was Nibbles getting himself caught up in Kerry's robe - he leaned up and peered over Kerry's snoring carcass just in time to see the cat poke his face out from under the robe and blink at him, slowly, with his big goblin eyes, before going back to sleep. Seemed like a great idea to Johnny, too, except as he stretched back out, Kerry smiled and his eyes fluttered open. Fucking fluttered, like some kind of a fairytale princess and not just an ageing rockerboy with more money than God.

"Hey," Kerry said, his voice kinda rough, as he turned himself onto his side. He'd slept on his front, arms shoved in underneath the pillow and his head turned to the side; he had a crease from the silky-ass pillowcase pressed into one cheek and Johnny was still examining that, wondering how the hell he looked like this at eighty-what-the-fuck, when Kerry moved again. Distracted by a fucking wrinkle and the next thing he knew, Kerry had gotten a whole lot closer to him. Kerry had gotten close enough to run one hand over Johnny's mercifully still clothed chest and lean in to press his mouth to his. It made his insides twist. It made something in his chest feel weird.

Kerry kissed him - not like the way he'd used to sometimes, drunk and kinda desperate, like he half expected the next thing that would happen was him getting his ass knocked down on the floor. He kissed him slow and soft and easy, almost chaste, like Kerry even knew what chastity was, like all it really meant was good morning. It even kinda felt nice, Johnny thought, if he ignored the jarring fucking wrongness of it all. He couldn't, though, not for long, 'cause he knew what was wrong and it wasn't just the fact that Kerry was kissing him - that much he could've lived with, 'cause he had a hundred times before. It was the fact he'd meant that kiss for someone else, and there wasn't a damn thing Johnny could do to make it right.

"Mmm, morning, V," Kerry said, as he turned onto his back. He stretched, hugely, arms above his head, back arched, groaning as his vertebrae popped, and Johnny could tell the exact instant Kerry realized what it was that he'd just done. His arched back dropped flat against the mattress. He pulled his arms down so he could rub his wincing face with both his hands. He took a breath, and Johnny knew.

"Fuck," Kerry said, muffled by one palm as he clapped it hard over his mouth. When he turned his head and moved his hand, Johnny could see the outlines of his fingers fading on his skin like that fucking wrinkle. And Kerry didn't apologize; he just said, "Morning, Johnny." Then he turned away, rolled away, got out of bed in his underwear like he couldn't have spent another second there in bed with him if he'd been paid to do it. Not that he needed the eddies, from the look of the place that he lived in, but who knew.

Kerry pulled on his robe and stepped his feet into his crappy slides. Nibbles peered at him disapprovingly for stealing his blanket until Kerry leaned down to pet him in between the ears. "I'll make coffee," Kerry said, as he was already walking away across the big open space. Nibbles followed along behind, almost more like a dog than a cat.

"And feed the cat," Johnny called after him. "There's a couple of cans in my stuff." Kerry raised one hand and waved vaguely over his shoulder as he turned onto the stairs, not looking at him. Johnny got it - every time he looked at himself in the mirror, he missed V, too. Damn kid had gotten to him. Even the dumb shit he'd done at the end, the shit that meant Johnny was there and V wasn't, only made Johnny miss him more. Maybe he hadn't taken a literal bullet, but he'd sure taken a metaphoric one.

He got up. It was maybe the best damn bed he'd ever slept in but he still ached from head to toe like he'd slept in V's shitty car, and when he looked at his clothes on Kerry's bedroom floor suddenly it stung like a bitch that pretty much everything he had in the world had been V's first. Fuck that, he thought, so he went into Kerry's closet - Jesus fucking Christ, Johnny had lived in apartments that were smaller - and there was absolutely no wonder that the two of them had gotten on so well, not given how Kerry owned just as much shit as V had, except he maybe hadn't looted them from lockers or from corpses. He pulled off his shirt and his underwear and pulled on a pair of sweats and a tank top, white tank, gray sweats, as generic as they came except for how much he figured their label had cost. Then he went downstairs, barefoot and tired. And feeling kinda like he might put his fist through the nearest window, just because.

"Are you wearing my clothes?" Kerry asked, when he turned away from the coffee machine for long enough to look at him. The son of a bitch had always loved the stuff and it wasn't even like it was Johnny's first time seeing him using the machine, complicated fuck that it was, more like military than culinary. Just every other time he'd seen it before that he'd been in the back seat and V had been driving, and now Kerry was making coffee for him, not his early days maybe-input.

Johnny had complained about that in the start, how V dating Kerry was a bad fucking idea because Kerry was a certified mess and V was maybe checking out in the not too distant future. And hey, speaking of checking out, weren't they meant to be dealing with that and not boning Kerry Eurodyne? He really hadn't believed V would die, though. He'd believed they'd find some kind of a loophole, beat the system or cheat it at least, and have V back to Kerry's place doing boring input shit before the month was out. V was the one who'd been meant to live, 'cause Johnny was already dead. He'd've said it was funny how shit worked out, but he hadn't felt like laughing in weeks: not even at himself, or at Kerry in his tiny robe.

He'd complained about it in the start, told V if he wanted to get laid then they could go find a joy toy down on Jig-Jig Street or some drunk guy at the Afterlife who'd take his pants off if V just smiled real nice. He'd told him Kerry was a bad idea and that fuck, Kerry's interest in V was all about Johnny anyway - Kerry had been hung up on him since maybe twenty minutes after they'd first met, and only ever more so 'cause they'd never gone ahead and fucked. V'd made a face and rolled his eyes and told him to go fuck himself 'cause he was gonna go fuck Kerry...and okay, in the end, he'd stopped with the complaints. Kerry and V had had just shy of three months by the end, hooking up every two or three days or sometimes more often, watching shitty TV and eating pizza on the cement-feeling couch. They'd texted all the damn time when they hadn't been together, cutesy fucking stuff that had made V smile and Johnny groan. And maybe the sex had been weird, 'cause Johnny sure as shit wasn't into guys, but the other stuff had been pretty good, like back in the day, at least the days when they hadn't both hated each other's guts. Hell, sometimes when Johnny had talked, V had told Kerry what he'd said, and it had almost been like all three of them were there, almost a goddamn party. Fuck, he missed the kid. Chances were Kerry did, too, at least if he still had any sense in him. He'd always been pretty low on that, but this time Johnny figured he'd manage it.

"Yeah," Johnny replied, and he left it at that. He didn't say that fifty years ago, the tee would've felt a little tight across the shoulders and the sweats a little short in the leg, 'cause they both knew V's body was different to how his had been back then. He could maybe grow his hair out a few inches till that felt right, so he wasn't always reaching to push it out of his face though V had kept his hair cut short - there was nothing there to push. He didn't ask if Kerry minded, either, 'cause if he'd said yes, what would he have done: stripped naked in the middle of the kitchen? Maybe. Probably. But for once in his life he stayed sensibly silent and watched Kerry make coffee while Nibbles ate his food. The fact Kerry had a can opener in that empty fucking cavern of a house was almost as surprising as the fact Johnny kept his big mouth shut. The fact Nibbles at the cat food without it being nuked with NiCola was the most surprising part, though, Johnny had to admit.

They sat down on the low-backed, high-legged stools by the kitchen counter once Kerry had poured the coffee. It was the real thing, Kerry said, though that was kinda lost on Johnny who'd've nuked a lukewarm cup from Buck-A-Slice and called it good enough. Then Kerry sat down next to him, close but Johnny could tell he was keeping a careful distance. After all the times Johnny had yelled at him to get out of his face, or get out of his space, it was ironic how much he hated there being an extra six inches between them.

"So, what happened?" Kerry asked, when his coffee cup was more empty than full. He was holding it in both his hands and staring into it like he could read his future, like that wasn't tea leaves or some kind of esoteric bullshit Misty probably had books on in her store. Johnny hadn't been to see her since he'd gotten back - he'd been telling himself that Misty and Viktor were V's friends, not his, and they'd probably be kinda pissed to see him, but if he was honest...yeah, he just didn't wanna be reminded of the things he'd lost any more than he already was from day to day. Maybe that made him an asshole, and maybe V would've yelled at him for it, but it wasn't like V got a say anymore.

"V went with Alt," Johnny said. "Didn't give me a choice."

"Yeah, that much I kinda figured," Kerry said. "Even you're not a big enough asshole to just steal a guy's body." He glanced at him sideways then looked back down at his coffee. "I meant after that. What, you lose my number, forget where I lived? It's been a month, Johnny. You could've...I don't know, let me know he was gone? Let me know you weren't?"

Johnny grimaced at his coffee. "Are you gonna feel like an asshole if I was unconscious all this time?" he asked.

"Were you?" He looked at Johnny, still grimacing. Johnny figured the look on his own face was pretty similar. "And I don't mean passed out at the bottom of a bottle, Johnny. A hospital. A ripperdoc. Some cute nurse who spent a month giving you sponge baths in bed. Actually medical, not tequila and pills."

Johnny's grimace deepened. "Then no," he said.

"Then I'm not the asshole here."

And Johnny guessed that was fair, but that didn't mean he liked it. Johnny guessed that was fair, but that didn't mean he'd come here for this shit. "This was a mistake," he said. He wrapped one hand around his coffee cup, which was still hot but not hot enough to feel like punishment. "I'm just gonna go. Can I leave the cat?"

"Don't you fucking dare go anywhere." Kerry stood so damn abruptly that his stool teetered and then fell and hit the floor. Johnny flinched and Nibbles yowled unhappily - Johnny knew how he felt. He almost expected Kerry to hit him then, and honestly he'd've probably let him. He didn't hit him, though; Kerry ran his fingers through his own hair, tugged on it, made his already short robe ride up even higher, and he said, "Drink your coffee, Johnny. Then come tell me what's wrong with this tune I've been writing."

He turned and he walked away after that, maybe to go put on some clothes that didn't make him look like a sleazy middle-aged millionaire, though that was actually almost accurate. Johnny watched him go, and Kerry paused at the stairs, took a breath then sighed and looked back at him.

"If you leave now, don't bother coming back," he said. His mouth twisted, wry, almost but not all the way a smile. "But don't leave, yeah? Don't leave." Then he disappeared up the stairs.

Johnny could've grabbed his shit and been long gone before Kerry had showered or dressed or whatever the fuck he was doing. He could've been on a bus leaving town in an hour, or most of the way to the end of a bottle.

Don't leave, Kerry had said.

He didn't.

---

The next morning, walking up felt kinda nice.

There was a hand down the front of his borrowed sweats, cupping his half-mast morning wood, and that felt pretty great until his brain engaged and he connected the hand down his pants back to Kerry. Kerry whose forehead seemed to be pressed to the back of Johnny's hair, and he could feel his slow, sleeping breath against the back of his neck. It tickled. He hadn't ever really been ticklish before.

The previous day had seemed to go on forever, just not in a totally horrendous way. Kerry had been writing again, which was good, but something about the song was kinda fucked and that was where Johnny's expertise came in. They hadn't talked about that kiss, not that it'd been much more than six seconds' worth of a sleep-fuelled folly; instead, Kerry had played him the song and they'd argued about it till Kerry's twink of a PA had arrived with lunch and when he'd said, "Hey, V, it's been a while!" like cheer and sunshine personified, Johnny could've punched him in the face. He did not feel like sunshine and cheer.

"You're either gonna have to get used to that or tell everyone you changed your name," Kerry'd told him, lounging on the couch with a slice of pizza in his hand.

"Or you could get a new assistant."

"Fuck you," Kerry said, "he's the best I've had in years. Unless you want the job, yeah?" And Johnny could think of almost nothing more abhorrent in the world than recycling Kerry's empty bottles and washing the jizz off his sheets.

Then they'd gone back to work, pizza and all, and they hadn't stopped all day, all night, till Kerry's voice was hoarse and they'd've been begging for an NCPD noise complaint if Kerry had just had any neighbors within hearing distance. It'd been nice, in the way where they'd pretty much wanted to beat each other senseless with the nearest guitar till things had started falling into place. Then they'd gone to bed in the early hours and Kerry, maybe trying to be considerate, had put on a pair of silk pyjamas instead of sleeping in his underwear. Johnny had made fun of them. Kerry had told him to kiss his ass.

The additional clothing hadn't helped with the way they'd woken up, though, awkward for the second day in a row; awkward, though it still felt good somehow even after he'd realized what was happening. Johnny could admit that much, to himself at least, as he lay there in Kerry's bed with Kerry's hand between his legs - a hand was a hand, after all, and he was probably pretty good at jerking guys off, too. All those years, all those decades, with a guitar pick in his hand had probably served him well for stamina and grip, and that was without all of the practice he'd definitely had. But fuck, the hand on his dick attached to the arm around his waist was attached to Kerry, not some girl he'd met in a bar last night. The dick in Kerry's hand attached to the body he was three quarters of the way to spooning was attached to Johnny, not a smart-mouthed merc. So he only let himself enjoy it for a moment longer than he knew he should, and even that felt kinda perverse.

"Hey, Ker," he said, once that moment had passed, and when Kerry grumbled by the back of his neck, when he moved but only far enough so he could rub his own morning hard-on against the curve of Johnny's ass, Johnny chuckled lowly and he reached up, reached back, and tapped the top of Kerry's head with his first two fingers.

He didn't really mind 'cause he'd never really minded how handsy Kerry had gotten with him sometimes. He'd always stopped it before it went too far, or else Johnny had stopped him, told him to knock that shit off 'cause the last time he'd checked he still into pussy, not cock, and sometimes Kerry had gotten pretty steamed with him, like he'd been leading him on, but Johnny was pretty sure he'd always been clear as he could be. Sure, so the line he wouldn't cross had been pretty mobile from one day to the next - one night they'd make out when they got off stage, 'cause Johnny's output found it hot and Kerry's input really didn't, and the next night Johnny couldn't even stand to be slapped on the back. He'd never really given it much thought before, but that shit must've driven Kerry crazy. He'd never really given it much thought before, but it turned out he'd been an ass for years. That much was not a surprise to him, at least.

"Mmm, yeah?" Kerry said.

"Yeah," Johnny replied. "Look, I know I've never met a handjob I didn't like, 'cept maybe that one girl with the nails in that bar in Atlanta... But Ker?" He slid one hand down over the top of his sweats and squeezed Kerry's hand through the fabric, which made Kerry's hand squeeze harder at his dick. "You're feeling me up."

For a second, Kerry didn't seem to get it. Johnny understood - he'd literally just woken up, he was still 100% pre-caffeine, and it wasn't like he wasn't used to waking up with some guy in his bed who'd be more than amenable to the matter at hand. For a second, Kerry's grip tightened, and he mumbled something probably obscene against the nape of Johnny's neck that made him shiver all the way right down his spine and brought him out in gooseflesh in a way that actually felt pretty good. Kerry turned his hand and he wrapped his fingers around the base of Johnny's dick like he hadn't heard a word he'd said, but then he froze. He took a breath in through his teeth, hissing, then slowly eased his hand back out of Johnny's sweats. When he turned onto his back, away from him, so did Johnny.

"Fuck," Kerry said, one arm over his eyes, but then he moved it just far enough that he could look at Johnny with a grimace. "Fuck," he said again, and put his arm back down over his eyes. And maybe Johnny expected more words, an apology, maybe an explanation though it wasn't like Johnny didn't understand, Kerry just left it at fuck. To be completely fair, it summed it up pretty well.

Johnny turned onto his side, head propped up on one hand as he looked at him. V would've kissed him, he thought, like swapping spit could make everything better, and for a second Johnny could almost imagine that - okay, half of it was memory, V at the helm and Johnny along for the sensory ride, but the rest was his imagination. He knew what kissing Kerry was like, but would Kerry freak out or be weirdly kind of into it? It was hard to say 'cause honestly, it seemed like Kerry was dealing with the V situation only marginally better than Johnny was. And imagining kissing Kerry really wasn't the start to the day Johnny had expected. He'd never really given much thought to kissing Kerry at all, unless he could count all the times he'd told V not to before he'd told him he should go ahead. That had probably been kinda confusing.

"I'm gonna go make coffee," Johnny said, instead of doing anything stupid like testing out his kissing theory, though the incredulous look on Kerry's face when he moved his arm again said maybe that idea was something stupid, too. Turned out it absolutely was; when Kerry came downstairs, hair all damp from a super-fast shower, wearing that goddamn tiny robe again instead of his black silk pyjamas, Johnny was ready to throw the coffee maker through the nearest window. There were lots of them, everywhere, like Kerry had never heard a word like privacy, so he'd've been kinda spoiled for choice. Maybe he could've just shot it instead: he'd kept three guns from V's stash - Archangel, his trusty old Malorian and Skippy just 'cause it amused the fuck out of him - but maybe sending Kerry's kitchen equipment to barista hell with the gun he'd given to V might've pissed him off more than absolutely necessary. Since when he'd actively tried not to piss Kerry off he wasn't sure, but it turned out he was making an effort.

Instead of talking about Kerry's hand on his dick, which was just as well 'cause Johnny had no idea how that conversation could've started naturally - is that somnophilia or are you just happy to see me? - Kerry showed him how to use the machine. Kerry wasn't exactly patient about it. Johnny, it turned out, didn't give a fuck about making coffee. It was not a winning combination, all things considered.

"Or you could just send Frankie out to Caliente," Kerry said, as they both took their seats by the counter, this time even farther apart.

"Kid's your drone, not mine," Johnny replied, like he gave a crap and didn't just feel fucking belligerent. "Don't you get sick of ordering him around? Fetch me some coffee, Frankie, dry clean my underwear."

So they argued about that, kept going when the coffee was gone and Johnny went into the bathroom to take a shower, kept going while he was drying himself off and getting dressed in more of Kerry's clothes, but Johnny could tell their hearts weren't really in it. Maybe it'd been a while for Kerry, maybe he'd had time to rose-tint the bad old days, but Johnny remembered how vicious they'd gotten sometimes and this really wasn't it. Not even close. In the end, he sat down on the couch and he sighed and he said, "Okay, play the song again." So Kerry did, the whole dumbass argument forgotten like they'd just needed an excuse to let it drop. He wished he'd figured that out way back when, and that he'd had the wherewithal to do it.

They worked on it all day again, passing Kerry's favorite guitar back and forth between them though they could've just gotten a second one down from the wall. And fuck, for a while it was just like the old days, the actually good days, the closest Johnny had felt to sharing a brain till he'd woken up inside V's head. When they were like that, bouncing riffs off of each other, there was no place on Earth Johnny would've rather been. Then they took the guitar to the piano and Johnny stood with one foot up on the bench by Kerry's hip so he could balance the guitar against his thigh, and every time Kerry looked up at him there was a big stupid grin on his face. It made him look fifty years younger, not that he even looked fifty. It tugged at some stupid thing in Johnny's chest, or maybe that was just what was left in him of V. All the bleeding personality bullshit had been meant to be one way, but sometimes he really wasn't sure how true that was.

"Stay till the album's done," Kerry said, sometime in the night, though Johnny hadn't even noticed it was getting dark outside despite the fish bowl panorama.

"Sure," Johnny replied, not sure at all if he really meant it. But he knew he wasn't gonna leave that night, at least.

The next day, though, he unpacked all his crap from the holdall he'd shoved under a shelf in the closet. He hung up his clothes. He left his toothbrush that'd used to be V's on the bathroom counter.

Seemed like he was making himself at home after all.

---

The guy with the bass was clearly into Kerry, and it was pissing Johnny off.

After the rest of the songs for the record had been written but still hadn't been recorded yet, Johnny had vowed to stay out of the rest of it. The part he really hated was mixing, and he'd always left that to guys with more patience than he had, but recording was also pretty shitty. What he'd liked was gigging, getting up on stage, writing when his ideas meshed with Kerry's 'cause fuck if Samurai's back catalog hadn't been the best part of his career. Recording, though, just him in a room doing take after take, that made him wanna scream, or break something, or both. He was pretty sure V would've hated it, too. Kerry agreed.

Kerry had a studio in the house, because of course he did. Sure, so if Johnny had had bank accounts like Kerry's he might've done the same - he didn't like to record, no, and he fucking hated mixing the recordings if he did record, but the point was: Kerry had a studio. He had a new manager, and contacts of his own, and bringing in a bassist and a drummer, a guitarist and a guy with hands the size of trashcan lids who it turned out played keys...it was a trivial thing. So they arrived one morning, piled into the house with all their gear, and set up to do some practice. Sure, they'd record separately, get the parts isolated from one another so the engineer could piece them back together like maybe it had happened all at once in the same room, but it kinda helped if they knew how the stuff was meant to sound before putting it on tape.

Johnny had been living there in Kerry's house for almost three full weeks by then, sleeping in Kerry's bed at night, wearing his clothes more often than not. They'd been writing, in that weird state where they'd really only needed one another, and the worst that had happened when he'd gotten up in the mornings, at least after the cock-cupping episode, had been occasional days with Kerry sprawled halfway on top of him, snoring like a backed-up drain. He hadn't minded that too much, with the AC on so the fact that Kerry's skin as he slept was the temperature of the sun didn't keep him awake. A few times he'd woken up and found Kerry was already out of bed, doing yoga on the patio like he'd even really known what yoga was back in the day, and a couple of times he'd sat down on the lawn with his back against a planter and shit-talked him till his handstand collapsed. Kerry had glared but he hadn't really meant it. Johnny knew what that looked like, and that wasn't it. Kerry was pleased he was there.

But the guy playing bass was into Kerry. Johnny hated it, maybe half because V would've hated it and half because he'd always hated that himself. He'd always figured it was 'cause the input of the week took Kerry's eye off the ball, but maybe V had been right: maybe Johnny had just needed to be the center of attention. Maybe he'd needed to be the center of Kerry's attention. So, the first night of recording, after a day of staying clear of it all and watching Nibbles look vexed by the new faces and new sounds, Johnny decided to put that theory to the test.

"We should go out," Johnny told him, sitting in the living room together once the guys were gone.

"What, you mean like a club or something?" Kerry replied. He looked kinda skeptical about it, like he'd lost his taste for the Night City nightlife while Johnny had been gone, and he guessed he couldn't blame him for that. The music scene had turned unmitigatedly shitty, Samurai was classic rock, and it wasn't like he wanted to spend the night out at the Afterlife, not when Rogue was probably still pissed at him. Besides, the bartender knew V, like all of the fixers and half the mercs in town. Fuck, he was never gonna be free of that. He either needed to practice his V impersonation or do something drastic to his look.

"Yeah, why not?" Johnny said. "It'll do you good. Find a guy, get laid, go into the studio tomorrow with a whole new lease on life."

And sure, so Kerry didn't look any more convinced by that than he had before, but he agreed. Probably just 'cause Johnny had asked, which was great for Johnny's ego but not so much for anything else. Still, they grabbed their jackets and they took Johnny's car - okay, so he kinda dug the Aerondight, but it was crying out to be keyed or klepped in the part of town they'd be going to. Kerry bitched about Johnny's driving the whole way there, which only made Johnny's driving that much worse, maybe on purpose but who could really say? There was a band playing at Red Dirt and they parked down the block, walked in together, and proceeded to get totally wasted.

As soon as Kerry took down his stupid goddamn hood and went to grab a drink, he had half the bar's attention while Johnny just kicked back in the corner with a beer. He watched Kerry smile and sign a few autographs, take a selfie or ten, get offered twenty drinks, but when the band came on, the crowd around him dwindled. Johnny was watching as a couple of guys vied for Kerry's attention, younger guys but he guessed they all were, the kind he bet had grown up with Kerry's posters on their walls and jerked off to them nightly. That wasn't exactly an area in which Johnny had much expertise, 'cause he'd never been into Kerry that way, but V sure had. Maybe V hadn't been a huge fan, but he'd known Kerry's face before they'd met. He'd imagined a whole lot more than that.

The band, as it turned out, was aggressively mediocre, but the people who'd turned up seemed to enjoy them more the more they drank. That was true for Johnny, too - he found a guy who'd sell him some pills and he washed them down with bourbon while he watched Kerry flirt from across the room and listened to the band not quite mangle their one or two good riffs. The guy Kerry was with was big, long-haired, beard he was wearing in a braid, the bad boy type Kerry had always kinda liked when he wasn't digging up guys who looked like Johnny, and Johnny told himself he found it funny, borderline hilarious, that Kerry's taste hadn't changed in the last fifty years. But the problem was, he didn't find it funny. He hated it, and he hated that he hated it. Turned out maybe V had been right: he was jealous. He didn't want to put too much thought into exactly what that meant, and so he left to get away from it. He figured Kerry could find his own way home, if he bothered coming home at all.

There was another bar down the block, not too far away, so Johnny walked over there. The music they were playing was some upbeat Spanish stuff with ten times more talent than the punk shit going on back over at Red Dirt, but Johnny wasn't so much in the mood for upbeat anything. He flirted with a girl, a busty redhead in a skirt up to her neck, young enough for V so whole decades too young for him, but he really wasn't gonna let a detail like that stop him. She smiled over her shoulder as she led him through the bar and back into the restroom. He'd fucked in his share of shitty dive bar restrooms over the years, he guessed, and this place was just like all the others, maybe a little cleaner, maybe a little brighter, so that seemed kinda positive. She caught his wrist and she tugged him toward an open stall, the last one in the row right by the window, almost downright private by some bathroom fucking standards.

And maybe he'd've done it, gone in there with her and locked the door, shoved her up against the back of it and had her there, like maybe it could prove something. Maybe he'd've even felt good for a minute, with her legs around his waist and his dick pushed up inside her. But something caught his eye as he was stumbling toward the stall and fuck, he turned his head and saw himself in the half-busted men's room mirror. He saw V, he guessed, at least V's face, and that was it: he couldn't do it. When he told her no, he'd changed his mind, she wasn't even mad at him, not really, just shrugged and flipped her hair and told him to go fuck himself, and honestly? That didn't even sound like too bad of an idea - he could get himself off in Kerry's bed or in the shower and he'd be done before Kerry was home.

Still, he put his fist into the men's room mirror so his reflection burst into fifty different pieces, then he got himself into a fight on the way back to the door. They were two guys twice his size who split his lip and bloodied his nose before he laid them out, one-two, a punch to the jaw and a kick in the balls. He spat blood on one guy's shirt, poured a beer over the other, and then left again. He maybe even felt a little better.

He figured he was too drunk to drive, or maybe too high, or too pissed off. He left the car in the parking lot and he took the NCART back to North Oak, could've called a cab but the shitty bus suited his self-pity and anyway, the only cab company he had a number for was V's old buddy Delamain. He cleaned himself up in the bathroom, tweezed a tiny piece of glass out of his knuckles and wiped the blood off his face, threw his bloody shirt in the laundry, all while pissed at himself and at Kerry and at the fucking world at large the way he'd always been. He drank some more, by himself at the pool table where he knocked the half-full bottle of tequila off the edge and laughed as it shattered till he couldn't breathe while Nibbles looked on disapprovingly. Then he figured what the fuck, left the whole mess there and went to bed, too drunk and tired to even want to jerk it. He peeled off his borrowed denim and crawled under the sheets, figuring that was that.

Kerry came in maybe an hour after that, drunk off his ass and walking into every goddamn thing, which was a damned impressive feat considering the house's general state of emptiness. He woke Johnny up from a motherfucking war dream, blood and guts and guns and all that shit, and he was jumpy already, his lip stung and his hand smarted, and when Kerry was done tripping himself up in the process of taking his boots off, when he'd made it to bed mostly dressed and stretched out on his back, he smelled like smoke and booze and sex so strong that Johnny couldn't stand it. It was his own damn fault, sure, he'd set him up to test his theory, but Kerry hadn't had to take the bait. He could've been a little less willing. He could've stuck with Johnny all night and not sucked some biker dude's dick. He could've sucked Johnny's. The fucked up part was Johnny might've let him, for once in his life.

Once Kerry was asleep, Johnny went downstairs. It was pretty fucking considerate of him, he thought, getting out of the way instead of yelling at him, not like Kerry had done anything he hadn't expected - hell, he guessed he should be thanking the gods of dumbass rockerboys that Kerry hadn't brought the guy back home with him and not just come home smelling like he had. So he stretched out on the couch, the one that was maybe worse than sleeping on the floor but he'd drunk enough that he barely felt it. All he felt was pissed and sick and like the room was tilting. Like the world was. Like every-goddamn-thing had had the gall to go and change. If he hadn't been lying there in his underwear using Kerry's robe as a blanket, he might've jerked himself off to see if that helped, even if he didn't really feel like it.

The truth was, though, he wasn't sure whose hand he'd've liked it to be: Kerry's, like that ever-more-distant handsy morning, or maybe V's, 'cause he remembered how V's hand had felt on V's cock.

He fell asleep before he could decide which he might've preferred, though, or decide which would've been worse.

---

The bass player was into Kerry and it turned out Johnny was, too. How the fuck that had happened he had no idea, but there it was nonetheless.

He woke in the morning feeling like he'd slept exactly where he'd slept, like he'd drunk exactly what he'd drunk, and he'd punched exactly what he'd punched. The whole house smelled like the bottle of overpriced tequila he'd knocked on the floor and Nibbles was sleeping on his chest. Probably because the robe he was under smelled like Kerry more than it smelled like Johnny, and Kerry currently smelled more like some other guy than he smelled like himself. But still, it was good to know the cat hadn't abandoned him completely.

He showered before Kerry got up. Turned out he'd paid more attention than he'd thought to Kerry's little coffee tutorial 'cause he managed to make a cup and drink it like it might miraculously cure his hangover even though he knew it wouldn't, and he left the house with his sunglasses pushed up firmly into place. He took the NCART down into Arroyo, thinking he'd pick up the car and be back before Kerry even knew he'd gone, but he figured what the hell, he still had like twenty cars V was never gonna need again, so he sat on a bench at the side of the street and made a couple of calls, see if he could move them on, make himself some cash - just in case he needed to move on, too. Wakako said she'd take a Thorton off his hands and Regina seemed interested in a Quadra, not V's favorite because he wasn't a total ass, and by the time he was done pretending to be V for the next four hours, moving on shit he was never gonna use, his hangover was still lingering. And from the way Regina looked at him, his face must've come out in a bruise, or two, or three.

"Thought you must've quit or died," Regina told him, as one of her guys got into the car.

"Yeah, well, rumors of my death..." Johnny replied, and she nodded like she understood even half of what he meant by that, but then again who cared? She paid him, nowhere near what V had paid for it first but it wasn't like that mattered much. Then he got into his Porsche and drove back out to Kerry's place. He kinda wished he hadn't bothered going back, but he told himself all his shit was there.

"Thought you'd left for good this morning," Kerry said, that night, when he came up to bed. Johnny had spent the afternoon up there, sitting on a shitty beanbag by the window, serenading Nibbles with one of Kerry's guitars. Turned out the cat was a critic, but he hadn't let that stop him.

"I was selling a couple of cars," he replied, and Kerry leaned over to turn out the light.

Johnny felt like the silence that fell after that started stretching out, like Kerry wanted him to say something, say he'd tell him if he ever made his mind up to get out of town, but he was pretty sure they both knew that he wouldn't. So Kerry reached over and ran his thumb over Johnny's split lower lip instead of saying anything, and Johnny winced but didn't shrug him away. He let him touch him, even though it kinda hurt, with his heart fucking thumping in his chest. He didn't move when the tip of Kerry's thumb dipped past his lip and traced the top edge of his teeth. In one moment of sickening certainty, he knew he'd've sucked on Kerry's fingers if he'd wanted him to. Maybe he wasn't ready to suck his cock, maybe he never would be, but Jesus Christ he'd've done his hands, and he was pretty sure that in that moment, Kerry knew it. He was pretty sure that in that moment, Kerry understood that Johnny wouldn't be the one to stop it. Kerry had pushed him like he always had and Johnny hadn't pushed him away. Seemed like neither of them knew what to do with that, 'cause Kerry pulled his hand back and wiped his thumb on the sheets.

"So you decided you'd try out life as a used car salesman?" Kerry asked, like either of them cared much about that.

"Fuck you, Kerry," he replied.

Kerry snorted. Johnny rolled his eyes. They went to sleep, which was pretty much for the best. But actually, the next day, Wakako called just after Kerry's sound guy had come in and Johnny went out while Kerry recorded. He was a shitty salesman, and he fucking hated people thinking he was V, but there was no sense in him keeping more cars to his not-quite-name than Delamain. He offloaded a couple, drank Buck-A-Slice coffee while he waited for pick-ups and cursed Kerry Eurodyne under his breath 'cause the son of a bitch had made him prefer the real stuff after all. Then he went back to Kerry's, fed the cat, caught an episode of Watson Whore like he gave a fuck about television while he got drunk all by his lonesome. It wasn't the first time and he was pretty sure it wouldn't be the last, and when Kerry came up to bed from the studio, he pretended he was already asleep. He wasn't sure he had anything to talk about, or at least nothing good.

The week went by like that. He sold a few more cars, sold a few guns, donated some clothes, though he wondered who would actually wear them if not V. He walked around downtown for a while, sat in the park outside Arasaka Tower feeling like everything he'd done in his whole life had been just so much bullshit, except maybe for the music. And when Wakako called with a job for him, a real job, the kind V would've done, he took it just to get out of there and turn his brain to something else; he got it done without firing a shot, though it didn't surprise him to find he would've liked to. The next day, when she called again with another job, he took it. When Regina called the day after that, he said yes to her, too. What it paid was two doors down from a pittance, but at least it kept him busy. Turned out he was good at it, too.

He slept in the next morning just because he could, maybe not exactly 'cause he wanted to, till Kerry's guys had arrived for the day and gotten started on recording. He might've stayed there another hour or two, staring out the window at the ugly motherfucker of a city, if Kerry hadn't come out into the hall and called up, "J!" So he picked himself up out of bed and went to peer over the railing, leaning on it, only mostly dressed. Kerry was standing there under the mezzanine, guitar in hand, the session player looking put out behind him.

"Yeah?" he called down.

"Will you come down here and show this asshole how to play guitar?" Kerry replied, clearly past the limits of his patience. And he almost said no. He almost claimed he'd got some prior engagement, a gig lined up for a fixer V knew, another car to sell, but he sighed and he pulled on a pair of Kerry's jeans and went downstairs.

Kerry was right: the guy was an asshole. Kerry was right: the guy really wasn't great with a guitar. They kicked him out and Johnny sat in and okay, so he wasn't wild about recording, but he liked the way Kerry looked at him almost all the time he was doing it. He liked the fact Kerry lent him his favorite guitar. He didn't like the fact the guy with the ugly-ass bass kept putting his hand on Kerry's shoulder and leaning down to whisper in his ear. He hated it. Jesus Christ, it turned out he was the jealous type. He just wondered if this newfound thing he had for Kerry was even him or just leftover bits of V, then he wondered if that mattered, 'cause it sure felt like Johnny was the one who wanted it. Wanted him. Jesus. Fuck.

He woke up with Kerry again the next day, and the day after that, Kerry's arm slung over his waist on the first day and his face smushed against his chest on the next. He sat in on recording again the next day, and the day after that, sneaking out for an hour or so to take care of some shit that he'd promised Wakako, who was a stone cold bitch but he'd found he kinda liked that about her. Things progressed. When he played, Kerry looked at him like he'd hung the fucking moon and he wondered how much or how little it'd take to make him volunteer to blow him. This thing was driving him insane, just like fuckface the bass guy, who kept putting his arm around Kerry's shoulders and trying to pet Johnny's fucking cat. Nibbles, at least, had the good sense to claw the motherfucker bloody. Johnny bought him the good food the next time he went out.

"So, how do you guys know each other?" the bass guy asked Johnny, when they were done the next day, maybe nine days in, 'cause Kerry had asked him to stay for a drink instead of fucking off to blow shit up. They were sitting around by Kerry's wall of really nice guitars, beers open, and there were so many ways Johnny could've answered him that weren't so fucking stupid as the way he did. He didn't say they were old friends, or that he was the reincarnation of Johnny fucking Silverhand. He said, "I'm his input," and watched Kerry narrow his eyes at that. Kerry didn't look pleased - he looked wary, like he wondered what was coming next, but he didn't contradict him. He just steered the conversation off in a slightly less fictitious direction. But it shut the guy up, at least, and it served Kerry right for introducing him to them as J. J like V, maybe, Johnny thought, except Johnny liked being Johnny a whole lot more than V had liked being Vincent.

"What are you doing, Johnny?" Kerry asked him, later, when he caught him alone in the kitchen.

"Pretty sure I'm grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, Kerry," he replied, sarcastically, and he made his point by popping the top off the beer using the edge of the kitchen counter. It left a gouge. Kerry didn't look impressed, either at him or at the mark he'd left. He was always leaving marks, he guessed.

"Not that," Kerry said. "The other thing."

"Making a record?"

"The other thing."

"Oh, that." Johnny leaned back against the counter. He sipped the beer. "What, you wanted me to tell him I'm your cousin or some stupid bullshit?"

"This is bullshit. This is complete bullshit."

"Believable bullshit."

Kerry scowled at him. Then he stole the beer right from his hand and walked away with it, already drinking, so Johnny figured that was that. He grabbed another beer, gouged the counter again, maybe on purpose, maybe more than he needed to, and followed him.

The problem wasn't that it was difficult to keep up with the lie he'd told, though. That night, playing pool, Johnny kept on standing close with his hand on Kerry's shoulder like maybe that was normal for the two of them. The next afternoon, pizza at the dining table, he took the seat next to him and kept passing the same can of NiCola back and forth between them, and that actually was normal for the two of them. Then the next night, Kerry sat on the couch and Johnny joined him, close, one arm stretched out along the back just behind his shoulders, and every now and then he bent his arm at the elbow to play with the ends of Kerry's short hair. Kerry kept looking at him like he thought he'd lost his mind and who knew, maybe he had, maybe half of it had died with his body or gotten all mixed up with V. And when Kerry squeezed his knee then slid his hand up higher, following the inseam of his borrowed jeans, Johnny didn't flinch; he tangled the fingers of his free hand all up with Kerry's till they were basically just holding hands. It didn't horrify him as much as it should have. It did seem to horrify Kerry.

"What the fuck are you doing, Johnny?" Kerry asked, leaning close by his ear so no one else could hear.

Really, Johnny didn't know. He had no fucking clue and more than anything, that was what got to him. He'd come to Kerry's place that first night thinking maybe it'd help him to get back on track, give him a jump start or something kinda like that; now that he was moving again, though, he was out of fucking control. He should've just said I don't know, like maybe that was as good as asking him for help, or he should've just backed off again, or headed outside to get some air and a smoke, or gone out and gotten hammered in some shitty bar, maybe told him he was sorry if he could've stomached an apology and thought Kerry might've actually accepted it. Of course, though, of course, he didn't do any of that.

He kissed him. In front of a bunch of mediocre-to-good session musicians and a sound engineer whose name he couldn't remember, he kissed him. He was still trying to summon up the guy's name - Gary? Gavin? Graham? - as he slid his fingers to the back of Kerry's neck and pressed his mouth to his. It wasn't like the times they'd done it before, drunk or high or both, hard and rushed and kinda dirty; he kissed him like maybe he liked it, like he liked him, lips soft, eyes closed, mouth a little open. He kissed him like V might have, except it was nothing like V when Kerry made a wounded sound down in his throat that Johnny hoped to hell no one else had heard, and then he kissed him back. He'd expected him to push him away, though he wasn't sure why - it wasn't like either of them had ever been the responsible one. That was why they'd always been such a fucking disaster, and why neither one of them had ever been able to let go.

"I think that's our cue to leave," one of the guys said, Glen or Glyn or fucking Geronimo, and Kerry pulled back, but he didn't go far. He kinda hovered there, so close even Johnny's hand-me-down Kiroshis couldn't focus on him properly, and he found himself wondering if Kerry's could. Kerry's face was flushed, though, he could see that, and his lips were parted like maybe there was something he wanted to say right on the tip of his tongue, but as the guys picked up their shit and made for the door, Kerry stood himself up and followed them. Johnny just dropped his head back against the steel-hard couch cushion, clapped his hands to his face and groaned out loud behind them.

He got up while they were saying goodnight or whatever it was they were doing at the door, who even gave a fuck. He wandered away, the music they'd been listening to still on, loud enough he couldn't hear his own footsteps as he went over to the window where the records were. Before, he hadn't understood why Kerry had kept them, not out on display like that, almost the only things in the entire place that said anything about its owner. Then, though, he thought he got it, and once the cars had started making their way down the drive to the gate, Kerry closed the door and turned the radio off and joined him standing there in silence. They watched the cars drive away through one of the forty thousand goddamn windows, and then Kerry looked at him in the turned-down light. He looked as tired as Johnny was, of all of it, just with fifty extra years on top.

"So, how many of these were about me?" Johnny asked, reaching out to tap the one that said Eurodyne on it and not just Samurai.

"Kiss my ass," Kerry replied, then he frowned like it'd just occurred to him that Johnny might be serious about it and wasn't actually being a dick. Not only being a dick, at least - they both knew both things could be true where Johnny was concerned and not mutually exclusive.

"None of them," Kerry said, hotly. "All of them. Take your pick." He sighed. He ran his hands over his hair, ran his hands over his thighs, then leaned back against the wall and sighed again. "Why? You wanna take credit for my whole career now? You've been gone for like two thirds of it. More than that. You've been dead for longer than I knew you."

Johnny shrugged. "Can't a guy just ask a question?" he said, like he'd ever asked an innocent question in his entire life. But the truth was he had no clue why he'd asked. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know the answer, except he was pretty sure he did know, 'cause Kerry had always had a thing for him and it really hadn't been the subtle kind. Kerry had been hot for him for years, that was just how things had always been with them, but now...fuck, the tattoo on his arm wasn't lost on him any more than the catalog of songs was. And the look on Kerry's face, Jesus Christ, it was kinda like Johnny had just shoved a switchblade straight into his chest and twisted, right where an old and mostly-closed up wound was.

Maybe he shouldn't've done what he did next, but he couldn't always be the one with great ideas. He lifted one hand, the one that'd used to be so fucking shiny, and he pressed it over the tattoo on Kerry's presently bare arm. Kerry tensed, but he didn't stop him. He just eyed him, more like Johnny was a suspiciously polite Scav complimenting him on his cyberware than his oldest friend.

"This is me, right?" Johnny said. "2023. That's gotta be me."

Kerry's face turned sharp. His look turned fucking nasty, and not with that kind of vicious glee he'd sometimes had, before or during or after a fight. He shrugged Johnny's hand from his arm abruptly. He pulled himself up ramrod-straight and shook his head so tightly it looked like he might strain his neck.

"You wanna do this now?" Kerry said. "Fuck you, Johnny. Fuck you. You're fifty years too late." And he turned and walked away from him, stalked away from him, did the next best thing to running away from him, but Johnny at least had his answer.

He'd always figured Kerry was hot for him. He'd figured Kerry had a crush on him. Somehow he hadn't figured this.

It was fucked. So was he. So was everything. But he'd be damned if he'd cut and run now.

---

When he woke in the morning, nothing was materially different. He was still a selfish asshole who couldn't handle his best friend liking anyone in the world at large who wasn't him, except maybe for V. He was still pissed off. He knew he really wanted a smoke. He should probably get up and feed the cat. Except this time, when he woke up, he was pressed up against Kerry's back. He had one arm wrapped around Kerry's waist. The arm he was lying on was half asleep but that mattered less than the fact the hand that wasn't half asleep was resting against Kerry's chest, and when he flexed his fingers he could feel the shiny lines of Kerry's chrome. That was different, he guessed, if nothing else.

He knew what they felt like already, 'cause V had liked to touch them. V had liked to press his mouth to them, like they were some weird gold erogenous zone and not just good-looking hardware. He'd like to kiss Kerry's throat once he'd settled on top of him, so Johnny knew how that felt, too, but telling himself that being into Kerry now that V was gone was all just muscle memory probably didn't make a whole lot of sense.

He was pretty sure sharing a brain with V hadn't made him gay and even if it had, it wasn't like he could do much to change that. What he could change was how pissed Kerry had been the night before, but, well, also, he knew Kerry: the fact he hadn't just shoved all of Johnny's shit into a bag and tossed it out of the front door, the fact he'd let him come to bed and hadn't kicked his ass onto the floor, meant he was pissed but not fuck-you pissed. It was more like fuck-me pissed, more exasperation than actual anger, more Johnny's up to his usual bullshit, he'll forget it by the morning than this is the line and you vaulted across it. Probably because he thought last night had been all about feeding Johnny's all-consuming ego with the torch it turned out Kerry really had been carrying for all these years. Probably because he'd thought Johnny had known all along it wasn't just about his impressive cock.

Okay, so Johnny's ego did like knowing Kerry felt shit for him. Johnny's sociopathic fucking ego loved it. He wanted to lap it all up like Nibbles at his water bowl. But the part of him that wasn't the biggest douche to walk the earth actually wanted Kerry to like it, too, not wish they'd never met.

He had his hand pressed flat to Kerry's chest. He had his forehead resting down against the back of Kerry's head. A slow shift to his position and he was basically just spooning him, half hard against the curve of Kerry's ass, and once upon a time that might've spooked him, might've sent him running for the hills - or at least a cigarette in another room - while he assured himself of his heterosexuality. But things had changed, and it turned out so had he.

He moved his hand down. Sure, sense dictated this was a bad idea, because who knew how Kerry was gonna react? But he slid his hand down over Kerry's sternum, his abdomen, down to the remarkably low waistband of his remarkably small underwear. He toyed with it with his fingertips, wondering if he was really gonna do this, 'cause being along for the ride with V at the wheel had been a whole lot different to driving. Turned out he was, though, because he slid his hand down, gave Kerry a slow squeeze over the top of his underwear, then pushed his hand down underneath. He tucked his fingers over Kerry's balls and let Kerry's cock rest up against the inside of his wrist, and he told himself that was totally fine. Kerry was gonna like this. He wasn't gonna try to break any part of Johnny with any part of him.

Kerry shifted. He leaned back against Johnny's chest, stuck out his ass against Johnny's stiffening dick and made a kind of rumble in his chest, pleased and sleepy as a fucking cat. One hand went down and squeezed over Johnny's. Then he stopped. Johnny could almost feel him frown as he clocked exactly what was going on.

"Johnny?" he said, almost like he wasn't even sure if it was him and not some other guy, maybe the one that he'd picked up the other night, maybe V, maybe some guy from twenty years ago, who knew. Then he sighed, pulling certainty from someplace in thin air. "Johnny, wake up," he said, flatly, and Johnny understood: fuck, Kerry thought he was still sleeping.

"I'm awake," he said, by the back of Kerry's neck.

"Then what the fuck are you doing?"

"Do you need me to draw you a picture?" Johnny gave him a slow squeeze and Kerry shivered. Kerry's cock twitched against his wrist then started hardening pretty rapidly. Kerry's fingers went around Johnny's wrist and clamped down tight. "I thought you were au fait with all this gay shit."

"All this gay shit," Kerry said. He sighed loudly. "Jeez, that really inspires confidence."

"You think I don't know what I'm doing?"

"No, I think you've probably jerked off alone enough over the years to know your way around a dick," Kerry said. "Most of it was probably angry wanking over Arasaka or some shit like that. Pretty sure it wasn't me." He sighed again. "Don't be an ass, Johnny. Don't fucking tease me. I'm not in the mood."

Johnny squeezed again. Kerry's cock thickened, getting stiffer against his wrist. He could feel the tip push against his bare skin, kinda moist, and that maybe should've turned his stomach, except all it did was make his own clothed dick against Kerry's clothed ass fill up a little more.

"It sure feels like you're in the mood," he said. He rubbed his dick against Kerry, slow and obvious. "It doesn't feel like I am?"

"Jesus, Johnny." He took a deep breath. He blew it out, all great fucking breath control, jackass had probably had vocal coaching or some shit while Johnny had been gone. Must've, if he was still singing now, 'cause Johnny knew the way things had been going, they both would've blown their voices out by fifty. "Johnny, would you maybe consider the fact I don't want to do this?"

Johnny snorted. "Sure," he replied. "I considered that. It's bullshit."

"Then consider the fact you're probably just gonna jerk me around more than jerking me off. And if you start this and then stop, Johnny, I swear to God..."

"I'm not gonna stop."

Kerry took another deep breath, let it out in a whoosh, took another deep breath, like he was psyching himself up before getting on stage.

"Yeah, we'll see about that," he said, like he had some kind of a plan, and maybe he did 'cause he threw back the sheets, and a second after that Johnny guessed he understood what he'd been psyching himself up for.

Kerry stood up, pulled his underwear off with a scowl on his face like he was as angry with his clothing as he was at Johnny, and he dropped it on the floor, stark naked and all the way hard. He gave his dick a stroke, rings on his fingers against his skin, then he climbed back onto the bed and straddled Johnny's thighs like that. Fuck, he was all neat tattoos and shiny gold cyberware, fingers shoving Johnny's tank top up underneath his arms, baring his chest till Johnny figured screw it and shifted so he could pull it off and throw it away. Kerry frowned, like maybe he hadn't expected him to do that, then he set his jaw and caught the waist of Johnny's sweats with his fingertips. He pulled down, moved aside so he could keep on pulling brusquely, stripping him naked like he expected it to freak him out and this would just help to get it over quicker. But Johnny wasn't freaking out.

He was unsettled, sure, he had a knot in his gut and his chest felt tight and he was tense, yeah, but he wasn't freaking out. Not even when Kerry dumped Johnny's sweatpants on the floor then moved up to straddle his thighs again when both of them were naked. Not even when he looked at him with that frustrated-determined expression on his face, turned on and pissed off, then leaned down to retrieve condoms and lube from someplace tucked away under the bed. He held one thing in each hand and looked at them both then shrugged and pitched the condoms over his shoulder while Johnny's insides lurched. He didn't give a fuck about the condoms, just that Kerry had considered making him use one, that Kerry had maybe considered putting one onto his dick personally, and then decided not to. Then Kerry opened up the lube, like maybe lube was a weapon.

He squeezed some straight out of the tube and over Johnny's dick like that might make him change his mind if nothing else had, but it didn't. He squeezed some out over his hand next, then he wrapped his fingers around him, still angry, still pretty clearly convinced he knew how this was gonna go if he just persevered. He stroked him, not exactly gently but Johnny had never wanted gentle, not a single day in his goddamn life, so that was fine by him. Kerry rubbed at the tip with the pad of his thumb, roughly, squeezed Johnny's balls with his other hand, also kinda roughly, but that made Johnny's hard-on just get that much harder. And Kerry scowled, his cheeks flushed almost the same color as the tip of his cock, a look on his face like he knew what to do next but he wasn't sure if he should do it. But then he shook his head, gripped his own thighs though that got lube all over, looked straight up at the ceiling up above them and took another breath.

"Fuck it," he said, and he moved up higher, walking his knees up either side of Johnny's hips. Johnny's cock dragged against him, over Kerry's balls and then his taint, making him shiver, making him tense, then Kerry reached behind himself and took Johnny in his hand again. He rubbed him against the crack of his ass. He rubbed him in between his cheeks, Johnny's arms out wide and fingers twisting in the sheets as he looked up at him. He rubbed him up against his hole, rubbed the length of him against the rim of it, familiar but not 'cause okay, V had fucked him, and Kerry had fucked himself on V, but he'd always looked pleased instead of just horny but pissed off. And Johnny, well, Johnny had had who even knew how many girls, in who even knew how many ways, but he'd never fucked a single guy. If he had, he knew chances were it would've been Kerry.

Kerry rubbed the tip of Johnny's dick against his rim, with the look on his face turning maybe even angrier, definitely more confused. He pressed him there, almost pushing him inside him, so fucking close to it, like maybe that would be what finally made him balk, except he didn't. He looked like he wanted to ask him are we really gonna do this? and Johnny was actually grateful that he didn't 'cause for all he liked to run his mouth, he wasn't sure how he'd've managed to say yes to that. Kerry said nothing, though. He just took a breath and he inched his knees out wider and he spread one hand against Johnny's chest so he could lean there as he did it. He was frowning like he just didn't fucking understand as he pushed the head of Johnny's cock in past his rim and fuck, Kerry hissed in a breath and he took him, not even really slowly, as deep in as he could. Then he pushed himself up straight, sat back, and shook his head down at him.

"Jesus, Johnny," he said, halfway breathless, voice tight, as his asshole clenched around him. Johnny groaned at that, not that he'd meant to, just that Kerry had wrung that shit out of him, and he shook his head against the pillow. Maybe Kerry meant to say something else but he didn't; he just sat there breathing slowly through his nose like maybe this was yoga and not sex, and it might calm him the fuck down instead of getting close to hyperventilation. Maybe Johnny meant to say something, but he had no clue what; he just moved his hands instead, slid them over Kerry's thighs and gripped him by the waist, skin on skin. Then he rolled his hips. He pushed his dick up deeper into him, and Kerry groaned out loud like the whole damn world was ending.

Kerry rode him. He started slowly, gripping his own thighs as he shifted his hips, eyes closed, biting at his bottom lip. Johnny braced his heels against the mattress and he gripped tight at Kerry's waist as he rocked up to meet him and Kerry cursed, shook his head and looked down at him, teeth bared. He ran his hands into his own damn hair, arms up, all his muscles tense, like a perfect fucking braindance. He rode him, his chest rising and falling with his loud breath slower than his hips moved. Then he leaned down, looked him straight in the eye as he planted both hands on Johnny's chest and leaned against him, hard, pressing him flat, his face kinda bitter like he thought this was the end of things and not, just maybe, something else. And fuck that, Johnny thought, fuck that; he grimaced as he slapped one hand against Kerry's chest and told him, roughly, "Get off me."

Kerry laughed, ragged and bitter and breathless. "Sure," he said, in a sarcastic tone that made Johnny roll his eyes and catch Kerry's wrist before he could do something stupid that he hadn't meant at all.

"Get off me and get down on your hands and knees," he said, clarification required, and Kerry frowned at him for a moment like that just didn't compute, like I've changed my mind made more sense than I want to actively fuck you, Kerry, not just watch you fuck yourself on me. But then he moved, pulled himself up off of Johnny's dick and got down next to him, forearms and knees instead of hands but who was even counting. Johnny followed, found the lube and re-slicked his dick and then fuck, he moved up behind him, Kerry's knees wide, his back arched, cock hanging down toward the sheets. He ran his hands over Kerry's ass, palmed his cheeks apart, and he'd seen him like this before, when V had had him, remembered how it'd felt to rub the rim of his hole with the tip of his thumb, but he went ahead and did it anyway, his choice this time. He rubbed him there, felt him tense and relax and then tense again as he pressed down, as he pressed the tip inside him, and fuck that made his balls feel tight. V probably would've used more lube but fuck, Johnny thought, Kerry had gone ahead like this, his choice, so what he did was spread his cheeks and spit, once, twice, wipe his mouth with the back of his hand then put his fingers in him. He used two of them, making him groan raggedly as he stretched out around him.

"Did you just fucking spit on me?" Kerry asked, breathless and incredulous, as he glanced back over his shoulder.

Johnny shrugged. His first two fingers were knuckle-deep in Kerry's ass and he glanced up at him as he pushed against him, getting them in a little deeper.

"Yeah," he said. "Problem with that?"

Kerry laughed. He let his head hang forward. "Nah," he replied. "It's just really fucking hot, y'know? Didn't expect that."

"And what, you thought I'd be shit at this?"

"Guess maybe I'd hoped so," Kerry said, and Johnny guessed he understood that. Not he gave it much more thought 'cause fuck, his dick was so hard it almost hurt and okay, so when he pulled his fingers out and spread Kerry's cheeks again, saw his hole all slick with spit and lube, it occurred to him that maybe he'd like to put his mouth on him. Maybe he'd've liked to've gotten his tongue on him, licked him, fucked him with it till his jaw ached, but instead he just slapped his ass with the back of one hand and made Kerry laugh again. That was a whole lot better than him scowling, that was for sure. Then, he pressed the tip of his cock down against his hole. He pressed forward, using one hand to keep himself from slipping down to Kerry's balls or up against his back. He pushed in, maybe not exactly slow enough but Kerry didn't seem to care: he just groaned out loud and pushed back against him, till Johnny was balls-deep inside.

It wasn't any slower after that. Johnny held him by his waist, just above his hips, and Jesus, it was hot, looking down and seeing himself fucking him. Kerry was tight around him, really tight, and Johnny fucking loved it - it was hard not to feel more alive than since he'd actually been living when Kerry was pushing back to meet his thrusts, when Kerry was groaning out loud every time that skin slapped skin, 'cause of course he wasn't quiet, even then. Johnny fucked him, muscles straining, toes pressed tight against the bed, gripping him so hard with V's fucking chrome hands that there was a really good chance that he'd bruise him there. The idea made him smile, honest to God smile, and fuck him harder. It made him laugh out fucking loud as his head reeled and his muscles ached in exactly the right way.

When Johnny came, it happened suddenly, barely any warning, or maybe there'd been plenty but he'd expected it to feel the way that it had always been for him before, not how it was for V. He came with a cut-off, strangled groan and a jerk of his hips, pushing in deep as he fucking throbbed inside him, holding on tight. Kerry squeezed around him what had to be on purpose, and Johnny would've maybe laughed except he hadn't got the breath to do it. He just spread Kerry's cheeks a little wider so that he could rub his rim while it was still stretched by his cock. Then he figured what the fuck and he leaned forward, got one arm in under Kerry's chest and helped to ease him up onto his knees. He pulled him back against his chest, his still-hard dick still inside him. Kerry didn't seem to mind when Johnny pressed one hand over his sternum and wrapped the other one around his cock. And when Johnny started to stroke him, Kerry reached back with one hand, Kerry turned as far as he was able to, and he pulled Johnny headlong into a wet, dirty kiss.

Kerry didn't last long after that, maybe 'cause he didn't even try to. Johnny stroked him as they made out, lascivious as fuck, but there wasn't enough slickness to his cock; he moved his hand, eased his dick out, shoved his fingers in instead, and that was more than slick enough. He stroked Kerry with his fingers slick with come, until Kerry started coming, too, till Kerry's fingers went tight in Johnny's hair and he tensed, every last little part of him, taut as the strings on a goddamn guitar. Johnny cupped his hand over the tip of Kerry's cock, not 'cause he gave a damn about the state of the sheets but so when he brought his hand back around to Kerry's ass and shoved his fingers in again, he was slicking him with his own come. Kerry seemed to like that; he squeezed around Johnny's fingers, maybe voluntarily and maybe not.

Afterwards, they stretched out together there on Kerry's bed, sweaty and naked, come-stained and completely fucked out. Kerry had this look on his face like he couldn't make sense of it but like maybe he'd also stopped trying to. Johnny figured it was best they both left figuring that shit out alone.

"So, is this a thing we do now or is it just a one-time deal?" Kerry asked, once he'd turned onto his side, because of course he couldn't leave it be.

Johnny shrugged. It would've been easy to back off, he thought, tell him something dumb about how it had all been V, not him, how they both just needed to get it out of their system so maybe they'd be able to move on, but he knew that wasn't it and Kerry, just like always, would've seen straight through him. So he turned onto his side, heaved himself up like maybe his first time with a guy had damn near crippled him, and he ran one hand over Kerry's pretty gold chrome throat. He ran his hand over the year tattooed on Kerry's arm and wondered if maybe he'd get another one, for V. Somehow, Johnny wouldn't've minded that.

"It's a thing," Johnny said, though admitting it felt kinda like he'd shoved a knife straight into his own chest. But Kerry grinned and Johnny rolled his eyes and shook his head like that might stop him smiling, too. It did no such thing.

"I'm gonna hold you to that, Johnny," Kerry said, pseudo-seriously.

Johnny didn't tell him not to. Honestly, he hoped he would.

---

It's been months now since that morning. And here they are, on the patio, still at Kerry's place.

They finished recording a couple of weeks after that, though the sound guy kept on coming back for a different take on this solo, maybe a new drum fill there? Johnny remembers sitting through the same song playing on repeat for hours, flat on his back on the living room couch while Kerry paced and they both went half mad till they figured out what didn't sit right in the mix. He doesn't like recording. He fucking hates mixing. They weren't going to be playing live together anytime soon. Kerry seemed to appreciate that he made the effort, though, or that at least he didn't make an effort not to.

They went to the album launch together not too long ago, or at least they kinda did. Johnny was late in from a job he was doing for Regina, recently reunited with her talking asshole of a sidearm, though Johnny had to admit he was maybe gonna kinda miss having the puppy-loving pacifist around. Kerry raised an eyebrow at him pointedly across the room and Johnny shrugged, maybe kinda blood-flecked but at least he'd made it there. He watched Kerry work the room and eye-fucked him between conversations till they abandoned all sense of public decency and felt each other up in a stall in the men's room, then went outside to share a smoke. It was like they'd always been, Johnny thought, except with a whole lot more fucking going on. And maybe they'd started arguing a little less 'cause hell, it turned out the asshole input Johnny couldn't stand was just Johnny himself. Should've been V, maybe, but Johnny would do in a pinch.

He wakes up every morning in the same place: Kerry's bed, in Kerry's house, a place it turns out suits them and the cat a whole lot more than he'd realized it could do on that first night he'd arrived. Kerry does his thing, 'cause he's always been the better choice for selling shit than Johnny, and Johnny does the kind of work his time with V prepared him for. He works gigs. He makes contacts. Maybe one day he'll even make the right one and he'll find a way to bring V back, and maybe that's even his goal, maybe Kerry even knows it is. Maybe they argue about it sometimes, 'cause Kerry's half convinced Johnny's gonna wind up just another name there on the columbarium wall for people to forget, like he's not already a drink at the Afterlife. He promises him he won't, but that's the same thing that he promised V. He's made a liar of himself once before.

"Hey, I'm gonna go take a shower," Kerry says, and he picks himself up off the chair in his retina-searing orange pants. When Johnny looks at him, he's in the sun, and if shading his eyes seems sarcastic then that's just a coincidence.

Kerry puts his hands on his hips, shakes his head, then turns and heads toward the door, but on his way he stops and looks back at him over his shoulder. He hooks his fingers into the waist of his pants and pulls the back down just an inch or two, enough ass on display that it makes Johnny ugly-laugh, just for a second before he reins that shit back in.

"You wanna join me, you know where I am," Kerry says. He flashes him a smile, he winks at him over the top of his glasses, then he makes his way inside. Johnny's pretty sure that they both know he'll follow, but he'll make him wait like it's not a sure thing. For the moment, he lies back and feels the sunlight on his skin, but they know it's a sure thing. They've been living together for months, like back in the day, like at the shithole hotel back in Watson and twenty other places, but this time Johnny knows it's different.

The world's fucked, Johnny thinks, just as much now as it's ever been. He still misses V, like soulkiller hollowed out all of the best parts of him. And he doesn't believe in fate, or in destiny, or in any of the bullshit Misty sells, but that's not to say there's nothing he believes.

He'll find a way to bring V back, or maybe he'll die trying. Frankly, he's not even sure he's getting close, but that won't make him stop - V's the cause he's chosen now, for better or for worse, over any and all others. That's what he believes. He made him a promise once and he's for damn sure gonna keep it.

In the meantime, though, Kerry's waiting. So he'll pick himself up and he'll go inside.

2023, he thinks. He's made him wait for long enough already.