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Night City looked softer before dawn.
The skyline beyond Kerry’s balcony shimmered in a pale purple haze, skyscrapers cutting through low clouds like broken glass submerged underwater. Ads still crawled over distant holo boards, colours bleeding lazily across the sleeping city. Somewhere far below, traffic hissed through rain-slick streets in long silver ribbons.
Kerry sat slouched in the outdoor lounger with his guitar balanced across his lap, silk robe hanging half open over freshly showered skin. Ash collected dangerously close to his fingertips while a dozen crumpled pages littered the floor around him in a way that looked like casualties of war.
None of it worked.
Every line sounded fake. Every rhyme felt cheap. A poor imitation of the man he was trying to find behind the mask he’d put in place decades ago.
He stared down at the notebook resting beside him, jaw set tight enough to hurt.
Fire in the static…
No.
Ghosts in the static…
Christ. No.
He scratched it out so hard the pen tore through the page.
For a second, Kerry just stared at the hole left behind.
The studio wanted three more songs before they could complete his album. Just enough to complete the emotional arc, they’d said.
As though emotion was something you could order off a menu.
His jaw tightened at the memory of the meeting.
Cold glass conference room. City skyline behind tinted windows. Half a dozen executives staring at sales projections instead of listening to the actual music and feeling it in their souls. One smug little corpo prick in an expensive suit tapping manicured fingers against the table while talking about market retention and audience accessibility.
Kerry could still hear them echoing through his mind.
Maybe we simplify the lyrics a little.
Something more relatable.
The younger demographic isn’t responding to the current material.
As if Kerry’s sound was some unfinished product rolling crooked off an assembly line. Like his entire career of pouring heartbreak and clawing songs out of his own ribs meant less than whatever algorithm they were feeding into their projections now.
Kerry rubbed both hands over his face.
He should’ve walked out.
Should’ve smashed the holo-display through the table and told them all to choke on their projections.
Instead he’d just sat there grinding his teeth so hard his head hurt while they discussed his music like a dying brand in need of repackaging.
He hadn’t slept since.
Every time he closed his eyes, all he could hear was deadlines. Contract clauses. Marketing projections. The quiet panic that maybe he’d finally run dry after all these years.
His fingers drifted absently across the guitar strings, soft unfinished chords humming through the early morning air.
“Fuck’s sake…”
The headache behind his temples sharpened into something mean.
Kerry leaned back in the lounger and tipped his head toward the skyline, cigarette ready to drop from his fingers as neon light bled across the sharp lines of his face.
For one brief, vicious moment, he considered throwing the notebook off the balcony.
Not just tossing it.
Launching the whole fucking concept of the thing into the abyss.
Pages scattering into the Night City smog like dead birds.
A dramatic little screw you to producers demanding emotional authenticity on schedule. To executives with soft hands trying to dissect his music into marketable pieces. To every smug bastard who thought Kerry Eurodyne needed help sounding like himself.
His grip tightened around the notebook as his jaw flexed hard enough to ache.
Then he heard footsteps.
The squeak of old trainers against the wooden decking.
And just like that, the anger lost some of its teeth.
Kerry turned his head just as V appeared around the corner of the trellis wall covered in artificial ivy and fading pink flowers poorly aged by acid rain. He looked half asleep still, hair sticking up at odd angles, dressed in grey sweatpants and one of Kerry’s ancient Samurai tees so worn the collar looked as though it had been eaten by moths.
Two steaming mugs balanced carefully in his hands.
Kerry’s shoulders loosened before he could stop them, as if his body recognised safety before his brain even caught up.
“You read my mind,” he muttered.
V walked over and handed him one of the mugs carefully. “Figured you could use one.”
Kerry stubbed out his cigarette before it dropped and took the mug with both hands like it was his life support. The heat seeped straight into his fingers, warming them straight to the bone.
V always remembered how he took it now. Double espresso. Jamaican blend. No milk or sugar. Strong enough to wake the dead. Hot enough to burn.
V sat opposite him on the cushion-less lounger, folding himself cross-legged into it with sleepy ease almost as if discomfort had never once bothered him in his life. He watched Kerry over the rim of his own coffee for a moment, steam curling between them in the cool dawn air.
“You’ve been disappearing a lot.”
Kerry kept his attention fixed stubbornly on the skyline. Looking at V right now felt dangerous. As though one direct look and the whole rotten mess sitting in his chest would come spilling out onto the balcony between them.
“Mm,” he murmured.
V took another sip, before he spoke again.
“I keep waking up alone.”
There was no accusation to it. No attempt to make Kerry feel guilty.
That somehow made it worse.
Kerry’s chest tightened. He took a long drink of coffee just to buy himself a second, eyes drifting down to the notebook balanced uselessly on his knee.
“Really miss me that much?” he asked finally, voice rough around the edges.
V shrugged one shoulder, seeing right through the mask Kerry was trying to lodge back into place.
“Everything okay?”
The question hung there quietly between them a moment.
Night City hummed below in distant static waves. Neon flickered across glass towers as the Ad rotation changed. Somewhere several streets down, sirens wailed briefly before dissolving back into the endless pulse of traffic.
Kerry looked down at the notebook again, shaking his head slowly.
His thumb dragged slowly over the hole he’d made in the page.
“No,” he admitted at last, voice quieter now. “Not really.”
V stayed quiet.
Kerry appreciated that about him. He never rushed to fill silence. Most people filled every moment of silence because Kerry Eurodyne made them nervous. V never did. He always gave him a moment to breathe and find the right words.
“I feel…” He grimaced, scratching at his forehead. “Fuck… I dunno. Hollow, maybe. Like somebody scooped my brains out and shoved me out on stage for the encore I wasn’t ready for.”
V tilted his head slightly in that infuriatingly adorable way, sleep still softening the edges of his face.
Kerry laughed once under his breath, but there was no real amusement to it.
“The label,” he said, the word itself sounded bitter as it left his mouth. “They want three more tracks. Says the album needs a stronger finish.”
He made a sharp little gesture with his fist, punching invisible teeth out of the air.
“Something with energy. Something that ‘reconnects audiences to my brand’.” He rolled his eyes viciously, complete with little finger air quotes. “Corporate poetry.”
The bitterness in his voice kept building the longer he talked.
“I’ve been sitting out here for four fucking nights trying to drag something real outta my head while some boardroom parasite who knows fuck all about music critiques everything I send them.”
He nudged the remains of his thoughts scattered across the floor with his bare foot, crumpled pages scraping across the decking.
“Lyrics don’t rhyme. Verses don’t mean anything. Every song sounds like somebody trying to impersonate a Kerry Eurodyne song instead of…” He gestured vaguely at himself. “Y’know. Me.”
His jaw tightened harder. The headache pulsating behind his eyes.
V glanced down at the pages carefully, like they were something fragile instead of failures.
“Maybe you should take a break.”
Kerry barked out a dry laugh and rubbed a hand over his face again. “I’m on a deadline.”
“You’re burnt out.”
“No shit,” he snapped, harsher than he meant.
The words landed ugly between them.
Kerry’s expression shifted almost immediately afterward.
The exhaustion catching up to the anger.
He sighed through his nose and lifted his coffee again, shoulders slumping as he took another long sip before setting the mug carefully on the table between them.
“Sorry,” he muttered after a second, quieter now. “I’m just…” He shook his head once. “Real fucking tired of feeling like somebody’s holding a gun to my head and telling me to perform.”
V didn’t answer right away.
Mostly because he genuinely didn’t know what to say.
This side of Kerry still caught him off guard sometimes. Not the anger itself. He’d seen Kerry furious before. At paparazzi, broken equipment, assistants getting in his way, TV shows that didn’t conclude their finale properly. But none of that had ever felt like a full spiral before.
He looked less rockstar legend in this moment, and more like a man being slowly crushed under the weight of everyone wanting a piece of him.
V rubbed his thumb absently against the side of his coffee mug.
“Wanna show me what you’ve got?”
Kerry tilted his head, lips pressing together as if weighing the idea against instinct, his pride over anyone other than himself getting to read a rough draft, and the exhaustion wearing him thin at the edges.
“It’s… rough,” he admitted.
“Try me,” V dared, softer now. “I could help.”
Kerry clicked his tongue quietly, holding back his amusement.
“Yeah?” he muttered.
He shifted forward in the chair.
The guitar slipped slightly as he moved, and instead of correcting it, Kerry simply set it down. As though he’d forgotten for a second that it needed to be held at all. As he did, the silk robe shifted. One side slipped down his shoulder, sliding lazily over skin still faintly warm from stress and hours spent existing too tightly in his own head.
He didn’t care enough to fix it, or maybe he left it like that on purpose.
V’s eyes flicked down, then lingered a fraction too long before he looked away again, as if it wasn’t the sight that mattered so much as the fact Kerry didn’t seem to care who saw him like this.
Kerry didn’t comment. Didn’t fix the robe either. He just watched him over the rim of tired eyes, aware of exactly how much V was looking at him and didn’t mind it at all.
V cleared his throat softly.
“C’mon…” He nodded toward the notebook sitting abandoned beside Kerry’s leg. “What’ve you got?”
Kerry tilted his head like he was still trying to decide whether letting someone this close to the process was as terrifying as it sounded in his head, or the relief he needed right now.
Maybe both.
“Okay, tell me something,” Kerry said, reaching for the cigarette packet he’d left on the table. He stuffed one into his mouth, leaving V in suspense while he searched around for his lighter.
V reached out automatically into the folds of Kerry’s robe and handed him the lighter like he’d done it a hundred times without thinking.
Kerry stared at him a moment, then took it, fingers brushing together.
He snapped the lighter closed with a metallic click as the cigarette sparked to life, smoke curling slowly past his mouth while he narrowed his eyes at V with theatrical suspicion.
“Lemme ask you something,” he said, pointing the cigarette at him. “Have you ever written a lyric in your life?”
“Well, no,” V agreed, a little sheepishly this time. “But I did have Johnny Silverhand trapped in my head for over a year.”
Kerry snorted immediately, leaning back into the lounger.
“Oh, right. Of course.” He took a long drag before continuing around the smoke. “So you suddenly think you’re a grammy-winning songwriter now?”
V laughed quietly under his breath.
It wasn’t a huge sound. Barely more than air and amusement.
But it pulled an actual smile onto his face for the first time that morning. Real enough that it softened the tiredness around his eyes completely.
Kerry felt something in his chest unclench at the sight of it.
He’d missed seeing that smile. Noticed its absence without even realising he had.
V shook his head. “When Johnny finally stopped lecturing me about everything I was doing wrong,” he explained, “sometimes he’d hum songs I’d never heard before. Or sit there trying to piece lyrics together.” He paused, gaze drifting somewhere between memory and disbelief. “Like he was still trying to create something outta nothing.”
Kerry tilted his head, observing him for a moment, trying to picture it. Johnny Silverhand, the chaos engine, gently rearranging silence into melody.
Then slowly, despite himself, Kerry smiled, as though something inside him had finally stopped bracing for impact.
“Sounds like Johnny.”
Kerry leaned forward and held the cigarette out toward him. “Alright. C’mere.”
V didn’t hesitate this time.
He got up, coffee still in hand, and crossed the small space between them like it wasn’t decision so much as a habit forming in real time. The lounger creaked softly as he dropped down beside Kerry, shoulder bumping lightly against his chest.
The cigarette passed between them without ceremony.
“You spill that coffee on me,” Kerry warned, low and lazy now, “I’ll shred your favourite jacket.”
V exhaled smoke toward the skyline, balancing the mug carefully in his other hand. “That happened one time. And that wasn’t even my coffee.”
“Still counts,” Kerry murmured. “I swear your hand eye coordination is getting worse by the day, kid.”
V prodded him in the chest with two fingers, offering him an unimpressed scowl.
“Are you gonna show me what you got?”
Kerry watched V take a drag, eyes tracing the movement absently. The curve of smoke leaving his mouth. The sleepy crease still pressed faintly into his cheek from the pillow. The scar still visible in his hairline, a permanent reminder of everything he had survived.
“Alright,” he said at last, tapping his fingers against V’s thigh, keeping time to a song only he could hear. “Picture this. Epic guitar riff opening… still pending.” He lifted one hand vaguely toward the skyline. “Massive, stadium level arrogance that you can feel in your soul.”
V gave him a look.
Kerry just smiled.
“The riff hits first, big enough to shake the room a little. Crowd thinks they know exactly where the song’s going.”
His hand dropped again to V’s leg, thumb absently brushing once against his worn sweatpants as he talked.
“Then it cuts.”
He snapped his fingers softly.
“Everything drops out except this low bassline. Quiet. Kinda lonely.”
V tilted his head slightly, listening properly now.
Kerry noticed immediately.
God, he loved that. With V, every word felt like it mattered.
Producers barely looked him in the eye while they scribbled notes than had nothing to do with the meeting.
“Then vocals come in,” Kerry murmured, pointing loosely at a line half-scratched out and sang it under his breath, rough and unpolished.
“’City lights burn holes in the dark…’”
The words hung there for a second, fragile in the early morning air.
“The whole thing’s supposed to feel…” He frowned slightly, searching for it. “Like driving through Night City at three in the morning when everything’s dead quiet for once and you almost trick yourself into believing the place still has a soul. I was trying to go for something like… like hope, or optimism. Something that you can feel even when the city tries to crush it down, I guess.”
Kerry tapped the pen against the notebook once.
“’But I still see you in the sparks…’”
He sang it softer this time.
Less performative, almost thoughtful.
V didn’t speak immediately.
He just shifted a fraction closer, shoulder brushing Kerry’s chest as he leaned in to read properly. Close enough that Kerry could feel the warmth of him through fabric, that steady, grounded presence like V had quietly decided this was where he belonged now.
“That’s actually really good,” V said at last, softer.
Kerry huffed a quiet laugh, the compliment seeming mildly offensive to him somehow. He dropped an arm loosely around V’s shoulders without thinking, drawing him in just enough to keep him there. Then, almost absent-mindedly, he tipped his forehead against V’s cheek.
“Really good?” Kerry muttered. “I’ve written some of the greatest songs in history. ‘Really good’ isn’t gonna cut it for this album.”
V glanced up at him.
“Well,” he said dryly, “you gave me two lines. How am I supposed to judge it based on that?”
Kerry snorted, tightening his arm around him, as though he could physically contain the voice in the back of his head telling him it was no good. “It’s a teaser. I’m not really ready for anyone to hear the whole thing yet.”
V’s mouth twitched, the beginning of a smile fighting its way through the last of his seriousness.
“Do you think I’m gonna steal your song or something?” he murmured, half-teasing.
“No,” Kerry said immediately. He tipped his forehead lightly against V’s again, a brief, grounding touch before he pulled back just enough to look at him properly.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
V snorted softly. “You know that for sure?”
“I have it on good authority,” Kerry said, voice quieter now.
The last traces of amusement drained out of him in small careful increments, as though someone was slowly turning a dial down.
“It’s not that…” He searched for it, jaw tightening slightly. “It’s exposure.”
Kerry exhaled through his nose and glanced down at the notebook between them, it’s weight suddenly feeling heavier than paper and ink.
“You don’t get it,” he said, not unkindly. “You’ve never had to sit there and put something real on a page, then hand it over to a million strangers who think they’ve got the right to decide what it means about you.”
His fingers tapped once against V’s shoulder again, slower this time.
“I’m not scared of writing it,” he continued. “I can write anything. That’s not the problem.”
He huffed out a long breath, realising the cigarette had been forgotten between them again.
“Fuck it’s just… letting it leave me that sucks. When it’s in my head,” Kerry said, louder and more punctuated now, “…it’s still mine to process. It’s all the messy, unfinished… thoughts or whatever I have floating around in here.”
He tapped the side of his head, then glanced back at V.
“But once it’s out there… it stops being mine. Then it’s just… everyone’s to judge or to misunderstand. Or some corpo news anchor saying shit about what this means about my mental health now.”
“I’m not everyone,” V said softly.
“No.” Kerry’s thumb brushed absently along the edge of the notebook. “But you still won’t get it.”
The pen tapped a few times in quick succession.
Then he dropped it.
Something inside him shifted.
Subtle, but definite.
Almost echoing the moment a performer steps off stage and realises there’s no crowd noise to hide inside.
Kerry straightened slightly.
His arm slipped from V’s shoulders.
He took the cigarette from V’s fingers without really thinking about it, like muscle memory was doing the talking now. The ember flared as he dragged in a long, steady inhale.
“I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking for the rest,” he said, voice lower now, smoke threading through every word. “It’s… filler. All of it. Doesn’t mean anything to me. Just… words on a page so the fucking corpos stop breathing down my neck. I can’t feel it when I try to sing it.”
V watched him, still close and patient.
Kerry went quiet for a second, visibly restraining the anger boiling up under the surface.
“Some guy at the last meeting,” he added, staring out past the balcony instead of at anything real, “said they were gonna get writers in to ‘help refine my sound’.”
The words came out flatter this time, but the irritation underneath them was still sharp enough to cut.
His jaw tightened as he spoke.
“Like I’m suddenly incapable of writing my own damn songs.”
Then he leaned back.
Slowly, deliberately, his body making a decision his mind hadn’t fully caught up with yet. He stretched out in the lounger, robe shifting again as he moved, one arm thrown over his eyes to block out the pale light beginning to creep over the balcony edge.
“Amazing how quickly you become irrelevant again.”
Kerry let out a tired sound somewhere between a scoff and a sigh.
“Ker,” V said, shifting slightly until Kerry’s leg rested against the curve of his back. “You’re not irrelevant.”
Kerry kept his forearm draped over his eyes, cigarette burning between his fingers.
“That’s cute,” he muttered. “You should put it on a motivational poster beside a dying houseplant or something.”
V snorted softly, gently elbowing his thigh.
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah, I know.” Kerry’s mouth twitched faintly beneath the exhaustion. “That’s the embarrassing part. Shit you’ve been through… no one should have to go through even half of that. Now your life has boiled down to comforting an old rockstar during a meltdown over deadlines and lyrics not feeling right.”
The early light crept slowly across the lounger, turning the edges of the notebook silver where it lay abandoned.
V glanced at it.
Then at Kerry, before he carefully picked it up.
He cleared his throat dramatically.
“’Your heartbeat echoes through the static haze…’”
Kerry groaned instantly and lunged across the small gap between them, one hand trying to clap over the page.
“Don’t,” he hissed.
V twisted away with a grin, holding the notebook just out of reach.
“’Like broken saints in neon graves.’”
“Stop.”
Kerry wrapped an arm around V’s chest from behind, reaching for the pad while V laughed under his breath and leaned further away. “It’s not meant to be read like that.”
“Neon graves?” V repeated, already losing composure.
“Yeah,” Kerry shot back, fingers brushing uselessly against the notebook. “Like the fucking ads that never stop shouting at you when you’re chasing a moment of silence in this city. I told you. It’s shit.”
V paused just long enough to glance back at him over his shoulder.
“I like it.”
Kerry shook his head with a scoff. “No, it sucks. The studio doesn’t want sappy shit where you have to read between the lines to figure out what it means.”
Then he tightened his arm around V and pulled.
“Give me that.”
“Hey!” V twisted sideways, keeping his coffee upright with surprising dedication. “I spill this, it’s on you.”
“You spill it, you’re dead.”
V laughed properly this time, the sound cracking warm and bright through the early morning quiet as Kerry hauled him sideways into the lounger against his chest.
Coffee sloshed dangerously close to the rim.
The notebook crinkled between them while Kerry made another grab for it, all elbows and stubborn refusal.
“Hand it over.”
Kerry made a low sound, almost a growl and caught him properly around the waist, momentum dragging them both deeper into the cushions. V went with it easily, still laughing, relinquishing his hold on the prized artefact.
Suddenly V was half sprawled beneath him, one leg caught between Kerry’s, coffee still somehow miraculously upright at his side.
“You’re way too strong for an old man,” V teased, breathless around the grin still pulling at his mouth.
The robe slipped further off Kerry’s shoulder during the struggle, sleeves bunching uselessly at his elbows as he leaned over him.
His expression shifted as he moved the notebook out of reach.
“It’s not supposed to be read like that,” Kerry said finally, voice lower. “You can’t just read lyrics. They have to be felt.” He tapped his chest over his heart.
V shifted beneath him, still pinned there, still warm and annoyingly calm about it, as though this was just another conversation instead of Kerry currently sitting on top of him with his entire creative ego in his hands.
“Then sing it,” V said again, simple as breathing.
Kerry blinked.
“…What?”
V shrugged a little, entirely unbothered. “If it’s meant to be felt, don’t read it to me. Sing it.”
As though it was the most obvious solution in the world.
Kerry stared at him for a second too long.
Then he looked away, jaw tightening slightly as he huffed a short, disbelieving breath.
“It’s not finished,” he said, like that should be the end of it.
V’s gaze didn’t move.
“Kerry,” he said gently. “C’mon. This has been keeping you awake for days.”
“Yeah,” Kerry muttered. “And it sucks.”
V’s mouth curved slightly.
“Then sing it to me anyway.”
Kerry let out a quiet laugh through his nose, disbelief curling through it as V said something so simple without seeming to understand what he was really asking of him.
He looked back down at him.
Steady eyes, that stupid, calm confidence. The way he just stayed there, completely unafraid of what came out.
Something in Kerry’s chest shifted, uncomfortable and exposed.
“You don’t understand what you’re asking,” Kerry muttered.
He looked away at first, dragging a hand through his hair, suddenly too aware of how close they were, how quiet the city had gotten around them, how real this felt for something he hadn’t even finished writing.
“Then explain it to me,” V said, simple and open.
Kerry let out a breath, slower this time, feeling something physically loosen in his chest.
“God, you’re annoying.”
“Why?” V laughed softly, unoffended.
Kerry glanced down at him again, feeling the warmth in his chest.
“Because…” Kerry started, then stopped like the words had hit something sharper underneath them.
He shifted slightly on top of him, not quite moving away, just enough to break the intensity for a second.
“It’s not just lyrics,” he said finally. “It’s… me.”
His voice dropped lower, less defensive now. More exposed than he probably intended.
“Stuff I don’t say out loud. Stuff I barely admit to myself when I’m sober enough to think about it properly.” He exhaled a quiet breath. “A completely open self portrait in its rawest form. If I sing it to you… you don’t get to turn it into something it’s not.”
V’s expression softened.
“I just want to hear it.”
Kerry’s grip on the notebook loosened a fraction.
The dawn light shifted across the balcony again, pale gold creeping over glass and metal, catching in the smoke between them, in the quiet space where the song was still waiting to become something real.
“Yeah.” Kerry looked away toward the skyline, jaw tightening. “That’s kinda the problem.”
V frowned slightly beneath him, pushing himself up onto his elbows just enough to really look at him now. “Kerry… don’t you trust me?”
“I do. I do.” Kerry exhaled sharply, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “That’s not what this is.”
He shifted off V properly then, slower this time, the movement careful in a way their wrestling hadn’t been. The lounger creaked softly as Kerry sat beside him instead, elbows resting on his knees while the cigarette turned to ash between his fingers.
“It’s just…” He searched for the words with visible frustration. “Corpos hear a song, they hear a product. Fans hear whatever version of themselves they wanna hear in it. Half the time they don’t even know what the fuck I’m actually saying and it doesn’t matter.”
He shrugged one shoulder, brittle around the edges.
“But you…”
He trailed off there, staring out over the balcony instead of finishing it.
“When you actually care what somebody thinks…” Kerry said eventually, quieter now, “…that’s when it gets real.”
V stayed quiet a moment.
He studied Kerry’s profile in the golden light creeping slowly across the balcony. The sharp line of his jaw. The exhaustion sitting heavy beneath his eyes. The robe still hung half open, gold chrome of his chest exposed to the light.
Beautiful.
Not in the polished, hologram poster way the city saw him. He wasn’t the legendary Kerry Eurodyne standing beneath stage lights with a guitar slung low and thousands of people screaming his name.
This version was real.
Burnt around the edges. Half-awake. Defensive and trying so hard to pretend none of this mattered as much as it clearly did.
V got the man underneath all the performance.
And maybe the strangest part was Kerry still didn’t seem to realise that was enough.
“You know,” V said eventually, voice quiet enough not to disturb the stillness settling around them, “you don’t have to prove anything to me.”
Kerry’s eyes flicked toward him immediately.
He scoffed softly, but there wasn’t much force behind it anymore. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“I know.”
V shifted a little against the lounger cushions, one arm draped loosely over his bent knee, still holding his coffee perfectly steady. He looked impossibly relaxed for someone currently sitting beside an unravelling rockstar.
“You don’t have to hand me every unfinished thought in your head just because I asked. I just thought…” he trailed off, lowering his gaze to the notebook. “I just wanted to help.”
Kerry watched him carefully then.
Suspicious out of habit, always waiting for the hidden condition underneath the kindness.
But there wasn’t one.
V just looked back at him with that calm acceptance.
Most people pushed.
Wanted access immediately. Wanted proof they mattered enough to get every secret version of him all at once. Especially after hearing him crack open like this.
But V wasn’t trying to pry his ribs apart and climb inside.
He was just… there.
Kerry shook his head, letting out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding in.
“Just…” He rubbed a tired hand over his mouth before gesturing vaguely toward the notebook. “Lemme finish it first, yeah?”
His voice had gone quieter now, less defensive.
“Need to get it outta me before anybody else touches it.”
He tapped two fingers lightly against his forehead.
“Still feels tangled up in here.”
V’s expression softened again in that dangerous way that made Kerry feel way too visible.
“Okay,” he said simply.
Kerry frowned faintly. “That easy, huh?”
V huffed a quiet laugh into his mug. “What, do you want me to put up a fight over you needing space?” He bumped his shoulder lightly into Kerry’s as he shifted. “You said you need space. So I’ll give you space.”
Kerry just stared at him for a second.
Most people heard I need space and treated it like rejection.
The absence of conflict almost made Kerry uneasy.
V stretched once, all sleepy and unguarded, shirt riding slightly up his waist before he made a move to stand.
“Just don’t stay up another four days,” he murmured.
Kerry smiled faintly despite himself, leaning unconsciously into the warmth V left behind as he moved away.
“No promises.”
Kerry stubbed out the cigarette, quickly reaching for V’s hand before he left completely. He held onto his fingers a moment, thumb brushing once across his knuckles.
“Are we good?” he asked quietly.
V looked genuinely confused by the question at first.
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
“I dunno.” Kerry shrugged weakly, still not letting go. “Feels like I just told my boyfriend to fuck off so I can emotionally suffer in private.”
That got a real laugh out of V.
Warm, sleep-roughed, and real enough to make Kerry’s stomach flip in the stupidest way imaginable.
“Ker,” V said, squeezing his hand once, “you’re a dumbass.”
Kerry barked out a tired scoff. “Wow. Romance really is alive and well.”
“I’m serious.”
Before Kerry could answer, V dropped back down onto the lounger beside him instead of leaving.
The cushions dipped beneath his weight.
Then V caught the front of Kerry’s robe loosely in his hands and pulled him in.
The kiss landed slow and sleepy first, tasting faintly of smoke and bitter coffee. Kerry made a quiet sound against his mouth out of pure surprise before immediately melting into it, one hand bracing instinctively against V’s thigh.
V kissed him like none of this was difficult.
As if Kerry being complicated wasn’t some unbearable burden to survive.
When he finally pulled back, he stayed close enough that Kerry could still feel his breath against his lips.
“I’ve known you for, what, three years now?” V murmured.
Kerry tilted his head a little. “Give or take.”
“You think I don’t know how you work by now?”
Kerry opened his mouth automatically, probably to argue on principle alone, but V kept going.
“You disappear when shit gets too loud in your head. You get dramatic when you’re stressed out. You act like everyone wanting something from you doesn’t bother you, then sit out here for four days spiralling because you actually care way too much.”
Kerry stared at him quietly.
V’s thumb brushed once along the edge of his jaw.
“And for the record,” he added, blunt as ever, “I love all that about you.”
Kerry let out a soft, cracked laugh, sounding genuinely stunned for a second.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” V echoed. “You’re a pain in the ass sometimes, but you’re my pain in the ass.”
That hit Kerry’s chest with embarrassing force.
His expression softened before he could stop it.
Without interrupting the moment, V plucked the dying cigarette from Kerry’s fingers, leaned sideways, and stubbed it out in the ashtray before it could burn him.
“I’m going back to bed,” V said casually.
He pressed a kiss to Kerry’s jaw, then stood again.
“Sing it to me when you’re ready.”
And then he disappeared around the trellis as casually as he’d arrived, leaving the balcony quieter behind him.
Kerry sat there for a long moment afterward, notebook resting forgotten at his side.
He pressed two fingers lightly to his lips as he watched the sun slowly rising between the chrome towers. The city was waking up now. Traffic thickening into silver rivers below. Advertisements blooming brighter against glass skyscrapers.
Another day grinding itself violently into motion.
Kerry leaned back slowly into the lounger cushions, finding his pen at his side. He clicked it on and off a few times before laughing softly to himself, shaking his head once.
“Fucking kid.”
He scrubbed a tired hand down his face with a heavy sigh.
The idiot really had no idea what he did to him sometimes.
V looked at him like he was still worth a damn.
That part still scared him more than the music did.
His gaze drifted back toward the notebook again.
Torn pages. Scratched out lines. Half-formed thoughts he’d spent nights trying to force into something meaningful.
Pieces of himself scattered across paper in messy black ink.
The kind of honesty people loved to consume once it stopped belonging to the person who wrote it.
Kerry stared at the page a little longer, then exhaled slowly through his nose.
He pulled the notebook back into his lap. The pen hovered over the page for a second.
He scribbled down a line that made him feel hollow.
Added another that still felt too vague to be real.
Crossed out two words.
Rewrote them the other way around.
Kerry smiled faintly to himself.
It was still a mess, still unfinished, and raw. But at least it sounded like him again.