Chapter Text
When V came back, Johnny stayed inside her. That was how he always thought about it. Like he was giving her space, somehow, although he never could. He could only ever give her silence. No way for her to have real alone time unless he was deleted for good.
“Whuh?” V said, blinking away pixels from her vision. A cough shook her, and she and Johnny tasted blood. “Fuck,” she muttered.
“Hey, you okay?”
Kerry’s hands on their shoulder, his face in the corner of their vision filled with concern. V looked at him, and she tried to stand. Stumbled, leg knocking against the edge of the table, and she fell back against the couch. Kerry caught her. Johnny felt his arms around them.
“Uh,” V said. “Kerry?”
“Yeah. That’s you again, right, V?”
She nodded. Leaned against him a little, the edges of her vision still dark, her blood doing some funny thing inside her veins. It was getting more intense every time she woke up. Getting dangerous.
“Why’re we… home?”
“Me and Johnny figured it’d be more comfortable for you waking up here. Y’know, somewhere familiar. And that maybe you shouldn’t be alone for it. That okay?”
“M-hm. Getting real used to waking up with you. Impressed we’re not naked this time. Johnny too busy caring about music to get around to sex?”
Kerry laughed. His arm was still around her shoulders, her head not quite leaning on his. Neither made any move to separate. Johnny wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“No, no, we did that. Before the concert, though.”
V grimaced. “Don’t tell me you got me naked in that disgusting bathroom, Johnny.”
“Not entirely naked. Think your top stayed on, if that helps?” Kerry offered.
“Eugh. Not really. Not a fan of the boobs, then? I mean, I read you were mainly into guys. Sorry I’m. I mean… I guess it might have been better if Johnny caught me pre-transition. For that purpose.”
Kerry groaned, throwing his head back.
“Spend my whole life telling folks I’m bi and no one ever listens. The boobs are good, V. Suit you, suit Johnny. Do I wish he looked like himself? Yeah! Course I do. Miss that dumb face. But it’s Johnny, I’d be into him no matter what body he was in, you know?”
“Right,” V said, and Johnny could feel the physical sensation of whatever dumb emotion she was experiencing. Some discomfort that didn’t even make sense.
“Hey,” Kerry said, frowning at her, “don’t mean that as in you’re not hot. Obviously you are, I mean, come on. Of all the bodies Johnny could’a come back in, yours is a good one!”
“That’s your goddamn issue?” Johnny asked. “Fuck, kid. Of all the many many things you should be insecure about that’s not it. Your driving? Sure. Your aim. Your complete inability to get laid without my help, your fashion sense, your utter lack of cultural references, your music taste—”
“Okay, okay, Johnny, I get it!”
“Uh. What’s he saying?”
“Listing everything wrong with me.”
“Oh. Yeah, he does that. Don’t be an asshole, Johnny. We wanna be nice to the chick you live in, yeah?”
Johnny felt V smile at that. Her hand curled in on itself the way it sometimes did. Her attempt at holding his the only way he could feel it.
“Yeah, Johnny. Listen to Kerry. He’s way nicer than you.”
Johnny didn’t know that nice was the word he’d use to describe Kerry. He was his best friend, and probably something more, but nice? Well. Less of an asshole, maybe. A bit better at talking to people, though he was still pretty goddamn volatile. Not to V, though. Maybe that was it. He knew keeping V around was how he could keep Johnny around. And hey, he seemed to like her too. Thank fuck.
“Not very hard,” Kerry said, grinning. “But thanks.”
“Maybe not. But he kinda is, sometimes, you know? Just with a lot of mean stuff in between to throw you off. Or maybe not nice, but… but deep down a good friend. Probably to a pretty small number of people. Still counts.”
“Uh-huh. Like the cat who hisses and bites everyone but then sort of slinks up to you after dark and purrs when you pet its belly,” Kerry agreed, like the traitor he was.
“Fuck off,” Johnny told him, and only felt V’s smile in reply.
“Hah, yeah, like that. He always that way?”
“Pretty much. We were two fucked up kids when we met. Him just back from getting blown up, came from a real shitty home before that. Experimental cybernetic arm he wasn’t used to yet. I had my own shit. Just put all that trauma into your music, huh? Never did get real help about it. So yeah, yeah. Got better at putting up walls as he went. Didn’t let many folks in. Guess I got lucky that way.”
“You both did, pretty sure,” V said.
She was right, of course. And maybe Kerry was, too. Johnny had never been good at dealing with his feelings, at even recognising them. They got in the way of the important shit in life; fucking, get fucked up and making music.
V shifted, but she had yet to move away from Kerry. Johnny still felt his hand on her shoulder.
“Johnny told me to look after you, by the way” Kerry said. “When he’s gone. Promised him I will.”
“I… thanks. Thank you.”
“Would have, anyway, if you let me. You’re what will be left of him. I mean, fuck, that sounds weird. Not like you’re his coffin, just… Like the two of you keep talking about, bleeding into each other. Some of him’s gotta be in you, even if…”
“Yeah,” V said, reaching up to put her hand over Kerry’s, “yeah. Course he will. Like I, um, I would like to keep in touch with you. For the same reason. Well, I mean, that and because you’re cool. But there’s no one else. I mean, there’s Rogue, I guess, but I don’t think she wants to sit around being nostalgic.”
“Talkin’ about me like I’m already gone,” Johnny grumbled.
“Well, you have died,” V retorted, cutting off whatever Kerry was about to say. He smiled. All soft and a little sad.
“Yeah? So have you, kid. Don’t see me talking about you like that.”
“You have called me a walking corpse on several occasions,” she pointed out. And then, to Kerry, “doesn’t like us getting a head start on grieving him.”
“Shit outta luck there, Johnny. Been doing that since twenty-three.”
Johnny sighed, blinking into place next to V on the sofa and lighting a cigarette. V half turned, gave him a soft smile he couldn’t quite read. Kerry tilted his head to the side, as if to see past her.
“Hey.” His voice was quiet.
“Guess I get it,” V said, turning back to Kerry, “don’t need any more reminders we’re dying, either. Tell me about the concert?”
“Sure,” Kerry said.
Johnny was only half paying attention. Him and Kerry had already talked it over earlier, and Kerry had, correctly, guessed V didn’t wanna hear about any of the actual music stuff. Instead he felt a frustrated resentment, at this, his life, his situation. Not towards V, or Kerry, or himself. It was tempting, but the true adversary was Arasaka. Always had been. He replayed V’s memory of Yorinobu squeezing the life out of Saburo. If he ever met the guy he’d buy him a drink for that.
“Hey,” Kerry asked a little while later, “can I… check something?”
“Uh, sure.”
Johnny saw the hesitancy in Kerry’s eyes, and had a vague idea he knew what he was about to do. Should he tell V? He considered it for a moment, but decided against it. Instead he just watched from over V’s shoulder as Kerry leaned in, kissing V. Felt it, after a moment, the familiar taste of Kerry, the soft lips and prickly beard. V kissed him back, instinctively. His own instinct, he imagined, rather than hers, because after a long moment he saw her flinch back, a second or two before he felt it.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, but it didn’t sound like the accusation he was pretty sure it was meant to be.
“V,” he told her, chrome hand on her arm, “be cool.”
“I just… Johnny told me you kinda had a thing for me, and you’re kind of cool and kind of him, so I wanted to see if there was, y’know, some chemistry happening.”
“Fucking hell, Johnny.”
“What? Not my fault what the gonk does.” He huffed, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at the back of her head.
“Not his idea,” Kerry said, proving himself worthy of Johnny keeping him around for once. “But come on, felt right to you too, huh?”
“I…” V faltered, looked down. She shifted a little, moved closer to Johnny, enough to phase through him a little. The edges of him flickered into teal pixels, dancing like rain along where they intersected. “Kinda? It felt familiar, but like déjà vu is familiar, not like a habit.”
“That good or bad?”
“It’s unsettling,” V said after a moment. “Like everything with you. Or, no, that sounds wrong. It’s mostly with you, but it’s not you, y’know?”
“Uh. I don’t, actually, no.”
“It’s the same as how I feel like I’ve known you for decades, even though I met you less than two months ago. Remember the time you and him spent together, shit like that. But I know it didn’t happen to me, so it makes it weird.”
“Well,” Kerry said slowly, “your body has been kissing me… Might be, dunno, muscle memory or somethin’?”
V blinked. “I’m not sure that’s how that works. But yeah, I mean, I guess it could be something like that. What’s the point, though?”
“The point?”
“Of you, me. This.”
Johnny groaned, leaning his head back against the wall he couldn’t feel. From somewhere inside the apartment he heard Nibbles mewl miserably, as if agreeing. All this fucking talking. He should have left Kerry at the bar. Would have, if the threat of never getting to spend more time with him didn’t hang over him.
“Point is I wanna spend more time with you. Both of you. Maybe while making out.”
V felt weird about this, an odd spiral sensation in her stomach. Some kind of discomfort, Johnny could tell as much, but nothing more. Chick had so very many feelings about shit, and all of them complicated.
“Because of Johnny.”
“Yeah, ‘cause of Johnny. And also because of you. He’s been saying how it’s not a good idea, letting him out any more, and yeah, yeah, I’m selfish. I wanna spend time with him before he gets flatlined again. Also wanna spend time with you, though. I like you, you like me, what’s the issue?”
“Oh my god, you two are just the fucking same,” V said. Which wasn’t wrong, Johnny could admit as much, particularly because he also did not see what the issue was.
“What?”
“You’ve just, dunno, conditioned yourself into liking me. Associate kissing someone who looks like me with Johnny. Fucking Pavlov’d yourself into being into me.”
“Look,” Kerry said, frowning. “Yeah, okay. Maybe it’s a little bit that. I like how it feels kissing you. How your cock feels inside me, the taste of it. I think you’re hot. Yes, because of him, but also because of you as a person, yeah? Not everything is about him.”
“Hey,” Johnny complained.
“He disagrees.”
“He would,” Kerry agreed. “But I’m serious, V. There any harm in seeing how it goes?”
“Yeah. Yeah, there is, because I fucking like you, Kerry. Have done for years, and for some reason actually meeting you hasn’t made me stop.”
“Ouch,” Kerry and Johnny said in unison.
“And if you lose interest as soon as Johnny is gone, that’s gonna really hurt. There’s so much fucking shit happening to me already, so many bad things looming, and I can’t take any more. My ability to dread stuff is maxed out. No more space.”
“Judgey,” Johnny told her. She half turned to face him. “Guy’s been in love with me for three times as long as you’ve been alive. Don’t think a short attention span is the thing you gotta worry about.”
“Yeah, but that’s you. I’m not… I’m not you.”
“I know you’re not Johnny. I’m not a complete gonkhead, V.”
“Debatable,” Johnny interjected.
“It’s different. Don’t feel the same about you as about him. Don’t got time for that, even with today’s tech. Not gonna happen, but I don’t think you want that. A whole lot of fights in there.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I remember,” she said. “Remember being an asshole to you. And you right back, sometimes.”
“See? Halfway there already.” Kerry grinned like he’d made a point.
“You’ve been very quiet,” V said, turning to Johnny. “Not like you.”
“Do what you want,” he said, shrugging.
“Johnny, c’mon.”
“For real, kid. Not butting in.”
She looked uncertain, but turned back to Kerry. She was right, of course. It wasn’t that he didn’t have an opinion, he just... didn’t know what it was.. He felt vaguely jealous, but he didn’t know who about. Maybe both. He even managed to feel excluded, literally impossible as it was. This shit was so much easier to deal with when he wasn’t permanently locked inside their mind.
“Look,” Kerry said, “seems like the two of you got some talking to do. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Yeah,” V said, “yeah, that might be good.”
She followed him to the door. For a moment Johnny thought he was going to hug her, but he didn’t. Just did that kinda sad smile again, the one usually reserved for Johnny, and then walked off in the direction of the elevator.
“Why do you have to make things so difficult?” V demanded.
“Could ask you the same. What’s wrong with fucking Kerry?”
“There’s nothing wrong with fucking Kerry.” V paced, Nibbles emerging from some dark corner to wind around her feet like she was trying to trip her. “I just don’t know if I can do it.”
“You can. Ker and me have checked. Repeatedly.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“What?”
“Wish you’d go back to smashing my head into the window ‘stead of talking to me. Easier to deal with.”
Johnny looked at her for a moment, then flickered out of view.
“Oh, is that how you’re gonna be? Well, fine. I’ll talk to Nibbles instead. She understands.”