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V feels Johnny kick him. Funny how that works when his eyes are closed, resting on his arm that’s draped on a toilet seat in a random public bathroom he barged into. It smells like shit and piss and three days old rot of some corpse probably in the next stall. The lock works but it doesn’t matter since the gap from the cubicle wall and the door was so wide anyone could peek into what’s going on.
Not like anybody cares to do so, it’s just V with his head glued to his arm, his legs slightly bent because he can’t straighten them all the way in the tiny cubicle he’s in. Black puddles on the floor which scent is masked by the unflushed vomit dotting the blood in the toilet bowl.
He could barely fit in the cubicle himself, but Johnny’s thinking of being in the cubicle, and Johnny’s thinking of kicking V; and so V’s traitorous brain conjures the feeling, all boot to rib bone and cramped spaces.
He feels Johnny thinking to kick him harder and puts a stop to that before he does, “Stop it, I’m not falling asleep.”
“Could’ve fooled me, you’re looking too cozy.” Johnny says, and V could feel and not see him shuffle to take out his cigarette. The sound of him starting the lighter is an odd kind of ease. It makes V’s stomach do more flips, the same way it flipped earlier when he first bended over to throw up and his hand automatically tried to pull his hair back. Like he had nape-length black hair and not short, unevenly shaved, badly dyed hair.
He gets that sick feeling again, that feeling of being from the outside looking in, his body a separate thing from himself, his skin too loud to be in, any move suddenly a semi-conscious decision instead of a full one.
"First chrome you got. Go." Johnny says, like it could help. V wishes he’d shut up. V wishes Johnny was dead. V wishes Johnny would be the one who had to tell a story, or go on one of his rants, anything, not ask him stupid questions he has to answer. V wishes Johnny was actually here and the nudge of the knee he just felt to his shoulder was actually real.
"Can't see that from my memories?" V asked, after Johnny nudged him again. He shuts his eyes harder until it squelches under his eyelids.
"Would require me to watch you during puberty, have a heart V, I can't handle that much secondhand embarrassment."
"Har har." V lets out a sigh and turns himself sideways, throwing his head back softly, hitting the cubicle wall behind him as he swallows through the lump of nausea that stubbornly clings onto the back of his throat.
"Lungs, I think. Wait, no--" He corrects himself quickly, "This guy." V says, tapping the golden plate chrome on his nose. "Broke it when I was 10, punched in so bad I couldn't breathe through my nose. Some chooms brought me to the nearest ripperdoc a few hours after."
"How bad of a kid were you that people were decking you at 10, V?" Johnny sneered, he’s still standing and smoking, so V has to look up at him while he snorts.
"The kinda bad that Heywood raises." V answers simply. He shrugs off the way his mind conjures the memory of inhaling blood and the searing pain right in the middle of his face that seemed to web itself outwards to everywhere. At least his chooms got him to a decent ripper that actually fixed his nose.
“Or the kinda idiot who could confuse a nose job with getting new lungs.” Johnny pointed out.
"Was supposed to get synthetic lungs for my first cyberware. It's how you get any chance in Heywood.” V says, because it’s practically drilled into his head once he started waddling by the adults: dolls with bad customers and errand-runners for Valentinos trying to quit with their life. Streetrat nobodies who gave half a damn about him on their good days.
“Synthetic lungs means bigger stamina; run faster and further so you could ditch the badges on foot if it comes down to it. Plus, you know," V doesn't know how to bring up the usual reason. Number one cause of death in the world, not just Heywood, was side-effects from breathing in the polluted air.
V had woken up half dead in a dumpster, open wounds touching with months old, spoiled tacos and not a single infection. That wasn't just Vik doing his magic, that was a lifetime of forging an immune system by risking food poisoning with every meal and torturing his respiratory organs every time he breathed. He got lucky with his digestive tracts. Not so much with the lungs.
Johnny’s still waiting, annoyingly. V let out a sigh and threw his hand up before letting it fall down unceremoniously to his lap, "I don’t know, Johnny. The usual. Actually having a built in filtration so you get to breathe fresh air and not cough every 8 minutes just sounds pretty fucking ideal."
"There's no filtration on earth that can handle Night City's fumes, gonk." Johnny snapped, like he knew V was gonna say that and had the reply locked and loaded.
"Look, a kid could dream, a’ight?" V says, "I was doing so good at it too, saved a good chunk up then I had to spend it all and still owe some to people for the nose."
V pouted his mouth sideways annoyedly. Johnny rolled his eyes, lit another cigarette up, his first one had fizzled out during the conversation, "Dunno why you even bother wanting to breathe this city's air."
"Fuck you," V mumbles out, even if it doesn’t mean much as a reply. He tries to stand up, using the stall’s partition as support, but his knees wobble too much and he slumps back down on the tile. He swears under his breath and coughs, waving off the smoke that wasn’t even there just to prove a point to Johnny.
There's a reason he doesn't smoke. It didn’t matter how much teasing and pressuring anyone on the street dished out for being a thief without a nicotine addiction. He knew better not to. Was just a dumb move to speed up killing his organ that was already actively failing. Cut it a little too close at the end there, couldn't even walk up any sort of stairs without coughing and wheezing for his life.
And for what? An average synth lung that cost years of blood, sweat and tears– and a first all-the-way-to-his-lungs breath that was underwhelming. Johnny caught wind of his thoughts at this point and provided unwarranted commentary as he always does, “Took you that long to figure that out? That’s the first world’s worst wonder for little Vincent? All the money in the world won’t mean shit when some organs are just designed to be weak and that’s not the ripper scamming you, that’s life?”
V scowled at him. The name-calling was unappreciated. Johnny knows, it was why he did it in the first place.
A sigh and a roll of the eyes, V turns his gaze to his fingers and cleans the dirt stuck under his nails. There’s no point in wishing Johnny was dead. Johnny is dead. He can joke that he’s talking to Silverhand’s ghost right now but that’s not quite true either. Ghosts are people who don’t know they’ve died.
Somebody opens the door to the public bathroom, a sliver from the streetlights outside pours in, diagonal mismatched neon colors on dirty walls that disappears. Whoever it was outside was clattering about, then went out just as quickly they went in. Another mocking wave of lights and V’s alone with Johnny again in the bathroom. V wipes the back of his hand to his nose, sniffling, the brief silence had shut off any need to stoop down to Johnny’s level to argue, "Whatever. It sucked, but after years of not having a good set of lungs to warrant me running out of trouble fast enough, I got used to sneaking around to avoid getting caught in the first place. Got my first gig from Padre from how quiet I could be, and now I got good rep for doing quiet work. So. Silver linings, I guess."
“Silver linings are for runner-ups trying to find some consolation prize, V.” Johnny chastises him. Always tossing the glass back and then complaining about the glass never being half-full. “Wasn’t this the same chrome your meat rejected?”
"No, that’s–” V stops, looks up at Johnny slowly, eyes squinting at the rockerboy. And Johnny can act nonchalant about it, shifting his weight and planting a hand on his hip all aloof. But V knows he knows he fucked up by saying that line. “So you have seen this in my memories."
"Eh, bits and pieces." Johnny waves him off, jots his hip out. “It’s all blurry in your head.”
“It was, that’s the point.” V says, deciding to just do what Johnny wants and continue the story, “My ganic eyes gave out when I was a kid. Could barely see one-two meters ahead of me.”
“There’s a thing called glasses, V. Ever heard of 'em?” Johnny scoffs, taking off his aviators and folding it, slipping it onto his vest.
“Yeah but a newer set of eyes aren’t that expensive. Plus you get to zoom in and stuff with the newer models. Guy I know told me he got his for a deal at this back-alley rippers of his and it had changed his life, so I went not long after I got my lungs.”
“Ugh, I don’t like where this is going.”
V smiles at that, it happened long enough ago that he could actually do that now. That’s how you know you won; when bad days turn into good stories. “Nah, the ripper’s shady but he actually kept his part of the deal. Was just a case of a bad match of that batch with my nervous system.”
Even then he was lucky enough that it hadn’t evolved into full-blown cyberpsychosis, considering the timing of him planting the lungs in barely a month prior, and how cyber-eyes usually set off the affliction with its close proximity to the brain.
It wasn’t cyberpsychosis, but it had been two to three weeks of steadily declining eyesight, constant glitches in his vision and a bad migraine that accompanied it all. Almost a month of scrambling to get any kind of work and asking for favors to scrounge up enough for a deposit for a legitimate brand of ocular cyberware, because he wasn’t about to risk another off-brand one again.
Come to think of it, the symptoms then weren't much different to what he has going now.
“And then you skedaddled to Atlanta because you burned every bridge you had in Night City paying off the debt. Whoop-de-doo. How exciting. In a world where your wildest dreams can come true in a visit to the rippers, you got real boring limbs.”
It wasn’t exactly how the story went. The actual story had something to do with old chooms (hah, “chooms”) who sold him out, that the whole bridge burning was more like both sides throwing grenades with reckless abandon. Some prison time somewhere in there, that he somehow weaseled out of and bankrupted him. Some rumors about Atlanta being a decent place to be in. The actual story had him starting fresh, or was it running away? It’s hard to think about Atlanta and not remember just constantly crashing at some random person’s couch, some guitar digging into his hip, and then he remembers that’s not my memory. And then he drops it.
“You’re the one who asked about my cyberware.” V says accusingly, trying to distract himself and Johnny simultaneously. “And you missed the big one,” He pulls his jacket higher up his arms to show the mantis blades plates. The sleeves rolled down again effortlessly, in a way it didn’t used to just a month prior.
It just dawned on V that maybe Rogue’s staring and buying him a milkshake with fries on the house last time he went to Afterlife wasn’t a jab at him being a kid as much as an awkward way to tell him to eat more. There’s a sudden pang in his heart that wasn’t from him at the thought of that, and he looks up at Johnny who’s not looking at him.
“I knew that one. Shitty fucking idea. ‘ Can’t take away my weapons if it’s planted on me ’, stupidest shit.” Johnny grumbles instead of meeting his eyes. V wasn’t particularly listening to him anymore. He thought of experimentally letting his blades out halfway, the same way you could sometimes do with an old-fashioned light switch to try and balance it in the middle to see when it’ll turn off or on. He used to be able to just unsheathe it barely, just so blades peek out under his skin. V decides against it, deciding it’s not worth the risk to fail this time and shred the sleeves of his jackets to pieces.
“-ot a silver arm and I don’t go around calling it a weapon, ‘cus it’s a goddamn arm! You’re just cosplaying a fucking insect at all times and– V are you even listening to me?”
“No,” V answers easily once his name popped back up into the conversation. “You were talking about something boring.”
Johnny slammed a silver fist to the cubicle wall. V could’ve sworn he felt it tremble along onto his back, “I am never boring.” Johnny hisses out in a genuinely offended tone. V puts his hands up in fake surrender and coughs lightly. He balls a hand into a fist and hits it to his chest once, just to give himself something to ground on.
“And?” Johnny asks. V frowns, looks up at Johnny in confusion. He wasn’t lying about not listening, he has no idea what Johnny is asking for him now. Johnny groans, “Your chrome, V, what else?” He spells out in an over-exaggerated louder and slower tone like he’s talking to an unruly kid.
V frowned harder, tilts his head to the side. That still makes no sense. He already finished talking. He’s honestly not really in the mood to talk more. Johnny obviously didn’t get the memo, because he continues, “You still missed one.” V did another mental count. He’s pretty fucking sure he got all of his chrome in order. He really didn’t have that much, by Night City standards. Then again he’s seen Smasher so maybe he’s a bit biased.
“Me.”
V blinks, then snickers and laughs, throwing his head back, it hits the cubicle wall lightly. “Fuck. No, you don’t count.”
“Sure I do.” Johnny says, and there’s a little smirk underneath there somewhere. “Rebooted your life twice already. I’m like the world’s best defibrillator. Could even hear my thoughts, know how many reality TV producers were asking to follow me around to hear what the great Johnny Silverhand thinks about 24/7 back in the day? And lucky you got yours for free.”
V huffs, “Okay, Johnny, sure.” He doesn’t argue about how chromes are implants to the body, not the mind. He doesn’t argue that most chromes are supposed to help you do something, and not actively kill you and replace you with themselves. He doesn’t argue because it’s fucking bleak, and the thought should be nauseating, and V’s finally not sick anymore.
He braces himself to stand, only to see a cigarette drop to the floor, snubbed out by pixels of a boot. Two hands pick him up from the floor and V blinks in surprise, standing in a now empty cubicle. It was so fast his brain didn’t even register physics. He bristles under his jacket, tries to think out thanks but it died halfway. Figures it won't be the last time he'll get the chance to anyway.
V walks out the public toilet, basks in the neon lights and night sky. He takes a long deep breath of the fresh air. As fresh as Night City gets, at least. “Hey Johnny, pick a place to get dinner.” he says, actually feeling like the night's gonna take a turn for the better for real now.
“What am I, fucking Siri?”
“Who’s Siri?”
“Jesus fuck, you’re such a kid.”
V argues back this time, feet walking to the closest train station to get him closer to home.