Chapter Text
2077 hit Johnny a lot like he'd been pistol-whipped. By a rockstar. Wearing Kerry's face.
Frankly, standing there in the bar that night, the first bar that they'd played in all those years ago and it really wasn't even like it'd changed too much since then, he wasn't sure if he'd expected this whole Kerry thing to be easier or harder than it was. Maybe both, in a weird way, because the truth was he couldn't conceive of a world in which Kerry hadn't missed him, but he wasn't dumb enough to believe he wouldn't run into a few...residual issues. Kerry must've missed him, sure, but that didn't mean he didn't also kinda want to put that pretty gun of his to Johnny's head and pull the trigger, at least as much as Kerry had considered doing the same thing to himself. If he hadn't been inside V's head and not his own, Johnny might've let him do it to him just to see if he came out the other side alive. Maybe he didn't exactly trust Kerry not to blow his fucking head off, not the way that Kerry had trusted him maybe a lifetime ago, but he really kinda wanted to. He figured that had to mean something, even if he wasn't sure what.
Before the show, he watched Kerry getting jittery and worked up and really kinda cute with V. He saw the whole thing from someplace just behind V's eyes - the kid had an obvious low-level celebrity crush on Kerry that Johnny guessed he understood but still didn't have to like too much. Not when he felt everything that V did, direct and acute, till it was kinda like he had that same crush, too. Didn't help that he'd indulged him a little more than he'd intended to the night before, that he'd stretched out by V's side on his awful bed and murmured shit he really shouldn't have, about Kerry's hands and Kerry's mouth and how good Kerry's ass had felt pulled tight around his cock. Didn't help that it turned out Johnny could do a thing that maybe almost felt like touching him, and that he'd jerked V off to some not exactly fantasy of rockstar Kerry Eurodyne before his meteoric rise. Weird as hell, though, jerking off another guy that felt like jerking off himself, considering he felt everything that V did. Weird as hell, especially when that guy was crushing hard on Kerry. And, for once in his life, Johnny couldn't find it in him to be jealous.
But that night, he could feel the fucked up butterflies inside his chest when Kerry smiled at him - at V, he guessed, not that the difference seemed to matter. He could feel the way V's heartbeat got a little faster each time that Kerry squeezed his shoulder, touched his arm, got in close and smelled the way he did, because apparently that hadn't changed - or at least it'd only changed as much as the difference between V's sense of smell and Johnny's, and they were pretty fucking close. Then V started playing up a little more to that whole we'll say you're my new input thing, the thing that Johnny found fucked up on a variety of levels but couldn't find the will to bitch at him about. He was pretty sure that it was all just the two of them trying to make him as uncomfortable as possible with their pseudo-casual mock-PDAs, not them trying to persuade anyone of anything, especially given how no one in the place really gave a damn who V was. But then V excused himself to head into the men's room; he threw back the pseudoendotrizine like a champ while Johnny coached him, not like he wanted to but a deal was a deal, and Johnny took the wheel.
When he came back out of the men's room, Johnny played along with the plan just so it wouldn't throw things off and put story-hungry Nancy on alert: he threw one arm around Kerry's shoulders and he leaned in really close. He nuzzled at the line of gold chrome not exactly real well hidden there behind Kerry's ear and maybe it should've felt the same as always, now that it was him, because it was Kerry and he knew Kerry and it shouldn't've felt weird at all, but he'd got the same damn butterflies inside as V had. He guessed that was the borrowed body playing tricks on him, responding in the same way V would've responded, except he knew there was another explanation if he really cared to look at it. Fuck, he really didn't need that crap. Not when he was trying hard to save V's life by throwing his own pseudo-life away.
"That you in there?" Kerry asked, and Johnny wasn't fool enough to think he was enquiring about V. Maybe he looked like him right at that moment, maybe he sounded like him, felt like him when Kerry slipped one hand into the back pocket of the too-tight, artistically slashed-up jeans V had insisted they wear like his own special take on rockerboy chic, but this was Kerry. The guy who'd known it was him just from twenty seconds of a song they'd written seventy years ago. Johnny had been sure he'd know. Kerry really hadn't disappointed him.
"Yeah," he replied, with V's face still pressed up against that chrome, against Kerry's skin. He tightened his arm around Kerry's shoulders. "Disappointed?"
Kerry scoffed. He shrugged off Johnny's arm and turned to stand in front of him, hesitated for a second before he got his hands up to V's shoulders and then stepped in, sliding his bare arms forward until they were draped lazily around V's neck. Johnny's neck. Jesus, he was standing really close, but Johnny just took that as a challenge, like maybe an extension of the dumbass make-Johnny-feel-weird game Kerry had been playing with V before. He chose to take it like that, at least, and didn't move except to shove the index finger of both hands into Kerry's belt loops and pull him in a little closer, until they were chest-to-chest with Kerry's mouth right by his ear. He figured two could play at that stupid game, and they'd see who it was that flinched first.
"Yeah, don't let V take this the wrong way," Kerry said, right by his ear, "but he's not the one I'm doing this to get on stage with."
"He's not gonna get offended, Ker."
"And that's what he says or that's what you say?"
Johnny paused. Okay, so maybe he'd skipped a few steps in the Relic primer that might've been useful for Kerry's general understanding and veered straight into setting up all of this distracting-Kerry-from-a-bullet crap, but he'd thought he'd made the separation clear. Maybe not, though. Maybe he'd gotten so damn used to being just a voice inside V's head that saying shit out loud seemed optional somehow. Maybe being around Kerry was even more familiar than being around V, and V had gotten pretty damned familiar.
"It's what I say 'cause V's not here right now," Johnny told him. "When he takes the pills, he checks out all the way till they wear off."
"So it's just you in there right now?"
"Yeah." Johnny moved back, just a little, just far enough to look him in the eyes. The gold-rimmed blue eyes that he wanted to find ridiculous, but that was kinda hard when they suited him the way they did. "When it's me, it's me," he said. "It's Only me."
"And when it's V?"
Johnny smiled wryly, watching how differently Kerry reacted when it was V's face with Johnny's expression on it and not just V. "When it's him, I'm in there with him," he said. "Talking through it the whole time like some shitty backseat driver."
Kerry snorted. "Oh yeah, I bet he loves every second of that," he said. And maybe it sounded like he was being sarcastic, but Johnny kinda had to wonder if maybe Kerry would've liked it, having him inside his head. Or at least if Kerry thought he would, without the benefit of having the fucked up reality of it all set in.
Nancy broke them up right after that so they could all head up on stage and play the show, and Kerry sounded great. The guitar felt right in Johnny's hands, too, or almost right, as close an approximation of how it should've been as it could get when he knew those hands weren't really his. If all went right, if it went to plan, they never would be. They played and they were good, they were really fucking good, and Kerry kept on looking over at him like he knew it, too. Or maybe like he needed to remind himself it wasn't fifty years ago again with his long hair sticking to his skin under the too-hot stage lights and Johnny by his side. Johnny was there, sure, but he couldn't say he looked a whole lot like himself. Sometimes he didn't feel a whole lot like he'd used to, either. And, as far as Johnny could tell, Kerry had had short hair for longer than Johnny had lived for. Fuck, he looked Johnny's age now, like Johnny had just skipped out on the past ten years, but he knew ten years didn't even start to cover it. Half of him wished he'd been there. The other half said maybe it was better that he hadn't been, at least not without having died and met V first - turned out V's whole deal had lent him a whole new perspective on what did and didn't matter. Turned out Kerry did.
They played the show and then they got off stage and Kerry seemed fucking buzzed with it, almost bouncing with it he was so high on the adrenaline, exactly the way he'd sometimes been back in the day. It was the way he'd been after a couple of those last shows, before the end - the end of Samurai, yeah, but if he was gonna get dramatic and/or sentimental, then the end of Johnny, too. They got drinks at the bar and Kerry slammed the first one back while Johnny watched him, trying to decide if he was gonna do the same and screw the no hangovers promise he'd made to V. He thought maybe it'd be easier to get so drunk he couldn't even think of doing something dumb, like he had back in those last few days before he'd died, and maybe Kerry could enjoy his company just one last time. But he shifted on the bar stool with his drink in his hands - V's hands, he guessed, that had worked out surprisingly well on the familiar guitar - and didn't drink it. He'd promised V he wouldn't get so damn fucked up again, and he figured he'd do his best to keep that promise.
"Hey, Johnny?" Kerry said, as he leaned over and stole Johnny's drink. Johnny let him - it wasn't like he was drinking it himself and it took away the temptation to be a total fucking dick after the first dumb flash that told him you should take it back, who cares if you weren't really gonna drink it? All he'd done was take one sip then hold the glass like it was his company for the night, and he watched Kerry fit his mouth to the same place he had, V had, Johnny inside V's body had, and take a sip of it, too.
"Yeah?" Johnny replied, when Kerry didn't go on. Like maybe he was interested. Maybe he even was. Maybe he even didn't mind him knowing that.
Kerry made a face but not at the drink - it was pretty good for a shitty dive bar, Johnny thought, even if Kerry probably had dumb expensive tastes these days, now he could way more than afford them. He put the glass down on the bar but rubbed at the rim of it with one fingertip, where it was still kinda wet from the fact they'd both drunk from it, one after the other. And his hands still looked the same as Johnny watched them on the glass, almost more familiar than the rest of him was with all that chrome and blue eyes and white hair, and the tattoos that he'd finally had finished. Fuck, there were at least ten dumb things Johnny would've liked to've done that involved Kerry's hands, so maybe he should've taken the drink back after all.
"Look, I need to ask you something," Kerry said, though he looked kinda like he'd've preferred to do anything else he could think of that really wasn't asking him something, including heading outside to go wander in traffic. "And I need you to tell me the truth, okay? Just this once. You think maybe you could do that?"
Johnny really couldn't've said he liked how this sounded, or where he thought that it might go. He couldn't've said he was in some huge goddamn rush to find out what Kerry's question was, either. He could think of at least ten different things just off the top of his head that he really didn't want to talk about, on top of the ten things he knew he shouldn't do, but he guessed he had to ask himself what was most important here: avoiding conversations that he didn't want to have or not actively fucking shit between them up again? Because he'd fucked up before and he knew it, not just because V liked to tell him so. He'd definitely fucked up. Over and over. Pretty close to irrevocably.
"Yeah, I think maybe I can do that," Johnny said. And it must've sounded like he meant it because Kerry looked almost as surprised as Johnny felt.
Kerry didn't ask the question right away. He flagged down the bartender and he ordered more drinks, then he led the way across the room to a half-dark corner with a table in it. Kerry sat himself down and put the drinks on the table - two beers and two double vodkas - and so Johnny sat down opposite.
"You remember I don't drink vodka, right?" Johnny said, as he waved his hand over the top of what might've been a candle in a bowl but turned out to be some kind of shitty LED imitation. He felt like throwing it against the nearest wall or pouring out a beer into it till the light flickered out, or maybe swiping it onto the floor like V had been possessed by someone's asshole cat and not just a long-dead rockerboy. He left it alone, though, so maybe he was learning.
Kerry shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I mean, it's not like you turned it down if it was free or the only thing a place had or whatever, but...sure." He arranged the drinks on the table, dragged both vodkas and one of the beer bottles closer to himself then threw back the contents of one glass.
Johnny snorted. "Yeah, point taken," he said. "They're not for me." But he took the second beer bottle and he sipped from it, watching Kerry drum his fingers against the edge of the table like he couldn't quite keep still. "So, what's this question that you wanna ask?"
Kerry winced. He scrubbed one hand over his face, his beard, tugged on his earrings a little like ninety years on the planet somehow hadn't adequately prepared him for this moment. Then he said, "Okay, so, before you died."
"Yeah?"
Kerry took a breath. He smiled, but it was that pained kind of smile that meant absolutely nothing good.
"Yeah," he said. "Before you died, I was kinda drinking a lot. And I was high a lot. And after you died, well." The smile turned wry. "Fuck, Johnny, I was kinda fucked up for a long fucking time. I tried real hard to forget. Now..." He shrugged, widely, sitting back, both his hands palms up like he was at a total loss. "Look, I just need to know if what I think happened really happened or if I just made it up."
Johnny frowned. "With the tower?"
Kerry shook his head. He eyed his glass as he held it there in both his hands. "Nah," he said. "I talked to Rogue a while after and she told me most of the story." He smiled that pained smile again as he looked down at his glass then back over at Johnny. "Guess now I've heard the rest from you."
"Then what are we talking about?"
Kerry smiled that painful fucking smile again, then he rubbed his mouth like he could pretend it hadn't happened. He rubbed the chrome in his throat, too, like he was thinking about something real specific, and not even close to unrelated, something Johnny recalled with damn near perfect clarity. That was when it hit him just what Kerry meant, what the question really was that Kerry was asking for an answer to. That was when it dawned on him that he was gonna have a choice to make, fucked up as that choice might be.
The thing was, it would've been real easy to pretend he had no clue what Kerry was talking about, but he knew what it was and he absolutely fucking hated it...just not for the reason he maybe would've expected, at least not back that. Kerry was asking about that thing they'd never talked about, because it turned out that he'd damn close to convinced himself it hadn't even happened, that it'd all been drug-fueled wishful thinking or whatever, a dream he'd had, a stupid vivid fantasy and not just something he remembered. And Johnny could've said he needed more to go on, scoffed when Kerry asked him did we ever sleep together? but...fuck. Really. Fuck. He didn't hate that it had happened. He hated that Kerry wasn't sure if it had.
"Kerry..." he said, instead of shooting him down, instead of brushing it off, as he tried to figure out if telling him was just gonna make things worse or not. He clenched his jaw for a second, looking down at the beer bottle in V's hands, at the weird haze where his own obvious chrome seemed to project over the top of V's more subtle shit - he guessed there had to be one way V managed to look less gaudy than he did and not roughly twenty times more. And honestly, it was hard for Johnny not to remember that thing it turned out Kerry maybe didn't. It would've taken a whole lot less effort for Johnny to remember than not.
He almost didn't need to try at all.