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The house was quiet when he got there.
The dressed-up bots roaming the villa's perimeter were pretty fucking useless as far as security went. Johnny hopped the fence out back, because hell if he was climbing the front gate and winding up dead of a broken neck on the driveway, and a couple of tricks he'd learned from V took the bots out one by one. He'd been kinda dubious about the notion of a chip inside his head, given the shit V had gone through after cramming the Relic on in there in a fit of astounding dumbassery, but a chip inside his head was what had brought Johnny back into his body - and besides which, he had to admit the cyberdeck he was running was pretty fucking preem. Okay, so he was never gonna be like V, crouching down behind a crate with his head in the cameras, mostly because he didn't want to do that shit. But he could sure as hell short out a few overpriced, undergunned bots and break into a rockstar's clifftop mansion. Besides, gunshots would've ruined the surprise.
The door through from the car port was standing wide open, which was pretty much Kerry all over: of course he'd bought a bunch of bots then left the fucking door unlocked, just tempting the hell out of fate. Of course, Johnny didn't actually believe in fate - he believed in making shit happen for yourself, taking personal responsibility for your own life and for the world around you, and if you saw something fucked up and shitty then you changed it or died trying. He'd died trying, which he guessed he was at least part of the way proud of, even if he was the rest of the way pissed off by it. And yeah, he wasn't in a hurry to do that shit again, hadn't had the time of his life getting digitally atomized by Soulkiller then shoved into a box inside Mikoshi. He didn't want to go playing the martyr, but there were still a few issues he could turn the right way around without fucking off into the great beyond for a second time. Like Kerry.
Like Kerry. Kerry who lived his life locked away in that huge fucking house, alone unless you counted the parade of fucked up parties. Johnny had almost crashed one while he'd still been in V's head, turned up to check in on him not long after that night when he'd been in charge the first real time, when he'd read a bunch of screamsheet bullshit that he'd really hoped they'd made up for the headlines, or that Kerry's jackass manager had made up for the weird PR. Kerry had been kinda high strung for as long as Johnny had known him, sure, but taking a turn toward the suicidal was something new and unexpected. Something Johnny didn't like the thought of, and not just because he could count the names of the people in the world he gave a shit about on the fingers of one hand. V, yeah, and maybe he was gonna need two hands for this after all because V counted at least twice. Rogue, though she was probably still kinda pissed at him for how the too-late date had ended, with a snide remark it turned out that he'd really meant. Maybe Nancy. Denny if he really stretched the limits of credulity. Henry could fuck all of the way off, though he had to admit that the shit with the concrete and Denny's pool had been fucking hilarious. And Kerry.
Johnny had turned up there at the house maybe a month ago, pretty soon after the movie he hadn't exactly watched with Rogue but before all of the Mikoshi crap with V, before he'd gotten his body back so he'd still been just some asshole virus eating up V's brain from the chip inside his head. He hadn't been completely sure what he'd been doing there at Kerry's place, what he'd expected to achieve there, and anyway, it'd been V at the wheel as they'd made their way up toward the wide open gate from where they'd left the car. The whole goddamn driveway had been full of the kind of shiny rich dick vehicles that always got V hard and they'd stood there, right on the edge of the property line, listening to the trashy-ass music blaring out of the place and watching a bunch of drunk-ass rich pricks staggering around the garden. Johnny wouldn't've joined in with that shit if he'd been paid to. V would've, but mostly just to get a better look at all their fashion choices.
But hell, when V had looked around, not exactly lacking in the optics department, they'd found Kerry there, too. Unsurprising, considering the place was his, but he'd been shirtless and stretched out on the hood of his car, getting some kind of booze licked off of his chest. By a guy Johnny was pretty sure he remembered from a shitty telenovela that V sometimes liked to watch at 2am.
V had looked at Johnny sideways, though he wasn't really there. He'd said, "Fuck, is it just me who really wants to be that guy right now?" and Johnny had rolled his eyes and walked away, like the eyeroll was his answer. Not that away had ever really been away where he and V had been concerned. Not that they didn't both know a thing or two about the shit that Johnny did or did not want subsequent to his semi-resurrection, and how exactly Kerry figured into that. But it'd looked a whole lot like Kerry would be fine for the time being, probably not blowing his head off in the bathroom in the next forty-eight hours, and they'd headed back to the car again. Frankly, it'd been kind of an anticlimax. The kind of climax he'd been hoping for had been...different, to say the least.
He'd regretted leaving, not that he'd told V that. Not because he'd thought Kerry was gonna wind up some sad footnote in rock history, some grim goddamn obit they'd get 'Bes Isis' to write once he'd shuffled himself along out of the world, some cautionary tale about being careful what you wished for 'cause the reality of it was a son of a bitch. He hadn't known there'd be a party going on that night and he'd had the whole damn thing planned out, though as V had trudged back to the car, bitching half-heartedly about the waste of time, he'd known how thin and halfway dumb his plan had been. Maybe it'd been all of the way dumb, because all he'd had in mind was getting in past Kerry's shit security without getting V shot full of holes and then popping one of Misty's special Johnny-summoning pills. He'd been pretty sure he'd find a guitar without a whole lot of trouble and he'd've played it, he'd've announced himself that way, a way that Kerry really couldn't deny. It just sounded dumber and dumber now he thought about it, as he slipped into the house weeks later, but the truth was that not exactly so deep down, he still believed it would've worked. Kerry would've known it was him. He wouldn't even have needed to play half a song to convince him. But Kerry's musical comprehension wasn't needed now: Johnny looked like himself again, not a streetkid from Heywood with purple hair so bright it damn near glowed. He looked like Johnny Silverhand the night he'd died. The way that Kerry would remember.
The place was quiet, though. No party this time, no line of supercars marching up the driveway or parked halfway into the flowerbeds, no shitty pop songs blaring from inside like Kerry's taste had nosedived while Johnny had been gone. No scantily-clad crowd inside, no glasses and bottles scattered over every surface - Johnny guessed a cleaner or eight had been through the place by then and made it look almost good as new. It was like no one was there at all though he was pretty sure that Kerry was. It was like a freaking ghost town with the lights on inside but everything so neat and empty, like nobody was even living there. Johnny was suddenly pretty damn grateful that the times when he went back to V's place, the huge new place they were living in together, and found V wasn't home yet, the cat always was. It was pretty hard to feel alone when he had a yellow-eyed goblin of a feline rubbing up against his pants leg like that was how he ordered dinner. Honestly, where Nibbles was concerned, it pretty much was.
Johnny walked through the house. He wasn't trying to be quiet, honestly would've been tough with how his boots clacked against the floors, but no one came storming the fuck out to meet him, gun in hand or whatever. Kerry had always been a terrible shot anyway, though Johnny guessed he'd had time to practice. Maybe he was some kind of a world-class marksman now, though chances were good that wasn't true - sure, fifty years was a long goddamn time, and he'd seen photos of all the ways that Kerry had changed physically, over and over, again and again: hair in all those different styles and colors, the sheer fucking variety of different chrome, those pretty blue eyes that made something inside Johnny's chest seize up all kinda tight. They suited him, sure, but Johnny still hated them. Maybe just because he didn't wanna think he'd changed.
But fuck, whatever, he walked through the house. There was a piano in there that he'd seen some drunk-ass starlet draped all over at the party, thanks to the zoom on V's upgraded optics, though fuck knew if Kerry even played - he hadn't back in 2023, not except for finding the right notes to tune his ax by. There were guitars up on the wall, too, the cool ones, the ones you couldn't just walk into some low-class pawn shop and pick up cheap the way they'd both started out with. He passed a fucked up display of record covers, Samurai and Eurodyne then Johnny's name, Johnny's fucking stylized hand, and he held his chrome up in front of it just for a second like he really needed the comparison. He hadn't believed for a second that Kerry would've forgotten him, but all the evidence he needed to the contrary was right there anyway. Fifty-four years and he was still in Kerry's head, almost as sure as he'd been inside V's. For Johnny, though, it felt like no time at all. Or maybe a fucking eternity, depending on how hard he thought about Mikoshi.
He heard something then. A voice, no clue what it was saying but he knew whose it was because if there was one voice in the world he knew that wasn't his and wasn't V's, it was Kerry's - Jesus, he'd spent so many hours listening to him talk, listening to him sing, that same dirty fucking tone to it since he'd been nineteen years old and not ninety. He could tell where it was coming from, too, so he headed that way, trying to work out if Kerry was alone in there and talking to himself, or maybe there was someone on the holo, maybe he had someone in there he was talking to. Didn't really matter because Johnny wasn't backing down. He wasn't leaving again. So, he pushed open the bathroom door.
Kerry was alone, that much was obvious right off the bat. He was standing there in front of the bathroom mirror, a mirror bigger than the windows in most of the places where Johnny had lived, naked except for a fluffy white towel tucked in all neat around his waist. It looked like the kind they set out in the real overpriced hotels, not that Johnny had spent too many nights in them, like V would've found in Yorinobu Arasaka's Konpeki Plaza suite if he'd ducked into the bathroom to hide from Saburo and not inside a fucking wall. Fluffy white towels would've probably been on Evelyn Parker's sneaky-ass recording if she'd let it run that far, and Johnny was pretty pleased that V hadn't gotten the full joytoy experience of her boning Yorinobu - okay, so he'd still just been bytes on a chip at that point, but he'd seen the whole shebang inside V's memories. And some shit he did not need to see.
Like this. Like Kerry with a gun pressed to his head.
The muzzle of the pistol was pushed up under Kerry's chin. His forefinger was on the trigger. And when his eyes met Johnny's in the mirror, Johnny wasn't sure if he'd meant to go through with it or not. He didn't want to know. He just wanted to drag his fucking heart back from his throat where it had lodged itself.
He raised his eyebrows. He leaned against the doorframe, maybe looking cool. "That's a big gun," he said, instead of anything more pertinent to the situation he'd walked in on. Fuck knew what he would've said about it anyway.
Kerry didn't reply. Kerry didn't move. He just looked at Johnny with those weird blue eyes and when Johnny stepped forward, when he pushed himself out of the doorway and went a little closer to him, Kerry's weird blue eyes followed him. He looked as unsure of what Johnny was gonna do as Johnny was himself because fuck, he really hadn't had a plan, not like the dumb one he'd had last time - he'd thought through fifty different conversations, with himself, inside his head; he'd thought through what Kerry would say, if he'd be happy, be angry, be both. V had gotten himself involved, too, sat Johnny down on the couch and told him he'd be Kerry, Johnny could be himself, and it'd felt dumb, yeah, really fucking dumb, but after a while he'd gone along with it. A couple of times. Maybe more than a couple. The only probably with that had been that V really wasn't Kerry, was nothing like him at all, so all the times they'd wound up making out, wound up jerking off, doing themselves or doing each other, it'd been V he'd made out or jerked off with. He'd come on V's chest and V's dick and V's face, licked it off of him and that was fine because he wasn't so concerned with being straight these days. He'd come with his dick in V's mouth and his fingers in V's stupid hair. And later, he'd imagined Kerry doing the same things to him, too.
"You need to work shit out with Kerry," V had told him, earlier that night. V wanted him to tell Kerry he was sorry for everything, but Johnny really wasn't - what he was sorry for was being the kind of dick who'd thought not giving a shit about other people had made him morally superior. He was sorry about all the crap that'd stemmed from that, but it hadn't all been his fault: he and Kerry had made each other better, and then they'd made each other worse. But V had told him to work shit out and maybe that was why he'd gone over there tonight: not because of what V had said but because he'd understood where it'd been heading if he hadn't. He'd been about to push V up against the kitchen counter, or drag him upstairs to the bed they both slept in, and it would've been fine, it would've been good, really good. But fuck, the truth was he and V had quit pretending it was practice or whatever weeks ago, almost as soon as it had started. Johnny liked it. He was into it. But Johnny still missed Kerry, and V being V...he understood.
He missed Kerry. And here Kerry was with a gun to his head. Jesus Christ, Johnny hated that, so he went over there like he could improve the situation. Kerry's thighs were pressed to the front of the counter he was standing so damn close to it, and that just made it easier for Johnny to stand there right behind him and reach past Kerry's hip to get his chrome hand to the maybe-marble. It made it easier for him to rest his ganic hand at Kerry's hip then run it up his side and make him shiver - damn, the death grip Kerry had on the gun, the way he was shaking as he did it, it was almost a surprise it didn't go off right then and there and make a bloody fucking mess before Johnny got to make his damn apology. Then Johnny ran his palm over Kerry's arm, from his bicep to his wrist, over that fucking tattoo of the year Johnny died and right up to his wrist. As he closed his hand over Kerry's, he stepped up against his back. As he eased the gun from under Kerry's chin, he was watching Kerry in the mirror.
"Gimme the gun, Ker," he said, by Kerry's ear, and maybe Kerry didn't give it to him but he for damn sure let him take it. Johnny held it up, turned it a little, let the too-bright bathroom lights glint off of it. Then he reached around Kerry with his chrome arm, practically fucking holding him against his chest, as he tapped one chrome finger against the word that was etched into the barrel.
"So you got yourself a Malorian," he said. Then he put the pretty fucking pistol down on the counter by the sink, so he could pull his own gun from its holster at his thigh - he rarely went anywhere without it, and he'd figured maybe if his hacking failed he'd use it for the bots. Kerry watched him in the mirror, a fucked up look on his face as his eyes went to the gun in Johnny's hand. V still preferred the little pink one he'd lifted from the Mox so Johnny guessed he had his own signature weapon now, but this one had been Johnny's since before V had been born. Kerry clearly recognized it, and when Johnny pressed the muzzle of it right where Kerry's had just been, forced his chin up just a little, forced his head back, he saw him swallow. He saw him bite his lip.
"You really wanna die?" he asked, so fucking close to him that his lips brushed Kerry's ear. It was the one with the rings in it, and he'd've liked to've played with them, used his chrome hand so they clicked against his fingers. He just gripped at the counter instead, though, and thumbed the safety off real obviously with his other hand. "You want me to do it for you?"
For a moment, one electric fucking moment, Kerry just stood there and stared at him. He had his throat stretched out a little, that pretty chrome throat that Johnny would've liked to've fit his hand against or tapped the muzzle of his gun to, and he honestly didn't know what Kerry's reply was gonna be. He sure as hell wasn't gonna shoot him in the fucking head, or in any other place, and the idea that he might say he wanted that...Jesus, it made Johnny wanna kiss him so he couldn't get the words out. But then Kerry shivered and he shook his head. He took a breath and told him, "No," and his voice almost cracked despite the fancy chrome. He sounded exactly as fucked up as Johnny felt.
"So what do you want?" Johnny asked. But the look Kerry gave him, the way he opened his mouth like he meant to say something but just closed it again and shook his head...yeah, Johnny understood that Kerry had no clue what the fuck he wanted. Johnny guessed that if Kerry didn't have an answer for that question, at least he did. Maybe a dumb one, but an answer nonetheless.
He moved the gun from under Kerry's chin. He followed Kerry's jaw with it, heard his beard rasp against it, let it click against Kerry's earrings before he brought it to the nape of his neck. He stepped away to press it to the back of his white-haired head and he'd already got the safety back on by then, not that he was sure that Kerry knew it. He dragged it down firmly, left a mark down the line of Kerry's spine that'd fade soon enough but for now just showed Johnny where he'd been. Turned out he liked marking him up just as much as he liked doing it to V, who'd let him suck dumb teenage hickeys into his neck or over his collarbones or real high up his thighs where no one else would see, not unless his classy outfit for the day included short-shorts. Sometimes it did, and V was real lucky he had the legs to offset that particular stupidity.
But he could almost see himself doing the same damn thing to Kerry, with his mouth and not his gun. Like he'd done once, years ago, before Kerry had left the band, before he'd even threatened to. He'd bitten Kerry's fucking neck, sucked on it until it'd bruised, teasing him except then it'd backfired. Kerry had worn those stupid shirts that slouched down his shoulder and showed it off till it'd finally faded, so everyone could see it wherever he went. Johnny should've maybe understood what'd been going on back then, because it hadn't made him angry - when he'd watched some guy that Kerry liked brush it with his fingers, watched him brush it with his mouth, all that'd done was make him feel possessive. He'd felt a jolt of it right through his chest, hot and unexpected, kinda sick. But then again, he guessed he'd always been like that where Kerry was concerned.
Still, when the guy had asked Kerry, "So, hey, who was it that gave you the love bite?" Kerry had just snorted and shoved him and said, "It was Johnny. But don't worry, we're not fucking. He just thinks he's funny." And Johnny hadn't had the guts to say he really hadn't found it funny at all.
Johnny ran the gun down Kerry's back to where that fluffy white towel was stretched over his skin, and he let it almost tug there a little, let it ease the towel down an inch or two like maybe it was gravity and not something Johnny chose to do at all. It came down almost to the indent by his tailbone, by the crack of his ass, but Johnny stopped abruptly and he moved the gun away, and from the bitter look on Kerry's face he must've thought that this was just like all those times before, so near to what he wanted yet so fucking far. Jesus, all those times he'd let him down. All those times he'd done it on purpose, because Kerry's attention had always fed his ego, but hell if he'd given much attention in return. Just a little flirting every now and then, for his own entertainment as much as for Kerry's. Beating up his inputs sometimes, when shit went wrong between them, or sometimes when it didn't. But now Kerry just looked disappointed, a familiar expression on a face that looked the same but different, and all that Johnny wanted was to prove him wrong. Because really, Kerry couldn't know he'd changed if Johnny didn't show him. That just made perfect sense.
"Hold this," he said, and he handed his gun to Kerry, who just frowned and took it from him. He'd always liked to hold Johnny's guns, the way he'd sometimes liked to play his guitars, like firearms and instruments were just another part of him to touch. He'd never minded Kerry holding them but then they'd been the touchy-feely type till Kerry had fucked off to go and make it solo - there'd been arms around shoulders, foreheads bowed together, sitting way too close - sometimes necessary due to lack of space available, like parties where Kerry had sat himself down on Johnny's knee like he was Johnny Santaclaus not Silverhand, there to grant his goddamn Christmas wish. At least he'd told himself it'd been necessary, at the time, but Kerry could've found someplace else to sit. He hadn't needed to be so close to Johnny, on his knee or on the arm of an armchair he was sitting in, leaning back against Johnny's chest on someone else's couch, or just straight-up sprawling drunkenly over Johnny's lap while Johnny tried real hard not to get his chrome fingers caught in Kerry's hair. Sometimes he'd even managed not to, or they'd spent twenty minutes laughing at each other as they'd tried to get untangled without needing to cut a chunk out of it, and really, screw anyone who'd stared.
The truth was they'd always been too close, but the truth was Johnny hadn't cared how it'd looked. They'd always been real fucking weird about each other. Would've almost been less weird if they'd actually been screwing. And Johnny knew he'd always been the reason that they hadn't, not Kerry.
So maybe that was why he did it. Part because he'd been driving V nuts with it for the past three months and part because he'd been making himself miserable with it for as long as he could remember, like misery was some kind of a virtue. He had a second chance at life that most people absolutely didn't get. He wanted Kerry to be part of it and maybe the smart thing would've been to take him by the wrist and drag him out of there, make him put on some clothes so they could talk over a drink or six. The smart thing would've been to take it slow, give his unlikely resurrection some time to settle into Kerry's brain before he did something dumb, make sure Kerry was sticking around now he was back and didn't need some kind of suicide watch. Kerry probably had feelings and shit that he'd want to air once the initial shock wore off, too, and Johnny figured that for once in his life he might actually listen. But, for the moment, for right now, he didn't feel like being smart. They'd both waited too damn long for that.
He reached around Kerry's waist with both arms. He eased him back an inch or two from the counter, just far enough so he could tug the towel from around his waist - he gathered it up and he tossed it into the sink. Kerry had always had such soft goddamn skin and when Johnny ran his hands over Kerry's hips, it made him smile a little because at least that hadn't changed. He was still as skinny as he'd ever been, but he'd put on a little muscle. The black and gold chrome looked great against his skin but he still had all his freckles, hadn't had some corpo medic wipe them off, so maybe he even looked a little like himself. Like he was Johnny's age now, sure, physically, though Johnny knew he was really someplace around twice that. Johnny had had three months to miss him since he'd been broken the fuck out of Mikoshi to go ride shotgun in V's head. Kerry had had half a century. Johnny was really gonna have to make up for lost time.
He held out his ganic hand in front of Kerry and after a couple of seconds staring dumbly, maybe at the snake tattooed around it, he seemed to figure it out and gave him back the gun that he'd been holding. For a moment, once he had the grip of it firmly in his hand, Johnny just rested the side of the barrel against Kerry's chrome throat, then he tapped there with the muzzle, twice, three times, before he moved it down. He did it lightly this time, just resting the muzzle against Kerry's skin as he ran it down his chest, down to his navel, pressed the length of the barrel to the length of Kerry's still soft cock. It made Kerry shiver, and he moved his hands to the edge of the counter, pressed there till his fingertips turned white, as Johnny gripped Kerry's hip with his chrome hand and eased the gun down lower. He leaned against Kerry's back as he nudged the barrel of his gun between Kerry's thighs, over his balls, twisted his wrist kinda awkwardly to press the barrel to his taint and Jesus, all the time Kerry's eyes were on him in the mirror. All the time, as Kerry's dick got predictably stiff, as Johnny felt his start to follow suit, Kerry was watching him. Somehow, he hadn't expected that to be so fucking hot. He hadn't expected that to make his heart beat faster.
He pulled the gun back after that, but not because he meant to stop. He put it down on the counter with a clank of metal against stone but only so he could squeeze Kerry's hips with both his hands, so he could run them up over his ribcage and then press between his shoulder blades to bend him down over the counter. Kerry let him, went down tensely but real easily till he was leaning there with one forearm either side of the sink that was still full of towel. Johnny picked the gun up again, hesitated for a moment because he almost felt like using Kerry's, the dark metal, the pretty etching, a statement piece that was Kerry through and through, but Kerry had always liked Johnny's.
He'd let him play with it sometimes, draw it from its holster, load or unload it, aim it, hold it out like he meant to shoot, but he never actually had - he'd seen what'd happened when Johnny had let one of Kerry's inputs try, how the kick of it had dislocated his fucking arm, because it'd been tweaked to take advantage of Johnny's particular chrome reinforcement. Johnny remembered finding that fucking hilarious. All Kerry had said to the guy was I told you so. And really, if the guy hadn't been such a fucking humorless dick about it, Johnny might've yanked his arm back into joint and found him a couple of pain pills for it, but the guy had been a total dick - so he'd figured whatever and left him with Kerry. Except forty minutes later, Kerry had been sitting there on Johnny's couch, doing blow off of the coffee table as they'd bitched about the songs that were playing on the radio, not holding his input's hand in some shitty ER waiting room. Maybe they always should've been together, judging by that shit. If Johnny had known how to compromise, if their goals hadn't been so mutually exclusive, maybe they even could've been. Maybe, it turned out Johnny had regrets.
Johnny pressed his chrome hand to the counter. He wasn't sure what he was gonna do next until he did it: he leaned over Kerry, his stiffening cock inside his worn black jeans pressed up to Kerry's bare ass, and he rested his forehead down between Kerry's shoulder blades. When he moved, he turned his head and brushed him with his beard, turned his head again and let his hair hang down against his skin, turned again and pressed his mouth there, a hard, sucking kiss by the base of his neck. The sound Kerry made said he liked that, Johnny's mouth on him, so he did it again, a little lower. He did it again and again, slowly because he could see no need to rush, looking up every now and then to meet Kerry's eyes in the mirror. He looked fucking incredulous but he didn't tell him he should stop. So he didn't - he just kept on moving lower down the length of Kerry's back, dragging his chrome fingertips and the barrel of his gun down Kerry's sides along the way, until he ran out of spine to kiss.
Fuck, he knew what he should do next. He didn't even mind the idea, not really - he'd watched some real enthusiastic porn with V, back when he'd still been stuck inside V's head and trying to convince them both he wasn't into that, but Jesus it had turned him on. Wasn't like he hadn't known it at the time. Wasn't like V hadn't, either. And he'd always liked to use his mouth, and he figured that he really shouldn't put his cock anyplace he wouldn't also put his tongue, and maybe he hadn't done it to V but he knew V fucking loved it. He'd been inside his head when he'd hooked up with guys who'd been happy to oblige, guys he'd met in clubs, one real high-class joytoy, his Aldecaldo buddy Saul, and maybe Johnny had bitched at him about it, about getting guys to eat his ass, whether they'd gone on to fuck him in it next or not, but he'd felt how good V had found it. Maybe he'd even teased him after, about how all the guys he'd gone for had been long-haired, brown-eyed, older, like he had a type, and who did that remind him of? He'd teased him till it'd stopped seeming much like teasing anymore, because even if V had rolled his eyes and said fuck you, it wasn't like he'd denied it. It wasn't like Johnny wouldn't've seen straight through him if he had. The kid knew him real well.
So, Johnny raised his eyebrows at Kerry in the mirror, then he palmed his cheeks apart. Jesus, he was all fucking smooth between them, as hairless there as he was everywhere else below the jaw - Johnny had known he'd shaved back in the day, had helped him with his chest once or twice when he'd fucked up his wrist in a fight he should've never started, and he'd bitched and moaned but he'd shaved him smooth right down to the low-riding waist of his jeans. He'd never realized he'd be hairless right down to his asshole, though, like in that fucking porno that he'd watched with V. They'd done that again once Johnny had gotten his own body back, too, once V hadn't been dying anymore, sat down on the couch and gotten their cocks out to pornography, though he'd been mostly watching V jerk off. The way he'd wound up with V straddling his lap, dicks rubbing together like it'd been going out of style...yeah, neither of them had really been watching. He liked the sounds V made when he rubbed his hole and stroked his cock a whole lot better than the porno, anyway.
He put his gun down on the counter. He spread Kerry's cheeks and he ran his thumbs between them, avoided his hole but it wasn't like he wasn't gonna get to that real soon. He ran his ganic hand between Kerry's thighs, pressed against his taint, squeezed his balls and made him gasp, then spread his cheeks again. This time, when he ran his thumbs between them, he let them brush against his hole and make his rim pull tight. Then he flashed him a grin in the mirror and he got down on his knees. Fuck, he'd never thought they'd get there, never thought he'd do this, but there they were.
The concept of what he was about to do wasn't some kind of a mystery to him, even if the thought of doing it made him feel unsteady, like he'd drunk too much or not enough. It also made his cock throb in his jeans, though, so he licked the pad of his ganic thumb then rubbed it against Kerry's hole. He had no clue why it felt so fucking intimate to touch him there - he guessed it was that way with V, too, when he put his fingers on him, but never quite inside. He was absolutely positive he was gonna do it sometime. He was absolutely positive he was gonna fuck him sometime, too. And his chest clenched up all tight inside when he leaned in and licked Kerry's hole. Just a little, just the tip of his tongue, for just the briefest of moments, but Kerry still took a sharp breath in, still arched his back, still spread his legs, and Johnny really didn't need much more encouragement than that.
He dragged the flat of his tongue over Kerry's hole, did it again, got it nice and wet, made it fucking shine under the bright bathroom lights the way he thought it'd shine if he came inside him and watched it leaking out again. He did it again, teased him with little flicks of the tip before he licked him again, broad swipes, as he used his thumbs to tease him open. He pulled back to see how it looked when he did that, Kerry's tight little asshole spread open just a little like he might've done with some girl's cunt, and all it did was make his dick throb hard. Fuck, he wanted him. He wanted to open him up on the length of his cock the way that Kerry had always wanted him to. He wanted to fuck him open, tell him not to touch himself and make him come just with the feel of his dick in him. Maybe he could. Maybe he would. But, for the moment, he just pressed the tip of his tongue to Kerry's hole until he felt it start to give a little. He pulled back, then he did it again, pulled back, did it again, till Kerry's breath was hitching, till Johnny could feel his muscles strain. Then, the next time, he pushed it in, and Kerry moaned out loud, so turned on and relieved and fucking dirty that Johnny moved one hand down between his own thighs to squeeze his balls over his jeans. Hard, like that might take the edge off. It really didn't.
Johnny fucked him with his tongue. Not for long, because it made his fucking jaw ache, but he shoved his tongue into him, over and over, licked at him, teased his rim with his chrome thumb and the tip of his tongue the way he was pretty sure would feel good to him. He picked up his gun from the counter and he used that, too, too wide to get inside him even if there hadn't been a sight on it, but he ran the smooth side of the barrel over Kerry's spit-slicked hole then tongued at him again. He pressed the muzzle of it up behind Kerry's balls and made him groan and Jesus, that was hot. So fucking hot. Next time he'd bring a second gun with him, a smaller one, with a nice smooth barrel he could push into him, right up to the trigger guard. Kerry would fucking love it - Johnny's loaded gun inside him like some dumb metaphor for something. Next time, if there even was a next time, if Kerry even wanted that. So he figured he'd better go ahead and make sure this time counted.
He rocked back onto his heels and he pushed up to his feet, set the gun down next to Kerry's and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand - mostly just to see the way that Kerry blushed when he looked at him, like he didn't have decades of experience. There was a pump-top bottle sitting on the counter, full of body lotion or whatever, and Johnny pointed at it, said, "Can I use that?" and when Kerry frowned at him like he'd just said what he'd said in Portuguese or something, Johnny scoffed and shook his head. "I'm gonna put my cock in you," he told him, as he ran both hands over Kerry's hips, as he ground said denim-clad cock against Kerry's ass, like that proved the truth of his statement. "If I use that, am I gonna regret it?"
Kerry shook his head tightly. "No," he said, sounding kinda bemused. "Go right ahead." And maybe it wasn't obvious if that go ahead was for spreading lotion on his dick or fucking him, but Johnny figured both things worked.
The first thing Johnny did was get his cock out of his pants. He unbuckled his belt then unbuttoned his jeans, unzipped them, pushed them down over his hips and let his dick rest heavily against Kerry's bare ass. Then he figured why not: he stepped to one side so when he reached for the lotion, when he spread it over the length of his cock, when he stroked himself, Kerry could see that. There'd been a few times over the years when he'd maybe thought about letting Kerry watch him, tried to convince himself it'd be no big deal, like all the times they'd walked in on each other with a girl or a guy respectively and stuck around to talk, like that was normal. He'd've liked to've seen the look on Kerry's face, but he guessed he was seeing it now: it was wide-eyed and pretty much just disbelieving, as Johnny cupped his balls with his chrome hand and got himself all slick with lotion.
He tugged his shirt up with one hand, thought about tucking it up underneath his arms out of the way but then just pulled it off instead and watched as Kerry's eyes moved over his reflection - over his tattoos, his scars, his chrome, all the things he hadn't seen in fifty years. Johnny had read some stupid screamsheet bullshit about the two of them, conspiracy theorist whackjob stuff that'd cracked him the fuck up, and maybe the one true thing they'd said was after Johnny had died, the first big paycheck Kerry had gotten, he'd spent it buying up the rights to everything that Johnny ever did. What they hadn't seemed to know was that Johnny had left everything he'd had to Kerry anyhow. He guessed that meant he'd left him the rights to his image, too. Turned out even super-rich super-fans couldn't get themselves cut to look like Kerry Eurodyne, so chances were that no one could look like Johnny, either. He had to admit he kinda liked that idea, like maybe he made Kerry feel possessive, too.
Kerry's eyes were on him, though, as he ran his chrome hand over the small of Kerry's back then stepped back in behind him. Johnny smiled, was fucking grinning at him before he'd even known he'd meant to, and he shoved his hair back with both hands before he realized he'd probably just gotten lotion in it. He didn't really give a fuck, though, as he smiled so fucking toothily at Kerry, though honestly Kerry just seemed confused by it. That was fine, though - Kerry didn't need to understand how fucking pleased Johnny was about this. He didn't need to understand that he felt damn near giddy as he ran his fingertips down Kerry's back, as he gripped his hips just for a moment then nudged his dick between his cheeks. Then he looked down to press the tip of it to Kerry's hole.
"Guess this is nothing new to you," he said, glancing up at Kerry just for a second before he looked back down again. At where his dick was pressing up to Kerry's hole. At where he'd put his mouth a few minutes before. "You're what, ninety years old? Bet you can't even count all the guys you've fucked." He pressed a little harder, felt Kerry tense and then relax, felt his hole give just a little, just enough that he could press the tip inside him as he took a sharp breath in. He was still looking down as he did it, saw that first inch pushing in as he heard Kerry gasp. Then he looked up and met Kerry's eyes in the mirror again. Johnny smiled again, lopsided, real, his face kinda flushed along with it.
"Be gentle with me, Ker," he said, not totally facetious, maybe teasing just a little as he squeezed his hips. "You know it's my first time, right?" And then he pushed in deeper.
Before he'd met V, Johnny had never really given a whole lot of serious thought to fucking a guy. He'd idly contemplated it, sure, not like he was gonna do it but in the same way he'd wondered what might've happened if he'd moved to Europe, or learned more Spanish than just what he needed to get laid or buy beer, or picked up playing the fucking ukulele though he'd actually broken two of them against a wall - two different walls, two different days - because he found them so chirpily annoying. He'd asked himself what it might be like, but he'd never come up with a reason good enough to go for it, so he'd never really thought about who he might've done it with. He'd told Kerry once, sometime not so long after they'd met, if I change my mind, you'll be the first to know, but he hadn't meant he'd literally fuck him first if his heterosexuality ever took a step a step to the left. But the thing was, as he pushed inside him, as he got in so deep he couldn't get much deeper, it felt right that it was him. Dumb but true. Sentimental but true. He figured maybe he'd tell him so later, just to see the way it made him smile.
For the moment, though, he paused there with his cock in Kerry just about as far as it would go, as they looked at each other in the mirror. For once in his life, Johnny was completely sober, but he maybe wasn't sure that Kerry was. Maybe there'd been some booze or pills to get his nerve up for the gun he hadn't fired, but Johnny figured they'd done half of everything while drunk or high so what exactly did that matter? He just slid his hands to Kerry's waist then flexed his hips and moved in him, made Kerry close his eyes and drop his head and curse under his breath. He kept moving after that, watching how the muscles tensed and strained in Kerry's back, looking down to the place where he was pushing into him, to Kerry's hole stretched taut around his cock. He rubbed at Kerry's tailbone with one thumb, moved it down, rubbed his rim while he was fucking him, and Jesus, the noise that Kerry made when Johnny pressed his thumb in there beside his cock was really something. He sounded fucking broken, but not like he meant stop. So when Johnny did stop, just because he was so damn startlingly overwhelmed, Kerry raised his head and looked at him and said, "Jesus, fuck, will you keep going?"
After that, he didn't stop again. He didn't exactly want to, but knowing Kerry didn't want that, either...fuck, the fucked-up tone of Kerry's voice when he'd asked him not to would've been enough just by itself. He gripped one of Kerry's hips and he moved the other hand up, skimmed his back, got his fingers to that short white hair and pulled it so he couldn't drop his head again, so he could see that chrome throat stretched out in the mirror, so that Kerry arched his back and pressed against him. He was so fucking tight around him, and when he slipped his hand from Kerry's hip and forward, down between his thighs, he was so fucking hard, too. His dick twitched as Johnny wrapped his hand around it, as he rubbed his thumb against the damp tip of it, and yeah, so what he'd wanted was to make Kerry come just from the feel of his cock, but a different idea came to mind right then. He shoved in deep and he stayed there as he started stroking, and Kerry seemed to get the idea because he didn't complain that he'd stopped again - Johnny wouldn't've called it stopping anyway. He just stroked Kerry's cock, his grip firm, strokes long, pressing up against his balls each time that he came back toward his body. He stroked him and Kerry moved a little, rocked against Johnny's hand and then back onto his dick, again, again till he was fucking himself on the length of him, so breathless he was almost gasping, with Johnny's other hand still in his hair.
When Kerry came, Johnny knew that it was gonna happen - his rhythm got all weird and his hole was almost too damn tight around him, then Kerry pushed back one more time and came all over Johnny's hand. He fucking yelped as he did it, like it almost hurt him, and Johnny kinda got that because wow, fucking wow, his cock ached inside Kerry. Kerry's hole just basically twitched around him, tightening over and over, and Johnny knew it wasn't gonna take much more. That had been his new plan, after all: get Kerry off and come from how that felt while he was still inside him, and Jesus Christ, he did exactly that. He'd known it wouldn't take much more but it still hit him like a train, like fucking whiplash, like the butt of a gun, close one second and then emptying his balls in him the next. He came so fucking hard his knees felt weak, that he had to grip the counter so he wouldn't fall, but then he took a breath and pulled back out and wiped Kerry's come from off his hand onto his cock. He'd just come but he was still real hard and so he pushed back in, made himself groan, made Kerry groan, as he throbbed inside him. Fuck, he couldn't believe they'd never done this before. They should've been at it for years.
In the end, though, he had to pull back. It was gonna get uncomfortable and besides, he wanted to spread Kerry's cheeks and watch his come well up from in him, spill over his rim so he could spread it with his thumb then lick it up. So he did - he sucked his come off of his thumb then leaned in to swipe Kerry's asshole with his tongue, not too much, not down on his knees, not eating it out of him, but only because he liked knowing Kerry had his come in him. Then he stepped back, and he pulled up his jeans, and while he was still buckling his belt, Kerry pushed up off his forearms and he turned around. Naked like that, flushed like that, so thoroughly fucked like that, he looked absolutely great to Johnny.
Kerry looked like he wanted to say something, like there was something right on the tip of his tongue, but suddenly it hit Johnny that there was something he needed to do, something ten times more important than anything that Kerry could want to say. Before he could utter a word, Johnny moved again. Before Kerry could protest, Johnny kissed him. They were both already breathless, but that didn't make it bad - it made it fucking fraught, as Kerry kissed him back and Johnny licked into his mouth and fuck, Kerry pulled his hair, both hands, clung to his shoulders, got one hand down to his ass to yank him even closer. And when they were done, when it'd gotten slower, more tongue than teeth, more lips than tongue, so close to fucking tender that it made Johnny hurt inside his chest some way he had no name for, that was when they eased apart. Johnny just wanted to do it again.
Kerry ran his hands over his hair as he made a vague attempt to recover some composure. Then he tossed Johnny his shirt and wrapped the towel around his waist again.
"So, you gonna tell me who sent you?" Kerry asked him then, sounding weirdly casual about something that made so little sense.
Johnny frowned. He pulled his shirt on. "I have no clue what you're talking about," he replied, because that was absolutely true.
"I mean, was it my manager? The label?"
"No one sent me, Ker."
Kerry grimaced. He leaned back against the counter like they were gonna continue the weird-ass conversation right there where they were, but then he changed his mind. He walked past Johnny, out the door, still barefoot and in his towel. So Johnny followed. He wasn't sure what else to do.
"Maybe don't call me that, okay?" Kerry said. He poured himself a drink, his hands unsteady enough that he spilled a little on the table by the couch, and he took a mouthful of the whisky from his glass. He didn't offer Johnny one.
"It's what I always called you," Johnny said. It really had been, he thought, since maybe four days or so after the night they'd met, like Kerry was too long a name somehow when Johnny wasn't. "Don't tell me it's been so long that you forgot."
Kerry sat down on the couch. The towel hung open a little, up really high on Kerry's thigh, Kerry's legs spread wide enough that Johnny could see the head of his cock there underneath the fluffy white cotton. Fuck, he'd've liked to've untucked that towel, played with him a little, not like he thought he'd get it up again so soon unless he had more chrome than Johnny realized, but he kinda liked how V's dick felt in his hand when it was soft - he figured he'd like Kerry's, too. And he'd still have Johnny's come inside him, and maybe he had some of those magic little pills, the ones that'd mean Johnny could fuck him again in less than an hour with his own come to use as lube. But Kerry finished the glass and then leaned forward to pour himself another.
"Look, I appreciate a good Silverhand impersonation as much as the next guy," Kerry said, while he was pouring, while he wasn't looking at him, like maybe he was avoiding that. "And you're real good. I mean, you're gonna need to go get rid of all that shit before I sue your ass for copyright infringement, but you're good. The best I've seen." He smiled wryly as he glanced at him then looked away again. He raised his glass up like a toast. "The gun was a nice touch. The dog tags I've seen before."
So, Johnny just cracked the fuck up. Because finally he understood what Kerry meant.
The easy thing would've been for him to leave, to walk out the door and not look back. Instead, he did what he'd meant to do the first time he'd gone over there: he picked up the first guitar he came to, a purple thing on a stand by the couch, and he played it sitting on the coffee table, trying not to get spilled whisky on his pants. He didn't play for long because it turned out he'd been right: he absolutely didn't need to. He saw realization dawn on Kerry's face, clear as sunrise, clear as day.
"Fuck, you're really him?" Kerry said, as Johnny put down the guitar. But Jesus Christ, he still looked dubious. He knew, and Johnny knew he knew, but he guessed he also knew how fucking weird this was, after all this time. So he leaned forward, one forearm to his knee, his ganic hand at Kerry's thigh just underneath the towel.
"Ask me something only I'd know," Johnny said.
Kerry frowned. He tapped his fingers on his glass as he looked down at that hand against his thigh like the real Johnny wouldn't do that shit, and fifty years ago...maybe he would've had a point. Kerry tapped his glass and he took his sweet time. For once, Johnny let him.
"What did you get me for my twentieth birthday?" Kerry asked, in the end.
Johnny sat back. "Probably a six pack of beer I drank half of," he said. Then he frowned. "Wait, twentieth? A guitar. Stole it, got it resprayed purple like that one. You played it till the back was all fucked up with buckle rash."
"That was my twenty-first."
"So the champagne I stole from your input's bar?"
"Nineteenth. Two years before it was legal, which figures."
Then he got it. He grinned.
"Twenty was the year I pierced your ear," he said. "You dropped the fucking ring and it rolled under the refrigerator, so I gave you one of mine."
He swept his hair back from his face with both his hands so Kerry could see where the rings had been, once upon a time. He'd woken up without the rings he'd worn in his ears sometimes as well as the ones he'd worn on his hand. Hell, he'd been stark naked on some med lab bed and almost surprised they hadn't taken off his arm, too. And Kerry nodded, tugged on the two gold rings in his ear, neither of which was the one that Johnny had given him. He'd been wearing shiny steel ones that day, ones that had matched his chrome, but Kerry had kept on wearing the one he'd given him even when he'd gotten pierced again: a gold hoop that time, so a mismatched pair. Johnny remembered kinda hating that Kerry had let someone else do the second one, just not enough to tell him so. Or maybe too damn much.
"So I'm right?" Johnny asked.
Kerry nodded again. "Yeah," he said, like he was at a total loss, like he didn't know what the fuck it was that he was meant to do with that. So Johnny figured that he'd show him.
When he knelt on the couch at either side of Kerry's thighs, Kerry didn't shove him off onto his ass, which Johnny took as a really good sign. When he brushed the chrome by Kerry's eyes with both his thumbs, one ganic and one chrome, Kerry let him do it, with his pretty blue Kiroshis not shifting off him for a second. And when he kissed him, Kerry slipped his hands to Johnny's waist and kissed him back. Like he meant it. Like he wanted it. Like he was gonna want it again and again.
They had a long way to go, sure. All the things they'd said and done back then...one torrid bathroom fuck while Kerry thought he was some other guy, that wasn't gonna wipe it out, much as Johnny would've liked it to. It couldn't erase what Kerry had maybe, maybe, been about to do when he'd arrived. Then there was V. Jesus, it was complicated.
They had a long way to go. But Johnny was determined to get them there.