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Kerry knocks on the door like it’s a trap, and considering his history with Johnny, maybe it was.
His knuckles tap almost gently at the wood, as if any second one of his knocks would trigger an explosion, make the whole tower fall.
You could say he was right, because Johnny opens the door and Kerry damn near feels himself die for a moment.
“Shit,” He mutters before he can think, hating the way Johnny started to smirk. Smirk with his lips. His lips. Not V’s, not some random body he’d been lucky enough to score, but him.
Kerry knows how dna and cloning work well enough, but he didn’t expect it work this well when Johnny had told him about it. And yet here Johnny was, his broad shoulders and defined brow bone, the same moles on his neck and shoulders. The same scars coming from the chrome arm, and funny enough, said arm is what looks most different.
Kerry is almost surprised Johnny decided to get the metal arm again, but only for a second, before he remembers it’s Johnny. Sure his chrome arm had caused him more pain than any of the lead he’d ate, or the bar fight bruises had left.
He’d always told Kerry, alone and high enough to not feel the need to keep his usual walls up, that he’d thought the arm had ruined him.
“I woke up, this ill-fitted crime against my body shoved into the place my arm used to be, and suddenly I can’t go a day without pain” he had said, and Kerry remembers trailing his fingers along the cool metal.
Johnny had told him that the pain made him mean, and then he had to stay mean forever. Kerry never got that back then, but weirdly enough he kind of gets it now.
The arm had made him who he is now, and that’s how he’d felt back then too. Hence the name change to Silverhand.
Past Kerry had remembered looking at Johnny like he hung the moon after hearing that story.
Present Kerry looks at Johnny now and kind of wants to keel over.
“Weird to see me like this?” Johnny asks, but it’s more of a statement and less than a question.
“Shit,” Kerry replies, shaking his head slowly. “V said I wouldn’t be able to believe it but… Christ, you’re you..”
Johnny grins, his usual smirk lacking it’s usual meanness, simply a layer of cockiness that Kerry thinks he’ll always possess.
“Come on Ker, let’s get hammered,” Johnny says leaving the door open and walking deeper into his apartment. As if it hadn’t been a month since he got this body. Kerry’s sure he’s had plenty of time to think in the time he’s been healing and recuperating since then.
Kerry winces for just a moment at the old nickname, unsure if what’s he’s feeling would better count as discomfort or a deep, painful yearning.
He follows Johnny, shutting his door behind him and looking around. It’s nicer than the shitholes he and Kerry used to crash in, but it has a certain layer of… charmingly tacky.
“Is this..?” Kerry asks, trailing off as he takes in some truly horrendous posters near the bed.
“V’s place? Yeah. Least it was; he said he bought plenty of places when he thought he only had a few months to live. Figured he doesn’t need all of them to himself now that he’s stickin’ around,” Johnny chuckles, crossing his arms and shaking his head as he looks at the same posters. “The fuck is that?”
“Looks like a half naked man fused with a coked up snake?” Kerry says, his head tilting to the side. They share a laugh, but then Kerry remembers where he is and who he’s with.
“Right, that drink,” Johnny says suddenly, moving quickly over to the open kitchen and digging something out of the cabinet.
“Johnny wait,” Kerry says, having yet to take off his jacket or even kick off his shoes. Johnny sighs, looking at him slowly as he sets the bottle of tequila onto the counter.
He nods, sitting down on the nearby barstool and taking a cigarette out of his pack, lighting it before he finally speaks.
“Okay. Let’s talk.”
Kerry exhales slowly, still standing as he busies his eyes with counting the tiles of the apartments ceiling. “I can’t just pretend that I’m the same man you knew.”
“You are though,” Johnny says, shaking his head. “You’re older, sure, and you got new fancy eyes, a new house, but you’re still Kerry-“
“Johnny,” Kerry cuts him off, his voice flat as his lips purse in a sad smile. “I’m not. When you left, when you died, there’s a part of me that went with you. I never got him back. I don’t think I will now that you’ve decided to just come back into my life,”
“I wasn’t out of your life by choice, Kerry,” Johnny says, that familiar defensive tone ever-present, even if in a way, Johnny has a point.
Kerry scoffs however, “You went on a suicide mission. You didn’t tell me, you just went to essesntially kill yourself for your stupid, egotistical goals-“
“Would you have rather I invited you? To get you killed?” Johnny asks, his voice rising a bit as he furrows his eyebrows behind his aviators.
“Yes!” Kerry says as he waves his hands around in emphasis. “I mourned you every fucking day for fifty god damn years, Johnny. There was not a day I didn’t think of you, not a night you didn’t appear in my dreams.”
Johnny feels his chest swell with something confusing, his heart race quickening in a way that reminds him of being young and anxious, like he’s lost somewhere that feels overwhelmingly big compared to him. Fuck.
“You plagued me for years with your fucking voice and your smile, there is not a place I could go, a song I could hear, a fucking star I could see without thinking of you. You died, and I was alone, with nothing but anger and pain and so much fucking regret Johnny.”
Kerry gasps for air like it was being stolen from his lungs as he speaks, words he’s been thinking for a long time bubbling towards the surface. “I regretted not knowing something was up before you stormed that tower. I regretted loving you so much I accepted the shitty treatment for years. I regretted loving you at all.”
He says it like it was a curse to have loved Johnny, to still love him even. For a moment, Johnny thinks maybe loving him is a curse. That maybe he’s the curse. For that moment, he kind of wants the world to open up and to swallow him whole - heartedly wonders if it feels anything like a tower collapsing around you.
“I was the only one,” Kerry says suddenly, sounding even rougher than usual. His voice lowers into a more quiet, shielded tone. “I was the only one who knew you. Not some fake, idealized version of yourself you insisted on portraying to every stranger, friend, and output,”
Kerry chokes on his words for a moment, harshly wiping the tears that stung in the corners of his eyes. Dammit, fuck the fact he could still fucking cry with kiroshis. “I knew you. Inside and out, and the fact that I saw you, that scared you. You couldn’t bare the thought that someone could see through your perfectly crafted narcissistic facade, the one you created to keep people out.”
Johnny’s chest twists in a way that unmistakable, and yet for once in his fucking life - and even his death - Johnny is speechless. Kerry scoffs, shaking his head and he brushes off his jacket.
“You’re not even a narcissist, Silverhand. You’re a fucking coward .”
He practically spits the last word, turning on his heel to leave the room.
Johnny feels like he’s gonna throw up, and for the first time in a long time, it’s not from cheap whiskey. Kerry left. Again.
It shouldn’t hurt as much as it did when Kerry left samurai, even when he’d rejoin jsut as fast. Something about it hurts even more, and Johnny can’t stop replaying every word Kerry had thrown at him again and again.
He knew this was his fault. Granted, he usually did know deep down when he had fucked up. Even as it happened.
He knew that he’s messed everything up in his life, especially towards the end. Things with Kerry, Rogue, every other friend he’d happened to make or fail to keep.
But Kerry was right. He was the one, if Johnny had to pick, that new him best without having shared his thoughts in a twisted state of consciousness.
What does he do now? He did what he’s always dreaded, put his heart on the line, and watched it get ripped up in front of him - he stops himself. There’s that victim shit again, no. This wasn’t Kerry’s fault. This was his .
For a moment, Johnny glances at his hand and sees the cigarette he hadn’t hit more than one still in his hand, long burnt out. Something about that makes it click for him. He sets it down and then purses his lips.
No. Not this time. He wasn’t gonna let Kerry go again. Never again.
Johnny stands, knocking his chair over in the process, and heads straight for the door.
Through the hall and quickly down four flights of stairs, he moves the quickest he has since he got his new body. He barely catches up with Kerry before he’s at his car, his hands in his pockets as he fishes for his key.
“Ker,” He says, nearly catching himself off guard with how soft and vulnerable it sounds. “Please, just listen,”
Kerry freezes, a small, strangled sigh leaving his lips as he turns around. His features are just barely visible in this light of the street lamps, his exhaustion obvious in the way he purses his lip.
“Johnny..” He says, and the desperate, tired cadence of his voice makes Johnny want to back out immediately. But he doesn’t. Not again.
“I fucked up. So many times - I can’t stress that enough, I know I did. That was never a question. You deserved better than I treated you and fuck if you probably don’t still deserve better,”
He’s rambling, so Johnny pauses, swallowing as he takes off his sunglasses. They were his comfort item in a sense, staying perched on his nose when eye contact or being earnest caused him a fret. It usually did.
He hooks them in the collar of his shirt and steps forward into the light, his eyes looking at Kerry almost nervously. “I want to do better. I’m going to do better, and not just because I fucking hate myself for how I used to be.. how I still am, maybe.”
He steps even closer, his ‘ganic hand reaching up to curl around the back of Kerry’s neck. For a moment a memory flashes, or twenty, all the times he’s touched Kerry there to pull him in, their foreheads together. It was their thing, talking lowly to eachother before a gig or even on stage.
Fifty years later and it still takes Kerry’s breath away to look so deeply into Johnny’s eyes. Dammit.
“You’re right. I was a coward - am a coward, Shit. But not as much..” Johnny leans forward, his lips grazing so softly against Kerry’s lips it feels like a daydream.
Sure it’s not the first time Kerry’s had Johnny’s lips against his. Plenty of times Kerry had kissed him, trying to make a move or to piss him off. So many times Johnny had let him for a moment, lesser times he’d kissed him back for just a moment, laughing as he pushed him away.
It was the first time Johnny kissed him though. The first time his lips lightly brushed across Kerry’s before finally closing the distance fully, slow and steady and so fucking tender Kerry’s convinced it’s not real.
But then Johnny’s chrome hand is finding his hip, pulling him against his chest, and his lips are deepening the kiss like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Kerry’s heart flips and he melts against him, his own hands immediately tangling in Johnny’s hair and pulling him closer, if they can even get closer.
Maybe he should push him away, curse him for waltzing back in decades after Kerry should have been over him. He should have been. Kissing Johnny shouldn’t feel as world ending as it did at twenty, when Johnny made fun of him after, calling him a stupid kid with a crush.
It’s stupid. It’s so fucking stupid.
Kerry tugs at the locks of hair between his fingers, breaking the kiss and looking at him with what he can only hope is more anger than wanting.
“You’re a fucking dick,” Kerry mutters, but it sounds less mean than he had intended. Johnny smiles, a little in disbelief and a little fond. Fuck.
“And you’re somehow just as pretty as you were before I died,” He says, so simple and matter of fact that Kerry wants to slap him.
He does.
It’s not as hard as he could manage, maybe a little more playful than he intended, but it makes Johnny gasp and look at him like he’s crazy. He’s also smiling, the sick fuck.
”You know I’m into that, right,” Johnny says, though he looks almost nervous to make the joke at he softly holds onto Kerry.
Kerry laughs, a little in disbelief, but yes of course he knew that. It was maybe a small part of why he decided to do it after all.
There’s a long moment of silence, of just breathing in eachothers air and one of them thinks of where they could possible go from here.
“I get it now, you’re not the same Kerry I knew. I will spend however many years I have left - how every many years you let me, trying to prove that I’m not that same Johnny, either.”
A beat of silence.
“I fucking hate you,” Kerry mutters, his voice sounding strangely husky to his own ears, and he kisses him again. He feels Johnny smile against his lips cause obviously he knew Kerry didn’t hate him. That Kerry couldn’t. Fucking Johnny Silverhand.
Kerry knows it’s not too late to back out, to honor the years he’d spent in therapy disescting the way he could never be normal when it came to Johnny. It’s not too late, he tries to tell himself, but it’s like his brain and his heart don’t agree.
In the end, when Johnny pulls back and looks at him with those dark, strangely vulnerable eyes, Kerry listens to his heart. He doesn’t back out. He let’s Johnny lead him back up to his apartment.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” Kerry reminds him as Johnny’s fingers pull the hem of his shirt over his head.
“I know,” Johnny mutters, his eyes sliding across Kerry’s body like he hasn’t seen it all before - though without as much chrome.
Johnny’s kissing him again, his chrome hand holding him by the hip, his other one caressing every part of him he can reach.
This is not how Kerry thought this would go.
Whenever he imagined sex with Johnny, he imagined it passionate, sure, but maybe angry and spiteful and maybe even shameful for Johnny, though that thought was usually to make Kerry hate himself more. Funny brain he had.
Despite how Kerry thought this would be like, Johnny’s touches couldn’t be more different. Tender in a way Johnny never was back then, but desperate like this could be the only time. It could be, but Kerry loses his faith in that thought when Johnny takes his hand.
He pulls it towards his face, placing Kerry’s calloused fingers against his cheek as he leans into his touch.
Kerry’s hands had always been a bit of a fixation for Johnny. Everytime they played together, Johnny’s eyes would end up drifting down to Kerry’s fingers, the way they danced on the strings and were graceful in a way Kerry never managed to be outside of music.
It feels too real, too much like something Kerry could grow addicted to.
“Bet you wish you did this when I was young and prettier, huh?” Kerry teases, voice tight as he sees Johnny frown.
“Nah… although,” He leans in a little, his gaze looking deeply at Kerry’s face. “I miss your eyes.”
It’s such a sudden and earnest admission that Kerry genuinely considers cutting off whatever they were doing and calling a ripperdoc, kiroshi’s be damned.
“Rest of me’s the same, more less,” Kerry says instead, his thumb brushing lightly against Johnny’s cheek where his hand was still being held there.
“Yeah,” Johnny nods, his eyes gliding across Kerry’s features. “You got all the same freckles and moles, the same divets in yours hips..” He finally takes his hand away from Kerry’s on his face to drop it down, suddenly pulling on Kerry’s pants.
Kerry’s breath hitches and the without a second thought he’s lifting his hips off the bed, letting Johnny wiggle his jeans off like they’re nothing.
Johnny touches him like he’s been waiting decades to do so, and maybe he has. Kerry’s been waiting for his for far too long, so they take their time.
Johnny takes his time, kissing Kerry like the world was ending and they had nothing left to do, and fucking him like they had all the time in the world.
In a way, both could be true. That night couldn’t been their last day in earth, the start of the most beautiful thing they’d had, and anywhere in between.
In the end, Kerry doesn’t think he cares much - he has Johnny in a way he’s always wanted, that he’s always ached for. And he didn’t forgive him yet, course not, but Kerry thinks that if he knows anything, he knows that this was a good start.