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Kerry's life had gotten kinda weird.
Okay, yeah, so his life had been weird for a while. He'd gotten famous whole decades ago and that had been pretty weird in itself, going all the way from local recognition to how everybody knew his name, but that wasn't the kind of weird he meant now. What he meant was the fact that he'd been going steady with a streetkid from Heywood for the best part of a year. What he meant was how Johnny had come back from the dead, and then died again, and then V had brought him back, just in a body of his own this time. What he meant was V's out-there taste in clothes and the goblin-eyed cat that was into NiCola. And Johnny Silverhand being back in his life again, just like he'd never been away.
It was really, really weird. Johnny had always hated Kerry's inputs but he didn't hate V - he liked V, a lot, more than Kerry had known him like anyone before. The two of them were living together, sharing a bed the nights that Kerry wasn't there, the nights when V wasn't sleeping at Kerry's, some bullshit about liking to be close that V blamed on the Relic and Kerry trusted him, he did, but he also knew Johnny. At least he'd thought he did, but now he wasn't sure if drugs and booze and time had wiped out chunks of who he'd been or if somehow parts of V had overwritten parts of Johnny and not just the other way around. He remembered him being an arrogant ass who'd fucked up Kerry's relationships just for the entertainment value; since he'd been back, the worst Johnny had done was tell him a song he was writing was bullshit then suggested ways to fix it. But then there was the other stuff.
He'd joined them on the couch and bitched about their taste in TV. He'd hugged him. More than once. Out of the blue. Wrapped his arm around Kerry's shoulders, ruffled his hair, played with the rings on Kerry's fingers when they'd been meant to be playing guitar. Tried to join them in bed when they were done having sex, and V would've totally gone for it, but Kerry really wasn't in the mood for Johnny's dumbass bullshit. Not when he was trying so damn hard not to fall for him all over again, though V didn't seem to mind that. It was really fucking weird.
So, Kerry had no clue what was going on with Johnny. He liked having him around, sure, because he knew he'd never get away from that, not when being around Johnny then was as easy as it had been when they'd met. He was charming and scathing and spent more time with Kerry's input than Kerry did in the average day, on account of the fact that they were working gigs together, so Kerry figured he'd just have to get used to how things were now. The only problem was that how things were was really damn confusing. Because Johnny and V didn't seem like they were only friends, the way they were around each other. And, after decades of no where Kerry was concerned, after decades of I'm straight, no way, never happening, it kinda seemed like Johnny's answers might've changed now. V kept telling him he was different. Sometimes it almost seemed like he was.
Kerry didn't know what to expect that night, but it really wasn't what happened. Within ten minutes of arrival, V was sleeping off the shitty come-down from a bunch of stims he'd taken for a job; Johnny had started to explain how that had wound up happening, while V had stretched out to nap, but Kerry had never been into the details of the merc work, so he'd cut him off and told him so. Johnny had just shrugged and said, "Suit yourself," then closed his eyes like he'd been running around high combat stims, too, though he'd hated them since his whole army thing. Maybe he'd had to, though. Maybe Kerry had stopped him right before he'd gotten to that part of the story. But then Johnny dozed off there with V, on the couch by Kerry's upstairs bar, and Kerry had to wonder why they'd bothered coming there at all when they could've just gone home. He guessed at least they hadn't borrowed his bed - maybe V didn't argue, but Kerry knew he hated it every time that he kicked Johnny out. He'd've liked him to stay. So would Kerry, which he guessed was the problem.
They were both asleep, Johnny with his boots up on the coffee table, ankles crossed, and V with his legs dangling over the end of the couch, his head on Johnny's lap like that was normal. Johnny had his ganic hand tucked underneath the hem of V's tight shirt. Then, when Kerry went closer, figuring he'd retrieve his guitar and go play someplace else, Johnny opened his eyes. He glanced at Kerry, then he looked down and ran his chrome fingers over V's blue hair. He tugged on it a little.
"V," he said. "Hey, V, c'mon." And V muttered and moved just far enough for Johnny to slip out and shove a cushion underneath V's head where his thigh had just been. V dozed off again immediately but Johnny stretched, hugely, arms over his head, shirt riding up, a couple of inches of skin bare just above the belt of his faded black jeans. It drew Kerry's eye and Johnny caught him looking. Johnny smiled. Kerry grimaced. Then Johnny crossed the room to go pour himself a drink.
"If you were anyone else putting moves on my input, I'd fuck you up so bad..." Kerry said, and Johnny glanced back over his shoulder to raise his eyebrows at him. He was pouring two glasses of bourbon while he did it and made a face when it spilled, but he was still looking at Kerry when he licked his fingers clean.
"Yeah, but if he were anyone else, I'd've fucked him up already," he replied, and Kerry frowned, and Johnny shook his head and raised his glass. "What, you're gonna tell me it slipped your mind how many guys you fucked who I fucked up later?" he said. He picked up the second glass and brought it over to Kerry. Their fingers brushed as Kerry took it, skin to chrome, but he knew Johnny felt it. Kerry sipped. Johnny watched him while he put his glass down on the bar then pulled himself up to sit there next to it. It made him real fucking tall and Kerry had to look up at him, like sometimes his memory had told him he'd had to. But he'd never really had to. He knew that.
Johnny wasn't exactly like Kerry had remembered. He was only a couple of inches taller, maybe less when he got out of his boots. His scars were fucking gnarly and his ink was just the next step up from prison grade. His beard was kinda scruffy and there was more hair on his chest and his abs and down by his dick than Kerry could've said he'd had, not that he didn't like that. He guessed fifty-four years of missing him had made Johnny an ideal to him, or an idea, a pretty picture that Kerry could pine for, not the guy he'd really been. But fuck, the way that Johnny sat there on the bar, the way he looked at him...sure, he wasn't perfect, not the way he'd built him up inside his head, but the fact was he was pretty fucking hot. So hot it took Kerry's breath away, but more like a punch to the gut than some awe-inspired gasp.
Not that he was gonna tell Johnny he was hotter than he remembered him. Like, dirty hot, not swimwear model hot. That just seemed like a shitty idea all around, given the state of Johnny's ego - Kerry sure hadn't forgotten that about him.
Turned out what he had forgotten, though, except the fact the way that Johnny moved and talked and looked at him seemed fundamentally designed to get him off, was what Johnny had just said: he'd forgotten how many of the guys he'd screwed around with had wound up getting into fights with Johnny. It hadn't been all of them, but he was pretty sure it'd been more than half. It hadn't always been for some incomprehensible reason, because Kerry's type of guy had always been a lot like Johnny - sometimes they'd said something that'd set Johnny off, or said something that'd set Kerry off, but other times...yeah, it'd been kinda mysterious. Outside the general fact of life that said Johnny liked to fight, at least.
"Why did you do that?" Kerry asked, and Johnny eyed him over the rim of his glass.
"Why did I do what?" he replied, but the look on his face said he knew exactly what it was that Kerry meant. He just wanted him to say it, or maybe didn't think he would, or maybe it was just Johnny's usual fucked-up dissimulation, a way out of the conversation that he'd started, but fuck that, Kerry wasn't having it.
"Why did you pick fights with the guys I picked up?" Kerry said.
Johnny looked at V, real obviously, but V was still asleep so he sure couldn't help him. Then he looked back at Kerry again and he shifted on the bar like that was gonna make him feel less awkward or maybe just like it might distract Kerry from the fact he was. He raked his hair back with his ganic hand the way that Kerry would've really liked to've done with it. Then he picked his glass back up and looked down at the contents, like he'd become a bourbon connoisseur in the past twenty seconds. He hadn't. Kerry knew that he preferred tequila.
"You remember the one guy that looked like me?" Johnny said, instead of actually answering the question. That didn't exactly escape Kerry's notice, but he rose to the bait anyway.
"They all looked like you," he replied, and Johnny scoffed and looked at him again. He scratched his beard.
"Yeah, well, this one really looked like me," he said. "Like me but ten years younger. Like I had a kid brother I never knew about." He leaned forward, elbows to knees, glass in both his hands. His hair hung forward and Kerry wanted to go over there and push it back. "You know the one I mean?"
Kerry nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I know the one." Because he did know. He hadn't thought about that guy in years, but he knew the one. He'd barely even thought about him at the time, except he'd looked a whole lot like a cute younger version of Johnny. He'd been able to pretend with him, if the light was bad enough and the guy kept his mouth shut, or used it for something that really wasn't words.
Fuck, it all came right back to him. They'd only hooked up for a couple of months and it'd had as much to do with pissing Johnny off as it'd had with playing make-believe. The guy had been pretty amenable to pretending he was Johnny, once he'd figured out that was the deal between them. So they'd screwed backstage before and after shows, where Johnny had been pretty likely to walk in, and more than once he had. He'd hung all over him at the bar where Johnny would see, made out with him a little, groped his ass, whatever, till Johnny had stolen his drink and stalked away. Then he'd done the dumbest thing he'd done in years.
They'd been living together at the time, Kerry and Johnny, or at least something kinda like it. It was actually Kerry's place, the first one he'd rented in a while because he'd spent so long bouncing between his inputs' places and wherever Johnny was. That time, though, it was Kerry's place and Johnny was technically just crashing there, but he was using Kerry's spare room and all his shit was there, guitar on the rack next to Kerry's by the couch, his favorite beer taking up too much space in the refrigerator, their clothes all mixed up in Kerry's room because they both hated doing laundry. It was like every other time they'd wound up sharing a place. Except for the fact that that night, Kerry took his Johnny-lookalike pseudo-input back there, while he knew Johnny was out.
He knew Johnny was out, but that didn't mean he knew he wasn't coming back. There was maybe a fifty-fifty chance - he'd been hooking up with a chick who thought art was throwing paint at canvas and hoping the result was pretty, and whether Johnny was gonna stay the night at her place probably depended on whether his desire to fuck outweighed how pissed he'd be at getting pink paint on yet another pair of jeans. Kerry didn't mind the splotches of pink paint - fuck, they were the most artistic thing she'd ever produced, as far as he could see. The fact she really obviously hated seeing him in Johnny's jeans had nothing to do with that, of course.
But Johnny wasn't there that night and Kerry went home with the guy who looked so much like Johnny that all their chooms had started making comments. Johnny had been laughing it off, saying stupid shit like, "What do you expect? He's obsessed with me," and when they looked to Kerry for a reply, he just shrugged and said, "What he said." Neither of them had tried to deny what they both knew was going on. Probably it confused the hell out of people, especially when Johnny wrapped an arm around Kerry's shoulders and leaned in so close to talk over the music that they might as well have shared the cigarette that he was smoking. Sometimes they did. Hell, they'd smoked the same brand for years just so it didn't taste weird when they stole from one another. Kerry had persuaded the lookalike to smoke the same brand, too, so that would be another thing that he and Johnny had in common. Creepy, yeah, but it really worked.
Pretty soon, another thing they'd had in common had been the spare bed in Kerry's apartment. Kerry knew it was dumb but he did it anyway: when they got back to his place, they didn't head to Kerry's room or make out on the couch or whatever. They went to Johnny's room. The bed in there technically belonged to Kerry, but he knew that technicality was bullshit. It was Johnny's bed he pushed the guy down onto - if technical ownership had been the point of it, they would've just gone into Kerry's room. It was Johnny's bed that Kerry got naked on, though in true-to-Johnny style, the guy he was with just kicked off his boots and shoved his pants down past his hips. Kerry didn't need any different.
There were condoms sitting out on the table by the bed but no lube so Kerry had to go find some in his own room, which maybe should've ruined the mood but it didn't. When he got back, the guy was leaning back against the headboard with his dick in his hand and just for a second, for one gut-wrenching second, he really could've been looking at Johnny.
They screwed in Johnny's bed, because Kerry was a son of a bitch and the guy he was fucking found it hot to act like he was Johnny Silverhand. The only light on in the room was a shitty floor lamp way over in the corner because neither of them could be bothered to replace the burned-out bulbs, but that kinda worked to Kerry's advantage right at that precise moment. He had his legs around the guy's waist, he was getting fucked just hard enough he had to brace his hands against the headboard, and the bad light and the way the guy's long hair fell down over his face...yeah, it was good. until the bedroom door had swung open, and somewhere behind his lookalike's back, Johnny had cursed out loud.
Kerry remembered a little of what had happened next: Johnny had dragged the guy off of him and marched him out of the room with his dick still out, and still hard, and still inside the condom he'd had Kerry roll on for him like that hadn't made the fact that he was nowhere near as big as Johnny kinda obvious. Maybe should've been weird that he knew enough to make the comparison, but that fact was still a fact.
He'd heard the door to the apartment slam, and he'd told himself he should get up and go back to his own room, or at least go finish up in the shower or whatever, but Johnny didn't come back in there right away. So, in the end, Kerry had stayed right where he was, not sure why, no clue what was going on or why he'd let Johnny toss his maybe-input out of the apartment when the apartment was entirely in his name. All he knew was in a flash it'd been morning and Johnny was in bed with him. And the next time that he'd seen the guy, it'd been pretty obvious that Johnny had beaten him up. Pretty bad. So bad that he'd wanted nothing more to do with Kerry. And somehow, Johnny and Kerry had never talked about that fact.
"He told me you put him in the hospital," Kerry said.
Johnny sat back up again. He shrugged. He drank. "Yeah," he said. "I shoved him out of the car in front of the ER."
"Why'd you do that?"
"What, drive his ass to the hospital? Maybe I felt bad. Wasn't his fault I was pissed."
Kerry didn't believe for a second that Johnny had felt bad, but he guessed that wasn't the point. "Not that part," he said. "Why'd you beat him up in the first place?"
Johnny paused. He made a face, rubbed his mouth, rubbed his beard, played with his glass, anything except answering the question, so Kerry couldn't help but wonder why the hell he'd brought the whole thing up in the first place if it was just gonna go ahead and end there. It was disappointing, yeah, but not exactly unexpected because Johnny had always been that way, starting shit with him that he'd never intended on finishing. It was disappointing, but Kerry knew he should've known better than to expect it to go anywhere. So he smiled wryly as he lifted his glass and maybe he would've even let it go without a word because after all that time, what was the use in arguing with Johnny? But it didn't quite happen like that.
"He was jealous," V said. He was still lying on the couch and they both turned to look at him looking at them. The look on his face was amused and fond and open, all the shit that Kerry loved about this guy he once wouldn't've looked at twice, and Johnny huffed and let his heels hit the bar.
"Yeah, well, I didn't know that at the time," he said. "I just wanted to smash his fucking face in so he wouldn't look like me." But that wasn't a denial. It was pretty much the opposite, and Kerry didn't exactly know what to do with that, not with the way that Johnny was looking at him. Weird and expectant and awkward underneath a thin veneer of nonchalance. Like he didn't know what he was meant to do next and he hated that. Or maybe like he knew the next move should be Kerry's, but he'd never had a whole lot of patience. Or impulse control. Neither of them had. Maybe that was why it had all ended in disaster.
Kerry cleared his throat. "So, jealous?" he said, though saying it out loud felt pretty damn ridiculous, and kinda like he was losing his mind.
"Yeah, jealous," Johnny replied. "Who knew."
"Not you?"
"No, I, uh." He scoffed at himself. He shook his head. He tugged on his hair. "Look, I'm not gonna say you were right all along," he told him. "But maybe you weren't completely wrong the whole time."
"So you beat up the guys I was into because..."
Kerry didn't finish the sentence. He left it hanging, while he watched Johnny watching him. Johnny smiled wryly.
"Because I didn't wanna fuck you," he said, "but I didn't want them to fuck you, either."
"And you're sure you didn't want to?"
Johnny shrugged, arms wide, abrupt, his drink still in one hand so it was the next best thing to a miracle he didn't spill it all over the floor.
"I was sure then," he said.
"And now?"
"Yeah, now I know it was bullshit."
"And, uh." Kerry made a face. He gripped his glass almost too tight. "Does that mean you're still into me?"
It was the dumbest conversation he'd had in recent memory. Usually he didn't really give a fuck if any given guy was into him or not, because it wasn't like there weren't others. Hell, at least a couple of generations had grown up jerking off to all his pretty posters, and he absolutely knew it. He'd absolutely used it to his own advantage. But he'd been dating V for the past ten months and anyway, this was Johnny. Johnny who just glanced away at V for a second and then looked at Kerry. Levelly. Weirdly certainly. Then he said, "Yeah. That's what it means."
Kerry looked at V. V shrugged. V smiled, and Kerry felt like he finally got the thing that V had been trying to tell him. So he turned back to Johnny again.
"So show me," he said.
Johnny eyed him. "What do you think I've been doing for the past six weeks?" he asked.
"I don't know, Johnny. Fuck, I really don't know. You're gonna need to show me." He winced. "Or we really need to let this drop right now."
"Is that an ultimatum? You're telling me put up or shut up?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
Kerry could feel this thing slipping away, not that he'd ever really had it in the first place, not that he really even knew what it was. He knew how it was gonna go from there, so he tossed back what was left of his drink and he put the glass down on the nearest flat surface and he smiled to himself, kinda bitterly, tugged on his hair that was almost too short for that, rubbed his mouth with the back of one hand because he thought maybe it would hold him back from doing something dumb. The whole thing was dumb, though - the way he felt was so familiar that he should've seen it coming, that sense of crushed hopes he'd let get way too high, because even now he had no fucking defense against Johnny. He'd always known better but he'd always wound up letting himself go there anyway. He should've learned, but he'd never learned. He wasn't surprised, but that shit was still gutting.
He meant to tell him he understood, because he did. He meant to leave the room, because he couldn't stand the sight of him. It'd be okay, he thought, because he'd never had great expectations - Johnny could just cut that shit out and they'd be friends again just like they'd been before. He was happy with V. He didn't need Johnny. What he needed was a few hours to himself, maybe the whole night, maybe two, and he'd bounce back again. But as he started heading out, Johnny just said, "Kerry."
He stopped. He hated that he stopped, but of course he stopped, and when he looked at Johnny, feeling two inches tall and so fucked up he could've slapped him straight across the face, Johnny raised one hand and beckoned with his chrome forefinger.
"C'mere," he said, and Kerry fucking crumpled up inside because he could barely keep himself from going over there without a second's thought or hesitation. It pissed him off that he still wanted him. It made him sad and he got enough of that crap from his own existential ninety-year-old angst.
"Why?" he asked.
"'Cause you want to," Johnny replied, subtle as a hammer, and Kerry felt it kinda like one because he knew that he was right. But then Johnny seemed to realize he'd said the wrong damn thing and it was just so fucking weird to watch the smug, self-satisfied look slide off his face and leave something maybe halfway to alarmed there. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Johnny look that way before. If he had, he'd forgotten. And if he'd forgotten that, what the fuck else was gone?
He was going to leave but he couldn't leave, because he had to know what Johnny would say next. That would decide what Kerry would do. Johnny said, "Kerry, just come over here," and that really wasn't precisely persuasive, but when he saw the look on Kerry's face, he followed up with, "Look, I want you to, okay? You said I needed to show you. I can't do that if you delta the fuck out of here."
Okay, so the smart thing to do would've been to leave and keep on walking, but Kerry wasn't feeling very smart. He hesitated just for a second, like maybe some heretofore unknown sense of better judgment might kick in if he gave it just a little time, but it really didn't. So he went over there. He stood close but not too close but then Johnny reached out and leaned forward and caught him by the chains around his neck.
Kerry let him pull him closer. Johnny was still sitting on the counter, taller than usual, and Kerry looked up at him with no clue what to expect next, if anything at all. But then Johnny finished his drink in one fast gulp and put the glass down, slid it away and it came so damn close to the edge of the bar that he couldn't've done that on purpose - nine times out of ten it would've smashed on the floor. Not that Kerry gave a damn about his glasses, not when Johnny adjusted his grip on Kerry's chains and then moved.
He slid forward off the bartop. Kerry tried to take a step back and give him some space but Johnny didn't let him - he held him there by his chains and he slid to his feet, caught between the bar and Kerry. He was so damn close that his shirt caught against Kerry and pulled up as he stood, but Johnny didn't try to rearrange it. Johnny's bare stomach was pressed to Kerry's shirt, warm through the fabric, and when Johnny let go of Kerry's chais it was to brush his fingers over Kerry's chrome throat, Kerry's prickly jaw, his earrings, on his way to the back of his neck. Kerry felt himself blush, like blushing was a thing he did, and it was kinda hard to meet Johnny's eyes, not just because the two of them were pressed so close together. They had been before, sure, in too-full subway cars and crowds at shows, but this didn't feel like that. Johnny's ganic fingers stroked the back of Kerry's neck, down the nape and then up into the shaved part of his hair. Johnny's chrome hand pushed into Kerry's back pocket and gave his ass a slow, deliberate squeeze. Then Johnny leaned in and rubbed his jaw against Kerry's so their beards rasped together. He turned his head and nudged Kerry's cheek with his nose. Then he pressed his lips to the corner of Kerry's.
Kerry was definitely blushing. He didn't know what to do with his hands so they just hung there by his sides and his heart was pounding so damn hard that it felt like Johnny should be able to hear it. Johnny just chuckled and pressed his mouth to Kerry's, slowly, kinda softly, not quite chastely, then pulled back to look at him. He ran his ganic hand over Kerry's hair, raked at his scalp just really lightly with his nails and made him shiver, then he kissed him again. And he pulled back again, but not far because he was still stuck there between Kerry and the bar.
"If I do that again and you don't kiss me back, I'm gonna think you don't want it," Johnny said, and Kerry didn't have the words to react to that. It was fine, though, because Johnny kissed him again and this time, Kerry kissed him back, lips soft, mouths mostly closed, not the eat-you-alive way he'd always seen Johnny kiss. It was nice. It was really fucking nice, Johnny moving his hands to cup Kerry's jaw, thumbs brushing his cheekbones, brushing the chrome by his eyes while Johnny kissed him like...fuck, he didn't know what it was like. like he was kissing him because he liked how it felt to be kissing him, not as a prelude to fucking. It was weird. It was great. And Kerry's chest hurt like he couldn't breathe, except that he was breathing against Johnny's lips, breathing the same breath as Johnny was, hot and close and boozy.
"You do know you can use your hands, right?" V said, from the couch behind them, and Kerry pulled back from Johnny's mouth like he'd been bitten or shocked or maybe both. Johnny glanced over Kerry's shoulder at V then he smiled at Kerry. Really smiled, not that cruel fucking smirk that Kerry was so used to or the smug look or any of it. It was an honest-to-God smile that knocked Kerry straight off balance, and Johnny rested his hands on both of Kerry's shoulders for a moment while he looked at him. Still smiling.
"Kid's not wrong, Ker," Johnny said, as he rubbed at Kerry's shoulders for a second. Kerry was wearing a tank top so Johnny's hands touched as much skin as they did shirt, and it wasn't exactly the first time Johnny had touched him like that, wasn't the tenth time or even the hundredth, but he still got all tense and made Johnny make a face about it. Kerry tried to relax but then Johnny slid both his hands down the length of both of Kerry's arms. The rings on his ganic fingers scratched harder than the joints of his chrome ones and made Kerry's shiver with it. He wrapped his fingers around Kerry's wrists. He slipped them down and took his hands, rubbed Kerry's palms with both his thumbs. Then he lifted one of Kerry's hands to the back of his neck, brought the other one around to the ass of his jeans, and he left them there.
"At least pretend you're interested," Johnny said, as he fished the pulled-up hem of his shirt from against Kerry's chest and pulled it off over his head. He threw it at V, and Kerry had to move his hand to let him take it off, and after that...fuck, he ran his hand back to the back of Johnny's neck, underneath his hair. He ran his fingers into it, slowly, watching the look on Johnny's face as he closed his fist and eased Johnny's head back just a little. Johnny didn't complain, though. He just smiled again, sharply, all teeth, as he got both his hands to the back of Kerry's waist and took two handfuls of his shirt.
He smiled as he let Kerry bare his throat, as Kerry trailed his fingers over it, as he spread his hand and squeezed. He knew Johnny liked that more than almost anything, but he'd never let him do it, and Kerry's chest felt tight as he realized that right then he would've let him. He could've pressed his mouth to Johnny's neck and bitten down, sucked, kept on going till he bruised him right where everyone would see, and Johnny would've let him do that, too. And okay, so Kerry would've liked to've done that, either thing, both, but it wasn't what he wanted right now. Maybe later. Fuck, he hoped he'd get to do it later. But not now.
He took a couple of steps back, put maybe three feet between them as Johnny frowned at him. Jesus, he looked good, shirtless with his jeans riding kinda low. He was even wearing his dog tags - it was fifty-fifty on any given day whether Johnny would be wearing them or V would, but there they were, hanging down against his chest. Kerry wanted to pull on them, pull him closer, pull his mouth to his, but he also really didn't.
"I'm confused," he said. "When I said show me, did you misunderstand?"
V laughed. Johnny shot him a warning look that made not one single iota of difference, then he crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head and cocked one hip. He paused, then looked Kerry up and down. Slowly. Really fucking hotly. The way Kerry had always wanted him to look at him and Kerry felt it fucking viscerally as Johnny bared his teeth and gripped so hard as his chrome arm with his ganic hand that his knuckles were white.
"I understood," Johnny said, and before Kerry could press him on that...well, Johnny proved that he didn't need pressing. He took two steps forward and he yanked Kerry toward him. Kerry would've maybe staggered into him except Johnny turned and took Kerry with him, pushed him back against the bar and then he kissed him, sudden, hard, biting at his lips, licking into his mouth, taking his goddamn breath away. It wasn't lost on Kerry that V kissed him that way sometimes. It wasn't lost on Kerry that Johnny was holding him there with his chrome hand tight on the back of his neck and one thigh shoved between Kerry's while he pushed his ganic hand up under Kerry's shirt. Johnny felt him up, totally fucking unsubtle about it, the chrome that framed Kerry's abs, then his side, his chest, the low edge of the chrome in his throat, all while he had his fucking tongue in Kerry's mouth. And Kerry kissed him back, just as hard, kinda desperate, while he felt his dick start getting stiff pressed up to Johnny's thigh. He pulled Johnny's hair and he raked his nails down his back while they were fucking devouring each other, and all Kerry could think was how real it felt, how if it was a dream it was a good one, how he really didn't want to wake up.
He could feel Johnny getting hard against him and he got one hand down there, over the denim, half convinced that Johnny would freak and that would be the end of it, but he also knew he had to know. Johnny didn't freak, though. Johnny groaned against Kerry's mouth and got one hand down there, too, pressed it over Kerry's and made him squeeze him harder. Then he pulled back and for a second Kerry thought he'd been right after all, but all Johnny did was unbuckle his belt and unbutton his jeans. He tugged down his zipper and when he stepped back in again, fucking swept back in, Hurricane Silverhand, he pushed Kerry's hand straight inside his jeans and closed his fingers around him. That really didn't seem like no. It felt like exactly the opposite, and Kerry was fucking alive with it.
Johnny was hard in his hand and Johnny kissed him again, but then his mouth dropped down to Kerry's neck. Kerry could feel what he was doing, sucking there, teeth against his skin, hard enough that it stung but hurting him really wasn't the point. Kerry had used to love it when guys had done that to him, back in the day, but the shine had worn off real fast once Johnny wasn't there to disapprove. He'd wound up just kinda pissed when it'd happened after that, because it always smarted the day after and there'd ben no one there to see it, or too many people, all asking if he was seeing someone when chances were it'd been some shitty one night stand.
Even when it hadn't been, his relationships had never lasted long. He was as surprised as Johnny was that he was still with V and hadn't fucked it up somehow, though he guessed it wasn't for a lack of fucking up. And he'd let V leave marks on him, had even encouraged him to do it sometimes, because he liked the way that looked on him, liked the way it felt the next day when V kissed him there or pressed a little at the bruise. Johnny had done that last part sometimes - pressed on bruises other guys had left on him, like pressing there would make them go away or make them more like they were his than theirs. Kerry had joked a couple of times that he could just do it to him if he wanted to so bad, though he guessed the only reason it'd been a joke had been because he'd known that Johnny wouldn't do it. But now he was doing it. Fuck, that really shouldn't've made Kerry's heart race and his face flush the way it did. It was just a hickey, after all, not a declaration of undying love. At most, it was a declaration of something else, and it wouldn't even last a week.
Then Johnny kissed him again, his mouth, his chrome throat, his neck where he'd just bruised him, while Kerry was gripping one of Johnny's shoulders and stroking his cock kinda awkwardly inside his jeans. Johnny seemed to figure out that inside his jeans wasn't exactly ideal because he took his hands off of Kerry just long enough to shove his jeans over his hips. Then he flashed Kerry a kind of sharp little smile as he got his hands to Kerry's belt. Six seconds and he peeled Kerry's pants down to the middle of his thighs, then he looked at him as he wrapped his chrome hand carefully around his own cock. Probably more for the aesthetic on Kerry'd side than the feel of it on Johnny's, and fuck, Kerry appreciated that.
Johnny looked good and he knew it. He always had. It'd been part of his charm, Kerry guessed. But then...well, Kerry knew he looked good, too. He looked really, really good, and it turned out Johnny was actually into him and not just teasing like a total dick. So Kerry slid the hem of his shirt up a little, away from the base of his cock, showing off his abs and a few lines of shiny gold chrome. He leaned back against the bar and wrapped his free hand around his cock, and Johnny cursed under his breath as he watched him do it. Looked like he liked what he saw.
Kerry was watching Johnny, too, though. He gave himself a slow stroke as he watched Johnny squeeze at his dick down by the base. He watched Johnny stroke himself, too, tightly, base to tip then back again, fucking huge, maybe even bigger than Kerry had thought he was before. Fuck, Kerry wanted him, so bad it made his dick throb in his hand, and he bit his own lip as he watched Johnny swipe his thumb over the damp tip of his cock. He didn't bite his lip for long, though, because Johnny stepped back in close and rubbed the moisture from his thumb over Kerry's lips and Jesus Christ, as if that wasn't enough, tasting Johnny on his lips, Johnny kissed him again. Johnny sucked the taste of himself off of Kerry's lips and Kerry sucked it off his tongue, and then Johnny's hand was on him, wrapped around his cock, his grip firm but moving slow.
He pulled back just far enough to look at Kerry, his ganic hand still on his dick, the chrome one on his shoulder so close to the crook of his neck that he could stroke Kerry's throat with his thumb. Johnny moved that hand, though, rubbed his own beard, drummed his fingertips against his lips, then he did the same to Kerry's. He ran his chrome thumb over Kerry's lips, teased the bottom one with his forefinger, then he eased open Kerry's mouth and slid just the tip of that finger inside. He ran it carefully over the edge of Kerry's teeth as Kerry's eyes went wide and his face got hot. He ran it onto his tongue, stroked there with his fingertip while he was still stroking Kerry's cock. Kerry could feel the weird textured tip of it against his tongue as Johnny pressed down a little. He could taste it when he took Johnny's wrist and he sucked there, metal and oil that should've been a turn-off but it was somehow exactly the opposite.
Johnny eased his hand back. He smiled knowingly. Then he slipped his chrome hand back behind Kerry, over his bare ass, and pressed his fingertip between his cheeks. He teased his hole with his spit-slicked chrome fingertip while Kerry's cock was still wrapped up tight in his ganic hand and for a second, as Johnny rubbed at his rim, slowly, firmly, deliberately, as he pressed until he almost got inside him, Kerry's dick throbbed and his knees went weak. He could've come right then and there. He almost wasn't sure how he didn't, except that Johnny moved his hand away again.
He moved both of them. He moved them to Kerry's hips and squeezed there, the chrome one almost too tight but Kerry wouldn't've minded if he'd bruised. Kerry pulled his shirt off over his head and set it down on the bar because that seemed like maybe the thing to do and it got Johnny's attention but only for a moment. He was still gripping Kerry's hip with his chrome hand when he got down on his knees right there on the floor in front of him and Kerry's heart gave a couple of beats so damn hard he felt it almost everywhere inside him. Johnny sat back on his heels and ran his hands over the leather of Kerry's boots over his calves, over the denim above that, skin above that. He came up off his heels and pressed his mouth to Kerry's hip, stroked a little, turned his head and made him shiver with his beard. Then he wrapped his ganic hand around Kerry's cock and glanced up as he stuck out his tongue to lick the tip fucking obscenely.
"V, am I imagining shit right now?" Kerry asked, as Johnny turned his head and planted a line of wet, sucking kisses all the way down Kerry's dick right to the base. "Because it looks like Johnny's going down on me."
V snorted. "Yeah, that's because Johnny's going down on you," he replied, helpfully, and it was kinda nice to have the confirmation when it genuinely seemed like the least likely event of the evening so far. And there'd been a few goddamn unlikely events.
"Yeah, like you mind," Johnny said, and his mouth was so close to the base of Kerry's cock that his lips brushed his skin as he talked. He was right, though - Kerry really didn't mind. What he minded was that as soon as Johnny had lapped at the tip like a fucking big cat, as soon as he'd slipped the head into his mouth and sucked, before Kerry could even get his fingers into Johnny's hair, he sat back away again.
"Turn around," Johnny said.
Kerry couldn't help it: his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What are you gonna do?" he asked.
Johnny shrugged. He leaned in and he pressed his mouth to the crease where Kerry's thigh met his body, hooked his thumb under his dick to ease it up out of the way, then nuzzled right at Kerry's balls before he sat back yet again. He looked up at Kerry like maybe he was considering telling him exactly what he was gonna do, and the smirk said it was filthy. But then he raked back his hair with both hands, paused like that as if he knew he looked like some dirty rockerboy wet dream, then said, "Fuck's sake, Ker, just turn around." Except then he leaned in again and gave the head of Kerry's dick a long, slow suck. "To be continued," he said, as he pulled away, then he gestured at Kerry. "Go on. Turn around."
So, Kerry turned. The bar was pretty high so he put his forearms on it and leaned there, feeling kinda dumb with his shirt off and his ass hanging out. But then Johnny ran his hands over the bare parts of Kerry's thighs. He ran his hands over his ass. And just when Kerry thought the evening really couldn't get any weirder, he felt Johnny spread his cheeks and run both his thumbs between them. He felt him rub at his hole with his chrome thumb then his ganic one. Then, Jesus fucking Christ, Johnny leaned in and licked him there.
It wasn't like he'd never imagined Johnny doing that to him, because he had - he'd just never expected that he really would. It would've been easier to believe Johnny would fuck him bent over the hood of his car than tease his asshole with his tongue, but Johnny did it. Kerry's dick throbbed and he pressed his cheek down hard against his hands and Johnny licked him, dragged the flat of his tongue against his hole and made his balls feel tight. Johnny adjusted his hands - Kerry felt him use his thumbs to open up his hole a little, then he pressed the tip of his tongue there. Fuck, before he knew it, Johnny's tongue was inside him, pushing in as deep as it could go, then licking him again, wetly, his beard scratching at his skin. He was gonna wind up with beard burn in a really dumb place but he didn't care. He really didn't care. Because Johnny kept going, getting him wet, tonguing him open, pressing the tip of his chrome thumb inside while Kerry pulled real tight around it, then fucking him with his tongue again.
He was driving Kerry fucking mad. It was too much, Johnny's mouth there, hands squeezing his ass, but also not even nearly enough and Kerry couldn't help it: he reached back and got his fingers into Johnny's hair to hold him there or try to press him closer, he really wasn't sure which. Johnny fucking growled but he didn't pull away. He just went at it harder, ate his ass with every bit of the enthusiasm Kerry had seen him bring to bear on some chick's cunt. It was weird as hell to think that Johnny wanted him like that, but it didn't stop him pressing back on Johnny's tongue. It didn't stop it damn near blowing his goddamn mind as his dick started leaking kinda helplessly. But then Johnny eased Kerry's fingers from his hair and moved away again. Just not far, because he held Kerry's cheeks apart like he wanted to see his hole pull tight when he teased him with his fingers.
"V, I'm gonna need a little help," Johnny said, then his hands left Kerry's ass. He stood, which Kerry knew because he moved to lean back against the bar right next to him while V groaned like getting up off of the couch was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in his life, not all the bullshit with the Relic or bringing Johnny back from the dead. Johnny leaned there and turned Kerry's face toward him with his chrome hand, let it click against the chrome by one eye and then kissed him, quickly.
"You like that, yeah?" Johnny asked him.
"What, the kissing or the other thing?" Kerry replied.
Johnny smiled wryly. "The other thing," he said, and Kerry grinned. He kissed Johnny, not quite as quickly as Johnny had done it, and then told him, "Fuck yeah, I like it. I'll like it when you do it next time, too. Or, hey, maybe I can watch you do V."
"You know I'm gonna hold you both to that, right?" V said, as he came closer, and Johnny rolled his eyes dramatically as Kerry reached over to run his fingers through V's colorful hair.
"I'm pretty discerning where I put my tongue," Johnny said, but then he yanked V toward him by the front of his shirt and the next place where Johnny put his tongue was V's mouth. Enthusiastically. And maybe Kerry did feel a flash of jealousy, but it died back down again pretty fast. Watching them kiss, Johnny's back up to the bar, V's hand on Johnny's cock, was mostly just hot. Fuck, it was really, really hot. But then Johnny pushed V back again.
"Really not what you're here for, kid," Johnny said, and V trailed both hands down Johnny's chest as he replied, "So what am I here for?" He raised his eyebrows. "I was sleeping, Johnny, so this better be good."
Johnny hopped up onto the counter exactly like he'd done earlier, except this time his jeans were down and his cock was hard. He gestured at his cock and V said an exaggerated, "Oh, I see..." before he stepped forward between Johnny's legs. He trailed the back of one hand up the underside of it and Kerry saw Johnny's dick twitch. Then V wrapped his hand around the base and said, casually, conversationally, "So you want me to get your dick wet enough so you can fuck Kerry without leaving the room to get lube?"
Johnny shrugged. "Well, yeah," he said, like all of that was obvious when it hadn't been obvious to Kerry at all, and he didn't point out that there was probably lube somewhere in the room because he really liked the idea of what V had just said. If the excited-nervous flip his stomach did could be relied upon as evidence, at least.
So, apparently satisfied with Johnny's plan, V leaned in and put his mouth on him. Kerry watched him, maybe kinda faintly weirded out that his input was going down on a guy right in front of him, but then again it was Johnny and V. Weird was par for the course.
"He's pretty good at this," Johnny told Kerry, like he didn't know that already, while V was slowly taking more and more of Johnny's cock into his mouth. He was probably teasing him with his tongue while he did it and Kerry knew how that felt when V did that. V ran his hands over the insides of Johnny's thighs and took him even deeper, gagged a little, snickered, then pushed even deeper still. He had his lips wrapped around the base of Johnny's cock pretty soon, nose in the hair there that Kerry didn't have because he nearly always shaved it off. V liked the way that looked, but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the contrast. V liked to suck on Kerry's shaved balls, like the smooth crack of his ass, press his mouth against the bare skin where the razor had been, but he looked really good sucking Johnny, too. And maybe Kerry could've done that, gotten Johnny ready to put his cock in him, but he kinda liked that it was V. Judging from the way V's dick filled out the front of his pants, so did he.
Kerry shifted a little, so he could grope V over his pants while V was sucking Johnny. V moaned around Johnny and Johnny took a handful of V's hair, and Kerry stepped around behind V to get a better grip on him. He rubbed his dick against V's ass, clad as it was in a pair of stretch denim jeggings. Fuck, if he'd tried hard enough he probably could've rubbed the seam of them right against V's hole, but he figured there was something better and reached around to unbutton V's pants instead. He pulled them down over V's ass and rubbed the tip of his aching dick against V's hole instead, made him groan around the length of Johnny's cock as V reached back with one hand to pull his cheeks wider apart. Kerry loved that V always wanted him, whether that meant V's dick inside Kerry or Kerry's inside V, or any other thing. He loved that V wasn't shy about the stuff he wanted, or how he wanted it, when. They'd screw in V's care, in the shower, in the men's room at some fancy restaurant where Kerry tipped the attendant to go be someplace else for twenty minutes. They'd done it right where they were more than once, too, and Kerry rubbed his dick between V's cheeks while Johnny watched as best he could.
They didn't come like that that night, though. A couple of minutes and Johnny seemed to decide he was wet enough, or that he'd wind up coming in V's mouth if he let him keep on going, so he eased V back from his dick. Kerry wasn't done, though. He had an idea, and as he leaned forward against the bar again, when he looked back over his shoulder at V, V seemed to get it right away, like it'd been Kerry in his head back then, not Johnny.
V pressed his dick between Kerry's cheeks, nowhere close to getting inside him but that really wasn't the point. V was so damn close already, Kerry knew that - he'd recognized the way his cock had twitched in his hand while he'd been stroking him, but close really was the point. V rubbed himself between Kerry's cheeks, over his hole, his breath really short and obvious so Kerry knew it wouldn't be long. Kerry looked at Johnny who was watching V like this was the best damn porno he'd seen in his life, then he hopped down from the bar, probably to get a better look but Kerry couldn't exactly tell. But V kept going, rubbing against him, faster, and fuck, Johnny ran his chrome hand down the length of Kerry's back. He rubbed at Kerry's tailbone, and he must've touched V's dick because V groaned and pressed his tip down hard and came between his cheeks. Kerry felt it on him, hot, running down thickly over his hole, and V stepped back quickly. Kerry guessed they all knew what was gonna happen next.
Johnny stepped up. He ran his hands over Kerry's ass and rubbed the tip of his dick between his cheeks, through V's come, over his hole, against it. He muttered something that sounded a lot like fuck, that's hot then pressed there harder, right up against his hole. He started pushing in, and Kerry took a shaky breath, leaning down against the bar, feet planted, still in his boots and half his jeans. Johnny started pushing into him and fuck, he was big. Maybe the biggest that he'd ever had or maybe not, it wasn't like Kerry had a photographic memory where his exes' dicks were concerned. He was pretty close with music, but not with genitalia. But fuck, he was big, and Johnny pushed in slowly, kinda slick with V's come, Kerry maybe still a little open from Johnny's tongue. It was fucking overwhelming and he loved it, fucking loved it, gripped at the bar and arched his back and yeah, Johnny pushed deeper, all the way, got right up against Kerry's ass and held him by his hips. He rocked against him, pushed him up onto his toes as he ran his ganic hand down Kerry's chest, over his abs, down to his cock. Kerry groaned and pushed against Johnny's hand, made a couple of inches of Johnny's cock pull out so he shoved back hard to take him back in.
"Fuck, I should've done you like this that night," Johnny said, kinda breathless, kinda raspy, loud enough that both of them could hear but he obviously meant it for Kerry. "You were fucking asleep when I got back. Would've served you right if I'd nailed you to the bed till you woke back up." He ran his hands up over Kerry's sides. He squeezed over his rubs and pushed in hard. "Jesus, Ker, it was like I'd walked in on you getting fucked by me. You had to know what you were doing."
Johnny slipped his hand down around Kerry's cock. He squeezed, and Kerry gasped, and Johnny fucked him harder. Like he meant it, about that night, coming home after fucking up the guy that'd been fucking Kerry. Kerry wasn't sure if he wished he'd done it or not, figured it would've ended in misery, but the idea was good, was really good, Johnny with blood on his hands because it'd still been there in the morning, picking up where his pretty little lookalike left off. He would've let him. He would've liked it. It wouldn't've lasted past that night.
"You should've done it," Kerry said. "Couldn't've made shit any worse."
Johnny scoffed. "Sure it could," he said.
"And it won't now?"
Johnny shoved in again, chrome hand on Kerry's hip, ganic one on his dick. It felt fucking great, pushing back against him, pushing into Johnny's hand, and Johnny laughed and raked his fingers down his back.
"It won't now," Johnny said. And fuck, Kerry was in trouble: he believed him.
It didn't last long after that. Johnny had to move his hand from Kerry's cock so he could fuck him harder, but that didn't seem to matter anyway - Kerry was so hard he ached, too hot, skin kinda sweaty so Johnny's hands kept slipping. Johnny's rhythm got completely fucked up and then it really wasn't long. The sound he made as he shoved in deep and came inside him was so close to fucking perfect, really dirty and perfect, and while he was catching his breath, V said, "Well, that was the hottest thing I've ever seen," and Johnny laughed until he fucking wheezed because he couldn't get a breath in. Then he pulled out, quickly, abruptly, and when Johnny spread Kerry cheeks again, he was expecting he'd maybe use his fingers, maybe just watch as his own come welled up from in him, but fuck, fuck, he got his tongue to Kerry's hole again instead. He guessed he had to hand it to him: when Johnny made up his mind to do something, he did it all the way. And V amended his assessment: that was the hottest thing he'd ever seen.
Kerry came like that, really not too long after, with Johnny eating his own come back out of him and two fingers of his ganic hand pressing up behind his balls. He felt it right down his spine, in every fucking nerve, like he'd stored it up for the past seventy years, though when he came it really was more like release than an explosion. He made a mess of the side of the bar but he really didn't care about that. He had V's fingers in his hair and Johnny stood up slowly. He ran his hands over Kerry's back. He eased him up. And it seemed like wonders just weren't gonna cease because he wrapped his arms around Kerry from behind him.
"You think maybe we can go to bed now?" V asked, and Johnny scoffed and pulled him right into a kiss, kinda playful, still halfway breathless. But V seemed pleased to kiss him back.
"Sounds like a fucking great idea," Johnny said, as he nudged V back again and ruffled his hair. "If Kerry wants me around tonight." Then he turned Kerry around. He tilted up his chin, and he kissed him just like he'd just kissed V. He still tasted like the come he'd just licked out of Kerry. Fuck, Kerry thought he could get used to that.
"So, what do you think?" Johnny asked. "Should I stay or go?"
Kerry wrapped his arms up around Johnny's neck. He leaned up by his ear.
"You go now and I'll hold it against you," he said. "So don't go. I'll be pissed. You won't like that."
"Sometimes I do," Johnny said. Which Kerry thought was pretty fair, but he still told him not to be a dick about it. Johnny really didn't argue. V just snickered.
They made their way to bed after that, all three of them, ditching their clothes along the way, leaning against each other so they wouldn't fall down. V and Johnny put Kerry in the middle, which seemed pretty fair to him, and V went out like a light before they'd even put the light out. Johnny, though, he was awake a while longer, just like Kerry was. He wrapped his ganic hand around Kerry's wrist, pressed his fingertips against his pulse and didn't move away.
"So you really were jealous?" Kerry asked, in the mostly-dark, just the lights from the city through the windows. He could've flipped a virtual switch and dimmed the glass, but he'd always kinda liked to know Night City was right there.
He thought maybe Johnny wouldn't answer, would act like he was sleeping, and Kerry might even had let him do it, as good and as weird and as fucked as the whole night had been. He thought maybe Johnny would make a joke and laugh it off, but then he just said, "Every time."
There were a million things that Kerry could've said to that, good or you know that's kinda shitty, right? or it was always hot when you beat up my inputs, shit that would've been true but Kerry didn't say a word. He just smiled into the dark instead and let it go. Turned out every time was more than enough for him right now.
He didn't know if it was gonna work out. Johnny was a dick and Kerry could be just as bad, and V couldn't always be the one that made the two of them see sense. He'd try, but they were both real fucking stubborn. He didn't know if it was gonna work, but Johnny turned to him in the near-dark, tilted Kerry's chin and kissed his mouth like that was just something they did now.
Maybe it would all go wrong. But Kerry figured it was worth the risk to try.