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Kerry had kissed him so many times over the years that it had gone from mildly amusing in the beginning to mostly annoying. He'd kissed Johnny the first night they'd met, before Johnny had got around to telling him he was straight and therefore not interested. He'd kept trying seriously for the first weeks of their acquaintance, as if he'd really thought that Johnny had been some repressed hick who didn't dare to admit that he was secretly lusting for cock.
And even after Kerry had given up hope that Johnny would suddenly change his mind, he'd kept kissing him every now and then – sometimes to be a little shit, because it made Johnny groan and roll his eyes at him. Sometimes it had been in the heat of the moment, during a wild night out, after running from the cops or after a great gig, and more than once Johnny had even kissed him back for a second or two then. Sometimes even on stage, and those had always been the times when Johnny had minded it least – it had even felt kinda good, like it was a part of them, of their music, of everything they were to each other. But it had never exactly turned Johnny on, at least no more than he was generally turned on after a gig.
So he had no fucking idea what was different this time. Kerry had kissed him maybe a week and a half ago after a night they'd spent shooting the shit and jamming and working on new songs. Nothing unusual there – technically they didn't live together right now because Kerry was mostly staying with his current input, but he was still at Johnny's place more often than not, and they still spent more nights together than apart. It had been a good one. They'd been a bit buzzed on pills and booze, but the good kind of buzzed – the inspiring kind, the one where they still felt like themselves rather than like they'd either numbed themselves into complete apathy or cranked up every emotion to eleven. They'd talked and they'd played together, and the song they'd written that night was fucking amazing. Johnny had already nagged Nancy ten times to set up the next gig because he couldn't wait to play it on stage.
But at the end of the night, some time around four in the morning when they'd both started to get sleepy, Kerry had pulled Johnny close and half crawled into his lap, and then he'd kissed him – not the filthy, seductive kind of kiss of the first weeks of their acquaintance, and not the teasing, playful kind either. He'd kissed him slow and deep like he'd forgotten all the reasons why he didn't get to kiss Johnny, the main one being that Johnny didn't want him to. Johnny had let him. Not for the first time, because he sometimes tolerated it a little bit, but for far longer than he ever had before. He'd even put his chrome arm around Kerry's skinny waist and hauled him close, had put his other hand in Kerry's soft, messy hair and pulled on it while he'd kissed him back.
Technically, Johnny had to admit that to himself, Kerry hadn't simply kissed him. They'd made out for quite some time on the ratty couch in Johnny's apartment, without a word spoken about it because then Johnny would have had to stop. They'd made out until they'd both yawned too much to keep going, coming down from the drugs and the tequila and ten hours of song-writing. Kerry had fallen asleep while still sitting half on Johnny's lap. Rather than dumping him on the floor, which would have looked pretty funny, Johnny had put him down more gently on the couch and gone to bed. He hadn't jerked off, but that had probably only been the case because he'd also fallen asleep the moment his head had touched the pillow.
So that had been that. Not the weirdest thing they'd ever done, compared to the time Kerry had dragged him to a gay strip club or all the times they'd both got their dick sucked in the same room while talking to each other. It had just been a kiss, nothing more. Johnny had made out with plenty of people he wasn't particularly into – groupies after gigs, random chicks at bars when he was drunk, probably even a guy once or twice in his life when he'd been really drunk and the guy had been pretty enough. It didn't mean shit. Kerry knew it didn't mean shit because he didn't say anything about it the next morning – he gave Johnny kind of a stupid look over coffee at the nearby diner, and then clearly decided it wasn't worth the fight. Johnny didn't know if he was relieved or pissed off because maybe a fight would have made him feel better.
But for some fucking reason, it stayed on his mind. Every time Kerry put a cigarette between his pretty lips – which was about every ten minutes except when they ran out –, Johnny thought about how soft they'd felt against his. Every time he fussed with his hair as if he ever managed to make it not look like someone had grabbed it earlier, Johnny thought about pulling on it, about the way Kerry had moaned when he had. And yeah, Johnny sometimes got obsessive about shit, but usually it was song ideas or people who'd pissed him off or fucking a particularly hot chick – he didn't obsess about kissing someone like he was some teenage loser who'd never gotten laid in his life. He certainly didn't obsess over kissing his best friend, who might have been pretty and shorter than him and kinda skinny, but still very, very obviously a man. Kerry had even grown a little moustache a couple of months ago, and while Johnny thought it looked utterly ridiculous, the fact was that he'd definitely felt it while kissing him. And it hadn't bothered him one bit.
He tried keeping his distance in the days after that – out of sight, out of mind and all that. Called up that crazy painter chick he'd been fucking the previous month and spent two days in her bed, right up until she had one of her unhinged hissy fits and threw him out for some bullshit reason he couldn't be bothered to remember. Then he went on a bender. Kerry, in the meantime, was probably sucking his input's dick day and night or whatever the fuck they got up to. And the problem was that Johnny couldn't in fact stop thinking about it. He thought about Kerry's lips when he made out with his now probably ex-output and then with some other girl he'd picked up at the bar afterwards, and he actually found himself thinking that kissing Kerry had been way more fun than either of them. That might have contributed to him getting thrown out, who the fuck knew.
And while Johnny had never liked any of Kerry's inputs or hookups or whatever he called those men he fucked for a night or a week or a month and then got bored by, it still hit him like a punch in the gut the next time he walked into the Rainbow Cadenza and saw Kerry hanging out there with Mitch or Mike or Matt or whatever the fuck his name was. Tall, older than Kerry, probably dumb as a brick. His usual type. Kerry was perched on his lap on a chair like he was trying to win an award for needy twink of the year 2012, arms wrapped around the guy and making out with him like there was no tomorrow.
Johnny could have just ignored it. He could have left. He could have found himself someone to fuck and made damn sure Kerry saw him with her. Instead he stared at them for long enough that some asshole bumped into him, so Johnny punched the guy, punched his friend who came to help, and about five minutes after Johnny had come in, there was a proper bar fight going on. Except Kerry and his input didn't seem to give a shit, considering they were still making out in the corner. So Johnny went over there, and he kicked out the chair from underneath them so they both fell on their asses. Johnny punched the input in the face for good measure and told him to stay down, then grabbed Kerry by the arm to yank him to his feet. The expression on his face was one of complete confusion, but also some of that wild-eyed excitement he always felt when there was a fight nearby. After all, Kerry started as many of those as Johnny did, he just didn't finish them.
"The fuck did you do that for?" he asked, but he sounded more breathless and curious than pissed off. It had been something like a month since he'd started seeing this guy, so he was probably already tired of him anyway. It wasn't as if he actually gave a shit about any of them. Certainly not more than about Johnny. So Johnny wasn't the least bit surprised when Kerry glanced down at his bleeding input, but made absolutely no move to free himself when Johnny dragged him towards the back exit of the club while the brawl started to escalate. Might have been fun to stick around and punch a few more people, but fuck, he wanted Kerry away from this guy. He didn't want Kerry in anyone else's lap, didn't want him kissing anyone else, didn't want him even looking at anyone else. The force of Johnny's anger almost surprised him himself, but then Kerry always got to him in a way nobody else did.
The alley behind the Cadenza was dark and dingy even during the day, and at night it looked like the kind of place you'd only ever go to to get yourself murdered and your implants harvested. Fortunately Johnny was used to being the worst thing you could run into in a dark alley. He shoved Kerry back against an ancient car without tyres that had been collecting grime there since before Johnny had arrived in Night City, a rusty old thing that would probably give you about five different diseases if you cut yourself on its sharp edges. Kerry clearly had the same thought because he tried his best not to touch it, which meant that his hands ended up holding on to Johnny's shoulders instead.
"Since when do you start fights and then walk out?" Kerry asked when Johnny still didn't say anything. There was a nervous energy to him, as if he was pretty damn tempted to get back in there himself – not to see if his poor input was okay, but to get in a few punches somewhere. Johnny loved seeing him like that. Kerry had his moody phases, too, just like Johnny did, but it always felt so damn wrong to see him sad or brooding or sulking in a corner. He should always be like this, full of energy and anger and want. Even if right now, what he wanted most didn't seem to be Johnny, and that didn't sit right with Johnny at all.
He did what he'd done the other night, too – put his chrome arm around Kerry's waist to pull him closer and ignored his surprised yelp. He raised his 'ganic hand so he could touch a strand of Kerry's hair that had slipped out of his bandana and was hanging into his eyes now – he stroked it back, then grabbed a fistful of his hair. It smelt like smoke and the same shampoo they both used, and for a moment Johnny just pressed his face into it. It smelt like Kerry, a scent that was more familiar, more welcome than that of any other person he'd ever known. He could have gone back into that club, getting his nose and his fists bloody. He could have saved some poor damsel from the commotion and enjoy her letting him fuck her as thanks. He could have laughed at Kerry and left and called up any of the dozens of women who would have dropped anything for another night with him.
But instead he pulled on Kerry's hair to make him look up at Johnny – confused and pathetically hopeful and so fucking pretty. Those damn lips. He'd always been aware that Kerry technically had a pretty mouth, the way he'd been aware that Kerry had nice hands and a cute little ass, but it didn't use to make his heart race. It didn't use to make his dick hard, and fuck, he was hard with Kerry pressing against him like that. When Kerry noticed that, his expression turned smug in that way that always made Johnny want to smack him over the head, and he wasn't in the mood to hear whatever the fuck Kerry had to say to him just then. He just pulled on his hair again, made him gasp, made him part his lips so when Johnny kissed him, he could lick into Kerry's mouth straight away without any resistance.
He didn't kiss him like he had that night, slow and comfortable, like it was just something they did, no trouble. He kissed him like he owned him, like he needed Kerry to remember that all the other men in his life were nothing but distractions from Johnny. Or at least that was what Johnny tried to tell himself, that he was making a point, that he was making sure Kerry wouldn't run off with anyone else tonight.
But the simple truth was that Kerry's lips felt maddeningly good against his. That his cock twitched when Kerry surged up against him, when he wrapped both his arms tightly around Johnny and hooked one leg around his hips as if he was trying to climb him. That he moaned every time Kerry nipped at his lips, even before Kerry got so impatient he shoved one hand into Johnny's pants and squeezed his cock.
Johnny would have liked to tell himself that he was trying to forget about that kiss ten days ago – just reminding himself that he'd never much liked it when Kerry had kissed him, so there was no reason why he should like it now. But every minute that passed only made him want Kerry more, so much that he let Kerry jerk him off right there against that stupid old car wreck, so much that he even returned the favour when Kerry growled against his lips and grabbed his throat with one hand and Johnny's hand with the other to pull it towards his own cock. He got him off just like Kerry had gotten him off, and fuck if it wasn't so good Johnny felt fucking high on it. It was every bit as good as fucking the crazy painter chick or any other woman he'd hooked up with recently, except somehow ... better still. Because Kerry wasn't going to give him shit for something stupid afterwards. Kerry was going to come home with him and they'd finally continue working on their song, and if he started being a smug little shit about any of this, Johnny would simply kiss him again until he shut his pretty mouth.
Maybe he'd let Kerry suck him off, too, considering how many times Kerry had offered to do just that in the past and how much he liked to brag about being great at it. Johnny didn't think he wanted to fuck him, but damn, who the fuck knew anymore when kissing Kerry felt this good? When even feeling Kerry's cock in his hand, his come spilling over Johnny's fingers, hadn't put him off?
"Let's just get back to my place," he said against Kerry's lips when they'd both tucked themselves back in. Kerry looked breathless and flushed and a little suspicious, so Johnny kissed him again before he could argue with him. "And just shut your fucking mouth, yeah? If you're a bitch about this, I'm leaving."
Kerry gave him a disbelieving stare and scoffed, but after another moment he spread out his arms and shrugged. "Fine, if you can manage not being a bitch, too."
On their way to the metro, Kerry slipped his hand into the back pocket of Johnny's pants and squeezed. Johnny wanted to tell him to knock it off the way he always had, but fuck it, who cared. Half their friends assumed they were fucking anyway, so it hardly made a difference if anyone saw them like this. And if it made sure that Kerry kept grinning to himself like an idiot instead of being a smug asshole about this ... Johnny could live with that.
Fuck, it turned out Johnny could live with a whole lot of things he hadn't expected.