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He knew where he was, because he'd been there before. It was the when of it that was fucking him up.
The place was the parking lot outside the Hammer, where they'd played their final show that night before the bullshit with Rogue and Smasher and the Tower. That night was also when it was, he knew that, 'cause the chopper was waiting with Rogue and Shaitan and all those other assholes in it, and he had the fucking bomb in its bag in one hand, a smoke in the other 'cause he'd figured why not have one last cigarette before he flew out there and did this thing? It was just like he remembered, though he knew V had suspected he'd embellished it a little. Turned out he hadn't. That was news to him, too.
But the point was: somehow he was there again, whether it was all just the last human flash of his psyche washing out beyond the Blackwall or whatever, fuck, maybe just one of life's loops. One second it'd been 2077, Mikoshi, saying goodbye to V and all that crap, heading out into the freaking never-never with his ex the ex-human AI; the next, it was 2023 again, a parking lot with the downdraft from the chopper whipping his goddamn hair into his face, and Kerry standing there telling him he shouldn't go. He'd been there before, he'd done that before, told Kerry to go his own way, and he knew for sure that he'd done it because he'd heard the songs he'd written after. He'd heard all of them. Maybe more than Johnny would've had it in him to write if he'd lived so fucking long.
But there Kerry was again, just local-famous instead of having everyone in the whole damn world know his name. There he was, telling him not to do it, while the smoke from Johnny's cigarette whirled there in between them. It got into Johnny's eyes and made them sting in that old familiar way, familiar like this whole damn conversation was, the way the Tower was, the way Kerry was. Kerry who was gonna be fucked up for fifty years thanks to the choices Johnny made this night. Jesus Christ, he didn't want that. He didn't want that any more than Kerry taking a gun into the bathroom with him while he showered, like that shit didn't mean something. Something real specific: something that fucked Johnny up a little more every time he thought about it.
So maybe in the end it all came back to that one dumb offhand thing he'd said to Rogue that night at the drive-in, not even halfway serious about it at the time, how if he could go back and do it over, he'd do Kerry. Sure, he hadn't meant it, he'd just been yanking Rogue's chain the way he always had, but shit, maybe truer words had never been spoken. Maybe if he had the power to change the past now he was living it again, Kerry was the one that he should change it for. Maybe the pissed-off feeling he'd gotten whenever V and Kerry had hooked up had meant something, the way V had so very fucking patiently explained it had. Maybe what he needed to do was leave Arasaka the fuck alone and fuck Kerry instead, make up for lost time by making out or some dumb fucking thing. He just knew there was no way he could've heard that back in 2023 and done anything but laugh; now, though, everything he'd seen and done, everything he knew about the world, about himself, he didn't feel so much like laughing.
"Yeah, you know what, fine," Johnny said, cutting Kerry off mid-sentence.
"Fine what?" Kerry replied, after an ominous pause filled up with the whoop-whoop-whoop of the AV's too-consistent rotors layered over the shitty DJing from the club. Kerry was frowning at him, just like he had been before that, but it had morphed into a different kind of frown now - Kerry had a whole bunch of different frowns, if you knew where to look and cared enough to work them out. Turned out either Johnny had cared more than he'd realized back then, or else they'd spent enough time high around each other for the knowledge to seep in via coke-fuelled osmosis, because he knew what that frown meant. It wasn't fuck you for throwing your life away, it wasn't fuck you for not giving a crap about me, it was what the fuck are you talking about? Johnny had to admit he liked the look of the latter a whole lot more than either of the former.
"Yeah, fine, I won't do it," he said. "It won't change anything anyway. They'll just build another fucking tower, same old corpo bullshit. The world's gonna go on just like it did before." His mouth took a bitter twist. "Guess at least this way I'll still be in it."
Kerry eyed him. It was his you've gotta be fucking kidding me frown now, like he expected Johnny to roll his eyes and ask him if he'd really fallen for that bunch of crap. But screw it, Johnny actually meant what he'd said: he'd seen the bleak-ass future that was basically as shitty as the bleak-ass present, and nothing he'd done had made a difference at all. Samurai was a few tunes they still played on classic rock radio, a few old fans who hadn't cared enough to make a difference in the world, a logo on the gates of Kerry's fucking huge estate. Johnny was half a faded legend and half a cautionary tale, a date tattooed on Kerry's arm, a bunch of songs that he mostly denied were about him. But none of that was real, not yet, and okay, so half of him said fuck it, go with Rogue and get it right this time, but half of him said none of that shit mattered. Not enough to die for. Not to die for twice, at least.
"Wait here," Johnny said.
"What, so I can stand around and watch you blow me off for whatever this shit is?" Kerry replied.
Johnny grabbed Kerry's shoulder with his smoking hand and swayed in closer to him for a second, caught his gaze and held it there the way he knew that Kerry always liked - the way that told him he had every ounce of his attention. He had. For once, he didn't even mean it ironically.
"Fuck's sake, Ker," he said. "Just wait here, okay? It's important. I'm coming right back."
He turned away and he marched across the windswept parking lot, over to the chopper. Rogue met him there, but he'd already made his decision: he wasn't getting in. He handed her the bag and she frowned at him like he'd blown a fuse or something, like he was some cowardly fake in a Silverhand suit and not the narcissistic asshole whose plan this was; he told her some stupid shit about how it turned out he was washing his hair tonight, she should go ahead, regards to Saburo, and then he marched right back over to where Kerry was standing, watching him, still there by the door. The look on Kerry's face as the chopper took off was eerily close to how Rogue's had been, like maybe Johnny wasn't Johnny at all, like he was some impostor in a Johnny suit. He was pretty sure he was still Johnny Silverhand, though: just maybe he wasn't the Johnny that they thought he was.
"They're leaving without you," Kerry said, with his eyes on him and not the chopper as it faded out into the sky, till the noise from back inside the club washed it out almost completely.
"They sure are," Johnny replied. "I always knew you were observant."
Kerry made a face. "And I always knew you were a dick," he said, but then the grimace on his face turned back into a frown again. "Why did you do that?" he asked, like he really had no clue at all and like the answer was important, and Johnny guessed that that made sense because he knew how sure he'd seemed. He'd seemed sure because he'd been sure, so totally convinced that he was doing the right thing that the thought of it all getting so completely fucked just hadn't even entered his head. "I thought you had this all planned out."
"Fuck, you need to make your mind up," Johnny said, but he was trying real hard not to smile. "You know you literally just told me not to do it, yeah?"
"Yeah, but I didn't think you'd listen."
"So you wanted me to go?"
"Oh fuck you, Johnny. Did you hear me say that?"
"So you were making a point? Some bullshit about how I never do what you want me to, right?"
"I, uh..." Kerry shoved his hands into his jeans pockets like maybe he'd punch him in the face or shake him by the shoulders if he didn't, which Johnny thought might've actually been a pretty fair response. "Shit, Johnny. I don't understand. Thirty seconds ago you were gonna go, I don't know, blow yourself up for the greater good?" He shook his head tightly. He dropped his chin toward his chest, looked up at Johnny like that from under his goddamn eyelashes, like he'd had a better grip on the situation when Johnny had been about to blow shit up. Possibly including himself. Probably including others. "Don't tell me I changed your mind just saying you don't have to do this. That's bullshit and you know it."
The hell of it was, he didn't know it. Sure, yeah, it was waking up inside V's head in 2077 and everything that had come after it that had changed his mind, but if Kerry hadn't been there right then, right at that second...there was a pretty good chance he would've just gone with Rogue like he had the time before. Johnny took a slow drag on his cigarette as he thought that through; Kerry watched him do it and with Kerry's eyes on his mouth, Johnny could see, clear as day, what he was gonna do next. He could see, clear as day, what Kerry's reaction to that was gonna be. It felt weird to want it, or at least it felt weird to let himself want it, but whatever: chances were this wasn't real anyway. He wasn't sure if he hoped it was or hoped it wasn't, but either way it was probably gonna shut Kerry the fuck up.
There was a wall just a couple of feet behind Kerry, out of the way of the doors and away from the lurking huscle, so Johnny stepped forward and made Kerry step back. He made him move until there was no more back because back was the wall and Johnny rested his chrome hand against it, palm flat to the bricks, scraping a little, wrist pressed up to Kerry's shoulder. Kerry rested his head back to look at him and Johnny got in close and he brought his ganic arm up, the smoke still burning there between his fingers. Then he turned his hand to offer it to Kerry, like he'd done a hundred times before but still somehow not like that at all.
Kerry leaned forward a little and he put his mouth to it, eyes darting up to Johnny's like he was kind of unsure what the fuck was going on as his lips brushed Johnny's fingers. He took a long drag as Johnny's thumb stroked underneath his chin, and as Johnny lowered his hand again, as he let his fingertips trail over Kerry's mouth then drop away down to his side, he leaned in even closer. He got so fucking close that Kerry couldn't even turn to his head to breathe back out and then Kerry seemed to get it, startled but sure; he blew the smoke back out again, slow and steady, while Johnny breathed it in from maybe not quite three inches away. Johnny fucking shotgunned the smoke from Kerry's mouth, not even close to something that they'd done before, so close they might as well have kissed. Then he leaned away and he turned his head to breathe the smoke back out again, while Kerry fucking gawked at him. Seemed like smoking really hadn't settled Kerry's nerves.
"Fuck, I wanna kiss you so bad right now," Kerry said, still leaning there against the wall, his long hair catching on the surface of the bricks, with Johnny's chrome hand still right there by his shoulder. The desperate, fucked up tone to his voice twisted at someplace inside Johnny in a way it never really had back then, the first time around. It twisted at something V had understood but Johnny would've maybe never got to on his own, not even all those times when he'd pissed off Kerry's inputs till they'd dumped him. Not even when he'd started fistfights with them, whether he knew that he could win or not, 'cause even if he lost and wound up knocked on his ass with a bloody lip, he'd known Kerry would yell at them until they left then blot the blood from Johnny's face with the hem of his own shirt.
Back then, he'd've said he did it 'cause he hated how distracted Kerry got, because it made all their Samurai crap seem that much harder to manage. V would've said okay, maybe that was halfway true and Kerry had always turned ten different kinds of flaky whenever he'd got a new guy in his life, but the other half of it was plain old jealousy, bone-deep and bitter, and really fucked up if you gave it just a little thought. And at that moment, fuck it: if Kerry had kissed him, Johnny would've let him. At that moment, forty-something years old and four minutes past giving up a second chance at life because he'd felt just how desperately V wanted to live it, he really wanted Kerry to kiss him. Forty-something years old and he'd turned into a teenager trying to ask his crush to prom, or figuring out how to get them to ask him, but he figured he could work with that.
"So why don't you?" Johnny replied.
"'Cause I like how I'm not currently getting cursed at, or insulted, or told to grow the fuck up?" Kerry said, like he was kinda baffled by the question. "I know it's been a while since I hit on you and really meant it, but I still remember how that goes, y'know? Maybe that's fun for you, I don't know, maybe you get a kick out of it, but it's not a barrel of laughs for me, Johnny. It's more like a slap in the face. Over and over. And you know the definition of madness, right?"
Johnny shrugged. He stepped back, his arms spread wide, then he took one last drag on his cigarette before he flicked it to the asphalt and ground it out with his boot. He felt like he could've lit another right away, just so he had something to keep his hands busy, some dumb nervous tic he'd developed in the last five minutes though he barely even knew what nerves were.
"You want me to kiss you first?" he said. "Is that it?"
Kerry threw up his hands. "Well, yeah!" he said. "Yeah. Fuck, yeah, that's what I always wanted. How is that a question you need to ask at this point?" He shook his head. "Fuck me, I thought you knew this."
He could've just kissed him. The maybe almost sensible thing to do would've been kissing him, just like that, pressed up against the wall of the shitty club they'd played in more times than Johnny could count, where they'd always had a decent crowd and the sound guy really knew what he was doing. Kerry usually made some kind of an at least half-assed attempt to seduce him there, like checking in that the situation vis-à-vis Johnny's heterosexuality hadn't changed, before he picked up a guy at the bar and fucked him in the men's room or some real romantic shit that was sure to lead straight to true love. Not that Johnny had opinions on that matter, except that it turned out he did. The sensible thing would've been kissing him there in the parking lot in full view of the huscle who clearly didn't have a single fuck to give between the two of them. Or maybe the actually fucking sensible thing would've been to tell Kerry the truth about 2077, or just agree he'd been a dick to him on and off since the day they'd met, and then call it a night 'cause a small step in the right direction was better than a huge step in the wrong one. The only problem with that was the fact Johnny had never been the one-step-at-a-time type. He was more the giant leap with fingers crossed type.
"Come with me," Johnny said.
Kerry's eyes narrowed. "Come with you where, exactly?"
"Does it matter?"
"Well, from the point of view where all our shit's inside the club...yeah, kinda?"
"So call Nance. Have her take care of it, you know she gets off on all that organizational crap."
"My phone's inside, too."
Johnny reached into his back pocket, pulled out his own phone and tossed it to Kerry. Kerry who just about managed to catch it and honestly, if he'd had more time to think about it, Kerry might've let it drop on purpose. Then Johnny walked toward the Porsche, parked not too far away, figured Kerry would follow him maybe just 'cause the alternatives were shitty, and he did; Johnny opened up the driver's side door and once he'd parked his ass behind the wheel, the passenger door opened and Kerry got in next to him. Johnny started the car and Kerry unlocked the phone as they pulled out of the parking space, no surprise at all that he knew his passcode 'cause he'd had the same one for the past fifteen years: the fake date of birth from his first fake ID. Kerry was texting as Johnny stepped on the gas and pulled out of the parking lot, onto the weirdly deserted street outside. He passed the phone back to him two blocks later, screen still unlocked, text still on the screen, and Johnny snorted as he read it: Taking Kerry back to my place, gonna fuck him on the kitchen table. Hold our gear?
Nancy replied while the phone was still in Johnny's hand, just Sure, "Johnny" because the texter's identity was pretty fucking obvious, but somehow that wasn't the point that stuck with him about it. What stuck with him was the image of Kerry on the kitchen table in his shitty apartment, like the time V'd fucked him on the dining table at the villa in front of all those floor-to-ceiling windows. He knew for a fact there was less champagne in his apartment. He was at least 95% sure Kerry's bare ass had never been near his table. But with all the times he'd watched from inside V's head while they two of them fucked, because it wasn't like he'd been able to go anyplace else, with all the times he'd felt like he was stuck in some kind of a fucked up BD starring his own ex-best friend, it wasn't tough to imagine what that would be like. In fact, it was disturbingly easy, and so maybe that was the answer.
"Sure, fine," Johnny said, as he turned off the screen and shoved the phone into his pocket.
"Sure, fine?" Kerry replied. "What the fuck does that mean?"
Johnny ignored him. "Just one question," he said instead. "Do you mean on or do you mean over?"
"What?"
"The table. On it or over it?"
"The fuck does it matter?"
Johnny slowed at the next set of lights, didn't bother with the handbrake, just stepped on the clutch and knocked the car into first gear. He let it creep forward inch by inch as he looked sideways at Kerry, the red light that washed over his face making him look maybe moderately more pissed than he really was. That was fine, though: Johnny had always kinda liked that look on him.
"I'm gonna imagine myself fucking you till we get out of the car," Johnny told him, straightforwardly, 'cause that was exactly what he planned to do. "So just for the sake of accuracy in this sexually explicit fantasy: are you on top of the table or am I bending you over it?"
Kerry gave him a look like what he wanted to say was are you having a breakdown right now? or to ask exactly how high he was, or if maybe he should leap out of the car and go organize an intervention right the fuck now. But fuck that: the light was still red so Johnny turned in his seat and he leaned over there, slid his ganic hand between the back of Kerry's hair and the front of the headrest, slid his chrome hand down between Kerry's thighs and squeezed. Suddenly, Kerry didn't look so sure it was a joke or a psychotic break or whatever. He basically froze there, eyes wide, hands gripping at his thighs, as Johnny traced the outline of his cock through his jeans with the pad of his chrome thumb.
"Fuck," Kerry said, under his breath, like he wasn't really aware he'd said anything at all. It felt pretty good, Johnny thought, the way Kerry's cock twitched under the denim as he touched him, that look on his face that was part overwhelming confusion and part total disbelief, but then the light changed and Kerry looked away and pointed at it with his arm stuck straight out like an arrow, like maybe Johnny gave a fuck about the people stuck behind them. He chose to, though, for once, ran the back of his ganic fingers over Kerry's throat and then moved on down the street.
But still, as they pushed up toward seventy, he glanced at him and said, "So, I'm waiting."
"For what?"
"An answer. On or over?"
Kerry cursed again, real obvious this time. He dropped his head back heavily against the headrest behind him and when Johnny looked at him, he'd closed his eyes. He was squeezing them shut, just like he was squeezing his hands into fists on his thighs.
"On," he said. "I'm on top of it, okay? You're standing." And that was a pretty great start.
"Pants on or off?" Johnny asked.
"Mine or yours?"
"Yours."
"Off. On the floor someplace, whatever."
"And mine?"
"On. Around your knees. Just far enough to get your cock in me."
"Jesus, Kerry. That's pretty fucking hot."
"It is?"
Johnny scoffed, 'cause it turned out in his head that was pretty obviously hot, but when he glanced at Kerry there in the half dark, seeing his face in flashes from the streetlights, he could tell that Kerry somehow wasn't sure if it was hot or not. Fuck knew what Johnny had done to make him get that way, 'cause he knew that under any normal circumstances Kerry could dirty-talk like a true professional. He'd heard him do it - on the phone with some guy he was or wasn't dating but was definitely fucking, in more than one shitty dressing room backstage in some dive they'd both known they were better than, on the couch in apartments they'd shared over the years because that'd been easier than breaking in a roommate, even when they'd fucking hated each other. Johnny had always told him to keep that shit to himself, because he damn sure didn't need to hear about the things he wanted them to do to him. Now, though, when what he wanted was Kerry to talk to him, when it was finally the right time and the appropriate place, he'd started doubting his own ability to turn a willing guy on. Maybe because it was Johnny, not some hot asshole he'd just met twenty minutes ago. Maybe because the willing part was so new it kinda didn't seem real.
And sure, yeah, maybe Johnny did know what he'd done to make him get that way: he'd said no to him for fifteen years in a bunch of different ways, ranging from amused to annoyed to deliberately fucking cruel. He'd told him not if we were the last two people left on Earth, that he'd fuck literally every woman on the planet before he'd so much as look at him. He'd told him it was fucking awkward the way that he kept hitting on him, and that his output thought it was hilarious, and that he couldn't fault his taste but seriously, he was straight. Turned out all it had taken to tear a bunch of holes into that notion was a few weeks riding around inside V's brain, then a fucked up second death that maybe was and maybe wasn't death at all. Maybe Soulkiller really had ended him the first time and all that was left was bits and bytes. Not that any of that mattered right then, not that he gave one single existential fuck, not when he understood he needed to do something that would cut through all of the unnecessary shit he'd heaped on Kerry. Turned out he had an idea about that.
So, he reached over with his ganic hand, chrome hand still tight on the wheel, and he took Kerry by the wrist. He pulled Kerry's hand over and he pressed it down between his own thighs, over his cock, though the leather of his pants was kind of in the way. He tightened his hand on top of Kerry's made him squeeze, made himself breathe in sharply, and then Kerry pulled his hand away. He had to admit he hadn't expected that.
"What the fuck is going on with you?" Kerry asked.
Johnny glanced at him then back at the road again. "Well, right now I'm trying real hard to get laid," he replied.
"C'mon, Johnny. I'm serious."
"So am I." He took a breath and blew it out, hit the steering wheel with his ganic hand because he wasn't sure he trusted himself to do it with his chrome one, at least not without breaking it. Then he said, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
"Would you believe I had an epiphany?"
"No, not really."
"So what would you believe?"
"I don't know, traumatic brain injury?"
"So pretend it's that."
"Pretend you fell and hit your head and now you wanna fuck me?" Kerry said "Sure, that's real flattering. That right there's the stuff that dreams are made of."
"Then what if I told you I died tonight?"
"Are we talking metaphorically? Philosophically?"
"Literally."
"Y'know, I don't think doing so much blow you pass out in the men's room and miss half the show counts as death and resurrection."
Johnny pulled up to the curb outside his building, backed into what was definitely not the one remaining parking space and blocked in the asshole he hated from three doors down the hall. Weirdly, Kerry seemed to relax a little as he did that, maybe because he'd seen what he'd just done and actually, it really seemed like the kind of petty shit that Johnny did on a regular basis. But then Johnny turned to him instead of getting out of the car, lit by the shitty streetlights and the neon blue blink of the sign outside the all night laundromat. As the big ol' blue bubbles flashed across Kerry's face, he could almost imagine blue eyes there instead of brown ones. He preferred the brown ones, and the hair that only didn't fall into his eyes because of the bandana he was wearing, and maybe the beard and the extra few pounds of muscle had looked good on him, maybe the gold chrome and the tattoos had, too, but fuck, at least there didn't need to be a date on his arm now. Johnny sure as hell wasn't dying tonight. Not unless he was already dead, he guessed.
"What if I told you I've lived this night before?" Johnny said.
"I'd say maybe you did fall and hit your head."
Johnny grimaced. He sat back. He looked away, shrugged, rolled his head back toward him with what he was pretty sure was a weird fucking smile there on his face.
"We blew the tower," he said, "but it all went to hell, and I died there tonight. But I didn't really die, or maybe I did, who the fuck really knows. They made me into some kind of a program and kept me locked up for fifty years. But then I got out, and I met someone, and he made me reevaluate my shit."
Kerry frowned at him. That was definitely an are you fucking kidding me right now? frown that wavered till it morphed into an I'm genuinely concerned you're losing it frown, before he took a breath and rubbed his face.
"So you met some guy in the future who made you wanna fuck me instead of setting off a nuclear weapon?" Kerry said.
Johnny shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much," he said.
"Yeah, well, excuse me if I think that sounds like bullshit."
"Pretty sure it's not crazy to have principles you think are worth dying for but to know tonight's not the night."
"That's not the crazy part and you know it."
Johnny guessed he did. He sounded like a fucking lunatic and he hadn't even explained the fact he'd been an engram on a chip inside V's head, or the fact V had been fucking Kerry while Johnny had been rattling around in there. He hadn't told him he knew what it felt like to fuck him, at least from the back of some other guy's mind, or that he couldn't think of one single goddamn reason why he shouldn't see what it felt like for him to do that, too.
"You know, you're really hot in 2077," Johnny said.
Kerry snorted. He made a face. "Okay, two things," he said. "One: am I not like ninety years old in 2077?"
"Sure, but with all the gene therapy crap you look my age."
"Pretty sure that's out of my price range."
"Yeah, well, give it five years and you're gonna be famous," Johnny said. "And everyone knows who you are in 2077." He raised his eyebrows at him. "Seriously. Everyone."
"So I'm still making records?"
"Sure you are. To be honest about it, they're really fucking good ones." He paused. He frowned. "So what was the second thing?"
Kerry laughed, shook his head, ran one hand over his hair. "Two," he said. "You're saying I'm only hot in 2077?"
He looked at Johnny in the crappy light, an expression on his face like he was joking but not really joking, like he expected that was what Johnny was doing, like any second now Johnny was gonna laugh his ass off because maybe Kerry had started to fall for his obvious bullshit. Johnny hated that, not because Kerry would've usually been wrong about it but because he would've usually been right: once upon a time, all of this would've been some shitty joke at Kerry's expense. And screw that, he thought - he was gonna convince him otherwise. That had to be within his power. So he did the first thing that came to mind, dumb as it was: he shoved his seat back and then climbed straight into Kerry's lap.
It really wasn't easy, but he also really wasn't a quitter. The front seats of his Porsche really hadn't been designed for it, though, so Johnny wound up with one knee jammed between Kerry's seat and the gearshift and the other knee jammed between Kerry's thigh and the door, and he had to lean really low so his head didn't hit the roof. Still, though, the stunned look on Kerry's face made the dumb, hunched, cramp-inducing position kinda worth it.
"Johnny, what are you doing?" Kerry asked, as he flexed his hands just an inch or two above Johnny's thighs. Then he apparently made up his mind and set his hands down, up by Johnny's hips.
"Roll the window down," Johnny said, which wasn't really an answer but that was fine because Kerry didn't seem to need one. He just did as he was told and opened the window a couple of inches while Johnny produced and then lit a cigarette. He inhaled from it, then blew the smoke toward the window, inhaled again as he looked Kerry in the eye, but then he leaned in close. It was stupid, but he hadn't come this far to give up and so he kissed him as his heart fucking pounded in his chest, pressed his mouth to Kerry's, got his chrome hand that was holding the cigarette pressed up against the seat and tangled his ganic hand in Kerry's hair. Kerry pushed him back but not to push him away, just to grab his wrist so he could get his mouth to the cigarette. When they kissed again, hard, kinda desperate, the smoke was fucking everywhere: it was in the air, and in Johnny's eyes, curling there in the neon-lit dark between their mouths with every breath they took. Kerry got one hand up to Johnny's hair and one hand down to Johnny's ass and he held him there as they kissed the smoke from each other's mouths between drags on Johnny's cigarette. Over and over, as it slowly turned to ash.
Johnny licked into Kerry's mouth and Kerry fucking moaned as Johnny's tongue slid against his, as he nipped at the tip of it then bit at his lip. He knew what Kerry liked because he remembered one rainy goddamn afternoon in Kerry's villa, on one of Kerry's fucking awful white couches, when Kerry had sat V down and taught him how to kiss him till he'd been so damn turned on he'd been practically rubbing himself off against V's thigh. He knew what Kerry could take because he'd seen the way he'd let his shitty inputs treat him, mostly because getting bitten and sucked on and slapped in the face seemed to genuinely get him off. Johnny figured he could work with that, as he flicked what was left of their shared cigarette from the window to the sidewalk. He ducked his head to the side of Kerry's neck and he sucked over his pulse as he shoved his chrome hand down between Kerry's thighs. Fuck, he liked the way that felt, Kerry's throat under his mouth and his cock under his hand. Johnny was pretty sure Kerry would've let him get him off right there, but once he was done leaving a fucking livid bruise just under Kerry's jaw, he opened the door and he let himself out. Kind of abruptly, he guessed, but enough was enough. He wasn't getting stains on his upholstery.
"So that's it?" Kerry said, still sitting there in the passenger seat as Johnny stretched to work the kinks out of his half-cramped muscles. "This is when you tell me to get a cab home and forget all about this, right?"
Johnny rested one arm on the roof of the car. He leaned down toward him. "That's what you want?" he said.
"Yeah, well, it's not the first thing that comes to mind," Kerry replied, and then he pressed one hand to his neck. He frowned, then he flipped the sun visor down and stretched out his neck to check the bruise in the mirror in the weird neon light. Then he gave him a really fucking weird look and said, "Johnny, did you give me a hickey?"
Johnny grinned. "Yeah," he said, and he reached his chrome hand out to touch it, made Kerry shiver in the process. "I'm not gonna lie, Ker. It looks fucking great on you."
"So all the times you told me they look tacky?"
"That was different."
"Because it wasn't you?"
Johnny held out his hand; Kerry took him by the wrist and let Johnny help him up and once the door was closed again, Johnny crowded him back against it. Kerry did not seem to mind him getting in his space. Honestly, he never had, and Johnny had never taken the time to appreciate that.
"Yeah," Johnny said, though he knew he was admitting something when frankly, admissions had never really been his strong suit. "Yeah. Because it wasn't me."
He rested his hands on the car either side of Kerry's arms as he wondered what the fuck he was doing, except he guessed he knew. He pressed against him, felt Kerry's dick against his hip through a layer of denim and leather, so he adjusted his stance a little, not so he couldn't feel him anymore but so Kerry could feel him, too, half-hard dick to half-hard dick. Then he leaned in by his ear.
"Because it should've been me," he said. "Turns out you were right all along. Who knew."
Kerry took a shaky breath and didn't say I told you so. He took two handfuls of the back of Johnny's shirt and said, "Fuck," instead. "I mean, hypocritical double standards aside, it almost sounds like you really mean that." And honestly, Johnny really thought he did. There was no way he could've been that guy the first time around and he knew that, yeah, but shit had changed.
"Yeah, well, I've had some time to think about it," he told him, as he stepped away and beckoned him with him. "C'mon. I meant what I said about getting laid and I'm not above fucking you in the street if that's what it takes, but..." He waved him closer. "C'mon. We already put on one show tonight."
Kerry rolled his eyes at him, his face flushed and his expression right on the edge of weirded the fuck out, but they still went inside. Behind the nondescript front door next to the laundromat, the place was just like Johnny remembered, which was to say the hall was full of trash and someone had yanked half the mailboxes down off of the wall, but at least the elevator was working that night. They stepped inside and Kerry pressed the button for Johnny's floor, and Johnny figured why not: he stepped up behind Kerry and wrapped his arms around his waist, impulsive but whatever. Fuck knew what Kerry had been expecting, though, 'cause he tensed up hard for a second, but then he relaxed and leaned back against him, let Johnny take a little of his weight. And as Johnny spread his chrome hand over Kerry's chest and his ganic hand between his thighs, as the elevator started to slide closed, Johnny's last favorite jackass neighbor appeared there, calling, "Hold the door!"
"Yeah, no fucking way," Johnny replied, and he flipped him off as the doors slid closed. Kerry laughed breathlessly while Johnny palmed his cock over his jeans.
"Jesus, you're a dick sometimes," Kerry said, not even managing to sound a little like he cared.
"You sure that doesn't just turn you on?" Johnny replied, and he slipped his hand in underneath the hem of Kerry's shirt, over warm skin, down to the waist of his jeans. He ran his fingertips just underneath the waistband and made Kerry take a breath. He'd played this game with so many girls over the years, he thought, taking them up to his place, going back to theirs, and it was really just the same but different. It was Kerry and so it was kinda fucked up but that also meant he knew him, knew him really well, knew the way his skin smelled when they got off stage after a show, the smell of the overpriced conditioner he used on his hair that sometimes Johnny borrowed 'cause smelling like Kerry really wasn't bad. He knew the place on his lip that Johnny had fucked up with a mic stand, that he'd touched sometimes when he was drunk or high though Kerry had gotten it removed after the first six months. He knew him. Once, that had just seemed so fucking stifling. Now, though, it was something else.
"So, what are you wearing under there?" Johnny asked, with his fingers still tucked down an inch or two in Kerry's jeans.
"I don't know, Johnny," Kerry replied, kinda sarcastic, which was par for the course. "What are you wearing under yours?"
Johnny shrugged. "Not a single thing."
"Well, there you have it. We're not so different after all."
So, Johnny wasn't exactly surprised when he worked open Kerry's belt and twisted the button at his waist open with one hand, when he pulled the zipper down and found that Kerry was bare underneath. He slipped his hand in, wrapped his fingers around him, felt him twitch and stiffen against the inside of his wrist, and fuck, Johnny liked that. It did something to him, in his chest and in his balls, and he even liked the wet smudge from the tip of Kerry's cock against his skin as he reached down to squeeze him by the balls. Kerry made a needy kind of sound someplace way down in his throat, a sound with which Johnny was really familiar, from all the times he'd been inside V's head, from the times he'd been inside the rooms where Kerry had been fucking, except that he could tell that Kerry tried to cut it off. Probably because he figured Johnny would just mock him for it. So he squeezed again as the door slid open, slid one finger back to rub firmly at his taint, then pressed his mouth to the back of Kerry's shoulder.
"You know, that sound you make just makes me wanna fuck you more," he told him, and Kerry shivered against him as Johnny reached past his shoulder to keep the door from closing. It clinked against his chrome hand and then he pulled away, pulled his hand back out of Kerry's jeans, but caught both his wrists when he moved to zip himself back up. "Don't," he said, and he slipped his hands down to ease Kerry's erection back into his pants himself, while Kerry bit at his own bottom lip. Fuck, Johnny liked having his hands on him. He would've liked having his mouth on him, too, he was pretty sure about that. He would've liked having his dick in him, right there in the goddamn elevator, riding up and down in it like some shitty fairground ride while he worked his way up to coming inside him.
"Don't zip up," Johnny told him, and Kerry nodded tightly like he didn't quite trust himself to speak after that, but he followed when Johnny left the elevator. It was only a short walk down the hall to Johnny's door but it felt like fucking forever till he could push Kerry up face first there against it and rock his hips against his ass while he patted at his pockets for his keys. Then his jackass neighbor came out of the stairwell and started bitching at him about the elevator, about how he couldn't move his car because Johnny had deliberately blocked him in again, and Kerry turned his head and said, "Fuck, man, can't you see he's kinda busy right now?"
Johnny snorted and the neighbor spluttered and Kerry turned in Johnny's arms, got both his hands to Johnny's ass then pulled him in against him, and that was apparently enough to make the guy beat his final retreat. Johnny kissed him, maybe for saving him or maybe just because, as he found the key and fumbled it against the lock, then promptly dropped it on the floor because Jesus Christ, he was too turned on for stupid shit like fine motor control. He dropped into a crouch there right in front of Kerry so that he could pick it up again but the issue there was his position put him right by Kerry's cock, just a few inches away, right there. He looked up once he'd scooped up the keys and he smiled as Kerry eyed him, as Kerry reached down to tuck Johnny's hair back behind one ear.
"So, how many times have you jerked off imagining me on my knees?" Johnny asked him.
"Technically, you're not on your knees right now," Kerry replied, crossing his arms over his chest, and okay so he was being a smartass, but he also had a point. So Johnny tilted his hips forward and tipped himself out from that crouch down to his knees.
"You were saying?" he said.
Kerry grinned. "Yeah, pretty sure I lost count years ago," he replied, and he reached out to run the pad of his thumb over Johnny's lips, just for a second. "Fuck, Johnny, you'd look great sucking cock."
And Johnny thought about just standing back up, actually unlocking the door this time, but he was so damn close to him down there that it seemed almost rude for him not to. He could see the base of Kerry's cock where his jeans hung open, the first couple of inches of it, so he leaned in with both hands against the door and he pressed his mouth against him there. He sucked a little as Kerry let his head drop back against the door and he ran his fingers into Johnny's hair, twisted tight, almost so tight it hurt but Johnny could be into that sometimes. But he figured that was enough for now, 'cause he absolutely wasn't gonna suck Kerry off on his knees in the corridor outside his door. He did get Kerry's dick back out, though, did give the tip a long, wet lick that made him gasp and make the sound again, then he stood and he kissed him as he finally unlocked the door.
Once it was open, he walked him backwards through it, sucking kinda hard on Kerry's lip, flicking on the lights and kicking the door closed behind them as they went. He tossed the keys away, didn't give a fuck where they landed, then wrapped his hand around him again and pressed him up against the kitchen table. Then Kerry seemed to realize exactly where they were in relation to what they'd been talking about back outside in the car, and he broke the kiss, and he eased Johnny back.
"Are we really doing this?" he asked, and Johnny guessed he understood why he seemed so damn incredulous because as far as Johnny was aware, he'd never once even let it seem like they might go this far before. So he just took a step back and he raised his eyebrows at him, gestured at him, the fact he was standing there with his dick out in Johnny's shitty apartment and all because Johnny had led him there instead of running off to his untimely death. When that didn't seem to convince him, Johnny put his hands to the buckle of his own belt, but two second later he changed his mind again and stepped back in closer to Kerry. He took Kerry's hands and he brought them to his waist, to his belt.
"Yeah, we're really doing this," he said, though it was pretty hard to believe it himself, just maybe not for the exact same reason as Kerry had. "Maybe go ahead and unbuckle my belt." So Kerry did that, not exactly slowly, let it hang from the loops for a second but then pulled it out and tossed it onto the counter with a clatter his neighbor would hear down the hall. He seemed to get the idea after that, unbuttoned Johnny's pants, tugged down the zipper, and he used both his hands to ease the leather down past Johnny's ass till he was bare from waist to knee. Kerry looked at him, at his face for a start but when Johnny wrapped his ganic hand around his own dick and stroked a little, Kerry's gaze went down to follow it. Kerry blushed and fuck, Johnny should maybe not have found that cute, but he absolutely did. Like when Kerry swore under his breath then bit his bottom lip. Turned out getting Kerry flustered by him was a turn-on.
"Jesus, Kerry,"Johnny said. "It's like you've never seen my cock before."
Kerry chuckled wryly. "Yeah, well, you putting it in me was never on the cards before," he replied, then he pushed a little at the waist of his own jeans. "So, should I, uh?"
"Yeah, you should." Then Johnny frowned. He hitched his pants back up a little, just far enough that he could walk in them and not feel like a total ass. "Do that. Stay there. I'll be back." He disappeared into the bedroom while he could practically feel Kerry's gaze on his bare ass, rummaged through the drawer by the bed and came back in with a tube of lube to find Kerry already barefoot and naked from the waist down. He was standing there, still in his tank top and bandana and pretty much only them, unless you counted the rings on his fingers. Fuck, just looking at him leaning there against the table made Johnny's dick twitch, and Kerry must've seen it because he raised his brows and said, "Wow, did you just...y'know. Because of me?"
"Yeah, but don't let it go to your head," Johnny told him. "It does that for all the guys I fuck." And Kerry paused a second then laughed kinda breathlessly because, well, they both knew that of the two of them, Johnny was not the one who liked to take a ride on every second cock that he encountered.
Johnny pulled a chair out from the table, legs squeaking on the floor. He sat down on it then he patted his thigh. "C'mere," he said. "Take a seat."
Kerry's eyebrows rose again as he seemed to get what Johnny intended to do to him next, but he didn't say no to it; he came closer, kinda awkward, pants off, dick bobbing, and he straddled Johnny's thighs there on the chair, balanced himself against with his toes on the tiles and his hands at Johnny's shoulders. His cock nudged against Johnny's and made Johnny laugh unexpectedly, not because it was funny, not really, but he guessed it wasn't not. In another life, this night had been a date with Soulkiller, not the tip of Kerry's cock making a damp spot on his shirt, not squeezing lube onto his fingers under the too-bright kitchen lights, not the too-fast, nervous rise and fall of Kerry's chest with every breath he took.
He realized a little too late that he should've maybe taken off his rings and figured fuck it, reached both his hands behind Kerry's back, spread his cheeks, ran his slick ganic fingers down over the crack of his ass. Kerry's face was flushed but he was still looking at Johnny as he did it, as Johnny's fingertips brushed over his hole and made him take a sharp breath in and then chuckle it back out, with a wry twist to his mouth because Jesus, they both knew this wasn't his first time. He'd had at least as much cock as Johnny'd had pussy, which was really kinda saying something. But it wasn't like either of them could pretend this wasn't something really different.
Johnny teased at the rim of Kerry's hole with his fingertips while Kerry gripped so tight at Johnny's shoulders that if one of them hadn't been chrome, he would've maybe had a real nice set of matching bruises shaped like Kerry's fingertips. He teased him there, pressed him there, felt Kerry's rim pull tight and then relax again just like he'd done with V, just like V had done with other guys, but there was no point getting stuck in all the shit they'd done together but then again wouldn't for another fifty years. Kerry pulled his own shirt up a little so Johnny's dick could rest against his abs instead of on his shirt and that felt pretty fucking good, Johnny thought, the head of it rubbing against him just a little, except that what he wanted was to get inside him. Johnny was bigger than V was, or bigger than he would be, it wasn't like V would even be born for another thirty-something years, assuming any of this was even real. It sure as hell felt real, though, as he pressed the tip of his middle finger just a fraction in past Kerry's rim, felt him clench and saw him smile as he arched his back and pressed against it, took it deeper. Fuck, Kerry reached back and he grabbed the lube from the table, squeezed a little of it out onto his own right hand, and Johnny wasn't sure what he was gonna do but Jesus, he was intrigued by it. Then Kerry reached back behind himself and he slipped his fingers down to Johnny's there inside his hole. Johnny's dick twitched as he felt Kerry push one in next to his own, deeper than it, making himself gasp and grimace but honestly, it didn't seem like it was pain that made him look that way.
Johnny pushed his finger in deeper right there beside Kerry's. Kerry's eyes were still on him as Johnny moved his hand again, as he fucked him with it just a little, and Jesus fucking Christ it was almost nothing like this shit had been with V. The body hadn't been his so he guessed that made sense but fuck, it wasn't the same. He could feel Kerry's weight against his thighs, his left hand still squeezing nearly too hard at his ganic shoulder, the way his asshole clenched around his finger again and again as he pushed it in and slicked him up. He could hear how loud Kerry's breath was, like the pounding of his own damn heart, and he shifted again, got the tip of a second finger there to Kerry's hole and pressed against it, slowly. He almost expected Kerry to pull his own back out again but he didn't do it; he left it there as Johnny put two in, as he stretched him, Kerry's jaw tight as he made himself relax to take him in, but he absolutely did it. He pushed against him a little, pushed down on Johnny's fingers, made himself groan and try to cover it with chuckling, but they both knew that Johnny knew. He knew him too damn well to not know.
So, Johnny fucked him with his fingers as they sat there, way too fucking close to one another but somehow nowhere near to close enough. Johnny's balls ached, and his cock throbbed, but he figured it wasn't gonna kill him to wait a while longer, not when the look on Kerry's face was so disconcerted and so fucking enthralled. But then Kerry moved his hand again, so Johnny stopped what he was doing, pushed his fingers deep and left them there while he felt Kerry start to push another in.
"Jesus, Kerry," he said, and Kerry grinned at him, almost too damn turned on to be self-conscious about what it was that he was doing.
"You're really big, what can I say?" he said, maybe teasing, maybe not. "I wanna be prepared."
"You get any more prepared and I could get my entire fucking hand inside you."
Kerry snorted. "Yeah, that's a whole lot harder than it looks," he said, and Johnny's dick gave a stupid, interested twitch that just made Kerry laugh breathlessly as he shoved his finger in right to the knuckle. But it was just for a moment longer, two of Kerry's fingers in there alongside two of Johnny's, before he eased them right back out again. He reached for the lube again. He slicked his fingers up again. But this time, he glanced down and Johnny knew what he was gonna do; Kerry wrapped his hand around Johnny's cock and stroked him, slowly, base to tip and back again. A little more lube and he did it again. A little more, one last time, his grip just tight enough to make Johnny hiss in a breath and shiver against hims. Kerry could've gotten him off like that in five minutes or less - probably less, with the way he squeezed at the tip, the way he ran his thumb against it, the way he teased the really fucking sensitive spot just underneath the head.
"Fuck, you're good at that," Johnny told him, and Kerry leaned down to kiss the corner of his mouth as Johnny pushed his fingers back in deep.
"Yeah, next time you blow off a night of terrorism to take me back to your place, and you shove my hand between your legs like that's the answer to my questions, I'll show you just how good I am," he said, then he reached back to Johnny's hand behind him, took his wrist and pushed his fingers in as deep as they could go. He flexed his hips and rocked against them just a little, then eased Johnny's hand away again. He stood, a little unsteady, his dick still flushed and stiff, shirt falling back down almost to the base of it. Then he hopped up to sit on the table, hands tucked underneath his thighs, and Johnny knew exactly what came next. Maybe he should've been nervous.
He stood. His dick fucking ached he was so hard and he stepped up close, between Kerry's legs, what-the-fuck-ever about the lube because he got his fingers into Kerry's hair and kissed him on the mouth. Johnny had always kinda liked to kiss and kissing Kerry felt great - in spite of all the other bullshit, the maybe-nerves over the fact they were doing this after all that time, how fucked up everything had gotten between the two of them over the years, Kerry knew what he wanted from a kiss, hard and wet, breathless and fucking consuming. Kerry was still wearing all of his rings, too, and Johnny could feel them on his skin as Kerry shoved his hands under the back of his shirt, pushed it up, and Johnny figured okay, if that was what he wanted: he tugged the shirt off over his head and he tossed it away, and Kerry ran his hands over Johnny's bare chest, got one hand to his dog tags and pulled him back in to kiss him again. It didn't last, though - Kerry pushed Johnny back with a sort of eager, turned-on smile on his face as he leaned back slowly, propped himself up on his forearms there on Johnny's goddamn kitchen table. His shirt was riding up a little high over his navel and his legs were swinging over the edge and fuck, he looked good. V would've loved it. Johnny sure did.
"So, are we doing this anytime tonight?" Kerry said, with a twinkle to his eye and a wicked edge to his smile. "I mean, I know I've waited fifteen years, but I kinda feel like you've been edging me for all of them."
Johnny laughed. He stepped back in, ran his hands over Kerry's thighs. "Y'know, I've been called a lot of things," Johnny said, "but a pricktease is not one of them."
Then he slipped his hands under Kerry's thighs and he eased them up. He leaned down and he hooked his arms underneath him and he pulled him down toward the edge of the table, made him laugh and stretch out on his back and Johnny leaned down lower while he was there, licked Kerry's cock right from balls to tip. He didn't mind the way he tasted when he sucked at the head, got it into his mouth, didn't care how it looked except Kerry seemed to like it so he eased up, Kerry's cock still pushed in past his lips, and looked up at him as he tongued the tip. Kerry groaned and ran his fingers into Johnny's hair, flexed them like he would've liked to push him lower but realized in time that maybe Johnny wasn't into that, and maybe he shouldn't keep pushing. He wouldn't've minded, but that fact surprised him so he couldn't exactly blame Kerry for not knowing it. But pulled back, though, leaned down over him, hands on the table, and asked him, "So, how do I look sucking cock?"
Kerry grinned up at him. "I don't know," he replied. "Pretty good, but I think I need more data."
"Sure," Johnny said. "Maybe next time I blow off a night of terrorism I'll blow you, too." Then he stood himself back up between Kerry's legs. He eased up Kerry's knees and exposed his hole, like that was just a normal thing for them to do somehow. Then he pressed his dick against him.
None of this was a great idea, Johnny thought as he started pushing into him. Not that he was having second thoughts: fuck no, he was doing this, there was no way he was stopping now, not when Kerry threw his arms wide and gripped at the edges of the table, not when Kerry hitched his legs up around Johnny's waist and crossed them over his back. Kerry's hair was a fucking mess, spread out over the tabletop, trying to escape from his bandana that was slipping out of place, and his skin was flushed right through his cheeks and neck into his chest, his cock was flushed right to the tip, and all Johnny wanted to do was fuck him. He was just aware that it was really not a great idea, the two of them, because chances were they're be fighting again by morning, if Johnny hadn't blinked out of existence by that point or whatever else might happen. Chances were Kerry was gonna want too much and Johnny wasn't gonna be able to give it to him, even if maybe he wanted to. But he pushed into him, not exactly slowly, watched Kerry's chest rise and fall as he reached up to trace the places where all of that gold chrome would be in fifty years. His chest. His throat, that Kerry stretched out for him so fucking obligingly, arching his back, tilting his head back, so Johnny could fit his palm against it as he pushed his cock in deep.
It maybe wasn't a great idea but it felt great. Johnny pushed in till there was no way to get in any deeper and felt Kerry tighten up around him just for a moment, and the look on Kerry's face said he'd done it totally on purpose. Johnny rolled his eyes and pressed his ganic hand against Kerry's cock like that was some kind of a retaliation except it just made Kerry grip a little harder at the table's edges and push down to see if there was any more of him that he could take. There really wasn't but that didn't stop him. It didn't stop Johnny, either; he gripped Kerry by the hips and pulled back just an inch or two, shoved back in, heard Kerry gasp and squeeze his legs around his waist. All those years telling himself he hadn't wanted this, Johnny thought, while he was fucking him slowly, while the heat and friction of him made his cock throb inside Kerry's hole, all those years and they could've been doing this. Maybe he couldn't've been Kerry's input, though he guessed he wouldn't've been a whole lot worse than some of them. Maybe it would've been more of an on-off thing, or maybe fucking each other would've been just another way for them to fuck each other up. He kinda hated how likely that last part seemed.
So, he fucked him. The lights above them were that shitty kind of bright that picks out all your flaws but Johnny didn't give a fuck, it wasn't like he didn't know what Kerry looked like, it wasn't like he needed him to be some kind of picture perfect thing. It wasn't like Kerry didn't know him, too, hadn't seen him so drunk that he could barely stand, bloody from fights or just fucked up from way too little sleep. It wasn't like Kerry didn't know where all his scars were, even then, because there'd been a night maybe five years after they'd first met when he'd asked about them, and Johnny had been so fucking high that he'd shown them to him, let him touch, told him the stories though he really kinda hated telling anyone the truth of how he'd got them and not just a convenient kind of a lie. Fuck, it was weird to know Kerry knew him like that and still wanted him. Then again, he guessed the same was true now in reverse.
Johnny fucked him. He fucked him till they were both damn near breathless, kinda sweaty under the awful kitchen lights, flushed but maybe not in the pretty, flattering way. Johnny still didn't care, just kept moving, just kept pushing in, feeling Kerry's asshole tight around him, Kerry's hands going to his arms, Kerry's eyes on him. He was kinda slipping a little against the tabletop but that was fine 'cause Johnny wasn't gonna last much longer anyhow, not with how fucking frayed and wired his nerves all felt, not with the thud of his heart and the throb of his cock. He didn't need to ask if Kerry cared if he finished inside him 'cause he knew Kerry liked that, always had, had made a point of pulling up his jeans once he was done with a guy he was fucking backstage, and Johnny was pretty sure he didn't need to know exactly how many shows Kerry had played with some other guy's come in him, how many conversations they'd had, songs they'd started writing. He knew how often V had come in Kerry and played with him after until Kerry had come, too, or he'd waited till V could get it up again then fucked him again while his hole was still slick. So he pushed into him again, Kerry's hands really tight at his arms, Kerry's ass really tight at his cock, fucked him till his hips bucked up to him pretty much of their own accord. He gripped his hips and pulsed inside him, met his eyes so he could see that Kerry knew exactly what was happening. Kerry absolutely knew. Kerry absolutely loved it.
After, Johnny pulled out and he sat back down on the same chair that they'd occupied before. He pulled Kerry with him, sat him down like he had before, shoved his fingers in him, deep, and watched him stroke himself. He could hear the gasps of Kerry's breath as he shoved his dick through his fist, as he rubbed the tip against Johnny's chest, as his come-slick hole clenched around his fingers as he came over his hand. Jesus, it got all over, all the way up Johnny's chest and underneath his chin, but he didn't really give a damn except to run his fingers through it, gather it up so he could rub it between Kerry's cheeks there with his own. V would've taken him to bed and licked it out of him, Johnny thought, and maybe he liked that idea, but maybe that was also a line he wasn't ready to cross yet. Yet. Jesus, that implied he thought this would happen again. It implied he thought this was real at all.
Then, Kerry stood. Johnny watched him find his jeans and pull them on. He watched him lean back against the counter, hands shoved into his pockets, and look at him with a weird kind of smiling grimace on his face. He had no idea what the fuck it meant, but he knew he didn't like it.
"So, you've lived this night before?" Kerry said.
Johnny shrugged. He lifted his hips just far enough to pull his pants back up and button them, though it might've been a better plan to take them off and take a shower.
"Yeah," he said. "It's like I said: I died tonight."
"So does this mean we changed the future?"
And honestly, Johnny had no clue. All he could do was stand and go over there, press Kerry to the counter and look him in the eye. He was shorter with his sneakers off, kicked underneath the table, barefoot on the tiles while Johnny had his boots on. Johnny liked that, and Kerry didn't seem to mind; he looked up at him, an uncertain look on his face that said he half expected that the joke was over now, and Johnny would call him a cab or make him call one himself, just from Johnny's phone 'cause his was with Nancy. But Johnny didn't want him to go anywhere at all.
In the past Johnny remembered, there was a fucking hail of bullets, and a bomb, and a weirdly fitting end to what had been the life of Johnny Silverhand. In the future he remembered, Kerry had had almost everything he wanted, except for that one last thing he never could and would always miss. So Johnny slipped one hand into Kerry's messy hair and leaned in close. He kissed him, slowly, and let Kerry pull him closer.
"I don't know," he said, against Kerry's mouth, after a moment, and then he pulled back far enough to look at him. Maybe the kitchen lights were shitty and Kerry was a mess, maybe so was he, but Johnny didn't give a fuck. Turned out he liked him that way.
"I don't know," he said again. "But y'know, I hope we did." Then he stepped away. He smiled, and he stooped to grab his shirt, and he waved Kerry with him out toward his beat-up couch; there was a crappy acoustic guitar on a stand there, the one he only owned because a bunch of his old outputs had told him it was hot when he played shit that didn't make the windows rattle.
"So," he said. "You wanna hear a song you wrote about me when I was dead?"
"Am I gonna need a drink for this?"
"Yeah, probably."
Kerry laughed. He shrugged. "Yeah, sure," he said. "What the hell." So he poured them both a drink and Johnny sat down to tune the guitar.
When he sang, Kerry listened, and the fucked up look on his face said he understood just how much of what Johnny had told him really wasn't bullshit. It said he was gonna need more than one drink, too, but there was plenty more of it.
And, when they called it a night, all the songs sung, all raw nerves like they'd been pared back hard by what they'd done, Johnny asked him to stay like that was the single most important thing he'd ever said. They crawled into bed together in two mostly clean pairs of Johnny's sweats, just like they'd done so many times but nothing like it. Then, once the lights were out, Johnny wrapped his fingers around Kerry's wrist. There'd been no explosion. He hadn't died. Kerry's pulse in the dark said he was still there, too.
He didn't know if it was real, but it seemed real. If morning came, he guessed he'd know for sure, and then maybe the future could be different. He wasn't sure how, but they'd figure it out.
He didn't know if it was real. But fuck, he hoped like hell it was.