Archive of Our Own

If one word could describe the hotel slowly rolling into the distance, it would be: gaudy. Ugly. Cheap, maybe. The best hotel in the neighborhood, sure, but definitely not the best. Buzzing neon and a grubby pool, the kind of ‘luxury’ only a promoter with more coke than cash would dare call five-star. 

“Park out front, Denny. I’ll grab our shit from the back,” Johnny grunts. Shifting to adjust his prosthetic before the van rolls to a stop. Johnny shrugs the gaudy limb over his shoulder stump casually, then reaches to adjust the threadbare cross-body strap keeping it secure. He buckles, then pulls it tight between his teeth until the leather lays flat. Finishing up with a quick check of the spray-painted silver vinyl. Screwed on tight. Great.

The process is interrupted by Nancy laughing at something in the distance. She slaps the wheel and laughs out loud. “Is that who I think it is? This is gonna be great, ha!”

The vans roll up almost at the same time. Samurai’s battered Porsche. Spray-painted and jammed with too much equipment, roughly strapped to the exterior. Half-wrecked monster with the windows taped. Johnny hanging out the with an unlit cigarette to get a better look. And then the sleeker Archangel ride. Maybe it was nice once. Like a play on some glamorous lifestyle. Done up, all pretty and painted, but missing half the bumper with hairline cracks in the headlights ‘cause the driver can’t drive for shit. Speaking of:

“Kerry fucking Eurodyne!”

Kerry clocks him before Johnny even bellows his name. Steps out of the car with his guitar case slung slow on his back, jacket collar turned up, shades hiding the bags under his eyes. He sees Johnny and freezes mid-step, and Johnny can practically see his blood pressure rising at the sight of his grin like gasoline catching a fire.

“No fucking way,” Johnny laughs, cig bouncing on his lip.

Kerry blinks at him through his lenses. Flat and pissed. “Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me, the fuck are you doin’ here, Silverhand?”

Johnny jabs his cigarette at him, still unlit. “Samurai are playing. Big stage, big crowd, big payout. The fuck you think? This city books real talent.”

“Pfft, real talent? A fuckin’ hack like you?” Kerry looks him up and down with a hand on his hip and a quirk of his brow. “They must’ve fucked up the paperwork.”

Johnny hears Nancy snort from somewhere behind him. This week’s gonna be fun.

The lobby quickly becomes a battlefield. Samurai storm in. Denny drops her snare on the foot of Archangel’s bassist and it starts a back and forth. Nancy throws herself onto one of the lobby couches and lights a cig. Kerry and Johnny shoulder each other, trying to be the one that gets through the doors first. Kerry shoves him with a hand on the head, then quickly slips through up to the front desk.

“Eurodyne, Kerry. Some kinda V.I.P thing, uh,” he checks a crumbled up note he pulls from his ridiculously tight jeans, “both suites? I’m guessing. I got my whole team here so…”

He trails off at the look on the desk clerk's face. Smile cracking under leather and denim and raw, rockstar ego. Flicking through the reservation book, she speaks just as Johnny pulls up to the front counter and leans across it nonchalantly. 

“Uh, K.Eurodyne, Archangel, yes. You’ll be taking Suite A, one of our two luxury suites… A week-long stay.”

Kerry grunts. The smaller space isn’t great but he’s had worse. He snatches the keys she hands him and makes a move to tell the band when he hears it.

“And Mr. R.J.Linder? That’s you? You’ll be taking Suite B.”

Kerry turns back on his heel, almost comically. “Suite B?” His voice has teeth.

Johnny leers, clearly very pleased with himself. “Oh-ho. Sneaky bastard promoter booked us both. I didn’t know, and by the look on y’face I’ll say you didn’t either?” Johnny laughs out loud, “looks like we’re neighbors, pretty boy! Guess the bastard likes bloodsport.”

Kerry bristles at the thought of it. Tries to play it off. “Don’t like it? Fuck off.”

“And miss the chance to wipe the floor with you in front of a full house? Not a chance.”

A week with Johnny Silverhand next door? Kerry’s pretty sure the promoter planned to put him in an early grave. Silverhand is insufferable, callus, and goddamn set on one-upping every success Archangel has. From the charts to the radio appearances to that one God awful Rolling Stone interview where he boasted about ‘certain frontmen’ who value ‘glitter over substance.’ Kerry can’t stand him. Johnny knows it. Uses it to worm under Kerry’s skin like a parasite. It’s not like Kerry can back out, either. This gig is the real deal. Silverhand was right about that. A big crowd and a big payout. Kerry planned to rock up, make the fans scream in some big all-or-nothing and leave with the media focusing on the band and not his hectic personal life. Hell, the promoter probably wanted the media attention, too. Rival bands head to head? Seven nights, fourteen gigs? Battle-of-the-bands bullshit, anything to get the drinks flowing, and the place packed out. Sly, but not stupid.

Kerry breathes. Turns around and ignores Johnny’s jabs from the front desk. If it’s rivalry they want, then it’s rivalry they’ll get. 

Kerry won’t complain.

Johnny makes a gesture like he’s choking on a dick.

Kerry won’t complain in public.

All’s well and done. When Eurodyne heads to his room, he makes a promise. Silverhand ain’t headlining.

Kerry’s kind of thankful that the venue looks nothing like the hotel. Backstage is cramped with Samurai’s shit, sure. Suffocating, but in an almost good way.  No pretence. No class. That’s why it works. Why it’s so popular. A real tight gig. It’s rock and roll and smoke stained rafters cramped into a sweaty little package. And as Kerry playfully eyes a group of giggling women across the bar, he feels a little less strung out. Tonight, his name’s going to be carved into the Goddamn concrete.

Kerry’s walking around the large dressing room a little later, half-dressed, half-drinking. He quickly snorts a bump of coke off his chipped, painted fingernail, maybe for nerves, before pulling out the outfit of the night. 

Hell yes.

Tiny, flared jeans. Skin-tight. Fringed. Shiny enough to blind when the lights hit just right. Kerry braces himself against the dressing table and then begins the ordeal of squeezing in, sucking in, wiggling them over his hips. The zipper going up is like a small victory, and Kerry laughs breathlessly to the empty room. Reaching for his shirt, some kind of threadbare band tee that clings and cuts too high. Homage for the media to stick to.

Kerry tops it with two or four belts. Tests a thick, chunky necklace against his neck before attaching it to his jeans instead. Eyeliner, next. Kerry teases his hair to high heaven and then hairsprays the living crap out of it, all held together with spit and prayer and some ugly-print bandanna.

Mirror time. This is the part he hates. Every angle a trick, a lie, like a murmuring in his head. Kerry swigs the half-full bottle of whiskey he brought for backup. Fuelled by nothing if not liquid courage and spite. Runs a hand down his chest like he’s checking for something. Anything. Like smoothing his hadn’t over the hood of a second-hand car. Seeing if it still works, still feels, still sells.

“Fuck it.” And then he throws on some skimpy leather vest with zebra print on the lining. Cropped enough to tease the line of his waist. Boots then. Platforms. Studded, weighty platforms he’d dug out of the bargain bin on one of his lower nights on the town. He towers when he wears them, and he needs that tonight. Needs the height. The presence. The swagger. The silhouette that says I own this stage.

Some roadie knocks the dressing room door. Yelling something about stage check, lights, how the pyrotechnics are off the table per the last lawsuit. Kerry doesn’t listen. Pulls a tuft of hair out over his forehead and hides the whiskey bottle behind the couch.

By the time Kerry fucking Eurodyne strides out under the neon backstage bulbs, the armor’s on. No one sees the zipper or the mirror. Just Eurodyne. Frontman. Rockstar. Hot shit. Sharp enough to cut, and untouchable as God himself.

The noise of Samurai arriving spills down the hallway as Archangel start their set.

Kerry is a presence. Glamour that cuts. Johnny thinks he read that in a magazine. He watches Kerry own the stage from the bar. Back, forth. Constant movement cramped in tiny little pants. 

The bartender slides Johnny an ashtray along with his tequila. Maybe sensing the night ahead of them. Johnny thanks him with a hand gesture. Lighting up a cigarette, but not dragging his eyes away from the stage.

The band circles Kerry like orbiting moons. Some kind of sick, unique mix. Glam rock but something else. Something raw. Something messy. Kerry screams too much for his own good. Panders too much for it to be real. Perhaps that’s what he wants, Johnny thinks. No pretence. No reality. Each set a hazy daydream. A glamorization of a lifestyle, powdered with coke and eyeliner. An alter ego, maybe. 

It works. A neat, pandered set littered with moments of crazy. Polished sharp as glass. Johnny thinks those moments might be the real Kerry. Eurodyne leans over and snatches a beer bottle from someone in the front row. Pours it down his front while he angles his crotch at the camera for a close up. Rebellion alongside the scheduled programming. It keeps him alive. Fresh. But also interesting. 

For Johnny, rock is real. Rock is political. Rock is raw. Johnny steps on to that stage and screams, sure. But those dreams are swept up in tiny glass fragments. Anger. Passion. Hate. Johnny can spit tales of war and consumerism until his cheeks puff red with exertion or he can get on that stage and scream his lungs raw. The money’s a bonus.

Kerry set plays out like clockwork with those little hints of rebellion. And Johnny wants to crack him open and see how the bastard ticks. 

Johnny makes his way backstage before Kerry finishes his set.

Nancy hands him his guitar. A modded, custom rig. Johnny brings the strap over his head and shrugs awkwardly until it hooks into a little strip of metal on the leather that straps his prosthetic to his chest. Stops the strap from sliding while he plays. When it’s secure enough to hang without him holding the body, Johnny goes about messing with the strings. A messy contraption. A little DIY rig that catches his stiff prosthetic enough to strum while his flesh hand messes with the frets. It’s gaudy, but it works. 

Kerry shoulders past him when his set finishes, all sweat and hairspray. Johnny laughs, “want some music with all that peacockin’ or you good?” 

Kerry doesn’t bother looking Johnny’s way, like he can make him disappear by sheer force of will. It’s hilarious, actually. The way Johnny gets under his skin. 

“We ain’t all gotta scream to be heard.” Tossed over his shoulder as he walks away.

“Right, some of us just shove our cocks in the execs faces. It’s easier.”

Kerry stills and, for a brief moment, Johnny’s pretty sure he’s going to get a punch in the mouth. He’s kind of hoping for it. The blood would make for a fun set. 

He doesn’t.

Samurai hit hard like a brick to the skull. Some raw, punk fury, Johnny stalks on to the stage like he’s damn near ready to inject the chords into his veins. Cheeks red, vein popping in his forehead as he spits the lyrics in a raw menagerie of noise. It’s like drugs. Energy fuelling him endlessly and, God, he feels like he could live forever. Right there, at that moment. Lyrics scraping teeth and a middle finger the crowd eats up like it isn’t an insult. Silver prosthetic hitting the lights and clanging against the strings.

Screaming, screaming, screaming. 

Encore echoing backstage, through the walls, through the ugly, cobwebbed rafters and in to the dressing room where Kerry knows, for sure, that Samurai have won their little unspoken competition tonight. The roar of the crowed tells the exactly what they’re fighting for: number one, and the right to bury each other alive. Kerry can already feel the dirt between his teeth.

When Johnny swaggers backstage, he steps back just in time to dodge the guitar case Kerry throws at one of the stagehands.

“The choir boy act is real cute, y’know.”

“Scrap metal cunt.”

“Oh-ho. Panties in a twist?”

The nosebleed is worth the look on Kerry’s face.

Johnny loves the hotel bar, now he thinks about it. Right up his alley. Not bothering with the pretence of luxury treatment the outside got. It’s all smoke in the air, nicotine stains on peeling wallpaper and little cigarette burns ground in to tacky patterned cushions Johnny’s pretty sure haven’t been changed since the 60s. It’s mid-afternoon, the day after another hectic gig. The band’s still hungover but they’ll be ready tonight. Always are. Johnny’s seen Nancy walk off enough drink to kill a man twice her size. Samurai showing up to a coked-out performance is one of the few things in this world he’s got faith in.

Silverhand’s sitting sprawled in a tacky booth, boots up on the table, ashtray overflowing, glass of tequila half finished, humming something idle while he lubes up his metal elbow joint with a can of WD40. Like that’s something people do.

Kerry spots him on his way back from the vending machine. Vicariously balancing his guitar case on one shoulder and one of the buffet trays in the opposite hand like some kind of overly glamorous waiter. He slows when he sees Johnny, hesitates, then rolls his eyes and steps closer. Placing his tray down on the table a little too firmly, as if he’s come to some kind of reluctant conclusion.

Johnny sniffs a little and sits up. Takes stock of Kerry’s tray, intending to steal a fry before, confusedly, changing his mind upon seeing his weird assortment.

Half a glass of whiskey, iced, a can of Coca Cola (the silver one Johnny thinks tastes like ass) and then a patchwork of food scavenged from the buffet and surrounding vending machines: three dry crackers, two precariously balanced marshmallows, one slab of dry toast and a couple spoons of rapidly melting white ice cream in a bowl off to the side. 

Knowing Kerry, whole thing’s probably sprinkled with a dash of coke, too.

Johnny grimaces a little at the assortment. 

Something, something eccentric rock stars, something, something. 

“You always eat like it’s wartime? Got some good news for ya, baby, Vietnam ended.”

Kerry doesn’t even look up. Takes a little of the whiskey and pours it over the ice cream, then mixes the rest with the coke. “Do you always drink like you’re out to pickle y’insides? Or is this a special occasion?”

Johnny smirks, “every day’s special when I’m in it.”

“Christ.” Kerry cuts the ice cream into several small, whisky flavored chunks and washes down each bite with Cola like he can’t quite stomach his own creation.

Silence stretches. Not the comfortable kind. The kind that dares you to break it. Johnny carries on fiddling with his prosthetic and revels in the discomfort, always one for words that itch. Kerry just eats, sniffs, eats, grimaces. Fuckin’ coke head.

“You’re wound real tight, you know?” Johnny shifts his feet back on to the table, finally screwing his wrist joint back into place. “Lemme guess, too wired to sleep?” Then, a smirk, a glint in his eye, “or you just scared of running in to me in your dreams?”

Kerry glares at him, “you’d inflict that on me? Nasty bastard. Bad enough seeing you in the daytime.”

“Oh, keep talking like that, the tabloids are gonna think you like me.”

“Like you?” Kerry scoffs, “you’re a fucking mess.”

Johnny glances down at the whiskey covered ice-cream Kerry’s currently spreading on toast. Then back up. “Takes one to know one, don’t ya think?”

It lands. Kerry’s jaw works, lips thinning. Instead of snapping, he just barks out a short, bitter laugh.

Just as Johnny suspected. Wednesday’s gig is an amalgamation of humming amps and sweat-slick bodies grinding up against each other. Screaming fans bleeding through the night, the noise.

Archangel jumped Samurai’s set like a Goddamn argument. Two frontmen screaming at each other, vastly different sounds mushing into the personification of a migraine, that’s all it was, that’s all it needed to be. The crowd only cared for the noise. 

Somehow, it mirrors that earlier half-silent, half-conversation at the bar. This, strange, mutual kind of understanding. Frankly, Johnny think’s Kerry’s batshit crazy. Knows it because he is too. And maybe, just maybe, Kerry’s screeching power vocals don’t sound too bad over Samurai’s red-hot noise.

A back and forth. Kerry shoves him, playful, halfway through a lyric. Johnny bites back. Grabs him by his ridiculous feather boa and pulls tight enough that Kerry has to grasp a hand into the feathers to stop himself from being strangled. Johnny grabs an offered drink from a fan in the crowd and chugs it while the audience chants. And Kerry, the sleazy, slutty bastard, gets down on his hands and knees at the side of the stage and grabs an offered shot with his teeth from between a busty fan's pushed up breasts. Tips his head back, spits the glass into the crowd, and turns back to Johnny like he’s itching for his reaction. Johnny gives him one. And the whole thing ends with a fist fight that leaves Kerry’s makeup smeared and Johnny’s lip split.

Backstage, Johnny lights a cigarette with his hand still shaking from the adrenaline of drug-rush or both. Still wired, still buzzed, chest heaving and sweaty shirt clinging to his ribs.

Maybe that’s the thing. The feeling. This feeling. A damn good set. A real good fucking set. Johnny can feel the thrill of it all. Hot and freeing and fiery. Damn-near enough to bust a nut to.

Kerry storm’s in a bit later, looking an expected mess. Hair all deflated, makeup smeared, sweating through his clothes, a tiny nose bleed smearing into his mustache. Oops. Johnny laughs at the look. For once playful, perhaps even happy.

Johnny spreads his legs and leans back on the couch. Blows smoke vaguely in Kerry’s direction as he passes.

“Not bad out there, eh, Eurodyne? Thought you might actually smile when they screamed y’name.” He flicks ash to the floor. “Beginning to think you were shy.”

Kerry rolls his eyes but doesn’t answer, just peers behind the couch. Then starts rummaging behind the couch cushions, a little irritated.

Johnny presses on, grinning with the teasing words. “And you even managed to hold a tune. Fuckin’ modern miracle.”

Kerry’s eyes snap up, ringed with exhaustion and irritation Johnny didn’t quite expect. “Better than whatever then fuck you were doing up there. Thought you were gonna pass out halfway through ‘Never Fade Away’.”

Johnny laughs, still playing their little game, thinking Kerry’s playing ball. “Oh yeah? Least I don’t look like a stiff breeze could knock me on my ass. You wanna side of coke with that anorexia you got?”

Johnny expects a comeback. A continued bad game. Some jab about his lungs or drinking or junky prosthesis. Like Kerry always does. Instead, Kerry freezes in his search for…whatever. Face all clammy under the glam.

“I ain’t fuckin’ anorexic. I’m a man.”

Hissed. Harsh. Biting.

The tone hits Johnny harder than the smack in the mouth earlier. He blinks, grin shrinking a little. “Yeah…I was just-“

But Kerry’s already off on one. I’m a man. He says it like it’s been said to him before, like he’s had to prove it a hundred times. Then, angrier, sharper, almost slurred from rage: “Just ‘cause I’m ah-a what? A fag? That make me a chick? Go fuck yourself.”

The room goes quiet. Even though it’s just them, it feels like the world stops and the crowd and the stagehands and the noise of the city are momentarily silenced.

Johnny blinks, the cigarette burning down, forgotten between his fingers. Weird joy crisping up with it, swept up with the ashes on the floor. 

“Christ,” it’s not even mocking. Just odd and awkward and heavy.

Kerry finally digs up what he’d been looking for. A mostly finished bottle of whiskey. Jammed between the cushions where Johnny had carelessly thrown himself on to the couch. Kerry opens it, chugs the rest neat, and then throws the bottle hard enough against the adjoining wall that it shatters into a million little fireflies.

Eccentric rockstar, maybe. Or maybe something else. Something Johnny can’t really fathom or even knew existed. Something…different. More than tabloids of ugly sexuality speculation can explain. Maybe the worst part is that it’s not even foreign. Whatever weird sensitivity Kerry has with his masculinity and his Jesus-diet are, sure. But the rot in his head? Yeah. Johnny’s known men who put a gun in their mouth and pulled the trigger. Has been that guy. Has lived through that hopeless agony, maybe even fear, when he lost his arm and the barrel was the only way forward. It’s not the same, Kerry doesn’t know that pain, but it’s real dangerously fuckin’ similar. 

Those words aren’t right. They tangle in his throat. Wrong for the time. Wrong for the man in front of him. So Johnny just settles for leaning forward on his thighs.

“You think I give a shit who you fuck?” Johnny says finally, like he can’t quite believe it himself, “or that you wear all that makeup, or strut around like Bowie with a fuckin’ hard-on? Like that’s what makes you a man? That’s what you think?”

Kerry glances, vibrating with restless energy. Like he’s caught halfway between screaming and dropping dead.

“You got it all wrong, Kerry. What makes you a man is not lettin’ the fucking world chew you up n’ spit you out. Firing a Goddamn bullet right into the crowd. Cause when y’ground down, and there’s nothing left? That’s when you lose it all. You don’t come back from that.”

Kerry takes it. Holds the words for several splintering seconds.

Then, “spare me the fuckin’ sermon, Silverhand.”

And then he’s storming down the hall. Swallowed by the neon lights, leaving Johnny staring at the dent he’d left in the air, ash still smouldering on the floor beside him.

The night drags on after their little argument. Johnny doesn’t see Kerry for the rest of the day. Honestly, he’s not even sure if he wants to. Not out of any fear of facing him or regret of what he said, but something in the way his stomach twists when the guy looks at him. Words echoing, sharp but ignorable.

Johnny’s just gotten comfortable in his messy bed. The girl he brought home’s just left, the sheets are crumpled, and he’s smoking a cig with the guitar on his lap. Two in the morning, half naked, balls drained, that the sweet spot. The time he writes or he writhes. Tonight’s a writing kind of night. 

Until an almighty crash from the hallway makes him jolt.

Johnny sets his cig in the ashtray, guitar on the bed, and gets up to nose about, half sure it’s Denny coming back from a bender. Johnny bends down a second to toss a jacket on over his boxers and socks, fishing a quarter out of his crumpled jeans for the vending machine, and heads out into the dim hotel hallway. 

That’s where he spots him.

Kerry’s feeling about the wall. Trying to find his own suite and failing. A drunken crumble of legs. He trips over those ridiculous platform shoes, crumbles against the wall, that ridiculous feather boa hanging limp like some kind of pathetic punchline. 

Kerry lolls his head vaguely in johnny’s direction. “The fuck you lookin’ at?”

Johnny approaches. Sighing and scrubbing a rough hand down his face because what is this? “A fucking mess.”

“A fucking mess,” Kerry mocks, slurring, waving him off with a jerky hand. The other braced against the floor like he’s trying to stop the world from spinning. Probably is. “The fuck you doing here? Fuckin’ pervert.”

“How about livin’ in the same hotel? Playin’ the same fucking venue? Ring a bell, man?”

“Ah,” Kerry’s skull thumps the drywall when he leans his head back.

Johnny takes it as permission to step closer, squatting to Kerry’s crumpled height. “The fuck you doing out here? Planning on passing out in the hallway like a roadie?”

“Better than listening to you talk.”

Kerry leans dangerously sideways, Johnny stops him with a firm shoulder grip.

“Don’t even got the energy to hate me proper? Should I be offended?”

That earns a twitch. “Hate you just fine.”

“Yeah, well, rivals ain't no good if they can’t stay upright, are they?” Johnny hooks an arm under Kerry’s shoulder, hauling him to his feet. “Hallway ain’t your bed tonight, rockstar.”

Kerry shoves him weakly, “don’t-dont touch me! Fuckin’ leave me alone, you ugly bastard!”

Johnny ignores the protest, “I ain’t planning on babysittin’ ya. Don’t wanna trip over your corpse when I go out for a smoke.”

“Might break ya fuckin neck, do me a favor.”

“Har-har.”

Johnny kicks open the door to Kerry’s suite, left unlocked. Then shuffles a couple of feet into what he assumes is Kerry’s room based on the line’s of dusty white on the vanity. Dumps him unceremoniously into the bed.

Doesn’t linger. Doesn’t unnecessarily touch. Throw’s a blanket over him in the last second to try to give him some shred of decency.

Kerry’s been pretty much avoiding Johnny after the hallway-incident. And, honestly, if he were anyone else, Johnny might think he’s embarrassed. Or, at the very least, sheepish.

In the backstage hallway, Kerry diminishes the thought with a shoulder check hard enough to knock Johnny’s prosthetic into an awkward position.

No, Johnny thinks, the privilege of embarrassment doesn’t come to men who wear glitter flares.

Eh, whatever. 

If Kerry thinks he’s getting under Johnny’s skin, let him. Johnny’s got all the time in the world to argue with him. There ain’t nothing Kerry can say to hurt him that he hasn’t already said to himself. And, frankly, that’s all Kerry does. Speak to hurt. Johnny reads him like a book. Man’s not particularly good at feeling it, at backing up his nastiness. Kerry bites when he’s cornered, see. Gets real mean when his chest aches. It’s so glaringly obvious. And so hilarious, how subtle he thinks he is. Kerry can’t wipe off that glamorous frontman persona, ever, it sticks under his skin, like one of those goofy face-hugging things from Alien.

Kerry isn’t particularly bothersome to Samurai, though, so that probably means something.

The stage lights are real blinding tonight, the crowd a tidal wave of overexcited, drugged out screams.

Johnny swaggers about the stage, a sweaty, bulletproof mess. No fear. No care. Everything and nothing at all. The crowd scream for Samurai. Scream raw knives across their vocal cords. Johnny’s halfway through tearing up a solo, body thrumming with the raw adrenaline high, sweat raining down his spine. 

And everything’s working. An amazing set. Raw energy and rock and power and, God, everything’s working.

Until it isn’t.

The sound falters halfway through the solo. Not his hands, not his lungs, but his arm. The arm. The rig. The strum attachment bends a little before unceremoniously skittering loose. Metal clattering across the stage and into the sea of outstretched hands.

And, for a heartbeat, Johnny freezes. Chest seizing up into a big, tight knot. Helpless. The guitar hanging useless at his hip, nothing but dead weight. And something in his head spits at him, just for a second, that’s what he is too. A dead weight. A spotlight in his eyes. Hundreds screaming, and Johnny Silverhand with nothing left to give. A single in a sea of thousands. Alone.

Caught. Exposed. Gutted. The kind of thing that ruins a man.

Then, Kerry moves.

From the wings, still cascaded in the low lights. Sunglasses glinting when he steps on stage, subtle, unannounced. Johnny meets Kerry’s gaze and for a second it’s like the air between them hums with a lighting force stronger than the dodgy amplifiers.

Kerry steps out. Smooth and casual, like he owns the place. The crowd roars, probably thinking it’s a bit. Another stunt. But Johnny doesn’t have it in him to be humiliated, or to even expect humiliation, because he knows what this is: a lifeline.

Kerry presses his chest to Johnny’s back. Heat of him searing through. Skin to skin. Sweat to sweat. The ridiculous feather boa brushing Johnny’s shoulders, his jaw, his back. One of Kerry’s arms snakes low across Johnny’s belly, the other slipping past his waist to the strings.

And then, just like that, he strums.

The sound suddenly rips back to life. Johnny’s hand tightens on the frets, pushing chords like he’ll die if he doesn’t. And Kerry’s rhythm slots into him, seamless, dirty, like they’ve been doing this for decades and decades.

God, it’s fucking obscene. It’s hot. The press of Kerry’s body, the drag of his hand, the audience howl, like they’re watching something they shouldn’t be. Johnny leans into it and tells himself he has no choice, but in reality he wants and wants and wants until it carves a hole in his chest. Snarls into the mic, and, together, they tear the song to shreds, twice as visceral as it ever was. 

When that final note rings out, feedback screaming, Kerry lets go first. Slips back into the shadow like nothing happened. Leaving Johnny confused, heaving, sweat-streaked, shaking and raw.

The media fallout the next morning is a collection of messy headlines. ‘Rivalry Boils Over Onstage!’ and ‘Eurodyne Crashes Silverhand Solo!” All big fonts and a million little exclamations points. The papers eat it alive. Paint it as venom. The kind of shit they’re good at. Make it out like Kerry was out to humiliate Johnny. Like he was chasing the headlines. Like Samurai is a mess.

It works. No use denying it. It’s fuel to the fire, and they both need gasoline. It’s what sells. Johnny isn’t going to argue.

But, behind the spin? Behind the mess? They both know the truth. Kerry didn’t come out there to steal Johnny’s anything. He came out there because he knew Johnny’s song, knew it down to the bone marrow, down to the epicenter of spit and duct tape.

Because Johnny helped him when he couldn’t stand.

Or, because Kerry is Kerry. A messy whore.

There’s a fun in not knowing.

Either way, it’s a thanks, wrapped In glitter and media mess, but a thanks nonetheless. 

And, for the first time since that messy argument, Johnny doesn’t feel like they’re enemies. They’re something worse, somehow. Or something better. Or maybe just something neither of them can quite name.

Better than Goddamn sex.

The hotel room’s a graveyard from the night before. Johnny adds to the rot with a quick toss of the local newspaper onto an ever-growing garbage pile. The pictures of him and Kerry? Johnny doesn’t care. But the venerable snapshots? The millisecond pictures of him, one arm, looking shell shocked? It makes him feel…something.

Johnny tosses the paper. He’ll burn it as a public service when he next needs a bonfire, alongside the last shreds of his dignity, and Kerry’s glitter jeans.

Now, he focuses on the task at hand. Cross-legged on the carpet, prosthetic splayed open across his lap, half disassembled, bolts everywhere. A cigarette punctuating the mess with slow curling smoke. Tired face, tired eyes.

And it’s not just that, is it? It’s the humiliation. Johnny’s a rockstar, a presence, a hack as Kerry so kindly put. But also just a guy. A guy whose strum rig fell off in the middle of a set. The rig falls, sure. What’s next? The whole arm? Johnny’s a fuckin’ amputee held together with spit and spite. And there’s only so much wiggle room before the crowd remembers. Vulnerability’s a real dangerous place when you’re volatile on a good day.

Kerry looks like he’s about to walk past but can’t resist nosing his way into Samurai’s suite. Door’s open, anyway. He leans in the doorway and eyes the mess, then the metal heap in johnny’s lap.

“You always this careless with your shit?”

Johnny sniffs, “my arm or my life?”

“Both.”

Kerry’s makeup’s smudged at the corners. That idle twitch in his hands that tells Johnny he’s on something or is about to be. When he talks, Johnny can see the lipstick on his teeth. Like a patent boot with the shine rubbed off.

“Strap snapped,” Johnny says eventually, gesturing to the weary excuse for leather that usually holds the thing to his body. “Less stability, probably for a while. Put pressure on it. Whole wrist snapped off at the fucking base. It’s a mess, Kerry. A fucking mess.”

Kerry hums, then steps closer and crouches to get a better look. “Yeah, well, you’re gonna make it worse if you keep poking at it with a screwdriver.”

“Heh, you volunteering?”


“I’m giving you a han-“

“Kerry.”

“Buzzkill. But yeah, sure, someone has to. Before you lose the other one tryna stab this one into submission.”

Johnny snorts, and doesn’t stop Kerry from reaching out. Kerry picks the forearm up like he’s testing the weight in his hands. Then looks at the buckles that typically hold the leather in place. The silence between them is the softer kind, light and sans barbed wire.

“Crowd loved it,” Johnny says eventually. “Heh, you hopping in. Looking like we planned the whole thing.”

Kerry’s mouth twitches as he idly fingers an extra sharp bit of scrap metal. “Yeah, well, you froze.”

“You saying I choked?”

“Didn’t say that, did I.”

“Thought it, though.”

Kerry doesn’t answer. Just pauses and leans back on his heels. Doing that thing. Not acknowledging the statement, so it isn’t real.

“I got a belt?” He gestures to Johnny’s prosthetic and all its makeshift modifications. “Won’t fix the wrist, but could rig it tighter to your body.”

Johnny glares. “If it’s got glitter on it, I’ll kick you in the head.”

“Lucky for you, I save the glitter for special occasions.” Kerry says it while laughing. Rising and leaving the suite, presumably wandering into his own next door. There’s the sound of distant, muffled crashing while Kerry no doubt dings through his mountain of ugly accessories.

Then, when he comes back, he’s got a belt (sans glitter). A slim one. Leather with studs. Kerry squats in front of Johnny and takes the prosthetic with way more care than his hands should be capable of. He gently threads the belt through the frame, then prompts Johnny to shrug the prosthetic into place before tightening it around his opposite shoulder. As he adjusts, his knuckles graze Johnny’s skin at his stump. Breath uncomfortably close.

Johnny breathes, easing through the weakness. The fuss. Lets Kerry touch him and doesn’t fight, though it’s a hefty battle. “You enjoying this? Dressing up the cripple?” He spits. Not at Kerry, really. At the situation. At the weakness. At the rot.

“Y’could do with the fashion advice,” Kerry says it as a joke, but it falls flat. 

Johnny’s not uncomfortable with his disability. No, that’s the wrong word. There’s a detachment, sure. A twitch, a feeling, an idea that it’s not real. The injury’s had it's time to settle, to scar over, to become some synonymous symbol of whatever the press feel like demonizing him for that week. 

Johnny is a sensation, but also an object, a sex symbol, a pity party. Those rock journalists? They sensationalize. To them, he’s ‘The Man Who Shook the Devil’s Hand’, some half there rock prophet they can exploit. Aesthetic over trauma. Johnny can’t hate it, really, the myth, because what’s the alternative? Pity? Ignorance? Johnny’s torn between three worlds. The head-case veteran, Rock Jesus, and the guy with the disability the fans quietly ignore. There’s this idolization of perfection. Of guys with that very same aesthetic Kerry's living of coke and whiskey-soda for. Those long limbs, lean bodies, strange, theatrical beauty. Face it. Johnny’s prosthetic doesn’t fit that mold, and it cuts the same way the injury itself did, agonizing at the time but healing over into angry, mangled, gore.

Johnny thinks it’s kind of ugly-poetic, how Kerry’s pain bleeds internally while Johnny’s laundry’s aired out in the form of a rust bucket reminder he’s human.

They sit there in tension while Kerry fusses. It grows and simmers until Kerry breaks it with an easy joke.

“So why’d ya call yourself Johnny Silverhand, then? Should've been Johnny Silver-Arm. Or better yet, Johnny Silver-Arm and Three-Quarters.”

Johnny snorts, shrugging a little to test the belt against his muscle. “Ain’t no one paying to see Johnny Silver-Arm and Three-Quarters, dickhead.”

“Yeah, well, maybe they should.”

For a moment, neither of them move. The silence doesn’t quite feel like a splinter, anymore. Not now Johnny’s got his arm back, at least. Sort of like a bruise they’ve finally stopped pressing.

“Wrist shouldn’t be too difficult to fix,” Johnny flexes his shoulder, testing the leather, “it’ll hold.”

“Yeah,” Kerry says, almost fond, “it always does.”

A pause, a shared look. And it’s not forgiveness so much as recognition. The kind that says 'we’re both wrecks, and I see that.'

Kerry doesn't move. Just looks up at Johnny. Not soft, not pitying. Something else, maybe. Curiosity, frustration. Some tangle of things neither of them have the equipment to unpack. The tension sharpens, pulling at the air between them. And Johnny could shove him away. Should shove him away. Should make a dumb joke and leave it at that. Ruin it like he always does. But Kerry's still too close, and Johnny's too tired. Too goddamn tired to pretend.

Johnny moves without thinking. Not fast, not gentle. Just a lean, a grab. Johnny clamps his hand around the back of Kerry's head and pulls him into a kiss, the buckle of his own prosthetic digging into the meat of his shoulder as he presses lips, spit, teeth into Kerry's.

And Kerry doesn't pull back. Doesn't melt, either, It's a collision over a kiss. Teeth, frustration, breath, noise. The kind of his that says we shouldn't, but, fuck it, we already did.

Kerry's hand returns the grip. Slides up the back of Johnny's neck, tangles into his hair. The other still braced on Johnny's shoulder where he'd been fussing with the strap. The prosthetic creaks as Johnny leans back and Kerry leans forward, crawling into Johnny's lap. 

They break apart just to stare, a heartbeat, a moment, a string of spit connecting their lips. As if to say, should we do this?  The answer is no, no they shouldn't. It makes it messy. It makes it complicated. 

But they're never ones for following the rules.

Kerry starts it up again. Pressing his hot mouth back into Johnny's. His mouth tastes like booze and lipstick, colliding with the omnipresent smoke Johnny carries in his mouth always. Kerry presses, opens his mouth wider to take more of Johnny in. And suddenly they're pressed together and sharing spit.

Sharing spit.

Huh.

And isn't that just something?

Johnny kisses Kerry like it doesn't mean a goddamn thing.

Like there's no risk, no stain, no slur waiting on the other side.

Easy, thoughtless, like he doesn't even register what it means to touch Kerry this way.

And maybe it is nothing, maybe that's the point. No one, not even Kerry himself, would blink if Johnny turned away in disgust. Kerry'd almost expect it. Because Kerry, Kerry feeds the media a caricature, the 'rock god', 'unhinged', 'junkie', 'womanizer'. And they'll take it. Take it and run because it's easier than the truth, It's a calculated self-destruction.

Because, perhaps, it's better to be seen as reckless and indulgent than vulnerable or…deviant. The denial of yourself in the face of being labelled dangerous.

But with Johnny, it's nothing. It's a moment. A shared state. Something that exists beyond that dreaded, cultural weapon they'll spit at Kerry, growing deadlier these past few years. Johnny kisses him like him, they, exist as more than warning columns on 'unsafe lifestyles'. 

Sharing spit.

Nothing sacred. Nothing shameful. The quiet, human rebellion of being touched without recoil.

There's no softness. Never. Not with their history. Not with their rivalry, the screw-ups, the public mess. They kiss and touch with this raw, unspoken need to one-up to out-hurt, to out-desperation each other. Rough and raw and needy. Johnny's shifting, suddenly. Hauling Kerry by the shirt, pulling him close, making sure, before letting the hand wander. A squeeze about his jaw, a palm on his face, his ribs, his ass. Guiding and manhandling. The prosthetic acts, too, even without the hand attachment, metal digging into Kerry's ribs as if planting him exactly where Johnny wants him. And, make no mistake, Kerry gives as good as he gets. Sinks his teeth into Johnny's lip, hard. Johnny likes it because he's a filthy bastard.

The aires all mean, and neither of them are gentle. They don't know how to be. Johnny hauls him up with one arm and they stagger, tumble over the built up piles of shit in Samurai's suite. Kerry moves with Johnny until he's half sitting on the bed, palms roaming all over his shoulders, down his chest. It's messy, odd. All elbows and knees. Kerry straddles Johnny, then, knees bracketing his hips. Kerry rips his tank top up and over his head. Leaving no room to comment on his body. Been and done and quick. Kerry distracts him like a master, grinding his ass into Johnny's crotch like he's damn near carving a place for himself there. 

Johnny's never been one for foreplay, he gets right to the grit, it's in his nature. But this? This is a war, and Kerry's fighting with every breath in his skinny chest. Every movement a challenge. There's an animal pull to the way they grind, denim on leather, as if they can somehow fuck out the years they've lost, or at least bury them under a new set of bruises. 

Kerry shifts his weight forward, and Johnny lets him pin him on his back. Chest suddenly exposed to Kerry's wandering mouth. His jaw, his pulse point, then lower. Kerry's tongue trailing over the matted mess of scar tissue over Johnny's ribs. “Fuck, Johnny, you're so…” Kerry doesn't say gorgeous, doesn't butter Johnny up like he does with the press and the groupies and the women whose racks he ogles. Just breathes out the rest of the sentence against Johnny's ribs. Tongue licking, wet and hot, against Johnny's puckered nipples. A hard suck makes Johnny grunt, the sound all caught up in his throat.

Hands everywhere: up Johnny's sides, down his back, over his prosthetic and then the scarred up flicker of his stump peeking out against it. Johnny pulls him by the hair up into another bruising kiss. Eating what's left of themselves and calling it dinner.

Johnny uses that same hand in Kerry's hair to yank him off him, momentarily, enough to show off the sweat shine against his sticky throat. Then, presses his fingers roughly into Kerry's mouth, eyeing the way his sore gums bleed when he sucks them obscenely. Wrapping his tongue around them. Eyes blown wide, black holes. 

“You always gotta win, don't ya?” Johnny says, almost fascinated by Kerry's mouth.

“Mhm,” Kerry pulls back just a second. “You'll let me. You want to. Can't fucking get enough, Silverhand. Think I don't see your hard on from the stage when I preform?” 

He punctuates it with a nasty grind down that has Johnny gasping, skull thudding back into the mattress. World dulling to a singular point: Kerry's touch, Kerry's lips, Kerry's hips.

He can't have that.

It gets faster, then, meaner. Johnny manages a twist. Using the raw strength in his good arm to reverse the roles. And suddenly, it's Kerry's back on the mattress. Bed frame groaning under Johnny's knees. The look of aching, aroused fear in Kerry's face makes Johnny want to say something. But what is there left to say that hasn't already come out in chords or venom or spit? So he says nothing. Just looks at Kerry way too long. Yesterday's eyeliner, lipstick on his teeth, track marks on his arms. Like he's waiting for a crack in the bravado. A sign, maybe permission, a confirmation that they're about to fuck-up somethin' awful and they're both to blame.

“Got somethin' to prove, Samurai?” Kerry heaves like he's not spitting pure hypocrisy like poetry.

“Nothing I ain't proved a thousand times over.”

Johnny leans in, slow enough to crack the tension in two, bumping his forehead against Kerry's in this ugly display of tenderness. Breathes Kerry in: cologne, coke sweats and booze. Disgusting. Then lets his hand trail low to his dumb, animal print jeans. Perfectly Kerry: attention seeking, tastelessness that works, somehow. Johnny quickly hooks his fingers in the waist band and goes through the motions of yanking the offending piece of fabric down sweaty, shaking legs. Peeling it off like a wet coat while Kerry writhes, hips canting up. No underwear because he's Kerry. There's a thick tangle towards the end when they catch on his platform boots. Johnny doesn't care for the practicalities. Just needs Kerry and nothing else. The pants make it as low as possible before Johnny gives up, hooking Kerry's legs over his shoulders, sliding in between, with the pants and boots still on. 

Kerry's cock is hard against his stomach. 

Johnny impatiently feels up Kerry's thighs, thumb brushing the inside as he leans forward enough to fold Kerry, a little. The lean is awkward. Johnny spits in his palm and roughly works Kerry's hole but he can't hold himself up over Kerry with the hand occupied. Johnny can't put his weight on his prosthetic, it'll dig into his tender scar tissue. So Kerry reaches up to support him, a firm grip on his shoulder, keeping Johnny in a position where he can lean over and work Kerry open without falling on him.

Another dribble of spit for good measure, and Johnny's unzipping his fly, awkwardly working his aching cock a few times, spreading pre, before pressing in. Kerry's jaw drops, eyebrows knitting together at the pain of the stretch. Slow and easy and working. Chokes on a laugh to hide it because of course he does.

Johnny works himself into the base, before snapping his hips. Rhythm as brutal as the honesty of the sex. Sweat, ache, and ugly noises of pleasure. Kerry grunts before the rhythm sets, then moans, nails digging into the meat of Johnny's stump where he's still holding him up. Uh, uh, uh's in time with Johnny's hips. Breath fighting like the air's too close, overloaded with sweat-stink and a kind of strange violence that never quite tips into malice, just raw desperation.

Still, Kerry refuses to lose. To be upstaged. He hooks his legs around Johnny's waist as much as the pants-bondage allows. Pulling his cock in tighter, closer, fuller. Closing the gap. Cock moving against his stomach with the awkward force of Johnny's thrusts. 

“Can-can't do that,” Johnny moans, voice warbling with sex as he uses his good hand to brush Kerry's grip away. He can't let Kerry hold him up like that anymore, it's killing his shoulder. Instead, he lets himself fall forward into the mess. Prosthetic arm hanging while the other brackets Kerry's head, leaning on his forearm now. It's tighter, wetter, sweatier this way. Skin to skin. The angle change as Johnny falls forward make's Kerry cry out a rough, aching moan. Like the thrusts are punching the achy noises out of his chest.

And Johnny? Johnny doesn't give a shit who hears them through the hallway. What band members might walk in. It's rebellion, it's showmanship, it's want. Johnny is not the absence of fear, the absence of shame, no, but the owner of it. The recognition that he's fucked, he's damaged, he's loud, he's ugly, and, through all that rot, still owns. The stage, the drugs, the media, the music, and Kerry's fucking ass.

With his hand free, Kerry wedges it between their sweat slick bodies, stroking himself in time with little aborted wrist movements. He's drooling, a little, legs locking tighter. Desperate, so desperate, to cling and fuck, oh, fuck-

Johnny can't get the same speed at this angle so, instead, his thrusts are short, aborted and deep. Filling Kerry up. And sweating body heat is nothing compared to this; Kerry is burning from the inside out, nerves stitched and restitched with every thrust. Singing pretty every time Johnny's cock hits home. For a second, it’s just need, as old and ugly as the scars on their bodies: the ache to consume, to ruin, to make something irreversibly theirs.

And when Johnny comes, it's a horse, low sound. A split second honesty, nothing left to hold it. Kerry follows right after, spilling between them with a cry. Then smothered by Johnny's weight. Nothing but their spit, at that moment, spit and the numb throb of too much sensation.

Johnny's the first to move. Rolls off and they're staring at the ceiling side by side. Neither saying anything. Just kind of sitting in that post sex stillness where they wonder if they regret it or not.

Gigs' in a couple of hours.

Kerry's not sure if he's supposed to feel lucky or fucked.

Johnny breaks the silence, wrecked and raw. “You ain't gonna make this weird, are you?”

Kerry huffs, deflated. “Says the guy who can't even look at me.”

“Yeah, well. Give me a minute.”

They don't move. Don't look.

Neither moves. Neither apologizes. Both just lie there, staring at the ceiling, like if they keep still long enough, the world might reset and let them take it back.

“You ever think 'bout how weird this is, Kerry?”

“What, the hotel ceiling?”

“Nah. This,” Johnny gestures, “all of it. Fuckin' in shitty hotel suites, spit and no rubber. Me? I'm some veteran cripple with a big mouth, there ain't that many places I can go. But you? The fuck you here for, Kerry? “

There's a flicker of something in Johnny's voice, not at Kerry so much as the whole idea, the whole situation.

“Same as you, Johnny.”

“Liar,” Johnny sniffs, “you could've settled down. Retired early in some shitty villa. Lived your life off some rich people takeout and Mexican coke while you watch me blow stuff up on the TV. You could have had that.”

“Divorced, remember?”

Johnny laughs, “you say that like it ain't your fault. Like you don't fuck up everythin' you touch. I know, 'cause I'm the same. Lemme guess, she take the kids too?”

Kerry snorts but it's not amusement, just disbelief at himself. “Of course she took the fuckin' kids, Johnny-”

“Oh boo-hoo!”

“A-and can you blame her? Fuck me. Is that what you wanna hear? I ain't exactly dad-of-the-year material, am I? ‘Oh hey, look kids, there’s daddy!” He waves a hand toward the ceiling like it’s a stage. “And it’s the guy coked out backstage, digging a thong out his ass with a fuckin’ paint scraper.”

Johnny blinks at the image, like the outburst isn't relevant. “Hot.”

“Not hot. Imma fuck up, Johnny. Fuckin' washed up. I'll blow the cash and die before I'm forty and you will too, don't play dumb.”

“Sexy heroin overdose or the good ol’ fashion hang yourself in the garage?”

“You ain’t funny. I’m done in.”

“Crowd don't seem to think so.”

“The crowd think whatever we want 'em to think, Johnny. They're still set on us hating each other.”

“Do we?”

The question hangs.

No answer.

They just lay there in silence again. Both reflecting. Both pretending. Both caught up in the moment, that maybe relief, maybe agony, until the clock strikes something and they put on the masks again.

The messy, glam rock junkie. The unhinged, crippled rockstar.

Sharing nothing but chords and spit.

“Gig soon.”

“Yeah.”