Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kerry wasn’t sure whether he needed to be more sober for this or less.

So, this fucker. Breaks into his house, right? Helps himself to some of the top shelf while Kerry’s in the shower after somehow getting past the robo-goons and then plonks down to have a go at one of the guitars on the wall. And fuck if that ain’t ballsy, breaking into a fucking mansion and then settling in like you own the place. Do something like that and you’re either stupid, or you don’t give a fuck what some rich bastard thinks about property rights, and… Well.

Johnny Silverhand didn’t exactly believe in property rights.

But this wasn’t Johnny. Not in the flesh. He played, talked, acted like Johnny, but this guy looked nothing like him. Johnny would’ve never let his hair go grey, for starters. And he never would’ve sprung for gorilla arms or white-blue Kiroshis or the military-grade Sandevistan that Kerry could see poking just past the edges of that familiar Samurai coat’s collar. Johnny was old school, an as-needed kinda guy. The kind of jacked you had to be to do that kinda chrome justice just wasn’t his style.

This body had lived a whole nother life without Johnny in it, and it was obvious even before Johnny admitted to it. Sleek, modernized, yet raw in its power. Two meters tall and stacked as fuck (was that natural? Or was that some kinda augment too?) with chrome around the eyes, extra ports behind the ears, a data jack that a corpo netrunner would be envious of. And that scar slashing through his brow, all wicked and gnarled—Johnny would’ve gotten that shit fixed up the second it happened. Wouldn’t have been caught dead letting a facial scar like that stick if it didn’t fit his image.

Eh, whatever. It was just idle musing anyways. Why question it? Johnny was back in a body that didn’t belong to him, so what? Still looked like a million eddies to Kerry. Combine that with that Silverhand magnetism Johnny had always had—and a strangely compassionate undertone as they reminisced that’d been completely absent fifty years ago—and Kerry was as hooked on it as he’d been back in the ‘20s. Completely weak to that shit.

Then, right as they were talking about maybe getting the band back together for one last gig (fucking stupid, right? But then, Kerry still wasn’t totally convinced that he wasn’t just hallucinating his balls off), Johnny staggered. Winced. Kerry rushed over to him as he sank heavily into a seat, watched him reach into a pocket to pull out a pill with sharp movements that didn’t match how unsteady the rest of him looked. Pale, bloodless, pained.

Before Kerry could do anything—before he could even ask what the pill was—it’d been popped into the other man’s mouth and swallowed, like it was being done on some kind of autopilot.

The pinched look fell away from those sharp features, relief flooding in. Broad shoulders sagged so heavily that for a second Kerry thought the guy might fall forward right out of the chair and bean himself on the expensive-ass coffee table, but he somehow remained upright.

“Apologies, Mister Eurodyne,” that rough voice murmured, accented. Holy fuck. That was not Johnny. “It appears Mister Silverhand went a bit beyond the bounds of our initial agreement.”

Fuck. Fuuuuuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Kerry swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat and hastily stepped back, tying his robe more tightly around his waist. “You must be the one that actually owns this pile’a chrome,” he said. He was going for cheerful and aloof but ended up sounding reedy to his own ears.

The stranger huffed, just the faintest amused chuckle with his narrow lips pulling into a smirk. He offered up a hand strong enough to crush a man’s head like a fucking grape in a friendly gesture. “Weston Vilim Carlisle,” he said.

Kerry reluctantly took that hand, feeling the cool synthskin and carbon fiber mesh of it. “Johnny called you V.” What the fuck? Lame-ass thing to say, Eurodyne, way to go.

V chuckled again, warm in a way Johnny never was. “Do you remember how government forms used to be filled out way back when, with the middle initial?”

“Hah! Like you’re old enough to remember that shit yourself.”

“Fifty-two is more than old enough for that much, Mister Eurodyne.” Really? Damn, this fucker looked good for fifty-two. At least on a merc budget. Wait, how the fuck—just how often did mercs even survive to fifty-two? “Regardless, my sincerest apologies for the extended and undue intrusion into your home. I shall endeavor to keep Mister Silverhand on a shorter leash in future.”

He started to get up, but Kerry surged forward to shove him back down. It shouldn’t have worked, but the absolute mountain of a man just let it happen and sank back down with a bemused smile. “No, no. You nearly passed out on me a second ago, there’s no way you should be up on your feet again that quick.”

“Nor should you have lied about the genuine nature of your suicide attempt, but I’ve found it to be simple human nature that putting on a brave face is often deemed to be the lesser evil.”

Kerry went still. He felt the blood drain from his face as he blinked at this man he’d known for all of two minutes that apparently had him dead to fucking rights. Strong, gorgeous, well-spoken, British, and now this fucker just had to go and bring the big guns verbally too. Everybody else had water pistols and this guy went and got the armor-piercing tankbuster munitions just for the occasion.

And then he had the gall to look soft after. “Johnny knows, yes,” V said solemnly. “He’s suspected ever since we spotted the automated security on the way in. Suspicions based on what he saw in the screamsheets are why we came.”

“Fuck you,” Kerry hissed. He was trembling by then. Shaking like a fucking cyberpsycho. “I told you it was a publicity stunt. I don’t even need those ‘bots.”

V went to stand, this time successfully. He absolutely towered over Kerry. It was like standing in the shadow of one of those ancient California redwoods. “Would it help?” he asked. “This reunion of yours.”

Kerry shivered. “I… I dunno. Fuck, I really dunno.”

“You were humoring Johnny,” V pointed out. “You needn’t do me the same courtesy. Whether it would help or not, I am at your disposal regardless.”

“Sound like a fuckin’ Delamain cab.”

V sighed. A little irritated, but it was overwritten by like… Fuck. For a guy that decked out in chrome, there shouldn’t have been any kinda capacity for that sorta patience anymore. The streets had made cyberpsychos outta less, hadn’t they? That kinda gentle, wistful look shouldn’t have been possible to even accomplish with a face that sharp, with optics that unnaturally bright. “Mister Eurodyne…”

“You can call me Kerry, y’know.” Or Ker. Like Johnny did. Kerry wished that V would speak to him with the same venom that Johnny used to. Get close just to drive the knife in then twist it. At least then Kerry would feel like he deserved what this guy was offering him.

Cool carbon fiber brushed his cheek and he jerked, startled. Blinking. He ended up getting caught in those optics again, white-blue like fresh snow on a clear day. The kind this part of California just didn’t see. V’s fingers retreated as quickly as they’d approached, like he’d been burned. Like the wordless rejection had seared him, or like he’d just remembered himself as he caught himself in the act of doing something unforgivable.

Kerry had almost never wanted to apologize to Johnny, but he was just a few minutes in and he already wanted to apologize to V. “What is it you wanna do?” he ended up saying instead.

V’s whole expression sobered. Closing up and locking down tight behind a cold, sad wall of practiced stoicism. “Whatever it is you might need of me.”

“You sure you’re up for it?” This was insane. All of it was insane. Maybe Kerry should’ve been more sober for this, or less. But the universe had dropped a beautiful, towering hunk into his lap that wanted nothing more than to help him. How could he say no? How could he not at least let the guy make an attempt? “Bein’ on stage, pretendin’ to be my output if anyone asks, all of it.”

Slowly, V nodded. Solemn and serious. This man was dangerous as hell, in every possible way. Kerry could feel it in his bone marrow. So why did he feel so safe around the guy? Didn’t make sense.

He sucked in a breath and let it out nice and slow to steady himself. “Okay.” They were doing this. Really fucking doing it. “I… Alright. I’ll give you Nance’s detes so you can start makin’ calls.” Didn’t matter how this ended up shaking out, Kerry just couldn’t stomach the idea of this big gorgeous merc getting upset over his ass. This V guy had been dealt enough of a shit hand as it was.

Fuck Johnny though. Seriously.

Chapter Text

[What’s this really about, Ker?]

Kerry sighed, flopping back in his bed. He was glad Nance was okay, but the impression she’d gotten was that Kerry had heard she was in trouble and sent in the scariest goddamn merc in all of Night City to rescue her. And yeah, it was obvious that V was a merc at a glance—no normie would be willing to drop that many eddies on chrome that high-end, the rebuilding that’d been done was way too extensive and the prep alone could flatline any idiot who tried to bulk up the wrong way—but he hadn’t been expecting, well. This.

V was former Arasaka. A straight-up corpo scumbag up until not too long ago. Word was that he’d been involved in Saburo Arasaka’s death a few months after he’d been canned. That he’d been responsible for a city-wide blackout a few weeks back, that the only reason he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere was because fucking Militech owed him favors, that nearly every gang in the city had some kinda beef with him except the Valentinos, the Mox, and the Voodoo Boys. He even had ties to some nomad clan out in the sticks.

It made the thing about Johnny living on an Arasaka chip in his head make a bit more sense. But it meant that him being Kerry’s new output made way, WAY less sense in comparison.

Worse yet, Nance was smart enough to figure out that it was bullshit. So, fuck it, if he had to be honest to make this stick… And it wasn’t like V was actually able to hear a conversation going on through Kerry’s implants even if he had snuck in the house again.

[Nance, you ever…] He trailed off, wincing at himself, scratching idly at his beard. Picking the nearest bottle up off of his nightstand, he uncorked it to take a swig—wine, stale and unpleasant. A gift from some MSM gonk that’d been trying to chat him up if he remembered right. [You ever meet someone and think, “fuck, I wanna get to know this person.” Not like in a sex way—I mean, shit, that too, you’ve seen the guy—but like…]

Nancy hummed. [We’re a little old for love at first sight, I think.]

[Fuck, you think I don’t know that?] And he did know. Fuck did he ever know. He hadn’t even experienced anything like that since he was in his 30s, and hey! Last guy had not only been an asshole, but he’d fucking died. [But he’s not just some groupie looking for an autograph and a handjob either.]

[No, he’s a mercenary who beat one chrome junkie to death with the cyber-arm he’d ripped off of another one bare-handed.] Nancy’s tone was flat, her words pointed. Kerry tried to imagine it and found it hard to reconcile with the man he’d seen in his living room. [He’s a lot closer to Johnny than he is to you or me.]

Fuck no. V was nothing like Johnny. [Then he’ll make a good stand-in, huh?] Kerry couldn’t keep the bitterness from his ‘voice.’

And of course Nance heard it. Sighed like Kerry wasn’t listening. Except he was listening—to everything and then some. [I’ll… I’ll just get everything set up for us, alright? You see if you can get the others on board.] Then… [Be careful, Ker. It’s already taken you this long to get over the last bad break.]

[Yeah, fuck you too Nance.] The line went dead, and Kerry took a long swig of his stale gifted wine, staring moodily at his ceiling. He felt like he was going insane, like he had to be the cyberpsycho. Because he kept trying to picture V, covered in blood, fists flying. Snarling and tearing through Maelstrom gonks like they were made of paper, literally dismembering them with hands that’d almost been afraid to touch Kerry at all.

He thought about how much force it must take to rip apart all those connective tissues and turn a human body into paste. He thought about the glimpse of the military-grade Sandevistan augments under V’s coat. He thought about a faint brush of carbon fiber against his cheek. Apologies, Mister Eurodyne.

Sucking in a breath, he set the bottle back down on the nightstand with a heavy thunk and dialed V’s number. Two rings, and then a pickup—no noise. Internal. Of course a fancy bastard would spring for that shit.

[What seems to be the trouble, Mister Eurodyne?] Fuuuuuck, that voice. That accent. Kerry scooted up along the bed to lean back against the headboard and curl a leg close to his chest.

In spite of everything, talking to V came easy. [I hear you made pullin’ Nance outta the fire look like pickin’ up groceries, Mister Carlisle.] There, taste of his own medicine. Fancy bastard. [How much do I owe you?]

V scoffed. There was a grin in his voice. [Owe me?]

[Yeah. You did a job, you deserve to get paid. I know how mercs operate.]

[Hmm.] There was amusement in that hum, warm and sweet. Moreso when he spoke again. [Mister Silverhand has plenty to say about this, by the way. Most doesn’t bear repeating.]

[Tell Johnny he can fuck off. It’s not like I’m offerin’ some kinda sugar daddy arrangement.] Kerry paused, considering that. [Unless you’d be into that.]

[Hah! Oh, he hates that idea. He just made the most ridiculous face.]

[I can imagine.]

[Do you think BDRec software might pick him up? To my understanding, the visual is a simulation projected directly towards my optic nerves.] V hummed again, thoughtfully. [I wonder if you might be able to see him through my Kiroshi implants with a direct connection.]

A direct connection with V? Did he even realize what he was saying? [Didn’t know you had BDRec software.]

[Worried I’ll record something of you, Mister Eurodyne?] Oh, he so knew what he was fucking saying. Asshole.

Kerry pretended not to notice. [Wouldn’t be the first time. Most Kerry Eurodyne XBDs are deepfakes, but a few… Well.]

V chuckled. [Don’t worry, I’m not about to record anything of that nature without your consent, and if you did feel like uploading it, I would get an editor I know involved. She works with the Mox and some of the joytoys around town, takes such things very seriously. No one would recognize any part of you by the time she was finished—and you would still get to indulge in a spot of exhibitionism, if you wished.]

[Do you?] Kink negotiation! Not how Kerry had expected this conversation to go. Hi, you punched people to death real good, let’s talk about sex. And the fucker was so casual about it too. Calmly and easily picking up what Kerry was putting down.

He was a natural. [Mister Eurodyne, I am the one with the software.]

[I mean…] Kerry swallowed. His mouth had gone dry. He reached for the bottle from earlier. [If you’ll fuck me with that Sandevistan of yours, sure.] Fuck. Fuck. Had he just said that? He’d been thinking it since he’d spotted the fucking thing, yeah, but… Shit. He drained the rest of the bottle in one nervous pull. [That’d give it a few more kinks to tag the thing with. Make a killing off of that even without my face tied to it.]

[At the risk of completely destroying your spine, perhaps.] That was not a ‘no’ and Kerry was seriously starting to wonder if his shitty wine had been spiked with something. [We’d need safety measures. For ourselves, even if they weren’t shown in the BD. And we would have to decide how much we did want to show, which audiences to cater to—]

[Yeah, yeah. Fuckin’ logistics-brained corpo-rat.]

V paused, and when he spoke again there was something to his voice that was… He should’ve been mad, shouldn’t he? Except he wasn’t. He sounded like he thought it was hilarious. [Now who told you that? I can’t seem to remember Mister Silverhand ever admitting to it.]

Kerry was seriously debating the pro’s and con’s of peeling himself out of bed just to get something else to drink. [Nance,] he conceded. [Told me about you when I tried the output cover with her.]

[Ah.] V was quiet for a while. [Does it trouble you?]

[Whaddya mean?]

[My… My current and former corporate ties.]

Kerry frowned to himself, pushing himself up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. [Sounded like it was just former to me.]

[Some yet remain. Perhaps they always will. Though in my case it stopped being a ‘sins of the father’ situation decades ago, long before I accepted the transfer to Arasaka’s counterintelligence department here in Night City. What I am—what I became—is not something I can blame others for.] V’s deep, gravel voice took on a somber tone. [I am not what most would call a good man, Mister Eurodyne. Your friend’s impression of me was correct, likely on all counts.]

So that’s how it was. Kerry poured himself out of bed and into his fuzziest slippers to head for the bar. [Johnny’s lookin’ for one last hurrah,] he said, [but you’re lookin’ for redemption. Have I got that right?]

V didn’t say anything for a while. [What can I say that you would believe?]

[Not a lot.] Kerry went for the top shelf for this, picking out a bottle of bourbon that was dark and rich and tasted like V’s voice sounded. The only pause was when he debated whether or not to bother with a glass. [Could try the “Johnny’s in love with you and has been for years” trick. Or maybe you could say you’ve been secretly whacking off to my centerfold photoshoots for decades, I still get that one sometimes from fans or people at MSM.]

[He hasn’t been. And, to be perfectly blunt, celebrity photoshoots are a dime a dozen.]

[Fuckin’ rude.]

The merc hummed again. At least he wasn’t denying it. [I saw his memories.]

Kerry stopped with the bottle halfway to his lips.

[I saw how he treated you. How he treated everyone, in fact. But none so badly as you.]

[That’s bullshit and you know it.] The bottle was set down on the counter; Kerry had started shaking again. [Alt died, man. And yeah, Rogue and I fuckin’ hate each other a lot of the time, but like… I know damn well she doesn’t deserve what he did to her either.]

V’s tone turned sharp. [And he didn’t regret it near as much as he should have until I was the one he was riding with. Think, man. The neural pattern is obviously bleeding in both directions. And of everyone I met through him, it was your doorstep that my feelings led him to darken.]

Kerry was stunned into silence; V took the opportunity to keep going, sounding honestly… Flustered? Really?

[Doubt everything else if you wish,] V said. [Even yourself if you must. But do not ever doubt that I still think you to be deserving of more. This is no redemption arc for me, Mister Eurodyne. I am well beyond that. I am here for you, and you alone—you need only ask.]

How the hell had they gotten from kink negotiations to these… These declarations of devotion or some fucking shit—? Kerry’s head was spinning. His eyes were beginning to blur and burn. There was a wet feeling running down his throat; he tasted salt and snot when he swallowed it. [I, I don’t… Fuck.]

Sitting in Johnny’s memories. In his head. Railing against his mean, bitter, manipulative ass in silence. Unable to do anything. Unable to fix what’d been broken. How long had V just been stewing in all that? Soaking in that feeling of one-sidedness that came with it, just as impossible to do anything about as pining for Johnny had been back then.

This could go to some very dark places if Kerry let it. He couldn’t let V drown the way he had when he’d been younger. The guy wasn’t an obsessed fan who only saw what they wanted to see through his music. V had let a known manipulative bastard take control of his body just to be able to check on Kerry’s wellbeing, saved the life of someone close to him, and expected absolutely nothing in return. Even all the sex talk had just been V matching Kerry’s freak, reading his mood, letting him yap in safety without any expectations.

[I’ll leave you to the rest of your evening,] V said after some silence, his voice soft again. [Again, my apologies for—]

[Don’t fuckin’ apologize for havin’ feelings. You’re allowed.] Kerry leaned his arms against the bar and let his head rest against them, turning the bottle in his hand without moving to drink from it again. [How long’ve you been sittin’ on this?]

[Since I awoke in a gutter after being shot in the head.] Ah. Yeah. Probably no other way to be about that except blunt.

Still not something Kerry wanted to think about, though. [Not long after Saburo kicked it then, I guess.] In a place like Night City, that was a long time to hold a torch if it was one that liked threatening to go out. This was real, huh? [I, uh… I was serious about the Sandevistan.]

V let out a soft huff. [We can work our way up to it if you’d like. I think you may be underestimating what that particular augmentation does.]

[I think you might be underestimatin’ the gonk-ass things I’ll do in pursuit of having a good time.] But as eager as Kerry might be to get railed, it wasn’t happening tonight and he knew it. [You gonna be okay?]

[Hah!] There was a smile in the response. Why was it funny? Was it that Kerry had asked at all? Or was it the question itself that was stupid? [Sleep well, Mister Eurodyne.]

Oh, there was zero chance of that happening.
__

They got the band back together, mostly. Kerry hunted the last couple of members down, but hadn’t realized they’d had a falling-out. Henry, the resident hot mess, had decided to take the opportunity of learning Denny’s address to fill her pool with concrete out of spite. Son of a bitch.

And then V, crazy bastard that he was, somehow managed to coax the baseball bat from Denny’s hands and calm her down. Defused the situation just like that. Sure, Henry wouldn’t be playing with them, but at least he figured out he wasn’t wanted in time to keep all his teeth. Kerry hadn’t had to do a damn thing in the end, that shit was all V. Handling things like it was easy while Kerry stood on the sidelines. Which, hey, competency’s great and all, sure. But Kerry couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been upstaged.

So he came over to V afterward and took him aside. “Can we talk?”

V tilted his head, but gave an obliging nod a moment later. There was something both comical and imposing for Kerry about having someone that big slipping that easily into his shadow; the habits and body language all screamed ‘corpo’ if he gave it even a half a second’s thought, but Kerry had been too busy thinking about how well-fitted V’s pants were when they’d first met.

Obedient, too. Waited for Kerry to say something first, watching him with a quiet kind of patience. “Listen, uh…”

“It was clear to me who was in the wrong,” V said plainly. Welp, so much for obedient. Took Kerry opening his mouth as permission. “The more we waffled, the more we risked escalation. And all three of you have Trauma Team biomonitors; were anything to happen, those vultures would’ve been on us like a fresh kill.”

Kerry blinked a bit. “Uh… I wasn’t gonna say anything about that.”

That seemed to catch V off-guard. He paused, eyeing Kerry more closely. “Really?”

“Can’t complain. Nobody got shot, nobody got their faces rearranged. An’ don’t tell me you weren’t tempted with Henry, I know damn well that you were.”

“He would’ve deserved it,” V agreed. No shame whatsoever.

“Maybe, maybe not, but with your chrome you’d just turn what’s left of his coked-out brains into soup. Pop every aneurysm he’s got at once with one good knock.” Kerry shook his head. “Nah, choom, that ain’t it. I meant to ask somethin’, more like.”

V nodded. No hesitation, just a slight frown of concern. “Ask away.”

“Were you… Are you cheatin’? With us, I mean.” Kerry processed how that sounded, then backtracked. “Like, have you got Johnny in your head feedin’ you the right answers all the time?”

“No, but I do have Mister Silverhand attempting to convince me of how much of a messy whore you are at the moment,” V said blandly.

Kerry just about blew a fuse. “He what?!”

“I think he does it to see if I’ll react.”

“Does he now? Son of a fuckin’… ugh.” Kerry kicked a rock across the dirt. Wait, no, a piece of loose concrete, not a rock. From the concrete truck that’d been used to fill Denny’s pool. Man, this was a weird past couple of days. “Stupid piece’a shit Johnny motherfuckin’ Silverhand—”

He paused mid-rant, glancing back. V was smiling at him. Fuck. Kerry’s last two remaining brain cells tried to dredge up some annoyance about it but came up empty, and somehow that lack of being able to get mad at V’s dopey-ass expression was even more of an irritant.

“If you’re recordin’ this, I’mma find out where you live an’ set all your shit on fire,” Kerry warned.

V’s smile became a slightly lopsided grin, like the scars on his face made it slightly harder to keep things symmetrical expression-wise or something. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Yeah?” The rockstar scoffed. “Shit, it really is just that easy with you, huh?”

“For you? Yes.” V’s grin fell away, turning more serious. More solemn. “As it should be. If you’re ever in a position to feel like I’ve backed you into a corner against your will, then I’ve likely made a series of grave mistakes that could very much do with addressing.”

“So what I’m hearin’ is, if you fuck up, I should go full Denny on your ass.”

V nodded. “You can even have your pick of my blunt weapons with which to do it,” he promised.

“Guns too?”

“I don’t keep many. Rarely do I have more than a pistol on me at any given time.” That made sense given all the chrome. But there was a smile crinkling the corners of the merc’s eyes all the same. “You’re more than welcome to them if you wish, however.”

Kerry swallowed. He’d forgotten what he intended to talk about. Kinda hard to concentrate with a goddamn mountain of a man saying shit along the lines of ‘I’d let you kill me’. “I, uh… Sure thing, man.”

V watched him for a while, quiet. Then: “Care for a ride home?”

“What, on—on your bike?” Fuck fuck fuck fuck, alright, the last two brain cells had just spontaneously fucking combusted. “Is there even room?”

“There’s room.” Okay, maybe. Yeah. But only if they squeezed. And if Kerry had to squeeze onto a bike with V like this then he would just die on the spot, because almost no matter how they managed to orient themselves, somebody’s dick would end up mashed against somebody else’s ass.

It was tempting as hell. But for all their yapping, Kerry wasn’t ready for that yet. Not if it was gonna mean something. “Nah,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll just call a cab. Frequent flyer with the Delamains at this point.”

Thankfully, V didn’t look insulted or anything like that. Maybe a little dejected. “Alright.” He offered a brief smile, then turned to head back to his bike. “Call if you need anything before the gig. I won’t be far.”

“Is that a way of sayin’ you’ll break traffic laws to get there?” Kerry teased.

V chuckled as he climbed onto his bike. Bright red with custom Valentinos paint. Scuffed, but well-kept; a real preem set of wheels that came from love instead of money. “Mister Eurodyne, if you knew how traffic laws were written, you would also regard them as suggestions.”

Kerry had to grin. “Already do.”

“A man after my own heart.” The rockstar’s guts filled with butterflies, distracting him so that the sound of the bike’s engine roaring to life didn’t register right away. Fuck, V couldn’t just say shit like that. Asshole. “Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t tell me what to do.” There was no venom in it. How could there be? Kerry watched as V sped off into the twilight on that bike, sleek and cool as hell. Fucking picture perfect bastard.

How dare Johnny drop something this tempting into his lap after fifty years? Fucker.

Chapter Text

Fuck, Kerry had missed being on stage.

‘Good’ didn’t even come close to describing it. Performing for a live crowd was like this… This transcendental experience, every time. An exchange of energy, the vibes all shared by every single soul out in the crowd and on the stage, circulating through the air itself. It was euphoric. Amazing. Exhausting. It left Kerry feeling like he was crossfaded on every single drug he’d ever tried, so wired that his hands shook. His throat was raw, his lungs ached, his heart was racing, his head throbbed.

He sank into a seat down at the bar afterward, still strung out on that high. Tried not to think about how the whole time, Johnny had been making V’s fingers fly over the frets, about how he’d screamed and sang with V’s voice. About how much better it could’ve been if it was V on stage, for real, and not some remnant of a dead man. Sharing that air with V would be the real dream.

“Didja have fun?” a voice asked. V’s voice. But even before he looked up, Kerry knew it wasn’t V speaking.

Shit, he didn’t need this. “Did you?” Kerry shot back.

Johnny snorted, plopping down on the nearest barstool and leaning over the counter like he owned it. “Can’t believe you still got that in you.” Wait, what? “Really did work on your vocals, huh?”

Ah. So that’s where that was going. “Fuck you,” Kerry sighed. Even the compliments were backhanded. And with that high of performing (and the amphetamines he might’ve taken beforehand) still in his system, Kerry didn’t feel like dealing with the bastard’s little jabs. “...Yeah. I had fun. More than I thought I would, honestly.”

“There ya go. Was that so hard to say, Ker?”

“Y’know how V seems to think you’ve actually changed from the old days?” Kerry shook his head with a chuckle. “’Cause I don’t. Every time we talk, you gotta go outta your way to prove his ass wrong an’ make yourself look like a dick again. Man goes to all that trouble to launder your image, make you look like you’re turnin’ into less of an asshole—”

“—by making himself look better in comparison,” Johnny pointed out. “He’s a corpo prick through and through. All that bowing and scraping, puttin’ you on a pedestal? It’s straight outta their playbook on how to get what you want. Advancement in the corporate world isn’t about real growth, it’s about how well you can stand the taste of somebody else’s boots.”

Kerry’s face twisted in disgust. No. That wasn’t what it was. “You don’t know shit about him.”

“I’m living in his head. I know how he thinks.” Johnny leveled him with a serious look. “This isn’t gonna end well for you, Ker. He’s gonna chew you up and spit you back out.”

If Kerry said anything he was gonna explode. All that swirling emotion from earlier had turned to a stewing rage, threatening to boil over. Because, fuck, Johnny was wrong. He was so goddamn wrong. Doubt didn’t have an inch of wiggle room to try and needle its way in because of how wrong Johnny was (which was rare in itself, because Kerry had done a lot of drugs in his time and sometimes doubted reality based on that alone). And if it was so obvious that even Kerry could see it then Johnny definitely knew too, which meant the fucker was lying through his teeth to try and fuck them over. The same way he apparently made jabs about Kerry that only V could hear, those mean little asides that Kerry could imagine all too easily because he remembered what it was like to hear them every single goddamn day.

Eventually, Johnny sighed. Sagged. The same way he always did when his goading didn’t work. Reaching back, he pulled his guitar out and set it down gently on the counter, with the kind of tenderness that was always reserved for things rather than people. Then, he scooted it towards Kerry with a soft, solemn pat.

Kerry blinked at it dumbly. “Johnny…”

“Go on.” An apology. That’s what this was. “She’s yours. Wouldn’t play without you anyway.”

“I—I can’t—” Kerry’s fingers wound around the neck of the guitar. His thumb stroked over the worn frets. All the anger had left him apart from a tiny shred in the back of his psyche that reminded him this was probably just another one of Johnny’s attempts at manipulation, love-bombing or some therapy-speak bullshit like that. But the rest of him was brought back to V’s words about the two of them bleeding into each other… “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” Johnny’s lips curled for a second with something like distaste, and he thrust his hand into his pocket to pull out a pill—that uncharacteristic jerk, like from before. V taking over. “Take care of her for me, will ya?”

He popped the pill, swallowed. There were a few seconds where it felt like Kerry’s heart had stopped. Everything was still, quiet except for the sounds of the club winding down around them.

Then V’s body lurched forward on the bar stool with a grunt, barely caught by the hand on the bar counter. The man gasped, coughed, shuddered as he visibly fought the urge to heave. These transitions between the two of them were bad enough to watch, but just how bad were they to live through?

Kerry dragged his teeth over his lip. “V?”

V let out a slow, shaky breath, only to cough again. “Don’t mind me,” he wheezed. “I’ll be… This won’t take but a moment.”

Right, sure. Might pass now, but what about the next time? And the time after that? This shit definitely wasn’t getting easier on V with time, and that was just from what Kerry had seen; there was no way to know what was going on when he wasn’t around, how bad it really got. “And Johnny?”

“I’ll let you know when we’re back on speaking terms,” V huffed, pushing himself up to sit up straighter with a wince. “Ugh. Worthless cunt can’t even sit correctly. Either he turns himself into a fucking liquid or does his best impression of a shrimp, without fail.”

Kerry had to smile. Even as his fingers tightened around Johnny’s guitar. “Guess no amount’a you two bleedin’ together can correct bad posture.”

V made a noise like a large, annoyed dog. He took a few more seconds to breathe, settle into himself, get his bearings. When he looked at Kerry again, it was with much more focused eyes. A clearer head. No more traces of Johnny.

“I, uh…” Kerry swallowed hard. “Listen…”

“Did it help?”

Kerry blinked a bit. “Did it—oh.” His last two brain cells scrambled to come up with an answer. “Uh. Yeah.” He cleared his throat and tentatively picked up the guitar, tugging the strap across his torso and feeling its solid weight against his back. Still warm, from when V had been holding it. From when Johnny had been holding it. “Thanks.”

This was all such a mess. Kerry could feel himself spiraling. And he knew, he fucking knew that if he stared for too long at V’s gentle, relieved smile he was gonna get caught up in it like a tidal wave because it was just too damn easy to get swept away by this guy. If it really was all just a big scary corpo act to get what he wanted, then V deserved an academy award for that shit.

“I should, uh… I should get goin’.” Sliding away from the bar, Kerry tried to look at anything that wasn’t V. “But really—thanks. It was a good time, V. If some gonk in the crowd managed to get a recording, I’ll send it to ya.”

V chuckled. “BD recording software, remember?”

Fuck, right. “Ain’t the same,” Kerry told him anyway, because it was true. “You looked fuckin’ good up there. Even if it wasn’t you. Deserve a chance ta see that shit for yourself.” He was talking on autopilot, yapping away. All his instincts screamed at him to get out because if he stayed any longer he wouldn’t want to go home. He needed a drink, or maybe five, and some time to himself to clear his head. And he needed to delta the fuck out now before he said something they’d both regret later.

“In that case, I’ll be looking forward to it.” V had a smile in his voice again. “Shall I give you a ride home, Mister Eurodyne?” Motherfucker.

It took everything for Kerry to not give in and say yes. “Nah, no need.” He started heading for the door, already ringing up a cab internally. He gave a wave without looking back. “Keep askin’ though. Might take you up on it sometime.”

“Count on it, then,” was the last thing he heard on his way out. Almost too quiet to register.

This fucker was gonna be the death of him.

__

Immediately after arriving back at his mansion, Kerry made every effort to get as wasted as possible. What had been a messy ending to a beautiful night became a blurry haze of disconnected moments and words and feelings. For the next couple of days he was a human puddle of goo on the floor fueled by booze and drugs, only occasionally staggering to his feet to take a piss or pick up his takeout orders from the front step.

He got a lot of texts in that time. Managers, agents, producers. Some were mad about the little impromptu concert since it hadn’t been something that was necessarily easy to monetize. Others were just nagging him about collabs, new tracks, what he was working on. A couple bugged him about V, who’d been spotted in the footage from their gig, but that was more just his handlers and PR team getting pissy about having to pay the screamsheets to lay off on the rumors for a bit until they could get Kerry to make some kinda statement (turns out the ‘he’s my new output’ excuse had worked a little too well and now people actually believed it).

But none of that mattered. Not really. Well, alright, the part about V getting put on the spot was probably gonna be a pain in the ass, but like. Even that just barely overshadowed the fact that Kerry’s tongue felt like it’d turned to cotton in his mouth. It was kinda nice to just, y’know, exist. On the floor. No worries on the floor. None whatsoever. Floor time was a sacred millennial art and Kerry was officially declaring its latest renaissance, or at least he would if he hadn’t been locked out of all his socials by his PR team ages ago.

Wait, what was that last text about? He’d only skimmed it. Something about J-Pop bitches…

Kerry froze for a second, scanning the text over again in his optics. Irritation began to prickle at the back of his skull, bright enough to pierce the fog and wake up his last two brain cells. Those little bubblegum pop sluts—

The next hour was spent getting into one-sided shouting matches with anyone and everyone he could reach. It was out of his managers’ hands; under contract. Out of his lawyers’ hands for the same reason. All under contract when it shouldn’t have been. Kerry knew damn well what he’d signed and it didn’t have any fucking clauses about how his shit was just up for grabs for any bitch who happened to be signed to the same label. He owned the rights to his own music, and he’d been around long enough to see what happened when a song didn’t get the right accreditation. It was worse than losing everything in the divorce had been, at least to him. You lose your music, you lose a piece of your soul.

Well, fuck it. If these bitches wanted problems, he’d give ‘em problems. No more legal avenues he could take? Fine! He could improvise.

[V!] Kerry was in full yapping mode the second he heard the other man pick up. [Got a job for ya, big fella. Merc stuff.]

There was a pause. [Mister Eurodyne,] V sighed, and Kerry could just picture him rubbing a hand over his face, [must we do this at three in the fucking morning?]

Kerry scratched his beard. [I thought you mercenary types were all night owls.]

[Normally I would agree, but I’ve been awake for the past twenty-two hours.]

[Jeez, the fuck you been doin’ for twenty-two hours?]

[Merc stuff,] V replied archly. [A former Arasaka colleague set things up so that his personal effects and intel would be wired to me in the event of his death. I already have a target on my back, so I assumed there would be little harm in… Well. Either way, nothing you ought to be worrying about.] Kerry wondered where he was. What he was doing. Had he just gotten home? Pulled off to the side of the road? Had he already been in bed? In the shower, maybe? [What seems to be the trouble?]

Kerry felt like he was about to vibrate out of his own skin. [I wanna blow somethin’ up.]

[Hah!] That’d been an out-loud laugh. Came through the pickups in a way that Kerry could tell. Shit, V probably had those crinkles around his eyes again like he always did when he got even a little bit of a smile. [Alright, you have my attention.]

Chest fluttering with excitement, Kerry made his way over to his closet to pick out something to wear that wasn’t a thong and bathrobe as he launched into his explanation of what he wanted to do. The J-Pop bitches, them gunning for his track without his permission and his label just giving it to them, their planned gig in Night City where they were gonna perform, the supply truck, all of it. He could snag a ride, he had the ordnance.

All he needed was backup. Just in case. And, y’know, for emotional support. ‘Cause even if it might not be necessary, V was good at making him feel safe. Like he was doing the right thing, like he could do anything he set his mind to, like anything was possible. Kerry didn’t say the sappy parts out loud, though, ‘cause like. Fuck.

V’s warm chuckle snapped him out of his thoughts.

[If I had to guess, this is likely down to a common clause in licensing agreements that allows for the company that wrote the contract to change its terms at any time,] the merc noted, amused. [It’s an old tactic from nearer the turn of the century, and a lesser-known one that rarely sees any sort of legal challenges due to most not knowing that they can. But if the contract was amended, then the amendments made to it may be in conflict with current NUS labor law.]

Kerry blinked. [So…] He frowned a little to himself. [You don’t wanna blow shit up with me?]

[I didn’t say that.] That audible smile. [But the intellectual property theft is a symptom. Get me a copy of your contract with MSM after we’re finished, mm? We can look it over for anything that might be used in a class-action suit. And if it can’t become a lawsuit, then we can surely turn it into one hell of a scandal.]

Fucking shiiiiit, this man. Where had he been all Kerry’s life? [I feel like Arasaka must’a lost a lotta money when they fired your ass.]

[And they lose more and more every day,] V agreed.

Chapter Text

V came right on time with a tall, dark coffee in hand and dark circles under his eyes, dressed in a silhouette-obscuring merc’s jacket that made him look all the more imposing lit by the city’s neon. And Kerry could not stop himself from thinking—not for the first time by a long shot—that the guy looked absolutely fucking stunning. Just, how the shadows contoured his long face, and his cheekbones, and those deep-set cybernetic eyes framed by chrome that always seemed to catch the glint of the streetlights. How the sharp slope of his nose looked in profile with all that harsh contrast… Fuck, there were lyrics in there somewhere, Kerry was sure.

Either way, they got into Kerry’s (borrowed) car, with V noting that Johnny was saying what a bad driver Kerry was, and Kerry rolling his eyes. The car clunked and sputtered and made noises when it hit potholes but it wasn’t meant to be a smooth ride, and V didn’t seem to mind Kerry’s yapping about the music industry, and the air was crisp and clean and smog-free so the car’s AC being busted didn’t matter. He could pretend, for just a second, that this was a date instead of a job. That they were in their 20’s going to see a shitty movie and not two older bastards going to blow up a truck belonging to some girl group.

It was nice. Weirdly normal. And what was even weirder was how much Kerry kinda wanted more of it. No backhanded jabs, no barbs, none of that shit that Kerry used to justify by saying it was boring without it. Just this ordinary, warm companionship from somebody that knew him, knew what he was talking about, knew how he felt.

As it would turn out, that feeling was just the climb into the first hill of the night’s absolute fucking roller coaster.

“We’re here,” Kerry said, pulling off onto the shoulder. He stepped out of the car, and V followed like a dutiful hound as he made his way over to a nearby autobus stop. “C’mon, let’s get outta sight.”

“Have you thought about how we’ll be stopping them?” V wondered.

Kerry flashed a grin and pulled out his pistol. “Sure did.” He paused for a second. “No killin’ though, alright? We’re just here ta cause a lil’ logistical snarl.”

V hummed, straightening out his coat. He’d finished the last of his coffee on the way over. “Understood,” was all he said, which was both concerning and a little hot in how threatening it managed to be. What was it they called guys that wore coats like that in the darker parts of the city? Solos? Hell of a thing to call somebody, but it fit; V looked like he could take on the whole city solo. 

Down the road by about a mile, a car was approaching. Kerry blinked as a ping came up at the edge of his vision; he broke into a wide grin. “Showtime.”

And V just nodded once, like all this was routine, said "I'll handle it then," and stepped right out into the road in front of the car.

Tires screeched. Brakes squealed. Someone in the car screamed. But it was too late to slow down or swerve at highway speeds. V simply braced his legs and set himself at an angle that put his shoulder first, like he was holding a shield, except the shield was his whole arm.

Watching a man shoulder-check a speeding truck was the kinda thing meant for a bad action flick. V did it like it was routine. The nose of the truck crumpled around him, its rear end lifting off the road as momentum kept it going for a second before it came crashing back down. The pavement around V’s feet cracked and threatened to buckle from the force of it all as it’d been carried through the merc’s body. Then, as calm as he’d been stepping into the road, V walked around to the driver’s side door. “Out.”

The driver was a sniffling, trembling mess. “W-what the fuck, m-man, some kinda fuckin’ cyberpsycho or somethin’—”

V sighed, gripped the door in his hands, braced against the bottom of the truck with his foot, and yanked. The door came off with a shriek of twisting metal; he tossed it aside and grabbed the driver by the collar, just to lift him bodily out of the truck and drop him back on the pavement. “Go,” he said. “Get as far away from here as you can. This is about the gear, not your lives.”

Kerry couldn’t tell if the guy’s pants had been soaked before that, but they certainly were after when he scrambled away, sniffling and whimpering. Then V looked at the passenger and nodded in the direction that the driver had gone; even just that white-blue cybernetic stare made the girl squeak.

“You too,” he said. “Out.”

She fumbled to open the door. “Yeah, yep, sure. No need to tell me twice, fuck. Have at it, mister cyberpsycho.” She didn’t bolt quite the same way the other guy did, but she was still quick to leave, no more door-tearing required. And the moment she was out of view, V leaned into the truck to yank out the dashcam and crush it in his hand like an egg.

“All clear.” Fuck yeah it was. Kerry let out a wheezy breath and stepped out from cover. He hadn’t even needed to do anything. Felt a little useless, honestly, but that feeling was overshadowed by all the blood in his body having traveled downstairs by that point. Holy shit. His last two brain cells struggled to remember what they were supposed to be doing. Belatedly, he put away his gun; he hadn’t even needed to intimidate anyone with it.

A thought eventually occurred to him as he moved to the back of the truck to crack it open and check the gear. “You, uh…” He cleared his throat. “You good? Kinda tanked a whole-ass cargo truck there.”

V snorted, coming to join him. Tossing the mangled remains of the dashcam aside. “Hardly the first time. Or the worst.”

“Yeah?” Kerry raised a brow. “No shit?”

“Downtown, on the expressway a few weeks back. Arasaka’s as territorial as any gang in their own way, just better armed.” V smirked. “I must’ve shown up on their local surveillance, because they sent out a patrol. Wasn’t about to shake them, and scuffing up the bike hardly seemed appropriate.”

“So you bodied an armored Arasaka military transport like that,” Kerry guessed.

V shrugged lightly. One glance over the contents of the truck, and then he was headed back to the car to grab the ordnance. “It’s just physics.” Uh-huh, completely normal way to respond there. Like tackling an armored Arasaka truck full of goons was all about calculation. “Though I showed a bit less concern for the well-being of the passengers then.”

Kerry broke into a trot to follow. “What’d you do after you fucked up their ride?”

“Threw it at the next one that was still in pursuit, obviously.” Obviously! Fuck, Kerry could just picture it. “There were four in total. Three to each vehicle. Arasaka clearly weren’t taking any chances, or at the very least they thought they weren’t. I turned it into a demonstration of just how much they’ll waste in the way of resources by attempting such things.”

“Spoken like a corpo.” Not as much of an insult as it normally would be; Kerry was impressed. “You hit ‘em where it hurts: right in the wallets. Even an admin on a power trip would hafta get it past shareholders to try that shit again. Gotta be some kinda ROI for them to make a move now.”

V nodded, hefting the bulk of the explosives himself and giving Kerry a grenade to play with. “That was the intent, yes.”

“What about NCPD? They get pissy about it?”

That got a chuckle out of him. “Mister Eurodyne, please. NCPD doesn’t deal with suspected cyberpsychosis cases. And considering that would be about the only way Arasaka could spin it and still look good, I doubt they’d want to expend the resources necessary to get MaxTac involved if they knew it could lead to increased scrutiny and poor publicity.” He paused a moment. “Besides, the NCPD owe me enough favors that half their workforce might very well quit on the spot, no matter how much Arasaka tried to pay them.”

Kerry’s face crinkled so hard that he could feel around the edges of his chrome. “You work with pigs?”

“There’s much they can’t handle, whether it’s too dangerous for them or too damning for their image. I don’t always deal in violence. At times I’m simply making up for the complete and utter lack of socioeconomic safety nets. NCPD still gets called regardless because it’s all there is, but their presence is hardly a panacea.”

“A what.”

V was smiling as he set the explosives down in the truck. “A cure-all.”

“Oh. Right. I knew that.” This wasn’t the kind of thing Johnny had talked about when it came to being a merc. Johnny had been more of an anarchist about it. Fuck the system, tear it all down. Everyone’s suffering, people are gonna keep suffering until it’s all burned to the fucking ground, the burning needs to be done even if a few folks get caught in it. That last part had always been what Kerry got stuck on: folks just trying to get by ending up in the middle of it all.

But V clearly thought about that kinda nonsense a lot more than Johnny ever did. Logistics and all that. Collateral damage. Kerry didn’t have a clue where the guy might’ve picked all that up but it was almost like he’d been trained to think about that shit, had it drilled into him until it stuck somewhere.

Kerry stared at the grenade in his hand, considering. Had V thought about this too? All the ripples it’d have? All the angles it could be approached from? Was all this as much of a calculated, sure thing to him as tanking a speeding truck had been? Was everything he did with Kerry as deliberate and careful and controlled, poised to slam into him later just as he was putting his foot down on the accelerator?

No… not quite that. Kerry had crashed out before. There was a weightlessness in it. A thrill of release and clarity of thought and purpose. But coming down, the sudden stop, everything after—that was what hurt. V was letting the crash come. Letting the excitement and relief happen. But he was padding out the landing after so it wouldn’t hurt, too. Tanking the impact so Kerry didn’t have to get rattled.

Kerry chewed his lip and offered up the grenade. “Feel like doin’ the honors, V?”

The big merc blinked, tilting his head. Then he smiled. All soft and warm. He took the grenade in his hand and moved to get between Kerry and the truck. “Very well. Best give it some distance.”

“No fun,” Kerry huffed, but he scooted back a ways anyway. Five meters or so. V rolled his eyes and took the musician by the arm to drag him back another car-length, and Kerry had to fight the laugh that was threatening to bubble out of him. Fuck, so goddamn protective. Some kinda instinct? It was almost cute. “Maybe I wanna get my eardrums blown out.”

“I’m sure the fireworks will still be more than spectacular enough from here.” The pin was pulled, the grenade tossed. It landed in the back of the truck, right in the middle of all the gear and planted explosives. There was a heart-stopping second of nothing, then—

BOOM!

Kerry jerked back, the breath knocked out of his lungs by the shockwave. Then as the fireball died down into just a plain ol’ vehicle fire, he let out a bark of a laugh and clapped V on the shoulder, beaming.

“Fuckin’ preem work right there!” he crowed. Then he glanced up at the merc curiously. “So how much do I owe ya for this?”

V seemed to think about that. “Another coffee, perhaps?” he said after a moment, gesturing to his head with a sheepish kind of smile. “Think the last one’s wearing off. Starting to feel a headache coming on.”

“You got it, choom, no problem. All on me.” Kerry squeezed his shoulder and turned to head back to the car. “C’mon, I know just the place.”
__

Kerry had a fondness for shitty little dives. Places where the waitresses would get into arguments with the regulars, no one in the back working the kitchens had a work permit, and the coffee was made on top of dregs from the last pot that never quite got finished off. This one just happened to have the perfect kind of donuts to pair with it—overfried sugary bullshit that stuck to the inside of your mouth and tasted like heaven itself when you were running on weed and fumes—but it was the coffee Kerry was focused on then, with the sun not quite peeking over the horizon and shitty synthpop playing over the tinny radio. He got his black double espresso, and V got a triple for good measure.

In other words, it was perfect. The best kinda date. Kerry’s chest was all light and warm, and V looked good even under the diner’s fluorescents. He’d look good under any lighting, Kerry was starting to realize. A beautiful man all around.

“About the contract…” V started to say.

Kerry blinked at him over the rim of his cup. “Mm? ‘Sup?”

“Might I see it?”

“Oh! Right, like we talked about, yeah…” Clearly, Kerry was firing on all cylinders tonight. He took a second to sort through his files, pressing his lips into a tight line as he concentrated on finding the right ones. “I got a lotta versions. You were right, there’s edits goin’ back years.”

“Mm. Just send me all of them, then.”

Kerry did just that, zipping all the versions of his contract into a single folder and tossing them V’s way. He saw the merc’s eyes flicker briefly: file received. “Not sure if sharin’ all this with ya is a breach or not. Haven’t had a chance to look over all the changes since I first signed the thing.”

“If it is, then the contract is already in violation of both national and state law,” V said, like he hadn’t even had to look that part up. His eyes were focused on his HUD, staring blankly at nothing. “Using an NDA to skirt the bounds of legality is usually considered an overreach already. But assuming you didn’t sign one directly—”

“Which I sure as fuck didn’t.”

“—then an NDA cannot be applied through later contract remediation in absentia.” The merc went quiet for a moment, leaning back against the counter and idly sipping on his coffee. “But how sloppy are they, I wonder…?” he murmured to himself.

Pretty sloppy, in Kerry’s opinion. MSM was just kinda average as corps went. “Not as clean as Arasaka, I’ll tell ya that.” He took a big gulp of his coffee and sighed as it warmed him from the inside. “Been a few times where they issued bullshit takedowns on my behalf, without me sayin’ shit. Had ta step in, make a stink.”

“Technically, they have to issue such notices,” V told him. “Copyright becomes worthless if it isn’t staunchly defended.”

“An’ I’ll defend my own shit, no problem. As we literally just got done demonstratin’.” Kerry scoffed. “But this ain’t people tryin’a claim what’s mine is theirs while my shit gets buried by their image. It’s creative commons, free publicity. All it does is cut into ticket an’ merch sales for the company that I ain’t needed an enny of in years. They start sendin’ out bullshit takedown notices, an’ it’s my image that suffers. They’re makin’ me look like a fuckin’ tyrant out ta crush some gonk teenager with a BD rec under the weight of a million cease-an’-desists.”

V shifted his jaw in such a way that it quietly popped, nodding to himself. He didn’t even blink. “Explains quite a lot.”

Kerry paused. “How so…? Didja find somethin’?”

“One of the most recent edits was a few months back.” V finally looked over to Kerry, calm and deadly serious as his eyes refocused. “MSM rewrote the part of the contract that gives you the rights to your own music, both solo and with Samurai. According to the edits they’ve made, they own everything you’ve ever composed—including the right for any artist under the same label to reproduce your music in part or in full, with all compensation from the resulting cover going directly to the record label.”

Bile rose in Kerry’s throat. His face was hot. That light, warm, safe feeling was gone, replaced with a tightness like his chest was being crushed in a vice. “Like… like one’a them slave contracts big corps give up-and-comers overseas?”

“Almost exactly the same sort of wording, yes,” V agreed solemnly. Then, something unthinkable: his hand went to cover Kerry’s on the counter, big and strong and smooth and cool. The nausea that had been threatening to bubble over was squashed under the weight of those cybernetic fingers before it could overtake him.

Just like that, he was safe again. He could think. He could breathe. “Send back whatever ya found, an’ highlight what’s worth lookin’ into,” Kerry managed. It was a croak, but it was something. “I’ll get it over to my lawyers.”

V smiled. His thumb stroked over Kerry’s knuckles and it sent a shiver down the length of his entire spine. “If you’ll give me a chance to sleep on it, I can prepare some notes for you as well.”

“Yeah. That works. ‘Preciate it.” Nothing like Johnny. Nothing like him at all. “Seriously though, V… Thanks. I mean it.”

“Whatever you may need of me, Mister Eurodyne.” One last brush of his fingertips, and then his hand was pulling away. Kerry had to resist the urge to chase after it, his fingers curling against the counter instead. Meanwhile, V went back to sipping his coffee. Finishing the last of his cup. A twinge passed across his features, so brief that Kerry thought he might’ve imagined it. “I should get going,” he mumbled, half to himself. “The faster I am about turning in, the faster I can get to looking over that contract in full.”

Kerry eyed him for a moment. “Still got that headache?” V nodded. “I could drive ya home. Or spring for a Delamain if you’d rather have that.”

V shook his head, standing with a wince. He set his cup down and started to head for the door. “No, no. Don’t mind me.”

“Hey, what’d I say about tellin’ me what to do, huh?” Kerry popped up from his chair to follow the man out. The bell above the door jingled at their departure: another relic. The charm Kerry would usually find in something like that was quickly smothered by concern, though. “You ain’t slept cause’a me. Lemme do this for ya, c’mon.”

They were out the door by the time Kerry got a chance to see V’s face again. When he did, what he saw made his blood run cold.

“You’re bleedin’…”

V’s lips twisted. He tried to turn away, hide the blood running from his nose, but Kerry grabbed him by the face to force him to make eye contact. And that, too, came with its own revelation.

“Holy shit, V, you’re burnin’ up.” V’s arms were cybernetic. His hands didn’t have any real meat to them anymore. But his face was still more than human enough for a fever like that to be felt. “No, no—this ain’t somethin’ you get to argue about. You’re comin’ with me, we gotta get you into an ice bath. This shit’s got overuse of cybernetics written all over it.”

For a second it looked like V was about to protest. Unfortunately, it was at that point he started to seize.

Chapter Text

The thing about running with Johnny for so long back in the day was that Kerry was no stranger to the kinda shit real edgerunner types went through. He’d seen some shit, knew what to look for. But this… Whatever V was going through wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen. It was close enough to look like it at a glance, but the deeper Kerry looked, the more things seemed like they were just a little to the left of where they should’ve been.

He got V into the car (somehow! All that bulk being dead weight definitely didn’t help). Drove him back to the villa. Watched him have two more seizures on the way (which was terrifying). Got him into the house (with the help of the bots), undressed him (while trying not to think about it), and shoved him into an ice bath to cool him off. And that part? All mostly familiar shit, even if it was scary as hell. Meet enough netrunners and cyberjunkies, you end up running those types an ice bath or two.

But when a cyberjunkie or a netrunner got hot, it was the spots where their cybernetics met their real skin that got the hottest. V didn’t even have any inflammation around those areas—they weren’t hot or swollen or tender at all—and his cybernetics were totally cool to the touch. The chrome and synthskin was only warm where it’d absorbed his body heat. The only spot where he was showing any signs of inflammation beyond the fever was behind his ear, near the back of his jaw; there was a gnarled scar around an old port there, with what looked like a datachip still stuck inside. Kerry’s fingers shook as he traced its jagged edges.

Johnny. This was the biochip, wasn’t it? That port was where Johnny’s soul had ended up.

Was Johnny killing V?

Kerry dragged his fingertips along V’s jaw, unable to do anything but stare at the man’s unconscious face while kneeling by the bath. Tired and pale and wrong, all the color having drained away. The nosebleed and seizures had stopped for the time being, but who could say when they’d start back up again? How much more could V take before he flatlined? His immune system was literally trying to attack something that was lodged inside his brain.

That much in the way of cybernetics… V had to have a ripperdoc, right? One he went to pretty often?

“Hey…” He patted V’s face. “C’mon, big fella. Don’t do this to me.”

Nothing.

“Carlisle,” he tried. Still nothing. Another pat. “Hey, don’t fuckin’ scare me like this, you bastard. I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll be tastin’ boot leather afterward.”

Again, there was nothing. Just silence. Kerry sucked in a tight breath.

“You don’t get to die on me. Not when I just met you.” He cupped the merc’s face with his hand, feeling the heat still radiating from V’s skin. “Weston—please.” He swallowed hard against the emotions that had a deathgrip on his throat. “I can’t lose you too.”

Not a goddamn thing. Fucking hopeless. Trauma Team wouldn’t do shit. City docs wouldn’t either. V needed his ripper. Kerry didn’t know which ones could be trusted otherwise, not with all the Arasaka bullshit going on. Even if they could help, that ‘help’ might come with the kinda price tag neither of them was willing to pay—and Kerry couldn’t make that sorta call on V’s behalf.

His fingers trailed idle circles along V’s hairline as he forced himself to breathe, doing everything he could to not break down on the spot. Then he felt a sharp edge—another port. An open one. No swelling. No scarring. His heart skipped a beat; the BD software. He could use it to talk to Johnny, couldn’t he? Wasn’t that what V had talked about trying?

Kerry had damn near chewed a hole in his lip by the time he got his data jack out. It was older than V’s. Less top-of-the-line. But it was still compatible, still worked with the same kinds of ports they used nowadays. It had to work. It had to.

He jacked in, shuddering from head to toe as he accessed V’s systems. Data corruption. Workarounds. Shortcuts. V had cordoned off Johnny’s engram, or tried to, but it wasn’t clear at a glance just who the admin permissions belonged to anymore. Maybe both of them. Maybe neither. Both were listed as ‘users’ but there was a third thing there too, ugly and gnarled, that Kerry couldn’t touch because just trying to with his limited-ass experience was like touching a live wire. It corrupted his UI and threatened to brick his OS if he so much as looked at it.

(Was that the chip itself? The Arasaka software?)

Either way, not what he was there for. He cleared his cache, stopped trying to look at whatever the fuck that thing was, and went straight to searching up the BD recording software. There was something weirdly intimate about it all if he glossed over the details; he had his hand molded to the nape of V’s neck, palm pressed to that port like it’d make things easier. Leaned over him in the tub of rapidly melting ice, holding him above its surface carefully.

Kerry was no netrunner. But if he could control his own pyrotechnics displays, then he could manage this. It might take a while, but he could do it.

The second he booted up the BD software, simulated pain stabbed through his skull with enough force to nearly make him fall right into the tub. He gasped, panted, gripped the side of the bath so hard his knuckles went white while he scrambled to adjust the settings so that the pain didn’t filter through. Then…

[Fuckin’ sucks, doesn’t it?]

Johnny. Kerry snarled through the lingering throb in his skull. “Not the time, motherfucker,” he grit out. He couldn’t see the bastard, but he could hear. That was enough. “Who’s his ripper? I need an address.”

[Doc Vector, based outta Watson. Not far from where he lives.] Johnny sounded like he very much wanted to spew some kind of insult, but even he understood the seriousness of the situation. [Get me control and I’ll get his ass out there myself.]

“Fuck that, you’re already killin’ ‘im.” Kerry took a second to catch his breath. Fuck, if that was what V wrote off as a mild headache, hard to imagine the shit he really considered painful.

Johnny sighed like he was as frustrated as Kerry was. [...Not by choice,] he said. [The pills are in the inside pocket of his jacket. I can’t even get you the coords without control of his OS, and for that I need the keys to his brain for a bit. He’s in bad enough shape that even I can’t do much once he heats back up again, though, so we gotta make this quick.]

Kerry finally bit through that last layer of skin on his lip just hard enough to taste blood, and shifted so that he could reach for V’s discarded jacket. “You two done this before?”

[Yeah. Best I could do by myself was get his ass to a motel to sleep it off last time. Time before that it was a bench.] There was something grim in that. Something dark and awful Kerry didn’t wanna think about. [You’ll still have to drive. That fever’ll cook through hand-eye coordination no matter who’s in charge.]

The bottle wasn’t hard to find. Name on the label was hard to pronounce, but that was true of most shit that was meant for purposes other than a good time. “I gotta disconnect so I can get this thing open,” Kerry said. “Anythin’ else I should know?”

[Unless you wanna know how much he stares at your ass when you’re not looking—]

He heaved a sigh and unplugged himself from the port. “Yeah, yeah. Joke’s on you, asshole, ‘cause I’m into that shit.”

__

Having Johnny help out was a lot better than nothing, as it turned out. He helped get V dressed again and back out to the car, which was way easier than Kerry trying to coordinate the bots around the villa to help with getting what had to be over a hundred thirty kilos of muscle and cybernetics clothed and hauled back outside as dead fucking weight. And getting it done faster meant that the ice bath could cling to him for that much longer, give them that much more breathing room.

This time, they took the Rayfield. This time, Kerry was pretty sure he was gonna end up with a couple dozen traffic violations in his inbox later. This time, it wasn’t panic that gripped him, but determination. A whole plate of spite directed at the world, served fresh and piping hot. He wasn’t gonna lose V on top of everything else. He refused.

His tires screeched as he slammed the brakes, g-forces from the last turn into the alley shoving him back into his seat for a second. “How’s he holdin’ up, Johnny?”

“Peachy,” Johnny grumbled. Halfway there, V’s nose had started bleeding again. Johnny was not happy about this development. “There’s a chick inside named Misty. She knows what’s up, go and get her attention.”

Fuck. It had to be bad if even Johnny fucking Silverhand wasn’t flinging insults anymore. Kerry swung the car door open and popped out, ignoring the baffled looks of onlookers from the alley as he searched for the right door. It was times like this that he was thankful for the Kiroshis. Meant he was just scanning addresses and public listings instead of having to knock on doors and ask folks (which was a good way to get mugged in a neighborhood like this).

There—Misty’s Esoterica. Kerry broke into a sprint the second he spotted it, bursting through the door to the sound of countless windchimes. At any other time he would’ve marveled at the décor—he was a sucker for a good zen garden, and this one was fucking legit—but he had more important shit to worry about just then.

“Hey!” Sometimes having a singer’s lungs augmented by tech was pretty damn useful. “Is Misty here somewhere?”

A huge mop of frizzy hair popped out from behind a potted plant. Round eyes caked in raccoon eyeshadow stared at him in total bewilderment. “I—huh? Uhm…”

“Yeah, yeah, Kerry Eurodyne, nice ta meet’cha, not important right now.” Right. Celebrity. For once, Kerry bristled at the idea of being recognized. “You know V?”

The sentient mop of hair blinked at him. “Oh! I, yeah? D’you need his number or something? If you’ve got a job for him I might—”

“He needs his ripper. He’s got a bad fever an’ he’s already had a couple seizures.” Kerry watched the girl’s whole expression crumple in horror, her hands lifting to her mouth. “I got him in an ice bath but it didn’t stick. He’s runnin’ way too hot.”

“Oh my God…” She gulped, then nodded, rushing towards the back of her shop. “I’ll get Vik. Bring him inside if you can.”

Easier said than done, but he’d try. Kerry turned on his heel to book it back to the car, beelining for the passenger side door and cracking it open without waiting for word from Johnny. Sure enough, V’s body slumped heavily the second the door was opened, forcing Kerry to drop to his knees to catch the big merc before he could crack his skull on the concrete. Fuck, he was too damn heavy. A few drops of blood from his nose spilled onto Kerry’s shirt, onto the pavement below.

Dead weight again. Out like a light. Even Johnny couldn’t handle whatever the hell was going on with V right now. Kerry eased him back into the car to check his pulse, breathing a sigh of relief when he found it.

It was about that point that ‘Vik’ rounded the corner, huge and imposing as V was but with a lot less cybernetics and the bearing of a goddamn typhoon. Misty trailed behind him, auto-injectors bundled into her arms. To the doc’s credit, he didn’t even flinch when he saw just who it was that had brought V to his doorstep.

“Move,” he ordered. Kerry jerked back from the car, hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. The doc pushed past him and kneeled by V’s prone form, then stuck one hand up while the other peeled back the merc’s shirt. “Methylprednisolone.”

Misty quickly pressed the auto-injector into the ripperdoc’s hand. All Kerry could do was watch. He hated that it seemed like they’d done this before. Hated that they knew what was going on. It meant that they’d seen V through this shit before and they couldn’t fix it. Even the way ‘Vik’ hauled V out of the car and over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry had a kind of familiarity about it that seemed like it came from him knowing what the weight in his arms would feel like already.

“Let’s get him inside,” he told Misty. “Be ready with the epi and the ativan just in case—”

Then he paused for a second, just briefly. Glanced back at Kerry over the top of his glasses.

“I don’t know what your deal is, Eurodyne, but if you think you’re about to delta the fuck out of here without a single word of explanation then you’ve got another thing comin’,” he said, heading back down the alley. “Let’s move. You too.”

Shit. Trust V to go to a ripper that gave the impression he could snap you in half, huh?

Chapter Text

Kerry had never been one for meeting someone’s family. He’d never gotten along with his ex-wife’s folks for obvious reasons—even without all the subterfuge and bullshit, they just hadn’t been compatible to begin with—and most others, he hadn’t known deeply enough or for long enough that he ever got a chance. The rockstar lifestyle just didn’t mesh well with sitting down to have a chat so you could ask for permission to take the latest boytoy out on a date.

So he wasn’t exactly prepared for the emotional weight of getting a stare-down from V’s ripperdoc while the merc napped on a surgery table nearby. Not after everything else. And definitely not while stone fucking sober.

“I shouldn’t have to tell someone of your years how important establishing a history is,” Vik said, arms folded across his broad chest. “So I suggest you tell me what the fuck happened to my patient, Eurodyne.”

Kerry rubbed the back of his neck, his leg tapping idly. “I, uh…” He cleared his throat. “He said he was handlin’ some Arasaka shit earlier, when we met up. Chasin’ down a lead from some old corpo friend’a his.”

“You weren’t with him for that?”

“No, I… I dunno what he was doin’ when I called but he said he hadn’t slept, an’ that was his reason.” Kerry fidgeted with his rings. “Said it was twenty-two hours then, so I’d guess about… Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Or it would be by now, I mean.”

Vik nodded gravely. “Lack of sleep can affect immune function…” he murmured. “What else?”

“I asked him ta come with me for a job. Smash an’ grab but without the grabbin’. He said ‘sure,’ grabbed a coffee an’ came with.” If it wasn’t cybernetics, Kerry didn’t think the next part was it, but… “He just fuckin’ tanked that truck, man. Highway speed to a full stop. Didn’t even bother ‘im. Ripped the doors off, got everyone out, then we blew it up for good measure. Seemed fine the whole time, just said he had a headache.”

None of this seemed to surprise Vik; he just sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb, shaking his head. “And then?”

“Then we went an’ got more coffee.” Kerry shrugged. “Talked for a while. He looked over some files for me, but nothin’ that ain’t clean. Legal docs, contract shit. Got up to leave an’ started seizing on the way out.”

“Didn’t hit his head?”

“No. Wouldn’t let ‘im.”

The doc nodded to himself, leaning forward. “Describe the seizures.”

Kerry blinked at him. “What? It’s a fuckin’ seizure, man. Shit’s obvious.”

“There are less obvious kinds. A seizure is a misfire in the brain. They can look like a lot of different things. Compulsive, repetitive behaviors, dissociative episodes. Usually they’re followed by a period of altered consciousness; he’d be out of it for a while afterward. At least for a few minutes. But in some cases that hazy period can last hours or even days.”

That… Had V had even more of those seizures than Kerry had thought? It’d already been fucking heartstopping on its own, watching him shake apart like that. Seeing him bend and contort in ways people just weren’t meant to, barely held together by the cybernetics that could’ve just as easily snapped regular un-augmented human bones if V still had them. Uncontrolled. Agonizing. But thinking that might’ve been going on internally too in the otherwise calm moments and Kerry wouldn’t have even seen it because of how out of it the big merc was already…

“How many did he have?” the doc asked.

Kerry’s voice came out as a croak. “Three.”

Another slow nod. “Said you put him in an ice bath?”

“Ain’t my first rodeo.”

Something in the doc’s eyes softened then. “It was the right call,” he said. “I don’t know how much I can tell you without his consent, but—”

“I get it, doc.” Those old patient confidentiality laws mighta been rendered defunct by the corps a long time ago, but Kerry could respect the man’s integrity. “The detes don’t matter. Long as he wakes up again, that’s what’s important.”

“West’s a hardass. His vitals are stable, his temperature’s looking a lot more normal, and the biomon’s not showing any permanent damage to his brain. This time, anyway.” Vik leaned back, adjusting his glasses and spinning his stool around to roll back to his computer. “He’ll be alright, Eurodyne.”

Best news Kerry’d heard all week. “How much do I owe you?”

“You don’t owe me shit.” The doc waved him off. “If you’re gonna wait for him, go sit with Misty. Tell her I said she oughta make you some tea, your withdrawal symptoms are making half the damn building vibrate with all that leg tapping.”

Yeah, some tea sounded like it’d be real good right about now.

__

Misty was a sweet kid. She sat Kerry down in a plush old pleather chair—the kind you’d find in an upscale nail boutique some fifty years back—and got him some piping hot tea served in a novelty mug shaped like some Japanese mascot character’s head. No sugar, no cream, nothing extra. Blackest blend she had, steeped extra hard so it had that bitter edge to it.

“You drink tea almost the same way West does,” she said, pulling up a stool to sit next to him. “He puts liquor in his when he thinks I’m not looking.”

Kerry didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d put liquor in it too. Didn’t wanna disillusion the poor kid. “You know him pretty well?”

“Yeah.” She smiled, tugging at her sleeves. “He’s… He’s helped out a lot. I don’t think there’s a soul here in Watson that he hasn’t touched.”

“He got any family we oughta call?”

“Not on this side of the Atlantic,” she said. Her smile faded. “And not on the other side either, if you ask him. All the people he cares about here already know.”

Right, all alone then. Poor bastard. Kerry was real familiar with how that one felt. An empty house filled with memories that sank their claws into you like bitter ghosts, even when you thought you had them nailed firmly to the walls already. Aching. Gnawing. Suffocating. And with nobody but Johnny fucking Silverhand yapping away in your head for company when shit got real bad… Yeah. Kerry would probably liquor up his tea a little too in that position.

Misty stared at him with those big eyes of hers. He couldn’t imagine someone like V coming to someone like her about loneliness. Big fella probably couldn’t bring himself to make her feel like she needed to do something about it. Shit, he’d barely let Kerry do anything. “Want me to do a reading for you?” she asked.

Kerry tilted his head. A reading? Like, tarot? “Sure.”

Bobbing her head with a nod, the kid stood and headed back to her counter. The first thing she did was pull out a lighter and get some incense going, and the scent of sandalwood was strong enough to cut through even Kerry’s cocaine-dulled sense of smell. He watched as she pulled out and unfolded a tiny card table, along with a well-worn deck of cards that she shuffled on the way back over; he couldn’t quite put a pin in what the exact variety of white girl spirituality was, but he wasn’t about to knock it.

The table was set down, as was the shuffled deck of cards. She even pulled a handful of crystals from her pocket and carefully placed them at various points on the table, leaving the middle clear.

“Think about your recent past, your present, and your expectations for the future,” she said, easing back down into her seat and giving the deck another shuffle for good measure. “And let me know when you’re ready.”

Fuck, it was like being back in high school. Kerry had to wonder if she ever did this for V, if he humored this side of her too. If he was gentle and sweet for her. The way she acted gave off this vibe that she knew V would never hurt her; she didn’t act like any of the girls Johnny had left in his wake. “I’m good.”

Misty smiled, and set down the first card: a picture of a woman draped in a shroud, with soft features. “The High Priestess,” she said. “That’s your recent past. She represents intuition and instinct, the subconscious, a little mystery… But she can also stand for a transitional state. A path taken from one place to the next.”

Shit, Kerry couldn’t breathe for a second. “V and I…” He swallowed. “We had a lil’ gig. Got the band back together. He let Johnny play, through that biochip’a his. It was… Fuck. That shit was great.” He couldn’t help his smile. “Best time I’ve had on stage in years. But afterwards I couldn’t keep myself from thinkin’ that I wished it was him I was really playin’ with instead’a Johnny’s ghost. Woulda been fuckin’ preem hearin’ what he really sounds like.”

The kid giggled, bright and airy. “West only plays keyboard. He told me he learned piano growing up. Played for me after Jackie died, at his mom’s bar.” There was a twinkle in her eyes. “He might play for you too if you ask him.”

“I think I will.” A keyboardist, huh? Shoulda said something. But then, Kerry supposed that might be stepping on too many toes for V’s tastes. He took another sip of his tea, staring down at the card. Transitional states…

Misty had a knowing look as she pulled the next card, setting it down. “The Wheel of Fortune.” She trailed a chipped fingernail over the design, thoughtful. “That’s a powerful card for your present. Each creature on the card is related to a zodiac sign, but as a whole they represent changes that come from fortune and fate. You’ve been hit with a big shock, but it’s not a bad thing. Instead, think of it like something that’ll lead to knowing yourself a little better, finding maturity and closure.”

“At my age?” Kerry wondered. The shock was real, but the result… He wasn’t sure if he trusted that yet.

“That kind of thing doesn’t really have anything to do with maturity, I don’t think.” Misty tapped her finger against the card. Her nail polish looked like it’d been chewed on. “People are never done growing, especially not now. We’re finally at a point where we can stretch the bounds of just how far human emotional development can progress with age. That’s a beautiful thing to have access to.”

Kid was so sincere that he didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. So starry-eyed. It’d be a damn shame if those stars ever went out. “Jackie was your output?” he asked instead.

Misty’s smile faded, turning into something soft and sad. She nodded once. “He and West were friends,” she said. Her voice had gone a little ragged, like the edges of an old threadbare t-shirt. Fraying at the corners and the seams without quite falling apart. The hurt was there, but it was well-worn enough that the kid could sit with it. “When Arasaka took everything, he and his mom took West in. And then Arasaka took Jackie too.”

“That’s what the corps do,” Kerry said. “I’m sorry, kid.”

She nodded again, solemn. Poor girl. Wasn’t even that old—in her twenties, maybe—and she’d already been through all that. That’s what the shadows did to people in this town, why Kerry steered clear of ‘em. “Last card,” she said. “Your future. All ready?”

He flashed her a smile. “Hit me with it.”

The card she placed down was a simple one: a single torch, held by a single hand and shining brightly against the gloom. “The Ace of Wands,” she told him. This one made her smile again, vibrant and real. She tapped it with a tapered finger. “Perfect for a musician. This one represents new beginnings. Inspiration, energy, passion. It’s all about the creativity and joy that you find in a new project, watching it take shape and grow into something magical.”

“I ain’t put out anything new in ages.” Kerry was skeptical. “Bad enough that the fuckers at MSM’ve been changin’ up my contract just to squeeze more money outta me.”

“This one’s your future, remember?” She winked. “Maybe Kerry Eurodyne’s about to set off on a comeback tour. Write a whole new album. Can you really say you haven’t found any inspiration at all lately that might be able to get you there?”

A week ago, his answer would’ve been a flat yes. Blunt and honest, probably over the rim of a longneck bottle. But now…

Misty got that sparkle in her eyes again as Kerry couldn’t come up with an answer. “It’s okay to be happy, y’know,” she said. Like it was a big important secret she was sharing. “You don’t have to trust it. You can just sit in it and feel it if you want. Float along and see where the currents of it take you.”

“Now that’s a cold read if I ever heard one,” he deadpanned.

The kid lit up with a grin. “West hates when I do that too.”

“You ever put out a spread for him?”

“All the time.” Well, that confirmed that V was humoring her. She put her cards back into her deck, shuffled it, and went to carefully set it on her counter before coming back to pack the rest away. Crystals in pocket. Table folded. “He thinks the cards don’t like him. I think they’re just worried and trying to make sure he stays safe.”

Kerry smirked, going back to sipping on his tea. Lukewarm by then, but hey, still drinkable. “I can kinda see that.”

She nodded. “You’re already doing a better job keeping him safe than they do anyway,” she said, which was weirdly cryptic but like, fuck it. Sure. Alright. He’d take praise, why not. “Mind if I turn on the radio?”

Eh, maybe meeting the family wasn’t so bad after all.

Chapter Text

Seven hours after Kerry had first called him, V walked back into Misty’s shop from the back entrance with a smug Vik bringing up the rear, and the rockstar shot up from his chair.

“V!” Kerry bolted for the back of the shop to check the man over, grabbing him by the face and yanking him down to look at the busted port where Johnny’s biochip sat. “C’mere, asshole. You fuckin’ scared me.”

V laughed, warm and slightly embarrassed. His face wasn’t hot anymore, and the skin around the port wasn’t as inflamed. “Apologies, Mister Eurodyne—”

“We solved the mystery, by the way,” Vik cut in. “Go on, West, tell him.”

The merc sighed. Kerry frowned and mushed his face.

“What? What happened?” His gaze darted between V and the ripperdoc. “Don’t tell me, I fucked up somehow.”

“You did absolutely nothing wrong,” V said. Kerry found that hard to believe, but okay. “I, on the other hand… have demonstrated remarkably poor judgement.”

Vik looked like he was trying not to laugh. “He forgot to take his meds.”

Kerry blinked. He looked between the two of them as the doc’s words sank in, his hands falling away from V’s face. His two brain cells struggled to process just how much heavy lifting that one short sentence did.

“All that?” he wondered. “Just for missin’ one day?”

“I normally take them in the evening.” V at least had the decency to look sheepish. “The dosing high by necessity, but apparently that sharpens the effects of coming off of them suddenly.”

Kerry stared at him for a long, long time. “…So what you’re sayin’ is, you’re fuckin’ stupid.”

V ducked his head. The doc stifled a snort by making it look like a cough. “Again, apologies. This…” The merc winced a bit. “This isn’t something I’m entirely used to having to deal with.”

“The fuck are you talkin’ about? You got chrome out the ass, have to’ve been on some kinda immunosuppressants before this—”

“His chrome’s fairly new,” Vik said. “Most of it before this was hacking and minor muscle and nerve fiber implants. Silverhand’s biochip changed everything.”

V nodded in somewhat red-faced agreement, holding up a cybernetic hand and flexing it. “My immune system began attacking anything it could. Functionality in my hands was the first casualty.”

Oh. Shit. “An’ that Sandy’s a full nervous system refit,” Kerry mumbled, suddenly understanding. He remembered that from when it popped up in the news. Folks talking about how that was the way it tended to fry people from the inside. V had survived the install because he was already so goddamn fried and so juiced up just to compensate for Johnny’s biochip that he had no functionality to lose.

They weren’t cybernetics. They were prosthetics. V’s body was giving out on him, cooking from the inside because of Arasaka’s bullshit. Because of Johnny’s ghost.

Kerry huffed. Then he pulled back a fist and thumped it against V’s chest. Not hard, because that’d fuck up his own hand more than it’d ever even put a dent in V’s ribs, but enough for the big fella to feel it. “Asshole,” he grumbled. “When the fuck were you intendin’ to tell me this shit was gonna kill you, huh? Can’t keep bumpin’ those dosages up forever.”

V sighed. His cool cybernetic fingers closed around Kerry’s wrist, holding on but not trapping him. “Not for a long while yet,” the merc admitted. “Not if I could help it.”

“Think you can make sure he gets at least a day’s worth of rest before he hops back in the saddle, Eurodyne?” Vik asked. Pouting, Kerry splayed his hand over the center of V’s chest, feeling the warmth there. The life that thrummed beneath synthskin. It was wild just how much contrast there was between that and the fingers encircling his wrist.

Could he keep V distracted enough to keep him from overtaxing himself again? Could he really be trusted to be in charge of making sure someone ate, slept, took their meds like a functional human being?

“Every pap in the city is gonna know Kerry Eurodyne’s car left the villa and ended up in Watson,” Kerry said. “You got a ride that ain’t the bike, V?”

V smirked. “Obviously.”

Obviously! C’mon, like Kerry was supposed to know that shit. “Then that’s what we’re takin’ over to your place.” He pulled his hand away, wrist slipping free. “Think I saw a spot around the corner on the way in where a guy could grab a new ‘fit. When Misty gets back I’ll toss her the eddies to snag somethin’ a lil’ more incognito, an’ then we can go.”

“You’ve put some thought into this, Mister Eurodyne.”

Kerry snorted. “Oh, trust me, this shit’s somethin’ I had ta learn to juggle a long time ago.”

__

Misty happily helped out with getting him something to wear, even if the black-and-gold hoodie she came back with wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. It was in V’s size because she hadn’t thought to ask for Kerry’s, which made it nice and easy to disappear into, but the colors were a little on-the-nose. He wasn’t sure if it’d trick the paps if they happened to be watching, and V seemed equally incredulous about it. But just as he was about to say something, a text popped up in his vision:

V-
{Not a damned word.}

Kerry stifled his laugh behind a sleeve that was just a bit too long and decided to go with the merc’s advice on this one.

Next came the car, and V’s not-bike wasn’t just some old beater. It was a vintage Quadra Type-66 640 TS, dipped in deep, iridescent midnight purple that shifted into golds and silvers at the right angles. Mirror-chrome stripes and detailing finished the sleek look of the car, giving its hard muscular angles and shapes even more emphasis when the sun hit it.

In short, it was fucking gorgeous.

“I see you’re a man with some actual taste,” Kerry said as he circled the car, peering inside. That leather interior with the dark wood and chrome accents called to him like a siren’s song. “Can I drive?”

V shrugged, moving to the passenger’s side. “Have at it. I regret buying the damned thing, it handles like a fridge in a rocket-propelled shopping trolley.”

Kerry boggled at him in the process of sliding into the driver’s seat. “You must have one helluva fuckin’ leadfoot, V.” He stroked over the steering wheel admiringly. “Just gotta be gentle with a car like this. Treat ‘er like she spooks easy. You be nice ta her, she’ll be nice t’you.”

“You’re welcome to have a go at it any time you like, Mister Eurodyne,” V sighed. “I mainly use it for street races. In my experience, it goes in precisely one direction, and that direction is ‘forward’. Regardless of whether or not you’re even directing it to do so at a given moment.”

“Don’t listen to him, baby,” Kerry cooed to the car. He gave its dashboard a pat, then started the engine, taking a second to push the seat forward so his feet could reach the pedals as it rumbled to life. V had it all the way back with the wheel all the way up, that tall motherfucker. “What’d you learn ta drive on, anyway?”

V shifted his jaw. “My father’s Bentley.”

“Well, fuck, no wonder. You gotta slam that pedal down just to get one’a those old boats ta wake up an’ think about movin’.” Kerry put the car into gear, easing her out onto the road. V was clearly insane, because she handled like an absolute dream. “Don’t gotta be like that with American muscle. Car like this? She’ll be a lil’ fussy sometimes, maybe even over-eager, but she’s built to wanna be good for ya. No need t’be heavy-handed. ‘Cept maybe when it comes to the brakes.”

“Couldn’t agree more with the last part,” V muttered, still sounding salty. Kerry snickered; he could tell the merc was just annoyed that someone was upstaging him with the handling of his own damn car. It was easy to imagine the research and forethought that’d probably gone into buying it, only to have it turn out to be a disappointment. Downsides of not flinging yourself into every single decision ass-first with no regard for consequence: risk aversion gone wrong.

Kerry pulled them into the parking garage of V’s building, catching glimpses of some of the street market stalls that littered the walkways on the way up. “Feel like grabbin’ somethin’ to eat? Prob’ly a good idea.”

V sagged a little in his seat. “If you’re amenable.”

“Ain’t about me, V.”

The merc seemed to mull it over as Kerry pulled the car into an open parking spot. “One of the stalls on the way up has katsudon,” he said after a while. “And beer.”

“Real pork?” Kerry wondered.

“Oh, definitely not.” A ghost of a smile tugged at V’s face. “And the beer will be warm, naturally.”

Kerry had to grin. “Sounds fuckin’ perfect.”

Chapter Text

It was surreal, being in a megabuilding again after living the good life for so long. Kerry hadn’t been a starving artist in over half a century, but he still remembered what it felt like deep down in his bones. Picking between food, drugs, a roof over your head, or a bus ticket to the next gig was a line that a man’s soul never forgot how to walk, and there was a weird familiarity to walking through the neon and fluorescent-lit halls. Seeing the ‘rent due’ signs above doors.

(Maybe he could swing paying off a few of these apartments. He could call it good PR if his handlers got pissy about it, turn that shit into a statement while helping some folks out. What was the point of having more money than God if all he did was sit on it?)

V’s door was no different from any other door at a glance. His apartment wasn’t prime real estate unless you counted it being by a vending machine; all the services were a floor down, including the elevator. For a guy that sounded more and more like he’d grown up with a silver spoon jammed up his ass, he’d sure fallen pretty damn far. This wasn’t the kinda place you’d expect to see a blue-blooded corpo-rat at all.

“Arasaka really fucked you, huh?” Kerry wondered as they stepped inside. It wasn’t much, but at least there was a couch, a TV, a window. A microwave. A bed. He craned his neck to peer into the wardrobe; V had some real preem threads for a man living in a megablock. “Where’d you live before this?”

V headed to the couch to sink down onto it heavily, throwing his jacket aside and leaning back against the cushions. “Much nearer the city center, in a designer flat where I owned nothing.” He looked up at Kerry tiredly. “My apologies if this isn’t to your tastes.”

Kerry shook his head. “No, no. It’s just, uh.” He let out a nervous laugh, tugging off the oversized hoodie and hanging it next to what looked to be an alligator leather trenchcoat. Just more proof that V had taste. “Been a few years since I’ve spent any time in a place like this.”

“If a drink would help, you’re welcome to it,” V said, gesturing to the kitchenette. Kerry gladly hurried over to pick up the first bottle he found—some imported scotch, looked like—and pour himself a glass. The beer and breaded not-pork had been decent enough to keep him together, but he needed something stronger for this.

Liquid courage, right? “Shame you’re not in better shape.” Kerry raised the glass to his lips, taking a sip and letting out a satisfied sigh after; V’s scotch went down smooth and easy. “First time in your apartment… Any other circumstances an’ I’d say we could record that XBD.”

V chuckled, shaking his head. “Not about to push it with the Sandevistan today, no.”

“I still want you to fuckin’ wreck me with that thing.”

“Mm. Someday we’ll get to it.” He held up a hand then, curling his fingers in a beckoning motion. Kerry went to join him, but brought both the bottle and the glass along for the ride, his hands still full by the time he sat down. Not that they were for long; the second he’d mashed himself against V’s side, the merc reached around him casually to pluck the bottle from his hand and lift it over his head to bring it around for a long swig.

Bastard. “You’re way too smooth with that shit.”

“I have what some might call an alarming amount of practice.”

Kerry hummed, leaning into his chest. Draining the glass in one more good pull. V wordlessly poured out more. Yep, smooth with it. “Realized as I was talkin’ with Misty that I don’t know shit about you.”

“Would you like to?” V rumbled. His voice had gone low, like a big predatory animal’s. Deep and resonant. Kerry could feel the syllables as much as he heard them, reverberating through his ribs.

Shit, he was in deep. “Well, I mean… You know just about everythin’ there is ta know about me. Through whatever the hell it is Johnny saw over the years, I mean.” He paused. “Screamsheets too, I guess.”

V switched out which hand was holding the bottle so he could drape his arm around Kerry’s shoulders. And holy shit, was it heavy. World’s most awkwardly shaped weighted sensory blanket. “What is it you’d like to know?”

“Whatever you’re down ta say, choom, I ain’t gonna force somethin’ you’re uncomfortable with.” Kerry took another drink of the scotch, pulling a leg up to his chest and making himself comfortable. “Misty said you play piano or somethin’, where’d you pick that up?”

The big merc huffed a laugh. “Private tutors.”

“Jeee-zus.”

“Mm. My family had servants.” V’s nose crinkled at the word. “I was also involved in all manner of sport, though it was combat I took to. My enthusiasm for it saw me being sent to ever more strict academies and boarding schools until I was old enough for university. After that, advancement up the corporate ladder became the goal. The nouveau riche are the aristocracy now, and my father wanted us all to be a part of it.”

“’Us’?”

V nodded, taking another pull from the bottle. “Oldest of three siblings,” he said.

“I thought you folks had a one-child law.”

“Fines for breaking such laws are but an elaborate entry fee, Mister Eurodyne.” Well, yeah. Kinda true. Horrifying to hear it said out loud so casually though. “Regardless, the moment I was approved for a transfer, I left. I’m given to understand that my sister did stay behind and works for Arasaka as a netrunner.”

“What’s sibling number three do?”

“My brother abandoned corporate life and the family entirely to go into public sector medicine.”

Kerry snorted. “Least he’s doin’ it over there. Heard that Trauma Team types out here won’t pay folks for shit, doesn’t even put its own people on a plan if they don’t pay. Fuckers.” He went quiet for a moment, letting the silence hang in the air. Sitting with it. “You ain’t told them you’re ‘boutta flatline?”

V shook his head. “My sister doesn’t need to be put in that position, my brother and I aren’t on speaking terms, and frankly I don’t give a rat’s hairy arse what my parents might think.” He poured Kerry a bit more scotch, as if that would soothe the ache he knew his words would bring. “I did try contacting my daughter, but it never went anywhere—”

“Wait wait wait.” Kerry twisted to look up at him. “You got kids?”

Something in V’s cool cybernetic gaze turned soft and sad. “Just the one. My situation was nothing like yours, I assure you.”

Kerry squinted. “Whadja think mine was?”

“That your wife was a managerially-encouraged beard,” V said archly.

On any other day, coming from anyone else, those would be fighting words. Kerry already felt that old anger boiling up, threatening to spill over. But then he actually really looked at V, really took in his expression. And he knew damn well that the guy hadn’t gotten that shit from any screamsheets, that he hadn’t heard it on some talk radio channel. No, this… This was a guy that knew what that shit actually felt like. This was V saying he’d been there. No insult. No judgement. No pointing and laughing, no accusations.

Kerry went quiet while V continued. “At any rate, she’s well out of reach by the corps, and for that I’m grateful,” he said. “They have no jurisdiction over Tycho’s museum of spaceflight, and she has at least a few more years of her internship there left to go.”

“Not many folks these days even know what that shit is anymore, y’know,” Kerry mumbled.

V tilted his head. “Which part?”

“A beard.” That kinda thing was supposed to be history. Way back in the past, something the world had left behind. Except Kerry had actually lived in the past; it wasn’t as far away as people tended to think. “Born in 2025? British aristos insistin’ on breakin’ the rules about how many kids they can have?” He chuckled joylessly. “Now I get it. Your family were crypto-fasch as fuck, weren’t they?”

The merc turned somber again. This time he took a really long swig of the scotch. “Minus the ‘crypto’ part. There was no need to be subtle about it then. It was only later on that the world began to frown on it.”

“Bet they’d hate me.”

V had to smile. “They would most definitely hate you.”

Kerry could get behind that.

__

They weren’t quite three sheets to the wind when they poured themselves into V’s bed sometime in the middle of the afternoon—both of them had stupid tolerances—but it was close. Maybe if they hadn’t called it quits once the bottle was empty, but Kerry had put his foot down with being at least a little bit sensible (for now). He’d also set an internal alarm to notify him of when V needed to take his meds, putting a note for himself with it about texting V every night at midnight on the dot (a reasonable time to assume V would be up) just to get it through the big idiot’s chromed-up skull.

And, well. Shit. It was nice actually waking up next to someone again, even if it was at midnight and he was a little hungover. All warm and comfy. Strong arms tightening around his shoulders when he shifted, lips against the back of his neck. V was awake already, just holding him close.

“Meds,” he mumbled. “Y’need ta take ‘em.”

V sighed into his nape, tickling the fine hairs there. “Must I?”

“I gotta piss too, V.” The merc made a grumbly noise of protest akin to a mildly annoyed, sleepy bear. “No, don’t gimme that. I’m eighty-nine years old, man, don’t fuckin’ test me.”

The big merc grudgingly rolled so that his arms were no longer wrapped around Kerry, and the rockstar took the opportunity to escape from the bed and head straight for the bathroom. There were some parts of aging a man just couldn’t avoid, short of a full rebuild like what Lizzy had done. And Kerry might be chromed up, but he wasn’t looking to be that chromed up. He did actually wanna keep some things.

(And his throat and lungs hadn’t been his idea, alright. That shit just so he wouldn’t have to worry about more polyps. Belt it into a mic for that many years? Nobody’s gonna have an intact throat or respiratory system after that.)

He didn’t see V get up, but he did hear it. Slow and ponderous, heavy footfalls turning into falling into the chair in front of his terminal as near-dead weight in such a way that it made the whole chair creak. Kerry was in the process of washing his hands and borrowing V’s toothbrush when he heard the spray-injector go off alongside the merc’s heavy sigh.

Kinda domestic, in a weird way. “How ya feelin’? Any better?”

“A bit,” V admitted. “Let me know when you’re finished.”

“Sure thing.” Yep, domestic as shit. Kerry’s eyes wandered the contents of the countertop as he spat and rinsed his mouth out, absently letting his Kiroshis scan things just to have some visual stimulation. Toothpaste, shaving cream, a razor with real blades instead of an electric, aftershave, cologne, some real expensive hand soap and moisturizer, bottle of lube—ahah. Grinning to himself, he snagged that last one and retreated back to the nook that the bed was in. “All yours.”

“Making yourself comfortable, I see.”

“Hey, I said I’d keep you from overworkin’ yourself for a day, an’ that means you get ta deal with me bein’ a cuddly bitch until you get the all-clear.” Among other things. Kerry yanked off his boots—which he was somehow still wearing, tipsy stressed Kerry had forgotten to take them off—and then his shirt, chucking them in the vague direction of ‘not the bed nook’ without caring where they landed. He was pretty sure one of his boots ended up knocking over the empty scotch bottle on the end table by the couch, but he couldn’t give less of a shit if he tried.

There was something like bemusement to V’s voice as he did his thing in the bathroom. “What in the world are you doing over there?”

“Nothin’,” Kerry lied. His belt and socks were now in a pile on the floor. “What, don’t believe me?”

“I think you’re plotting something.” There was a pause. “Mister Silverhand is making faces at me.”

Kerry rolled his eyes. “Ugh, fuck off, Johnny. No one gives a shit.”

“I am definitely not repeating what he just said.”

“Motherfucker’s probably callin’ me slurs,” Kerry grumbled. V made a wordless noise of assent. “Wanna do somethin’ that’ll piss him off?”

The water ran for a bit before shutting off. V had a curious look when he stepped out, brows raising at the sight of a nearly-naked Kerry Eurodyne in his bed. “I’m listening.”

“Well, I was gonna ride you,” the rockstar said, “but I feel like he’d like that too much.”

V leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his broad chest. “Go on.”

“So I figure if I fuck you and you pillow princess it up, we’re still keepin’ it low-key for you while makin’ sure Johnny really does not have a good time.”

Shockingly, V didn’t seem to hate that idea. “Most don’t want something like that from me.”

Kerry shrugged. “Yeah, not everybody has taste.”

“Hm.” A few more seconds worth of thinking about it, and V was moving to climb onto the bed, kicking his shoes off on the way and pulling off his shirt. Kerry had seen him naked getting him into the ice bath, but actually seeing the muscles in motion, pulling and shifting under V’s skin… That was something else. “Anything I should know?”

“About me? For this? Nah.” Kerry put a hand on the merc’s shoulder, urging him down onto the bed. “Just lay back, relax, enjoy the ride. Like I said, pillow princess. Lemme do the work this time.”

V scoffed. Let himself be led, molded, manipulated. Lifted his hips to help Kerry get his pants and boxers off (plain black, brand name, did anything about this man not come with a designer label?) and that was about it. Seeing a guy that big so eager to follow orders would be a helluva trip if Kerry hadn’t met that kinda guy before. “This time.” The big guy smirked, glancing down. “What about the time after that?”

“Next time, you’re more than welcome to rail me so hard I can’t walk for a week.” Kerry kissed the inside of a muscular thigh, feeling it flex under his fingertips; he grinned when V’s dick gave a needy twitch in response. “Yeah, you like that idea.”

If it weren’t for the fact that Kerry was certain neither of them had gotten around to a proper shower in at least two days (the ice bath didn’t count), he’d go down on the guy then and there. As it was he settled for getting his hands on the merc for the time being, getting a good grip on his length to start working it over with guitar-calloused fingers. Watching those lips part, that chest rise and fall, those cyber-eyes flutter closed. V was tense but it was all anticipation, not fear.

Yeah, if it wasn’t obvious before then seeing V like this would’ve been the final nail in the coffin: big fella enjoyed this. And Kerry had a hunch that he could go a little further. “How rough are ya hopin’ this’ll be?”

“Very,” V whispered. His fingers curled in the bedding, muscles going taut as Kerry squeezed him. “Don’t hold back.”

A heady wave of pure want washed over the old rockstar at that, and he surged up to bring his free hand up to V’s jaw and crush their mouths together with bruising force. Shit, okay. This wasn’t about pissing Johnny off anymore. Only what they needed, what they both needed. He ground his hips against V’s and it earned a heavy sigh that set his blood on fire almost as much as the pressure and friction did. And once he managed to fumble his own underwear off, the skin-on-skin contact was nothing short of perfect.

Kerry broke the kiss first, ducking down and sinking his teeth into a line on V’s pectoral where synthskin met real flesh over reinforced ribs; when V arched up into it with a hiss, Kerry scratched his blunt nails down the merc’s sides hard enough to leave red welts in his wake. V wasn’t loud but he was fucking responsive as hell. Chest heaving, clutching the sheets or the pillows like he didn’t wanna leave any bruises on Kerry but had to get a grip on something.

Pulling back a little, Kerry got one of the merc’s legs over his shoulder, biting down on the muscle as he kept grinding V into the mattress. It was an opportunity to pick up the lube as much as anything else. Popping the cap, pouring some onto his hand. “Bet Johnny’s gone real quiet now,” he murmured.

V shivered. “I-I can’t hear him at all, actually.” He huffed, licked his lips. “Have to say I missed the silence.”

Kerry nodded, pulling V’s lower body up to rest against his knees. Angling the big merc just right. “Just you an’ me, West.” He gave his own cock a few strokes to slick things up, briefly probed V with his fingers just to make sure he wasn’t gonna actually hurt the guy. “We’ll show his ass just how much this ain’t for him.”

At a single nod from V, Kerry shoved his way in—hard and deep, as rough as V had asked for—and immediately had to bite back a moan at how tight the fit really was. It was heavenly, too fucking good for words, almost too much already, and for a second he might’ve worried that V wasn’t up for it after all but the merc sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and grabbed Kerry by the hair hard enough for his scalp to sting and it was around that point that Kerry’s last two brain cells just gave up completely.

He didn’t hold back. He pinned V to the mattress with his knee up around his shoulder and fucked him, biting down hard enough on the merc’s skin to litter his neck and collarbones with swiftly darkening bruises. When Kerry spread a hand over V’s chest for better leverage, the other man tipped his head back with an imploring look, and sighed like it was the best thing in the fucking world when the rockstar’s fingers closed around his throat. His other heel dug into the curve of Kerry’s lower back like the added pressure would encourage him to go harder, deeper.

Usually a guy had to pay for someone to be that kind of into it in this city.

Going in for another kiss saw V bent into an extreme enough shape that it pulled a tight groan from between the merc’s teeth; Kerry nipped at his lip and gave his neck a squeeze, digging calloused fingers in at either side. “Go on,” the rockstar breathed against V’s lips, “you still got hands. Lemme see how much you like this.”

The command had V’s hand flying down to his own cock with a choked sound; Kerry grinned and moved his hand enough to bite down on the merc’s neck, fucking into him that much harder as a reward for good behavior just to watch his eyes roll back with it. He was absolutely writhing beneath Kerry by then, wrecked beyond words. All for him. Nobody else wanted this side of the big guy? They couldn’t appreciate art. He’d see to it this one-man show was booked out all for him just to make sure the seats went somewhere.

When the dam finally broke, V’s orgasm must’ve hit him harder than that fucking truck did because for several seconds, the guy just froze. His whole body went so tight that Kerry’s pace stuttered for it, switching it up by grinding into him instead with a curse. He spilled over his hand, both their guts, even a little onto his pecs, and only then did a strained growl rake its way out of him all low and guttural like his voice had been dragged over a bed of hot coals—and that was what did it for Kerry. That half-feral sound coming from someone so controlled and poised and polite. Knowing he’d been the one to dredge it up, and just the fact that he’d been allowed to at all…

Kerry made a choked noise and slammed in deep, letting the merc’s leg down in favor of kissing him, tasting him in the process of riding out that peak. It shuddered through the rockstar from head to toe, turned his awareness to static at the edges. Sang through his nerves like a perfectly-tuned plucked string and reverberated through him even after it was over.

He could tell V was feeling it too, afterward. Body humming in a perfectly harmonized chord with his. It was in the way the merc’s eyes trailed over him, the softness of that smile while they both took a second to breathe. The big, gentle chrome hands that petted over his arms.

Then, V’s stomach growled. Loudly.

“Hah!” Kerry flopped on the bed to grin at the ceiling. “Shit, I guess we better eat.”

V sighed, one arm draping over his face to hide some of his embarrassment. “There’s a stall not far from here that should still be open,” he rasped. Oh, his voice was so very fucked. The low gravelly tone had turned into a ragged, deep croak.

Kerry had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. “What’s on the menu?”

“Synth-meat and onion curry over fried rice,” V answered without having to think about it.

Well, fuck, if he kept this up Kerry might just come live here full-time.

Chapter Text

The rest of the night was chill. Soft. V shared some of the braindances he’d made with that friend of his, Judy, and let Kerry enjoy some street racing (in which V really did have a leadfoot!) and underground fight clubs from the safety of a comfy couch. He even got to feel what wearing and using the Sandevistan was like, the wildfire that roared through a guy’s nerves when the body could move at the speed of thought. He also got to see inside V’s walk-in closet, which had been turned into a weapons locker, except most of the weapons were the kind you smacked or stabbed people with until they stopped twitching.

“I like the club with spikes,” Kerry commented. “Looks like it could do some real damage.”

“Traditional Japanese weapon called a kanabo,” V told him. “That one was an antique even before you’d released your first album.”

Kerry liked it. He itched to hit something with it because he figured it looked like it’d be fun. He also kind of itched for his amphetamines. Instead of pursuing any of that, however, he returned to where V was sitting in his chair at his his computer and sat down right on the keyboard.

The merc leaned back, brows raising. “Yes?”

“Has it been a day yet.”

V twisted and craned his neck to squint out the window even though he most definitely had an internal clock. To be fair, the sun starting to come up outside was just as much of an indicator of time’s passage; he made a so-so motion with his hand. “Just about.”

The rockstar hummed and proceeded to climb into V’s lap. “Feelin’ better then?”

“Aren’t you a fucking menace.” The words were sharp but the tone was fond as V settled a hand on his input’s hip—that’s what they were now! They were dating! They’d been on real dates and gotten food together! Johnny’s opinions could fuck right off!—and stroked a thumb along the upper seam of his jeans. “What is it that you’re propo—”

V stopped mid-sentence, a furrow appearing in his brow. Then he tilted his head, light dancing in his eyes.

“How long has it been since you checked your messages?” he asked.

Kerry frowned. “Uh…” A while. It’d been a while. He’d had his notifications turned off since he’d left the house in that borrowed beater of a car to blow shit up. “One sec—oh.”

“Usually I consider the conventional wisdom about older generations and technology to be rooted in entirely in fiction—”

“Fuck off, I’m better at that shit than most people think.” The reply was half-automatic, coming more from a habit of snapping back than genuine annoyance. Kerry was too busy scrolling through the seemingly endless angry messages from multiple people about his output being a cyberpsycho as they flooded his UI.

V continued on regardless, still stroking his hip. “If I don’t let Nancy know where you are, I’d assume she’s going to call the authorities,” the merc noted. Ah, so Nance had gotten so angry at Kerry ignoring her that she’d gone and messaged V directly. “And I doubt she’ll hold back on insisting that MaxTac be brought in.”

Kerry sighed, sliding a hand over his face. “She’s gonna wanna know everything.”

“Do you think she should?”

“She can probably handle it, but she’ll want an exclusive with ya. Typical journo shit. Ain’t stupid enough to publish it straight away an’ get flatlined by a bunch’a gonk-ass Arasaka bastards at least.” He finally refocused on V, chest feeling tight. “Sorry, V.”

The merc’s hand came up to brush his cheek. “I knew what I was getting into.”

Anyone else and Kerry would say they were full of shit, but this was V, and calculation was just how he operated. Unfortunately, no matter how calculated the risk, sometimes a guy was just really fucking bad at math. “On the bright side, now you’ll get ta come to all the fun parties. Get ta have you on my arm for real. Get coked up t’go on talk shows together.”

“I’m not going on a talk show while on cocaine, Kerry,” V said admonishingly. Fuck. First time he’d called Kerry by name that way. Sounded fucking perfect. “Drunk, maybe.”

Kerry snorted, shaking his head. “Nahhh, y’need uppers for talk shows. Gotta match their energy, and you know all those bitches are fuckin’ up their nasal passages before they go on the air.”

V’s face scrunched. Kerry stared at him for a minute.

“Waitaminute.” This just made the larger man’s face scrunch further. “How’d you get through corpo life if you weren’t outta your goddamn mind on somethin’?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t on anything.”

“Uh-huh…”

V narrowed his eyes, scooted the chair back enough to make room, and gestured for Kerry to get off his lap. Amused (and wanting to see where this was going), Kerry hopped up and leaned back against the desk. He watched as V stood and headed for the kitchenette, scooping what had to be about four times the normal amount of grounds for a single cup into his coffee maker before turning it on. Then it was into the cabinet over his desk—leaning over Kerry to reach it—to get out a massive bottle of pills and two small single-shot energy drinks.

Kerry squinted at the pill bottle, then at the energy drinks, scanning both. “Caffeine,” he said, incredulous. “And kratom. With taurine.”

V nodded. The coffee maker dinged, and he pulled his towering travel mug from it. The mug was nowhere near full. Kerry realized he knew what was about to happen next.

“Ohhhh, now that right there’s a heartstopper,” he murmured, and sure enough, V proceeded to calmly pour both energy drinks and three of the massive caffeine pills into the mug, before moving on to stirring it all with a chopstick. “So you’re a real crazy motherfucker.”

“This was my breakfast for thirty years.” V continued to stir it until the pills were dissolved, then took a careful sip. By the face he made, it probably tasted like nail polish remover. “And part of my lunch.”

Kerry was pretty sure if he drank it he’d shoot through the ceiling. “Okay, but if I let you drink any more’a that Vik’s gonna fuckin’ kill me, so,” He took the cup from V’s hands and walked over to pour the rest straight into the sink. “I think we can leave that part’a corpo life behind for now.”

He didn’t think he’d ever seen a man so relieved to be rid of his vices.

__

By the time Nancy showed up at V’s apartment, both merc and rockstar had made sure they were clean and dressed to meet her (even if they got a little handsy in the shower while in the process of getting there). V had even shaved, pulled out a bottle of rum, and then actually managed to not give in to the temptation to open it before she got there! Progress!

(Kerry had been the one to open it before she got there. While V was shaving. Just for a sip. He was pretty sure V noticed and didn’t say anything.)

The gist of it was this: a few recordings of their impromptu concert had been passed around with V on guitar and backup vocals. Then, the Us Cracks van had been reported as vandalized, with BD rec and dashcam footage of V absolutely destroying it. And after that, he’d been spotted at Kerry’s villa being poured out of the getaway car and helped inside. An hour later, blurry footage showed Kerry’s Guinevere leaving the villa and going to Watson of all places, where he proceeded to drop off the fucking map.

Nancy slamming her fist on the door when she arrived was a completely understandable reaction. V got up to let her in and Kerry stood with him, though the rockstar hung back to straighten his shirt for a second. But when the door opened, she barely acknowledged V’s presence; she shoved past the merc, stormed right up to Kerry, and slapped him hard across the face.

“Agh—the fuck?!” Kerry jerked back from her, blinking. “Whazzat for?!”

“You had us all worried sick, asshole!” She huffed and rounded on V, who was looking a bit like a proverbial deer in the headlights. “And you’d better have a damn good explanation for all this, you cyberpsychotic fuck.”

Kerry glared at her. “He ain’t a cyberpsycho, Nance!”

“Normal people don’t rip car doors off their hinges!”

“He was doin’ what I asked him to!”

“And you did what after that, hm?” She jabbed a finger in Kerry’s face. “Came back to his place out in Watson to thank him with a quick lay? You’re wearing the same cologne, dumbass!”

“It ain’t that simple—“ SMACK. Kerry recoiled with a yelp, staggering back this time. Same spot. He rubbed at his face with a pout. “—fuck you hit hard.”

“Good! Maybe it’ll knock some sense into you. Get you to stop sprinting into things dick-first.” She huffed, then pointed sharply at the couch. “Both of you. Sit. I want an explanation, right now. From the top. As of this moment, no more gonk bullshit, no more lying to my face, no more acting like this doesn’t affect anyone but yourselves.”

V looked at Kerry, and Kerry looked back at V. It was the merc who moved to sit first, appropriately cowed (instinctively?) as he eased down and got comfortable with his impeccable posture and hands in his lap. Kerry rolled his eyes and sank down next to him, leg bouncing angrily away.

Nancy nodded as if satisfied, and brought an ottoman around to sit across from them and stare. “From the top,” she reminded them. “Ker, you’ve been in a funk for years. Carlisle doesn’t fit the profile of a superfan. Why is it that he’s the one to make you want to bring the band back together?”

The merc leaned forward. “Have you heard of Arasaka’s Relic program?”

Her face scrunched. “It’s… It’s some immortality initiative. Personality and memory upload. Why’s it relevant here?”

Kerry and V shared another look. Fuck. He didn’t wanna see V go, but… “Up t’you.”

“What’s up to him?” Nancy asked, squinting at Kerry suspiciously. Then she got even more suspicious as V pulled a pill from his pocket. “Are drugs gonna make this make more sense?”

“Just watch, Nance,” Kerry told her.

The effect of V swallowing the pill was as quick as it was hard to watch. Seeing him grunt and lurch forward, clutching his head, then come out of it gasping like he’d been drowning. And in that instant, V was locked away; the one who looked up at Nancy with those sharp cyber-eyes and that wicked smirk wasn’t the merc, but Johnny Silverhand.

Johnny breathed like the stale megabuilding air was the best thing he’d tasted in decades. “Hey, Nance.” He started to straighten, but it just led to him leaning back and manspreading so far that it smushed Kerry towards the end of the couch. “I’d say ‘long time no see,’ but…”

All the blood drained from Nancy’s face as she sat up straighter. “…You’re shitting me.”

“Wasn’t entirely my idea idea t’get the band back together,” Kerry admitted. “An’ it sure as fuck wasn’t V’s idea.”

“You’re fucking an Arasaka copy of Johnny Silverhand?”

Johnny made a noise like a jammed paper shredder; Kerry choked, then burst out laughing as the ghost of a dead man sank further into the couch with a deep scowl.

Nancy just looked even more confused. “So you’re not—”

“I didn’t actually think they’d fuck when I set all this up, okay?!” Johnny snapped. Kerry’s laughter devolved into wheezing giggles; his bastard of an old friend elbowed him sharply.

“Ohh.” That seemed to make more sense to her, which was a good thing; if she kept prodding, Johnny might start throwing shit, and Kerry didn’t want him fucking up V’s apartment. “Johnny got his new merc roommate to drive him to the gig and didn’t expect the roommate to hook up with his bandmate afterward.”

Johnny sneered, folding his arms. “Basically.”

“So how’d you pick up the roommate?”

Kerry finally managed to calm down enough to wipe his eyes and stop snickering, but Johnny still had to be the one to answer this one. “V got asked to klep the biochip I was on, put it in a port for safekeeping, got shot near the port and got it lodged in his brain.” The former lead singer of the Samurai shifted in his seat with a slight wince. “Fuck, Ker, did you really have to—”

“I don’t wanna know,” Nance said immediately. Johnny scowled at her some more but didn’t complain further. “So a copy of Johnny Silverhand’s mind and personality is stuck in a merc that could probably level a building bare-handed. Is that what led you to blow up a truck?”

Johnny shook his head quickly and pointed between V’s body and Kerry. “Nope! That was these two fuckin’ gonks, all the way. Chaotic fuckin’ dumbasses from start to finish, Nance.”

Nance blinked slowly like she was starting to get a headache. She slowly turned to Kerry. “Ker.”

“Yep.”

“Why did you blow up a truck.”

“’Cause those Us Cracks bitches were stealin’ my shit! MSM gave them the go-ahead to perform my music ‘thout accreditation.” Kerry shrugged, thumping back against the couch. “Label went an’ changed the terms of my contract on me so I couldn’t do nothin’, so I just… Made sure they’d have a lil’ hiccup in their tour. Enough ta know their efforts ain’t appreciated. Figured they might call off the tour if they encountered enough friction. They ain’t big over here.”

Nancy stared at him for several seconds. “Kerry.”

“Yeah?”

“Please lay off the drugs.”

This time it was Johnny’s turn to burst out laughing.

Chapter Text

Nancy dragged him out of the apartment after a little more chatting. Kerry would’ve stayed, but Johnny didn’t want him there either and wasn’t about to let V back out early if he could help it, so he pulled the oversized hoodie back on and left with her. They were quiet on the way out to her car, and when they got in he sank into the seat, tired and dejected.

“You’re gonna need to talk to your lawyers,” she said, turning on the engine and pulling out. “But if you want, I can put together a little something about MSM’s contract practices. Say the word and I’ll make sure those bastards feel it, Ker. They don’t get to fuck with the Samurai without bleeding for it.”

Kerry sighed and dragged a hand over his face. “Thanks, Nance.”

She nodded slowly. Then, “I saw those vials on his desk.” Kerry immediately winced. “That’s military-grade shit. You don’t take those dosages if you’re not either in a combat situation or actively dying.”

“I know.”

“You know? Then…” She seemed to consider for a moment, rounding a corner and settling into the lunch rush traffic. “Then it was his ripper you brought him to.”

“Figured that one out, huh?”

“Process of elimination. Nothing of interest in the area where you parked the Guinevere except Doc Vector’s place. Former underground boxing champion here in the city.” She nodded to herself. “It’s no wonder they get along. Carlisle was a heavyweight boxer back in what we’d call high school.”

Kerry shot her a weird look. “You looked him up?”

“Had to. Figured it might be relevant to knowing why he totaled a truck full of gear without klepping anything and then ended up at your place.”

They both went quiet for a while. The city passed by them lazily as they stopped and started their way through traffic, and Kerry stared out at it absently. “Could you look somethin’ up for me too?”

She hummed, shooting him a curious glance. “Depends on what you need me to look up.”

“He, uh…” Fuck. If Kerry were dying, he’d want folks to know. He’d want his kids to know. He’d wanna hear their voices, or at least know he’d done everything he could to reach them. “He said he’s got family. Some back home. A daughter, up on Luna. Workin’ outta Tycho.”

Nancy’s expression turned soft. She understood immediately. “Want me to pull some strings, see if I can get into contact?”

“Look, I get it if that’s—”

“It’s fine, Ker.” Something in his chest settled a little, stopped trying to twist itself into ever-tightening knots. “I’ll see what I can do, but you have to know that if people aren’t in contact with their families, there’s usually a reason. This might not be the reunion you’re hoping for.”

Kerry shook his head. “I gotta try, Nance.”

“Do you think he’d do the same for you?”

“I…” He swallowed, nodding. There wasn’t any question in his mind about that but he didn’t know how to communicate that to her without sounding insane. “You know all that gettin' the band back together shit? How it wasn’t his idea? Well, he… He coulda put a stop to that, if he wanted. At any time. Didn’t hafta come see me in the first place. Didn’t need’ta let Johnny talk to me at all.”

She frowned at him. “Okay…?”

“He—he asked me. If it’d help.” So sweet in contrast to Johnny’s attitude. Blunt but only so that Kerry wouldn’t back away from the questions being asked. “An’ then after, he asked again: did it help? An’ I said, yeah, it fuckin’ did. ‘Cause it had. More than Johnny jerkin’ me around an’ callin’ me a pussy ever did.”

“Ker, I hate to say this…”

“You’re gonna say it anyway, might as well.”

“…but you’re sounding a little desperate.” She peered at him during a red light for a while, then turned her attention back to the road. “Corpos can smell blood and you’re just letting that bleeding heart of yours pour right out into the water with him. He might not be Arasaka anymore but he can still exploit you. Still got teeth.”

“He ain’t like that, Nance.”

“Most of the guys you’ve dated have been like that.”

This one wasn’t. “Lemme tell you why he ain’t, then.” Kerry gestured to his ear. “See my earrings? Two at the bottom. Old-ass signifier for when you’re queer at a club, man lookin’ for other men. How’s he wear his? Two at the bottom.” He folded his arms. “Called me out on bein’ depressed. Called me out on not bein’ interested in Louise. Most people don’t even know what the word he used for last one means in that context these days. An’ I didn’t tell him shit, he just figured it out on his own. How’d he figure it out? Watched me through Johnny’s perspective an’ made up his own fuckin’ mind about how to feel. An’ you might bitch about that corpo shit, but he’s the one who found the problems with my contract.”

“Parasocial relationship,” she said. “Stalker behavior. An unhealthy obsession. Take your pick.”

“Think I ain’t seen my share’a parasocial weirdos? Creepy-ass fans? I mean, shit, did you even see any Samurai merch at his place?” There were admittedly a few things in the wardrobe tucked away that Kerry had found, but all of them were bootleg replicas of Johnny’s old shit. Probably to make their resident anarchist feel more comfortable. “It ain’t like that. He just met me a couple months ‘fore I met him.” Kerry paused. “Shit, if anything seein’ me in Johnny’s POV mighta made him feel even more awkward about it. Seems like the kinda guy to internalize feelin’ like a creep.”

Nancy let out a long, tired sigh, her fingers tapping the wheel. “I’m just worried, Ker.” She pulled into the last roundabout before the villa, taking the curves up the hill nice and slow. “I think in your case another heartbreak might be one too many.”

“It won’t be his fault if this shit breaks me,” Kerry insisted. “C’mon, lemme have this.”

She was quiet as she pulled into his driveway, thinking. Eventually, she nodded. “Okay.” She put the car into park and gave him a serious look. “I’ll see what I can do about finding you that contact information. In the meantime, try to lay low, okay? No more explosions.”

“No more explosions,” he echoed with a firm nod. He climbed out of the car and stretched, wincing slightly. He already felt like he needed a fucking nap again, and there was a twinge in his back that was starting to seem like he might need to pop a perc for it later. “Thanks for the ride, Nance.”

“And no more terrorizing lazrpop stars!” she called out.

Kerry flipped her off. “Fuck off. No promises.”

She laughed, starting off back down the drive. “Fuck you too, Eurodyne.”

__

Kerry slept the rest of the day, then woke up around ten at night and ordered takeout (which was a lot more boring and routine now in comparison to the street food vendors he’d gone to with V). It was still the finest sushi you could get in this town, but seriously. Where was the flavor? The grease? The MSG? He ended up using extra wasabi to compensate for how unfulfilling it was and it was still disappointing.

Then midnight rolled around, his alarm pinged, and he smiled to himself.

Kerry
{Meds time}

He pulled one of his guitars from the wall to strum on and a bottle of vodka (Johnny’s least favorite, just out of spite) to drink, then made his way over to his living room couch to settle in and wait for a response. Felt like a fucking teenager waiting for one, but it was a good feeling. All fluttery and warm.

V
{I’m flattered you remembered.}

Kerry
{I set an alarm :* Gonna remind your ass every day}

V
{Got home safely enough, at least?}

Kerry
{Yup}
{Miss you already :( Made a good fckin pillow}

V
{You’ll manage.}
{One of my fixers has arranged a gig for tomorrow, so I won’t be in. Simple tailing mission, shouldn’t be difficult.}

Kerry
{So no calling for phone sex, got it}

V
{I think the sorts of meetings you might end up in with the record label executives are a good deal more suited for that than mercenary work.}

Kerry
{Love the way you think. Hate those fckin meetings, I might take you up on that}

V
{On the topic of dealings with the record label, I believe I’ve discovered the reason why those starlets never questioned any of the shady things about the MSM cover deal. But I will need to research the matter further before I can be certain.}

Kerry
{I thought Arasaka didn’t dip their hands into media production}

V
{All large corporations dip their hands into trying to shape the media landscape, whether directly or through investment firms or subsidiaries. They even tried to buy out an e-sports franchise at one point.}

Kerry
{No shit?}
{Those video game gigs are fckin nova. Packed house every time. Sell out whole stadiums to folks who ain’t even heard your music up to that point, get a whole surge of new blood fans afterward. Did one a few years back and I still get new people comin from the video of that one concert}

V
{It wasn’t about the music, although that’s its own can of worms. Simply put, an unnamed executive was upset with the idea that the Koreans and the Chinese were doing something better than they were.}

Kerry
{HA}

V
{It gets better! The sports they wanted to be able to compete in and sponsor aren’t even popular enough in Japan to field a fully Japanese professional team. Japan has a culture of handheld and console gaming, and the games sponsored by telecommunications and shopping megacorporations in Korea and China are all played with a mouse and keyboard. And you can’t switch an entire country from pachinko parlors and arcades to net cafes on a whim when the mafia back home and in the very company trying to set up a sponsorship are digging their heels in about maintaining existing gambling infrastructure.}

Kerry
{So either you suck for a while and give up, or you pay for players from countries that don’t suck and just admit somebody else is better than you at somethin}

V
{They pressed on with the all-Japanese team for about a year. Then they replaced the roster entirely with imports but kept the coaching staff, who were all there by virtue of being corporate cronies anyway. By the two year mark, the whole thing had fallen apart—which anyone would’ve been able to foresee if they’d done even a modicum of research.}

Kerry
{A lotta money down the drain over a little beef}

V
{Sports sponsorships in general are a gamble. Usually Arasaka executives understand all too well that if you wish to make money gambling, you need to be the one running the casino. If I had to guess, I would say such a decision was likely a result of nepotism-driven hiring practices.}

Kerry
{Someone’s kid gets into the scene, gets promoted through the company, thinks they can do it too but better with daddy’s eddies}
{MSM had a problem with that a while back but it was with likeness rights. Some new investment banking fucker got into the company as a friend of a friend and decided that the new company policy should be that every artist would sign over everything. Face, voice, writing, mixing, instrumentals, you name it. Then it’d all get put into AI-powered performances that folks could have happen on-demand for a fee, doing whatever weird shit they wanted}
{Now I ain’t one to knock vocal synth, you can do some preem shit with it. And if somebody wants to sign over their voice to be used in vocal synth, that’s fine, because they still get a cut and it’s clearly labeled as being done with the vocal synth VB. Shit’s real big overseas}
{Even got approached to do a bilingual VB once. English and Tagalog, if recording it didn’t sound like the most boring gig of my life I mightve done it for that alone. SO MANY PHONEMES}

V
{But?}

Kerry
{Well, shit like this is why we sign contracts in the first place. Even if there’s holes in likeness rights laws (and I DID lock that shit down later fyi) copyright’s a lot older. So a bunch of us artists got together and put up a class action: the new policy goes against our copyright bc there’s nothing preventing reproduction, redistribution, or impersonation without our consent on a commercial level}
{Ended up staging a walkout. Did some interviews. Got my social media taken away}

V
{I think I remember that.}

Kerry
{On the bright side, the exec that proposed that shit got fired :)}

V
{You’re an absolute fucking menace, Mr. Eurodyne.}

Kerry
{But you love it :*}

V
{God help me, I do.}

Kerry paused in his strumming, blinking even though it didn’t take the message’s text from his optics. His hands settled over the guitar in his lap and he let out a shaky sigh, not responding straight away; he’d expected playful deflection, or jokes, or… Or something. Simple, casual sincerity like that just hadn’t been something he was prepared for.

After a while he picked up the vodka bottle and took a long swig.

Kerry
{Hey, can I buy you a keyboard}
{I wanna hear my man play. See what that private tutoring taught you}

V
{I can get one for myself if you’d like.}

Kerry
{Nahhh I wanna spoil you. My treat. Imma get you a real nice one, older model from back when the synth had teeth}

V
{You don’t have to, Kerry.}

Kerry
{But I WANT to. Can I?}

V
{Yes. If you must.}

Kerry
{Fuck yes I’ll start huntin one down :***}

He set the bottle down, relaxing as a sense of satisfaction washed over him. Hopefully that would get the message across.

Chapter Text

The news quickly got bored of reporting the weird, potentially senile antics of an aging rockstar. Kerry kept an eye on things for the next few days just in case, but didn’t catch anything else that wasn’t just wild speculation—at least, about himself.

V was another matter.

[Gonna need a new apartment, big fella,] Kerry ended up teasing him after seeing stills of the merc no less than three times in the past day. [Paps are crawlin’ all over your building lately.]

[They can take as many pictures as they like. It’s good advertising.] V hummed. [As was blowing up the truck, to be fair. But for a different sort of clientele. I’ve a meeting with a mayoral candidate in a few days to discuss the next job I’ll be taking.]

[Ooh. Fancy. How much they payin’ you?]

[More than the idiots making the snuff XBD did, I’ll say that much.]

[Still can’t believe you didn’t just spring the poor bastard outta his cuffs an’ delta.]

[He wouldn’t have left the deal with the studio behind even if I had. He believes he’s acting in service to God, the damned fool.]

Kerry nodded in solemn agreement even though V couldn’t see it. [Didja get the keyboard yet?]

V chuckled. [Not yet. I’ll let you know when I do.]

[Better get there in one fuckin’ piece, the Jupiter X is a classic.] Kerry deliberately hadn’t mentioned how many eddies he’d dropped on the damn thing. V had been polite enough not to ask. [Wanna come with me for another gig in the meantime?]

[I see your distaste for the notion of laying low continues unabated.]

The rockstar made a noise. [It’s about them Us Cracks bitches again. They ain’t stopped their tour.]

[Of course it is.] V sighed, but he didn’t sound annoyed, so it was probably fine. [What is it you need from me, then?]

[You speak Japanese, right? I wanna talk to’m.]

[I do.] Perfect! [But if they continue to refuse to agree to whatever terms it is you decide to set, or otherwise react in utter befuddlement, I will draw the line at flatlining a trio of tiny Japanese women. I doubt that would be good PR for either of us.]

Kerry scoffed. [No murder. I wanna see if we can talk ‘em down.] He paused. [Why’s talkin’ gonna confuse ‘em?]

[As I said previously, I believe I’ve found the source of the misunderstanding,] V said. [The girls are acting under the assumption that you’ll be compensated and credited fairly as you would be under Japanese standard practices; they went through MSM’s channels to arrange for venues and probably think that as a result, there won’t be an issue.]

Sinking into his couch, Kerry stared blankly at a wall. [I don’t follow. Why would they think that?]

[Utattemita.]

[What.] Kerry’s HUD translated that helpfully as ‘try to sing it.’

[Producing covers of others’ music is an exceptionally common practice for independent artists in Japan, and accreditation follows a strict protocol across their corner of the net. The original performer, producer, or writer is included in the upload’s title, as is whether the song is a cover to begin with. This is done without an intent to monetize the upload itself, as monetization is saved for album and track sales and studio deals. This provides a framework so that the moment the music is monetized, the original artist is able to be compensated and given proper credit.]

Huh. [But this is a live performance, it ain’t an upload unless MSM makes it one.]

[Exactly. I have no doubt that they plan to. And they’ll no doubt make an album out of it and pull the profits from that as well, while leaving it up in the air whether they’ll put the notion that it’s a Samurai cover on the packaging. And of course they’ll be doing all of this while also raking in your share of the profits from the gigs themselves.]

[An’ you think the girls have no idea.]

V hummed his assent. [I think it’s worth a civil discussion. They’re likely to be as disgusted as you are—for different reasons, of course. But I doubt they’ll take it lightly.]

[You got a lot more faith in these kids than me.]

[I never take anything on faith, Mister Eurodyne.]

Yeah, V could keep right on telling himself that. But everybody took at least a few things on faith. Had to. Otherwise nobody’d ever get shit done. [Still down ta come with me? Crash their party?]

There was a smile in V’s voice. [Happily. Where and when?]

Kerry wished for nothing more than to kiss him through the phone.

__

So the bitches were playing at this… This upscale club place. One that V apparently already knew a back way into! Having a merc as an output was too damn useful sometimes.

“And you’ll never believe who it is I broke in for,” V said.

Kerry blinked. “Eh? Who?”

“Lizzy Wizzy.”

“HAH!” Kerry broke into a grin. “You’re shittin’ me. What for?”

“She wanted to know if her partner was cheating.”

“Biiitch just fuckin’ talk to your man, don’t get all weird about that shit.” Kerry’s nose crinkled, and then he looked at V with a slight frown. “You ain’t gonna get like that with me, are ya? Sneakin’ around ta find out whether I’m goin’ behind your back?”

V snorted. “No.” He did a quick scan of the security room just beyond with the thermal sight of his optics, then forced the door open in such a way that the lock audibly made a crunching sound. Nice knowing you, door lock. And possibly door hydraulics. And door sliding track.

“Good,” Kerry said rather than dwell on the property damage. “Like I said, just talk ta me, y’know? Personally I don’t give a fuck who ya bring home so long as we’re on the same page. Might pout if ya didn’t share though.”

“If I do bring anyone home, you’re like to be the first to hear about it. It isn’t something I do often, not these days.”

Getting used to the idea of existing in your own skin as yourself could do that to a guy. Kerry didn’t point that out though. It could also just be that V had standards, and if he started thinking like that he’d end up worried he might not meet them. The whole thing was something he’d rather not pick apart at all. “So was he actually cheating?”

“No, he was asking a corporate agent if uploading her as a Relic engram would present an opportunity to reprogram her to be more agreeable and cure her of her cyberpsychosis.”

Kerry spluttered. “Fuckin’ excuse me?”

“Mm. I let her think he was cheating so she would leave him and get therapy. Both are better off.” He pulled Kerry into a back hallway, then paused; they were nearly in the club proper. Just a little further, but—”A moment. Someone’s coming.”

Shit. They were dressed to go incognito, but if they were spotted and recognized—”You’re the expert here, what’s the plan?”

V stared down the hall with narrowed eyes, likely watching the heat signature as it approached. Still. Quiet. Poised like he’d killed for less and could do it again. The second a shape rounded the corner and came into view beyond the glass door that led to the rest of the club, he flew into motion; the lines and shapes of his body seemed to blur, and in an instant Kerry was pinned to the wall by all the merc’s weight and strength. Legs lifted and held firmly around V’s waist, weight completely suspended above the ground.

And for the full length of the Sandevistan’s charge, Kerry was helpless to do anything except submit to V’s mouth practically attacking his own.

“Wh—oh, fuck.” An unfamiliar voice (one of the club-goers?) filtered down the hall, sounding a little drunk already. “I guess this ain’t the bathroom. Uh.”

Kerry’s two shellshocked brain cells recovered for just long enough to flip off the voyeurs.

“Yup, leaving, okay. Wow.” The voice trailed into the background noise of the club, muttering. “This fucking city, man…”

V broke off the second the gonks left, huffing with amusement (and exertion). The way they were pressed together meant that Kerry could feel just how hard the big merc was through his pants; grinning, the rockstar rolled his hips until he earned a playful growl and another shove against the wall that was just the perfect kind of rough.

He loved this side of V. “Tempting fate, Mister Eurodyne?”

“Temptin’ you.” Kerry curled himself forward, arched, mouthed along V’s jaw while cradling his face with both hands. “We got time before we gotta be backstage, don’t we?”

“Not enough for what I’d like to do,” V rumbled.

Kerry rolled his eyes. “Ruin my fuckin’ fun, why don’cha.”

“Ruining my own as well.” Carefully, the big merc let Kerry down off of the wall, making sure there was no chance whatsoever that he fell right on his ass. Awful considerate of the guy. And maybe slightly more necessary than one would think; there was a twinge in Kerry’s back after all that, his legs having gone slightly wobbly. “If I were to do as I pleased rather than merely create a distraction, however, it’s likely you wouldn’t even be walking afterward.”

“Yeah, whatever. Guess I’ll hafta settle for a taste for now.” But what a taste it’d been. “Well, you’re the one that knows this place. Lead the way, V.”

No more distractions; they’d come here because they had a job to do.

Chapter Text

So they met with the Us Cracks girls backstage. The blue and purple ones squeaked at the sight of them, while the redheaded one puffed up like a pissed off street pigeon and shoved herself between her bandmates and the intruders with her arms stuck out like she could bodyblock for them. Kerry started to rant, then V cut him off with some shit in Japanese, and… Well.

V had been right.

Turns out the girls really were horrified. Blue Moon spoke the best English and apologized to Kerry directly, while Purple Force bowed and babbled rapidly in Japanese that they had no idea, they really had no idea, Red Menace did you know. Red Menace soothed her before she could start crying and hugged her, then told V that this was more than enough to want to put the tour on hold, that MSM had been acting shady since they’d made the deal.

And after that they got to talking for real, and Kerry started to realize that in all his anger, he’d completely missed that these kids were punk as fuck. Like, really.

He asked about their eyes first. All of ‘em had weird eye implants going on, chrome for aesthetic’s sake. Common in the music world, especially in Europe, but theirs was uniquely strange and he was curious. Blue told him that they were a form of protest against Japanese beauty standards for pop stars and a visual representation of the fact that any work they got done would be their choice rather than a studio-mandated decision. Purple nodded and said to V in Japanese, tell him about the contracts they have idols sign.

The word ‘aidoru’ then proceeded to come up a lot more in the next hour than it ever had in Kerry’s professional career. He listened, fascinated and horrified, as the girls gave him a crash course on what cruel expectations really looked like. Before this, all he’d really known about were the details that made it through the American press, the kids that started work as preteens and got groomed and negged into music careers where the studio made all the money. He hadn’t known about the plastic surgeries, or the diets, or the competitive atmosphere that was maintained to keep idols in line through self-policing.

“They said Purple and I were too fat,” Blue said. “She almost died trying to keep up with the choreo and dieting to meet weight requirements. They wanted Red to get her jaw shaved but still told her she’d only ever be pretty enough to be a backup dancer in a mask.”

The girls’ lyrics and music were a protest too. Tuneless and peppy with lots of cursing sprinkled into the cutesy vibes. Red explained (with V’s translation giving it slightly more nuance than the one Kerry’s HUD provided) that idols were expected to maintain a spotless, innocent exterior that was palatable and consumer-friendly for a wide audience. They were supposed to be good, virginal girls who never did anything wrong while also being walking temptation magnets for the creepiest fucking gonks imaginable.

If Kerry’s label had treated him like that, he would’ve resorted to arson.

Needless to say, he ended up exchanging detes with them. Had V snap a quick still with them for the occasion. He left feeling both relieved and a bit heavier than he’d been when he left, somehow managing to have both more and less faith in humanity at the same time. Definitely less faith in corps, but that was a fucking given. But the girls? They were alright.

It was getting well into the evening by the time they left. “You took a Delamain to get here, didn’t you?” V asked on the way out. “Care for a ride?”

Kerry hummed. “Sure, why not.” It’d be on the bike, but Kerry was a lot less worried about that than he’d been before. Now instead of dreading the awkwardness, all he could think about was that the idea of riding with V sounded kinda nice.

And it really was nice. Climbing onto the bike pressed against V’s back. Arms around the guy’s chest and waist, legs bracketing his hips. The bike rumbled to life underneath them and V revved it a few times for good measure; the way it purred was almost soothing, like having a big contented cat in your lap. When he leaned his cheek against the alligator leather of V’s coat, he could feel the hard metal of the Sandevistan implant running along the merc’s spine.

So at first, when they started heading south instead of back out to Westbrook and the villa, Kerry wasn’t too concerned. He figured, hey. V’s gonna take him to a nice place down in the city center, some upscale restaurant from back in his corpo days where every dish has a fancy name and comes on a way too big plate with not nearly enough sauce. Not usually Kerry’s favorite thing, but he could dig it if it was V taking him. Places like that were always more interesting with some good company.

But then they kept right on going south. The streets got worse. The potholes got bigger.

“There a reason you’re takin’ me into Pacifica, V?”

The merc just chuckled. “You’ll see,” he replied.

Kerry shivered at that. Fuck, V didn’t even see a problem in it. Or maybe he’d done that shit he always did where he calculated the likelihood of it being a problem and came up with a result of Punch It If It Becomes One. Because there wasn’t a doubt in Kerry’s mind that V knew Pacifica was dangerous—he’d worked with the Voodoo Boys before, hadn’t he?—and that there were gangers everywhere and that the last mayor had literally unincorporated it just to crow about statistically lowering Night City’s crime rate. V wasn’t blind.

No, he was just confident. In himself, or in the people there, or whatever. Didn’t matter that Kerry was starting to see corrugated steel shacks and chemical barrels filled with burning trash being used as space heaters; V wasn’t apprehensive at all.

They pulled off near a stairwell that led up to an old hotel. Inside, even though it was surrounded by more of those shacks, the first floor had been opened up and taken over by something like a street market. There was loud reggae music playing out over the old intercom speakers, boosted and tinny at the same time; Kerry heard the clipping at the outer edges of the speakers’ range. And there were people everywhere, milling around or loitering or talking shit in half a dozen different languages. He could’ve sworn he heard Tagalog in there somewhere, but dismissed the thought immediately. Had to be imagining it, right?

V took his hand then. Cool carbon fiber reinforced fingers closing around his. “This way,” he murmured. There was a flicker in the merc’s eyes—hacking? Or a text?—”It’s not far.”

“What’d you just do?” Kerry wondered.

“Made sure we won’t be bothered,” V said. “No paparazzi. No gangs. Not even so much as a pickpocket.”

Kerry’s gaze darted around. All of a sudden he realized that a few of the people he’d spotted just loitering were packing the kind of heat you might see in a Sixer’s wet dreams. Not just confidence then, huh? They had a whole-ass security detail. V wasn’t taking chances. “Really rollin’ out the red carpet for me here, V.”

V smiled, squeezing his hand gently and leading him into the market.

Now, it had to be said—again—that Kerry’s sense of smell was possibly the weakest of all his senses, apart from his sense of self-preservation. He’d lived a long, hard life, and while he could probably get that shit fixed with some surgery, he didn’t wanna actually fuck up the aesthetic of his nose. Wasn’t just vanity either; he’d known since he was a kid what kinda shit celebs did to themselves to make their features less distinctive, a trend that’d been going on since even before he was born. He liked his nose, he’d kept his nose, and as a result when it’d gotten fucked up internally, it’d stayed fucked up internally.

If that hadn’t been the case, he would’ve known what V was bringing him here for a lot sooner. He would’ve been able to smell it way earlier, instead of having a mix of that scent and old memories hit him square in the face the second they came around a corner to approach a particular stall.

“Ah!” The vendor at the stall beamed, waving them over. “Kumusta po kayo?”

Kerry’s shoulders sagged. A lump formed in his throat, and his eyes started to burn. V smiled down at him and gently tugged him forwards, guiding him to a stool at the vendor’s stall. He’d spent ages looking; the last good place to get food from the Philippines had closed down years ago, and he hadn’t had any luck finding anything since then. And yet here it was, hidden down in the Pacifica slums, the familiar smells and sights suddenly overpowering.

“Kamusta…” he mumbled, easing down onto the stool. V’s hand shifted to his back and he leaned into it with a shaky breath. “What’ll it be, West?”

V shook his head. “Not exactly my area of expertise. Would’ve brought you something before this otherwise.” Probably because even Johnny couldn’t have told him what kind of food Kerry liked. Bastard had never been good at paying attention to that kind of thing. “Order something for me as well, maybe?”

It was a damn shame British food fucking sucked, otherwise Kerry would’ve figured out a way to return the favor a little better.

__

When they finally left, Kerry was so stuffed he felt uncomfortable. Naturally, he hadn’t been able to resist sampling half the damn menu. But it was a good kind of uncomfortable, and he’d even managed to get a little barbecue chicken (real ‘ganic chicken! Actual fucking chicken meat! Apparently people in Pacifica raised their own and there was a whole black market surrounding it, it was wild) and fried siopao that was getting taken home and probably eaten later in a fit of late night munchies.

The night air was cool on his face on the way back to the villa; the wind blew at his hair, tousling it like an old friend. And for the first time in years, he was… He was happy. He was fucking happy. He’d had a gun in his mouth a few weeks ago and now here he was, safe and cared for. Like a part of him that had been missing for decades had finally been slotted back into its proper place. He was eighty-nine years old—and he kinda wondered if it wasn’t a sign that he was just going off the deep end or had maybe finally hit the point of a few too many substances—and his heart was light like it hadn’t been since…

Since he’d first been on the stage. Since he’d first gotten into the booth, poorly fitted Audio Technica cans on his ears, belting out his own version of one of Johnny’s most popular tracks. Since he’d signed his first autograph.

They got back to the villa safe and sound sometime close to midnight. Kerry eased himself off the bike, still feeling its vibrations in his bones. Grabbed his snacks from the compartment under the seat.

“I, uh…” Anything could’ve said didn’t feel like it’d be enough. “Thanks. Takin’ me out there, helpin’ me out with the Us Cracks girls…” His fingers tightened around the rolled end of the paper bag his food was in. “It helped.”

V inhaled sharply through his nose—the only indication he was startled. Then he nodded, slowly. “Least I could do,” he said, solemn and utterly sincere. “Goodnight, Mister Eurodyne.”

“You could stay, y’know.”

“Unfortunately, I left my medication at home,” V pointed out. His voice softened a moment later. “Otherwise I might very well take you up on that.”

Kerry nodded to himself. The air between them were quiet for a bit, charged with a subtle tension. There were a lot of things that sprang to mind that he could say and all of them were stupid. Could just live with me. Villa’s big enough. But instead of saying them, he settled for leaning in for a kiss.

He didn’t regret it. V’s lips still tasted like NiCola and Filipino street food, and his stubble was scratchy, and his warmth was such a hard contrast against the cool desert air, and the way he sighed into Kerry’s mouth and melted into it was too perfect for words. If there were paps in the bushes, fuck ‘em. Let the bastards all see. He would get to have this one single thing in his life going right for him, damn it. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if it ended up in the screamsheets.

“Lemme know when ya get that keyboard, a’ight?” he mumbled, fingers trailing down the leather of V’s sleeve. “I wanna be the first one ta hear you play.”

V’s hand brushed his cheek. “You will be,” the merc promised.

Kerry nodded, stepping back. V revved the bike and pulled out into the drive with a last heated glance Kerry’s way, then headed off into the night. He watched the bike’s taillight disappear into the distance, staring after it even when it was well out of sight. When he finally went inside, he still felt lighter than he had in years, but that clingy, needy part of him that’d been too deprived for too long wanted to scream and cry and break things, so he headed straight upstairs to his personal bar for a drink in lieu of letting that part of himself ruin the night on a whim.

Because it had been a great night. One of the best he’d ever had. He grabbed a bottle of scotch and took it downstairs, not bothering with a glass, just to go and stare at his guitar collection. Which axe did he wanna play tonight? A night like that, it’d left a little music in his fingers, a syncopated rhythm in a lazy, comfortable 4/4. He ended up picking up an old blue Strat that was resting on the bench to bring back with him to the couch. It was a classic of an axe with a finish well-worn by time and use, and plenty of musicians had bled over the strings of guitars just like it with their love for the whole line across the last few generations. Fitting, he figured, for a night like this. For men like them.

As he flopped down on the couch and started to play, that alarm he’d set in his OS pinged in his HUD; he smiled to himself at the sight of it.

Kerry
{Meds time :*}

V
{I’m just now getting in the parking garage.}

Kerry
{Hey, I told you I’d remind you :) Just keeping my word here. Being a good input}

V
{Does this imply that you’re going to be a very naughty input later on?}

Kerry
{I mean if you’re into that sure}
{Been a few years since I was a part of that whole scene though.}

V
{Physically, I’m on an elevator going back to my apartment. Mentally, I’m now calculating the price of a decent collar. My finances are going to be in shambles if I continue this line of thinking.}

Kerry
{Does Johnny read these}

V
{He checked out of what we were doing not long after we left the club. I’m sure he’s still present, but he does his best to ignore these things.}

Kerry
{Alright then, this one’s for him: I already own a few collars :)}
{Plus some other shit. I can go into specifics if you really wanna weird him out.}

V
{He just appeared to tell me to tell you that he does NOT need to know about all of that. I wish I could show you the look on his face right now, it’s honestly priceless.}

Kerry
{:) It’s good for him to give him shit once in a while}
{Hey Johnny: I got beads too}

V
{He made a disgusted noise and then completely disappeared. How fascinating. It’s not as if beads would be taking the amount of kink going on to any particular extremes.}

Kerry
{Compared to choking, nope. But there’s normal fuckboy shit that he can admit he’s into and then there’s shit that dips into him maybe having to have an existential thought or two about how queer he is, and the latter ain’t his strong suit}

V
{I see. I suppose I can sympathize.}

Kerry
{When Samurai was starting out, shit was bad. Like it was still bad when you were growing up, but it was REAL bad back then}

V
{I’ve seen the stills. The footage.}

Kerry
{The worst was before our time, but it wasn’t all that far in the rear view either. I don’t think Johnny ever quite shook it}
{A lotta guys like us just fckin flatlined, West. Hit the music scene even harder. If we’d been performing in the 1980s doing the same shit we did in the 00s we woulda ended up wasting away dying of incurable fuck-you disease with nobody willing to come into our hospital rooms bc nobody knew how it spread except “gay”}
{So yeah, I’m gonna be open and embrace that shit now that I’m old and nobody remembers or cares anymore. And I’m gonna goad Johnny bout being such a fckin gonk bc we both know he’s just doin it to try and wedge himself further in the closet}

V
{Is he actually…?}

Kerry
{Oh he’s bi}
{He just won’t out and fckin ADMIT IT}

V
{I’ll see if I can get more out of him before I pass out for the evening (morning? Hm :P). As fun as it is to tease him, it might be for the best if he finds a bit more closure on the matter.}

Kerry
{You’re a lot fckin nicer to him than I was, West}

V
{I owe him. It’s the least I can do.}

Humming, Kerry paused in his strumming and texting to take a sip of the scotch. It wasn’t as good as what V had shared with him, but it still went down smooth. A decent way to cap off a damn good night. Johnny finding some closure wasn’t a big focus for him, at least not in that way. Hadn’t been for decades. But he supposed having the guy living in his head made V a little more sympathetic, a little more willing to forgive the hiccups and see it through to its conclusion. Kerry didn’t have the bandwidth for that shit anymore.

If anyone could do it though, it’d be V. No question.

Chapter Text

The next time they spoke, it was V that called Kerry.

[You will not believe what I’ve just stumbled upon in the Japantown markets,] the merc declared.

Kerry held up a hand to his sound guy, took off his cans, and stepped out of the booth. “Take five, everyone,” he said aloud, unable to keep from grinning. [A’ight, lay it on me.]

[I found a vendor who specializes in old musical memorabilia. And, specifically—] V paused for effect, and Kerry could hear how much he was smiling. [—bootleg Samurai and Kerry Eurodyne merchandise. He has a few of your old live performances that I didn’t even know existed.]

[Now that’s fuckin’ nova.] The smile had become infectious. Now Kerry was wearing one himself. His sound guy was looking at him like he was a dumbass, though. [If I wasn’t in the middle’a recordin’ I’d come see it for myself. Give the poor bastard a heart attack.]

[I suppose it’s a good thing I bought some of it to show you, then.]

[Really? Didn’t think you were a fan.]

V snorted. [I’m not. Mister Silverhand gives me enough headaches as it is.] Literally! [But I found a hilarious Second Impact shirt that was probably supposed to have some of your lyrics on the back, except they’d been run through a translator several times and had turned to nonsense. The icon on the front also appeared to have been glommed together by a first-gen image generator AI of a sort that they had back before the Blackwall went up. It was hideous and it’s going directly into my wardrobe at home.]

Oh that was beautiful. Kerry needed that. [Next time I swing by I’m borrowin’ that shit.]

[Feel free, darling.] Ooh, that was a new one. Sounded real pretty coming outta V. [Now, what is it that we’re recording today?]

Kerry wandered out of the studio and into the hall to grab a sparkling water from the vending machine. Nothing that’d affect the voice today, he was on a roll. [Collab with the girls. I’m curious how they’re gonna mix it, but right now I’m focusin’ on makin’ sure the vocal’s nailed down. After that it’s the instrumental, then I’mma do some work on the acoustic version. Folks eat that shit up.]

[Speaking of, did you give Blue Moon my contact information?]

That got Kerry to pause. [Uh… I ain’t in trouble, am I?]

[Not at all. Helping her with a stalker is well within my area of expertise. I was just curious.]

Kerry snorted and shook his head, then proceeded to chug half the water bottle in one go; he muffled a belch behind his hand.

[Kerry.] V’s tone was admonishing, but fond. Then: [I’m sure you can do better than that.]

[Challengin’ me, West? Well fuck, a’ight, one sec—]

Taking a breath, Kerry tossed back the rest of the bottle in a single long pull. Then he belched so hard that he could feel it burning his throat and mouth a bit, the remnants of the carbonation reaching as far as the inside of his nose.

He’d never heard V laugh quite the way he did then. Deep and resonant and helplessly fond. It was such a good fucking sound, rare and beautiful. Kerry wished he was recording that sound instead; slap that shit on a vinyl, listen to it all the damn time.

[You’re a complete disaster, Kerry Eurodyne,] V said with a sigh afterward, like it was the most wonderful thing in the world. Maybe to him it was. [I’ll let you get back to recording. Enjoy yourself, hm? And don’t overwork your chrome. I don’t want to have to put you in an ice bath.]

Kerry smiled. [Like you’re one ta talk.] But Kerry did know the drill by now. He’d been living with his for a lot longer than V had. [Stay safe out there, West.]

He came back to the studio, headed back into the booth. Put his cans back on. A gesture to his sound guy had him back in his seat at the mixing desk. The dead air of the soundproofing and noise cancellation was soon replaced by the basic MIDI instrumental in his ears that he was using for timing. He tapped the beat out in the air with his fingers, nodded along. Three, two, one…

Showtime.

__

The next time V called, it wasn’t so cute and silly. It was a ‘drop everything and go’ kinda moment.

Kerry was on his couch after a shower, watching the news, vibing. Munching on the last of the barbecue chicken. He was just thinking he was going to have to ask V to take him to get more when the merc’s name popped into his peripheral vision with an incoming call.

[V!] Kerry broke into a grin. [Hey, I was just—]

[Kerry, could…] The rockstar sat bolt upright on the couch, frowning; he’d never heard V sound like that. Ever. [I’m… I’m terribly sorry, but could you…]

Kerry immediately shucked his bathrobe and shot up from the couch, everything else forgotten. [I gotcha, West. Your place?]

V was quiet for a moment. [Yes.] His voice was raw. [Thank you.]

[It’s not a problem, baby, I’ll be right over.] Clothes. He needed clothes. Whatever he could throw on. [You okay with the wait or should I stay on the line?]

[Just… Do whatever it is you need to do.]

Not in any danger. Not dying. Not hurt enough that Kerry needed to get him to a ripper or hurry. Not so fucked that he’d eat a bullet rather than wait it out. That made it less of an emergency, but no less alarming. [Take a shower, clear your head. I should get there ‘round the time you get out, that okay?]

[I—yes.] Whatever it was, it was still bad enough for V to reach out. And knowing the merc, that meant it was really, really fucking bad. [I’ll see you then.]

Not caring who saw, Kerry hopped into the Guinevere and booked it.

This had to be a job thing, didn’t it? Kerry’s mind raced with possibilities. Was it the thing with the mayoral candidate’s investigation into the last guy’s death? The snuff XBD? The corruption investigation with that NCPD choom of his? Something to do with the nomads or his friends in the Mox? V was pretty open about what he was doing at any given time, and nothing he’d been doing lately sounded too much like it could cause someone like him to have a meltdown.

Into the parking garage, straight to the elevator. Kerry smacked the button so hard the touchscreen’s colors warped. When he reached V’s section, he burst out so fast that he nearly tripped over a discarded NiCola can; it didn’t stop him from bolting up the stairs to the merc’s apartment, two at a time.

He slammed his fist on the door. There was a faint shuffling inside before it slid open, and when it did…

“Shit, somethin’ fucked you up, huh?” Kerry had never seen V cry. Never. Not once. And it was a little weird, seeing someone with such red-rimmed eyes and artificial optics that were clear as ever. But he knew in an instant that’s what’d been happening. V had been crying his goddamn eyes out before Kerry got there, possibly for a while. He even still looked like had a little more in him.

V nodded weakly in response. No words. Probably didn’t trust himself with them just yet; that was fine. Kerry just took him by the arm and led him back to the couch, urging him to sit down in front of the coffee table so the rockstar could plop down on that and face him while still being close enough to touch him. He wasn’t hurt—thankfully—but when Kerry leaned forward and took his hands, all he did was stare at them. He didn’t try to wind their fingers together or bring Kerry’s hand up to kiss it or anything. Just kind of existed in Kerry’s loose grip, eyes trained on his cybernetic palms.

It was awful. “Feelin’ up for tellin’ me what happened?”

For a while, V stayed quiet. His voice was a faint rasp when he spoke. “I… I don’t know if I,” he started to say, but hesitated. Winced.

“Hey, no, don’t have to.” Kerry squeezed his hands. “D’you think Johnny would be able ta tell me?”

V’s face screwed up, but he nodded. He started to reach for a pill bottle on the table but Kerry stopped him by taking that errant hand by the wrist.

“No pills. Ain’t gonna make you fuck yourself up worse.” Slowly, carefully, Kerry moved forward to ease himself into the merc’s lap. “Got a port open for me?”

The last time he’d tried this, V hadn’t been awake for it. He still remembered the feeling of all that feverish heat under his palms. This time, V’s temperature was more normal, but the sullen way he stared up at Kerry was no less heartbreaking. With the merc’s face in his hands, Kerry maneuvered his datajack into that open neck port, and closed his eyes to concentrate on accessing the BD software.

He knew he’d gotten it right a second time when Johnny’s voice was the first thing to flood his awareness.

[—fuck, was that a shitshow.] Unlike V, their anarchist ghost was equal parts upset and angry. Kerry knew that tone. [Hi, Ker. You missed some real corporate bullshit.]

Of fucking course it was corpos. [Just gimme the rundown.]

[It’s that XBD, the Passion snuff. The main actor was startin’ to get iffy on the whole thing, and those fuckers decided that V here would be great motivation for the bastard since he seemed to care so much.] In V’s periphery, Johnny—the Johnny Silverhand that Kerry remembered—sat on the other side of the wraparound couch, scowling. [V went in thinking he could talk them down. Instead the guy just wanted his best buddy there to witness his final fuckin’ moments while some corpo bitch from the XBD studio crowed about how many eddies it would rake in.]

Kerry opened his eyes; the BD awareness of Johnny overlaid his own vision as he stared down at V. “Oh, baby…” he murmured.

[She wasn’t even subtle. Real cold bitch, that one. V told her after to pump the brakes on the distro and she was all too happy to tell him it was out of her fuckin’ hands and she’d be sending him a bonus for bein’ so helpful.]

If he wanted, he could go and access the footage of what had happened right now. The files were there, wide open for Kerry to pull up. But one of them having to watch a man be exploited to death was enough for one night’s cruelties.

[I’ll be honest, Ker, I don’t know if there’s much we can do about this one,] Johnny said, and it sounded like he hated that it was the case. [Not a lotta options here that aren’t just plain ol’ violence.]

Kerry shook his head, scooting up to kiss V’s forehead. Feeling him suck in a sharp breath and let it out to calm himself down. “I got one for ya,” the rockstar said. “but we’ll need that BD editor buddy’a yours in the Mox ta help out.”

Johnny sat up straighter in V’s periphery. [You wanna take V’s footage and do a distro of our own…?]

“Gotta hit ‘em where it hurts: right in the investors’ accounts.” Kerry stroked his thumbs over V’s cheeks, staring down at him. “Won’t fix shit, but it’ll help. Right?”

V’s gaze tracked back up to meet Kerry’s; the rockstar could see himself through his output’s eyes, finally get a hint of how V stared at him. Cool hands shifted until they’d tentatively settled on his hips, then moved up over his shirt and around his back. The merc could only nod quietly, his jaw tight—still not trusting his voice. It might be a while. That was okay. Long as he wasn’t stuck in the shadows alone (or with no one but Johnny for company, ugh).

After all, Kerry knew all too well what it was like to go through shit alone.