[Johnny’s at least got enough decency to rein in any commentary as V pukes up his guts, even as he’s been flown the bird the whole while. Instead, he tries not to let his own stomach roll with the sound of it — which isn’t really that hard to do, when he’s got a strong repertoire of past nights exactly like this one to bolster his will against it.
Instead, he raises a hand to edge his shades a smidge higher up the bridge of his nose, his other waving dismissively in the merc’s direction.]
Yeah, yeah. Feel better now?
[Not Johnny, though he’s processing it better than V by leagues. Still, the nighttime air feels cool on his skin, slipping past his cheekbones, and with his head craned back, he closes his eyes beneath his shades. Strands of hair fall across his face haphazardly, but he’s too sloshed to care.]
You had fun. Admit it. Might feel like you were run over in the morning, but you had fun.
'tween this 'n my brain, rememberin' why I feel like this when I wake up's fifty-fifty.
[ It's supposed to be a joke, except when it's out of his mouth it sounds a lot less funny. His features pinch lightly into a loose frown and he finally opens his eyes. With the greatest of efforts, he eventually sits up a little straighter and glances across the space between them.
Realistically, not remembering a night after Johnny's been leading isn't exactly anything new, just the cause of it has shifted slightly. Either way he's not gonna blame Johnny. ]
Yeah I had fun. Guessin' from the look've you, not a bad night out in your own body for you either.
[It’s supposed to be a joke, sure—and Johnny knows V well enough to assume that it was—but it brings back a subject that’s not much of a laughing matter; a subject he had put in his back pocket while the sun was still hanging in the sky, before their bar crawl that’s already not much more than a haze in his skull.
Johnny exhales, the effort from that alone feeling like it’s squeezing the rest of his energy from his veins. He straightens, or at least tries to, wooden slats creaking beneath his weight.]
Not a bad night at all. Have had a lot worse; company counts for something.
[He takes a moment to decide whether or not he wants to circle back to the subject of V’s head, if either of them are really in a state for it—or maybe this is the proper state for burdensome conversation: so drunk that the uncertainty and maybe-inevitable don’t feel so heavy at all.]
Hey, y’know— [Another vague gesture in V’s direction.] Found Kerry a… awhile ago, talked about the state of your head when he was finished gawking at me. Anyway, we’re gonna be lookin’ for a way to help you, V. See if there’s a miracle this fucking bizzare planet can provide your grey matter or… I don’t know. Somethin’.
[ Hand tangled up in his hair now that he's slid the bandana off, he's got the fabric scrunched up in his other hand as Johnny starts talking. Not exactly what he'd been expecting but, in some ways, there's no surprise when he does. In this state, he's almost surprised he remembers his own name, but there's something vague and wispy ghosting through his neural network. ]
Think I remember 'im mentioning you now. Or... I dunno. Part've it.
[ It feels like he's trying to look at a memory through dark water, the eddying and swirling blurring the mental image to the point where he can't really make out what it is properly. Snatches of a conversation, maybe. Kerry's guitar and a few random notes that drift through lazily after. ]
Don't 'member Mikoshi. Don't remember seein' you 'cept when we were on that rooftop. Above Misty's. After that...
[ He lifts a hand to gesture in the air, like he can explain it feels like trying to grab at smoke and feeling disappointed every time he doesn't manage it. Blowing out a heavy breath, he can taste the unpleasant mix of stomach acid and alcohol still clinging to the inside of his mouth. He doesn't dwell on it, but when he scoots back deeper onto the bench, he doesn't make any attempt to not press his shoulder up against Johnny's. ]
Know what I miss? Talkin' to ya in my head. Didn't even have'ta open my mouth.
[ Head lolling backward onto the bench again, he closes his eyes and thinks on that for long few seconds. ]
'm so fuckin' tired.
[ Not just literally tired because he needs sleep, but tired in ways that he can't explain and wishes he could just share what he means in a thought to the one person he feels like he can confess that to. ]
It’s a well-shared sentiment, and Johnny knows just the kind of tired that it is — the sort that the whole world hammers into a man with the passage of time, the sort that Night City drove into the hearts of all who lived there like it was some kind of damn prerequisite. Johnny’s carried it in himself for years at this point, used it to ignite his ever-burning flame of anger, and he knows the weight of it; just as he knows the degree of which V shoulders that burden, too, after all he’s been through. Dealt a shitty hand, with Johnny being the real main reason that the merc’s brain is the way it is now.
A memory full of holes. Recollection strained at the edges, simply trying to remember a conversation from days ago. V’s shoulder gently knocks against Johnny’s, and a little bit of the haze clogging up his thoughts slowly drain away. Subtle enough not to notice it quite yet, the clarity in which his cognizance rearranges itself around the subject at hand.
Yeah, it’d be a lot easier if they could just think what they meant, rather than having to form the words with any kind of eloquence.]
Would call you a liar if you said you weren’t. After everything that’s happened... don’t blame you for it.
[He drums metal fingertips against the arm of the bench, idle. Unthinking.]
Really can’t recall Mikoshi? Well, you didn’t miss much — just a bunch of damn excuses why Alt couldn’t fix you up the way we were hopin’ for. And the decision to stick you back in your body, anyway.
[Which is a generalized version of the conversations that took place, riddled with all manner of emotions on the fly. But Johnny sees no need to linger on that.]
Told you to keep on fighting, though. Expectin’ you to do the same here, just as much as you would’ve back on Earth. Ker even mentioned some hair-brained scheme about the Crystal Palace or whatever. Talk about a hell of a job.
[ The slow realization that he could lie to the man now doesn't make him feel better about anything. Brain swimming in alcohol, he could easily get dragged down under a wave of hopelessness that he can feel brewing at the edges of his mind. More he learns about what happened, more he's feeling like his freedom's still being slowly chipped away at.
But he honestly believes that even if he tried lying, Johnny would know. Spent long enough sharing a brain that Johnny's probably got a better measure of who he is than anybody else ever has. V's open with his feelings and thoughts, for the most part, but nobody knows them as intimately as Johnny does. Raw and unfiltered.
The difference here's that he can feel the solid warmth of Johnny next to him - a physical weight that's undeniably seeping into his conscious mind like a balm, and thinking about Johnny as a balm to anything wrenches a laugh from his lungs. Imagine that.
The exhaustion sweeps in soon after, his body leaning that much more heavily into Johnny's side, craving a connection that feels like it got cut out of him and that he's been privately grieving for these few long days. Maybe Johnny'd be expecting it, the fact that V's chasing after whatever connection he can get. Reaching out with his body where his mind feels so far away. He's always been tactile, and considering this is his first experience of being able to touch Johnny and feel something tangible, it's a wonder he hasn't tried going in for a hug again. ]
What happened to you? After, I mean.
[ The mention of the Crystal Palace is skipped over for now, the urge to find out what became of Johnny too great to ignore. If he went back to his body without Johnny riding along, and thinking about the way he feels now, he can't quite wrap his brain around having the energy to even attempt something so huge. He'd wished so desperately for a good outcome for the both of them. ]
[Kind of wish that the haze wasn’t going away; Johnny’s growing lucidity only makes this harder to talk about, even if— Well, even if there’s no getting around a question like that. He straightens a little more in his seat, about as straight as Johnny Silverhand can manage, lets the silence linger for maybe a moment too long.]
Well... about all that could be done.
[Which is only an answer that bodes unwell, and Johnny can’t be that mean to V and leave it hanging, so he continues.]
I stayed with Alt. Or, y’know, her idea of what stayin’ would be — left to become a part of her code, a piece of a greater whole.
[A bigger AI, something more. Alt still had a hint of Alt in her, but Johnny had wondered how long that was going to last if she was going to keep vacuuming up stray AI personalities to become herself, too.]
That’s all I really was, anyway: lines of code fashioned to look and act like Johnny Silverhand. Wasn’t that bad a sacrifice, in the end, to make sure you lived what time you had left.
[ Behind the glassiness of his optics, shielded away deeper behind flesh and bone, it doesn't take long for a singular thought to take root that's not altogether different from Johnny's. V doesn't know that, but his own thoughts drag him back to a void, a blank canvas where it shouldn't be. Slowly but surely the people he knows - people he trusts - are scribbling what they know there. Fuck he wishes he was more drunk right now.
Scrubbing a hand over his face, he exhales heavily like the punch to his gut had been real and not emotionally-charged. Johnny sacrificed himself and he-- ]
Stop. Just... stop.
[ Falling silent, face still cradled in an upturned palm, V can feel that same wave of emotion that's been following him around since he arrived. Crying's not something he does all that often. Not out of some archaic belief that it's not what men do, but because he got better at handling his emotions. Pragmatism; can't survive without it 'cause nobody's got time to hang out in their small things theorizing. Especially not the two of them. They never had time.
His brain hooks into something that flares hot and bright instead, sets him on a course away from tears and down a path Johnny's sent him before. All of this is so big to fit into his already ailing brain, and though there's a full spectrum of emotions unfolding inside of him, he grasps the hottest. ]
All you really were, huh? Just lines'a code. That's how we're gonna look at this?
[ Even drunk he's unskilled when it comes to sitting still, and he gets up like the bench is on fire, burst into flames under his ass and sends him shooting to his feet. Except he is still drunk, and he wobbles when he's upright, interrupts whatever flow he'd been sliding into. He shoots Johnny a good approximation of pissed though, feels like he needs to throw up all over again and this time it has nothing to do with what he's consumed. ]
[He’s well aware Kerry’s got reason to want to return, too. Him and V together are motivation enough for the whole lot of them, he thinks, to fight and claw for a way back to planet Earth as they know it. Johnny, on the other hand? Well, he might have been able to take his time—what’s left for him back there, other than being lines of code working as a part of Alt’s whole, after all?—but with familiar faces here beside him, their priorities become his own by way of obligation, filling up those old crevices of selfishness he clung to once before.
Even so—]
Don’t talk like we’re not all about to juggle a hell of a lot more than we bargained for. Still gotta make a living somehow on this rock, don’t we?
[Seems like the mundane needs are going to mix with the greater priorities, inescapable as they are.]
[Kerry replies. He knows if he plans on making any money with his music he'll have to start with all over, but there's literally nothing else he wants to do with his life. The idea of having to rebuild his whole career is exhausting and he hopes they won't be here long enough for it to become a real concern.]
Well, Johnny, if I 'member correctly, I was in the middle of recordin' before my ass ended up here... and you're fuckin' dead.
[Kerry can't help but point out the obvious when Johnny asks why he has a guitar and Johnny doesn't. Of course, he knows first hand that being dead hadn't fully stopped Johnny from playing before.]
Been a solo artist for a while now. Not sure what I'm gonna do about a band...
[He feels the temptation here to jump right into asking Johnny to join him, but those feelings have finally been resolved with their final performance. He doesn't know how wise it will be to reopen those scars.]
Don't exactly know any other artist here 'sides you.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
@disrupts
[Johnny’s at least got enough decency to rein in any commentary as V pukes up his guts, even as he’s been flown the bird the whole while. Instead, he tries not to let his own stomach roll with the sound of it — which isn’t really that hard to do, when he’s got a strong repertoire of past nights exactly like this one to bolster his will against it.
Instead, he raises a hand to edge his shades a smidge higher up the bridge of his nose, his other waving dismissively in the merc’s direction.]
Yeah, yeah. Feel better now?
[Not Johnny, though he’s processing it better than V by leagues. Still, the nighttime air feels cool on his skin, slipping past his cheekbones, and with his head craned back, he closes his eyes beneath his shades. Strands of hair fall across his face haphazardly, but he’s too sloshed to care.]
You had fun. Admit it. Might feel like you were run over in the morning, but you had fun.
no subject
[ It's supposed to be a joke, except when it's out of his mouth it sounds a lot less funny. His features pinch lightly into a loose frown and he finally opens his eyes. With the greatest of efforts, he eventually sits up a little straighter and glances across the space between them.
Realistically, not remembering a night after Johnny's been leading isn't exactly anything new, just the cause of it has shifted slightly. Either way he's not gonna blame Johnny. ]
Yeah I had fun. Guessin' from the look've you, not a bad night out in your own body for you either.
no subject
Johnny exhales, the effort from that alone feeling like it’s squeezing the rest of his energy from his veins. He straightens, or at least tries to, wooden slats creaking beneath his weight.]
Not a bad night at all. Have had a lot worse; company counts for something.
[He takes a moment to decide whether or not he wants to circle back to the subject of V’s head, if either of them are really in a state for it—or maybe this is the proper state for burdensome conversation: so drunk that the uncertainty and maybe-inevitable don’t feel so heavy at all.]
Hey, y’know— [Another vague gesture in V’s direction.] Found Kerry a… awhile ago, talked about the state of your head when he was finished gawking at me. Anyway, we’re gonna be lookin’ for a way to help you, V. See if there’s a miracle this fucking bizzare planet can provide your grey matter or… I don’t know. Somethin’.
no subject
Think I remember 'im mentioning you now. Or... I dunno. Part've it.
[ It feels like he's trying to look at a memory through dark water, the eddying and swirling blurring the mental image to the point where he can't really make out what it is properly. Snatches of a conversation, maybe. Kerry's guitar and a few random notes that drift through lazily after. ]
Don't 'member Mikoshi. Don't remember seein' you 'cept when we were on that rooftop. Above Misty's. After that...
[ He lifts a hand to gesture in the air, like he can explain it feels like trying to grab at smoke and feeling disappointed every time he doesn't manage it. Blowing out a heavy breath, he can taste the unpleasant mix of stomach acid and alcohol still clinging to the inside of his mouth. He doesn't dwell on it, but when he scoots back deeper onto the bench, he doesn't make any attempt to not press his shoulder up against Johnny's. ]
Know what I miss? Talkin' to ya in my head. Didn't even have'ta open my mouth.
[ Head lolling backward onto the bench again, he closes his eyes and thinks on that for long few seconds. ]
'm so fuckin' tired.
[ Not just literally tired because he needs sleep, but tired in ways that he can't explain and wishes he could just share what he means in a thought to the one person he feels like he can confess that to. ]
no subject
It’s a well-shared sentiment, and Johnny knows just the kind of tired that it is — the sort that the whole world hammers into a man with the passage of time, the sort that Night City drove into the hearts of all who lived there like it was some kind of damn prerequisite. Johnny’s carried it in himself for years at this point, used it to ignite his ever-burning flame of anger, and he knows the weight of it; just as he knows the degree of which V shoulders that burden, too, after all he’s been through. Dealt a shitty hand, with Johnny being the real main reason that the merc’s brain is the way it is now.
A memory full of holes. Recollection strained at the edges, simply trying to remember a conversation from days ago. V’s shoulder gently knocks against Johnny’s, and a little bit of the haze clogging up his thoughts slowly drain away. Subtle enough not to notice it quite yet, the clarity in which his cognizance rearranges itself around the subject at hand.
Yeah, it’d be a lot easier if they could just think what they meant, rather than having to form the words with any kind of eloquence.]
Would call you a liar if you said you weren’t. After everything that’s happened... don’t blame you for it.
[He drums metal fingertips against the arm of the bench, idle. Unthinking.]
Really can’t recall Mikoshi? Well, you didn’t miss much — just a bunch of damn excuses why Alt couldn’t fix you up the way we were hopin’ for. And the decision to stick you back in your body, anyway.
[Which is a generalized version of the conversations that took place, riddled with all manner of emotions on the fly. But Johnny sees no need to linger on that.]
Told you to keep on fighting, though. Expectin’ you to do the same here, just as much as you would’ve back on Earth. Ker even mentioned some hair-brained scheme about the Crystal Palace or whatever. Talk about a hell of a job.
no subject
[ The slow realization that he could lie to the man now doesn't make him feel better about anything. Brain swimming in alcohol, he could easily get dragged down under a wave of hopelessness that he can feel brewing at the edges of his mind. More he learns about what happened, more he's feeling like his freedom's still being slowly chipped away at.
But he honestly believes that even if he tried lying, Johnny would know. Spent long enough sharing a brain that Johnny's probably got a better measure of who he is than anybody else ever has. V's open with his feelings and thoughts, for the most part, but nobody knows them as intimately as Johnny does. Raw and unfiltered.
The difference here's that he can feel the solid warmth of Johnny next to him - a physical weight that's undeniably seeping into his conscious mind like a balm, and thinking about Johnny as a balm to anything wrenches a laugh from his lungs. Imagine that.
The exhaustion sweeps in soon after, his body leaning that much more heavily into Johnny's side, craving a connection that feels like it got cut out of him and that he's been privately grieving for these few long days. Maybe Johnny'd be expecting it, the fact that V's chasing after whatever connection he can get. Reaching out with his body where his mind feels so far away. He's always been tactile, and considering this is his first experience of being able to touch Johnny and feel something tangible, it's a wonder he hasn't tried going in for a hug again. ]
What happened to you? After, I mean.
[ The mention of the Crystal Palace is skipped over for now, the urge to find out what became of Johnny too great to ignore. If he went back to his body without Johnny riding along, and thinking about the way he feels now, he can't quite wrap his brain around having the energy to even attempt something so huge. He'd wished so desperately for a good outcome for the both of them. ]
no subject
Well... about all that could be done.
[Which is only an answer that bodes unwell, and Johnny can’t be that mean to V and leave it hanging, so he continues.]
I stayed with Alt. Or, y’know, her idea of what stayin’ would be — left to become a part of her code, a piece of a greater whole.
[A bigger AI, something more. Alt still had a hint of Alt in her, but Johnny had wondered how long that was going to last if she was going to keep vacuuming up stray AI personalities to become herself, too.]
That’s all I really was, anyway: lines of code fashioned to look and act like Johnny Silverhand. Wasn’t that bad a sacrifice, in the end, to make sure you lived what time you had left.
Owed that much to ya, right?
no subject
Scrubbing a hand over his face, he exhales heavily like the punch to his gut had been real and not emotionally-charged. Johnny sacrificed himself and he-- ]
Stop. Just... stop.
[ Falling silent, face still cradled in an upturned palm, V can feel that same wave of emotion that's been following him around since he arrived. Crying's not something he does all that often. Not out of some archaic belief that it's not what men do, but because he got better at handling his emotions. Pragmatism; can't survive without it 'cause nobody's got time to hang out in their small things theorizing. Especially not the two of them. They never had time.
His brain hooks into something that flares hot and bright instead, sets him on a course away from tears and down a path Johnny's sent him before. All of this is so big to fit into his already ailing brain, and though there's a full spectrum of emotions unfolding inside of him, he grasps the hottest. ]
All you really were, huh? Just lines'a code. That's how we're gonna look at this?
[ Even drunk he's unskilled when it comes to sitting still, and he gets up like the bench is on fire, burst into flames under his ass and sends him shooting to his feet. Except he is still drunk, and he wobbles when he's upright, interrupts whatever flow he'd been sliding into. He shoots Johnny a good approximation of pissed though, feels like he needs to throw up all over again and this time it has nothing to do with what he's consumed. ]
Not to me you weren't. Fuck, Johnny.
@secondconflict
[He’s well aware Kerry’s got reason to want to return, too. Him and V together are motivation enough for the whole lot of them, he thinks, to fight and claw for a way back to planet Earth as they know it. Johnny, on the other hand? Well, he might have been able to take his time—what’s left for him back there, other than being lines of code working as a part of Alt’s whole, after all?—but with familiar faces here beside him, their priorities become his own by way of obligation, filling up those old crevices of selfishness he clung to once before.
Even so—]
Don’t talk like we’re not all about to juggle a hell of a lot more than we bargained for. Still gotta make a living somehow on this rock, don’t we?
[Seems like the mundane needs are going to mix with the greater priorities, inescapable as they are.]
no subject
[Kerry replies. He knows if he plans on making any money with his music he'll have to start with all over, but there's literally nothing else he wants to do with his life. The idea of having to rebuild his whole career is exhausting and he hopes they won't be here long enough for it to become a real concern.]
no subject
[Is really the only reasonable response to that.]
Why’d you get a guitar and I get stuck with shit-all ‘cept the clothes on my back? Christ.
[But he sounds more intrigued than actually upset.]
So what’s the plan, then? Startin’ a new band?
no subject
[Kerry can't help but point out the obvious when Johnny asks why he has a guitar and Johnny doesn't. Of course, he knows first hand that being dead hadn't fully stopped Johnny from playing before.]
Been a solo artist for a while now. Not sure what I'm gonna do about a band...
[He feels the temptation here to jump right into asking Johnny to join him, but those feelings have finally been resolved with their final performance. He doesn't know how wise it will be to reopen those scars.]
Don't exactly know any other artist here 'sides you.