[ Wrapping his arms around his knees, V tilts his head just enough that he's looking at Johnny from the corner of his eye. In this dream - or a flickering, digitized, visual private showing out in the real world - Johnny commands the space he occupies, and it's more than just the fact he's literally overwriting V's personality. Some people are just like that. Johnny's one of them. He wonders what it's like being able to walk into a room and turn every head in it.
Part of him's surprised at the answer, a little. Another part? That part of him thinks it must be exhausting to be Johnny. Everything's a corpo-infected wrong to right; to Johnny's vision of right. Once the man's set his sights on something, feels like there's nothing that can get in his way. V can't help but wonder if Johnny's tired of all of it, just won't back down from it. Can't.
V's not all that well-versed in understanding his own ideals. Thought that making a name for himself in Night City was an ideal worth chasing. Or, more like, worth hunting down with a fully loaded iron and just about good enough at what he does to balance out the recklessness. Freedom, yeah, that's one of them. But his version of freedom and Johnny's feels different, and Night City... now he knows it's not for him, not a place he'd still be if it wasn't for their shared situation. People living in the city like that, all on top of each other? It's not right.
As Johnny brings the point back home, V's eyebrows draw down, eyes as green as the grass squinted and hued with an assessing shade. ]
Can't a dream just be nice? 'sides, ground has swallowed me up out there in the real world. Don't need a dream for that to happen. Got my teeth knocked out when I was seven fightin' over toasted marshmallows. And there was this one time-
[ His lips tug into an amused, nostalgic sort of smile. Briefly wistful before edging towards rambunctious in nature. ]
Got chased damn near halfway across the desert without my pants.
[Maybe V’s come closer to hitting the nail on the head than Johnny would ever care to admit; maybe there’s a part of him that is tired, but refuses to back down because that’s just not how he was put together, made of sterner stuff than steel. Maybe Johnny himself would argue that the best rebellious spirits are the tired ones, the jaded ones, because they’ve seen the world for what it is — enough to drain the life out of most men and women, but never enough to take the fight out of a revolutionary.
And if there’s one thing that he will never let go of, it’s his ideals. They’re strict and sturdy, as unmoving as the mountains stretched out before them in a dream, never loose or tenuous. Even if it kills him, he’ll hold onto them — hell, they already have.
A part of him wonders if V understands it, even sharing a head. Another facet hopes that if he imparts even one thing to the man, before whatever else happens in the future set in front of them, it’s the stubborn will to fight like Johnny fights, to push forward like only a rebel rockerboy can.
For now, though, all he does is let out something that sounds close to a laugh, strained at the edges like it had trouble leaving his throat.]
Not exactly what I was expecting to hear. [Idly, he plucks grass out from the ground, caught tight between his knuckles. Johnny’s always leaving some kind of chaos in his wake.] And what’s the story behind that one?
Edited (tmw you see a typo literally hours later ) 2021-01-01 10:11 (UTC)
[ Something V's noticed about his brainmate is that he's never still. Even when Johnny stops, he never really stops. Fidgeting like he's imbued with excess energy; a vibrating, pulsing personality with too much inside of him to just be.
Wherever Johnny eventually sits - and V's starting to think the man's allergic to chairs - he's lighting up a cigarette, or looking around like he can actually interact with the world around him, or crossing his arms and looking like he might uncross them again at any moment just to stay on the move, to stay dynamic and more than just 2D data. So, the hand tearing up the grass is just another one of those moments that Johnny's being Johnny about things, even in V's dream, and the corners of V's lips turn upward in response. ]
Had a thing goin' with a neighboring clan leader's daughter.
[ In other words, sex got him into that particular situation. In his defence he was younger than he is now, filled to the brim with a wild kind of reckless abandon and uncontrollable hormones. ]
Didn't stick around for the beatin' they wanted to give me when we got caught in her tent mid-fuck. Stole a bike and rode my buck naked ass outta there. Know what hot leather feels like against your balls? Don't recommend it.
[Given all the insanity and inanity that he’s seen and lived, somehow this tale of escaping the shotgun-blast wrath of daddy clan leader isn’t all that surprising. Hell, he’s seen weirder and more harrowing situations that V’s slipped past (though maybe less exposing ones) just through the secondhand experience of strange gigs and side jobs tossed his way.
Even so, damn if it isn’t funny. The mental image isn’t something he’d have conjured up on his own, that’s for sure, but now it’s next to impossible to not think about V tearing across the desert on his bike, kicking up dust with his ass hanging out. It makes Johnny’s grin stretch a little wider.]
Shit. Guess you’ve always been something of a troublemaker — but a heartbreaker, too?
[Not that Johnny can really talk. He lived the rock ‘n’ roll life as any man would, and even if he didn’t, trouble’s always been the name of the game for him. ‘Least, seems to be that way by judging him now.]
[ Drifting with purpose is what V's been doing his whole life, and while Night City makes him feel more like a Static than ever before, he's still got nomad fire in his veins. Even from a young age, he'd understood making connections with people outside of the family was likely to be short-lived and fleeting. If he was a heartbreaker it's not something he meant to be, but the way Johnny says it makes it sound preem in a way that only ageing rockerboys can.
His amusement escapes in a quick breath through his nose - a breath he knows isn't really a breath at all, here in his dream. Back to feeling nostalgic for a simpler time; he feels that ache of longing for the open road as if he were awake instead of dreaming. ]
She understood. So did I. Moved on not long after. Don't think it was 'cause of me, was just time.
[ Itchy feet, keen to put rubber to the road to see what else was out there. Not that the family hadn't had to move on because of V's antics before, but that time was different. ]
Always worse when it wasn't a nomad I was leavin' behind. Whole buncha people out there lookin' for the nomad experience. 'Least they thought they wanted it. Wasn't the same as in their BDs.
[ They live in a society where all manner of kinks and niche interests are catered to. He'd hunt down a nomad-inspired BD just for a laugh, but time hasn't been kind and there's more pressing things to do.
'Catching feelings' has always been a phrase he's disliked, as if they're a disease when V knows they're not. He can name his, doesn't shy away from them. What's the point? But as those people discovered, catching feelings for nomads is sure to lead to heartbreak all the same, 'cause in the morning that nomad is nothing but a memory. A lingering indentation in a mattress and the scent of wind-swept hair and sun-warmed skin hanging in the air where there used to be a person.
Longest he's ever stuck around in one place is Night City, and he already knows with painful clarity he's not just doing it now to save his own hide. He gives a shit about what happens to Johnny, too. ]
[Johnny can’t relate to the nomad lifestyle beyond that thirst and appreciation to live a free life, but there’s a part that understands where he’s coming from — to exist in a way that the masses view as romanticized to hell and back, a life that comes store-bought in pre-packaged BDs to further fuel the misconception.
Johnny lived high on the rockerboy life, and though it boosted his ego and narcissism to the highest levels imaginable, he had never done it just for the glory. There was work in it, sweat, blood, and tears for the whole band, careening under the fame while still trying to stand on two feet and put the message out. It had always been about the message, the music just an angry disenfranchised conduit for it.
And then there was the war, where a younger version of himself—feels like someone else altogether different—signed up for the military happy-as-you please like the biggest gonk the world had ever seen. Then he had been searching for glory, for that rush, for a blazing purpose to set him on the rest of his life’s path. Didn’t quite turn out how he envisioned it, but maybe that had been for the best in the end.]
Always some sparkly-eyed outsider who thinks the grass is greener on the other side. Thinks a lifestyle that isn’t their own is something glorious, drummed up by the advertising, or the propaganda, to make them believe it.
One way or another, they always learn it isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. That they can’t handle it, and go straight back to their default lives, looking for something else. Something shinier and newer.
[Life in Night City is always a chase — for the next hit, for something better, for something advertised, or for survival. Things have only gotten worse since his time.]
[ V's first experience of a BD had been Yorinobou Arasaka's penthouse. Probably not the standard entryway into that world, either of BDs or the private residence. Seems like so long ago now, the heist, but in reality it's been a handful of weeks. Time's one of the things he's acutely aware of slipping through his fingers like sand. Doesn't matter how hard he tries to squeeze his fingers closed around it; it melts away all the same.
Nodding belatedly in agreement at Johnny's assessment, he exhales in a steady stream, like in here those breathing exercises will work like they do out there. He'd been ignorantly dismissive of it right up until he'd met a monk, and that had been weird enough on its own. Couldn't tell if he was being conned like a gonk or not, but he'd sat with the man all the same. ]
It's a mistake.
[ One that V knows he made himself. Living legend in Night City? He wants to laugh, desperate and hollow, like a man burnt by his own decisions. Nothing wrong with trying out something new, but his own choice had been to chase glory in a place he didn't know was going to chew him up and spit him out in pieces. Nothing more he wants now than to get back out on the road. ]
Better than what most people manage — pretend I’m giving you a pat on the back for it.
[Which he might could very well do in this dream-state, yet Johnny was never a touchy-feely sort of rockerboy, gestures of camaraderie rare, like they’ve been stamped out of him in his youth. But he does give V a look adorned with a quirking brow, leaning back properly on both hands this time.]
Hopefully you’ll live long enough to pass your newfound wisdom down to all the other gonks who think glory and splendor and all that other scop comes without giving half your life expectancy for it.
[That the grass ain’t so green on either side of the fence — it’s all just yellowing, thick with weeds and bramble.]
But probably not. Knowin’ you... you make it out of this alive, you’re just going to keep going, keep making a name for yourself. A dream realized, the worst kind of fate. But the kind worthy of envy and respect all the same. I’d bet my life on it if I wasn’t already dead.
[ Can't deny that part of him's elated at the idea of both a pat on the back from Johnny and a reaching belief that he's got it in him to go that far. Always comes with the heavy caveat of 'if you survive', but that doesn't darken the doorway of this particular treasure uncovered.
He'd motion to pat himself on the back but already knows the kind of look it'd get from Johnny, so he just sits still and nods his head, slowly. Like he's trying to keep the crown Johnny put there in place. ]
Think I already know Night City's not for me.
[ That glory, no matter how big the pull, probably isn't worth continuing down a path he wants to veer off of. Whether or not Johnny's called it right remains to be seen. Survival comes first, just like always. ]
We survive this? Gettin' on my bike 'n riding as close to the distant horizon as I can.
[Johnny isn’t so sure — for all their talk of wanting to tear themselves away from the city, there’s something about it that sticks to the soul, something that drills past the bone marks its permanence there. Maybe it’s because Night City never changes, always stands unmoving in its pool of ugly things, while the rest of the world tries to move on, but can’t quite free its shoes from its muck.
It’s that unchanging that guarantees Johnny would always have been screaming into a mic for the rest of days, or fighting violently against the corpo machine, if his life hadn’t been cut short and digitized into a prison of Arasaka tech. And now that V’s caught in the net of Night City just like he was, and he wonders how much he’ll continue to pull against its influence when all is said and done.
However it plays out.]
So no blaze of glory, right?
[He shrugs.]
Guess I’m not surprised if your dreams end up looking like this. Peaceful, idyllic... [A smirk.] Little too vanilla for my tastes, though.
[ The lie everybody tells themselves is they can leave whenever they want. Maybe V's starting to understand that. No corner of Night City is as dark as the Badlands when there's no moon, but it feels darker. Choking the air out of his lungs and leaving him feeling like he can't remember the last time he took a deep breath.
But going out in a blaze of glory isn't exclusive just to Night City. He knows that too. Thing is, it's hard to think outside of and around the plan. Arasaka Tower. Mikoshi. Alt. Not knowing what's going to happen makes all of this hypothetical at best, and terrifying at worst.
Forcing himself not to dwell on it, he doesn't notice that the sky has taken on a different quality now. Clouds are rolling in thick and full, swollen with rain like floating sponges ready to be wrung dry. Instead, he's smirking too at Johnny's assessment. ]
Night City's not the only place that'll swallow you whole. You think this place is vanilla? Out here, nothin' between you 'n the real wild things.
[ There's a brief pause and then V's reclining back into the grass again, eyes fixed on Johnny's surprisingly solid-looking back. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Part of him's surprised at the answer, a little. Another part? That part of him thinks it must be exhausting to be Johnny. Everything's a corpo-infected wrong to right; to Johnny's vision of right. Once the man's set his sights on something, feels like there's nothing that can get in his way. V can't help but wonder if Johnny's tired of all of it, just won't back down from it. Can't.
V's not all that well-versed in understanding his own ideals. Thought that making a name for himself in Night City was an ideal worth chasing. Or, more like, worth hunting down with a fully loaded iron and just about good enough at what he does to balance out the recklessness. Freedom, yeah, that's one of them. But his version of freedom and Johnny's feels different, and Night City... now he knows it's not for him, not a place he'd still be if it wasn't for their shared situation. People living in the city like that, all on top of each other? It's not right.
As Johnny brings the point back home, V's eyebrows draw down, eyes as green as the grass squinted and hued with an assessing shade. ]
Can't a dream just be nice? 'sides, ground has swallowed me up out there in the real world. Don't need a dream for that to happen. Got my teeth knocked out when I was seven fightin' over toasted marshmallows. And there was this one time-
[ His lips tug into an amused, nostalgic sort of smile. Briefly wistful before edging towards rambunctious in nature. ]
Got chased damn near halfway across the desert without my pants.
no subject
And if there’s one thing that he will never let go of, it’s his ideals. They’re strict and sturdy, as unmoving as the mountains stretched out before them in a dream, never loose or tenuous. Even if it kills him, he’ll hold onto them — hell, they already have.
A part of him wonders if V understands it, even sharing a head. Another facet hopes that if he imparts even one thing to the man, before whatever else happens in the future set in front of them, it’s the stubborn will to fight like Johnny fights, to push forward like only a rebel rockerboy can.
For now, though, all he does is let out something that sounds close to a laugh, strained at the edges like it had trouble leaving his throat.]
Not exactly what I was expecting to hear. [Idly, he plucks grass out from the ground, caught tight between his knuckles. Johnny’s always leaving some kind of chaos in his wake.] And what’s the story behind that one?
no subject
Wherever Johnny eventually sits - and V's starting to think the man's allergic to chairs - he's lighting up a cigarette, or looking around like he can actually interact with the world around him, or crossing his arms and looking like he might uncross them again at any moment just to stay on the move, to stay dynamic and more than just 2D data. So, the hand tearing up the grass is just another one of those moments that Johnny's being Johnny about things, even in V's dream, and the corners of V's lips turn upward in response. ]
Had a thing goin' with a neighboring clan leader's daughter.
[ In other words, sex got him into that particular situation. In his defence he was younger than he is now, filled to the brim with a wild kind of reckless abandon and uncontrollable hormones. ]
Didn't stick around for the beatin' they wanted to give me when we got caught in her tent mid-fuck. Stole a bike and rode my buck naked ass outta there. Know what hot leather feels like against your balls? Don't recommend it.
no subject
Even so, damn if it isn’t funny. The mental image isn’t something he’d have conjured up on his own, that’s for sure, but now it’s next to impossible to not think about V tearing across the desert on his bike, kicking up dust with his ass hanging out. It makes Johnny’s grin stretch a little wider.]
Shit. Guess you’ve always been something of a troublemaker — but a heartbreaker, too?
[Not that Johnny can really talk. He lived the rock ‘n’ roll life as any man would, and even if he didn’t, trouble’s always been the name of the game for him. ‘Least, seems to be that way by judging him now.]
Still, probably what I would’ve done, too.
no subject
His amusement escapes in a quick breath through his nose - a breath he knows isn't really a breath at all, here in his dream. Back to feeling nostalgic for a simpler time; he feels that ache of longing for the open road as if he were awake instead of dreaming. ]
She understood. So did I. Moved on not long after. Don't think it was 'cause of me, was just time.
[ Itchy feet, keen to put rubber to the road to see what else was out there. Not that the family hadn't had to move on because of V's antics before, but that time was different. ]
Always worse when it wasn't a nomad I was leavin' behind. Whole buncha people out there lookin' for the nomad experience. 'Least they thought they wanted it. Wasn't the same as in their BDs.
[ They live in a society where all manner of kinks and niche interests are catered to. He'd hunt down a nomad-inspired BD just for a laugh, but time hasn't been kind and there's more pressing things to do.
'Catching feelings' has always been a phrase he's disliked, as if they're a disease when V knows they're not. He can name his, doesn't shy away from them. What's the point? But as those people discovered, catching feelings for nomads is sure to lead to heartbreak all the same, 'cause in the morning that nomad is nothing but a memory. A lingering indentation in a mattress and the scent of wind-swept hair and sun-warmed skin hanging in the air where there used to be a person.
Longest he's ever stuck around in one place is Night City, and he already knows with painful clarity he's not just doing it now to save his own hide. He gives a shit about what happens to Johnny, too. ]
no subject
[Johnny can’t relate to the nomad lifestyle beyond that thirst and appreciation to live a free life, but there’s a part that understands where he’s coming from — to exist in a way that the masses view as romanticized to hell and back, a life that comes store-bought in pre-packaged BDs to further fuel the misconception.
Johnny lived high on the rockerboy life, and though it boosted his ego and narcissism to the highest levels imaginable, he had never done it just for the glory. There was work in it, sweat, blood, and tears for the whole band, careening under the fame while still trying to stand on two feet and put the message out. It had always been about the message, the music just an angry disenfranchised conduit for it.
And then there was the war, where a younger version of himself—feels like someone else altogether different—signed up for the military happy-as-you please like the biggest gonk the world had ever seen. Then he had been searching for glory, for that rush, for a blazing purpose to set him on the rest of his life’s path. Didn’t quite turn out how he envisioned it, but maybe that had been for the best in the end.]
Always some sparkly-eyed outsider who thinks the grass is greener on the other side. Thinks a lifestyle that isn’t their own is something glorious, drummed up by the advertising, or the propaganda, to make them believe it.
One way or another, they always learn it isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. That they can’t handle it, and go straight back to their default lives, looking for something else. Something shinier and newer.
[Life in Night City is always a chase — for the next hit, for something better, for something advertised, or for survival. Things have only gotten worse since his time.]
no subject
Nodding belatedly in agreement at Johnny's assessment, he exhales in a steady stream, like in here those breathing exercises will work like they do out there. He'd been ignorantly dismissive of it right up until he'd met a monk, and that had been weird enough on its own. Couldn't tell if he was being conned like a gonk or not, but he'd sat with the man all the same. ]
It's a mistake.
[ One that V knows he made himself. Living legend in Night City? He wants to laugh, desperate and hollow, like a man burnt by his own decisions. Nothing wrong with trying out something new, but his own choice had been to chase glory in a place he didn't know was going to chew him up and spit him out in pieces. Nothing more he wants now than to get back out on the road. ]
Learned from mine, though.
no subject
[Which he might could very well do in this dream-state, yet Johnny was never a touchy-feely sort of rockerboy, gestures of camaraderie rare, like they’ve been stamped out of him in his youth. But he does give V a look adorned with a quirking brow, leaning back properly on both hands this time.]
Hopefully you’ll live long enough to pass your newfound wisdom down to all the other gonks who think glory and splendor and all that other scop comes without giving half your life expectancy for it.
[That the grass ain’t so green on either side of the fence — it’s all just yellowing, thick with weeds and bramble.]
But probably not. Knowin’ you... you make it out of this alive, you’re just going to keep going, keep making a name for yourself. A dream realized, the worst kind of fate. But the kind worthy of envy and respect all the same. I’d bet my life on it if I wasn’t already dead.
no subject
He'd motion to pat himself on the back but already knows the kind of look it'd get from Johnny, so he just sits still and nods his head, slowly. Like he's trying to keep the crown Johnny put there in place. ]
Think I already know Night City's not for me.
[ That glory, no matter how big the pull, probably isn't worth continuing down a path he wants to veer off of. Whether or not Johnny's called it right remains to be seen. Survival comes first, just like always. ]
We survive this? Gettin' on my bike 'n riding as close to the distant horizon as I can.
no subject
It’s that unchanging that guarantees Johnny would always have been screaming into a mic for the rest of days, or fighting violently against the corpo machine, if his life hadn’t been cut short and digitized into a prison of Arasaka tech. And now that V’s caught in the net of Night City just like he was, and he wonders how much he’ll continue to pull against its influence when all is said and done.
However it plays out.]
So no blaze of glory, right?
[He shrugs.]
Guess I’m not surprised if your dreams end up looking like this. Peaceful, idyllic... [A smirk.] Little too vanilla for my tastes, though.
no subject
[ The lie everybody tells themselves is they can leave whenever they want. Maybe V's starting to understand that. No corner of Night City is as dark as the Badlands when there's no moon, but it feels darker. Choking the air out of his lungs and leaving him feeling like he can't remember the last time he took a deep breath.
But going out in a blaze of glory isn't exclusive just to Night City. He knows that too. Thing is, it's hard to think outside of and around the plan. Arasaka Tower. Mikoshi. Alt. Not knowing what's going to happen makes all of this hypothetical at best, and terrifying at worst.
Forcing himself not to dwell on it, he doesn't notice that the sky has taken on a different quality now. Clouds are rolling in thick and full, swollen with rain like floating sponges ready to be wrung dry. Instead, he's smirking too at Johnny's assessment. ]
Night City's not the only place that'll swallow you whole. You think this place is vanilla? Out here, nothin' between you 'n the real wild things.
[ There's a brief pause and then V's reclining back into the grass again, eyes fixed on Johnny's surprisingly solid-looking back. ]
Ever heard of the Sun Dance?