Archive of Our Own ^beta

"This is a bad idea," Johnny said. Which, coming from Johnny Never-Met-a-Bomb-He-Didn't-Like Silverhand, was really saying something.

V rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to point out that actually, it had been Johnny's idea. An hour or so ago, when they'd still been wiping the underground studio's drives and pocketing the data file, Johnny had found the idea fucking hilarious. To the point where he'd smirked that smug, smug smirk of his and said, "Y'know, V, we should really try this out." Johnny was exactly the kind of narcissist who'd jump at the chance to fuck himself, or to at least get V an awkward handjob so he could feel it, too, so if he was gonna start pointing fingers in anyone's direction then he could for damn sure point them at himself. Of course, if Johnny was gonna point fingers then the chrome finger he would've pointed would've been his middle one, and it would've been pointed firmly in V's direction. It was a gesture V was getting real familiar with. Honestly, he was almost kinda fond of it.

"So now you're not curious?" V said. "C'mon, Johnny. It's a BD, not a bullet to the head. And we survived the bullet already."

Johnny crossed his arms. He peered at him over his sunglasses, skeptically, like what V had said wasn't true when it was, or like wearing sunglasses indoors ever didn't make you look like a tool. Sure, so Johnny made it work, but that didn't mean V didn't like to tease him for it. And it really was true: they'd live through the bullet that had gotten the two of them stuck together. They'd lived a whole lot longer than that, past a two-for-one suicide run that somehow hadn't killed them, and okay, so they were still stuck in the same body, that was probably just how things were gonna be, but the point was they were alive. V thought that was pretty remarkable. So did Johnny, when he wasn't being a dick just because.

So, V smiled at him pleasantly. "What's wrong?" he said. "You leave your sense of adventure in Mikoshi?"

Johnny huffed. He crossed his arms over his chest. And now that V had impugned his sense of adventure of all things, he shrugged and he said, "Yeah, whatever. Let's get this shit over with."

V already had the wreath in his hands. It was a nice one he'd picked up off of a Tyger Claw he'd short-circuited in an alley someplace near Wakako's pachinko parlor, way too nice for most of the shitty XBDs that shady guys in underpasses tried to sell him, but what they were about to try wasn't the usual shady-guy-in-an-underpass bullshit. It was pretty well known that Kerry kept a real firm grasp on the rights to use his own likeness, with an flock of shitty corpo lawyers ready to swoop in at a moment's notice, but it turned out he had the same rules for Johnny's, too; Kerry's lawyers tied the ones they could in legal knots and the shady ones he hired mercs to deal with. Mercs like V, though usually they didn't have Johnny along for the ride inside their head, and V kinda got the impression that Kerry had enjoyed flicking them the gig more than he would have with anyone else. He probably meant it to screw with Johnny a little, given how the purpose of the program was screwing Johnny. Now here they were, gig closed, mission accomplished, and V was ready to torture Johnny just a little longer in the name of entertainment.

V already had the wreath in his hands, so he slipped it on and he jacked himself in, not totally sure what he should be expecting. The studio they'd taken if from had been pretty much deserted, not totally surprisingly for sometime around 3am; the two Maelstrom guards hadn't exactly been forthcoming about the shit that they were doing, and all he'd gotten from the kidnapped coder was a tearful thank you and a slightly sweaty hug before he'd deltaed the fuck outta there. That meant V really wasn't sure if all that he was gonna get was two seconds of garbled wireframe, maybe a collection of cheesy pickup lines in what may or may not have actually sounded anything like Johnny's voice, or something pretty close to finished. But a screen popped up in his HUD that asked him to set parameters, and suddenly V really didn't care what happened after that. Just as long as he got to play dress-up with his own personal Johnny doll, because that was what it sounded like. V grinned. He really liked that idea. Probably about as much as Johnny didn't.

"Don't you fucking dare," Johnny said, as V was scrolling through the clothing menus, hovering over a really tempting pair of bright pink short-shorts.

"Yeah, you're right, you don't have the ass for that," V replied, and he scrolled on while Johnny was grumbling about how the dimensions of his ass were really not the point: he'd just never worn booty shorts while he'd been alive, and he wasn't about to start now he was dead.

"How about you choose shit you wouldn't like to wear yourself?" Johnny said next, as V lingered on a lime green tank top with a big gold sun in the middle of it. V didn't point out that he wouldn't've worn it because his hair was currently dyed green and the shades would've clashed - something told him Johnny didn't want to get into the finer points of fashion choices, he just wanted V to choose something dull and move on. So he clicked on the first pair of jeans he could find: washed-out blue ones with holes in the knees to go with a plain black tank top and a pair of black boots. He figured Johnny wouldn't complain too hard, even if they couldn't actually see the results yet; V figured previews must've been someplace lower on the production list, because all they could see were the clothes.

In the next few screens he could change shit like eye color and hair color, and sure, there was a very real temptation to turn Johnny's hair pink and his eyes blue, but he really wasn't aiming to piss him off that bad. The menus showed disembodied images of all of Johnny's tattoos, though, gave V the option to remove them one by one or add to them - he was halfway tempted to give him a bunch of gnarly skulls and pretty roses all over his body, or a kraken on his back with tentacles that wound down all his limbs, but he wound up leaving the tattoos alone. He left Johnny's scars alone, too - he knew Johnny had what he might've called a complicated relationship with them, so wiping them out of virtual existence maybe wasn't gonna be the best of plans. Same with his arm, when it came to that: when the menus gave V options to switch to something ganic or to a shiny, pretty kind of chrome, V just skipped on by that without comment. He figured he'd rather deal with the elbow spike, virtually speaking, than with Johnny losing his shit in his general direction. Usually V just laughed it off, but he was pretty sure Johnny would, for once, have been justified.

Next up was piercings, and Johnny just sighed melodramatically as V scrolled through a punch of shiny rings and bars and shit.

"Hey, you ever have a piercing?" V asked, as he was trying to decide if all the images of pierced nipples were based on Johnny's anatomy or not.

"No," Johnny replied.

"Not even an earring?"

"Pretty sure the closest I ever came to that was piercing Kerry's ear." Which V remembered, thanks to their whole Relic deal, like he'd been the one who'd done it. The hole was still there. Seventy years and he'd never let it close, which V had told Johnny probably meant something. Johnny hadn't disagreed, which probably meant V was right and Johnny knew it.

V scrolled past the nipples, past the ears and the lips and the tongues, though he was pretty sure Johnny with a stud in his tongue might've been the end of him. Now he wasn't dying from the chip inside his head anymore, death by tongue stud maybe seemed like a pleasant way to go. But he moved on into genitalia and Johnny groaned. Loudly.

"You're not piercing my cock, V," Johnny told him.

"You know it's not actually your cock, right?" V said. "I mean, assuming this even works. Maybe I'll get through these ninety dumbass menus and find the thing looks like Lucius Rhyne."

"Guess our dear departed major did always look like was down to fuck."

V tried not to think too hard about that. "How did I end up stuck with you?" he asked.

"Just plain good luck," Johnny replied.

V rolled his eyes. Johnny did something that almost looked like smiling. And V moved on.

"So hey, does your dick actually look like this?" V asked, as he was paging through thirty different varieties of jewelry-laden penises, each with its own accompanying image of how it would look soft and hard. There was all kinds of shit, from rings through the tip to a shiny Jacob's ladder, eight barbells marching up the underside of the disembodied dick that V was having a really hard time not imagining in his hand or in his mouth or in certain other places. Johnny just really didn't strike him as the type, he guessed, though it made a very pretty picture.

"Yeah, I guess that's pretty accurate," Johnny replied. "Not that I ever had that many holes." And frankly, that did not do a whole lot for V's current base level of horniness. Frankly, having Johnny in his head hadn't been great for that in general, like the first thing he'd picked up was his smoking habit and the next thing after that had been his stupid high libido. Maybe would've been easier if he hadn't gotten that, V thought - maybe then he wouldn't've been jerking it in the shower every morning while Johnny leaned against the wall and smirked. Maybe then he wouldn't've fucked the occasional joytoy while Johnny had bitched at him for liking guys. Not that Johnny gave a damn who V was into, if he was gay or straight or anyplace between, but he really liked the sound of his own complaining. He liked it a whole lot more than his own lingering sense of heterosexuality, V thought; maybe because he was technically dead and only really existed inside V's head, or maybe it was because he'd spent fifty-something weirdly timeless years inside Mikoshi. Or maybe feeling how much he turned V on was the ultimate rush for a narcissistic ass like him.

"So you don't think that's hot?" V asked, as he was hovering over an image of Johnny's erect cock with a shiny silver ring in the tip.

"It looks like I got drunk and lost a bet," Johnny replied. "But I tell you what: find me a body, get one of those yourself, and I'll play with it all you like."

"You know that's the best offer I've had in months, right?"

"Kid, it's the best offer you've ever had," Johnny replied, and V laughed but he wasn't sure that wasn't true. It was kind of a toss-up: after all, he'd been screwing around with Kerry for months by then, while Johnny sometimes did and sometimes didn't try to act like he wasn't there, too. Kerry was so fucking great V sometimes had to pinch himself to check it was real. Johnny was the hot guy living in his head. He was pretty damn lucky that he didn't need to choose.

He came to a body hair menu next and he grumbled when he found most of the dumb pubic hair designs were grayed out, like they hadn't been installed yet. So he figured enough was enough and he confirmed his choices, and then the scene materialized. It was like they were backstage at a show, in the kind of real nice dressing room maybe Kerry had these days but that Johnny sure as hell hadn't set foot in, except for that one time he'd dated a girl who'd been ten times more famous than he was. But V didn't have a whole lot of time to take in the scene before the door swung open, and in walked...Johnny. Wearing the clothes V had picked out, with his Orphean slung over his back.

"Oh, hey," Fake Johnny said, and he pulled the guitar off over his head and leaned it up against the wall. He raked his hair back with both hands, with his back still turned - jeez, his hair was long, longer than V had ever seen it, and he was pretty sure he hadn't adjusted that in the menus, so he figured maybe it was just what had been in Johnny's stolen data from around ten years before his death. Then he turned around and he looked at them, at both of them, and he smiled a smile so fucking Johnny that it made V's chest feel tight.

"Wasn't expecting two of you," Fake Johnny said.

V frowned. "You can see him?" he asked, pointing at actual Johnny, and Fake Johnny shrugged his shoulders with his hands tucked into his pockets. Johnny did that sometimes. Fuck, whoever it was who'd put this together had done a really great job.

"Sure," Fake Johnny said. He looked Johnny up and down, slowly, obviously, with his head tilted, hands on hips. Then he glanced back at V again. "You want me to pretend I don't? He can watch."

"Well, that's fucking disturbing," Johnny said.

"I think you mean that's fucking hot," V replied.

Johnny crossed his arms over his chest. He raised his eyebrows pointedly. "Oh yeah?" he said.

V nodded. He grinned. "Yeah," he replied, maybe a little too enthusiastically, but it wasn't like he didn't mean it. Would've been pretty hard for him not to appreciate the fact he had two Johnny Silverhands in the room with him, instead of the usual maximum of one Johnny Silverhand inside his head, even if the room didn't technically exist any more than either Johnny did. And he was pretty sure that Johnny was just gonna scoff and tell him okay, knock it off, he'd had his fun, but for some weird reason he didn't. He looked at V for a moment longer, then he turned to his decade-younger doppelgänger. He reached out and he prodded him firmly by one shoulder with the first two fingers of his ganic hand, and when Fake Johnny said, "Hey!" Johnny just laughed and shook his head and looked at V again. After a second, it dawned on V exactly why that was: it turned out Johnny, so insubstantial in the real world, could interact with Fake Johnny. That was something new.

"Oh," V said, with his eyes maybe just a little wide.

"Yeah, oh," Johnny replied, then he turned back to the guy who wasn't really there, even less than the real Johnny was. Not that any of them really were, V guessed, but only one of them was an illegal digital sex aid.

"So, Johnny," Johnny said, and he took Fake Johnny by the shoulders, one hand set on each. V could see him squeezing there a little, like it was almost a relief that he could touch something without the temporary use of V's body. "What were you expecting if you weren't expecting two of us?"

Fake Johnny made a face. "Oh, I don't know," he said, with the sarcasm dialed right up to eleven. "Maybe one of you?"

V snorted. "Wow," he said. "They made him as much of a dick as you are."

Johnny rolled his eyes at V like some high school mean girl, then he turned his attention back to the dickish fake. Actually, V really did wanna see where this was going.

"What were you expecting one of us to do?" Johnny asked, and Fake Johnny shrugged.

"Why don't you tell me?" he replied. "I'm here. You're here. Pretty much anything goes."

"Anything?"

"Sure. I'll try anything once."

That part didn't sound too much like Johnny, V had to admit. Johnny had limits. Okay, so those limits varied from day to day, hour to hour, one minute he'd be pissed off at the idea of V getting laid and the next he'd be murmuring a bunch of filthy fucking things right by V's ear as he was getting off, but he had limits. Fake Johnny, on the other hand, apparently didn't.

Anything, Fake Johnny had said. So, Johnny glanced at V for a second, brows raised, then he turned away again. He slapped Fake Johnny straight across the face. Hell, his cheek even got kinda red from it, so the coder had done some seriously nice work. Not that this was exactly the time to be admiring the workmanship, when Fake Johnny rubbed his own cheek with his chrome hand and then raised his eyebrows at Johnny.

"Sure, we can play rough if you want," he said. "You wanna do that again?"

Turned out Johnny did wanna do that again, because he did it again. V heard it from the couch across the room where he finally sat himself down to watch them; he could feel the perfect fucking couch cushions underneath his ass, and he could see them both, like Johnny Silverhand at twenty-eight was meeting Johnny Silverhand at forty-one, and that shit was off the charts hot. Especially when Johnny slapped Fake Johnny again, hard, hard enough to make his head snap to the side, and then he stepped in close to take a handful of his too-long hair by the nape of his neck. It came down to the middle of his back, straight, so dark it almost looked dyed except V knew Johnny never dyed it. Maybe he would've if he'd started going gray, vain asshole that he was, but then again the salt-and-pepper thing really would've worked for him. Fuck, V had it bad.

Johnny shook Fake Johnny by his hair a little. He pulled a little harder and he made Fake Johnny yelp, but he didn't sound like he was really against the whole thing. Then Johnny just took a really good grip to keep him there exactly where he was, and then he did the single hottest thing that V had ever seen in his admittedly short life. Even hotter than Kerry on the yacht had been, because there were two Johnny's standing there, and V was pretty sure that Kerry of all people would get that. Johnny kissed his doppelgänger on the mouth. Kerry would've loved it.

Fuck, though, he didn't just kiss him. V could see it happen when Johnny bit Fake Johnny's lip then licked into his mouth, and made him gasp as he kissed him harder. Johnny made the fuck out with Fake Johnny, all teeth and tongues, but it wasn't like either of them was gonna come out of it with damage. They looked almost exactly the same, just the hair and a few wrinkles between them, not that V was gonna say the word wrinkle to Johnny, and V ran one hand down between his thighs as he sat there and watched them. He was getting hard already, like that was some big surprise when Johnny on Johnny was basically a wet dream come true. But then Fake Johnny tried to get his hands on real Johnny's ass, and real Johnny stepped back and slapped him again. Hard enough to make him curse, but he still sounded 300% turned on.

"What was that for?" Fake Johnny asked. Not like he minded. Like maybe he just wanted to find out so he could do it again. Which, actually, kinda did sound like Johnny.

"Don't fucking touch me unless I tell you to," Johnny replied. He wiped his mouth with the back of his ganic hand and then shoved Fake Johnny in the chest with his chrome one. "You got that?"

Fake Johnny shrugged. He put his hands up. "Got it," he replied. "Hands off. Whatever." Then he smiled that Johnny smile again, the dirty one, the fucking filthy one. "You gonna kiss me again?" he asked. "That was hot." And Johnny took a second to turn his head and raise his eyebrows at V across the room, like he was fact-checking that statement with the only actual gay guy currently present. So V nodded. He cleared his throat. He told him, "Fuck yeah, Johnny, that was hot," so Johnny smiled that same smile, the one that Fake Johnny was still smiling, then he turned back to him. He kissed him again. If Johnny had asked, V would've told him it was just as hot the second time. Maybe hotter, because Johnny had to've seen what V's hand was doing to the front of his pants, and he hadn't tried to stop him.

Johnny still had Fake Johnny by the hair as he shoved one thigh between Fake Johnny's legs and grabbed his ass with his chrome hand. It made Fake Johnny moan against Johnny's mouth, kinda muffled but V still heard it, and Jesus Christ, V would've liked to've made Johnny make that noise. V was rubbing his dick over his pants as he watched the two of them, Fake Johnny's hands down by his sides but he kept clenching and unclenching them, like he'd've liked to've touched but he'd been told not to. Not that Fake Johnny liked anything, of course. V knew that. They were both just bits and bytes on a chip, but one of them was a little more complex. Only one of them felt things. And the one of them that felt things was currently feeling himself up: he took his hand off of Fake Johnny's ass and he shoved it down between his thighs instead. V could tell that he squeezed because Fake Johnny cursed, and real Johnny laughed as he let go and stepped away.

"Still hot?" Johnny asked, and V knew that he was asking him though he was looking at Fake Johnny.

"Fuck, yeah," V replied. While he was weighing up if it was gonna piss Johnny off if he went ahead and got his dick out. It was straining against the zipper in the front of his leopard print jeggings, which were already pretty tight under normal circumstances. But then Johnny turned his head and glanced at him. He looked down at what V's hand was doing and he smiled like he was gonna go ahead and take every bit of credit for it. V, for his part, was absolutely fine with that.

"I can think of a couple of things that'd be hotter," Johnny said, then he pointed his chrome forefinger down between V's thighs. "Get it out before you strain something," he told him, then he turned back to Fake Johnny again. He put his hands on his hips and looked at him. He told him, "Get down on your knees."

Fake Johnny did as he was told, which pretty succinctly demonstrated the difference between the two of them, because Johnny was a contrary son of a bitch. Fake Johnny, though, got down on his knees on the dressing room floor, then he sat back on his heels and looked up at him.

"What, making me kneel makes you feel like a man?" Fake Johnny said, and real Johnny snorted.

"Making you kneel makes me glad I'm not you," Johnny replied, then he took Fake Johnny's chin between his thumb and his forefinger. He tilted his head one way and then the other. He looked at him, like he was checking that they really were the same, and V was unbuttoning his pants, lifting his hips to push them down to his knees, when Johnny pushed his thumb into Fake Johnny's mouth. Fake Johnny didn't seem surprised, though V guessed maybe surprise wasn't something he'd been programmed for. Then Johnny pulled his hand back, and he started opening his jeans. Actually, the two of them were wearing pretty much the same outfit, not that V had actually tried for that. Besides, Johnny could've changed in a flash if he'd wanted to. Now they could switch control without the meds, they could both switch clothes while they were playing passenger. The difference was that Johnny stuck to jeans or leather pants, tank tops, boring shit that okay, might've looked good on him, and V liked dressing to distract him. Usually it worked.

"So it'll make you feel like a man to get sucked off in front of your input?" Fake Johnny said, and real Johnny actually laughed at that, surprised the way Fake Johnny couldn't be.

"He's not my input, smartass," Johnny told him, as if the opinion of the guy who didn't exist even mattered at all. He got his cock out and he stroked it. He was already halfway hard and V could see the BD's menus hadn't been exaggerating about it. Neither had Johnny, which V was pretty glad about, and he watched as Johnny stepped in close to rub the side of it against Fake Johnny's cheek. They had the same scruffy beard, and V was pretty sure the real Johnny had never had facial hair like that against his dick before, but shit, maybe he was gonna act like this was all just some weird-ass kind of masturbation. Couldn't be gay if he was doing himself or whatever. Seemed like the kind of bullshit Johnny might pull, no matter how far he'd come. No matter that sometimes it was him that kissed Kerry, not V. No matter that sometimes when one of them jerked off, it was like both of them were doing it.

"So what is he?" Fake Johnny asked.

"He's the guy whose head I live on a chip inside of," Johnny replied, and Fake Johnny frowned up at him.

"I don't get it," he said.

Johnny tapped Fake Johnny's cheek with his dick. "Don't strain yourself, sweetheart," he told him, then he slapped him with his dick instead of his hand, across the face. He tapped against his cheek again after, then tapped the tip against his lips. He told him, "Stick your tongue out," so Fake Johnny did that, and Johnny tapped the tip of his dick against it. He rubbed there, not pushing into his mouth yet, and V could pretty much imagine himself right there in Fake Johnny's place, with Johnny's precome smudging against his tongue, Johnny teasing him until his dick ached. Not that it didn't already. It was standing up real hard between his thighs, like maybe it was even real and not just pixels or whatever, and when Johnny glanced at him again, sideways, with his dick resting heavily against his doppelgänger's tongue, his gaze went down between V's thighs. It lingered there maybe a little longer than it should've, so V finally wrapped one hand around himself and stroked.

"What d'you think, kid?" Johnny asked him, with his eyes still on V's dick, but then he dragged them back up to V's face again. "Should he blow me or should he blow you?" Then he looked at Fake Johnny again and he shifted his cock away, told him, "Close your mouth," then rubbed his tip against his lips.

"Who says he can't do both?" V replied, and Johnny laughed again, kinda breathlessly, as if he even needed to breathe. He ran his fingers into Fake Johnny's hair and then twisted them, gripped him there, then guided him down lower. He held his dick out of the way with his chrome hand and told him, "Suck my balls, Johnny-boy." So Fake Johnny did that. Pretty damn enthusiastically. While Johnny looked at V.

"You make a good point," Johnny told V, while he was holding Fake Johnny down there by his hair. Fuck, V could hear him sucking. He could see where real Johnny was looking, too: at V's hand on his cock as he stroked himself. Then Johnny pulled back. He dragged Fake Johnny to his feet with a handful of hair and made him curse along the way, but his worn blue jeans did nothing at all to hide the fact Fake Johnny was hard in them. Made sense, V guessed: the other two guys in the room were. Would've just been fucking rude if the Maelstrom pornbot hadn't been hard, too.

Johnny dragged Fake Johnny over to the couch. Then he shoved him back down to his knees, right in front of V.

"You know you could've just asked, right?" Fake Johnny said, looking up at real Johnny, and Johnny snorted.

"Sure," he said. "But where's the fun in that?"

Fake Johnny seemed to consider that for a moment, then he shrugged like he was conceding the point, and V snickered. Fuck, it was weird. It was weird there being two of them. It was weird that one of them was the same fucking asshole that he always was and the other one didn't mind getting pushed around, even if he was kind of a dick about it. Then again, maybe Johnny would've liked it, too - V kinda suspected he would, not that he'd've admitted it. Maybe he wouldn't've done it for V, but they both knew a guy who'd had more than seventy years to get good at all the shit he liked. Kerry was amazing. V was pretty sure that Johnny knew that, too.

"Go ahead and suck him," Johnny told Fake Johnny, and he gestured at V's dick. V moved his hand away from it. He looked up at Johnny as he set his hands down on the couch to either side of his thighs and pressed there just a little, like the couch was really real. Then Fake Johnny did what he'd been told to do.

Fake Johnny sucked him. V wasn't sure if it felt like Johnny's mouth on him or not because it wasn't like that was a thing that he had any way to find out about, but it absolutely felt good. It felt really good. Okay, so he knew what happened inside the BD came from a kind of sensation bank, a library of physical shit harvested from who the fuck even knew where and then tuned to the individual user so their brain would fill in the blanks, so who knew if it was real or fake or someplace in between. But Fake Johnny slid his hands over V's bare thighs and he wrapped his ganic fingers around V's hard cock. He ducked his head down and he licked the tip with the flat of his tongue. He took the head into his mouth. He sucked, slow and firm. V groaned and he rested his head back, and he closed his eyes, and Johnny - the real Johnny - laughed at that. Then he sat himself down next to him there on the couch.

V felt the couch cushion shift with Johnny's weight, though neither Johnny nor the cushion actually existed. He felt Fake Johnny take his dick a little deeper, heard him yelp though it was kinda muffled, and he opened his eyes to see Johnny's hand in his lookalike's hair again, pressing him down lower on V's cock. Fake Johnny took it in. He took more. He gagged, which felt pretty damn realistic, but then he took more, and he took more, as Johnny kept on pushing down. V leaned back and he watched his dick disappearing past Fake Johnny's lips. He moved one hand from its death grip on the couch cushion and he ran it over Fake Johnny's hair. And fuck. Fuck. He felt real Johnny's fingers in Fake Johnny's hair, too. He actually felt them, like he was real after all.

He turned his head and he looked at Johnny. Johnny, who was already looking at V, looked exactly as surprised as V was. So he let go of Fake Johnny's hair and he grabbed a handful of V's hair instead. Fuck, all it took was a second for Johnny to yank him close and get his mouth on his, no hesitation. Like the answer to the question should we do this? was so obvious he didn't have to ask.

Johnny kissed exactly like V knew he did: hard and wet and fucking filthy. V felt Johnny's teeth on his lips, Johnny's tongue in his mouth, groaned and took a handful of Johnny's long hair, and Johnny actually seemed to like that - he didn't shove V away, he just made a sound like a fucking growl and he kissed him kinda like maybe he'd just die without it. V felt like he maybe would, never mind Johnny, as Fake Johnny sucked his cock and real Johnny sucked his tongue. All the promises Johnny had made, the casual bullshit, do this and I'll fuck you if we both live, do that and I'll make out with you if we don't both wind up dead, V hadn't believed them for a second. Now here they were. They weren't dead, but they shared a body. In this place, though, for once, that wasn't true. Fuck, if V had known, he'd've bankrolled the whole thing himself, or maybe gotten Kerry to.

Johnny pulled back first. Fake Johnny pulled back after that and Johnny frowned and slapped him again, because he could, because it was hot, because he hadn't told him he should stop, but he didn't tell him he should start again - Johnny just wrapped his own ganic hand around V's cock and he stroked him, slowly, all slick with Fake Johnny's fake spit. He rubbed the tip with his thumb and he made V groan, then he moved his hand away and licked the precome off his fingertips. All V could do was curse under his breath as he watched him do it. Jesus Christ, the Relic hadn't killed him, but it turned out maybe Johnny would.

"Turn around," Johnny told V, and V frowned at him so Johnny mimed it with one hand until V got it. He got up on his knees and he turned around on the couch, faced the back, and Johnny reached across to slap his bare ass. V rolled his eyes. Johnny flashed him a smile. Then Johnny pushed himself back up onto his feet, and V heard Johnny tell Fake Johnny, "Go ahead and eat his ass. He'll like it."

V liked it. He leaned down lower and felt someone spread his cheeks - he guessed that it was Fake Johnny, just because real Johnny would've made a whole-ass song and dance about it. He felt Fake Johnny's fingers on him, too, fake-real ones and chrome ones, felt his tongue start to lap at him, felt it trace his rim, tease his hole, then start to push inside. Johnny sat himself back down right next to V and when V looked at him, he was jerking off. Till he took one of V's hands and brought it to his cock instead, that was, and he was fucking huge, and hard, and impossible, and everything V wanted right in that stupid, fucked-up moment. He had Fake Johnny's tongue trying hard to open up his hole and real Johnny's cock in his hand. But he guessed he still had another idea or two.

"You should probably fuck me," V told him, pretty far from casually, though he guessed he'd quit trying to seem casual to Johnny before he'd even started. "In case we don't get another chance." And Johnny gave him a wry kind of look that V understood completely: he was thinking they could use the BD again sometime for that. Johnny didn't even look a whole lot like he minded the idea of it. He didn't look like he minded the idea of what they were doing now, or the fact a simulation that looked a lot like him was lapping at V's asshole, getting him real wet. He just reached down between V's thighs and wrapped his hand around his cock, and smiled. Then he rolled his eyes and he hauled his ass back up again. Johnny liked to say Kerry was a drama queen, but Johnny wasn't exactly miles behind when it came to shit like that.

They wound up on the floor, which was fine because the fake dressing room floor was 100% less mysteriously sticky than any other dressing room V had ever been in. V wound up on his hands and knees - Johnny dragged Fake Johnny away from V's ass and he dragged V down, and the next thing V knew, Johnny was rubbing the tip of his dick between his cheeks. "Lube," he told Fake Johnny, and Fake Johnny obliged; he grabbed a tube from who the fuck even knew where and he squeezed it out against the crack of V's ass. Johnny's cock slipped against him. Johnny's cock pressed against him. And maybe it wasn't real when Johnny started pushing in, but that didn't seem to matter. They both felt it. They both wanted it. That was what mattered.

Johnny was big. It didn't hurt when he put it in, though - maybe it would've if anything about it had been real, but it just made V tingle down his spine and through his balls, and made his cock get harder. Johnny pushed in, not slow because he had no fucking manners, or no patience, or couldn't see a reason to. He gripped V's hips and he pushed in deep and made V groan and when V slumped down to his forearms, Johnny sighed and pulled him back up onto his hands again. V didn't get why, not in the start, but then Fake Johnny came closer, got in front of him, his dick in V's face while real Johnny raked his chrome hand down his spine. Fuck, Fake Johnny rubbed the tip of his dick against V's lips, and Johnny told him, "Suck him. Pretend you're sucking me." And honestly, when V did it, it didn't take a whole lot of pretending. Fake Johnny sounded real. He tasted real. He wasn't sure he would've known the difference.

When V came, he had Johnny's cock in his ass and Fake Johnny's in his mouth, like Johnny was fucking him twice. He was kneeling on the dressing room floor like some trashy 2020s groupie, but he really didn't give a fuck exactly how it looked. V swallowed when Fake Johnny came in his mouth, and real Johnny came inside him, with his chrome hand shoved up underneath the back of V's tight shirt and his ganic one around V's cock. He told Fake Johnny to fuck off back to the couch, so he did, grumbling under his breath about how real Johnny was apparently an asshole, which was fucking hilarious to V: he laughed breathlessly as Johnny pulled him up onto his knees and back against his chest and V came over Johnny's hand, again, just a couple of minutes after that, the impossible made possible by whatever the fuck this tech was. It was good. It was really, really good. A whole lot better than the crappy wireframe models he'd expected, anyway.

They took a seat on the couch when they were done, Johnny feeding V's come from his hand to his dickish sexbot counterpart before he kissed him like he didn't care about the taste of it. V did it next, straddled Fake Johnny's lap and made out with him a little while Johnny told him exactly how hot he thought that was, and slipped his ganic fingers to V's hole where his come had started to leak out. He fingered him a little, almost like it was just casual or something, like it was something they did all the time and not something brand new. But, in the end, they had to delta.

On the couch in V's apartment, he was still rock hard inside his jeggings. Johnny laughed at him, but then he sat down right there next to him and murmured filthy fucking things while V got himself out and got himself off. He seemed casual about that, too. Like he wasn't even freaking out about it. V had to admit he was surprised, but he was also pretty pleased. It was another big step in the right direction.

"So, you still think this was a bad idea?" V said.

Johnny scoffed. "Did I say that?" he replied. "Think you're getting me confused with the sexbot." And V didn't point out he knew he wasn't. He didn't tell him he didn't care, either, as long as they got to do this again. And again. And again.

They went to bed not long after that; V got in under the sheets for once instead of passing out on top of them, and Johnny stretched out next to him. The lights were out. V could see Nibbles sleeping curled up on a hoodie on the floor next to the coffee table, lit up faintly by the neon signs outside the window. It was a good night. One of the best since he'd officially quit dying.

"You think Kerry's gonna know if we don't destroy the program?" V asked, once he'd closed his eyes.

"Kid, Kerry doesn't know what day it is," Johnny replied. "Pretty sure we're fine."

V snickered, because Johnny was probably right. Kerry was a lot of things, most of them good, but down to earth wasn't one of them.

"You think he'd like to try it, too?" V asked.

Johnny snorted. "Why?" he replied. "He can have the real thing."

"Can he?"

Johnny hummed thoughtfully, or as close to thoughtful as Johnny ever got. "Yeah," he said. "Guess I better tell him that. Or show him. Fuck. Whatever." Honestly, V liked the sound of that.

Shit wasn't perfect and V knew it. Johnny was a dick sometimes, and Kerry could be pretty high-strung, and V was a streetkid from Heywood who'd gotten in the middle of a thing that dated back more than fifty years. Or maybe it was him that made it work when the two of them couldn't get their shit straight, who really knew. But Johnny was alive and so was V, and that was pretty much a miracle, so maybe anything could happen. Anything at all.

"G'night, Johnny," V said, instead of blurting out any of the crap that he had in his head. Johnny didn't believe in miracles, or fate, or luck, or even being any kind of decent human being, so it was kinda lucky V and Kerry didn't give a damn about that. Besides, chances were Johnny knew all of it already.

"Yeah, get your beauty sleep," Johnny replied. "I'll be here."

And the thing was, V knew he really would be. Even if they found a way to get him a new body. Even if he didn't need to be.

Johnny was sticking around. So was V. And as he drifted off, he knew he'd sleep a little easier for knowing that.