On Johnny’s trans journey
cw for internalized and externalized transphobia, lesbophobia, alcohilism mentions, canon-compliant violence
Yeah so one day (this is my hc in my CP15 AU where Johnny doesn’t get to stay with the Aldecaldos the whole time between summer 2013 and the 2020s and instead goes back to Kerry NC, thus leading to a Reunion Tour that gets Victor hired by Samurai’s label), there's yet another quidproquo between Victor and him.
In a panic, he suckerpunches Victor rasping "I'm not a fucking tranny [unsaid: like you]"
And something clicks inside Victor's head (probably their chrome thinly-veiled skull rebuffing against the impact) and everything falls to place. As comprehension sets in, their response is instantaneous:
"Well fuck, damn you stupid bitch, I didn't say you were, but now I know you are!!"
And they look at him in disbelief like he's pulled the biggest bit they've ever witnessed, there's a blank where Johnny is pale as a fucking sheet, looking like a ghost that got killed twice more, starting to hyperventilate as he stares at them, and they righten themselves, rubbing and cracking their jaw back into place (that's also when Johnny understand how borged out they secretly are), and they look at him, eyebrows rising, and whistles out,
"Fuck, that explains so much."
Johnny once fell upon an entire fortune. Literally. While raiding an abandoned house the enemy forces had been hiding out at, the poor kid had collapsed right onto some corpse of a guy still clinging to a wad of cash. Johnny did what any shellshocked underage impulsive teen soldier would have.
He pocketed the money and hid it, the stress and fear of being caught with it making him sick. He had to get rid of it and quick. And he couldn’t waste it.
He’d gotten the whole premium package: he’d already had a medium shit quality T implant, so he got a mammectomy he paid a fortune for, a scrotum and penis transplant, and a few months later, he got back to the clinic using the rest of the cash plus the little military credit and health care he had for cosmetic surgery that erased his chest scars, rendering him unidentifiable as trans to the naked, cis gaze.
Robert Linder died for good with Johnathan Nauman, and he was a pre-op trans man hopeful for a future that had more colours to it than just reds and blacks and maroons.
Only Kerry and Denny knew. Kerry only did because he was himself a semi-closeted trans man. And Johnny acted with such disgust toward the subject anytime he’d brought it up, unless it was about himself and then suddenly it was fucking magically fine (it made Kerry feel special, so he did not question it- if only he’d know just how special he actually was, so special to Johnny that Johnny had to resort to violence to deny himself another chance at loving a man the way he wished he could-) and Kerry’d always just assumed it was just yet another Raised in The Bible Belt thing.
He’d not been entirely wrong.
Denny on the other hand, knew about it because one day, she’d been the only one semi-sober– to this day she does not understand how nor why it had to be her of all people to learn this about their cryptical, aggressive frontman.
He’d been curled up in a corner and mumbling to himself, which wasn’t unusual but rare, but he was also sobbing and clutching his head.
That, was not normal. It was fucking bizarre actually, and she felt even more mortified see this much from him than she’d been the first time she’d gifted a bouquet to a girl she liked (her name was Natasha, she had long auburn hair and a face like a gentle doll, lips pink like fruit) who’d then looked at her up and down and spat,
“I’m not a fucking lesbo.”
As if just the thought had soiled her.
Well somehow that was worse.
And yet she’d approached him, and kneeled beside him.
Now, everyone in Samurai knew about Johnny’s horrid war-induced C-PTSD, and the first rule of thumb about Johnny’s horrid war-induced C-PTSD: You don’t talk about Johnny’s horrid war-induced C-PTSD.
If it needs to be brought up, Johnny is more than capable enough doing it himself and then by gods he’ll only stop when he’s done talking about it.
Many-a-one jaws and noses and ribs and walls and chairs and tables and car windows had beared the testimony of what happened if you broke that rule.
So they didn’t talk about it.
Then the 2013 raid happened. And it somehow got worse.
But let’s not get sidetracked.
Denny had sat next to Johnny, and a decade later she wonders if she wasn’t on some acid trip after all, when he’d not only not slapped her hand off of him, but collapsed against her chest, in the most uninterested way, and wailed just a tad louder, a tad clearer, about some guy he’d stolen everything from, the man who’d taken a bullet from him, and how he was a fraud and one day they would all find out, how he could only keep lying to himself for so long, he’d always just be the delusional bitch his older brothers said he was.
She had not even thought it was possible for Johnny Silverhand to have brothers, much less plural, much less ones that would have abused him and won.
More things were said. Garbled and disjointed, but Denny knew how to speak tongues with men who’d been swallowed by the bottle.
Oh, everyone assumed she was so patient with Henry because she was naive and stupid, but what they didn’t want to understand is that she just knew better. She knew that beneath the violence and the smell of chemicals lied terrified boys who’d grown into broken men, begging for anyone to just understand.
Her father had been such a kind man before the incident.
And so, she’d learned a secret Johnny hadn’t told anybody else, not even Kerry, and that was when she knew.
It was bad. She could never fucking mention it to anyone.
But Denny was used to taboos, and one more didn’t shake her. She just kept on drumming, taking out her rage at the world for burdening her with the pain of everyone around her by beating the shit out of her drumset and making bank off it.
She just knew some things were better left unsaid. Sleeping dogs lying and all that, y’know?
And then Victor had to go and fucking ruin it, making Johnny have to come out and say it.
And Johnny’s fists could barely scuff their face, it only broke the skin and bled but nothing underneath got any real damage, so, seemed they were all fucked.
They were gonna have to talk about it. Or at least put words on it, thinking about it, now.
Johnny hated them even more for that.
(That must be why he slept at their place, in their bed, for the next few weeks following.
Sometimes, Kerry would stay over so they could work on their songs, Victor keeping themselves busy with what the fuck ever it was that their imp ass did during their free time, and he’d sleep into bed behind him, or as the little spoon when Johnny felt small like humouring him.
Victor would stay on the same side of the bed and latch onto him one way or another, kissing his scalp softly, and he’d fall asleep, and if he were lucky, he dreamed of cocoa butter scented hair tickling his face, strong lanky dark skinned arms around his frames, two sets of dogtags clinking together softly under the rustles of the sheet.
Sometimes there would be blonde hair falling in a halo around a pale figure, but most of those dreams ended up as nightmares, so that’s not what we’re talking about if we’re talking about the times Johnny got lucky dreaming.
And when he’d wake up, there would be no blood. No screams.
Just Victor’s stupid little hanging charms chiming softly as the AC droned on.
Just Kerry’s snoring against his neck.
