DRESSED UP ALLIGATOR, a 2022 silverdyne fic (6.9k words, rated E. written for @blameitonthesnow for the @cp77nyexchange !)
A loud thumping at the door startles Kerry. Passingly he glances at the glowing numbers of the clock underneath his television; it’s too late for any normal visitor's arrival, and while his heartbeat temporarily spikes as the urgent knocking continues, he can settle himself with the realization that another kidnapper probably would not be knocking for entry.
Still, his building’s front desk should be better than this. The Concord apartments are a far cry from his Samurai days in squalid tenements barely fit for the rats they cohabitated with, let alone people. He’s moved somewhere with real security, from both kidnappers and psycho fans alike, away from the mundane dangers of Night City and the active combat zones that have dotted the city with the escalating Corporate war, and he pays out the nose for it. They should have denied anyone not on his very short guestlist entry, or called up to let him know he had a guest at this hour, at the very least.
Kerry tosses his guitar aside. The short time it takes for him to walk from the couch to the door is enough to froth him into righteous indignation.
“Who the fuck do you think you are,” Kerry snaps as he turns the locks and throws open the door, “knocking at this time of night—“
“You greet all your friends like this, Ker, or am I just special like that?”
The nickname, after all this time, still pushes Kerry off-center, somehow even more so than the state Johnny is in.
Leaning heavily against the doorframe stands Johnny Silverhand. Kerry hasn’t seen Johnny in over a year, and yet he instantly knows it’s him. Johnny has come to him in so many costumes; the buzzed head and faded fatigues in two-thousand eleven, the sand-dusted nomad jacket from twenty-fifteen, the bloodshot eyes of twenty-twenty.
Johnny, bruised and blood-spattered in an old Samurai leather jacket and smelling of rain and gunpowder is an easy one to recognize; Kerry’s seen this version of him before.
Teeth bloodied, Johnny not so much smiles but grimaces, his trademark aviators falling crookedly down the bridge of his similarly crooked nose. They look broken, temples off-center.
Kerry grips the doorframe, steeling himself. “Jesus Christ.”
“Just Johnny is fine.” He says.
The joke feels unbearably flat with the sudden worry Kerry’s heart tattoos behind his breastbone. Grip tightening against the doorframe, Kerry frowns.
(READ MORE HERE!) (COMMENTS & RBs MUCH APPRECIATED!)