Chapter Text
Saturday mornings in Night City didn’t rise, they crawled.
Kerry Eurodyne woke to the sound of something dripping that absolutely should not have been dripping. Water, maybe. Or something from the upstairs neighbour, who treated their plumbing like a suggestion. Kerry lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling where the paint had peeled back in long, curling strips like dead skin, trying to decide whether he could afford another five minutes.
His eyes drifted to the clock.
“Fuck,” he groaned, rolling out of bed and immediately stepping on something sharp. A guitar pick skittered away across the tarnished wooden floor. He didn’t bother picking it up. The room already looked like a crime scene of unfinished intentions. Clothes draped over the back of a chair that had lost its will to live. Empty takeout cartons stacked like a monument to bad decisions. A battered old guitar leaned dangerously against a set of poorly stacked boxes, one wrong nudge away from becoming an avalanche.
The apartment was a shoebox in the truest Night City sense. One room pretending to be several, with a kitchenette wedged into the same corner as the shower. The wallpaper had once been eggshell yellow, but now it was nicotine-stained and bubbling in places, as if the walls themselves were rotting from the inside out, just like the rest of the place.
The shower was a rushed, scalding affair. Kerry stood under the spray long enough to rinse off the sleep and the faint ache of last night’s rehearsal. He cut it short before the water heater could start screaming at him. Towel slung around his neck, he leaned toward the cracked mirror, studying his reflection as steam fogged the glass around his face. He brushed his fingers over the stubble beginning to creep in along his jaw, eyes lingering a second longer than necessary.
Not bad, he thought.
His ex had never really seen him like this. Always too busy telling him to get something steady, something sensible. As if ambition was a phase he’d grow out of, like bad fashion or worse music.
Kerry tilted his head, lips quirking as he caught his own eye in the mirror. Yeah. He didn’t know what he’d walked away from. His loss.
He dragged a comb through his hair, watched it immediately rebel, and snorted. Gave up halfway through and shoved the comb aside. Messy was a style now. Messy meant he was going somewhere, even if he hadn’t hit the big stage yet.
Kerry yanked a clean shirt out of a pile that was only clean by technicality and pulled it over his head as he crossed the room for his tight jeans. His new axe sat at the end of the bed, case half open, strings glinting faintly in the morning light bleeding through the blinds. He paused there, just for a second. Fingers brushed the fretboard automatically, muscle memory humming to life.
He remembered the gig from last week, that dive bar two blocks from the edge of nowhere. Just him and Henry on the tiny stage, amps cranked, lights low and sticky with sweat. The song was his, one of his own, lyrics scribbled in a notebook that had long since lost its spine. For those few minutes, the room had belonged to him. He could still hear the way the attentive few leaned in during the verses, nodding along, catching every word he spat with that careful urgency. When the chorus hit, they had jumped to their feet, and he’d felt it: the kind of electricity that made every chord, every note, every breath… completely worth it.
Later, he told himself. Dream later. You’re late.
He pulled his jeans on one leg at a time, shoving his feet into his favourite boots then made for the door. The stairwell smelled like old piss and stale cheese. Someone had left a stack of empty pizza boxes halfway down, the remnants of the pizza base moulding with the stairs. He dodged it and ran for the door, spotting a new flyer taped to it. Local gig. Some band he’d never heard of. But the rocker boy on the centre looked familiar. He stared at it as he passed, imagining his name there instead, bigger font, brighter colours, his image bleeding through the ink.
One day, he thought.
The street outside was already awake in its own ugly way. Neon signage flickered like tired eyelids. A food cart hissed grease into the air. Someone’s car engine rattled as it crawled by with bass so low it felt more like pressure than sound. Kerry broke into a jog, boots splashing through a shallow puddle that reflected the red glow of the BLACK DOG VINYL sign down the block.
“Shit, shit… sorry,” he muttered, slipping sideways past a couple arguing in front of a parking ticket machine.
“You said you paid it,” the woman snapped.
“I did,” the man shot back. “System ate it. Corpos got my card.”
Kerry checked his wrist. His watch flashed 9:57am.
“Made it,” Kerry breathed, a grin already breaking across his face as he lunged for the door.
The bell overhead gave its familiar, petulant jangle.
“You are a menace to time itself,” Nancy snapped from somewhere behind a stack of milk crates filled with vinyl.
Kerry froze mid-step, then straightened like he hadn’t just sprinted half a block. “Good morning to you too, Nance.”
She emerged from behind the crates, short and sharp, purple hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her jacket was sleeveless despite the chill, pale arm marked with a fresh new tattoo that was still red around the edges.
“What time do you call this?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Early,” Kerry said brightly. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the chair behind the counter. “Emotionally.”
Nancy pointed up.
The wall clock read 10:14am.
Kerry squinted. Then checked his watch, shrugged his shoulders together. “That thing’s busted.”
“Your shift starts at 8am,” Nancy said, folding her arms. “Trust me, it’s not that busted. How does the rest of the world manage while you’re always late?”
He grinned at her, unrepentant, already lifting a crate of new records to put out. “You’d miss your free time if I was actually punctual.”
“I might actually get some free time,” she said, crossing the shop to the door. She flipped the sign on the door from CLOSED (DON’T KNOCK) to OPEN, the neon sign outside humming to life. The city noise bled through the cracked glass; sirens, engines, distant shouting layered together like a bad mix that somehow worked.
“See?” Kerry said, gesturing vaguely toward the street as if it were evidence in his defence. “The city needed me. Balance restored.”
Nancy shot him a look over her shoulder. “The city doesn’t know you exist.”
“Yet,” he corrected, already pulling open a crate and thumbing through sleeves. “Give it time.”
She leaned against the counter, watching him with narrowed eyes that had learned how to read between his lines. “How long did you spend in front of the mirror this morning?”
Kerry didn’t look up. “What, I can’t appreciate good lighting?”
“That’s not an answer.”
He pulled a record from the stack, sliding the vinyl out with a hushed hiss. “If you must know, I overslept. Got back late from that open mic night at the Nexus.”
“Again?” Nancy’s tone was sharp, but the way she leaned against the counter betrayed that she’d already accepted it as inevitable.
Ignoring her accusation, he set it on the turntable, letting the needle drop. The vinyl spun, spitting tiny sparks of sound into the air. Kerry closed his eyes for a second, letting the music warp around him like an old friend.
“I didn’t play this time,” he added casually, “just listened.”
Nancy snorted. “One day you’re going to flake on something important.”
He winced, just a little, then recovered with a crooked grin. “I don’t flake. I… prioritise.”
“That is the most poetic excuse for being unreliable I’ve ever heard.” She pushed off the counter, grabbing a notepad from behind the register and flipping it open. “So, I guess you skipped rehearsal with Henry.”
Kerry stilled for half a beat, then shrugged, brushing his fingers along a crate as he walked past. “He’ll get over it. What do you need me to do?”
Nancy groaned, rubbing at her temple. “Y’know, I open this place six days a week, Kerry. Six. Alone. And every Saturday I tell myself, this is the one where he shows up on time and I don’t have to play manager, cashier, and janitor before noon.”
“You’re hardly rushed off your feet,” he said, spinning a crate around to glance at the aisle behind him, his movements lazy and fluid, like the shop had always belonged to him.
Nancy’s eyes followed him. “You really think wandering around, daydreaming, is going to cut it when someone’s paying you to actually work?”
Kerry smirked, letting the edge of a record catch the neon light. “Daydreams count as practice. Trust me.”
He moved around the space like it was an extension of himself. The shop wasn’t big, but it was dense. Vinyl stacked in precarious towers. Old gig posters stapled to the walls, curling at the corners. Listening booths salvaged from a dead mall, cushions cracked but still warm with use. A couch near the window upholstered in loud teal stripes, one leg propped up on a piece of scrap metal to keep it from collapsing.
Music lived here. Old, new, music that never got the chance to be anything more than a demo burned onto cheap plastic. Cracked sleeves, bent corners, smudged liner notes; every record carried a story, and Kerry could feel them all humming under his fingers. He ran a hand along a stack of records, feeling the grooves, imagining each one a crowd hanging on his every note, a tiny heartbeat of someone else’s dreams.
Kerry loved it here more than he’d ever admit. The smell of dust and old vinyl, the faint hum of the neon outside, the way the air seemed thick with stories waiting to be played.
This was his sanctuary.
But it wasn’t the dream.
He imagined it: the lights low, a stage packed with screaming fans, his name in bold across neon lights, even a poster somewhere above some gonks bed, framed and immortalised. The guitars he’d mastered, the songs he’d written in notepads, ink-stained and trembling with possibility, finally reaching the air in a way that made people stop in their tracks. The first chord, the roar of the crowd, and the heat of every eye in the room on him, Kerry Eurodyne, centre stage, un-ignorable.
He picked up the duster to look busy, letting the bristles trail along the edges as if he were really cleaning. Fingers brushed the sleeves as he adjusted a tilted tower of records here, nudged one slightly there, all the while letting his mind wander. He imagined one day his own albums would sit among these, grooves catching the light just like the records he was dusting now.
A crate caught his eye. He flipped through it slowly, pausing over each cover just long enough to seem purposeful. He pictured the first time someone would do that with his own music, staring at his cover, wishing it was them in his place, feeling the same impossible dreams he carried in his chest, and know he’d been first.
The thought made his heart hammer, a mix of exhilaration and ache, because that future felt so close and yet somehow impossibly far away at the same time.
He let out a breath, set the record back in its crate, and ran a hand through his hair. The bell chimed again. He looked up automatically, already halfway through a greeting that stalled in his throat.
The man in the doorway didn’t rush in like most customers. He paused, boots planted just inside the threshold, scanning the room like he was taking stock of it. Like he was measuring it against something only he could see.
He wore dark jeans, scuffed at the knees, a black leather jacket hung open, showing off the tight vest and dog tags that lay underneath. Chrome glinted at his wrist. His hair black, messy in a way that looked deliberate, like he’d made a decision to never bother taming it.
He took off his aviators in one slow motion, lashes fluttering over those familiar eyes.
“Oh, fuck,” Kerry murmured, clutching the duster from his hands tightly to his chest. His knees felt a little weak, his brain betraying him with a cocktail of awe and disbelief.
Nancy peeked from behind a crate, one eyebrow raised, lips twitching. “Who’s that?” she whispered, half-amused. “You want me to deal with him? You look like a kid who just saw a holographic unicorn.”
Kerry’s cheeks warmed. “I… it’s nothing,” he stammered, trying to act casual, but his eyes stayed glued on the visitor.
The man stepped further inside, boots thudding against the floor. “Hey, Kerry,” he drawled before he could answer, voice low and smooth. “Still hiding out in record stores, huh?”
The room tilted.
Kerry’s heart kicked hard against his ribs, heat rushing up his spine in a way that felt wildly inappropriate for ten in the morning.
“Johnny,” he breathed, before he could stop himself.
Johnny Silverhand’s grin was sharp, knowing, as if he’d been waiting to hear his name like that for years. “Been a while, Ker. You look good.”
Nancy let out a dramatic whistle from behind her hand. “Oh… Johnny. The Johnny? Rockerboy Johnny you’ve been drooling over since forever?”
Kerry shot her a look so lethal it could cut through sheet metal. “Don’t.”
She shrugged, stepping into view, folding her arms with a mischievous tilt of her head. “I mean… come on. You’ve been talking about him non-stop for months. I didn’t think I’d actually see you freeze up like a rookie.”
Johnny’s gaze flicked to her, calm, piercing, like he could see through her teasing with zero effort. “You must be Nancy,” he said smoothly, voice carrying that quiet authority he always seemed to have. “Denny said you keep Kerry in line.”
Nancy smirked, giving Kerry a gentle nudge. “Oh, I keep him in line all right… mostly from hyperventilating every time a rock star wannabe walks into the store.”
Kerry groaned softly, muttering under his breath, “Please shut up.”
“How’d you know Denny anyway?” Nancy’s smirk shifted into mild suspicion, the journalist in her flicking on like a light. “She’s never mentioned you. Not once.”
Johnny tilted his head, eyes scanning the spines of a crate beside him as if he weren’t even aware of the question. “We’ve crossed paths a few times,” he said easily, tone casual but measured, like he was sharing a trivial face about the weather. Kerry’s stomach did a full twist. “She knows me when it counts.”
Nancy didn’t blink, arms folding across her chest, the smirk fading into a thin line. “I’m sure she does. Denny knows a lot of bad guys. But you? Walking in here, talking about her like you’re old friends…” She let the words hang, sharp and clipped. “So… what do you want?”
Johnny chuckled, low and rough, the kind of sound that made the floorboards hum in sync with Kerry’s heart. “I like her,” he said casually, flipping a record in his hand and letting the sleeve graze the edge of a crate, like he was just a customer browsing the racks.
“Everyone does,” Kerry muttered, voice slightly breathless, eyes glued to Johnny like he might evaporate if he blinked.
Nancy’s eyes narrowed, scanning him up and down, instinctively protective. “I’ll be in the back if anyone needs me.” She let a little exasperation creep into her tone, watching Johnny like she could see the danger before Kerry even registered it. “If the building collapses, scream loud.”
She disappeared behind the curtain of beads, leaving the air thick and buzzing.
Johnny didn’t flinch. He moved further into the shop, boots thudding against the floor with that easy swagger that made Kerry’s nerves hum like live wires. His hand grazed the edges of a crate as he passed, like he was checking the inventory, not sizing up the kid he’d already memorised. Each step felt intentional, yet casual; a predator that wore charm instead of teeth.
“Asked around about you,” Johnny said, finally looking up at Kerry, voice smooth and even, as if he’d been saying the words for months. “This is what you do when you’re not tearing into a mic in some dive bar?”
“Sort of,” Kerry said, words coming out too quickly. “Play when I can.”
“Yeah?” Johnny turned back to him, eyes sharp, taking in the kid like he could read the tremor behind Kerry’s composure. “Still writing?”
Kerry swallowed hard. “Always.”
Johnny leaned casually against one of the listening booths, arms crossed, posture far too relaxed. “Didn’t think you’d still be in Night City,” he said, eyes on Kerry. “Thought you had big plans?”
“Still do,” Kerry snorted, trying to keep his voice even. “Thought you were outta this corpo-infested hell hole for good. That’s what you said the last time I saw you.”
Johnny’s expression flickered, just for a second, a shadow of something behind the grin, before it returned, effortless and infuriating. “City’s hard to quit,” he said lightly, one hand brushing over table littered with boxes.
“Yeah,” Kerry said softly. “Tell me about it.”
They stood there, the music filling the silence between them, the neon hum of the city still seeping through the cracked glass like an electric heartbeat. Kerry’s mind raced, caught between the dream of Johnny and the reality of him standing right there, casual, untouchable, and dangerous.
Johnny broke it first.
“You wanna play for me again?”
Kerry nearly dropped the headphones he’d just pulled from the hook behind the counter. He caught them at the last second, fingers fumbling, then pretended that was exactly what he’d meant to do. He wound the cable around his wrist once, twice, anything to keep his hands occupied.
“Yeah,” he said, way too fast. He cleared his throat, tried again. “I thought that was a onetime gig. Your band… have a falling out again?”
“Something like that.”
Johnny drifted closer without Kerry noticing, slow and unhurried, reaching into his pocket for a pack of smokes. He popped one into his mouth, but didn’t light it right away, eyes scanning Kerry like he was weighing him up. “How old are you, kid?”
“Twenty-two.” Kerry straightened instinctively, chin lifting as he slid the headphones back onto the hook. “Old enough to know how to make a crowd lose their minds.”
Johnny‘s mouth twitched. Not a smile, not yet. “Twenty-two, huh.” He circled past Kerry, boots thudding softly on the scuffed floorboards. “Still wet behind the ears. But…” He stopped at the counter, leaning his hip against it. “I can see it in your eyes. Heard it last time you were up on that stage. That fire.”
Kerry busied himself again, reaching for the duster, dragging it across the counter even though it was already clean. His pulse was doing something stupid, loud in his ears.
“You want the stage,” Johnny went on, voice low, deliberate. “Lights. Crowd screaming your name like it’s a prayer. I’ve seen a lot of kids chase that dream and burn out hard.” His gaze sharpened. “But you might actually make it.”
Kerry swallowed.
“Unless,” Johnny added lightly, “you wanna waste your life in here, peddling other people’s trash for the rest of your life till your hands go soft.”
Kerry scoffed, more breath than sound, and picked up a vinyl just to have something solid to hold. He turned it slowly, thumb tracing the sleeve, the neon from the window catching the edge.
“That’s not happening,” he said, voice low but firm. “This isn’t where I end up.”
He looked up then, eyes bright and defiant.
“One day it’s going to be my name on the sleeve. My songs’ll play from a record just like this, loud enough to drown out everything that ever told me I couldn’t. I’m not made to disappear.”
Johnny finally lit the cigarette. The flare of the lighter was brief, bright, then gone, smoke curling between them like a secret.
“Good,” Johnny said. “Because I’m putting something together. Loud. Real.” He stepped closer, close enough that Kerry could smell the leather from his jacket. “And I want you in it.”
Kerry’s stomach flipped. Hard.
“You want me…?” he asked, hating how hopeful that sounded.
Johnny turned fully toward him then, gaze intense. “I’ve heard you play a few times now. You’ve got a talent, kid.”
Kerry blinked. “You have?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Dive bars with shitty acoustics. You played like you were trying to punch through the walls.”
Kerry’s throat went dry.
“That’s why I need you,” Johnny said simply, expression softening, just a fraction. “Guitar. Song writing. Your voice. I’m putting a band together. I want you on the frontline.”
Silence settled, thick and humming, broken only by the distant hum of a motorcycle whizzing by. Kerry looked down at the record in his hands, thumb pressing into the cardboard sleeve, feeling the weight of the choice sink into his gut.
Then he nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”
Johnny straightened, grin snapping back into place like a switch had been flipped. “Good.” He flicked ash to the floor and stepped in, chrome hand closing briefly around Kerry’s arm. “Six tonight. I’ll pick you up here.”
Kerry barely breathed.
“Glad I found you, Eurodyne.”
Johnny turned for the door, pausing just long enough to glance back once, smoke trailing after him like punctuation.
Then he was gone, swallowed by the city, and Kerry was left staring at the door heart racing, music still echoing through the shop like it had attached itself to his ribs. His fingers twitched, still holding the edge of a record like it might give him guidance, and he felt a stupid, helpless grin creep across his face.
Nancy peeked out from the stockroom, one eyebrow raised. “That guy?” she said, voice flat but sharp. “Seriously, he’s bad news.”
Kerry’s grin widened, bright and unstoppable. He let out a soft laugh, almost breathless. “Yeah, I know,” he said, voice low and dreamy, like he was still hearing Johnny’s words echo in his chest.
Then, abruptly, a spark of panic cut through the haze. His eyes darted toward the counter, the shelves, the stacks of records. His mind scrambled for control. “Shit. What do I wear?” he muttered, pacing a few steps, running a hand through his hair, already imagining the stage lights, the crowd, the heat of Johnny’s gaze just a little too close.
Nancy stepped fully into view, arms crossed, unimpressed as always. She gave him one of those looks that could cut through steel. “Do you even own anything else?”
He exhaled sharply, cheeks warming, mind racing with chords, lyrics, clothes, and Johnny Silverhand. The city was waiting for him to take his chance, and he was going to grab it with both hands and never let go.