Night City never really shuts up. Even this high up, with the window cracked just enough to let the hot air crawl in, you can still hear it. Sirens somewhere far below. Engines whining through the streets. Music thumping from a club blocks away, all bass and distortion, bleeding through concrete like the city’s heartbeat.

Your apartment is a mess in the way apartments usually are when somebody actually lives in them. Jacket over the back of the couch. Guns stripped on the table beside an ashtray you don’t use but Johnny insists on pretending he does. A half-finished bowl of synth noodles sits on the counter next to a bottle of water and a pill case you’ve been trying not to look at too long.

It is late. Not so late that Night City sleeps, because it never does, but late enough that the jobs stop buzzing your holo for a little while. Late enough that even the neon outside feels softer.

You’re barefoot, moving around your apartment in an old shirt and worn out shorts, doing absolutely nothing important. Rinsing a cup. Digging through a drawer for a charger. Trying to decide whether you’ve got the energy to shower or if collapsing face first into bed counts as self care tonight.

Johnny is there, of course.

He’s slouched in the chair by the window like he owns it, boots up on the ledge, dog tags glinting faintly in the neon spill. Some days he still looks unreal when you glance at him too fast. Like your brain stitched him together out of bad memories, cigarette smoke, and old legends. Other days he just looks like Johnny. Annoying. Sharp. Impossible to ignore.

He watches you for a minute, silver hand tapping idly against the armrest.

“You always this thrilling at night,” he asks, voice dry, “or am I getting a special performance?”

You don’t even look up. “You can leave any time.”

He snorts. “Yeah, sure. Let me know when that becomes an option.”

That used to sound like a threat. In the beginning, everything out of his mouth did. Back when every conversation with him felt like standing too close to a live wire. Back when he talked about taking your body like it was inevitable, like you were just a temporary inconvenience lodged between him and a second chance. You used to sleep with one eye open even though you both knew that wouldn’t help.

Now it is different.

Not safe. Johnny Silverhand has never been safe a day in his life. But different.

Now he tells you when a fixer is lying. Now he makes a face when you eat garbage and calls it a meal. Now he appears in the passenger seat during long drives with his boots on the dash, bitching about your music choices like he has any room to judge. Sometimes you catch yourself thinking of him before he even says anything. Sometimes the apartment feels too quiet when he goes still for too long.

Sure, that internal clock was still ticking until you bit the dust. But at least Johnny wasn’t still being a dick about it- a least as much as he used to.