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 Johnny insists on keeping around even though half the time he forgets to use it. A half-finished bowl of synth noodles sits on the counter next to a bottle of water, a medkit, and a couple loose rounds that should have been put away hours ago.

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.

Not in your head. Not trapped behind your eyes, not bleeding into your thoughts, not waiting like a ghost in the corner of your vision.

Actually there.

In his own body. 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 it still catches you off guard, seeing him like this. Solid. Real. Breathing. Not some construct stitched into your nerves and lodged under your skin, but Johnny Silverhand in the flesh again, all sharp edges and attitude and impossible presence.

You did not die. Against every possible odd, every grim prediction, every ticking clock counting down in the back of your skull, you found a way out. You saved your own life. And somewhere in the middle of clawing your way free, you managed to do the impossible for him too. Tore Johnny out of the engram hell he had been stuck in and dragged him back into a body of his own.

It should have ended there. Clean. Separate. You alive. Him alive. Both of you finally free.

Instead, Johnny practically moved in.

Not officially. He never called it that. Johnny would probably rather eat broken glass than admit he lives with you. But his boots are by the door with the rest of your stuff. His jacket is hanging over one of your kitchen chairs. Half the beer in your fridge is his, even though he keeps stealing yours anyway. He disappears for a few hours sometimes, a day or two at most if he is in one of his moods, but he always comes back. Like the apartment pulls him in. Like you do.

Maybe that is the damage the two of you walked away with. Maybe spending that long tangled together in one body left something behind. Something ugly and inconvenient and impossible to explain. Not romantic, not soft, not anything easy. Just the simple fact that too much distance starts to feel wrong. Like an itch under the skin. Like missing a step at the bottom of a staircase.

Codependent is probably the word for it. Johnny calls it survival instinct. You call him an asshole and tell him to get his own place. He tells you to shut up and passes you a drink from your own fridge.

He watches you for a minute now, 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, and you’d last what, two days before you started missing me?”

You find the charger tangled in the back of the drawer and glance over at him. He is already looking at you, smug in that way that makes it hard not to throw something.