#truly the joys of being able to have a script backstage

[hundredyardclown]

the actors during tech today managed to skip 3 whole pages of lines without slowing down at all. unsure whether to be impressed or somewhat disappointed.

they also happened to be 3 extremely important pages of exposition, truly one of the moments of all time.

[lion-hearted-wolf]

Electric Blood

My 2nd entry for the Cyberpunk 2077 Prompt Event @cp2077promptevent

Prompt: 15 April – dialogue: “Here. See/feel how much I want you.”

Pairing: Alt Cunningham / Johnny Silverhand 

Note: Alt Cunningham’s a rockstar, Johnny Silverhand too. They met in college, started two different bands, but still keep in touch to exchange ideas about songs and… do other fun things. It’s a bit of a random story, written only following the prompt’s mood, and veeery different from what I expected.

The “take your broken heart” quote isn’t mine, of course. The song Alt’s singing is “Kandy Krush” by Kim Wilde, idk why but I’ve always thought about her while listening to it.

Smut under the cut. Read at your own risk.

(Thanks to @spectrum-nebula for her translation and beta-reading work, and for being the wonderful creature she is.)

“I only feel alive when I sing.”

Alt smokes her cigarette, for the last time before it runs out. She shakes it to get rid of the ashes, then throws it in the ashtray. The ink is drying up, a sentence still uncertain: it would take very little to erase it, replace it with another, less fragile feeling, but it’s alright. It’s sincere. She had promised herself before she started singing: never tell lies about yourself. If anything, change the words to express a feeling, but never erase it.

Take your broken heart, and turn it into art.

And she knows a little something of broken hearts.

She rubs on her temples: he asked her to open for the next Samurai concert, and no matter how many times she repeated herself it doesn’t mean that much to her, that it’s just an offer like any other, in the end she can’t stop thinking about it. Because Johnny is just like that: a summer storm, a hurricane passing by once and leaving you counting the damage for weeks. A damn distraction she cannot do without. A cocky smile, metallic fingers always brushing against her side in the same way after they have sex, as if they’re searching for a trace left long ago. Lips tasting like alcohol, like rattled off promises kept one time of out ten, yet beautifully enticing. The powerful voice with which he improvises for her the lyrics she’s written only a few hours ago, filled with rage and an energy he pours out between the sheets while touching her. She’s known him for a lifetime, and another life wouldn’t be enough to get used to him.

She sighs, knowing far too well she’s gonna end up in his arms again after the concert, the same way it’s always been: there are scripts that, no matter how edited and rewritten they can be, lead to the same ending. So it was for the first one, when from the front raw she would catch every single glance he threw at her between one refrain and the other, as so it was for the last, when she waited for him in the dressing room and they had sex, passionately, barely closing the door without even thinking about Kerry and Denny and Nancy out there and Henry who’d surely come by to drink something after he finished signing autographs for his groupies…

You’re the safe place I come back to every time, he had whispered once, head laying on her chest. She would gladly give away half the money she’s earned throughout her career to know if he was sincere or not.

And then the concert comes, and she’s on stage with the girls, first tuning their instruments, a moment after singing in front of a cheering crowd, people pushing each other and screaming their names. Rogue’s eye sparkle, fingers tight around the guitar. Alt breathes in, closes her eyes, then reaches out for the mic. It’s all there, that instant the audience stops, waiting for the song to start, hundreds of faces holding their breath, anticipating that moment they’ll never forget. When her voice starts singing, with a hint of hesitation she manages to conceal after the first notes, the roar is back with even more energy.

There’s a light there’s a light there’s a light in your eyes tonight…

Johnny is there, backstage, waiting: his eyes never left her for a minute. He watches her moving on stage, leaning down, and touching the fingers of the nearest spectators while delivering the last note to the audience and Rogue finishes her solo. He peers at her, throwing glances that say everything without speaking. Those eyes keep promising something, and perhaps this time they’ll oblige: asking her to open for that concert has to mean something, right? He waits for her to come down, under the stage, and brushes her side again, in the same spot, then tilts his shades to take a better look at her. He’s smiling.

“Good luck, Silverhand.” She’s breathless: never holding back when she sings, and that’s part of what made her irresistible in his eyes, she just knows that. She always gives her everything, one hundred percent, because she couldn’t, wouldn’t do otherwise. He smiles again, fingers lingering on her hips. Denny is looking at them, but who cares? They already know everything, after all, it would be impossible not to notice.

“See you later.”

And here’s the promise. She licks her lips, but only because they’re dry, and she urgently needs to drink. Another lie. She nods at him and he does the same, then glides towards the dressing room. Rogue knows everything, there’s no need for more explanations: she’ll find a way to tell the other girls. After all, they too need their post-concert time to unwind a little.

The dressing room is dark and quiet, perfect to think. She only turns the lights from the wall mirror on, then drops on the black leather couch. She waits, as she always did, this time with certainty of a reward: it’s only a matter of time. She just needs to wait for the roaring crowd to calm down, for the last notes to run out in the darkness of the room, for Johnny to lay down his guitar and walk away from the mic to say goodbye to the audience by waving his hand, as he always does. Then she needs to count the sound of his steps, holding her breath as they stop in front of the door and the doorknob turns and he enters a place they can finally be alone.

Until he’s in front of her, so real it makes her tremble. Finally, all to herself.

She breathes in his scent with a bit of arrogance, holding to his shoulder while he kisses her neck, taking her clothes off and helping her do the same with his. It’s a hurried and urgent homecoming ceremony, where every word is barely murmured and it’s suddenly lost among fingers brushing, grasping, holding to each other and letting go a moment after. The safe place he comes back to every time, the space he can truly let the mask he wears fall, and finally be himself.

He brushes a strand of hair from her face, kissing her again and lifting her leg to adjust it around his waist. Alt breaths in his scent again, intoxicated by that contact, back against the cold wall, fingers on his face. So close, so close, so hers. At least for a little while. An illusion that, for now, will have to do.

“Here. Feel how much I want you.”

His voice is hoarse, warm, and breathless: it’s weird he still has enough to talk. How many times was she about to confess she adores him, that she’d listen to him talking about small things for hours or even singing happy birthday to you or any other nonsense, being able to just listen to him would be enough, until she’s tired of it (and it’d never happen). Complimenting him only to be silenced by a kiss, in the aftermath of sex where everything is funny, and every single thing looks beautiful. Enjoying that sex without thinking about what comes after, because what sense does it make ruining everything before it’s over? Thoughts flow while she tries to stop them from filling her mind, and Johnny’s organic hand – not the metallic one, the warm fingers of his right hand – takes her hand and places it between his legs. As she brushes against his erection, a moan escapes his lips.

She was also about to tell him how much she likes his moans, and maybe she will, sooner or later. Maybe later, when they’re done again and in the aftermath of sex, maybe next time. She likes the idea of leaving him hanging, of always having something different to confess him: it adds a little magic to those encounters. It gives her a reason to mark on the calendar every single day separating her from the next concert. Something to anticipate with joy.

He takes her while brushing her hips once more, laying kisses on her neck that get more and more desperate and soon turn to bites, sinking his fingers in her skin while she breathes in, holding a little moan at first and then letting it go, following his pushes with her hips, leaving little white half-moons on his back with her nails. She climaxes a moment before he does, her sweaty leg still searching for a contact but inevitably slipping down, muscles delightfully numb. If she only had the strength to murmur even a single syllable, she’d propose him to move to the couch to start again, but figuring out what will happen within even a few minutes is impossible with Johnny, and maybe it’d make no sense or…

Until he lifts her up, carrying her right to the couch. And while he slides on top of her, surrounding her in a warm and sweaty embrace that smells like both of them, he leaves her enough time to feel incredibly happy.

 He never mentioned loving her voice, but maybe the way he looks at her while she improvises her songs means much more than she could think. Maybe. Those careless caresses, the way he leans his head on her chest and falls asleep after tracing random figures on her skin. His songs. There’s much more to him than he wants to show, beneath that thick skin of a person who does nothing more than shout to the world how much it’s going down the drain.

Sometimes she wonders if she’s the only one who noticed that.

She thinks about it again later, when they make love slowly, once again, after the fire has gone out and their gestures become slower and measured. The hotel room she followed him to is large, smells good and there’s even a soft carpet she can sink her feet into. She can’t help but wonder what it would be living together for more than a week, having a home to come back to and fill with music and more words.

Morning comes, always too soon, leaving the concert and its exciting confusion behind and a new date has been already scheduled, and the girls are waiting for her to add more songs to their setlist, maybe even with a new unpublished work. He’s sleeping, head sunk in the pillow: better leave before he wakes up. Her eyes linger on him for a while and – even if she doesn’t know how – she manages to stop herself from caressing his face. So calm, so far from that life. He doesn’t even look like the same person but, after all, she loves him for what he is. She wouldn’t know how to do without that feeling.

She gets up slowly, collecting her clothes and putting them on, trying not to think too much about what’s going to happen next: by now she’s learned how little that helps with living the present, how much it can poison her days. She smiles at his sleeping silhouette, picturing in her mind his expression in the moment he’s going to find the note she left for him, squeezed in a corner of the wall mirror and signed with a simple A. under the lyrics (a confession, more than an actual song) she drafted while he was sleeping, and smiles.

“It’s all here… see how much I want you.”