Take a Bow (4/5)
Title: Take a Bow
Author:
ashamedbliss
Pairing: Belldom
Ratings: up to NC-17/18
Fic summary: Dominic Howard, billionaire and ex-playboy has just returned from a five year stint on a mysterious island. Matthew is his IT assistant who starts getting some very strange requests...
Feedback: appreciated like Felicity screen time
Disclaimer: much as I and many other ladies would like to own Muse, I don't. This is totally fictional, I'm not making profit, and pretty please don't steal it *bats eyelashes* IRONIC as this is basically stolen from the TV show Arrow haha oops.
Author's Note: BASICALLY I really love the TV show Arrow so I plonked in our favourite frontman and drummer, and voilà what do you mean matt's chara is a girl in the show any questions PLEASE ASK. I have written this with non-watchers in mind so hopefully everyone can enjoy. this fulfils the 'celebratory kiss' trope for my bingo card yay!
A few days later, and his window is fixed, with his flat returned to its normal level of just acceptable tidiness. Matthew is waiting outside his block of flats where Chris will pick him up, according to Dominic’s text. Yes, they were texting now. And Dominic even ends his texts with a kiss. Matthew wonders about which word of the phrase professional relationship they are tilting towards when the black BMW pulls up before him. Chris leans across and opens the front door and Matthew climbs inside.
“Matthew, right?” the driver says, and Matthew shakes his hand. “Call me Chris.”
“Call me Matt,” Matthew says, as he buckles up, the car pulling away from the curb. “So you’re Dom’s bodyguard during the day, but you moonlight as what exactly?”
Chris laughs a warm belly laugh, and he instantly strikes Matthew as the kind of guy who gets along with everyone. “A bit of extra support, really. I do some technical stuff, but it’ll be much easier with you joining our team. Plus I’m the weapons guy, and I can call in some military favours.”
“Military?” Matthew asks, genuinely intrigued. Chris nods, eyes on the road.
“A dozen or so years in the infantry, a couple of tours of Afghanistan. Medically discharged after I was shot in the shoulder and they could never take out all the shrapnel. So, of course, I went into personal security,” he says, pausing as he manoeuvres through some particularly dense traffic. Matthew notes they’re heading to the heart of the Glades. “Landed the job as Dominic’s bodyguard. He was avoiding me for the first few weeks or so until, well, the rest is history I guess,” he laughs.
“Wait, you were shot?!” Matthew asks incredulously and Chris continues to laugh.
“Yep. Wicked scar.”
“Wow,” Matthew whispers as the car pulls up outside Verdant, the nightclub Dominic had opened shortly after arriving back to Starling City. “Is Dom meeting us for midday cocktails or something?” Matthew asks as they get out of the car, smirking alongside Chris.
“Not quite. Follow me.”
Chris locks the car and leads him down the side of the club, through a fire escape into the main room, avoiding the main entrance. There are a few people milling around, but mostly bar staff restocking ready for the evening. Chris leads him to an area under the stairs, punching a code into a hidden panel and pushing a heavy door open.
Matthew quietly creeps down the metal stairs behind Chris, into a large, mostly dark room. He can hear grunting from the far end of the room, where a few shafts of stray sunlight fall. Chris flicks on some lights, and Matthew hears the heavy, industrial buzz of them before the room is illuminated.
It’s like every secret superhero lair that he’s ever dreamed of.
Matthew quickly darts over to the three screen wide computer set-up, crouching down to look at some of the hardware, some of which even his IT budget wouldn’t be able to afford for the company. He whips around, seeing the Hood’s costume elaborately displayed on a mannequin in a glass case. He sees a row of arrows lined up neatly, almost wanting to touch them then thinking again. Finally his eyes alight on perhaps the most valuable object in the room, the Hood’s prized bow. Matthew looks up to Chris, who shrugs. Gingerly, Matthew picks it up, finding that it weighs a lot less than he expected it to.
“Don’t even think about drawing that bow,” a voice rings out, and Matthew nearly drops the bloody thing. His eyes follow the voice to find Dominic suspended perhaps ten feet in the air, doing pull ups on a bar, grunting with each one. Matthew had been so distracted by all the gadgetry he hadn’t even sought out the source of the noise.
Oh, and Dominic is topless, of course. Matthew swallows dryly, able to see a few sporadic tattoos across Dominic’s sweaty chest that he hadn't noticed in the darkness of his flat. Dominic drops down to the floor, quickly striding across the room to gently take the bow from Matthew’s hands. “Dry firing ruins it. I’ll teach you one day, if you want.”
Matthew breathes in the heady scent of Dominic’s sweat as he leans across him, placing the bow back on its stand. “Sure,” he says, before he rakes his eyes over Dominic’s chest quickly. What was meant to be a brief glance at his (wonderfully defined) abs soon turned into something else entirely. “Dominic, you’re...”
His skin was littered with scars, some of which looks like knife wounds and some like burns. Matthew wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to spread his fingers across them.
Dominic turns abruptly, grabbing a t-shirt off one of the iron girders of the huge basement. “Where are those scars from?” Matthew asks.
“The island,” Dominic says in a way that means that the conversation is closed. He smiles broadly, then, but it looks a little fake on his face. “Welcome to the Foundry,” he says, spreading his arms wide. “This is our little base. I hope it’s all up to your expectations,” he says, gesturing to the seat in front of the computers. Matthew slides into it, allowing himself to settle in amongst the technology, where he belongs.
“Oh God,” Matthew says, eyebrows knitting together as he pushes his glasses up. “What is this? This program is entirely out of date,” he mutters to himself, before pulling up the system properties. “This hurts my soul,” he says dramatically, and Chris laughs from the back of the room. “This needs a huge amount of work. You should count your lucky stars I even accepted to be on your team,” Matthew says, the sarcasm in his voice not undetected.
Unknown to him, Dominic and Chris share a glance across the room. They knew they’d chosen the right guy for the job.
~
Matthew pushes his glasses up his nose before he reaches for his can of Pepsi, happily realising that there’s more in it than he’d thought there would be. It’s late at night and he’s still working on the system, days after he was first inducted to the ‘team’. Matthew smiles at that word. He’d never really been part of a team before, except that one time he was picked for football at school, but he got tackled a lot.
In retrospect, a lot of the people tackling him were on his own team.
Glancing at the clock, Matthew finishes his can of Pepsi and throws it in the bin, deciding to call it a night. He powers down the system, so very near completion but a few of the final touches require him to have a clear head, something he doesn’t have after a whole day spent looking at screens. He grabs his coat and makes his way up the metal stairs, switching the lights off as he leaves and pulling the door shut behind him.
Of course as it’s late at night, Verdant is in full swing, the nightclub full of people and the music far too loud for Matthew’s tastes. With Dominic attending some fancy function or the other at his mansion, with Chris near him at all times, Matthew had had the night to himself.
Sadly, nothing much had developed between them over the last few days. Dominic had been doing lots of pull ups, though. Matthew appreciated that, at least.
Exiting the nightclub, Matthew pulls his jacket tighter around him in the cold. He doesn’t even notice the men behind him, or the van idling a few paces in front of him. He hardly even feels the sharp blow to his head as his world goes black.
~
Matthew comes to in a basement. He blinks into harsh light and immediately tries to move, only to find his arms bound to his sides, and he himself tied to a large pipe. He tries to kick his feet out, but they’re tied too, and as he tries to open his mouth to scream he finds that that’s been taped over.
Pretty thorough, then.
A woman walks into the room, clad head to toe in leather. She shakes her big, auburn hair out behind her, and Matthew realises that she’s absolutely stunning. If only she wasn’t, you know, holding him hostage, and if only he wasn’t, you know, gay.
“Hello Matthew,” she says in a soft American accent. “I hear you’re a friend of Dominic’s.”
Matthew finds himself nodding dumbly, because he can’t do anything else. He glances around the room, trying to take it all in. Large pipes, some steam being released into vents. Definitely a basement. The woman puts her left hand on her hip, the right hidden behind her back.
“Well. I’m a friend of Dominic’s too. A very, very old friend,” she drawls, and Matthew watches with wide eyes. It’s almost as if she’s performing for him, as if she’s had this planned for a long time. “But he betrayed me. Do you know where he is?”
Matthew shakes his head vigorously, even though he knows exactly where Dominic is, unless he decided to go on a spontaneous vigilante adventure. Matthew, now that he’s in on the secret, has learnt that Dominic spends the best part of his working day sneaking off to fight bad guys. The woman steps forward and rips the tape from Matthew’s mouth, pain flaring across his face. He hears a noise, and realises it’s himself, crying out.
“Tell me,” she orders.
“I don’t know!” Matthew shrieks in an embarrassingly high pitch. “I don’t know,” he lies, protecting Dominic the only way he can. He may not be strong, or good with weapons, or even all that brave, but he’s bloody loyal.
The woman moves, and within a flash, the point of a sword is pressed up against the top of Matthew’s neck.
“Do you know what this is, Matthew?” she purrs. “This is a foil. Not just any foil, though. This one is made of titanium, which means it only needs a little bit of pressure to be applied...” she presses upwards slightly and Matthew feels the blood dribble down his neck. “For me to be able to slice you from head to toe. So. Tell me where Dominic is.”
“I really don’t know,” he whimpers, screwing his eyes shut and anticipating death. When she sighs lightly, he cracks them open again. She lowers the sword and turns behind her, turning on a light that illuminates a huge crate fixed with a timer.
A bomb.
“Do you know where we are, Matthew? Don’t answer that,” she says, throwing her head back with a false laugh. “You couldn’t even tell me something you actually know. We are currently under the children’s hospital, Matthew. Yes. This is a bomb.”
Matthew’s eyes dart all over the wires, the electronics. He watches the timer tick down from 5:04 to 5:03 to 5:02 as he analyses it all. It looks like a simple timer, he presumes. The woman stands in front of him again, breaking his line of sight with the bomb.
“I don’t really care if you tell me where Dominic is or not. I know where he lives, I know where he works. I’ll check there anyway. I just thought you might’ve been a bit more helpful. Fucking loyal boyfriends. If you don’t tell me, I leave you here to explode, along with all the poor children in the ten stories above us.”
She smiles a wicked smile and opens her mouth to say something else, just as Matthew’s phone begins to ring in his pocket, a Queen song singing out in the room. Matthew winces as a grin spreads across the woman’s face. She retrieves it from his pocket deftly, answering the call and putting it on loudspeaker.
“Matthew? Did you get home okay?”
The woman balances the phone in her left hand and her sword in the other, pressing it against Matthew’s neck again. He doesn’t dare cry out for Dominic.
“Hello, Dominic,” she drawls, smirking up at Matthew as she twisted the sword just a little.
“Inferno,” Dominic says lowly, concern replaced instantly with hatred. “Why are you with Matthew?” he asks, although it isn’t really a question. Even down the line, Matthew can hear Dominic grinding his teeth together.
“Oh, you know,” she says with a flirtatious giggle. “I wanted to see your new friends, hang out a bit. I was back in town, I’d missed you.”
“Last time you missed me it was with a swing of your broadsword,” Dominic replied flatly. “Your problem is with me. Don’t you dare hurt Matthew.”
Inferno pouts, shaking her orange hair back over her shoulder. “But baby, that’s the fun of it!” Instantly, she moves the sword away from Matthew’s neck and to just below his collarbone, thrusting forward. The point of the blade sinks deep into Matthew’s flesh, and he screams out as she twists it.
“Inferno!” Dominic shouts down the line, and Matthew pants as she withdraws the blade with a laugh. He feels like he’s about to faint. He hates blood. “You and me, face to face. Leave him alone.”
“Come find me,” she laughs, and disconnects the call, throwing Matthew’s phone to the floor. She raises the sword again, this time to Matthew’s heart. “Your poor boyfriend doesn’t love you enough,” she imitates with heavy sarcasm, before laughing and drawing the sword back to put power behind her arm. “This was fun. We should try it again sometime,” she says, and Matthew simply hangs his head.
The lights shut off, plunging the room into darkness aside from the faint red glow of the clock on the bomb. 3:28. Matthew hears the sword clatter to the floor and tries to see through the pitch black, to no avail.
Matthew hears the stretch of the bow and the thrum of the arrow hitting its target. He smiles at those familiar sounds; he’s being rescued again.
One of the lights flickers back on, and before him is Dominic, clad in his vigilante costume (with leather trousers that leave little to the imagination) in close quarter combat with Inferno. Some of Dominic’s punches land and he takes some as well, although Matthew struggles to keep up with all the movements. Dominic jumps up onto some shelves at the side of the room, aiming an arrow for Inferno’s hand as she reaches for her sword again. She drops it with a cry, not before Dominic sends an arrow straight into her shoulder blade.
She collapses onto the floor and Dominic jumps down to stand over her, hands shaking towards him as she cries out once more and then goes limp. Matthew looks to Dominic, hoping he didn’t just kill a woman before his eyes.
Dominic, seemingly reading his mind, shakes his head. “Tranquiliser,” he says as he steps across the room to Matthew, using the point of one of his sharpened arrows to cut through the restraints around his body. “She’ll wake up just as she’s being arrested,” he says, stepping back as Matthew is freed, the brunet rubbing his arms a little and immediately pushes his glasses up with his good arm.
“That’s a bomb,” Matthew says quite dumbly, not even worried about the still-bleeding wound in his shoulder. He steps up to the console, where the timer reads 1:04.
“Of course it’s a bomb. Inferno wasn’t called that just for her hair,” Dominic says quickly, climbing up on top of the crate to open it. “Packed with explosives. Like, a fuck tonne. She could take down this whole hospital.”
“This is a really simple timer,” Matthew says, looking up at Dominic for encouragement. “I mean, I’m not an expert but I used to play with wiring like this at university, I might be able to at least freeze the timer, but I don’t know if I can--”
“I trust you,” Dominic says suddenly and with enough conviction to convince Matthew to do it.
“Please work,” Matthew whispers to himself as he fingers the different cables, trying to locate the right one. He glances at the timer and instantly regrets it. “Fuck. Please,” he prays, before he shuts his eyes and yanks his chosen cable hard.
Silence.
Matthew opens his eyes to see the timer frozen on 0:03, and to find the explosives still in one piece. “Ha!” he says, dropping the cable as he steps back from it, a grin spreading across his face.
Dominic leaps down from the box with a shout of joy, standing at Matthew’s side. “You did it!” he says, taking Matthew’s head between his gloved hands. “You saved us, and the kids, and--”
Dominic takes them both by surprise as he pulls Matthew forward and kisses him hard. Matthew whines in shock as Dominic’s mouth grins against his own, and he convinces himself to relax because how long has he been wanting this for now?
Just as he gets used to the sensation of being kissed, though, Dominic releases him, his grinning face inches from his own. “You beautiful, clever bastard!” Dominic shouts, and Matthew bursts out laughing. The shuddering action reminds him of his shoulder, though, and he winces in pain. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he wheezes, slowly falling to sit on the floor, Dominic reaching for him. “She got my shoulder.”
Dominic pokes at the bloodstained fabric around the wound, before shouting fills the room. “Shit. I gotta run. I’ll drop round later,” he says, and Matthew barely has time to acknowledge that before Dominic is gone from his sight.
He hardly believes that the last five minutes even happened, really.
Police swarm the room and one is bending over to check if Matthew’s okay, whereas the others are scooping up a drowsy Inferno and instantly putting her in handcuffs. The last thing Matthew sees before he blacks out from the pain is her bright orange hair disappearing into the darkness.
~
Matthew decides that he really, really likes pain meds.
He stands topless in front of his bathroom mirror, admiring the blemish in his reflection, the stitches that will surely become a scar. He thinks of the scars on Dominic’s chest, and how they look a bit like art, and how they both have scars now. He touches it. It doesn’t even hurt. He giggles.
He touches his lips, where he can still feel Dominic’s kiss, even though he’s really tired and not entirely convinced that he didn’t make it up. Someone knocks at his door and Matthew wonders who it could be. The nurse in the hospital had said something about resting and he was really tired, maybe he should just ignore the knocking and go to bed.
He opens the door and stares blankly at Dominic, blinking once or twice. “Hi,” he says, before he giggles. Dominic smiles, rolling his eyes slightly.
“Just how many times did you ask for pain relief?” Dominic says, taking Matthew by the shoulders and steering him back into his flat, kicking the door shut behind him.
“Squillions,” Matthew says before he giggles again. “The doctor was so cute. He looked like you, except his ears weren’t so big,” Matthew honestly says, trying to reach up to flick Dominic’s ear but he ducks away. “Oh,” Matthew says loudly.
Dominic sits Matthew down on his bed, lifting the covers and helping Matthew get in. “I haven’t fed the cat,” Matthew mumbles with a smile on his face as he leans back on the pillows. Dominic knows Matthew doesn’t have a cat and simply smiles as he tucks Matthew in, taking his glasses off gently and putting them aside. “We’ve ran out of cheese.”
“Good night, Matthew,” Dominic says clearly, realising that all the things he wanted to say about the kiss and saving Matthew weren’t going to be said tonight. As he goes to stand up, though, he hears something distinctly.
“You’re my favourite person.”
Dominic smiles widely as he kisses Matthew’s forehead, eyes now closed and breathing becoming softer. “Sweet dreams,” Dominic whispers.
Author:
ashamedbliss
Pairing: Belldom
Ratings: up to NC-17/18
Fic summary: Dominic Howard, billionaire and ex-playboy has just returned from a five year stint on a mysterious island. Matthew is his IT assistant who starts getting some very strange requests...
Feedback: appreciated like Felicity screen time
Disclaimer: much as I and many other ladies would like to own Muse, I don't. This is totally fictional, I'm not making profit, and pretty please don't steal it *bats eyelashes* IRONIC as this is basically stolen from the TV show Arrow haha oops.
Author's Note: BASICALLY I really love the TV show Arrow so I plonked in our favourite frontman and drummer, and voilà what do you mean matt's chara is a girl in the show any questions PLEASE ASK. I have written this with non-watchers in mind so hopefully everyone can enjoy. this fulfils the 'celebratory kiss' trope for my bingo card yay!
A few days later, and his window is fixed, with his flat returned to its normal level of just acceptable tidiness. Matthew is waiting outside his block of flats where Chris will pick him up, according to Dominic’s text. Yes, they were texting now. And Dominic even ends his texts with a kiss. Matthew wonders about which word of the phrase professional relationship they are tilting towards when the black BMW pulls up before him. Chris leans across and opens the front door and Matthew climbs inside.
“Matthew, right?” the driver says, and Matthew shakes his hand. “Call me Chris.”
“Call me Matt,” Matthew says, as he buckles up, the car pulling away from the curb. “So you’re Dom’s bodyguard during the day, but you moonlight as what exactly?”
Chris laughs a warm belly laugh, and he instantly strikes Matthew as the kind of guy who gets along with everyone. “A bit of extra support, really. I do some technical stuff, but it’ll be much easier with you joining our team. Plus I’m the weapons guy, and I can call in some military favours.”
“Military?” Matthew asks, genuinely intrigued. Chris nods, eyes on the road.
“A dozen or so years in the infantry, a couple of tours of Afghanistan. Medically discharged after I was shot in the shoulder and they could never take out all the shrapnel. So, of course, I went into personal security,” he says, pausing as he manoeuvres through some particularly dense traffic. Matthew notes they’re heading to the heart of the Glades. “Landed the job as Dominic’s bodyguard. He was avoiding me for the first few weeks or so until, well, the rest is history I guess,” he laughs.
“Wait, you were shot?!” Matthew asks incredulously and Chris continues to laugh.
“Yep. Wicked scar.”
“Wow,” Matthew whispers as the car pulls up outside Verdant, the nightclub Dominic had opened shortly after arriving back to Starling City. “Is Dom meeting us for midday cocktails or something?” Matthew asks as they get out of the car, smirking alongside Chris.
“Not quite. Follow me.”
Chris locks the car and leads him down the side of the club, through a fire escape into the main room, avoiding the main entrance. There are a few people milling around, but mostly bar staff restocking ready for the evening. Chris leads him to an area under the stairs, punching a code into a hidden panel and pushing a heavy door open.
Matthew quietly creeps down the metal stairs behind Chris, into a large, mostly dark room. He can hear grunting from the far end of the room, where a few shafts of stray sunlight fall. Chris flicks on some lights, and Matthew hears the heavy, industrial buzz of them before the room is illuminated.
It’s like every secret superhero lair that he’s ever dreamed of.
Matthew quickly darts over to the three screen wide computer set-up, crouching down to look at some of the hardware, some of which even his IT budget wouldn’t be able to afford for the company. He whips around, seeing the Hood’s costume elaborately displayed on a mannequin in a glass case. He sees a row of arrows lined up neatly, almost wanting to touch them then thinking again. Finally his eyes alight on perhaps the most valuable object in the room, the Hood’s prized bow. Matthew looks up to Chris, who shrugs. Gingerly, Matthew picks it up, finding that it weighs a lot less than he expected it to.
“Don’t even think about drawing that bow,” a voice rings out, and Matthew nearly drops the bloody thing. His eyes follow the voice to find Dominic suspended perhaps ten feet in the air, doing pull ups on a bar, grunting with each one. Matthew had been so distracted by all the gadgetry he hadn’t even sought out the source of the noise.
Oh, and Dominic is topless, of course. Matthew swallows dryly, able to see a few sporadic tattoos across Dominic’s sweaty chest that he hadn't noticed in the darkness of his flat. Dominic drops down to the floor, quickly striding across the room to gently take the bow from Matthew’s hands. “Dry firing ruins it. I’ll teach you one day, if you want.”
Matthew breathes in the heady scent of Dominic’s sweat as he leans across him, placing the bow back on its stand. “Sure,” he says, before he rakes his eyes over Dominic’s chest quickly. What was meant to be a brief glance at his (wonderfully defined) abs soon turned into something else entirely. “Dominic, you’re...”
His skin was littered with scars, some of which looks like knife wounds and some like burns. Matthew wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to spread his fingers across them.
Dominic turns abruptly, grabbing a t-shirt off one of the iron girders of the huge basement. “Where are those scars from?” Matthew asks.
“The island,” Dominic says in a way that means that the conversation is closed. He smiles broadly, then, but it looks a little fake on his face. “Welcome to the Foundry,” he says, spreading his arms wide. “This is our little base. I hope it’s all up to your expectations,” he says, gesturing to the seat in front of the computers. Matthew slides into it, allowing himself to settle in amongst the technology, where he belongs.
“Oh God,” Matthew says, eyebrows knitting together as he pushes his glasses up. “What is this? This program is entirely out of date,” he mutters to himself, before pulling up the system properties. “This hurts my soul,” he says dramatically, and Chris laughs from the back of the room. “This needs a huge amount of work. You should count your lucky stars I even accepted to be on your team,” Matthew says, the sarcasm in his voice not undetected.
Unknown to him, Dominic and Chris share a glance across the room. They knew they’d chosen the right guy for the job.
~
Matthew pushes his glasses up his nose before he reaches for his can of Pepsi, happily realising that there’s more in it than he’d thought there would be. It’s late at night and he’s still working on the system, days after he was first inducted to the ‘team’. Matthew smiles at that word. He’d never really been part of a team before, except that one time he was picked for football at school, but he got tackled a lot.
In retrospect, a lot of the people tackling him were on his own team.
Glancing at the clock, Matthew finishes his can of Pepsi and throws it in the bin, deciding to call it a night. He powers down the system, so very near completion but a few of the final touches require him to have a clear head, something he doesn’t have after a whole day spent looking at screens. He grabs his coat and makes his way up the metal stairs, switching the lights off as he leaves and pulling the door shut behind him.
Of course as it’s late at night, Verdant is in full swing, the nightclub full of people and the music far too loud for Matthew’s tastes. With Dominic attending some fancy function or the other at his mansion, with Chris near him at all times, Matthew had had the night to himself.
Sadly, nothing much had developed between them over the last few days. Dominic had been doing lots of pull ups, though. Matthew appreciated that, at least.
Exiting the nightclub, Matthew pulls his jacket tighter around him in the cold. He doesn’t even notice the men behind him, or the van idling a few paces in front of him. He hardly even feels the sharp blow to his head as his world goes black.
~
Matthew comes to in a basement. He blinks into harsh light and immediately tries to move, only to find his arms bound to his sides, and he himself tied to a large pipe. He tries to kick his feet out, but they’re tied too, and as he tries to open his mouth to scream he finds that that’s been taped over.
Pretty thorough, then.
A woman walks into the room, clad head to toe in leather. She shakes her big, auburn hair out behind her, and Matthew realises that she’s absolutely stunning. If only she wasn’t, you know, holding him hostage, and if only he wasn’t, you know, gay.
“Hello Matthew,” she says in a soft American accent. “I hear you’re a friend of Dominic’s.”
Matthew finds himself nodding dumbly, because he can’t do anything else. He glances around the room, trying to take it all in. Large pipes, some steam being released into vents. Definitely a basement. The woman puts her left hand on her hip, the right hidden behind her back.
“Well. I’m a friend of Dominic’s too. A very, very old friend,” she drawls, and Matthew watches with wide eyes. It’s almost as if she’s performing for him, as if she’s had this planned for a long time. “But he betrayed me. Do you know where he is?”
Matthew shakes his head vigorously, even though he knows exactly where Dominic is, unless he decided to go on a spontaneous vigilante adventure. Matthew, now that he’s in on the secret, has learnt that Dominic spends the best part of his working day sneaking off to fight bad guys. The woman steps forward and rips the tape from Matthew’s mouth, pain flaring across his face. He hears a noise, and realises it’s himself, crying out.
“Tell me,” she orders.
“I don’t know!” Matthew shrieks in an embarrassingly high pitch. “I don’t know,” he lies, protecting Dominic the only way he can. He may not be strong, or good with weapons, or even all that brave, but he’s bloody loyal.
The woman moves, and within a flash, the point of a sword is pressed up against the top of Matthew’s neck.
“Do you know what this is, Matthew?” she purrs. “This is a foil. Not just any foil, though. This one is made of titanium, which means it only needs a little bit of pressure to be applied...” she presses upwards slightly and Matthew feels the blood dribble down his neck. “For me to be able to slice you from head to toe. So. Tell me where Dominic is.”
“I really don’t know,” he whimpers, screwing his eyes shut and anticipating death. When she sighs lightly, he cracks them open again. She lowers the sword and turns behind her, turning on a light that illuminates a huge crate fixed with a timer.
A bomb.
“Do you know where we are, Matthew? Don’t answer that,” she says, throwing her head back with a false laugh. “You couldn’t even tell me something you actually know. We are currently under the children’s hospital, Matthew. Yes. This is a bomb.”
Matthew’s eyes dart all over the wires, the electronics. He watches the timer tick down from 5:04 to 5:03 to 5:02 as he analyses it all. It looks like a simple timer, he presumes. The woman stands in front of him again, breaking his line of sight with the bomb.
“I don’t really care if you tell me where Dominic is or not. I know where he lives, I know where he works. I’ll check there anyway. I just thought you might’ve been a bit more helpful. Fucking loyal boyfriends. If you don’t tell me, I leave you here to explode, along with all the poor children in the ten stories above us.”
She smiles a wicked smile and opens her mouth to say something else, just as Matthew’s phone begins to ring in his pocket, a Queen song singing out in the room. Matthew winces as a grin spreads across the woman’s face. She retrieves it from his pocket deftly, answering the call and putting it on loudspeaker.
“Matthew? Did you get home okay?”
The woman balances the phone in her left hand and her sword in the other, pressing it against Matthew’s neck again. He doesn’t dare cry out for Dominic.
“Hello, Dominic,” she drawls, smirking up at Matthew as she twisted the sword just a little.
“Inferno,” Dominic says lowly, concern replaced instantly with hatred. “Why are you with Matthew?” he asks, although it isn’t really a question. Even down the line, Matthew can hear Dominic grinding his teeth together.
“Oh, you know,” she says with a flirtatious giggle. “I wanted to see your new friends, hang out a bit. I was back in town, I’d missed you.”
“Last time you missed me it was with a swing of your broadsword,” Dominic replied flatly. “Your problem is with me. Don’t you dare hurt Matthew.”
Inferno pouts, shaking her orange hair back over her shoulder. “But baby, that’s the fun of it!” Instantly, she moves the sword away from Matthew’s neck and to just below his collarbone, thrusting forward. The point of the blade sinks deep into Matthew’s flesh, and he screams out as she twists it.
“Inferno!” Dominic shouts down the line, and Matthew pants as she withdraws the blade with a laugh. He feels like he’s about to faint. He hates blood. “You and me, face to face. Leave him alone.”
“Come find me,” she laughs, and disconnects the call, throwing Matthew’s phone to the floor. She raises the sword again, this time to Matthew’s heart. “Your poor boyfriend doesn’t love you enough,” she imitates with heavy sarcasm, before laughing and drawing the sword back to put power behind her arm. “This was fun. We should try it again sometime,” she says, and Matthew simply hangs his head.
The lights shut off, plunging the room into darkness aside from the faint red glow of the clock on the bomb. 3:28. Matthew hears the sword clatter to the floor and tries to see through the pitch black, to no avail.
Matthew hears the stretch of the bow and the thrum of the arrow hitting its target. He smiles at those familiar sounds; he’s being rescued again.
One of the lights flickers back on, and before him is Dominic, clad in his vigilante costume (with leather trousers that leave little to the imagination) in close quarter combat with Inferno. Some of Dominic’s punches land and he takes some as well, although Matthew struggles to keep up with all the movements. Dominic jumps up onto some shelves at the side of the room, aiming an arrow for Inferno’s hand as she reaches for her sword again. She drops it with a cry, not before Dominic sends an arrow straight into her shoulder blade.
She collapses onto the floor and Dominic jumps down to stand over her, hands shaking towards him as she cries out once more and then goes limp. Matthew looks to Dominic, hoping he didn’t just kill a woman before his eyes.
Dominic, seemingly reading his mind, shakes his head. “Tranquiliser,” he says as he steps across the room to Matthew, using the point of one of his sharpened arrows to cut through the restraints around his body. “She’ll wake up just as she’s being arrested,” he says, stepping back as Matthew is freed, the brunet rubbing his arms a little and immediately pushes his glasses up with his good arm.
“That’s a bomb,” Matthew says quite dumbly, not even worried about the still-bleeding wound in his shoulder. He steps up to the console, where the timer reads 1:04.
“Of course it’s a bomb. Inferno wasn’t called that just for her hair,” Dominic says quickly, climbing up on top of the crate to open it. “Packed with explosives. Like, a fuck tonne. She could take down this whole hospital.”
“This is a really simple timer,” Matthew says, looking up at Dominic for encouragement. “I mean, I’m not an expert but I used to play with wiring like this at university, I might be able to at least freeze the timer, but I don’t know if I can--”
“I trust you,” Dominic says suddenly and with enough conviction to convince Matthew to do it.
“Please work,” Matthew whispers to himself as he fingers the different cables, trying to locate the right one. He glances at the timer and instantly regrets it. “Fuck. Please,” he prays, before he shuts his eyes and yanks his chosen cable hard.
Silence.
Matthew opens his eyes to see the timer frozen on 0:03, and to find the explosives still in one piece. “Ha!” he says, dropping the cable as he steps back from it, a grin spreading across his face.
Dominic leaps down from the box with a shout of joy, standing at Matthew’s side. “You did it!” he says, taking Matthew’s head between his gloved hands. “You saved us, and the kids, and--”
Dominic takes them both by surprise as he pulls Matthew forward and kisses him hard. Matthew whines in shock as Dominic’s mouth grins against his own, and he convinces himself to relax because how long has he been wanting this for now?
Just as he gets used to the sensation of being kissed, though, Dominic releases him, his grinning face inches from his own. “You beautiful, clever bastard!” Dominic shouts, and Matthew bursts out laughing. The shuddering action reminds him of his shoulder, though, and he winces in pain. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he wheezes, slowly falling to sit on the floor, Dominic reaching for him. “She got my shoulder.”
Dominic pokes at the bloodstained fabric around the wound, before shouting fills the room. “Shit. I gotta run. I’ll drop round later,” he says, and Matthew barely has time to acknowledge that before Dominic is gone from his sight.
He hardly believes that the last five minutes even happened, really.
Police swarm the room and one is bending over to check if Matthew’s okay, whereas the others are scooping up a drowsy Inferno and instantly putting her in handcuffs. The last thing Matthew sees before he blacks out from the pain is her bright orange hair disappearing into the darkness.
~
Matthew decides that he really, really likes pain meds.
He stands topless in front of his bathroom mirror, admiring the blemish in his reflection, the stitches that will surely become a scar. He thinks of the scars on Dominic’s chest, and how they look a bit like art, and how they both have scars now. He touches it. It doesn’t even hurt. He giggles.
He touches his lips, where he can still feel Dominic’s kiss, even though he’s really tired and not entirely convinced that he didn’t make it up. Someone knocks at his door and Matthew wonders who it could be. The nurse in the hospital had said something about resting and he was really tired, maybe he should just ignore the knocking and go to bed.
He opens the door and stares blankly at Dominic, blinking once or twice. “Hi,” he says, before he giggles. Dominic smiles, rolling his eyes slightly.
“Just how many times did you ask for pain relief?” Dominic says, taking Matthew by the shoulders and steering him back into his flat, kicking the door shut behind him.
“Squillions,” Matthew says before he giggles again. “The doctor was so cute. He looked like you, except his ears weren’t so big,” Matthew honestly says, trying to reach up to flick Dominic’s ear but he ducks away. “Oh,” Matthew says loudly.
Dominic sits Matthew down on his bed, lifting the covers and helping Matthew get in. “I haven’t fed the cat,” Matthew mumbles with a smile on his face as he leans back on the pillows. Dominic knows Matthew doesn’t have a cat and simply smiles as he tucks Matthew in, taking his glasses off gently and putting them aside. “We’ve ran out of cheese.”
“Good night, Matthew,” Dominic says clearly, realising that all the things he wanted to say about the kiss and saving Matthew weren’t going to be said tonight. As he goes to stand up, though, he hears something distinctly.
“You’re my favourite person.”
Dominic smiles widely as he kisses Matthew’s forehead, eyes now closed and breathing becoming softer. “Sweet dreams,” Dominic whispers.