Save As by Poisontaster, Commentary by Frostian, 1/3
Title: Save As
Author: poisontaster
Fandom: Die Hard
Commentator: frostian
I like the Die Hard series. Went to see all of them on the big screen, even #3. I'm also a big fan of poisontaster's writing so when the opportunity arose I immediately nabbed the chance to do a commentary on Save As. Enough with the blabbing and on with the commentary!
December 26
"Hey. Turn on the game, will ya?"
Regular sex has been good for Matt.
Regular sex has been so good for Matt that the generalized cloud of anxiety that's been plaguing him has almost completely vanished, leaving him feeling almost-almost-like the happy-go-lucky guy he was before the fire sale. And here we go. Poisontaster has the awesome habit of dropping her readers into the middle of the characters’ lives, which gives the illusion that we’re voyeurs and not readers. This maneuver could jar some people but I’m not one of them so I’m quite happy to go along for the ride, watching Poisontaster piece together the puzzle bit by bit. It’s an act of faith in her part as much as it is for the readers, and that’s rare enough of a practice so I’m grateful for it.
Regular sex has, in fact, been so good to him that he doesn't even blink at McClane's request to turn on football, probably Matt's least favorite activity ever, next to maybe boxing. Because he, ladies and gentlemen, has not only been spectacularly laid, he also has had his brain sucked out through his dick in the shower about ten minutes before by none other than Detective John McClane, hard-boiled New York City cop himself. As humorous as this particular description is, it also introduces the startling fact that John’s knocking boots with a guy, and seems quite capable of handling gay sex as he is with armed psychos.
"What's the score?" McClane shouts from the bathroom, finishing up his own shower.
"Uh…" Guys in burgundy and guys in white are spread out across the screen. Matt has no earthly idea which is which. "Pru is winning by seven?"
John laughs. "Purdue," he corrects. "Purdue is winning by seven."
Matt rolls his eyes but doesn't have any time to come up with a response because there's a swift, perfunctory knock on the apartment door and then the rattle of keys. Matt prides himself on being a pretty quick thinker under pressure, at least when guns aren't involved, but he sits there, totally tharn on John's couch while the door opens and Lucy-holy Christ, Lucy-breezes in, balancing some gift-wrapped boxes in one arm.
"Dad! Don't shoot, it's Lucy," she says, unable to see Matt over her armful of presents. "I'm sorry I didn't call but my cell battery died and I…" She turns to put the boxes down on John's breakfast bar and spots Matt still sitting completely frozen on the couch. And the cozy domestic scene just went to hell with bells on, laughing madly.
"Um. Lucy, hey." Matt manages a weak wave, thanking whatever patron saint watches over dumb ass hackers that he's at least fully clothed. Half an hour earlier and she'd have gotten the full Monty, oh Jesus.
Is this what a heart attack feels like? he wonders, racking his brain frantically for something better, smarter…hell, anything that he can say to explain what he's doing in John's apartment, chilling on John's couch, dick freshly sucked, ass pleasantly reamed. By John. I bet this is. I bet this is exactly what a heart attack feels like.
"Matt?" Lucy tugs her hat from her hair, sprinkling melting snow onto the shoulders of her coat. She's frowning, but it's not the Glen Close going for the kitchen knives kind of frown, so that's something.
"Matt, what are you doing here?"
"Matt, did you say…?" John's voice gains in volume as he comes from the bathroom.
Head still frozen face forward, Matt can't look, but he's praying-and he's an atheist-praying: For the love of God, let him be clothed. Please. I know I don't believe in you, but if there's any kind of giant voice in the sky looking out for harmless little guys like me, let John at least have his skivvies on, please. The most interesting thing here is the fact that Matt believes he’s harmless, when, in actual truth the dude’s capable of so much damage he’s probably permanently fixed on the radars of CIA, FBI, NSA, and host of other intelligence communities.
"Lucy." John's voice sounds…weird is the best adjective Matt can come up with. Matt finally breaks his paralysis enough to turn his head and oh, man, thank you. John is shirtless, but he's wearing his jeans and Matt is totally not looking at the last of the shower water rippling down John's cut abs, he is totally not doing that, thank you, no. Men and sex: they could be looking at death in the face and sex would still win the lion's share of attention. Matt looks away, heart hammering so hard in his chest he feels lightheaded even sitting down. "What're you doing here, honey?"
"Forget about me, what are you doing here, Matt?" Lucy doesn't sound mad exactly, but there's a definite edge to her voice and when Matt can bring himself to look back at her, her mouth is set in a line that looks remarkably like John's.
Matt opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Not even air.
"Matt and me have been hanging out," John cuts in, with more smoothness than Matt thought he was capable of. "I make him go to the gym every once in a while and he shows me how to use the computer for more than looking up porn."
Lucy's face wrinkles. "Dad. Ew." And the switch-n-bait works! For now.
"Hey." John comes forward, arms held out. "Don't I even get a hug?"
"Yeah, of course." Lucy steps into John's arms and puts her head on his shoulder, eyes closing as he squeezes her tightly. Matt's chest aches rottenly at the sight, feeling like he's seeing something he has no right to, squirmy and out of place. "Merry Christmas, Daddy." Again, we see Matt’s insecurities firmly in place. The reader has to wonder if this is purely on Matt’s part or if John has something to do with it. And, if both are responsible for Matt’s insecurities - then how could it bypass them for so long?
***
"Dad, can I talk to you for a minute?" After the hug, Lucy offers John significant eyebrows and grabs his arm to tow him further back into the apartment near the bathroom.
"Lucy?" John's stuck somewhere around amused though he's not sure if it's more from Matt's panicky discomfort or Lucy's wild-eyed confusion.
Lucy's lips flare and then tuck flat. "I just. What's he even doing here? Really?"
John shrugs, not for one second considering telling the truth. "There's no big conspiracy here, kiddo, sorry to disappoint." He’s not outright lying but he’s doing smoke and mirrors routine. Of course, if he did just lie it probably would’ve benefited him more as the conversation would have ended a lot earlier.
Lucy huffs and shifts on her toes, glancing anxiously back toward the living room. She lowers her voice again. "Okay, but it's weird, right? Don't you think it's weird? You hardly know each other."
John considers how well he knows Matt. He knows Matt will compulsively pick all the vegetables from his Chinese, laying them in a neat semicircle around the rim of his plate, eyebrows furrowed in the same frown of concentration he gets when he writes code or whatever you call it. He knows Matt still has nightmares, far more often than he admits to, whimpering in his sleep and waking with cramping phantom pain in his leg. He knows the scar embarrasses Matt, watches him try to casually hide it when he's naked. He knows the fruity rose tattoo that curls around Matt's navel that Matt should probably hide. Hmmm … that’s kinda sexy in a jailbait emo!boy way. He knows Matt's cock, soft and hard; knows how Matt likes it to be touched, held, sucked. John knows to press his fingers into Matt's bruises when they fuck and the stifled, breaking sounds he makes when he comes. Again, John, for all his testosterone driven behavior, has little problem appreciating a male lover. Of course, he’s still John McClane so his observations encompasses areas most normal folks wouldn't consider.
"Plus, you're old." Here’s a beauty. This particular pairing, a slash pairing specifically, deals not with not just the fact that there’s a gay relationship but that one of the biggest obstacles in that relationship is age, which is rare enough of a problem that I can’t remember the last time I've read another slash story that dealt with it to a great extent.
John smiles. "Gee, thanks, Lucy."
Embarrassment peeks through her puzzled irritation in the way she sighs. "You know what I mean. Matt's like… my age."
"I think he's still got a couple years on you," John says absently, craning down the hallway for any sight of Matt.
Lucy sighs and rolls her eyes, stepping into his vision again. "Practically the same age. Tons younger than your Stone Age. I just… I'm worried that he's pretending to like you-to be friends with you-to get in good with me."
John puts a hand on her shoulder. "Honey, no one in their right mind would think the way to you goes through me."
Lucy laughs. "Okay, yeah. That's true." Then her expression turns serious again. "I just worry sometimes that Matt's not in his right mind." Lucy’s far from stupid, so her observation here should have set off a warning bell in John’s head. Her huge eyes fix on him. "And I don't want you to get hurt."
John flushes hot with warmth, feeling it all the way to his bones. His relationship with his kids isn't what he'd like it to be, isn't what it should be, but John loves Lucy and Jack like no one else on the planet and it's easy for him to forget they might give a shit about what happens to him too.
"He's a kid," John tells her gently-though not without some misgivings. "I think I can handle it."
Another roll of Lucy's eyes but it's mild, easy. "Oh, Dad." Her tone reminds him so much of Holly he can't stand it. "I know you can. I'm…. I'm being silly. I know it. I think it's good. You spend too much time by yourself anyway and if Matt talks to you, feels safe with you…" She crosses her arms like she's cold. "God knows he won't talk to anyone else."
Lucy's expression is shadowed but this time John gets the distinct impression it's not for him. He doesn't get the chance to follow up, though, because Matt clears his throat loudly and steps into the hallway. He's fully dressed, down to his puffy coat and knit cap. John wants to smooth the messy ends out of Matt's eyes. "I…" Matt points over his shoulder in the direction of the door. "I'm getting ready to head out." His tone is mild, unreadable, but John doesn't need to be a fucking mind reader to see what's going on here.
"What? No, hey, Matt…" Lucy looks flustered now, a hectic, blotchy blush rising in her already cold-reddened cheeks.
"Bullshit." John brushes past Lucy to snatch the hat from Matt's head, messing up his hair more. John wants to wrap his fingers in it, pull it back, jerk Matt's head back so he can mark up that long, white neck. Instead, he tosses the hat into Matt's face, making the kid sputter. "You brought that gigantic turkey into my house. You're not sticking me with it. I'll burn this place down."
Lucy is looking from him to Matt and for one heart-stopping second, John thinks she's figured it all out, though hell if he knows how, since he hasn't figured it all out himself. "He will, you know," Lucy interjects helpfully instead, coming to John's side. "Besides, you can't go. I just got here and I haven't even heard about your latest Warcraft exploits. Did you ever advance that Hoarde druid?"
John has no fucking idea what Lucy's talking about but it seems to do the trick as Matt brightens up right away: "Aw, man, I had to stop playing him. I started playing this rogue instead and she's really into leather working, you know…?" Another big-ass problem, John’s a friggin’ Luddite and Matt isn’t. So, aside from the secret gay relationship, we have the issues of age and this to deal with. It’s already obvious these two are going to have a giant reality check handed to them.
Between the two of them, they get Matt out of his coat and into the kitchen where he puts John to work cleaning goop out of the inside of the bird and Lucy chopping up vegetables. It's oddly comfortable and John can almost fool himself into believing everything's five by five.
Matt looks at him over Lucy's bent head, something in his expression that John flat-out can't read.
Almost.
***
"Well, that was an adventure." Once Lucy's gone, John drops heavily onto the couch next to Matt, arm curving around Matt's back.
"Yeah." Matt's eyes are closed and he resists the pull of John's fingers trying to urge him to lean into John's side. He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He felt fine while Lucy was here. Well… as fine as it can be when you're fucking your sorta-ex's dad on the sly. But now she's gone and the quiet has resettled on the small apartment and Matt feels out of sorts and itchy in his skin.
"What's wrong?"
"What?" Matt lifts his head and opens his eyes, focusing on John. "Nothing, nothing."
John nods slowly, but he doesn't look satisfied with that answer.
"Hey." Matt holds out his hand. "Good looking out on the whole Lucy situation, by the way. Man, that could've been a real disaster." Matt hates his voice. It sounds too loud, too phony-cheerful and wavery as a saw blade. Like this last bit. I can perfectly imagine how Matt sounds.
John's eyes don't change, watchful as a hawk's on Matt's face and Matt feels himself start to flush.
"Yeah," John agrees in that deadpan monotone that doesn't tell Matt anything. "A real disaster."
Matt rakes a hand through his hair. It's getting too long, even for him. "I'm tired. I'm gonna… I'm gonna get some sleep."
"You need me to tuck you in?" John's hand settles on Matt's thigh, gently kneading and Matt knows John's being funny and what passes for flirtatious for a New York cop, but there's still that edge in his voice, the one that makes Matt a little sink-stomached and simultaneously, kind of turned on.
He just doesn't know if he wants John touching him at all right now. Matt lurches up from the couch, head throbbing leadenly. "No," he says, a little too quickly. "I'm good, just… tired. I really just want to sleep," he says apologetically.
John settles back on the couch. "Yeah, sure."
Matt hesitates in the bedroom doorway, his fingers brushing the jamb. "You coming?"
"In a little bit."
"Oh. Okay." He's not disappointed. He's really not. He doesn't know what he is, except exhausted.
Definitely time for bed.
***
December 27
Matt didn't expect to fall asleep as quickly or as deeply as he does. His track record for sleeping through the night is shot, even if it's just a half-rise through the layers of consciousness to recognize where he is and John's slack body snoring quietly beside him. When he opens his eyes to the pressure of John's weight hitting the mattress, though, weak fingers of daylight are peeking through the cheap shades.
John peels the blanket back and the chill hits Matt's shoulders, making him whimper and turn his face into the pillow, trying to huddle deeper. John laughs quietly and then buries his face in the nape of Matt's neck, pressing against Matt's back, almost as good as the blanket.
"You j'st now c'ming to bed?" John trails warm, open-mouthed kisses down Matt's neck, his spine, and Matt gives up any hope of getting back to sleep. Doesn't mean he's not going to fight it tooth and nail, though.
"Yeah. Fell asleep on the couch." One callused hand curves around Matt's naked side, squeezing lightly before it pushes under the waistband of his shorts to palm his hip. "You still mad?"
Huh? Matt starts to turn over, has to wait for John to untangle his hand from his boxers and slide back enough to give him the space to roll. "I'm not... I wasn't mad."
"Mmmhmm." The corner of John's mouth curves up, a half-smile now as familiar as the hands tugging Matt's underwear from his hips.
"It's just. You know. With Lucy stopping by and all..." Matt lifts up helpfully, kicking his boxers away as John drags them down his legs. "Whew! That was crazy. Wasn't that crazy?"
"Matt." John wraps his fingers around Matt's cock, stroking with a firmness that makes Matt's toes curl. "I really don't want to talk about Lucy right now." Dude, I don’t want to read about Lucy right now!
"Oh. Heh." Matt's nervous chuckle deepens into a moan when John's thumb slips over the head of his cock on the upstroke and his legs slide restlessly on the sheets. "Yeah. Oh."
"On your back. Roll on your back."
Matt can't seem to remember what his kinks were before John McClane-though surely he had to have some-but these days, a sharply snapped order in that low, deadly-serious voice and John's big, hard hands holding him down... yeah. That right there. Matt isn't even remotely sleepy anymore, but he feels awake in this drugged, soporific way, pliant and compliant as John pushes him onto his back, pinning him there with one hand and a lot of weight on his shoulder. Without missing a stroke or losing a bit of his crooked smirk, John rises and nudges his knees between Matt's, pushing them apart.
Matt lifts his head and looks down his body to look at John's hand wrapped around him, moving faster now, harder. He follows it up the corded, bunched line of John's arm-laddered in fine, pale scars-to his shoulder, smooth skin marred by knurled scar tissue the size of Matt's palm. The older scar-knife, John had explained, without further illumination-is as silvery smooth as the ones on John's arms, but the star pucker of the gunshot wound is still tenderly red, even after nearly two years. Matt sometimes buries his face there, puts his mouth where the bullet went in and swears the skin is that tiny bit warmer there than anywhere else on John's body. He's done extensive research. I like Matt a lot here; only a nerd of his caliber could be both so sweet and so factual.
"Matt. Don't do that. Look at me. Look me in my eyes."
John's voice calls Matt out of his head; Matt looks up into John's face, still crumpled with sleep and rough with graying stubble. Gullied sun and smile lines lead Matt into the calmest, steadiest eyes he's ever seen. Reaching up isn't conscious; Matt isn't aware of his hand moving until John's ribs are under his fingers, the regular bellow of John's breath vibrating against his palm. And still John jerks him with relentless intensity, liquefying Matt's spine and making his thighs shake in helpless trembles.
At Matt's touch, John's face tightens for a moment as if in pain-a reaction Matt's familiar enough with now to know it's no such thing-and then his breath blows out and he crushes his mouth against Matt's. Matt moans into it, fumbling his hand down the surprisingly soft skin of John's side to the rocky outcrop of his hip and then in, seeking the heat and heft of John's cock.
Matt hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about his future. There was always so much now to worry about. But in what thoughts he'd had he'd never imagined this; slow, molten heat and want-wanting so much-from a man old enough to be his father, a man nothing like he thought he could or should want. And here we see Matt’s quite aware of two of the three problems: age and common ground.
John angles his hip away. Just a little. Just enough to make his desire known: No. Don't touch. At the same time, he pushes Matt's knees wider with his own, making him tight, taut, and more than halfway to breaking and just begging for it.
"John," he says, tearing his mouth away with a wet sound. He's close and his breath pants out of him in little moans. John hasn't even reached for the lube yet, the condoms. "John... I'm going to...ah come..."
"Damn right you are," John agrees breathlessly, with a hint of a grin, and Matt gives up the fight with a groan, head flopping back on the pillow.
When Matt is really close, John slips down his body with sudden, deadly speed. It hardly takes more than the touch of John's mouth, the hot wet curl of his tongue, for Matt to seize, orgasm lifting him up and slamming him down in hard pulses of yes, yes, yes.
By the time Matt starts to come down, John is pressing him deeper into the mattress with that one hand, jerking himself in short, brutal strokes.
"Oh, Christ, John." Matt's voice comes out weaker than he means it to but his whole body feels watery and soft, even as his spent cock twitches hard. John makes a noise, head tilting down toward Matt's until their foreheads grind together. Matt wishes he hadn't come yet.
"John," he says again, wrecked. Then, stronger: "Come on, McClane." He reaches for John's cock again, John's frantically pistoning hand. His shoulder aches from the full pressure of John's weight and he barely manages to run his fingers over the wet, pearling head before John cries out and comes, hot spurts that stripe Matt's belly, his pubes, his already come-filthy cock.
Oh, God, Matt wishes he hadn't come already.
John collapses-mercifully-to the side, groping frantically on the nightstand for a tissue. Matt doesn't understand until John spits into it and then smacks his lips and tongue distastefully.
"Don't think I'm ever getting used to the taste of that," John complains, but his face is still slack and softened with orgasm and he doesn't sound nearly as tough as he probably thinks he does. Matt's laugh comes up like bubbles of carbonation, startling even him, and he reaches for John again, this time to kiss him, licking the flavor of his own come out of John's mouth.
Nah. Definitely not mad. Sex is not a cure-all, but it does take the edge off of things.
***
Matt is woken up the second time by his cell phone, shrilling somewhere from the vicinity of the foot of the bed. He used to have different ring tones for each of his handful of different friends, but after all his belongings blew up-and ninety percent of his friends and contacts vanished into the woodwork before he could say 'FBI'-those kinds of niceties seemed less important.
Head half-buried under the pillow, Matt whines pitiably...but the bed is empty. Again. There's no one to take pity on him. Matt groans and reverses direction, wriggling under the blanket until he comes out at the foot, groping for his discarded jeans. There aren't that many people that call him anymore and his hair is hanging in his eyes, so he just thumbs it on. "Um. Hello? This is Matt."
"Matt? Hey. It's Lucy." Of course, once the sexual bliss is over, reality does have a way of taking a throttle-hold!
The hand Matt's using to support himself slips out from underneath him. Matt slide-falls out of bed with a squawk, though he miraculously manages to keep hold of his cell. "Oh. Hey, Lucy, hi."
"Are you all right?" Oh, let’s count the ways Matt will NEVER answer this question truthfully!
"What? Yeah, sure. Fine, fine." Matt scrapes himself up to sitting position and tries to ignore his illogical impulse to cover his crotch with the blanket. Then he does it anyway. "What's going on?"
"You're still in New York, right? You think you have time to meet me for coffee?" The thing about Lucy is that-rocky relationship with John aside-she is very much John McClane's daughter. Which means things that sound like questions generally aren't; they're thinly veiled threats. The problem is that with John, it's fucking sexy and with Lucy it's just fucking scary. Not that John can't be scary, too; Matt's just kind of screwed up on that score. Pure Matt; he may not be grounded the way John is but he is definitely plugged into real life. Especially if his neck is on the line.
"Um. Coffee? Sure. Okay." Now that his heartbeat is slowing to something like normal, he can hear John in the shower, voice raised in a surprisingly good rendition of "Swinging on a Star". "When? Where?"
She gives him an address on 5th Avenue. "How about an hour?"
The shower shuts off and a moment later, John appears in the doorway in nothing but a fraying towel slung low on his hips, shining up his bald head with another. Matt licks his lips. "Better make it an hour and a half." Let’s face it, sex and men, the twain shall be cleaved forever and ever.
***
"Oh, Matt, hi!" Lucy gives him a kiss on the cheek and a hug made awkward by her messenger bag and the foam cup in her hand. "Thanks for meeting me."
"Yeah, sure, hey." Matt pats her on the shoulder just as awkwardly, even though his hands are empty. Other than last night, he hasn't spoken to Lucy since... Hell, what's the word for it, even? Calling an amicable parting of the ways-after a handful of dates that hadn't gone much of anywhere-a 'break-up' seemed like an insult to good break-ups everywhere. "What's going on?"
Lucy rolls her eyes. "Whoo, boy, what isn't?" Someone abandons a nearby table and Lucy slides smoothly into the vacated seat, gesturing Matt to join her. "My mom's in D.C. getting driven crazy by my grandmother, she's driving Jack crazy-Jack's my brother-and, of course, I'm the one that's got to hear about it all. And then my friend Judy-the one I'm staying with over break? She's having all this drama with her boyfriend Yusef and it's just..." Lucy whistles and rolls her eyes again, untangling her scarf from around her neck. "Crazy." Poor Lucy, she’s not having an easy time of it either. Being a McClane can’t be a smooth ride, and having John McClane as her father would try the patience of a saint. Add in her mother and you got a kid primed for a long ‘rest’ in a private institution.
Matt doesn't know how to respond to that in the slightest, so he settles for smiling politely, nodding and trying to catch the harried wait-dude's eye. He needs a stiff caffeine injection to get through this. When he finally manages, through frantic semaphore, to indicate his desire for coffee, he looks back at Lucy only to find her smiling ruefully at him.
"I'm sorry. You didn't want to know all that."
Matt shrugs. "No," he avers vaguely, "it's fine."
Lucy laughs. "You should see your face! No...but. That wasn't why I asked you to meet me." She looks down, stroking the lid of her cup with one fingertip. Her plum-colored nail polish is chipped.
"Yeah, okay, sure." Matt wipes his palms on the thighs of his jeans. The wait-dude suddenly slams down Matt's coffee and an enormous cinnamon roll gooey with icing that Matt doesn't remember ordering. Okay, slam is probably overstating it, but it makes Matt jump anyway. He looks up in time to see the guy wink at him and smile. Oh. "Thanks," he mutters into his first sip of liquid nirvana, wondering if the heat in his face means he's blushing.
"Wow, what was that about?" Lucy makes wide eyes and laughs. Not in a mean way, but as though it's the height of hilarity that the waiter might think Matt's gay or even interested.
Hilarious.
Matt hums noncommittally into his coffee and resolutely does not say: "Well, Lucy, it would seem that getting fucked up, down and sideways by your dad has upped my queer quotient." Because that would be bad. But so entertaining. Could you imagine the price of real estate on Fifth Avenue if there was a crater the size of a football stadium smack dab in the middle?
The cinnamon roll is really good, though.
"Anyway." Lucy shakes herself, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. It's almost the same color as John's, though Matt wouldn't know that if he hadn't found pictures of John and his ex, Holly, hidden away in a box of old kitchenware that John inherited in the divorce. “You said last night that you're moving up here to NYC? Seriously?”
Matt shrugs, awkwardly trying to get out of his jacket without putting anyone's eye out, including his own. It seems inordinately warm, all of a sudden. “That's the plan.”
Lucy nods, but it's like she's listening to music in the car, hearing without really listening. In all likelihood a habit she got from her dad, which probably drives her mother batshit insane. “Cool, cool. So I guess you and my dad will be hanging out more often then, huh?”
Matt tenses and then shifts his weight on the chair. Lucy, mercifully, is looking down at her coffee and doesn't see him squirm. “Um. Yeah, I guess so. I hadn't thought about it, really.”
Lies. All lies.
The look Lucy slants up at him says that maybe she knows it's a lie. Or maybe not. "Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you. Warn you."
"Warn me?" Matt repeats, not sure where she's going with that. He'd really tried to be on his very best platonic geek behavior while Lucy was there but that didn't mean she hadn't sniffed them out anyway. Which is why he'd wanted to leave in the first place, even though a drive back down to Camden on the day after Christmas sounded like the stuff of nightmares. But it was infinitely preferable to sitting in an overcrowded and overpriced cafe in Brooklyn getting told off by your almost-ex: stay away from my father.
The corner of Lucy's mouth curves down, a not quite sad line. Her voice is almost sad, though, when she says, "Look, I love my dad, okay? We don't always see eye to eye on stuff and he can drive me crazy sometimes-a lot of the time-but I love my dad." The squareness of her gaze doesn't leave any room for doubt. Not that Matt has any. Only the people you love can drive you that crazy. And Matt had witnessed firsthand how screwed-up the relationship between Lucy and John could become when the fire sale erupted and Lucy was taken hostage.
Not that Matt has a whole lot of experience with that. But that doesn’t mean Matt isn’t a little jealous.
Matt nods. "Yeah, Lucy. Sure. Of course."
"Okay. But. My dad?" Lucy sighs, tapping her cup lid again. "You gotta understand. My parents' marriage lasted several years past its shelf life because of my dad the hero." She laughs again, but humorlessly. "Don't get me wrong. My dad... He's great at the hero thing. My dad is fucking awesome at the hero thing." Lucy's mouth does this thing where it looks like she can't make up her mind whether to smile or frown and she shrugs one shoulder in a bad attempt to look careless. "It's just everything else he kind of sucks at."
The melting sweetness of the cinnamon bun turns thick and sour, effectively gluing Matt's mouth shut.
"And I know..." Lucy sighs again, sitting back in her chair and looking with Matt with old, knowing eyes. "Look, Matt, I'm glad you and my dad are friends, I really am..." There's no irony or special tone to Lucy's voice when she says 'friend', a realization that makes Matt almost dizzy. "My dad... He's been lonely for a long time. A long time. And you-"
It probably shouldn't startle Matt when Lucy reaches across the table to take his hand, but it does and he's hard pressed not to flinch away. He can tell Lucy notices, though, by the way her eyes soften at him. It's annoying as much as it's embarrassing and either way, it turns his face to flame again. "I just don't want you to get hurt," Lucy says finally.
Matt tugs his hand from hers and slurps enough coffee to unstick his mouth. "Lucy-"
Lucy shakes her head, hair tumbling down into her face again. "I know things didn't work out with us, Matt. And I won't lie; it stung some when you just...dumped me like that."
"I didn't dump you," Matt protests, turning his hand up.
"Oh, my God, you totally dumped me, Matt." Though her tone is outraged, Lucy's smiling and a lot more warmly than before. "But that's okay, you know? You've got...stuff...going on. Did you ever see Dr. Larrabee again?"
"No." It comes out curt, hard-a lot like John says it, now that he thinks about it-and immediately, Matt tries to backpedal. "I mean, no, I'm fine, Lucy. I don't... I'm fine. I'm doing really good, actually." He can't tell her why he's good, of course, but that doesn't make it any less true. He is doing good. Better than he thought he could.
"That's great, Matt! Really." It sounds truthful, an effortless sincerity that must come from Holly, since it definitely didn't come from John. Not to mention the fact that it would take a miracle to have a conversation with John on such an intimate topic.
Matt's conscious of a desire to ask Lucy about her-about Holly, about John's wife and Matt's competition and rival, even now. Back in the beginning, he'd looked it all up; Nakatomi Plaza, Hans Gruber, the whole fiasco at Dulles with Esperanza, Simon Gruber and his riddled bait-and-switch-everything. Everything he could lay his hands on, everything he could find, trying to figure out John fucking McClane. It was both ironic and irritating, having his only sources of information come from the exaggerations and lies of mainstream media, but it's not like he could ask John, for obvious reasons. The question is whose reasons are these? Is it from Matt’s own guesswork or from John’s reluctance to talk about what happened with the Grubers, the multi-hostage situation at Dulles, or Holly? And given how he and Lucy had ended up, it just seemed tacky to look her up for the sole purpose of grilling her for information.
And now this.
"I mean...you do. You look great," Lucy goes on, catching his wrist again. "You look so great. I just. My dad's not a bad guy. He just really, really sucks at being there when there aren't guns or bombs involved. And I know he saved your life and he's woo-hoo John McClane," she twirls her fingers mockingly, "but just...don't count on him for too much. You know?"
And what the hell else is Matt supposed to say to that, except, "Yeah, Lucy. Got it. Loud and clear."
***
"You know, since I hadn't heard from you in so long, I was starting to get worried." John can still hear some of that worry scratching up Al's mellow voice. Still, John can't feel mad at him; Al's stuck by him through thick and some pretty damn thin and that's earned him a little leeway. The man's a saint for not holding a grudge. After all, John's little stunt of tossing a corpse onto Al's car nearly gave the man a heart attack!
"You sound like my freakin' grandmother, may she rest in peace."
Al chuckles, rich and belly deep. "You should be so lucky as to have a grandmother cool as me, McClane. I gotta say, though. You sound good. Better than I was expecting."
"Yeah, I'm doing all right." John can't help the grin that breaks out across his mug as he says the words, as grudging as he tries to make them sound.
He knows why Al's calling. These days, Christmastime is practically the only time they talk, but Al knows what this time of year is like for John. Or he knows historically what this time of year is like for John. Still, for more years than John's comfortable counting up, Al Powell's been the only person John could count as a friend and, even happier than he's been in a long time, it's good to hear his voice.
"You sound like it," Al agrees. "Better than all right. What's going on in the Big Apple, man?"
"I'm...kinda...seeing somebody." John's kind of amazed at how easy the words come out. Almost as amazing as the slow warmth that creeps through him for saying it out loud at all. Huh. He hasn't said it out loud. To anyone.
"Shut your mouth!" Al laughs again but it's a good sound, a happy sound. "Now I know you're lying, old man. What woman would be crazy enough to go out with scarred-up geezer like you?"
"Hey, this scarred-up old geezer can still kick your ass, Powell!" It's a good thing that John's mouth can move without any prompting from his brain, because when Al says woman, the bottom drops out of his good mood like kicked and shattered glass. Poor John, he’s dug himself into a grave and now he’s got no way out of it. At least no way out gracefully. Of course, Al would think it's a woman. Why wouldn't he? He's met Holly and what's the likelihood that John McClane, red-blooded American man and real life action-hero, would suddenly turn faggot? Not a nice way to describe oneself, and we see that John may not be so cool with the idea of having a male lover.
And how the hell can John even begin to explain that to him? Especially when he doesn't totally get it himself.
Fortunately, he's spared that decision by the beep of his call waiting. John tips the phone back to look at the display. Lucy. "Hey, Al, I gotta go. That's my little girl on the other line."
"Yeah, sure. Connie's on my back about visiting the in-laws today anyway. But I wanna hear all about it real soon, man. I'm serious!"
"Yeah, Al. Sure."
"Merry Christmas, John."
"Merry Christmas, man."
John clicks the phone over. "Hey, Lucy. What's the good word?"
"Dad, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
At least she's still calling him Dad. "I'm sorry, honey," he says sweetly. "That's too broad a category. You're going to have to narrow it down for your old man." Still, the sourness that messed up his conversation with Al is still there, like the nights that John forgets he's too old to eat tamales and chilies relleños anymore.
Lucy sighs deeply, something she perfected in her early teens. "Look, Matt is fragile, okay? And it's really shitty of you-and typical, Dad, so freaking typical-to do this to him when he's so fucked up."
John feels speechless, no small feat. Yeah, he knows Matt's a little fucked up after the fire sale-but who isn't? John's plenty fucked up and he's doing okay. And fragile... John doesn't even know where Lucy's pulling that one from. And still he doesn't know exactly what Lucy knows, what she's guessed. "What, exactly, do you think I'm doing to Matt?" John asks finally, cautiously. The dull throb of headache settles in the back of his neck, where one of the vertebra is permanently just a little off-center.
Lucy laughs, sounding eerily like Holly. "God, Dad, this is so like you! So...what? You've fucked up your relationship with Jack and me-"
"Hey! Language!"
"Fucked up your relationship with Jack and me," Lucy repeats, She’s his all right. "and so you think you're going to play father figure to Matt and that's going to make it all right?"
"That...wasn't exactly what I had in mind, no," John says weakly, unable to come up with an appropriate come-back.
"Are you the one that made him quit therapy? I bet you are. Oh, I should've seen that one!" Lucy laughs again, the same jagged tone. "Are you the reason he dumped me too?" Lucy pauses. "No. You know what? No. Because this isn't even about me and Matt, this is about you, John."
And here they go with the John, just like clockwork.
"I know it's got to feel really good to have someone hanging on your every word and everything but you need to think about Matt. He worships the ground you walk on..."
What? What? Where is Lucy even getting this from?
"...and he needs a friend, Dad. He needs a real friend, someone who's going to be there and I'm not trying to be a bitch, Dad, I'm really not, but we both know your track record for being there. Matt deserves better than that. He needs better than that."
Someone younger, someone better, someone...more. Lucy's not saying anything John hasn't thought himself. Of course, John's keenly fucking aware of the difference between knowing you're a piece of shit and hearing it from someone else's mouth. From the mouths of babes, no less. Still, John's got those last embers of stubbornness in him to say, "Well, tell me how you really feel about it, Luce."
"Dad-"
"No, Lucy. You had your little say and I heard you. But contrary to what you and your mom like to think, I'm a grown man. Capable of making grown man-like decisions. So while I appreciate your advice, I'm still your father and I'm going to do what I want to do and be friends with whoever I want to be friends with."
"This is so like you," Lucy complains and John doesn't have to work hard to imagine her wounded deer look.
"Yeah," John says, a hell of a lot more serenely than he feels. "It is. And you should be used to that by now." But his family isn’t, and neither is John, really.
***
John never knows what the hell to do with himself on his enforced Christmastime vacation.
In the bad old days, he'd crawl into a bottle and not come out again (which is why Al always calls to check up on him) but he doesn't do that anymore. Even before Matt he'd been working his way out of the pit he'd fallen into after the divorce. Not that he was blaming Holly; the only reason they'd lasted as long as they had was because of Holly's determination. John wasn't under any illusions as to who was the screw-up in their little family. John uses the same distorted mirror Matt has, and it’s even crueler to him because he’s got lot more years looking at it.
But the bottom line was that without the booze to distract him and Matt off doing God only knows what with his friends, John doesn't know what the hell to do with himself. Lucy's call sits in the back of his mind like an itch between his shoulder blades, annoying and impossible to scratch. He knew Lucy and Matt had gone on a couple dates. He tried not to think about it-because there was only so much about their relationship that John could handle at one time-but he knew. Matt had blamed the fire sale and John had accepted it. Why not? John didn't have any reason to think the kid was lying. (except you think everyone's a liar, John)
Except the kid had been lying. About all sorts of things, apparently.
Are you the one that made him quit therapy? I bet you are.
John's in the middle of putting together a turkey sandwich he doesn't really want when he hears the scrape of Matt's key in the door. The sound makes him stop for a moment, but with a mental shrug, he goes back to slamming lettuce, tomato and leftover turkey on the defenseless bread. John tracks Matt by sound, the thump of his ever-present bag on the coffee table, the double clunk of his shoes, whisper of his coat. John gets lost after that, loses Matt somewhere between there and the winter-chilled hands slipping around his waist and under the hem of his tee-shirt. Lips only slightly warmer brush over John's naked nape. Heat snakes down John's neck to pool in his belly.
"Hey."
"Hey." John leaves the sandwich on the cutting board and loosens Matt's hands enough to turn around, look him in the face. It's weird. It hasn't even been that long and already it's like he's seeing Matt for the first time. It's not like he spends a lot of time mooning over Matt. He knows what Matt feels like and that's usually enough.
But he looks at Matt now, really looks at him, sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes under eyebrows that have more hair than John's got on his whole head, the big, slightly crooked nose, soft, fragile-looking mouth. There's only about an inch difference in their heights, but it always feels like Matt's looking up at him. Brushing the ball of his thumb down Matt's soft cheek, he has to wonder if Lucy's not right about Matt, about them.
John leans in for the kiss anyway, because he never claimed to be a good man. But he is. He just isn’t a perfect one. Matt tastes coffee-bitter, but with lingering sweetness underneath. For a moment, Matt holds himself stiff. Then, just before John decides to pull back, Matt sighs out into the kiss and presses himself close, wrapping both arms around John again.
It's easy to think of bending Matt over the counter right here. Strip Matt down, rub his hardened cock in the crease of that tight ass until Matt's voice breaks and splinters for begging and then fuck him slow, deep and thorough until they're both too tired to do more than stagger into the bedroom and sleep. It's certainly better than the alternative, some long, drawn out, bullshit conversation he doesn't want to have.
John breaks the kiss slowly, guiding Matt away from him. "Put your hands on the counter."
Matt does, making that low, atonal turned-on hum in the back of his throat, pushing his hips back. But when John spreads over his back, reaching around to fumble for the button on Matt's jeans, Matt turns his head just far enough to catch John's eye and asks, "You ever think about doing this the other way around?"
John blinks. Then, just as quiet: "You ever think about telling me you were seeing a shrink?"
Matt's eyes flutter-his eyelashes are as long as any girl John's ever dated, swear to God-through a bunch of different emotions: lust gives way to confusion, confusion to annoyance.
Yeah, that one John can read crystal clear.
"I'm not seeing a shrink, John." Matt's voice drips with fake sweetness, edged like a razor.
"Yeah, that's what I heard," John says, showing his willingness to cut himself.
"Fucking Lucy," Matt mutters, pushing John back from him. He turns around, tugging the hem of his shirt down, hair falling in his face.
"Hey. Don't talk like that about her."
Matt looks up, mouth pressing pissily thin. "Your daughter can't hold water, John."
John wasn't really aware of his anger until it came bubbling up, quick and dirty, familiar as that first belt of Irish whiskey warming up his belly. His body feels stiff with phantom aches from old wounds. "Maybe if you hadn't lied to me, she wouldn't have to."
"Jesus." Matt's mouth turns up in a not-smile and he rakes a hand through his hair. "I didn't fucking lie to you."
"No? What are we calling it now? Creative editing?"
"I didn't tell you because there was nothing to tell. I went to my court ordered sessions but other than that? I don't need therapy, so I quit. All of this before we even hooked up." Matt snorts and then shakes his head. "But this is so typical, right?
“I chase you, I make the first move, fully expecting to get punched in the face." Another snort, this time more of a huff. "Hell, my face if I was lucky. I let you fuck me... Jesus Christ, John it was almost two years before I even dared ask for a freaking blow job!" Matt throws his hands up and, just like all the times Holly got all wound up, John finds himself drawing in tight, stepping back from Matt, crossing his arms. In contrast, Matt looks mostly the same, slouched with his hands crammed back in his pockets.
Jack used to stand like that, John remembers with a pang. And it had taken John the better part of two years to train him out of it, get him to stand up straight, head high. But with Matt, it just seems part of him and John's thoughts about that long, hunched body are anything but paternal. Still, he's never seen Matt's face with the expression it has now, angry and shuttered closed. It's an uncomfortable look for John, who's not used to feeling as though Matt's closed off to him in any capacity.
"You think this is how I pictured my life turning out, fal-messing around with some guy old enough to be my father? You think I thought I'd turn out queer any more than you did? I'm here because I want to be here, John! But that's never going to mean shit to you, is it? Not compared to the least little bullshit thing that Lucy-or Holly, fucking Holly-comes up with."
"I already warned you once about talking about them, kid."
Matt steps in close. "I'm not your kid, John."
"And they're my family! Just because you don't seem to give a shit about your family-"
"I don't have a family!" Well, shit. What little space there is between them seems to get even smaller, the taut-dangerous tone of Matt's voice filling up the air between them.
John can't quite tell what his expression must look like, but whatever it is, it makes Matt smile and huff a half-laugh. "Yeah, didn't know that, did you, John? Because you never fucking asked. And you know? That's fine. I get it. I get what a huge fucking burden it is on you to keep me like your dirty little secret. Because God forbid John McClane might like fucking another man."
"I never said that!"
"You didn't have to say it, John. It was written all over your face, the minute Lucy walked in the door!"
"Me?" John demanded. In the way some things carve themselves into his mind forever, he remembers the expression on Matt's face perfectly and the look Matt threw at him, desperate and pleading all at once. What else was he supposed to have done, with Matt looking at him like that, Don't Ask, Don't Tell practically emblazoned across his forehead? "Christ, kid, I thought you were a dope smoker when I met you and now I know it's true."
"Oh-" Matt breathes out noisily, the end of it turning into a laugh, deeper than his normal voice. "Oh, that's rich, coming from..."
John's cell shrills suddenly, silencing them both like a slap to the face. John's hand automatically jerks toward the holster, but he stops himself, still staring Matt down, hating the bitter anger in the other man's eyes. Where did this come from? How had things gone from laughs and slow, easy lays to this shouting match?
Jesus, it's like being married all over again.
Matt rolls his eyes, huffs and shrugs one shoulder, flapping his hand toward John. "Go ahead," he says, quieter than before, sounding almost defeated. "It..." Matt sighs. "It could be important." Matt turns around and leaves the little open square of the kitchen to flop down on the couch and fling his arm across his eyes.
John slips his cell from the holster and looks at the display. "It's Holly." John's not sure why he says it out loud. Voicemail, John. Learn it, live it, love it.
"Of course it is," Matt mutters without moving. He waves his hand again. "Don't mind me."
John makes a face, but he flips the phone open. "Hey. Holly." And there it is: John still can’t separate himself completely from Holly even if their relationship is a DMZ
"Hello, John." The bitter acrimony that surrounded the divorce has mostly given way to a kind of resigned amusement at his expense. Personally, John thinks he liked it better when she was perpetually pissed. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"No, it's fine." John thinks he hears Matt snort, but by the time he looks, Matt's just lying still again. For once, John doesn't see him as a boy, a kid; Matt looks oddly grown sprawled out like that, like John himself over too many late nights. "What's going on?"
"Well." Holly sighs. "You know I'm down in D.C. visiting my parents, right?"
"So I heard." John folds his free hand across his ribs and leans back against the counter, still watching Matt from under his eyelashes.
"So, I was wondering if you'd have time to come down. Have a family dinner. Talk."
Inwardly, John groans, pushing off the counter and turning his back to Matt. Holly's talks never mean anything good for him. "Aw, Jesus, Holly, what now?"
"Is it too much to ask that you make some time to eat a meal with your son and daughter, John? It's Christmas." Holly's voice sharpens all too familiarly, striking deep in the guilt centers of John's brain.
"Christmas was over two days ago. And last I checked, neither you nor the kids were too interested in breaking bread with me." John's voice picks up its own edge. It doesn't take much, at this point in the evening's proceedings. "C'mon, Holly. What's the deal?"
Holly's sigh is deeper this time, more exasperated. "Look, John, I don't want this to be difficult. Can we please just bypass all the witty banter and try to be civil to each other? Your kids expressed an interest in having a meal with you. Do you think you can make time in your busy schedule for that or not?"
"Yeah," John agrees, a sour taste in his mouth like after a bender. "Sure. When?"
"My parents are going to a party on the 30th. I know how well you and my mom get along, so I figured that would be the best day for all concerned."
Thank God for small fucking favors, at least. "Yeah, that's fine. What time?"
"How's five?"
"Yeah. Fine."
Mercifully, Holly doesn't waste time on pleasantries. When she hangs up, John tosses the phone onto the counter. God, he wants a drink. He really fucking wants a drink. Instead, he drags ass over to the couch, shoving Matt's feet off the arm and onto the floor. "Hey. Matt."
Matt sits up, pulling all the way to the other end. "So what did The Great Holly want?"
The thin cooled crust over his anger cracks like brittle glass. "Jesus, Farrell, could you not hang from my sac, too?"
"Oh, gee, John and here I thought that's what you liked me for. Suck your cock, roll on my belly...just as long as nobody knows about it and I shut the fuck up."
"You really need to shut the hell up, right about now," John warns, the ugly stiff feeling freezing his bones again. "Don't do this."
"Don't do what? Don't dare criticize Saint fucking Holly? Jesus Christ, John, you're divorced!" Matt throws his hands up, voice rising in pitch. "Okay? You've been divorced for more than a decade! When the fuck are you going to finally let her the fuck go?"
"She's the mother of my kids, Matt. You don't just let that go. All those years, you don't know what I put her through..."
Matt surges up to his knees, faster than John thought the kid could move. "And what about what she's put you through, huh? Marriages are made up of two people, John. And when they fall apart, it's not just one person that fucks it all up."
"What the hell would you know about it?" John demands. "You, sitting up in your apartment with your little dolls-what the hell do you know about relationships? Who the hell have you ever cared about enough to know how it goes?"
Matt's jaw knots. "You, asshole," he says flatly, getting up from the couch. He grabs his coat from the hook and his shoes from the floor. It's against John's nature to sit passive on the couch and not do anything but for a change, he's actually afraid of what he might do, heart hammering in his chest and pulse pounding in his temples so hard he feels it down his spine.
"I cared about you."
Matt walks out. John had a lot of people he cared about walk out on him, but I'm guessing he's never gotten used to it. And part of it is the fact he can't let go, even when told to. His bond with Holly is a perfect example of this unhealthy behavior, and Matt's right to point it out to John since it's effecting their relationship. However, Matt could've made a more convincing argument
Part II
Author: poisontaster
Fandom: Die Hard
Commentator: frostian
I like the Die Hard series. Went to see all of them on the big screen, even #3. I'm also a big fan of poisontaster's writing so when the opportunity arose I immediately nabbed the chance to do a commentary on Save As. Enough with the blabbing and on with the commentary!
December 26
"Hey. Turn on the game, will ya?"
Regular sex has been good for Matt.
Regular sex has been so good for Matt that the generalized cloud of anxiety that's been plaguing him has almost completely vanished, leaving him feeling almost-almost-like the happy-go-lucky guy he was before the fire sale. And here we go. Poisontaster has the awesome habit of dropping her readers into the middle of the characters’ lives, which gives the illusion that we’re voyeurs and not readers. This maneuver could jar some people but I’m not one of them so I’m quite happy to go along for the ride, watching Poisontaster piece together the puzzle bit by bit. It’s an act of faith in her part as much as it is for the readers, and that’s rare enough of a practice so I’m grateful for it.
Regular sex has, in fact, been so good to him that he doesn't even blink at McClane's request to turn on football, probably Matt's least favorite activity ever, next to maybe boxing. Because he, ladies and gentlemen, has not only been spectacularly laid, he also has had his brain sucked out through his dick in the shower about ten minutes before by none other than Detective John McClane, hard-boiled New York City cop himself. As humorous as this particular description is, it also introduces the startling fact that John’s knocking boots with a guy, and seems quite capable of handling gay sex as he is with armed psychos.
"What's the score?" McClane shouts from the bathroom, finishing up his own shower.
"Uh…" Guys in burgundy and guys in white are spread out across the screen. Matt has no earthly idea which is which. "Pru is winning by seven?"
John laughs. "Purdue," he corrects. "Purdue is winning by seven."
Matt rolls his eyes but doesn't have any time to come up with a response because there's a swift, perfunctory knock on the apartment door and then the rattle of keys. Matt prides himself on being a pretty quick thinker under pressure, at least when guns aren't involved, but he sits there, totally tharn on John's couch while the door opens and Lucy-holy Christ, Lucy-breezes in, balancing some gift-wrapped boxes in one arm.
"Dad! Don't shoot, it's Lucy," she says, unable to see Matt over her armful of presents. "I'm sorry I didn't call but my cell battery died and I…" She turns to put the boxes down on John's breakfast bar and spots Matt still sitting completely frozen on the couch. And the cozy domestic scene just went to hell with bells on, laughing madly.
"Um. Lucy, hey." Matt manages a weak wave, thanking whatever patron saint watches over dumb ass hackers that he's at least fully clothed. Half an hour earlier and she'd have gotten the full Monty, oh Jesus.
Is this what a heart attack feels like? he wonders, racking his brain frantically for something better, smarter…hell, anything that he can say to explain what he's doing in John's apartment, chilling on John's couch, dick freshly sucked, ass pleasantly reamed. By John. I bet this is. I bet this is exactly what a heart attack feels like.
"Matt?" Lucy tugs her hat from her hair, sprinkling melting snow onto the shoulders of her coat. She's frowning, but it's not the Glen Close going for the kitchen knives kind of frown, so that's something.
"Matt, what are you doing here?"
"Matt, did you say…?" John's voice gains in volume as he comes from the bathroom.
Head still frozen face forward, Matt can't look, but he's praying-and he's an atheist-praying: For the love of God, let him be clothed. Please. I know I don't believe in you, but if there's any kind of giant voice in the sky looking out for harmless little guys like me, let John at least have his skivvies on, please. The most interesting thing here is the fact that Matt believes he’s harmless, when, in actual truth the dude’s capable of so much damage he’s probably permanently fixed on the radars of CIA, FBI, NSA, and host of other intelligence communities.
"Lucy." John's voice sounds…weird is the best adjective Matt can come up with. Matt finally breaks his paralysis enough to turn his head and oh, man, thank you. John is shirtless, but he's wearing his jeans and Matt is totally not looking at the last of the shower water rippling down John's cut abs, he is totally not doing that, thank you, no. Men and sex: they could be looking at death in the face and sex would still win the lion's share of attention. Matt looks away, heart hammering so hard in his chest he feels lightheaded even sitting down. "What're you doing here, honey?"
"Forget about me, what are you doing here, Matt?" Lucy doesn't sound mad exactly, but there's a definite edge to her voice and when Matt can bring himself to look back at her, her mouth is set in a line that looks remarkably like John's.
Matt opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Not even air.
"Matt and me have been hanging out," John cuts in, with more smoothness than Matt thought he was capable of. "I make him go to the gym every once in a while and he shows me how to use the computer for more than looking up porn."
Lucy's face wrinkles. "Dad. Ew." And the switch-n-bait works! For now.
"Hey." John comes forward, arms held out. "Don't I even get a hug?"
"Yeah, of course." Lucy steps into John's arms and puts her head on his shoulder, eyes closing as he squeezes her tightly. Matt's chest aches rottenly at the sight, feeling like he's seeing something he has no right to, squirmy and out of place. "Merry Christmas, Daddy." Again, we see Matt’s insecurities firmly in place. The reader has to wonder if this is purely on Matt’s part or if John has something to do with it. And, if both are responsible for Matt’s insecurities - then how could it bypass them for so long?
***
"Dad, can I talk to you for a minute?" After the hug, Lucy offers John significant eyebrows and grabs his arm to tow him further back into the apartment near the bathroom.
"Lucy?" John's stuck somewhere around amused though he's not sure if it's more from Matt's panicky discomfort or Lucy's wild-eyed confusion.
Lucy's lips flare and then tuck flat. "I just. What's he even doing here? Really?"
John shrugs, not for one second considering telling the truth. "There's no big conspiracy here, kiddo, sorry to disappoint." He’s not outright lying but he’s doing smoke and mirrors routine. Of course, if he did just lie it probably would’ve benefited him more as the conversation would have ended a lot earlier.
Lucy huffs and shifts on her toes, glancing anxiously back toward the living room. She lowers her voice again. "Okay, but it's weird, right? Don't you think it's weird? You hardly know each other."
John considers how well he knows Matt. He knows Matt will compulsively pick all the vegetables from his Chinese, laying them in a neat semicircle around the rim of his plate, eyebrows furrowed in the same frown of concentration he gets when he writes code or whatever you call it. He knows Matt still has nightmares, far more often than he admits to, whimpering in his sleep and waking with cramping phantom pain in his leg. He knows the scar embarrasses Matt, watches him try to casually hide it when he's naked. He knows the fruity rose tattoo that curls around Matt's navel that Matt should probably hide. Hmmm … that’s kinda sexy in a jailbait emo!boy way. He knows Matt's cock, soft and hard; knows how Matt likes it to be touched, held, sucked. John knows to press his fingers into Matt's bruises when they fuck and the stifled, breaking sounds he makes when he comes. Again, John, for all his testosterone driven behavior, has little problem appreciating a male lover. Of course, he’s still John McClane so his observations encompasses areas most normal folks wouldn't consider.
"Plus, you're old." Here’s a beauty. This particular pairing, a slash pairing specifically, deals not with not just the fact that there’s a gay relationship but that one of the biggest obstacles in that relationship is age, which is rare enough of a problem that I can’t remember the last time I've read another slash story that dealt with it to a great extent.
John smiles. "Gee, thanks, Lucy."
Embarrassment peeks through her puzzled irritation in the way she sighs. "You know what I mean. Matt's like… my age."
"I think he's still got a couple years on you," John says absently, craning down the hallway for any sight of Matt.
Lucy sighs and rolls her eyes, stepping into his vision again. "Practically the same age. Tons younger than your Stone Age. I just… I'm worried that he's pretending to like you-to be friends with you-to get in good with me."
John puts a hand on her shoulder. "Honey, no one in their right mind would think the way to you goes through me."
Lucy laughs. "Okay, yeah. That's true." Then her expression turns serious again. "I just worry sometimes that Matt's not in his right mind." Lucy’s far from stupid, so her observation here should have set off a warning bell in John’s head. Her huge eyes fix on him. "And I don't want you to get hurt."
John flushes hot with warmth, feeling it all the way to his bones. His relationship with his kids isn't what he'd like it to be, isn't what it should be, but John loves Lucy and Jack like no one else on the planet and it's easy for him to forget they might give a shit about what happens to him too.
"He's a kid," John tells her gently-though not without some misgivings. "I think I can handle it."
Another roll of Lucy's eyes but it's mild, easy. "Oh, Dad." Her tone reminds him so much of Holly he can't stand it. "I know you can. I'm…. I'm being silly. I know it. I think it's good. You spend too much time by yourself anyway and if Matt talks to you, feels safe with you…" She crosses her arms like she's cold. "God knows he won't talk to anyone else."
Lucy's expression is shadowed but this time John gets the distinct impression it's not for him. He doesn't get the chance to follow up, though, because Matt clears his throat loudly and steps into the hallway. He's fully dressed, down to his puffy coat and knit cap. John wants to smooth the messy ends out of Matt's eyes. "I…" Matt points over his shoulder in the direction of the door. "I'm getting ready to head out." His tone is mild, unreadable, but John doesn't need to be a fucking mind reader to see what's going on here.
"What? No, hey, Matt…" Lucy looks flustered now, a hectic, blotchy blush rising in her already cold-reddened cheeks.
"Bullshit." John brushes past Lucy to snatch the hat from Matt's head, messing up his hair more. John wants to wrap his fingers in it, pull it back, jerk Matt's head back so he can mark up that long, white neck. Instead, he tosses the hat into Matt's face, making the kid sputter. "You brought that gigantic turkey into my house. You're not sticking me with it. I'll burn this place down."
Lucy is looking from him to Matt and for one heart-stopping second, John thinks she's figured it all out, though hell if he knows how, since he hasn't figured it all out himself. "He will, you know," Lucy interjects helpfully instead, coming to John's side. "Besides, you can't go. I just got here and I haven't even heard about your latest Warcraft exploits. Did you ever advance that Hoarde druid?"
John has no fucking idea what Lucy's talking about but it seems to do the trick as Matt brightens up right away: "Aw, man, I had to stop playing him. I started playing this rogue instead and she's really into leather working, you know…?" Another big-ass problem, John’s a friggin’ Luddite and Matt isn’t. So, aside from the secret gay relationship, we have the issues of age and this to deal with. It’s already obvious these two are going to have a giant reality check handed to them.
Between the two of them, they get Matt out of his coat and into the kitchen where he puts John to work cleaning goop out of the inside of the bird and Lucy chopping up vegetables. It's oddly comfortable and John can almost fool himself into believing everything's five by five.
Matt looks at him over Lucy's bent head, something in his expression that John flat-out can't read.
Almost.
***
"Well, that was an adventure." Once Lucy's gone, John drops heavily onto the couch next to Matt, arm curving around Matt's back.
"Yeah." Matt's eyes are closed and he resists the pull of John's fingers trying to urge him to lean into John's side. He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He felt fine while Lucy was here. Well… as fine as it can be when you're fucking your sorta-ex's dad on the sly. But now she's gone and the quiet has resettled on the small apartment and Matt feels out of sorts and itchy in his skin.
"What's wrong?"
"What?" Matt lifts his head and opens his eyes, focusing on John. "Nothing, nothing."
John nods slowly, but he doesn't look satisfied with that answer.
"Hey." Matt holds out his hand. "Good looking out on the whole Lucy situation, by the way. Man, that could've been a real disaster." Matt hates his voice. It sounds too loud, too phony-cheerful and wavery as a saw blade. Like this last bit. I can perfectly imagine how Matt sounds.
John's eyes don't change, watchful as a hawk's on Matt's face and Matt feels himself start to flush.
"Yeah," John agrees in that deadpan monotone that doesn't tell Matt anything. "A real disaster."
Matt rakes a hand through his hair. It's getting too long, even for him. "I'm tired. I'm gonna… I'm gonna get some sleep."
"You need me to tuck you in?" John's hand settles on Matt's thigh, gently kneading and Matt knows John's being funny and what passes for flirtatious for a New York cop, but there's still that edge in his voice, the one that makes Matt a little sink-stomached and simultaneously, kind of turned on.
He just doesn't know if he wants John touching him at all right now. Matt lurches up from the couch, head throbbing leadenly. "No," he says, a little too quickly. "I'm good, just… tired. I really just want to sleep," he says apologetically.
John settles back on the couch. "Yeah, sure."
Matt hesitates in the bedroom doorway, his fingers brushing the jamb. "You coming?"
"In a little bit."
"Oh. Okay." He's not disappointed. He's really not. He doesn't know what he is, except exhausted.
Definitely time for bed.
***
December 27
Matt didn't expect to fall asleep as quickly or as deeply as he does. His track record for sleeping through the night is shot, even if it's just a half-rise through the layers of consciousness to recognize where he is and John's slack body snoring quietly beside him. When he opens his eyes to the pressure of John's weight hitting the mattress, though, weak fingers of daylight are peeking through the cheap shades.
John peels the blanket back and the chill hits Matt's shoulders, making him whimper and turn his face into the pillow, trying to huddle deeper. John laughs quietly and then buries his face in the nape of Matt's neck, pressing against Matt's back, almost as good as the blanket.
"You j'st now c'ming to bed?" John trails warm, open-mouthed kisses down Matt's neck, his spine, and Matt gives up any hope of getting back to sleep. Doesn't mean he's not going to fight it tooth and nail, though.
"Yeah. Fell asleep on the couch." One callused hand curves around Matt's naked side, squeezing lightly before it pushes under the waistband of his shorts to palm his hip. "You still mad?"
Huh? Matt starts to turn over, has to wait for John to untangle his hand from his boxers and slide back enough to give him the space to roll. "I'm not... I wasn't mad."
"Mmmhmm." The corner of John's mouth curves up, a half-smile now as familiar as the hands tugging Matt's underwear from his hips.
"It's just. You know. With Lucy stopping by and all..." Matt lifts up helpfully, kicking his boxers away as John drags them down his legs. "Whew! That was crazy. Wasn't that crazy?"
"Matt." John wraps his fingers around Matt's cock, stroking with a firmness that makes Matt's toes curl. "I really don't want to talk about Lucy right now." Dude, I don’t want to read about Lucy right now!
"Oh. Heh." Matt's nervous chuckle deepens into a moan when John's thumb slips over the head of his cock on the upstroke and his legs slide restlessly on the sheets. "Yeah. Oh."
"On your back. Roll on your back."
Matt can't seem to remember what his kinks were before John McClane-though surely he had to have some-but these days, a sharply snapped order in that low, deadly-serious voice and John's big, hard hands holding him down... yeah. That right there. Matt isn't even remotely sleepy anymore, but he feels awake in this drugged, soporific way, pliant and compliant as John pushes him onto his back, pinning him there with one hand and a lot of weight on his shoulder. Without missing a stroke or losing a bit of his crooked smirk, John rises and nudges his knees between Matt's, pushing them apart.
Matt lifts his head and looks down his body to look at John's hand wrapped around him, moving faster now, harder. He follows it up the corded, bunched line of John's arm-laddered in fine, pale scars-to his shoulder, smooth skin marred by knurled scar tissue the size of Matt's palm. The older scar-knife, John had explained, without further illumination-is as silvery smooth as the ones on John's arms, but the star pucker of the gunshot wound is still tenderly red, even after nearly two years. Matt sometimes buries his face there, puts his mouth where the bullet went in and swears the skin is that tiny bit warmer there than anywhere else on John's body. He's done extensive research. I like Matt a lot here; only a nerd of his caliber could be both so sweet and so factual.
"Matt. Don't do that. Look at me. Look me in my eyes."
John's voice calls Matt out of his head; Matt looks up into John's face, still crumpled with sleep and rough with graying stubble. Gullied sun and smile lines lead Matt into the calmest, steadiest eyes he's ever seen. Reaching up isn't conscious; Matt isn't aware of his hand moving until John's ribs are under his fingers, the regular bellow of John's breath vibrating against his palm. And still John jerks him with relentless intensity, liquefying Matt's spine and making his thighs shake in helpless trembles.
At Matt's touch, John's face tightens for a moment as if in pain-a reaction Matt's familiar enough with now to know it's no such thing-and then his breath blows out and he crushes his mouth against Matt's. Matt moans into it, fumbling his hand down the surprisingly soft skin of John's side to the rocky outcrop of his hip and then in, seeking the heat and heft of John's cock.
Matt hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about his future. There was always so much now to worry about. But in what thoughts he'd had he'd never imagined this; slow, molten heat and want-wanting so much-from a man old enough to be his father, a man nothing like he thought he could or should want. And here we see Matt’s quite aware of two of the three problems: age and common ground.
John angles his hip away. Just a little. Just enough to make his desire known: No. Don't touch. At the same time, he pushes Matt's knees wider with his own, making him tight, taut, and more than halfway to breaking and just begging for it.
"John," he says, tearing his mouth away with a wet sound. He's close and his breath pants out of him in little moans. John hasn't even reached for the lube yet, the condoms. "John... I'm going to...ah come..."
"Damn right you are," John agrees breathlessly, with a hint of a grin, and Matt gives up the fight with a groan, head flopping back on the pillow.
When Matt is really close, John slips down his body with sudden, deadly speed. It hardly takes more than the touch of John's mouth, the hot wet curl of his tongue, for Matt to seize, orgasm lifting him up and slamming him down in hard pulses of yes, yes, yes.
By the time Matt starts to come down, John is pressing him deeper into the mattress with that one hand, jerking himself in short, brutal strokes.
"Oh, Christ, John." Matt's voice comes out weaker than he means it to but his whole body feels watery and soft, even as his spent cock twitches hard. John makes a noise, head tilting down toward Matt's until their foreheads grind together. Matt wishes he hadn't come yet.
"John," he says again, wrecked. Then, stronger: "Come on, McClane." He reaches for John's cock again, John's frantically pistoning hand. His shoulder aches from the full pressure of John's weight and he barely manages to run his fingers over the wet, pearling head before John cries out and comes, hot spurts that stripe Matt's belly, his pubes, his already come-filthy cock.
Oh, God, Matt wishes he hadn't come already.
John collapses-mercifully-to the side, groping frantically on the nightstand for a tissue. Matt doesn't understand until John spits into it and then smacks his lips and tongue distastefully.
"Don't think I'm ever getting used to the taste of that," John complains, but his face is still slack and softened with orgasm and he doesn't sound nearly as tough as he probably thinks he does. Matt's laugh comes up like bubbles of carbonation, startling even him, and he reaches for John again, this time to kiss him, licking the flavor of his own come out of John's mouth.
Nah. Definitely not mad. Sex is not a cure-all, but it does take the edge off of things.
***
Matt is woken up the second time by his cell phone, shrilling somewhere from the vicinity of the foot of the bed. He used to have different ring tones for each of his handful of different friends, but after all his belongings blew up-and ninety percent of his friends and contacts vanished into the woodwork before he could say 'FBI'-those kinds of niceties seemed less important.
Head half-buried under the pillow, Matt whines pitiably...but the bed is empty. Again. There's no one to take pity on him. Matt groans and reverses direction, wriggling under the blanket until he comes out at the foot, groping for his discarded jeans. There aren't that many people that call him anymore and his hair is hanging in his eyes, so he just thumbs it on. "Um. Hello? This is Matt."
"Matt? Hey. It's Lucy." Of course, once the sexual bliss is over, reality does have a way of taking a throttle-hold!
The hand Matt's using to support himself slips out from underneath him. Matt slide-falls out of bed with a squawk, though he miraculously manages to keep hold of his cell. "Oh. Hey, Lucy, hi."
"Are you all right?" Oh, let’s count the ways Matt will NEVER answer this question truthfully!
"What? Yeah, sure. Fine, fine." Matt scrapes himself up to sitting position and tries to ignore his illogical impulse to cover his crotch with the blanket. Then he does it anyway. "What's going on?"
"You're still in New York, right? You think you have time to meet me for coffee?" The thing about Lucy is that-rocky relationship with John aside-she is very much John McClane's daughter. Which means things that sound like questions generally aren't; they're thinly veiled threats. The problem is that with John, it's fucking sexy and with Lucy it's just fucking scary. Not that John can't be scary, too; Matt's just kind of screwed up on that score. Pure Matt; he may not be grounded the way John is but he is definitely plugged into real life. Especially if his neck is on the line.
"Um. Coffee? Sure. Okay." Now that his heartbeat is slowing to something like normal, he can hear John in the shower, voice raised in a surprisingly good rendition of "Swinging on a Star". "When? Where?"
She gives him an address on 5th Avenue. "How about an hour?"
The shower shuts off and a moment later, John appears in the doorway in nothing but a fraying towel slung low on his hips, shining up his bald head with another. Matt licks his lips. "Better make it an hour and a half." Let’s face it, sex and men, the twain shall be cleaved forever and ever.
***
"Oh, Matt, hi!" Lucy gives him a kiss on the cheek and a hug made awkward by her messenger bag and the foam cup in her hand. "Thanks for meeting me."
"Yeah, sure, hey." Matt pats her on the shoulder just as awkwardly, even though his hands are empty. Other than last night, he hasn't spoken to Lucy since... Hell, what's the word for it, even? Calling an amicable parting of the ways-after a handful of dates that hadn't gone much of anywhere-a 'break-up' seemed like an insult to good break-ups everywhere. "What's going on?"
Lucy rolls her eyes. "Whoo, boy, what isn't?" Someone abandons a nearby table and Lucy slides smoothly into the vacated seat, gesturing Matt to join her. "My mom's in D.C. getting driven crazy by my grandmother, she's driving Jack crazy-Jack's my brother-and, of course, I'm the one that's got to hear about it all. And then my friend Judy-the one I'm staying with over break? She's having all this drama with her boyfriend Yusef and it's just..." Lucy whistles and rolls her eyes again, untangling her scarf from around her neck. "Crazy." Poor Lucy, she’s not having an easy time of it either. Being a McClane can’t be a smooth ride, and having John McClane as her father would try the patience of a saint. Add in her mother and you got a kid primed for a long ‘rest’ in a private institution.
Matt doesn't know how to respond to that in the slightest, so he settles for smiling politely, nodding and trying to catch the harried wait-dude's eye. He needs a stiff caffeine injection to get through this. When he finally manages, through frantic semaphore, to indicate his desire for coffee, he looks back at Lucy only to find her smiling ruefully at him.
"I'm sorry. You didn't want to know all that."
Matt shrugs. "No," he avers vaguely, "it's fine."
Lucy laughs. "You should see your face! No...but. That wasn't why I asked you to meet me." She looks down, stroking the lid of her cup with one fingertip. Her plum-colored nail polish is chipped.
"Yeah, okay, sure." Matt wipes his palms on the thighs of his jeans. The wait-dude suddenly slams down Matt's coffee and an enormous cinnamon roll gooey with icing that Matt doesn't remember ordering. Okay, slam is probably overstating it, but it makes Matt jump anyway. He looks up in time to see the guy wink at him and smile. Oh. "Thanks," he mutters into his first sip of liquid nirvana, wondering if the heat in his face means he's blushing.
"Wow, what was that about?" Lucy makes wide eyes and laughs. Not in a mean way, but as though it's the height of hilarity that the waiter might think Matt's gay or even interested.
Hilarious.
Matt hums noncommittally into his coffee and resolutely does not say: "Well, Lucy, it would seem that getting fucked up, down and sideways by your dad has upped my queer quotient." Because that would be bad. But so entertaining. Could you imagine the price of real estate on Fifth Avenue if there was a crater the size of a football stadium smack dab in the middle?
The cinnamon roll is really good, though.
"Anyway." Lucy shakes herself, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. It's almost the same color as John's, though Matt wouldn't know that if he hadn't found pictures of John and his ex, Holly, hidden away in a box of old kitchenware that John inherited in the divorce. “You said last night that you're moving up here to NYC? Seriously?”
Matt shrugs, awkwardly trying to get out of his jacket without putting anyone's eye out, including his own. It seems inordinately warm, all of a sudden. “That's the plan.”
Lucy nods, but it's like she's listening to music in the car, hearing without really listening. In all likelihood a habit she got from her dad, which probably drives her mother batshit insane. “Cool, cool. So I guess you and my dad will be hanging out more often then, huh?”
Matt tenses and then shifts his weight on the chair. Lucy, mercifully, is looking down at her coffee and doesn't see him squirm. “Um. Yeah, I guess so. I hadn't thought about it, really.”
Lies. All lies.
The look Lucy slants up at him says that maybe she knows it's a lie. Or maybe not. "Well, that's why I wanted to talk to you. Warn you."
"Warn me?" Matt repeats, not sure where she's going with that. He'd really tried to be on his very best platonic geek behavior while Lucy was there but that didn't mean she hadn't sniffed them out anyway. Which is why he'd wanted to leave in the first place, even though a drive back down to Camden on the day after Christmas sounded like the stuff of nightmares. But it was infinitely preferable to sitting in an overcrowded and overpriced cafe in Brooklyn getting told off by your almost-ex: stay away from my father.
The corner of Lucy's mouth curves down, a not quite sad line. Her voice is almost sad, though, when she says, "Look, I love my dad, okay? We don't always see eye to eye on stuff and he can drive me crazy sometimes-a lot of the time-but I love my dad." The squareness of her gaze doesn't leave any room for doubt. Not that Matt has any. Only the people you love can drive you that crazy. And Matt had witnessed firsthand how screwed-up the relationship between Lucy and John could become when the fire sale erupted and Lucy was taken hostage.
Not that Matt has a whole lot of experience with that. But that doesn’t mean Matt isn’t a little jealous.
Matt nods. "Yeah, Lucy. Sure. Of course."
"Okay. But. My dad?" Lucy sighs, tapping her cup lid again. "You gotta understand. My parents' marriage lasted several years past its shelf life because of my dad the hero." She laughs again, but humorlessly. "Don't get me wrong. My dad... He's great at the hero thing. My dad is fucking awesome at the hero thing." Lucy's mouth does this thing where it looks like she can't make up her mind whether to smile or frown and she shrugs one shoulder in a bad attempt to look careless. "It's just everything else he kind of sucks at."
The melting sweetness of the cinnamon bun turns thick and sour, effectively gluing Matt's mouth shut.
"And I know..." Lucy sighs again, sitting back in her chair and looking with Matt with old, knowing eyes. "Look, Matt, I'm glad you and my dad are friends, I really am..." There's no irony or special tone to Lucy's voice when she says 'friend', a realization that makes Matt almost dizzy. "My dad... He's been lonely for a long time. A long time. And you-"
It probably shouldn't startle Matt when Lucy reaches across the table to take his hand, but it does and he's hard pressed not to flinch away. He can tell Lucy notices, though, by the way her eyes soften at him. It's annoying as much as it's embarrassing and either way, it turns his face to flame again. "I just don't want you to get hurt," Lucy says finally.
Matt tugs his hand from hers and slurps enough coffee to unstick his mouth. "Lucy-"
Lucy shakes her head, hair tumbling down into her face again. "I know things didn't work out with us, Matt. And I won't lie; it stung some when you just...dumped me like that."
"I didn't dump you," Matt protests, turning his hand up.
"Oh, my God, you totally dumped me, Matt." Though her tone is outraged, Lucy's smiling and a lot more warmly than before. "But that's okay, you know? You've got...stuff...going on. Did you ever see Dr. Larrabee again?"
"No." It comes out curt, hard-a lot like John says it, now that he thinks about it-and immediately, Matt tries to backpedal. "I mean, no, I'm fine, Lucy. I don't... I'm fine. I'm doing really good, actually." He can't tell her why he's good, of course, but that doesn't make it any less true. He is doing good. Better than he thought he could.
"That's great, Matt! Really." It sounds truthful, an effortless sincerity that must come from Holly, since it definitely didn't come from John. Not to mention the fact that it would take a miracle to have a conversation with John on such an intimate topic.
Matt's conscious of a desire to ask Lucy about her-about Holly, about John's wife and Matt's competition and rival, even now. Back in the beginning, he'd looked it all up; Nakatomi Plaza, Hans Gruber, the whole fiasco at Dulles with Esperanza, Simon Gruber and his riddled bait-and-switch-everything. Everything he could lay his hands on, everything he could find, trying to figure out John fucking McClane. It was both ironic and irritating, having his only sources of information come from the exaggerations and lies of mainstream media, but it's not like he could ask John, for obvious reasons. The question is whose reasons are these? Is it from Matt’s own guesswork or from John’s reluctance to talk about what happened with the Grubers, the multi-hostage situation at Dulles, or Holly? And given how he and Lucy had ended up, it just seemed tacky to look her up for the sole purpose of grilling her for information.
And now this.
"I mean...you do. You look great," Lucy goes on, catching his wrist again. "You look so great. I just. My dad's not a bad guy. He just really, really sucks at being there when there aren't guns or bombs involved. And I know he saved your life and he's woo-hoo John McClane," she twirls her fingers mockingly, "but just...don't count on him for too much. You know?"
And what the hell else is Matt supposed to say to that, except, "Yeah, Lucy. Got it. Loud and clear."
***
"You know, since I hadn't heard from you in so long, I was starting to get worried." John can still hear some of that worry scratching up Al's mellow voice. Still, John can't feel mad at him; Al's stuck by him through thick and some pretty damn thin and that's earned him a little leeway. The man's a saint for not holding a grudge. After all, John's little stunt of tossing a corpse onto Al's car nearly gave the man a heart attack!
"You sound like my freakin' grandmother, may she rest in peace."
Al chuckles, rich and belly deep. "You should be so lucky as to have a grandmother cool as me, McClane. I gotta say, though. You sound good. Better than I was expecting."
"Yeah, I'm doing all right." John can't help the grin that breaks out across his mug as he says the words, as grudging as he tries to make them sound.
He knows why Al's calling. These days, Christmastime is practically the only time they talk, but Al knows what this time of year is like for John. Or he knows historically what this time of year is like for John. Still, for more years than John's comfortable counting up, Al Powell's been the only person John could count as a friend and, even happier than he's been in a long time, it's good to hear his voice.
"You sound like it," Al agrees. "Better than all right. What's going on in the Big Apple, man?"
"I'm...kinda...seeing somebody." John's kind of amazed at how easy the words come out. Almost as amazing as the slow warmth that creeps through him for saying it out loud at all. Huh. He hasn't said it out loud. To anyone.
"Shut your mouth!" Al laughs again but it's a good sound, a happy sound. "Now I know you're lying, old man. What woman would be crazy enough to go out with scarred-up geezer like you?"
"Hey, this scarred-up old geezer can still kick your ass, Powell!" It's a good thing that John's mouth can move without any prompting from his brain, because when Al says woman, the bottom drops out of his good mood like kicked and shattered glass. Poor John, he’s dug himself into a grave and now he’s got no way out of it. At least no way out gracefully. Of course, Al would think it's a woman. Why wouldn't he? He's met Holly and what's the likelihood that John McClane, red-blooded American man and real life action-hero, would suddenly turn faggot? Not a nice way to describe oneself, and we see that John may not be so cool with the idea of having a male lover.
And how the hell can John even begin to explain that to him? Especially when he doesn't totally get it himself.
Fortunately, he's spared that decision by the beep of his call waiting. John tips the phone back to look at the display. Lucy. "Hey, Al, I gotta go. That's my little girl on the other line."
"Yeah, sure. Connie's on my back about visiting the in-laws today anyway. But I wanna hear all about it real soon, man. I'm serious!"
"Yeah, Al. Sure."
"Merry Christmas, John."
"Merry Christmas, man."
John clicks the phone over. "Hey, Lucy. What's the good word?"
"Dad, what the hell do you think you're doing?"
At least she's still calling him Dad. "I'm sorry, honey," he says sweetly. "That's too broad a category. You're going to have to narrow it down for your old man." Still, the sourness that messed up his conversation with Al is still there, like the nights that John forgets he's too old to eat tamales and chilies relleños anymore.
Lucy sighs deeply, something she perfected in her early teens. "Look, Matt is fragile, okay? And it's really shitty of you-and typical, Dad, so freaking typical-to do this to him when he's so fucked up."
John feels speechless, no small feat. Yeah, he knows Matt's a little fucked up after the fire sale-but who isn't? John's plenty fucked up and he's doing okay. And fragile... John doesn't even know where Lucy's pulling that one from. And still he doesn't know exactly what Lucy knows, what she's guessed. "What, exactly, do you think I'm doing to Matt?" John asks finally, cautiously. The dull throb of headache settles in the back of his neck, where one of the vertebra is permanently just a little off-center.
Lucy laughs, sounding eerily like Holly. "God, Dad, this is so like you! So...what? You've fucked up your relationship with Jack and me-"
"Hey! Language!"
"Fucked up your relationship with Jack and me," Lucy repeats, She’s his all right. "and so you think you're going to play father figure to Matt and that's going to make it all right?"
"That...wasn't exactly what I had in mind, no," John says weakly, unable to come up with an appropriate come-back.
"Are you the one that made him quit therapy? I bet you are. Oh, I should've seen that one!" Lucy laughs again, the same jagged tone. "Are you the reason he dumped me too?" Lucy pauses. "No. You know what? No. Because this isn't even about me and Matt, this is about you, John."
And here they go with the John, just like clockwork.
"I know it's got to feel really good to have someone hanging on your every word and everything but you need to think about Matt. He worships the ground you walk on..."
What? What? Where is Lucy even getting this from?
"...and he needs a friend, Dad. He needs a real friend, someone who's going to be there and I'm not trying to be a bitch, Dad, I'm really not, but we both know your track record for being there. Matt deserves better than that. He needs better than that."
Someone younger, someone better, someone...more. Lucy's not saying anything John hasn't thought himself. Of course, John's keenly fucking aware of the difference between knowing you're a piece of shit and hearing it from someone else's mouth. From the mouths of babes, no less. Still, John's got those last embers of stubbornness in him to say, "Well, tell me how you really feel about it, Luce."
"Dad-"
"No, Lucy. You had your little say and I heard you. But contrary to what you and your mom like to think, I'm a grown man. Capable of making grown man-like decisions. So while I appreciate your advice, I'm still your father and I'm going to do what I want to do and be friends with whoever I want to be friends with."
"This is so like you," Lucy complains and John doesn't have to work hard to imagine her wounded deer look.
"Yeah," John says, a hell of a lot more serenely than he feels. "It is. And you should be used to that by now." But his family isn’t, and neither is John, really.
***
John never knows what the hell to do with himself on his enforced Christmastime vacation.
In the bad old days, he'd crawl into a bottle and not come out again (which is why Al always calls to check up on him) but he doesn't do that anymore. Even before Matt he'd been working his way out of the pit he'd fallen into after the divorce. Not that he was blaming Holly; the only reason they'd lasted as long as they had was because of Holly's determination. John wasn't under any illusions as to who was the screw-up in their little family. John uses the same distorted mirror Matt has, and it’s even crueler to him because he’s got lot more years looking at it.
But the bottom line was that without the booze to distract him and Matt off doing God only knows what with his friends, John doesn't know what the hell to do with himself. Lucy's call sits in the back of his mind like an itch between his shoulder blades, annoying and impossible to scratch. He knew Lucy and Matt had gone on a couple dates. He tried not to think about it-because there was only so much about their relationship that John could handle at one time-but he knew. Matt had blamed the fire sale and John had accepted it. Why not? John didn't have any reason to think the kid was lying. (except you think everyone's a liar, John)
Except the kid had been lying. About all sorts of things, apparently.
Are you the one that made him quit therapy? I bet you are.
John's in the middle of putting together a turkey sandwich he doesn't really want when he hears the scrape of Matt's key in the door. The sound makes him stop for a moment, but with a mental shrug, he goes back to slamming lettuce, tomato and leftover turkey on the defenseless bread. John tracks Matt by sound, the thump of his ever-present bag on the coffee table, the double clunk of his shoes, whisper of his coat. John gets lost after that, loses Matt somewhere between there and the winter-chilled hands slipping around his waist and under the hem of his tee-shirt. Lips only slightly warmer brush over John's naked nape. Heat snakes down John's neck to pool in his belly.
"Hey."
"Hey." John leaves the sandwich on the cutting board and loosens Matt's hands enough to turn around, look him in the face. It's weird. It hasn't even been that long and already it's like he's seeing Matt for the first time. It's not like he spends a lot of time mooning over Matt. He knows what Matt feels like and that's usually enough.
But he looks at Matt now, really looks at him, sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes under eyebrows that have more hair than John's got on his whole head, the big, slightly crooked nose, soft, fragile-looking mouth. There's only about an inch difference in their heights, but it always feels like Matt's looking up at him. Brushing the ball of his thumb down Matt's soft cheek, he has to wonder if Lucy's not right about Matt, about them.
John leans in for the kiss anyway, because he never claimed to be a good man. But he is. He just isn’t a perfect one. Matt tastes coffee-bitter, but with lingering sweetness underneath. For a moment, Matt holds himself stiff. Then, just before John decides to pull back, Matt sighs out into the kiss and presses himself close, wrapping both arms around John again.
It's easy to think of bending Matt over the counter right here. Strip Matt down, rub his hardened cock in the crease of that tight ass until Matt's voice breaks and splinters for begging and then fuck him slow, deep and thorough until they're both too tired to do more than stagger into the bedroom and sleep. It's certainly better than the alternative, some long, drawn out, bullshit conversation he doesn't want to have.
John breaks the kiss slowly, guiding Matt away from him. "Put your hands on the counter."
Matt does, making that low, atonal turned-on hum in the back of his throat, pushing his hips back. But when John spreads over his back, reaching around to fumble for the button on Matt's jeans, Matt turns his head just far enough to catch John's eye and asks, "You ever think about doing this the other way around?"
John blinks. Then, just as quiet: "You ever think about telling me you were seeing a shrink?"
Matt's eyes flutter-his eyelashes are as long as any girl John's ever dated, swear to God-through a bunch of different emotions: lust gives way to confusion, confusion to annoyance.
Yeah, that one John can read crystal clear.
"I'm not seeing a shrink, John." Matt's voice drips with fake sweetness, edged like a razor.
"Yeah, that's what I heard," John says, showing his willingness to cut himself.
"Fucking Lucy," Matt mutters, pushing John back from him. He turns around, tugging the hem of his shirt down, hair falling in his face.
"Hey. Don't talk like that about her."
Matt looks up, mouth pressing pissily thin. "Your daughter can't hold water, John."
John wasn't really aware of his anger until it came bubbling up, quick and dirty, familiar as that first belt of Irish whiskey warming up his belly. His body feels stiff with phantom aches from old wounds. "Maybe if you hadn't lied to me, she wouldn't have to."
"Jesus." Matt's mouth turns up in a not-smile and he rakes a hand through his hair. "I didn't fucking lie to you."
"No? What are we calling it now? Creative editing?"
"I didn't tell you because there was nothing to tell. I went to my court ordered sessions but other than that? I don't need therapy, so I quit. All of this before we even hooked up." Matt snorts and then shakes his head. "But this is so typical, right?
“I chase you, I make the first move, fully expecting to get punched in the face." Another snort, this time more of a huff. "Hell, my face if I was lucky. I let you fuck me... Jesus Christ, John it was almost two years before I even dared ask for a freaking blow job!" Matt throws his hands up and, just like all the times Holly got all wound up, John finds himself drawing in tight, stepping back from Matt, crossing his arms. In contrast, Matt looks mostly the same, slouched with his hands crammed back in his pockets.
Jack used to stand like that, John remembers with a pang. And it had taken John the better part of two years to train him out of it, get him to stand up straight, head high. But with Matt, it just seems part of him and John's thoughts about that long, hunched body are anything but paternal. Still, he's never seen Matt's face with the expression it has now, angry and shuttered closed. It's an uncomfortable look for John, who's not used to feeling as though Matt's closed off to him in any capacity.
"You think this is how I pictured my life turning out, fal-messing around with some guy old enough to be my father? You think I thought I'd turn out queer any more than you did? I'm here because I want to be here, John! But that's never going to mean shit to you, is it? Not compared to the least little bullshit thing that Lucy-or Holly, fucking Holly-comes up with."
"I already warned you once about talking about them, kid."
Matt steps in close. "I'm not your kid, John."
"And they're my family! Just because you don't seem to give a shit about your family-"
"I don't have a family!" Well, shit. What little space there is between them seems to get even smaller, the taut-dangerous tone of Matt's voice filling up the air between them.
John can't quite tell what his expression must look like, but whatever it is, it makes Matt smile and huff a half-laugh. "Yeah, didn't know that, did you, John? Because you never fucking asked. And you know? That's fine. I get it. I get what a huge fucking burden it is on you to keep me like your dirty little secret. Because God forbid John McClane might like fucking another man."
"I never said that!"
"You didn't have to say it, John. It was written all over your face, the minute Lucy walked in the door!"
"Me?" John demanded. In the way some things carve themselves into his mind forever, he remembers the expression on Matt's face perfectly and the look Matt threw at him, desperate and pleading all at once. What else was he supposed to have done, with Matt looking at him like that, Don't Ask, Don't Tell practically emblazoned across his forehead? "Christ, kid, I thought you were a dope smoker when I met you and now I know it's true."
"Oh-" Matt breathes out noisily, the end of it turning into a laugh, deeper than his normal voice. "Oh, that's rich, coming from..."
John's cell shrills suddenly, silencing them both like a slap to the face. John's hand automatically jerks toward the holster, but he stops himself, still staring Matt down, hating the bitter anger in the other man's eyes. Where did this come from? How had things gone from laughs and slow, easy lays to this shouting match?
Jesus, it's like being married all over again.
Matt rolls his eyes, huffs and shrugs one shoulder, flapping his hand toward John. "Go ahead," he says, quieter than before, sounding almost defeated. "It..." Matt sighs. "It could be important." Matt turns around and leaves the little open square of the kitchen to flop down on the couch and fling his arm across his eyes.
John slips his cell from the holster and looks at the display. "It's Holly." John's not sure why he says it out loud. Voicemail, John. Learn it, live it, love it.
"Of course it is," Matt mutters without moving. He waves his hand again. "Don't mind me."
John makes a face, but he flips the phone open. "Hey. Holly." And there it is: John still can’t separate himself completely from Holly even if their relationship is a DMZ
"Hello, John." The bitter acrimony that surrounded the divorce has mostly given way to a kind of resigned amusement at his expense. Personally, John thinks he liked it better when she was perpetually pissed. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"No, it's fine." John thinks he hears Matt snort, but by the time he looks, Matt's just lying still again. For once, John doesn't see him as a boy, a kid; Matt looks oddly grown sprawled out like that, like John himself over too many late nights. "What's going on?"
"Well." Holly sighs. "You know I'm down in D.C. visiting my parents, right?"
"So I heard." John folds his free hand across his ribs and leans back against the counter, still watching Matt from under his eyelashes.
"So, I was wondering if you'd have time to come down. Have a family dinner. Talk."
Inwardly, John groans, pushing off the counter and turning his back to Matt. Holly's talks never mean anything good for him. "Aw, Jesus, Holly, what now?"
"Is it too much to ask that you make some time to eat a meal with your son and daughter, John? It's Christmas." Holly's voice sharpens all too familiarly, striking deep in the guilt centers of John's brain.
"Christmas was over two days ago. And last I checked, neither you nor the kids were too interested in breaking bread with me." John's voice picks up its own edge. It doesn't take much, at this point in the evening's proceedings. "C'mon, Holly. What's the deal?"
Holly's sigh is deeper this time, more exasperated. "Look, John, I don't want this to be difficult. Can we please just bypass all the witty banter and try to be civil to each other? Your kids expressed an interest in having a meal with you. Do you think you can make time in your busy schedule for that or not?"
"Yeah," John agrees, a sour taste in his mouth like after a bender. "Sure. When?"
"My parents are going to a party on the 30th. I know how well you and my mom get along, so I figured that would be the best day for all concerned."
Thank God for small fucking favors, at least. "Yeah, that's fine. What time?"
"How's five?"
"Yeah. Fine."
Mercifully, Holly doesn't waste time on pleasantries. When she hangs up, John tosses the phone onto the counter. God, he wants a drink. He really fucking wants a drink. Instead, he drags ass over to the couch, shoving Matt's feet off the arm and onto the floor. "Hey. Matt."
Matt sits up, pulling all the way to the other end. "So what did The Great Holly want?"
The thin cooled crust over his anger cracks like brittle glass. "Jesus, Farrell, could you not hang from my sac, too?"
"Oh, gee, John and here I thought that's what you liked me for. Suck your cock, roll on my belly...just as long as nobody knows about it and I shut the fuck up."
"You really need to shut the hell up, right about now," John warns, the ugly stiff feeling freezing his bones again. "Don't do this."
"Don't do what? Don't dare criticize Saint fucking Holly? Jesus Christ, John, you're divorced!" Matt throws his hands up, voice rising in pitch. "Okay? You've been divorced for more than a decade! When the fuck are you going to finally let her the fuck go?"
"She's the mother of my kids, Matt. You don't just let that go. All those years, you don't know what I put her through..."
Matt surges up to his knees, faster than John thought the kid could move. "And what about what she's put you through, huh? Marriages are made up of two people, John. And when they fall apart, it's not just one person that fucks it all up."
"What the hell would you know about it?" John demands. "You, sitting up in your apartment with your little dolls-what the hell do you know about relationships? Who the hell have you ever cared about enough to know how it goes?"
Matt's jaw knots. "You, asshole," he says flatly, getting up from the couch. He grabs his coat from the hook and his shoes from the floor. It's against John's nature to sit passive on the couch and not do anything but for a change, he's actually afraid of what he might do, heart hammering in his chest and pulse pounding in his temples so hard he feels it down his spine.
"I cared about you."
Matt walks out. John had a lot of people he cared about walk out on him, but I'm guessing he's never gotten used to it. And part of it is the fact he can't let go, even when told to. His bond with Holly is a perfect example of this unhealthy behavior, and Matt's right to point it out to John since it's effecting their relationship. However, Matt could've made a more convincing argument
Part II