Die Hard Fic for sexy_right: Some Assembly Required
Title: Some Assembly Required
Author: persnickett
Rating: R
Prompt: "…you find yourself in the middle of something you don’t understand." (Munro Kelly, Congo)
Notes Written for the Notable Quotables Challenge at sexy_right
Some Assembly Required
by persnickett
There are boxes. Big ones, stacked up outside Matt’s bedroom door.
Cardboard boxes; and John forgets all about the last beer in the fridge, and how good the chill of the bottle was going to feel against his palm, as he sat down on his sofa and sipped the day’s annoyances away. He forgets about the traffic on his way home, and the stupid loudmouthed rookie who was going to earn himself a punched nose one of these days, if he didn’t start keeping it out of the files on other people’s desks.
He just stands there, staring at the pile of boxes marked THIS END UP like it’s Mount Rushmore, or the Washington Monument. He’s still there, just standing like an idiot in the hall when Matt walks in.
It must have started raining out, because his hair looks damp in places, and the shoulders of his jacket are dark.
So John stares at that for a while, instead. He watches the spare, angular lines of his shoulders as he shrugs out of the humid fabric to hang it up on the pegs by the door. He watches Matt kick his shoes off on the mat and leave them in an unceremonious heap of upturned soles and untied laces next to the neat, regimental row of John’s boots, like it could be the last time.
Matt doesn’t notice John standing there until he’s nearly walked right into him, and John still doesn’t move. He just keeps on standing there, blocking the way to Matt’s room and staring at a droplet of rain still sitting on top of the strands of Matt’s hair, that hasn’t soaked in yet.
Matt looks up and reaches for the little cord hanging around his neck, yanks those tiny little headphones he never leaves home without out of his ears. His mouth starts to open - likely to say something smartassed about pedestrian right of way, or not remembering this wall being here. John can see the smirk starting on his lips.
“Going somewhere?” he asks.
The only response he gets is Matt’s eyes whitening around the rims, the almost-smile falling right off his face.
That’s fine. It surprises him too, the way the words come growling out of him somewhere in the vicinity of his chest; the low threat in the undertone that John knows is coming from the deepest, most insecure part of him - but Matt doesn’t. To Matt, it is just a growl, and as far as he knows John means it.
Maybe he does, a little.
They’re both staring now. Matt’s left hand makes sort of an aborted gesture in the vague direction of his bedroom, but neither of them says anything.
It’s easier than maybe it should be, then; reaching out to grab the kid by the back of the neck. Fingers pushing bluntly up into the hair at the nape, tangling in the half-wet strands just starting to mat and curl against the skin.
It’s easier than he might have thought once, to tug Matt brusquely into him, to angle down and push their mouths roughly together, because it’s not the first time.
It’s happened before, this unexpected swell and break in the walls holding back the unspoken things building between them. And then it didn’t happen again - if you didn’t count the morning after, just rolling over and letting his weight press Matt down into the mattress, pressing and pushing and just trying to get closer and closer until it felt like their bodies took over for them, fitting themselves together and overlapping in all the right places.
It didn’t happen again because that’s how it goes when you’re a conservative middle aged cop, just getting used to the idea of finishing your life alone, and suddenly you find somebody in your bed who’s the wrong age, and the wrong shape. Somebody who says and thinks all the wrong things and somehow makes you believe it’s never been quite so wrong at all. …You find yourself in the middle of something you don’t understand.
He hasn’t figured it out yet, what it means. But it shouldn’t mean this, it shouldn’t mean packing. And leaving. It shouldn’t mean Matt standing in the hall with his tongue in a knot and his keys in his hand. It shouldn’t mean boxes.
So he does it again, reaches out and tries to find what it means with hands and mouth and flesh on flesh.
Matt’s response is just as zealous as the last time; sharp, surprised breaths going hard and ragged as John’s advances bring the wall bumping up against his back; mouth soft but demanding; hands scrabbling and tearing at their clothes with a nimble efficiency that has them lying in a rumpled and urgent trail to John’s bedroom so fast it makes his head spin.
Or maybe that’s just Matt, shoving himself up against John’s body everywhere like he’s got to get everything he can before John has time to change his mind. Pushing himself into his arms like he’ll die if they stop, as if he can’t breathe without John’s hands on his skin, his mouth against his throat.
As if he’s not the one who’s got it wrong at all.
***
“Not that I’m complaining,” Matt pants, squirming a little. He’s pretty effectively trapped, between the snarled mess they’ve made of the sheets, and John. “But can you tell me what the hell brought that on? …So that I can take careful notes and make sure it happens as often as possible?”
It’s tempting for a moment, to give in to the obvious attempt to make light of what has just happened, but that was where he thought they’d left it last time, light. And now there’s boxes in the hallway, looking pretty damn heavy.
“Look kid,” John says slowly, looking for the words as he goes. “I’m not good at this.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Matt argues breathlessly. “Is it normal for your dates to sort of see spots after sex? Have you ever asked? Because I think I may black out.”
“No, this,” John presses, refusing to give in and banter back. “Relationships.”
Matt blinks like he’s trying to clear the alleged spots from his vision and gets his elbows under him like he’s about to try and struggle free of the tangle of blankets, but John his still half of the reason he’s pinned. And he’s not moving yet.
Matt’s brow creases.
“You know how for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction? Well there’s this direct correlation where basically the harder we fuck, the softer my brain gets, and right now I’m essentially working with jell-o pudding. So you’re going to have to give me a second here.” Matt gives up trying to get John to move and flops exhaustedly back against the bed again. “…We’re in a relationship?”
John frowns. That hadn’t exactly been his point. At least not the one he’d been trying to make.
“Just a…shitty track record with communication,” he says, probably not making things any clearer.
Matt smiles. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up. Maybe we both have some work to do there. I just found out I’m in a relationship.”
John shakes his head.
“Look. I’m an actions kind of guy. Words, sometimes I’m not so good with.” He lifts his weight up off of Matt’s rib cage a little, lets the kid breathe before he really does pass out. “Just because the last time this happened, it didn’t happen again for a while…didn’t mean it wasn’t ever going to happen again.”
“Well that’s-“ Matt interrupts, but John cuts him off before he can start making any more wise cracks that will tempt him to give up this whole awkward, stumbling explanation that doesn’t seem to be getting them any closer to making sense of whatever this is that keeps happening between them.
“Listen. I just…sometimes I just need a little time. To think things through. Y’know, my brain doesn’t work as fast as yours does. …Even when it’s been fucked into pudding.” Matt smiles again and this time John lets himself smile back a little. “So, I wanted to say that I get it. We should have talked about it. I should have tried harder to find the words that went with the actions. So I don’t blame you for leaving. …But I guess I’m just hoping you’ll give me a little more time to come around before you go.”
It doesn’t come out like a question, but John leaves it at that, and hopes Matt will give him his answer anyway.
“What? I’m going somewhere?” Matt says instead, cocking his head to the side against the crooked pillow.
“You packed up!” John answers, impatiently. “You got boxes.”
“The b-“ Matt breaks off to give an incredulous little chortle John can feel reverberating in his chest. “The boxes in the hall?”
Matt is laughing harder now. He’s not stopping.
John’s not so crazy about this reaction to the painful revelations he’s been struggling to make, here, but it’s been so long since he felt somebody naked against him, with their skin against his, and happy, that he can’t hold back the start of an uncertain smile.
“Those are Ikea boxes, McClane!” Matt grins. “Remember? The last time you kicked over my drink you said you were so finished tripping over soda cans and cleaning up sticky fucking Mountain Dew and if I was going to be sticking around the place much longer your end table was going in the trash and we were getting a ‘proper god-damned coffee table’, like civilized people. Or something, I’m paraphrasing, the original version had a lot more swearing.”
John could start laughing too, but he’s just too fucking floored.
“Coffee table?” he repeats. “You went out and bought us a coffee table?”
One of Matt’s shoulders slides up toward his ear against the sheets. “Happy Birthday?”
John looks over at the clock on his nightstand. The wishes are accurate. The night had indeed turned into the early morning while they’d been…distracted. John had been another year older for exactly four minutes.
But finishing the rest of his middle aged, conservative life alone would have to wait for now, because he just found out he’s in a relationship. With somebody who might be the wrong age, and possibly the wrong shape, but who maybe didn’t always say the wrong thing at all. Somebody who was planning on sticking around the place ‘much longer’.
Maybe what he’s found himself in the middle of isn’t so hard to understand after all.
He looks back down at Matt. A fondly incredulous smile is still sitting across his lips, but his eyes are already closed. Maybe the kid hadn’t been entirely kidding when he was making cracks about passing out.
“Yeah,” John agrees with him anyway, easing himself off of Matt to settle down beside him. He puts a quick kiss into the hair at his temple, damp now with what is much more likely sweat than rain at this point, and then closes his eyes too.
“…It’s off to not a bad start.”
.
Author: persnickett
Rating: R
Prompt: "…you find yourself in the middle of something you don’t understand." (Munro Kelly, Congo)
Notes Written for the Notable Quotables Challenge at sexy_right
Some Assembly Required
by persnickett
There are boxes. Big ones, stacked up outside Matt’s bedroom door.
Cardboard boxes; and John forgets all about the last beer in the fridge, and how good the chill of the bottle was going to feel against his palm, as he sat down on his sofa and sipped the day’s annoyances away. He forgets about the traffic on his way home, and the stupid loudmouthed rookie who was going to earn himself a punched nose one of these days, if he didn’t start keeping it out of the files on other people’s desks.
He just stands there, staring at the pile of boxes marked THIS END UP like it’s Mount Rushmore, or the Washington Monument. He’s still there, just standing like an idiot in the hall when Matt walks in.
It must have started raining out, because his hair looks damp in places, and the shoulders of his jacket are dark.
So John stares at that for a while, instead. He watches the spare, angular lines of his shoulders as he shrugs out of the humid fabric to hang it up on the pegs by the door. He watches Matt kick his shoes off on the mat and leave them in an unceremonious heap of upturned soles and untied laces next to the neat, regimental row of John’s boots, like it could be the last time.
Matt doesn’t notice John standing there until he’s nearly walked right into him, and John still doesn’t move. He just keeps on standing there, blocking the way to Matt’s room and staring at a droplet of rain still sitting on top of the strands of Matt’s hair, that hasn’t soaked in yet.
Matt looks up and reaches for the little cord hanging around his neck, yanks those tiny little headphones he never leaves home without out of his ears. His mouth starts to open - likely to say something smartassed about pedestrian right of way, or not remembering this wall being here. John can see the smirk starting on his lips.
“Going somewhere?” he asks.
The only response he gets is Matt’s eyes whitening around the rims, the almost-smile falling right off his face.
That’s fine. It surprises him too, the way the words come growling out of him somewhere in the vicinity of his chest; the low threat in the undertone that John knows is coming from the deepest, most insecure part of him - but Matt doesn’t. To Matt, it is just a growl, and as far as he knows John means it.
Maybe he does, a little.
They’re both staring now. Matt’s left hand makes sort of an aborted gesture in the vague direction of his bedroom, but neither of them says anything.
It’s easier than maybe it should be, then; reaching out to grab the kid by the back of the neck. Fingers pushing bluntly up into the hair at the nape, tangling in the half-wet strands just starting to mat and curl against the skin.
It’s easier than he might have thought once, to tug Matt brusquely into him, to angle down and push their mouths roughly together, because it’s not the first time.
It’s happened before, this unexpected swell and break in the walls holding back the unspoken things building between them. And then it didn’t happen again - if you didn’t count the morning after, just rolling over and letting his weight press Matt down into the mattress, pressing and pushing and just trying to get closer and closer until it felt like their bodies took over for them, fitting themselves together and overlapping in all the right places.
It didn’t happen again because that’s how it goes when you’re a conservative middle aged cop, just getting used to the idea of finishing your life alone, and suddenly you find somebody in your bed who’s the wrong age, and the wrong shape. Somebody who says and thinks all the wrong things and somehow makes you believe it’s never been quite so wrong at all. …You find yourself in the middle of something you don’t understand.
He hasn’t figured it out yet, what it means. But it shouldn’t mean this, it shouldn’t mean packing. And leaving. It shouldn’t mean Matt standing in the hall with his tongue in a knot and his keys in his hand. It shouldn’t mean boxes.
So he does it again, reaches out and tries to find what it means with hands and mouth and flesh on flesh.
Matt’s response is just as zealous as the last time; sharp, surprised breaths going hard and ragged as John’s advances bring the wall bumping up against his back; mouth soft but demanding; hands scrabbling and tearing at their clothes with a nimble efficiency that has them lying in a rumpled and urgent trail to John’s bedroom so fast it makes his head spin.
Or maybe that’s just Matt, shoving himself up against John’s body everywhere like he’s got to get everything he can before John has time to change his mind. Pushing himself into his arms like he’ll die if they stop, as if he can’t breathe without John’s hands on his skin, his mouth against his throat.
As if he’s not the one who’s got it wrong at all.
***
“Not that I’m complaining,” Matt pants, squirming a little. He’s pretty effectively trapped, between the snarled mess they’ve made of the sheets, and John. “But can you tell me what the hell brought that on? …So that I can take careful notes and make sure it happens as often as possible?”
It’s tempting for a moment, to give in to the obvious attempt to make light of what has just happened, but that was where he thought they’d left it last time, light. And now there’s boxes in the hallway, looking pretty damn heavy.
“Look kid,” John says slowly, looking for the words as he goes. “I’m not good at this.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Matt argues breathlessly. “Is it normal for your dates to sort of see spots after sex? Have you ever asked? Because I think I may black out.”
“No, this,” John presses, refusing to give in and banter back. “Relationships.”
Matt blinks like he’s trying to clear the alleged spots from his vision and gets his elbows under him like he’s about to try and struggle free of the tangle of blankets, but John his still half of the reason he’s pinned. And he’s not moving yet.
Matt’s brow creases.
“You know how for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction? Well there’s this direct correlation where basically the harder we fuck, the softer my brain gets, and right now I’m essentially working with jell-o pudding. So you’re going to have to give me a second here.” Matt gives up trying to get John to move and flops exhaustedly back against the bed again. “…We’re in a relationship?”
John frowns. That hadn’t exactly been his point. At least not the one he’d been trying to make.
“Just a…shitty track record with communication,” he says, probably not making things any clearer.
Matt smiles. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up. Maybe we both have some work to do there. I just found out I’m in a relationship.”
John shakes his head.
“Look. I’m an actions kind of guy. Words, sometimes I’m not so good with.” He lifts his weight up off of Matt’s rib cage a little, lets the kid breathe before he really does pass out. “Just because the last time this happened, it didn’t happen again for a while…didn’t mean it wasn’t ever going to happen again.”
“Well that’s-“ Matt interrupts, but John cuts him off before he can start making any more wise cracks that will tempt him to give up this whole awkward, stumbling explanation that doesn’t seem to be getting them any closer to making sense of whatever this is that keeps happening between them.
“Listen. I just…sometimes I just need a little time. To think things through. Y’know, my brain doesn’t work as fast as yours does. …Even when it’s been fucked into pudding.” Matt smiles again and this time John lets himself smile back a little. “So, I wanted to say that I get it. We should have talked about it. I should have tried harder to find the words that went with the actions. So I don’t blame you for leaving. …But I guess I’m just hoping you’ll give me a little more time to come around before you go.”
It doesn’t come out like a question, but John leaves it at that, and hopes Matt will give him his answer anyway.
“What? I’m going somewhere?” Matt says instead, cocking his head to the side against the crooked pillow.
“You packed up!” John answers, impatiently. “You got boxes.”
“The b-“ Matt breaks off to give an incredulous little chortle John can feel reverberating in his chest. “The boxes in the hall?”
Matt is laughing harder now. He’s not stopping.
John’s not so crazy about this reaction to the painful revelations he’s been struggling to make, here, but it’s been so long since he felt somebody naked against him, with their skin against his, and happy, that he can’t hold back the start of an uncertain smile.
“Those are Ikea boxes, McClane!” Matt grins. “Remember? The last time you kicked over my drink you said you were so finished tripping over soda cans and cleaning up sticky fucking Mountain Dew and if I was going to be sticking around the place much longer your end table was going in the trash and we were getting a ‘proper god-damned coffee table’, like civilized people. Or something, I’m paraphrasing, the original version had a lot more swearing.”
John could start laughing too, but he’s just too fucking floored.
“Coffee table?” he repeats. “You went out and bought us a coffee table?”
One of Matt’s shoulders slides up toward his ear against the sheets. “Happy Birthday?”
John looks over at the clock on his nightstand. The wishes are accurate. The night had indeed turned into the early morning while they’d been…distracted. John had been another year older for exactly four minutes.
But finishing the rest of his middle aged, conservative life alone would have to wait for now, because he just found out he’s in a relationship. With somebody who might be the wrong age, and possibly the wrong shape, but who maybe didn’t always say the wrong thing at all. Somebody who was planning on sticking around the place ‘much longer’.
Maybe what he’s found himself in the middle of isn’t so hard to understand after all.
He looks back down at Matt. A fondly incredulous smile is still sitting across his lips, but his eyes are already closed. Maybe the kid hadn’t been entirely kidding when he was making cracks about passing out.
“Yeah,” John agrees with him anyway, easing himself off of Matt to settle down beside him. He puts a quick kiss into the hair at his temple, damp now with what is much more likely sweat than rain at this point, and then closes his eyes too.
“…It’s off to not a bad start.”
.