Indelible - part 2
Part two of Indelible
written for smallfandombang
“John?” The voice on the other end of the line when John finally gave in - after two mostly-sleepless nights plus one day spent in such a foul temper that Kowalski literally sent him home for accidentally snapping the plastic feeder tray off of a particularly belligerent printer that repeatedly insisted it was suffering from a paper jam that was only possible if somebody had invented invisible paper while John wasn’t looking - and dialed the number for Matt’s mobile, wasn’t Matt’s.
“…Kennedy?”
It was a reasonable guess. She was the only one of Matt’s people he had met that would have access to his personal items and possessed a reasonably female-sounding voice. Come to think of it, she was the only one of Matt’s people John had met, period.
“Sorry,” she said, in confirmation. “I wouldn’t normally pick up Matt’s phone, but I saw your name on the screen and…”
“Sure,” John said, “no problem. I was just…”
Why was he calling anyway? To ask Matt what the hell his problem was? To check in (that he wasn’t a corpse in a dumpster somewhere)? Because it was John’s ‘turn’? Even in his head, none of them sounded like likely messages a person leaves with a roommate. Not a person in their right mind, anyway.
“…Calling.” John finished lamely.
“Honestly, I’m kind of relieved you did,” Kennedy said, and John had to wonder if was imagining the way she sounded slightly breathless. “If I had your number in mine I would have called you myself by now, to be honest.”
“Everything alright?” John asked, keeping his tone even, although his mind was already running through every step in the standard procedure for the ‘corpse in a dumpster’ scenario, which suddenly didn’t seem like nearly as crazy a reason to call as it had only seconds ago.
“That I know of,” Kennedy said, speaking a little slower. “I mean, I haven’t seen Matt in days.”
“What?” John gave up all pretense of sounding casual, and slipped into Missing Persons Procedure: Step 1. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Oh,” Kennedy said, sounding surprised by his tone. “I know where he is.” She gave a nervous sounding laugh. “He’s in his room.”
“…His room.”
“Yeah,” she said. “For four days. Since the last sighting. And then probably another three days before that.”
“Oh,” said John this time.
“Yeah,” she said again. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to alarm you or anything,” Kennedy said kindly, if not a little too late. “He does this. A lot. I know he’s working, and this is how he likes to focus and everything but… It’s not exactly healthy. I mean he must come out, for bathroom breaks or whatever, but he goes all kind of nocturnal and does all that stuff in the middle of the night so I don’t see much of him, and I just …worry. You know?”
“…Yeah,” John agreed quietly. Because he did know.
Suddenly, irritatingly, frustrating-that-Kowalski-was-right-all-along-ly, he did know.
Why he was doing this, why he had called. Why he was lying awake at night, and snapping idiot paper-jam-hallucinating printers in half by day. He was worried.
In the past few short weeks since they had reconnected, Matt had become somebody John worried about. Somebody he cared for.
“He eat?” John quizzed her, remembering the piles of junk food wrappers littering Matt’s apartment the first time they had met.
“Inconclusive,” she replied. “I’m pretty sure he’s squirrelling food away in there, although I don’t know how much of it he actually eats, because it’s kind of starting to smell a bit like…”
“Like a corpse in a dumpster?” John finished for her, gamely.
“In a word? Yup,” Kennedy replied, finally sounding like she might be smiling at least a little now. “So listen,” she said, giving John the brief sense she was winding up for some kind of sales pitch. “I was just going to try to lure him out with Chinese food and Netflix. And if you’re not super busy or anything… I know he would come out of his room for you, if you maybe wanted to join us?”
“Can I bring anything?” John asked, because while hanging out with two people half his age watching Internet movies might not be his first choice for a Friday night, if it was going to be good for Matt, then suddenly there was no question.
“Just you,” Kennedy said, and this time he was sure he could hear her grinning. “You provide the bait, I’ll bully him into the shower and clean out the ‘dumpster’ while he’s distracted.”
“Love it when a plan comes together,” John said, approvingly.
“Thank you,” Kennedy said, in her sincere, friendly voice. “…And John? Make it fast?”
“Bet you the bill I get there before the delivery guy,” John vowed, then ended the call. Just a quick change of clothes, and he could be on his way.
And if he happened to pick out the low-necked Henley that had repeatedly drawn Matt’s eye the last time the two of them settled down in front of a television, well, who was to say it wasn’t a matter of pure coincidence?
***
If John had worried that it might get awkward, making conversation for an entire night with Matt and his platonic homosexual life partner - all evidence of her easy and unrelentingly friendly disposition aside - he needn’t have bothered.
When he arrived, the door was answered by a flushed and hurried-looking Kennedy, claiming she had received the most urgent of booty calls and must fly immediately across town into the waiting arms of her unexpected ‘girl on girl action’ as Matt would put it.
Kids these days were so up front about their sexuality. John nodded politely and tried not to look either surprised or old. Although watching her rush around the small two-bedroom in an openly amourous tizzy, snatching up items like keys and a long blue scarf that looked a lot like the one Matt had been wearing the night he waited for her outside of Vinnie’s, was sort of making him feel both.
He was sure there was a time when he had been like this on his way to a date with Holly, but by now it was difficult to even remember it, much less how it had felt.
“Matt’s still in the shower,” Kennedy said, plowing through the living room to stop at a hip, bohemian-style hat rack and grab her coat. John would have started to feel like the victim of a not-so-elaborate setup, except this was the most flustered he had ever seen her. “He should be out any minute though, and the food’s already in the kitchen. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
John smiled. “Get outta here,” he said gently. “Guess I owe you the bill.” He gave a nod back over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen from where, sure enough, the scent of kung pao chicken was wafting.
Kennedy shrugged into her coat, and gave a mischievous grin that went fetchingly with the excitement glittering in her eyes and reddening her cheeks. “I used Matt’s credit card. He can just call it payback for all those free drinks.”
And John was spared from having to think up a response to the information that Matt had clearly been going over the details of their outings together with his roommate, as she walked briskly toward him, reached behind him for the doorknob, and then gave him an impetuous peck firmly on the cheek.
“Thanks John,” she said, her sincere expression only dulling her excitement of the evening’s prospects for the briefest of moments, before she slid quickly by him and out the apartment door.
She was right about one thing. It really was only minutes before Matt was finished in the shower. John barely had time to put the six-pack he had brought along into the fridge and conduct a preliminary investigation of the bags of takeout sitting on the counter.
“McClane?”
John turned to see Matt standing outside the kitchen. His hair was wet and he was clutching a towel wrapped haphazardly around his waist. He was otherwise naked, right down to his bare feet.
John looked away. Then he realized there was actually no reason to do that, and looked back.
“Hey,” he said, still making sure to keep his gaze trained on Matt’s face anyway. The expression there looked oddly blank. “Kennedy let me in,” he explained, with a gesture toward the door. “…She didn’t tell you I was coming?”
“She-no, totally. I mean yeah, yes. She…” Matt’s gaze flicked in the direction of one of the bedroom doors, and between Matt’s reaction and what she had said on the phone, John got the distinct impression that not much of what Kennedy said to Matt while he was holed up working in there had a real habit of sinking in. And Matt seemed to be thinking something similar. “Did she say, exactly um-” Matt looked around the apartment, pushing a hand through his wet hair as he did. “Did she leave?”
“Her girlfriend called,” John offered.
“Is that food?” Matt asked, confirming John’s suspicions about how much information actually made its way into Matt’s brain when he was focused on working. He raised his nose like a scenting Labrador and raised himself up on bare tip-toes to try and see past John into the kitchen. “…Wait. ‘Girlfriend’?”
“Lilah?” John tried to remember. Kennedy’s explanation and been both brief and rushed. “Lisa?”
“Lula,” Matt supplied. He looked down at his bare feet, with a dreamy, lecherous little smirk.
“Lula,” John agreed. “She told me to tell you you were missing all the hot girl-on-girl.”
Matt aimed a short huff of laughter at his toes. When he looked back at John his gaze was clearer, with little more presence in it. He tightened his grip on the towel at his waist.
“So, I’m afraid our gracious hostess isn’t gonna be coming home tonight. And I’m-“ Matt looked down, passed a hand over his unclothed torso. John’s eye followed the motion for an involuntary second before he wrenched it back up, all the way to Matt’s dripping hair. “Woefully indisposed,” Matt finished. He made a gesture back over his shoulder at his bedroom door. “I’m gonna go and just-”
“Yeah,” John said, nodding only partially as an excuse for averting his gaze. “Of course.”
***
They loaded up their plates with fried rice and egg rolls and spicy chicken and deep friend shrimp. Then they sat on the couch and ate it in silence in front of something Matt called a “Netflix Original” that appeared to be about a girl detective who didn’t realize she was a superhero.
Or at least John ate in silence. Matt picked at a shrimp, poked his rice around his plate with his chopsticks a while, and set his plate down to take a single bite out of his egg roll - which he doused liberally with several packets of both soy and plum sauce first - and then never picked it back up again.
Kennedy’s plan to lure Matt out of his hacker hibernation didn’t appear to be coming together at all. But he could see why she had tried. Close up, John could see now how drawn and pinched Matt looked. Dark circles under the eyes, the whole bit. And yet he was still distracted. It couldn’t be clearer that the only thing on Matt’s mind was getting back to his work.
John looked over at him, pretending to watch the tough girl detective jump out a three storey window and land lightly on her feet, even though he was plainly too busy tapping strung out fingers on the arm of the couch and tossing intermittent junkie-glances in the direction of his bedroom to be paying much attention. He tried to think if Matt had looked this bad when had first laid eyes on him tonight, but that only brought back the image of Matt standing undressed in front of him in the middle of the room.
He hadn’t seen dark marks under his eyes, just the way his skin was so pale it had a look like cream, like if John were to touch it it would ripple and give way under his fingers like silky liquid. He couldn’t remember pinched looking cheeks, just the curve of the bare shoulder as Matt twisted back to look nervously over it at his bedroom door, and the smooth lines of his chest - mostly hairless except for where a little dark trail under his navel disappeared into the towel held loosely around his waist.
John took his eyes off of Matt before he turned from the screen and busted him staring. His gaze landed on the now long-abandoned plates of food on the coffee table instead, and John pulled himself up off the couch to clear them.
He had both plates in hand before Matt noticed what he was doing, and made a move guiltily to get up.
“Hey, you don’t have t-I can…”
“Would you relax?” John ordered. “It’s ten steps to your kitchen and they’re paper plates.”
Matt sat back, looking reluctant. When John got back, he had paused the action on the screen, as if John would be sorry he missed it. He dangled a bottle of beer from the six pack John had forgotten he put in the fridge over Matt’s shoulder.
“Thanks,” Matt said idly, as he accepted it. And then, as he recognized the retro brown-bottled organic stuff he had brought by John’s last time: “Heeeeey, you remembered.”
It was the first sign of life Matt had shown all night. John smiled as he set down his own bottle and held out the rest of his offering from the kitchen.
“You barely ate any dinner, the least you can do is eat your dessert.”
“Ha.” Matt examined both the fortune cookies, swaddled in their crinkly packaging and nestled in his cupped palm, before grabbing one with what could be described as ‘gusto’ compared with the rest of the evening’s mood.
“Fortune cookies are the worst,” Matt said with relish, as he tore into the package. “I kind of love them.”
“Read it out,” John said, ripping the crinkle-wrap off his own cookie. “That’s the rules.”
“’An inch of time is an inch of gold’,” Matt read. “Yup,” he confirmed, tossing the tiny paper slip down onto the table and crunching avidly into the hard, brittle pastry. “The worst.”
“Huh,” John said leadingly, when he read his fortune.
“What?” Matt turned toward him. It was gratifying to see the hint of interest in something, anything, lighting his eyes.
John looked back down at his fortune and read. “…You will meet an indelible acquaintance.”
“It does not say that!” Matt raised his chin and leaned in, trying to get a look at the fortune.
“Sure it does,” John flashed the fortune at him, too quickly for Matt to read, then he raised an eyebrow and crumpled the little strip deliberately in his fist.
“There we go,” Matt said, as if his suspicions had been proven.
John watched him take a sip of his brown bottle with a smile on his lips. This was progress. “You callin’ me a liar?” John pressed.
“I-yeah!” Matt confirmed, looking back at him and grinning over the lip of his drink.
John opened his fist to show the crushed fortune but when Matt reached for it he shut it just as fast.
Matt’s grin got wider and he ducked his head. “Nice,” he muttered setting his bottle down, “Real mature.”
Then Matt gave him exactly what he was looking for, and made a surprise swipe for John’s wrist.
Matt was fast, he actually managed to catch him, but John was the stronger and twisted easily out of his grasp. Matt rallied by launching himself across the couch, both quick hands flailing for purchase. John was ready for him this time, accounting for his speed and relying on torque to keep repeatedly freeing himself.
What he didn’t account for, though, was brains. Most people he had fought, or sparred with, forgot John was left-handed and they let it take them by surprise. Not Matt. They ended up pressed backward over the arm of the couch, Matt straddling John’s lap with a knee planted firmly on either side of him and a tight, long-fingered grip around each of his wrists.
John wasn’t out of tricks yet. Matt had hold of him, but he was using his grip on John for balance. Slowly, John started to spread his arms, so Matt would be forced to relinquish his hold, or fall. Matt held on, but his newfound grin faltered.
“That’s cheating!” he exclaimed, breathlessly.
“Some would call it winning,” John argued. He spread his arms a little wider and Matt’s body levered down a little closer.
They were both breathing fast. Matt gave him a defiant look, and John widened his span a little more. Just a threat, but enough to bring Matt so close his hair was brushing John’s forehead. He barely even noticed the scent of Matt’s shampoo anymore, it was so familiar now.
Matt broke eye contact first. He looked down at John’s chest, where he would land if he didn’t give in soon. And that’s when the switch flipped.
It was hard to tell at this distance, but it looked like Matt’s gaze snagged on the neckline of John’s shirt again. Then it came back up to what might have been his mouth.
John froze. Matt let go.
Then he pushed himself up off of John and retreated to his corner of the couch.
“You give up too easy,” John said triumphantly. The taunt did nothing to revive the playful spark in Matt’s eye which seemed to have been snuffed out as quickly as it had ignited.
“Yeah,” he agreed, with a brief and awkward looking smile down at his hands. “But some would call it winning, so.” Matt flashed the awkwardness posing as a smile in John’s direction for a second and then reached for the remote.
John leaned forward and caught his wrist before he could get to it.
“Hey,” he said, making sure to keep his tone gentle. “The Internet isn’t going anywhere.” He let go of Matt’s arm, which didn’t move, just stayed there, hovering over that crazy remote Matt had that looked like it was designed for shooting digital zombies and driving virtual racecars, not playing and pausing movies. John just hoped he never had to figure out how to use it. “You were finally starting to relax,” he went on. “Let’s just…hang out.”
Matt sat back. His lips thinned a little into a skeptical line. He looked anything but relaxed.
“Hang out,” he repeated, uncertainly.
“Yeah,” John said, and then abandoned all pretense. “Look, Kennedy called me over here because she’s worried about you.”
Matt gave an impatient sigh. “She always does this. I-look I know it’s weird, and like, hermit-y or whatever, but I’m work-”
“I know,” John interrupted, still keeping his voice as gentle as he could, “I know you’re ‘working’. But hey, I work too, and I don’t look like I haven’t eaten in a week, and there ain’t bags under my eyes big enough to carry my sister’s shoe collection.”
That got Matt’s attention. Although he didn’t look happy about it. He looked sharply up at John, exasperation written all over his face.
“Matt,” John said, before he could start giving him hell, “she’s not the only one who’s worried.”
Matt’s expression softened a touch, and his shoulders slumped as a little of the tension went out of them.
“We haven’t even spoken in weeks. It…” John stopped short of saying ‘it’s not like you’. It felt strange to realize the truth was he didn’t really know. “I was starting to wonder if it was something I said.”
Matt sighed again. He rubbed both his hands over his face.
“My ex-girlfriend would say this is why I don’t have any friends,” he said, finally. “And probably why she’s an ex-girlfriend. Look, I’m sorry,” Matt said. He got slowly to his feet, like he was expecting John to do the same so they could call an end to the evening. John sat exactly where he was, for now. “I shouldn’t have…crawled in your lap like that. I’m not trying to push you, John, I’m just-”
It was the first time John could remember Matt using his first name.
“Push me,” he interrupted. He felt almost as surprised by it as Matt looked.
Matt stopped talking and looked down at his chest, the breadth of his biceps, like John had meant it physically. Although when he thought back to how much easier things had been when they were roughhousing, how much happier and relaxed Matt had looked, he thought it might not be a bad plan.
“I-sorry, what?”
“Push me,” John repeated. “You got things to say to me, shit you wanna ask? Push me, say it. Ask.”
Matt stared at him helplessly for a moment. He didn’t say anything, but he sat back down and stopped acting like he was about to kick him out so he could disappear back into his room. Baby steps, John figured.
“I told ya, you give up too easy.” Matt still didn’t speak, but his eyebrows moved together like he was considering the words. “That night you came over, looking all sharp? …Gave up too easy then too.”
Matt’s eyebrows stopped bunching together like he was trying to use them to hold too many thoughts in his head. In fact, it looked as if his mind might have gone completely blank.
He looked at John for a second. And another.
“Respecting the fact that somebody doesn’t date guys isn’t giving up. It’s sort of more of a non-starter,” he said finally.
“Who made you the expert on who I’ve dated?”
Matt’s eyebrows shot straight up this time.
“You’ve dated guys?” he said, disbelievingly. Almost like he might be about to laugh at him.
“Just the one, but yeah,” John said, and he almost wished Kennedy could be here to see the shock on Matt’s face. Who was all modern and open with their sexuality now, huh? “…And I wouldn’t call it dating exactly.”
“I-is this where I ‘push’ you?”
John spread his hands silently in reply.
“Fine, I’ll bite,” Matt said, leaning back into the couch, and if he didn’t look relaxed, at least he didn’t look checked completely out of life anymore, like he had when John had arrived. “Who is this mysterious not-date. Do tell, Detective.”
Now that it came to it, though, John wasn’t exactly sure how to start. In his zeal for drawing Matt out of his lifeless, ‘hermit-y’ shell, and his pride in not being the stodgy old fuddy-duddy he must have seemed earlier tonight, he had led them to a topic that he had frankly zero experience talking about. Because he had never told anybody.
How did Matt always do this to him? It was happening again. Matt, just sitting quietly, waiting with those intelligent eyes on him, unblinking. Not pushing. Just open and ready. In case.
In case John wanted him. Like he had been with everything else.
John cleared his throat.
“When you get out of the Academy, they pair you up with a mentor. Somebody older, more experienced. Y’know, to show you the ropes.” John waited, for Matt to make a snarky comment about stereotypes, or how he saw a dirty movie like this once, but he didn’t. He just waited. “He was this older guy, y’know, tough. A little dangerous. It was just locker room stuff, mostly. A bit of horseplay in the showers…maybe some fooling around in a couple of back alleys after a bust got our blood pumpin’.” John stopped. He looked at Matt. “I was young.”
“And so that’s what you think this is?” Matt said finally, when it was clear John was finished. He pointed a finger at himself. “Like…hero worship?”
Matt made it sound like a bad thing. John felt his brain groping around for some other way to put it. “You said the first time I saved your life was the first time…”
“Yeah but-” Matt cut him off with a little laugh that didn’t actually sound funny. He scooted himself a little closer on the couch, like what he had to say was important and he wanted to be sure John could hear. “Not because you’re, like, this big-swinging-dick, cowboy stereotype.” There it was, John thought, the ‘stereotype’. He prepared for the ‘gay porn trope’ and Village People jokes, but none came.
“Not because you’re ‘dangerous’ - Okay so you’re totally all those things,” Matt said, with a dismissive wave. “But you don’t make me feel dangerous, coming over to your place that night wasn’t about catching some kind of thrill. When I’m with you… I feel safe.”
Oh.
“It’s not something I feel that often anymore,” Matt said quietly, “Safe. Since the Fire Sale. You know?”
“Yeah.” John nodded. He had known, once. It felt like another lifetime ago; the years of counselling after Nakatomi. The countless therapy sessions and family support groups, and none of it had saved his second shot at his marriage, or his relationships with his kids. He could never get over it, the feeling that they weren’t safe, the need to always protect. Or to overprotect, as they had put it, in numerous arguments over the span of more years than John wanted to think about.
He supposed he still hadn’t gotten over it. John had come here tonight with one goal - protect Matt. Sure, mainly from himself, but still. And now here was Matt, saying he liked having John around because he made him feel safe.
Well, mission accomplished. For once.
“Hey,” Matt was saying, when John came back from his thoughts. It had the sound of a question.
“Huh?” Matt’s hand was on his knee. It was warm.
“Can I show you something?”
John could admit to a little trepidation as Matt led him across the apartment to his bedroom. Remembering Matt’s old place, it came as little surprise that the little room looked like a cross between a storage unit and video game graveyard. There was stuff, and boxes of stuff, everywhere. There were even large jugs of water and some canned goods stacked up in the corner as if Matt were preparing for the apocalypse. And having met Matt’s friend the Warlock and seen his ‘Command Centre’ first hand, John wouldn’t be surprised if that was exactly the case.
There was a little clear path of space on the carpet Matt could use to get to his desk and the bed next to it, however, and John was pleased to see Kennedy had made good on her promise to make sure it didn’t smell like a dumpster. An orange tabby cat was curled happily on the corner of the unmade bed.
On the walls, Matt had hung up some frames. There were pictures of Matt’s family, one of them gathered around a younger Matt wearing a cap and gown at his highschool graduation. There was another of him even younger still, maybe ten or eleven, with his arm around another boy John didn’t recognize, both of them grinning and holding out what John could only assume was the first fish they had each ever caught. There was a shot of him and Kennedy smiling over drinks side by side in a booth at some bar. It was a little out of date but looked more or less like the pair as John knew them, and next to that was a photo of him with John himself. John looked at it in surprise before he realized these were the clippings Kennedy had mentioned. The frame was filled with a spread of two or three newspaper and magazine clippings collaged together.
There was one of them on the fateful day itself, neither of them looking at the camera, still streaked in blood and muck and looking shellshocked and exhausted. There was one of them tidy and freshly scrubbed in their hospital pyjamas, receiving their merit award certificates from Miguel Bowman and aiming exhausted morphine-enabled grins at the cameras despite the sling on John’s arm, and Matt leaning on his crutches. And there was one of John, taken in profile weeks later, giving his press statement.
“Oh,” Matt said, “you found that.” He was standing at the desk next to John, bent over a collection of computer junk John couldn’t put a name to with a gun to his head. “It’s not what I wanted to show you, although it’s kind of been my inspiration. I was going to show you this.”
Matt held a hand out at the pile of mechanical miscellany. John tried not to look completely baffled. He noticed at second glance that it was all connected together with wires, and in some places, duct tape.
“It’s what I’ve been working on,” he explained. “I call it HERO, Home Emergency Response Organizer. Watch.” Then he bent down and talked into a small microphone John hadn’t noticed before. “Hi Hero,” he addressed it.
“Hello, Matthew,” a recording of Matt’s own voice said back. “What’s your emergency?”
“Voice recognition, for security,” Matt explained, as if all of this made perfect sense. “See, you try it. Just…” Matt gave a little laugh and John realized he must be looking old and confused as hell right now. “Just say hello or something.”
John leaned down next to the microphone. “Hello or something.”
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said the recorded voice. “Please have an authorized family member introduce you.”
“It will keep saying that until your voice gets introduced by an authorized one,” Matt explained quickly. And you can integrate with your alarm system, see, so if you think there’s somebody in your house that shouldn’t be, you can even program it to sound the alarm.”
“Very cool,” John said, and he meant it. He had always known Matt was smart with this stuff but seeing it first hand was kind of interesting, even if he didn’t really get it.
“Hero, I’d like you to meet John,” Matt said, into the microphone. “Say hello or something again,” he prompted.
“Hello or something again,” John said.
“Smartass,” Matt said, grinning. But the machine had started clicking and making whirring sounds.
“Hello,” the recorded voice said again, “…John.”
“Nice,” John said, nodding. “Creepy.”
“He is a little,” Matt agreed, laughing. It’s just a prototype, the voice obviously won’t be me if I ever get him ready for sale. Maybe a snooty English Butler like JARVIS. …I wonder if Jude Law’s available…”
John had no idea what that meant, but Matt had hold of his elbow and was pulling him toward the little mic again.
“See, Hero is like Siri for Emergency Preparedness. Tell him there’s a hurricane coming.”
“Hero,” John said stiffly, “there’s a hurricane.”
More clicking and whirring. “There are no hurricane warnings in your area,” Matt’s voice said.
The real Matt beside him laughed. “Okay, that’s okay, he’s working properly at least. Sorry.” He leaned over to the far side of the desk where the type of computer John did recognize sat with its light-up keys glowing silently in the dim, windowless room. “Let’s just…make one,” he said, typing something rapidly in on the keyboard.
He spared John and leaned over to talk to Hero himself this time. “Hero, help us,” he said.
“Hello Matthew,” Hero responded creepily again. “What’s your emergency?”
“Hurricane,” Matt said succinctly. It was followed by some whirring but no clicks this time.
“You have approximately four hours to prepare. Please show me your provisions.”
“This is my favourite part,” Matt said, excitedly. John was happy to see him moving and motivated. He wondered briefly if he was failing Kennedy disastrously by letting Matt back in here to tinker with his obsession again, but this whole thing was kind of too great for him to care enough to stop it just yet. “I don’t know if I’ll have a separate wireless scanner, or if you just pick up the unit and scan,” Matt rambled as he fiddled with the machine. “It’ll depend if he’s wall-mounted…” Matt pulled something out of the jumble of wires that looked like a grocery bar-code scanner and pointed it at the pile of apocalypse provisions in the corner. John noticed they were all stacked with their code stickers facing away from the wall.
Matt moved the scanner slowly over the pile, and then clicked a button. “Your provisions are insufficient,” Hero proclaimed. “You may need a first aid kit. I am searching for a list of places you can buy…first aid kits. In your area within…four. Hours.” Matt gestured grandly at the screen of his computer, which pulled up a Google Map dotted all over with red location icons showing drug stores and supermarkets.
“You’re a genius,” John said flatly.
“No…” Matt said modestly. He looked like he was blushing, but he might have also just been flushed with excitement about being back in his element.
“No, nothin’.” John said. “You are a genius, Matt. This…I’m impressed.”
“Well it is what the IQ tests say,” Matt allowed, somewhat less modestly. “But this…I mean you get the credit.”
John looked at him, and started mentally checking for symptoms of fever or head injury.
“The day we met you said something that…” Matt looked over at the clippings on the wall. “You said what we should be worried about was the people who were alone and scared in their houses. I had you, so I was okay. But a lot of people weren’t that day. I did my research and there were thirteen heart attack victims that didn’t make it because the system was shut down, just for a few hours. There were two elderly people that died of accidental falls because ambulances couldn’t get there on time, and there was even one lady that died in childbirth. That kid doesn’t have a mom now, because of Gabriel.”
Matt looked at him and let that tidbit land.
“I can’t stop anything like that from happening again, nobody can. But since we started hanging out again I realized how important it is just to feel safe. I wanted to create something to make those people you talked about feel like they had a Hero of their own.”
John didn’t know what to say. That day, Matt had shown every indication of hating the system and everything about it. The ‘system’ that John was a part of. The ‘system’ that was made up of people. He had even said when he had first heard of a Fire Sale, he thought it might be ‘cool’. If he was honest, John had seen more of somebody like Gabriel in Matt that day, than somebody like him. The thought that Matt had taken a few words John had said just to get him moving so much to heart was…
“What?” Matt was asking him. He had lost his excited flush, he even looked like he might be a little nervous. “You’re…like, smiling.”
“It’s just funny,” John said, trying to put it into words. “You say that I make you feel safe. I used to think you were dangerous.”
Matt smiled a little, and looked down at his creepy robotic protector. “And now?”
John thought about how Matt could always get him to talk. Even when he didn’t think that he wanted to. He thought about Matt’s wide honest eyes on the couch earlier, the warmth of his hand on John’s knee.
“…It’s a little of both,” John said honestly.
“I know the feeling,” Matt said. He smiled, and he looked up from his mechanical creation and at John, with those eyes. Waiting.
John was done waiting. He took a step forward and put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. When that worked out well, he slid the touch upward to the side of his neck. His skin was as soft as it looked.
“You are a genius, Matt. And not just that, you’re-”
“Your genius?” Matt said simply. It wasn’t what John had meant, but it wasn’t something he didn’t mean, either. “Hey, you’re my hero, so it’s only fair.”
“Kowalski says she knows you like me because you like to stare at my neck,” John murmured, smoothing his thumb so gently over the ridge of Matt’s adam’s apple that the touch was barely a touch at all. He could feel goosebumps form under his fingers at the nape of Matt’s neck in response.
“It’s a nice neck,” Matt said, stepping right in and putting his fingertips to John’s collar bone. He felt his own skin draw tight and start to tingle in reply.
They were standing so that John’s back was to the bed. “Matt,” he said, hearing the way his voice had dropped to a low, bedroom register. “Push me.”
Matt looked up at him and smiled, and for a second John thought he was about to oblige.
“Um…awkward,” Matt said instead of shoving him down on the bed and finally taking what they had both apparently been waiting weeks for, “but this will only just take one teeny tiny second, I promise.”
Matt slipped past him and went to the bed.
“Kierkegaard, out!” he said, giving the orange tabby cat a nudge. The cat regarded him curiously, then turned the look on John. “Oh no, you perv. This is a private show,” he insisted, picking the cat up and dumping her unceremoniously out the door.
Then he turned around and without further warning, came barreling across the short distance to the bed and tackled John surprisingly effectively onto it.
“Where were we?” Matt asked, grinning down at him.
John rolled them both firmly over, and gave Matt his answer.
***********
Epilogue
The launch party for HERO Inc. was a small and intimate affair, but it was still pretty good of Vinnie to let them have the place for the night.
The thing was, being small and intimate with a bunch of people Matt had only actually ever met on a computer screen meant he did a lot of shaking hands and was bought a lot of drinks, and was generally a hard guy to get alone. That was life as a CEO, John figured (even when you worked at a place where the CEO was also the Head of Design, and Sales, and also every other employee).
“You nervous?” Connie asked him. She had been asking him shit like that all night.
“Nah,” John said, taking another slow sip out of the whiskey she had talked him into.
“Good,” she said, doing the same. “Because there’s your opportunity.”
John followed the direction of her nod. Matt was standing next to the appetizer table, chatting animatedly to Kennedy and her new girlfriend. He wasn’t alone, but it would definitely do. It was maybe even a little bit perfect.
John drained his drink and grabbed his provisions.
“Go get ‘im, Tiger,” John heard Kowalski say, as he started to thread his way through the little clumps of computer nerds dressed to the nines in their cleanest t-shirts, and clustered around Best Buy and Home Depot sales reps in cheap suits.
Matt’s back was turned when he got there, laughing at something one of the girls had said - or, most likely, at one of his own cheesy jokes. That was fine, because it gave John a chance to school his expression into something that looked like a relaxed, straight face, and to run his hand down the back of Matt’s silky steel gray button-down.
“Hey, there, Mr. President-and-CEO,” John said in Matt’s ear.
“It’s Mr. Founder-and-CEO actually,” Matt said, smiling happily as he turned. “But Mr. President sounds better, actually. Maybe I’ll change it. Hi!” he said finally, leaning in for a quick kiss.
“What’s in the box?” Matt asked curiously, once he leaned back.
“Got you a little Launch Present,” John said, handing it over.
“I didn’t know that was a thing, I’ll have to throw corporate launches more often!”
“If it gets you out of your room,” Kennedy said, approvingly.
“And our apartment,” her girlfriend drawled, tossing back her long, dark hair and draping an arm lasciviously around Kennedy’s neck.
“But I’m such an appreciative audience, Lula,” Matt joked, ripping the paper off his gift and handing it to John. His face lit up when he got the box open.
“Fortune cookies,” he said warmly. “It’s a thing,” he explained briefly to the girls. “We have a thing.” Matt looked up at him and grinned. “What? …You have that face, that ‘wait for it’ face when I’m missing someth-” Matt looked back down into the box and saw the smaller box inside.
Matt looked a little nervous as he reached in. John took the box of cookies so that Matt could open the little one.
“Last time we had these, I think I got the wrong one,” John told him quietly. “Never shoulda let you have first pick. I believe this must be yours,” he said, as Matt got the box open to reveal a tiny, crumpled slip of paper.
“You kept this…” Matt breathed, openly touched. Mission accomplished, again.
“Read it out, that’s the rules.”
“‘All your hard work is about to pay off,’” Matt read. His voice was just the slightest bit husky.
“Congratulations, Mr. Founder-and-CEO,” John said.
“Congratulations, Matt!” The girls said together, they gave a little round of applause and John realized Kowalski was standing behind him, clapping along with them.
“It’s President…” Matt muttered, blinking quickly a few times before he looked up. “Thank you, John. Seriously.”
“You did great,” John said, smiling widely and wrapping a congratulatory arm around Matt.
When John let him go, Matt was still blinking the touched sparkle out of his eyes. “Ugh,” he said, “I need a cookie.”
John pulled the box away before he could get at it. “You lost first pick, remember?” He picked out a cookie and handed it over.
Matt unwrapped his cookie while accepting graciously as Connie gave him her congratulations. He stopped mid-thank you, and choked on a sudden laugh.
John ignored Kowalski’s knowing smile, and waited.
“Read it out,” she told Matt. “You know the rules.”
“‘You will make an indelible acquaintance’. ‘Indelible’ is in bold,” Matt said, flipping the fortune over to show her and the girls. “I think this cookie may have been hacked.”
“Oh yeah?” John said all too innocently, “I think there’s something wrong with this one, too.” John gave it a shake, to demonstrate something was rattling around inside, and then held it out for Matt.
Matt took it with an incredulous shake of his head. Inside the cookie was a shiny silver key.
“How did you…”
“Vinnie knows a guy,” John said. “They put engagement rings in ‘em and stuff. So whaddya say? My place. You wanna?”
“I do,” said Matt, grinning and tipping his chin up for a kiss. “Looks like you got your wish, ladies.”
“Our own apartment!” Lula exclaimed, wrapping both arms around her girlfriend this time and initiating a kiss that lasted much longer than the one he and Matt had just shared.
“And we got ours too, huh kid?” Kowalski said to Matt, with a friendly nudge on the arm.
Matt grinned and gave a wolf whistle. “Get a little closer, ladies, don’t be too shy to let those hands maybe get involved…”
The girls broke apart and Kennedy gave Matt a well-deserved shove to the shoulder. He just kept grinning a ‘worth it’ grin in Kowalski’s direction.
“Oh, hey,” Matt said, with a snap of his fingers. “I have something for you too. Don’t go anywhere, I will be right back.”
“Congratulations on the new roomie,” Kowalski told John, as they watched Matt make his way over to the bar and call for Vinnie. “If he’s the President, that make you First Lady?”
“Somebody oughta be a lady around here,” John bantered happily back.
“Not a chance,” Kowalski said. They both fell quiet as she spied Matt on the return approach.
“For you,” he said cordially, holding out Kowalski’s missing black umbrella.
She laughed. “Oh, you shouldn’t have, honey. Really. You know there’s-”
And John thoroughly enjoyed the look on her face as he and Matt both joined her in rowdy unison: “about twenty of them in the lost and found down at the precinct!!”
~~~
.
written for smallfandombang
“John?” The voice on the other end of the line when John finally gave in - after two mostly-sleepless nights plus one day spent in such a foul temper that Kowalski literally sent him home for accidentally snapping the plastic feeder tray off of a particularly belligerent printer that repeatedly insisted it was suffering from a paper jam that was only possible if somebody had invented invisible paper while John wasn’t looking - and dialed the number for Matt’s mobile, wasn’t Matt’s.
“…Kennedy?”
It was a reasonable guess. She was the only one of Matt’s people he had met that would have access to his personal items and possessed a reasonably female-sounding voice. Come to think of it, she was the only one of Matt’s people John had met, period.
“Sorry,” she said, in confirmation. “I wouldn’t normally pick up Matt’s phone, but I saw your name on the screen and…”
“Sure,” John said, “no problem. I was just…”
Why was he calling anyway? To ask Matt what the hell his problem was? To check in (that he wasn’t a corpse in a dumpster somewhere)? Because it was John’s ‘turn’? Even in his head, none of them sounded like likely messages a person leaves with a roommate. Not a person in their right mind, anyway.
“…Calling.” John finished lamely.
“Honestly, I’m kind of relieved you did,” Kennedy said, and John had to wonder if was imagining the way she sounded slightly breathless. “If I had your number in mine I would have called you myself by now, to be honest.”
“Everything alright?” John asked, keeping his tone even, although his mind was already running through every step in the standard procedure for the ‘corpse in a dumpster’ scenario, which suddenly didn’t seem like nearly as crazy a reason to call as it had only seconds ago.
“That I know of,” Kennedy said, speaking a little slower. “I mean, I haven’t seen Matt in days.”
“What?” John gave up all pretense of sounding casual, and slipped into Missing Persons Procedure: Step 1. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Oh,” Kennedy said, sounding surprised by his tone. “I know where he is.” She gave a nervous sounding laugh. “He’s in his room.”
“…His room.”
“Yeah,” she said. “For four days. Since the last sighting. And then probably another three days before that.”
“Oh,” said John this time.
“Yeah,” she said again. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to alarm you or anything,” Kennedy said kindly, if not a little too late. “He does this. A lot. I know he’s working, and this is how he likes to focus and everything but… It’s not exactly healthy. I mean he must come out, for bathroom breaks or whatever, but he goes all kind of nocturnal and does all that stuff in the middle of the night so I don’t see much of him, and I just …worry. You know?”
“…Yeah,” John agreed quietly. Because he did know.
Suddenly, irritatingly, frustrating-that-Kowalski-was-right-all-along-ly, he did know.
Why he was doing this, why he had called. Why he was lying awake at night, and snapping idiot paper-jam-hallucinating printers in half by day. He was worried.
In the past few short weeks since they had reconnected, Matt had become somebody John worried about. Somebody he cared for.
“He eat?” John quizzed her, remembering the piles of junk food wrappers littering Matt’s apartment the first time they had met.
“Inconclusive,” she replied. “I’m pretty sure he’s squirrelling food away in there, although I don’t know how much of it he actually eats, because it’s kind of starting to smell a bit like…”
“Like a corpse in a dumpster?” John finished for her, gamely.
“In a word? Yup,” Kennedy replied, finally sounding like she might be smiling at least a little now. “So listen,” she said, giving John the brief sense she was winding up for some kind of sales pitch. “I was just going to try to lure him out with Chinese food and Netflix. And if you’re not super busy or anything… I know he would come out of his room for you, if you maybe wanted to join us?”
“Can I bring anything?” John asked, because while hanging out with two people half his age watching Internet movies might not be his first choice for a Friday night, if it was going to be good for Matt, then suddenly there was no question.
“Just you,” Kennedy said, and this time he was sure he could hear her grinning. “You provide the bait, I’ll bully him into the shower and clean out the ‘dumpster’ while he’s distracted.”
“Love it when a plan comes together,” John said, approvingly.
“Thank you,” Kennedy said, in her sincere, friendly voice. “…And John? Make it fast?”
“Bet you the bill I get there before the delivery guy,” John vowed, then ended the call. Just a quick change of clothes, and he could be on his way.
And if he happened to pick out the low-necked Henley that had repeatedly drawn Matt’s eye the last time the two of them settled down in front of a television, well, who was to say it wasn’t a matter of pure coincidence?
***
If John had worried that it might get awkward, making conversation for an entire night with Matt and his platonic homosexual life partner - all evidence of her easy and unrelentingly friendly disposition aside - he needn’t have bothered.
When he arrived, the door was answered by a flushed and hurried-looking Kennedy, claiming she had received the most urgent of booty calls and must fly immediately across town into the waiting arms of her unexpected ‘girl on girl action’ as Matt would put it.
Kids these days were so up front about their sexuality. John nodded politely and tried not to look either surprised or old. Although watching her rush around the small two-bedroom in an openly amourous tizzy, snatching up items like keys and a long blue scarf that looked a lot like the one Matt had been wearing the night he waited for her outside of Vinnie’s, was sort of making him feel both.
He was sure there was a time when he had been like this on his way to a date with Holly, but by now it was difficult to even remember it, much less how it had felt.
“Matt’s still in the shower,” Kennedy said, plowing through the living room to stop at a hip, bohemian-style hat rack and grab her coat. John would have started to feel like the victim of a not-so-elaborate setup, except this was the most flustered he had ever seen her. “He should be out any minute though, and the food’s already in the kitchen. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
John smiled. “Get outta here,” he said gently. “Guess I owe you the bill.” He gave a nod back over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen from where, sure enough, the scent of kung pao chicken was wafting.
Kennedy shrugged into her coat, and gave a mischievous grin that went fetchingly with the excitement glittering in her eyes and reddening her cheeks. “I used Matt’s credit card. He can just call it payback for all those free drinks.”
And John was spared from having to think up a response to the information that Matt had clearly been going over the details of their outings together with his roommate, as she walked briskly toward him, reached behind him for the doorknob, and then gave him an impetuous peck firmly on the cheek.
“Thanks John,” she said, her sincere expression only dulling her excitement of the evening’s prospects for the briefest of moments, before she slid quickly by him and out the apartment door.
She was right about one thing. It really was only minutes before Matt was finished in the shower. John barely had time to put the six-pack he had brought along into the fridge and conduct a preliminary investigation of the bags of takeout sitting on the counter.
“McClane?”
John turned to see Matt standing outside the kitchen. His hair was wet and he was clutching a towel wrapped haphazardly around his waist. He was otherwise naked, right down to his bare feet.
John looked away. Then he realized there was actually no reason to do that, and looked back.
“Hey,” he said, still making sure to keep his gaze trained on Matt’s face anyway. The expression there looked oddly blank. “Kennedy let me in,” he explained, with a gesture toward the door. “…She didn’t tell you I was coming?”
“She-no, totally. I mean yeah, yes. She…” Matt’s gaze flicked in the direction of one of the bedroom doors, and between Matt’s reaction and what she had said on the phone, John got the distinct impression that not much of what Kennedy said to Matt while he was holed up working in there had a real habit of sinking in. And Matt seemed to be thinking something similar. “Did she say, exactly um-” Matt looked around the apartment, pushing a hand through his wet hair as he did. “Did she leave?”
“Her girlfriend called,” John offered.
“Is that food?” Matt asked, confirming John’s suspicions about how much information actually made its way into Matt’s brain when he was focused on working. He raised his nose like a scenting Labrador and raised himself up on bare tip-toes to try and see past John into the kitchen. “…Wait. ‘Girlfriend’?”
“Lilah?” John tried to remember. Kennedy’s explanation and been both brief and rushed. “Lisa?”
“Lula,” Matt supplied. He looked down at his bare feet, with a dreamy, lecherous little smirk.
“Lula,” John agreed. “She told me to tell you you were missing all the hot girl-on-girl.”
Matt aimed a short huff of laughter at his toes. When he looked back at John his gaze was clearer, with little more presence in it. He tightened his grip on the towel at his waist.
“So, I’m afraid our gracious hostess isn’t gonna be coming home tonight. And I’m-“ Matt looked down, passed a hand over his unclothed torso. John’s eye followed the motion for an involuntary second before he wrenched it back up, all the way to Matt’s dripping hair. “Woefully indisposed,” Matt finished. He made a gesture back over his shoulder at his bedroom door. “I’m gonna go and just-”
“Yeah,” John said, nodding only partially as an excuse for averting his gaze. “Of course.”
***
They loaded up their plates with fried rice and egg rolls and spicy chicken and deep friend shrimp. Then they sat on the couch and ate it in silence in front of something Matt called a “Netflix Original” that appeared to be about a girl detective who didn’t realize she was a superhero.
Or at least John ate in silence. Matt picked at a shrimp, poked his rice around his plate with his chopsticks a while, and set his plate down to take a single bite out of his egg roll - which he doused liberally with several packets of both soy and plum sauce first - and then never picked it back up again.
Kennedy’s plan to lure Matt out of his hacker hibernation didn’t appear to be coming together at all. But he could see why she had tried. Close up, John could see now how drawn and pinched Matt looked. Dark circles under the eyes, the whole bit. And yet he was still distracted. It couldn’t be clearer that the only thing on Matt’s mind was getting back to his work.
John looked over at him, pretending to watch the tough girl detective jump out a three storey window and land lightly on her feet, even though he was plainly too busy tapping strung out fingers on the arm of the couch and tossing intermittent junkie-glances in the direction of his bedroom to be paying much attention. He tried to think if Matt had looked this bad when had first laid eyes on him tonight, but that only brought back the image of Matt standing undressed in front of him in the middle of the room.
He hadn’t seen dark marks under his eyes, just the way his skin was so pale it had a look like cream, like if John were to touch it it would ripple and give way under his fingers like silky liquid. He couldn’t remember pinched looking cheeks, just the curve of the bare shoulder as Matt twisted back to look nervously over it at his bedroom door, and the smooth lines of his chest - mostly hairless except for where a little dark trail under his navel disappeared into the towel held loosely around his waist.
John took his eyes off of Matt before he turned from the screen and busted him staring. His gaze landed on the now long-abandoned plates of food on the coffee table instead, and John pulled himself up off the couch to clear them.
He had both plates in hand before Matt noticed what he was doing, and made a move guiltily to get up.
“Hey, you don’t have t-I can…”
“Would you relax?” John ordered. “It’s ten steps to your kitchen and they’re paper plates.”
Matt sat back, looking reluctant. When John got back, he had paused the action on the screen, as if John would be sorry he missed it. He dangled a bottle of beer from the six pack John had forgotten he put in the fridge over Matt’s shoulder.
“Thanks,” Matt said idly, as he accepted it. And then, as he recognized the retro brown-bottled organic stuff he had brought by John’s last time: “Heeeeey, you remembered.”
It was the first sign of life Matt had shown all night. John smiled as he set down his own bottle and held out the rest of his offering from the kitchen.
“You barely ate any dinner, the least you can do is eat your dessert.”
“Ha.” Matt examined both the fortune cookies, swaddled in their crinkly packaging and nestled in his cupped palm, before grabbing one with what could be described as ‘gusto’ compared with the rest of the evening’s mood.
“Fortune cookies are the worst,” Matt said with relish, as he tore into the package. “I kind of love them.”
“Read it out,” John said, ripping the crinkle-wrap off his own cookie. “That’s the rules.”
“’An inch of time is an inch of gold’,” Matt read. “Yup,” he confirmed, tossing the tiny paper slip down onto the table and crunching avidly into the hard, brittle pastry. “The worst.”
“Huh,” John said leadingly, when he read his fortune.
“What?” Matt turned toward him. It was gratifying to see the hint of interest in something, anything, lighting his eyes.
John looked back down at his fortune and read. “…You will meet an indelible acquaintance.”
“It does not say that!” Matt raised his chin and leaned in, trying to get a look at the fortune.
“Sure it does,” John flashed the fortune at him, too quickly for Matt to read, then he raised an eyebrow and crumpled the little strip deliberately in his fist.
“There we go,” Matt said, as if his suspicions had been proven.
John watched him take a sip of his brown bottle with a smile on his lips. This was progress. “You callin’ me a liar?” John pressed.
“I-yeah!” Matt confirmed, looking back at him and grinning over the lip of his drink.
John opened his fist to show the crushed fortune but when Matt reached for it he shut it just as fast.
Matt’s grin got wider and he ducked his head. “Nice,” he muttered setting his bottle down, “Real mature.”
Then Matt gave him exactly what he was looking for, and made a surprise swipe for John’s wrist.
Matt was fast, he actually managed to catch him, but John was the stronger and twisted easily out of his grasp. Matt rallied by launching himself across the couch, both quick hands flailing for purchase. John was ready for him this time, accounting for his speed and relying on torque to keep repeatedly freeing himself.
What he didn’t account for, though, was brains. Most people he had fought, or sparred with, forgot John was left-handed and they let it take them by surprise. Not Matt. They ended up pressed backward over the arm of the couch, Matt straddling John’s lap with a knee planted firmly on either side of him and a tight, long-fingered grip around each of his wrists.
John wasn’t out of tricks yet. Matt had hold of him, but he was using his grip on John for balance. Slowly, John started to spread his arms, so Matt would be forced to relinquish his hold, or fall. Matt held on, but his newfound grin faltered.
“That’s cheating!” he exclaimed, breathlessly.
“Some would call it winning,” John argued. He spread his arms a little wider and Matt’s body levered down a little closer.
They were both breathing fast. Matt gave him a defiant look, and John widened his span a little more. Just a threat, but enough to bring Matt so close his hair was brushing John’s forehead. He barely even noticed the scent of Matt’s shampoo anymore, it was so familiar now.
Matt broke eye contact first. He looked down at John’s chest, where he would land if he didn’t give in soon. And that’s when the switch flipped.
It was hard to tell at this distance, but it looked like Matt’s gaze snagged on the neckline of John’s shirt again. Then it came back up to what might have been his mouth.
John froze. Matt let go.
Then he pushed himself up off of John and retreated to his corner of the couch.
“You give up too easy,” John said triumphantly. The taunt did nothing to revive the playful spark in Matt’s eye which seemed to have been snuffed out as quickly as it had ignited.
“Yeah,” he agreed, with a brief and awkward looking smile down at his hands. “But some would call it winning, so.” Matt flashed the awkwardness posing as a smile in John’s direction for a second and then reached for the remote.
John leaned forward and caught his wrist before he could get to it.
“Hey,” he said, making sure to keep his tone gentle. “The Internet isn’t going anywhere.” He let go of Matt’s arm, which didn’t move, just stayed there, hovering over that crazy remote Matt had that looked like it was designed for shooting digital zombies and driving virtual racecars, not playing and pausing movies. John just hoped he never had to figure out how to use it. “You were finally starting to relax,” he went on. “Let’s just…hang out.”
Matt sat back. His lips thinned a little into a skeptical line. He looked anything but relaxed.
“Hang out,” he repeated, uncertainly.
“Yeah,” John said, and then abandoned all pretense. “Look, Kennedy called me over here because she’s worried about you.”
Matt gave an impatient sigh. “She always does this. I-look I know it’s weird, and like, hermit-y or whatever, but I’m work-”
“I know,” John interrupted, still keeping his voice as gentle as he could, “I know you’re ‘working’. But hey, I work too, and I don’t look like I haven’t eaten in a week, and there ain’t bags under my eyes big enough to carry my sister’s shoe collection.”
That got Matt’s attention. Although he didn’t look happy about it. He looked sharply up at John, exasperation written all over his face.
“Matt,” John said, before he could start giving him hell, “she’s not the only one who’s worried.”
Matt’s expression softened a touch, and his shoulders slumped as a little of the tension went out of them.
“We haven’t even spoken in weeks. It…” John stopped short of saying ‘it’s not like you’. It felt strange to realize the truth was he didn’t really know. “I was starting to wonder if it was something I said.”
Matt sighed again. He rubbed both his hands over his face.
“My ex-girlfriend would say this is why I don’t have any friends,” he said, finally. “And probably why she’s an ex-girlfriend. Look, I’m sorry,” Matt said. He got slowly to his feet, like he was expecting John to do the same so they could call an end to the evening. John sat exactly where he was, for now. “I shouldn’t have…crawled in your lap like that. I’m not trying to push you, John, I’m just-”
It was the first time John could remember Matt using his first name.
“Push me,” he interrupted. He felt almost as surprised by it as Matt looked.
Matt stopped talking and looked down at his chest, the breadth of his biceps, like John had meant it physically. Although when he thought back to how much easier things had been when they were roughhousing, how much happier and relaxed Matt had looked, he thought it might not be a bad plan.
“I-sorry, what?”
“Push me,” John repeated. “You got things to say to me, shit you wanna ask? Push me, say it. Ask.”
Matt stared at him helplessly for a moment. He didn’t say anything, but he sat back down and stopped acting like he was about to kick him out so he could disappear back into his room. Baby steps, John figured.
“I told ya, you give up too easy.” Matt still didn’t speak, but his eyebrows moved together like he was considering the words. “That night you came over, looking all sharp? …Gave up too easy then too.”
Matt’s eyebrows stopped bunching together like he was trying to use them to hold too many thoughts in his head. In fact, it looked as if his mind might have gone completely blank.
He looked at John for a second. And another.
“Respecting the fact that somebody doesn’t date guys isn’t giving up. It’s sort of more of a non-starter,” he said finally.
“Who made you the expert on who I’ve dated?”
Matt’s eyebrows shot straight up this time.
“You’ve dated guys?” he said, disbelievingly. Almost like he might be about to laugh at him.
“Just the one, but yeah,” John said, and he almost wished Kennedy could be here to see the shock on Matt’s face. Who was all modern and open with their sexuality now, huh? “…And I wouldn’t call it dating exactly.”
“I-is this where I ‘push’ you?”
John spread his hands silently in reply.
“Fine, I’ll bite,” Matt said, leaning back into the couch, and if he didn’t look relaxed, at least he didn’t look checked completely out of life anymore, like he had when John had arrived. “Who is this mysterious not-date. Do tell, Detective.”
Now that it came to it, though, John wasn’t exactly sure how to start. In his zeal for drawing Matt out of his lifeless, ‘hermit-y’ shell, and his pride in not being the stodgy old fuddy-duddy he must have seemed earlier tonight, he had led them to a topic that he had frankly zero experience talking about. Because he had never told anybody.
How did Matt always do this to him? It was happening again. Matt, just sitting quietly, waiting with those intelligent eyes on him, unblinking. Not pushing. Just open and ready. In case.
In case John wanted him. Like he had been with everything else.
John cleared his throat.
“When you get out of the Academy, they pair you up with a mentor. Somebody older, more experienced. Y’know, to show you the ropes.” John waited, for Matt to make a snarky comment about stereotypes, or how he saw a dirty movie like this once, but he didn’t. He just waited. “He was this older guy, y’know, tough. A little dangerous. It was just locker room stuff, mostly. A bit of horseplay in the showers…maybe some fooling around in a couple of back alleys after a bust got our blood pumpin’.” John stopped. He looked at Matt. “I was young.”
“And so that’s what you think this is?” Matt said finally, when it was clear John was finished. He pointed a finger at himself. “Like…hero worship?”
Matt made it sound like a bad thing. John felt his brain groping around for some other way to put it. “You said the first time I saved your life was the first time…”
“Yeah but-” Matt cut him off with a little laugh that didn’t actually sound funny. He scooted himself a little closer on the couch, like what he had to say was important and he wanted to be sure John could hear. “Not because you’re, like, this big-swinging-dick, cowboy stereotype.” There it was, John thought, the ‘stereotype’. He prepared for the ‘gay porn trope’ and Village People jokes, but none came.
“Not because you’re ‘dangerous’ - Okay so you’re totally all those things,” Matt said, with a dismissive wave. “But you don’t make me feel dangerous, coming over to your place that night wasn’t about catching some kind of thrill. When I’m with you… I feel safe.”
Oh.
“It’s not something I feel that often anymore,” Matt said quietly, “Safe. Since the Fire Sale. You know?”
“Yeah.” John nodded. He had known, once. It felt like another lifetime ago; the years of counselling after Nakatomi. The countless therapy sessions and family support groups, and none of it had saved his second shot at his marriage, or his relationships with his kids. He could never get over it, the feeling that they weren’t safe, the need to always protect. Or to overprotect, as they had put it, in numerous arguments over the span of more years than John wanted to think about.
He supposed he still hadn’t gotten over it. John had come here tonight with one goal - protect Matt. Sure, mainly from himself, but still. And now here was Matt, saying he liked having John around because he made him feel safe.
Well, mission accomplished. For once.
“Hey,” Matt was saying, when John came back from his thoughts. It had the sound of a question.
“Huh?” Matt’s hand was on his knee. It was warm.
“Can I show you something?”
John could admit to a little trepidation as Matt led him across the apartment to his bedroom. Remembering Matt’s old place, it came as little surprise that the little room looked like a cross between a storage unit and video game graveyard. There was stuff, and boxes of stuff, everywhere. There were even large jugs of water and some canned goods stacked up in the corner as if Matt were preparing for the apocalypse. And having met Matt’s friend the Warlock and seen his ‘Command Centre’ first hand, John wouldn’t be surprised if that was exactly the case.
There was a little clear path of space on the carpet Matt could use to get to his desk and the bed next to it, however, and John was pleased to see Kennedy had made good on her promise to make sure it didn’t smell like a dumpster. An orange tabby cat was curled happily on the corner of the unmade bed.
On the walls, Matt had hung up some frames. There were pictures of Matt’s family, one of them gathered around a younger Matt wearing a cap and gown at his highschool graduation. There was another of him even younger still, maybe ten or eleven, with his arm around another boy John didn’t recognize, both of them grinning and holding out what John could only assume was the first fish they had each ever caught. There was a shot of him and Kennedy smiling over drinks side by side in a booth at some bar. It was a little out of date but looked more or less like the pair as John knew them, and next to that was a photo of him with John himself. John looked at it in surprise before he realized these were the clippings Kennedy had mentioned. The frame was filled with a spread of two or three newspaper and magazine clippings collaged together.
There was one of them on the fateful day itself, neither of them looking at the camera, still streaked in blood and muck and looking shellshocked and exhausted. There was one of them tidy and freshly scrubbed in their hospital pyjamas, receiving their merit award certificates from Miguel Bowman and aiming exhausted morphine-enabled grins at the cameras despite the sling on John’s arm, and Matt leaning on his crutches. And there was one of John, taken in profile weeks later, giving his press statement.
“Oh,” Matt said, “you found that.” He was standing at the desk next to John, bent over a collection of computer junk John couldn’t put a name to with a gun to his head. “It’s not what I wanted to show you, although it’s kind of been my inspiration. I was going to show you this.”
Matt held a hand out at the pile of mechanical miscellany. John tried not to look completely baffled. He noticed at second glance that it was all connected together with wires, and in some places, duct tape.
“It’s what I’ve been working on,” he explained. “I call it HERO, Home Emergency Response Organizer. Watch.” Then he bent down and talked into a small microphone John hadn’t noticed before. “Hi Hero,” he addressed it.
“Hello, Matthew,” a recording of Matt’s own voice said back. “What’s your emergency?”
“Voice recognition, for security,” Matt explained, as if all of this made perfect sense. “See, you try it. Just…” Matt gave a little laugh and John realized he must be looking old and confused as hell right now. “Just say hello or something.”
John leaned down next to the microphone. “Hello or something.”
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said the recorded voice. “Please have an authorized family member introduce you.”
“It will keep saying that until your voice gets introduced by an authorized one,” Matt explained quickly. And you can integrate with your alarm system, see, so if you think there’s somebody in your house that shouldn’t be, you can even program it to sound the alarm.”
“Very cool,” John said, and he meant it. He had always known Matt was smart with this stuff but seeing it first hand was kind of interesting, even if he didn’t really get it.
“Hero, I’d like you to meet John,” Matt said, into the microphone. “Say hello or something again,” he prompted.
“Hello or something again,” John said.
“Smartass,” Matt said, grinning. But the machine had started clicking and making whirring sounds.
“Hello,” the recorded voice said again, “…John.”
“Nice,” John said, nodding. “Creepy.”
“He is a little,” Matt agreed, laughing. It’s just a prototype, the voice obviously won’t be me if I ever get him ready for sale. Maybe a snooty English Butler like JARVIS. …I wonder if Jude Law’s available…”
John had no idea what that meant, but Matt had hold of his elbow and was pulling him toward the little mic again.
“See, Hero is like Siri for Emergency Preparedness. Tell him there’s a hurricane coming.”
“Hero,” John said stiffly, “there’s a hurricane.”
More clicking and whirring. “There are no hurricane warnings in your area,” Matt’s voice said.
The real Matt beside him laughed. “Okay, that’s okay, he’s working properly at least. Sorry.” He leaned over to the far side of the desk where the type of computer John did recognize sat with its light-up keys glowing silently in the dim, windowless room. “Let’s just…make one,” he said, typing something rapidly in on the keyboard.
He spared John and leaned over to talk to Hero himself this time. “Hero, help us,” he said.
“Hello Matthew,” Hero responded creepily again. “What’s your emergency?”
“Hurricane,” Matt said succinctly. It was followed by some whirring but no clicks this time.
“You have approximately four hours to prepare. Please show me your provisions.”
“This is my favourite part,” Matt said, excitedly. John was happy to see him moving and motivated. He wondered briefly if he was failing Kennedy disastrously by letting Matt back in here to tinker with his obsession again, but this whole thing was kind of too great for him to care enough to stop it just yet. “I don’t know if I’ll have a separate wireless scanner, or if you just pick up the unit and scan,” Matt rambled as he fiddled with the machine. “It’ll depend if he’s wall-mounted…” Matt pulled something out of the jumble of wires that looked like a grocery bar-code scanner and pointed it at the pile of apocalypse provisions in the corner. John noticed they were all stacked with their code stickers facing away from the wall.
Matt moved the scanner slowly over the pile, and then clicked a button. “Your provisions are insufficient,” Hero proclaimed. “You may need a first aid kit. I am searching for a list of places you can buy…first aid kits. In your area within…four. Hours.” Matt gestured grandly at the screen of his computer, which pulled up a Google Map dotted all over with red location icons showing drug stores and supermarkets.
“You’re a genius,” John said flatly.
“No…” Matt said modestly. He looked like he was blushing, but he might have also just been flushed with excitement about being back in his element.
“No, nothin’.” John said. “You are a genius, Matt. This…I’m impressed.”
“Well it is what the IQ tests say,” Matt allowed, somewhat less modestly. “But this…I mean you get the credit.”
John looked at him, and started mentally checking for symptoms of fever or head injury.
“The day we met you said something that…” Matt looked over at the clippings on the wall. “You said what we should be worried about was the people who were alone and scared in their houses. I had you, so I was okay. But a lot of people weren’t that day. I did my research and there were thirteen heart attack victims that didn’t make it because the system was shut down, just for a few hours. There were two elderly people that died of accidental falls because ambulances couldn’t get there on time, and there was even one lady that died in childbirth. That kid doesn’t have a mom now, because of Gabriel.”
Matt looked at him and let that tidbit land.
“I can’t stop anything like that from happening again, nobody can. But since we started hanging out again I realized how important it is just to feel safe. I wanted to create something to make those people you talked about feel like they had a Hero of their own.”
John didn’t know what to say. That day, Matt had shown every indication of hating the system and everything about it. The ‘system’ that John was a part of. The ‘system’ that was made up of people. He had even said when he had first heard of a Fire Sale, he thought it might be ‘cool’. If he was honest, John had seen more of somebody like Gabriel in Matt that day, than somebody like him. The thought that Matt had taken a few words John had said just to get him moving so much to heart was…
“What?” Matt was asking him. He had lost his excited flush, he even looked like he might be a little nervous. “You’re…like, smiling.”
“It’s just funny,” John said, trying to put it into words. “You say that I make you feel safe. I used to think you were dangerous.”
Matt smiled a little, and looked down at his creepy robotic protector. “And now?”
John thought about how Matt could always get him to talk. Even when he didn’t think that he wanted to. He thought about Matt’s wide honest eyes on the couch earlier, the warmth of his hand on John’s knee.
“…It’s a little of both,” John said honestly.
“I know the feeling,” Matt said. He smiled, and he looked up from his mechanical creation and at John, with those eyes. Waiting.
John was done waiting. He took a step forward and put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. When that worked out well, he slid the touch upward to the side of his neck. His skin was as soft as it looked.
“You are a genius, Matt. And not just that, you’re-”
“Your genius?” Matt said simply. It wasn’t what John had meant, but it wasn’t something he didn’t mean, either. “Hey, you’re my hero, so it’s only fair.”
“Kowalski says she knows you like me because you like to stare at my neck,” John murmured, smoothing his thumb so gently over the ridge of Matt’s adam’s apple that the touch was barely a touch at all. He could feel goosebumps form under his fingers at the nape of Matt’s neck in response.
“It’s a nice neck,” Matt said, stepping right in and putting his fingertips to John’s collar bone. He felt his own skin draw tight and start to tingle in reply.
They were standing so that John’s back was to the bed. “Matt,” he said, hearing the way his voice had dropped to a low, bedroom register. “Push me.”
Matt looked up at him and smiled, and for a second John thought he was about to oblige.
“Um…awkward,” Matt said instead of shoving him down on the bed and finally taking what they had both apparently been waiting weeks for, “but this will only just take one teeny tiny second, I promise.”
Matt slipped past him and went to the bed.
“Kierkegaard, out!” he said, giving the orange tabby cat a nudge. The cat regarded him curiously, then turned the look on John. “Oh no, you perv. This is a private show,” he insisted, picking the cat up and dumping her unceremoniously out the door.
Then he turned around and without further warning, came barreling across the short distance to the bed and tackled John surprisingly effectively onto it.
“Where were we?” Matt asked, grinning down at him.
John rolled them both firmly over, and gave Matt his answer.
***********
Epilogue
The launch party for HERO Inc. was a small and intimate affair, but it was still pretty good of Vinnie to let them have the place for the night.
The thing was, being small and intimate with a bunch of people Matt had only actually ever met on a computer screen meant he did a lot of shaking hands and was bought a lot of drinks, and was generally a hard guy to get alone. That was life as a CEO, John figured (even when you worked at a place where the CEO was also the Head of Design, and Sales, and also every other employee).
“You nervous?” Connie asked him. She had been asking him shit like that all night.
“Nah,” John said, taking another slow sip out of the whiskey she had talked him into.
“Good,” she said, doing the same. “Because there’s your opportunity.”
John followed the direction of her nod. Matt was standing next to the appetizer table, chatting animatedly to Kennedy and her new girlfriend. He wasn’t alone, but it would definitely do. It was maybe even a little bit perfect.
John drained his drink and grabbed his provisions.
“Go get ‘im, Tiger,” John heard Kowalski say, as he started to thread his way through the little clumps of computer nerds dressed to the nines in their cleanest t-shirts, and clustered around Best Buy and Home Depot sales reps in cheap suits.
Matt’s back was turned when he got there, laughing at something one of the girls had said - or, most likely, at one of his own cheesy jokes. That was fine, because it gave John a chance to school his expression into something that looked like a relaxed, straight face, and to run his hand down the back of Matt’s silky steel gray button-down.
“Hey, there, Mr. President-and-CEO,” John said in Matt’s ear.
“It’s Mr. Founder-and-CEO actually,” Matt said, smiling happily as he turned. “But Mr. President sounds better, actually. Maybe I’ll change it. Hi!” he said finally, leaning in for a quick kiss.
“What’s in the box?” Matt asked curiously, once he leaned back.
“Got you a little Launch Present,” John said, handing it over.
“I didn’t know that was a thing, I’ll have to throw corporate launches more often!”
“If it gets you out of your room,” Kennedy said, approvingly.
“And our apartment,” her girlfriend drawled, tossing back her long, dark hair and draping an arm lasciviously around Kennedy’s neck.
“But I’m such an appreciative audience, Lula,” Matt joked, ripping the paper off his gift and handing it to John. His face lit up when he got the box open.
“Fortune cookies,” he said warmly. “It’s a thing,” he explained briefly to the girls. “We have a thing.” Matt looked up at him and grinned. “What? …You have that face, that ‘wait for it’ face when I’m missing someth-” Matt looked back down into the box and saw the smaller box inside.
Matt looked a little nervous as he reached in. John took the box of cookies so that Matt could open the little one.
“Last time we had these, I think I got the wrong one,” John told him quietly. “Never shoulda let you have first pick. I believe this must be yours,” he said, as Matt got the box open to reveal a tiny, crumpled slip of paper.
“You kept this…” Matt breathed, openly touched. Mission accomplished, again.
“Read it out, that’s the rules.”
“‘All your hard work is about to pay off,’” Matt read. His voice was just the slightest bit husky.
“Congratulations, Mr. Founder-and-CEO,” John said.
“Congratulations, Matt!” The girls said together, they gave a little round of applause and John realized Kowalski was standing behind him, clapping along with them.
“It’s President…” Matt muttered, blinking quickly a few times before he looked up. “Thank you, John. Seriously.”
“You did great,” John said, smiling widely and wrapping a congratulatory arm around Matt.
When John let him go, Matt was still blinking the touched sparkle out of his eyes. “Ugh,” he said, “I need a cookie.”
John pulled the box away before he could get at it. “You lost first pick, remember?” He picked out a cookie and handed it over.
Matt unwrapped his cookie while accepting graciously as Connie gave him her congratulations. He stopped mid-thank you, and choked on a sudden laugh.
John ignored Kowalski’s knowing smile, and waited.
“Read it out,” she told Matt. “You know the rules.”
“‘You will make an indelible acquaintance’. ‘Indelible’ is in bold,” Matt said, flipping the fortune over to show her and the girls. “I think this cookie may have been hacked.”
“Oh yeah?” John said all too innocently, “I think there’s something wrong with this one, too.” John gave it a shake, to demonstrate something was rattling around inside, and then held it out for Matt.
Matt took it with an incredulous shake of his head. Inside the cookie was a shiny silver key.
“How did you…”
“Vinnie knows a guy,” John said. “They put engagement rings in ‘em and stuff. So whaddya say? My place. You wanna?”
“I do,” said Matt, grinning and tipping his chin up for a kiss. “Looks like you got your wish, ladies.”
“Our own apartment!” Lula exclaimed, wrapping both arms around her girlfriend this time and initiating a kiss that lasted much longer than the one he and Matt had just shared.
“And we got ours too, huh kid?” Kowalski said to Matt, with a friendly nudge on the arm.
Matt grinned and gave a wolf whistle. “Get a little closer, ladies, don’t be too shy to let those hands maybe get involved…”
The girls broke apart and Kennedy gave Matt a well-deserved shove to the shoulder. He just kept grinning a ‘worth it’ grin in Kowalski’s direction.
“Oh, hey,” Matt said, with a snap of his fingers. “I have something for you too. Don’t go anywhere, I will be right back.”
“Congratulations on the new roomie,” Kowalski told John, as they watched Matt make his way over to the bar and call for Vinnie. “If he’s the President, that make you First Lady?”
“Somebody oughta be a lady around here,” John bantered happily back.
“Not a chance,” Kowalski said. They both fell quiet as she spied Matt on the return approach.
“For you,” he said cordially, holding out Kowalski’s missing black umbrella.
She laughed. “Oh, you shouldn’t have, honey. Really. You know there’s-”
And John thoroughly enjoyed the look on her face as he and Matt both joined her in rowdy unison: “about twenty of them in the lost and found down at the precinct!!”
~~~
.