Die Hard fic for smallfandomfest: Some Dreams Never Die (Hard)
Title: Some Dreams Never Die (Hard)
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Die Hard movies
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Category: M/Slash
Prompt: Die Hard movies, John/Matt, dream
Spoilers: n/a
Summary:
But then again, there’s no reason Lucy has to know his answer is quite entirely possibly the single least sarcastic thing Matt may have ever said....
Notes/Warnings: Not unless death by fluff-poisoning might be a thing. And what do I know, it might.
Written for smallfandomfest for the prompt 'dream.' AND For my untiringly loyal fandom wife who Die-Hard-Married me ten not-so-long years ago when I was writing my very first series, in this fandom or any other. And who has been lovingly pestering me for more of it ever since. <3
Sev I love ya, you'll never know how much the ongoing love and support means to me!
Read on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20058031
Some Dreams Never Die (Hard)
by persnickett
“Matty.”
The voice comes echoing in from the blank edge of his consciousness, pulling. Drawing him back from something that’s sliding away from his memory, slipping out just under his mind’s grasp like sand and water ebbing away with the tide. Melting, the way a snowflake’s patterns lose themselves into the warmth of your outstretched fingertip on the year’s first snowfall.
“Matty, wake up.”
The warm kiss behind his ear and the thick, calloused fingers finding his own and lacing themselves strongly in between, make the command a lot easier to obey.
“Mhh,” Matt replies, eloquently, into what should be the dark but - oh, Mother of Dragons - that is waaaay too bright!
“Was it the dream?” Matt tries to roll over to face John, but the arm banded tightly around him isn’t ready to let him yet. “Was I doing the thing?”
“The thing where you kick me in the nuts and scream your head off about Mai?” says the morning-roughened voice in his ear. The strong, warm fingers unlace themselves and slide down his chest, stopping to tickle momentarily at his navel before continuing on downward to the evidence of his subconscious’ nocturnal adventures, still quite prominent in his shorts. “Nah, it was this dream.”
“Oh - ohhhhhh,” Matt replies, as John’s fingers start to curl. “Then why’d you hafta wake me up?”
He can feel the smile in the scratch of stubble pressed into the back of his neck. “So I could do this…”
When John has finished doing everything he wanted - and then some - and Matt is still panting, still shuddering, heart still hammering like Mjolnir and bones that aren’t made of rubber nowhere to be found on his radar, John is ready to let him turn. To let him snuggle debauchedly into the now thoroughly-silvered patch of chest hair, and reach his arms around the well-muscled barrel-torso, pulling John in closer for the main course.
But those fingers find and wind their way into his hair this time, tipping his head back with a gentle tug.
“I’m late for the gym,” John says into the kiss. “You can go back to sleep.”
“Pretty sure the beauty of being retired is you can’t actually be late for anything ever again,” Matt argues, tilting his head back down again to set his teasing teeth against his favourite place on that collar bone, with what years of experience tell him is just the right amount of pressure.
John’s little grunt is all the confirmation he needs that ten years later, it’s still just right. Although apparently those years weren’t enough to prepare him for being flipped suddenly and swiftly right onto his back.
Several more kisses, a surprised chuckle or two, and at least one more practiced and judicious use of teeth in the appropriate inappropriate place, and John is grinning down at him. Pressing his wrists into the mattress with a pressure that is more of a promise than playful.
“Gotta let the dogs out and give Bullit his arthritis pill.” But John leans forward then, and his last kiss is long and slow and attentive, and full of all the things they rarely need to say out loud anymore. “But I’ll need a shower when I get back,” he whispers.
“Hmmm,” Matt murmurs back. “It’s a date.”
And it’s hours away. Matt curls into the sheets, rubbery and sated and thrumming with some uncountable integer set of different kinds of contentment, and shuts his eyes.
***
The kitchen is blinding as Matt shuffles blearily in, blazing with white morning light. The air bitter, redolent and aromatic - and nothing short of downright heavenly.
“Ohhhh, she made coffee!” Matt announces himself, to the figure standing silhouetted against the broad sunlit panel of sliding doors that lead out into John’s garden. “Let it be known, people - angels do in fact walk among us.”
Lucy’s long, lustrous brown hair has been chopped into one of those hip mom-bobs for a while now, but the way the sun gleams off of it as she turns away from the window to face him doesn’t actually make for a half-bad halo.
The bangs might be new though.
“Late start?” she asks, after coming forward to plant her habitual kiss high on his cheek.
“I mean, not like, a record or anything, but…” Matt yawns widely. He raises an arm above his head in a good, satisfying stretch, scratching indulgently at his belly when he feels the tickle of his t-shirt riding up to expose a little slip of flesh over the waistband of his sweats that’s probably just the slightest touch more convex these days, than it would have been the last time Lucy had been privy to it. “Morning!”
Matt squints. The digital clock on the stove looks like it reads 10:57, but then his eyes are pretty blurry. He’s been meaning to get checked out for a new prescription but, hey, he’s semi-retired. Who the hell has the time?
“It’s still morning right?” Maybe that says 11:58. Which still totally counts as morning. “John’ll be home soon, he’s just still at the gym…”
Lucy’s single eyebrow-raise says ‘I don’t want to know, do I?’ with stunning, unequivocal clarity and precision. It’s got to be genetic. Matt wonders idly if the McClane family would lose all ability for communication if one of them lost an eyebrow in your standard-every-day blowtorch fight, or to a tragic freak flaming-marshmallow incident.
But before Matt can ask Lucy whether they have insurance for that, the sliding doors to the garden are scraaaaaping open and three-feet-two-inches of lightning and rainbows are barreling straight into Matt’s thigh.
“And who’s THIS!?” Matt leans down to hoist the youngest McClane up onto a hip, ignoring what couldn’t possibly be a twinge in his back. “Are you an angel too? Or is this a Princess?”
“I’m a Pirate Princess!” Sophie exclaims, all glowing brown eyes and dimpling cheeks, as she pulls the pirate-print fabric of her dress away from her chest to show it off with a tiny, chubby fist.
“Well,” Matt agrees, putting a quick kiss into the side of her sun-warmed brown curls, as they make their way to the cabinet where John (aka. Pop-pop) keeps the Grandpa Cookies. “Pirate Princesses are a pretty underrated subspecies of Princess. They’re actually one of my favourites.” Sophie reaches right past the chocolate digestives for the Peek Freans with the red sugar jelly in the middle. She’s a pretty smart kid, their Sophie. “Maybe a close second. I’m also pretty partial to Ninja Princesses, and Dragon-Mother Queens. You know, if you’re ever considering a change of pace.”
“Okay.” Sophie nods sagely, her glittering little pixie eyes fixed firmly on the box as Matt finagles it open one-handed, for her to reach inside. “We’re going to the beach today! Momma says we can have a poss-icle.”
“Soph…” And apparently the McClane brow-code works for stern mom-reminders too.
Because the single syllable from Lucy is all it takes, and then Sophie quips a dutiful “dank-you, Matt-Matt” (he even gets a moist little peck on the cheek out of the deal) before she is slithering out of his arms and heading back to the garden doors at a trot, Bullit and Beretta both hot on her Peek Frean-toting heels. (Bullit’s hearing may not be what it once was, but that dog knows a soft target when he sees one, and there’s sure nothing wrong with his cookie-tracking nose.)
“So, the beach!” Matt says, through a mouthful of his own ’Frean as he offers Lucy the box.
Lucy’s trademark lazer gaze follows her daughter’s flouncing pirate tutu out the door, clearly gauging whether her gamboling glitter-purple Crocs are clean enough for Pop-pops floors (Pop-pop has never once complained about the mud or the glitter) before she turns it on him to take the entire cookie box away from him and seal it up with a meaningful look down at his midsection.
“Just thought we’d stop in while traffic thins out,” she explains, handing Matt a mug of coffee made just the way he likes it instead, and officially absolving herself from the flagrant (and unnecessary - the scale says he’s only gained six pounds and scales are Math and Math doesn’t lie) body-shaming, or needing to give any excuses for being here at all.
“So,” she asks him finally, cradling her own mug between her perfectly manicured hands and leaning a conversational hip against the counter. “How’s things?”
Matt looks around. Outside, the sunshine plays joyfully through the bouncing ringlets of Sophie’s gorgeous hobbit-curls as she attempts to share her cookies (crumb by bossy, authoritatively withheld crumb) while Beretta leaps around her in exuberant, erratic circles that seem to accomplish nothing but ensuring that John’s petunias have been thoroughly stomped to an early and gruesome puppy-inflicted death (their nutty, cranky old neighbor had originally given them those petunias, so Pop-pop might have something to say about that one) and Bullit, for his part, demonstrates how its done, raising himself up onto his arthritic old haunches into the expertly executed begging stance he and Matt had long ago perfected, tail thumping adoringly and expectantly in the lush green summertime grass.
Out in the living room, Matt’s Nintendo Switch and a sweet, inky-smelling, glossy new stack of the latest issues of Venom await him on the coffee table. There’s Cheetos in the cupboard and beers and Red Bull in ample supply in the fridge, and his preferred format of Sunday Worship is stretching out before him in a long, promising swath of slothful, gluttonous glory.
“Oh, you know me.” His coffee mug steams happily in his hand, and Matt brings it up for a long, luxuriating sip before he finishes his reply. (Because, wow, he really must be getting soft in his old age.)
In a couple of hours, John will be home. Matt can almost feel the steam in the shower curling up around them now, the slippery slide of soap suds and blunt, careful fingers moving firmly and knowingly over his skin - can just about hear the shivery-low, loving tone in that honeyed-gravel voice in his ear.
But then again, there’s no reason Lucy has to know his answer is quite entirely possibly the single least sarcastic thing Matt may have ever said:
“…Just living the dream.”
.
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Die Hard movies
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Category: M/Slash
Prompt: Die Hard movies, John/Matt, dream
Spoilers: n/a
Summary:
But then again, there’s no reason Lucy has to know his answer is quite entirely possibly the single least sarcastic thing Matt may have ever said....
Notes/Warnings: Not unless death by fluff-poisoning might be a thing. And what do I know, it might.
Written for smallfandomfest for the prompt 'dream.' AND For my untiringly loyal fandom wife who Die-Hard-Married me ten not-so-long years ago when I was writing my very first series, in this fandom or any other. And who has been lovingly pestering me for more of it ever since. <3
Sev I love ya, you'll never know how much the ongoing love and support means to me!
Read on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20058031
Some Dreams Never Die (Hard)
by persnickett
“Matty.”
The voice comes echoing in from the blank edge of his consciousness, pulling. Drawing him back from something that’s sliding away from his memory, slipping out just under his mind’s grasp like sand and water ebbing away with the tide. Melting, the way a snowflake’s patterns lose themselves into the warmth of your outstretched fingertip on the year’s first snowfall.
“Matty, wake up.”
The warm kiss behind his ear and the thick, calloused fingers finding his own and lacing themselves strongly in between, make the command a lot easier to obey.
“Mhh,” Matt replies, eloquently, into what should be the dark but - oh, Mother of Dragons - that is waaaay too bright!
“Was it the dream?” Matt tries to roll over to face John, but the arm banded tightly around him isn’t ready to let him yet. “Was I doing the thing?”
“The thing where you kick me in the nuts and scream your head off about Mai?” says the morning-roughened voice in his ear. The strong, warm fingers unlace themselves and slide down his chest, stopping to tickle momentarily at his navel before continuing on downward to the evidence of his subconscious’ nocturnal adventures, still quite prominent in his shorts. “Nah, it was this dream.”
“Oh - ohhhhhh,” Matt replies, as John’s fingers start to curl. “Then why’d you hafta wake me up?”
He can feel the smile in the scratch of stubble pressed into the back of his neck. “So I could do this…”
When John has finished doing everything he wanted - and then some - and Matt is still panting, still shuddering, heart still hammering like Mjolnir and bones that aren’t made of rubber nowhere to be found on his radar, John is ready to let him turn. To let him snuggle debauchedly into the now thoroughly-silvered patch of chest hair, and reach his arms around the well-muscled barrel-torso, pulling John in closer for the main course.
But those fingers find and wind their way into his hair this time, tipping his head back with a gentle tug.
“I’m late for the gym,” John says into the kiss. “You can go back to sleep.”
“Pretty sure the beauty of being retired is you can’t actually be late for anything ever again,” Matt argues, tilting his head back down again to set his teasing teeth against his favourite place on that collar bone, with what years of experience tell him is just the right amount of pressure.
John’s little grunt is all the confirmation he needs that ten years later, it’s still just right. Although apparently those years weren’t enough to prepare him for being flipped suddenly and swiftly right onto his back.
Several more kisses, a surprised chuckle or two, and at least one more practiced and judicious use of teeth in the appropriate inappropriate place, and John is grinning down at him. Pressing his wrists into the mattress with a pressure that is more of a promise than playful.
“Gotta let the dogs out and give Bullit his arthritis pill.” But John leans forward then, and his last kiss is long and slow and attentive, and full of all the things they rarely need to say out loud anymore. “But I’ll need a shower when I get back,” he whispers.
“Hmmm,” Matt murmurs back. “It’s a date.”
And it’s hours away. Matt curls into the sheets, rubbery and sated and thrumming with some uncountable integer set of different kinds of contentment, and shuts his eyes.
***
The kitchen is blinding as Matt shuffles blearily in, blazing with white morning light. The air bitter, redolent and aromatic - and nothing short of downright heavenly.
“Ohhhh, she made coffee!” Matt announces himself, to the figure standing silhouetted against the broad sunlit panel of sliding doors that lead out into John’s garden. “Let it be known, people - angels do in fact walk among us.”
Lucy’s long, lustrous brown hair has been chopped into one of those hip mom-bobs for a while now, but the way the sun gleams off of it as she turns away from the window to face him doesn’t actually make for a half-bad halo.
The bangs might be new though.
“Late start?” she asks, after coming forward to plant her habitual kiss high on his cheek.
“I mean, not like, a record or anything, but…” Matt yawns widely. He raises an arm above his head in a good, satisfying stretch, scratching indulgently at his belly when he feels the tickle of his t-shirt riding up to expose a little slip of flesh over the waistband of his sweats that’s probably just the slightest touch more convex these days, than it would have been the last time Lucy had been privy to it. “Morning!”
Matt squints. The digital clock on the stove looks like it reads 10:57, but then his eyes are pretty blurry. He’s been meaning to get checked out for a new prescription but, hey, he’s semi-retired. Who the hell has the time?
“It’s still morning right?” Maybe that says 11:58. Which still totally counts as morning. “John’ll be home soon, he’s just still at the gym…”
Lucy’s single eyebrow-raise says ‘I don’t want to know, do I?’ with stunning, unequivocal clarity and precision. It’s got to be genetic. Matt wonders idly if the McClane family would lose all ability for communication if one of them lost an eyebrow in your standard-every-day blowtorch fight, or to a tragic freak flaming-marshmallow incident.
But before Matt can ask Lucy whether they have insurance for that, the sliding doors to the garden are scraaaaaping open and three-feet-two-inches of lightning and rainbows are barreling straight into Matt’s thigh.
“And who’s THIS!?” Matt leans down to hoist the youngest McClane up onto a hip, ignoring what couldn’t possibly be a twinge in his back. “Are you an angel too? Or is this a Princess?”
“I’m a Pirate Princess!” Sophie exclaims, all glowing brown eyes and dimpling cheeks, as she pulls the pirate-print fabric of her dress away from her chest to show it off with a tiny, chubby fist.
“Well,” Matt agrees, putting a quick kiss into the side of her sun-warmed brown curls, as they make their way to the cabinet where John (aka. Pop-pop) keeps the Grandpa Cookies. “Pirate Princesses are a pretty underrated subspecies of Princess. They’re actually one of my favourites.” Sophie reaches right past the chocolate digestives for the Peek Freans with the red sugar jelly in the middle. She’s a pretty smart kid, their Sophie. “Maybe a close second. I’m also pretty partial to Ninja Princesses, and Dragon-Mother Queens. You know, if you’re ever considering a change of pace.”
“Okay.” Sophie nods sagely, her glittering little pixie eyes fixed firmly on the box as Matt finagles it open one-handed, for her to reach inside. “We’re going to the beach today! Momma says we can have a poss-icle.”
“Soph…” And apparently the McClane brow-code works for stern mom-reminders too.
Because the single syllable from Lucy is all it takes, and then Sophie quips a dutiful “dank-you, Matt-Matt” (he even gets a moist little peck on the cheek out of the deal) before she is slithering out of his arms and heading back to the garden doors at a trot, Bullit and Beretta both hot on her Peek Frean-toting heels. (Bullit’s hearing may not be what it once was, but that dog knows a soft target when he sees one, and there’s sure nothing wrong with his cookie-tracking nose.)
“So, the beach!” Matt says, through a mouthful of his own ’Frean as he offers Lucy the box.
Lucy’s trademark lazer gaze follows her daughter’s flouncing pirate tutu out the door, clearly gauging whether her gamboling glitter-purple Crocs are clean enough for Pop-pops floors (Pop-pop has never once complained about the mud or the glitter) before she turns it on him to take the entire cookie box away from him and seal it up with a meaningful look down at his midsection.
“Just thought we’d stop in while traffic thins out,” she explains, handing Matt a mug of coffee made just the way he likes it instead, and officially absolving herself from the flagrant (and unnecessary - the scale says he’s only gained six pounds and scales are Math and Math doesn’t lie) body-shaming, or needing to give any excuses for being here at all.
“So,” she asks him finally, cradling her own mug between her perfectly manicured hands and leaning a conversational hip against the counter. “How’s things?”
Matt looks around. Outside, the sunshine plays joyfully through the bouncing ringlets of Sophie’s gorgeous hobbit-curls as she attempts to share her cookies (crumb by bossy, authoritatively withheld crumb) while Beretta leaps around her in exuberant, erratic circles that seem to accomplish nothing but ensuring that John’s petunias have been thoroughly stomped to an early and gruesome puppy-inflicted death (their nutty, cranky old neighbor had originally given them those petunias, so Pop-pop might have something to say about that one) and Bullit, for his part, demonstrates how its done, raising himself up onto his arthritic old haunches into the expertly executed begging stance he and Matt had long ago perfected, tail thumping adoringly and expectantly in the lush green summertime grass.
Out in the living room, Matt’s Nintendo Switch and a sweet, inky-smelling, glossy new stack of the latest issues of Venom await him on the coffee table. There’s Cheetos in the cupboard and beers and Red Bull in ample supply in the fridge, and his preferred format of Sunday Worship is stretching out before him in a long, promising swath of slothful, gluttonous glory.
“Oh, you know me.” His coffee mug steams happily in his hand, and Matt brings it up for a long, luxuriating sip before he finishes his reply. (Because, wow, he really must be getting soft in his old age.)
In a couple of hours, John will be home. Matt can almost feel the steam in the shower curling up around them now, the slippery slide of soap suds and blunt, careful fingers moving firmly and knowingly over his skin - can just about hear the shivery-low, loving tone in that honeyed-gravel voice in his ear.
But then again, there’s no reason Lucy has to know his answer is quite entirely possibly the single least sarcastic thing Matt may have ever said:
“…Just living the dream.”
.