Live Free or Die Hard Fanfic: "The Babysitting Gig"
Title: The Babysitting Gig
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John/Matt, Lucy
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4622 words
Summary: "Jesus, Farrell," she said, "you act like you've never seen a mouse before."
Notes: Written for smallfandomfest (which is now held over at dreamwidth) for the prompt 'donuts'. Could be labelled 'crack' but I just call it 'rediscovering how much fun writing can be'. Part of the 'mousecapades' series, but it's a standalone. :D
The Babysitting Gig
by Severina
There was a time when getting a visit from a hot girl like Lucy Gennero would have sent Matt into a full blown panic attack, which usually included racing around the apartment throwing dirty clothing, rumpled smut mags and old pizza boxes into the back of the closet and then scrambling for a breath mint. But that was before he A. kinda sorta saved the world with an eleven digit rotating algorithm and B. kinda sorta saved the girl by firing four shots at the bad guy holding her hostage (and one of them even hit the mark) and most importantly, C. kinda sorta started dating the hot girl's dad.
So yeah.
When he hung up from Lucy - who apparently had to run off to L.A. and needed him to take care of some shit for her and yes it was important and yes it had to be right now Farrell jeeeezus put down the joystick for two seconds - he just looked down at his pajama pants and T-shirt and shrugged.
Of course, it wasn't long before he remembered that Lucy could quite certainly report on the state of his (threadbare) pajama bottoms and (Cheetos-smudged) T-shirt to her father, especially if she was in the mood to pull his chain - and let's be honest, that was the mood she was in about eighty-seven percent of the time - which was why he was breathless from shrugging into a clean pair of jeans and still had his head stuck halfway in and halfway out of a (not really clean but definitely not bearing orange fingerprints) T-shirt when he opened the door to her knock a few minutes later.
He did manage to catch the begonia she pushed toward him in a lopsided football hold against his chest before he bumped back into the half-open door and gave himself one fucker of a bruise. (Later he would twist around to show off the purplish contusion on his 'cam and complain to the Warlock that he'd inherited his mother's stupid complexion and bruised like a peach, and the Warlock would roll his eyes and ask him if he had picked out a dress for his wedding to McClane yet and Matt would give him the finger but he'd be blushing to his roots, which would also be noticeable to Warlock even on the shitty webcam that he'd managed to get after his decent gear got blown to shit because hello, he and Mary Lynne Farrell shared one thing and that thing was the pallor of a underfed vampire. But all that was some hours and one squeaky wheel in the future, so.)
"Water it briefly, once a night, just enough to keep the soil moist," Lucy said as she brushed past him.
Matt managed to pop his head out of his shirt far enough to glance down at the flower. And to frown. Because he was the guy who managed to kill a cactus once and if Lucy came home from her trip to Los Angeles to a dead begonia he didn't want to be the guy wearing a flower pot as a hat. 'Cause it wasn't cool when Devo did it and it sure as hell wasn't cool now. And he was opening his mouth to warn her that maybe someone else would be a better caretaker for a living thing like a plant - like maybe John or her physics prof or that dude on the corner who sells those Chinese knock-off DVDs - when he saw what she was setting down on his scratched up coffee table and discovered he shared another trait with his mother.
They both screamed like Jamie Lee Curtis in her best horror marathon.
Lucy looked up sharply, one hand going for her back pocket - and holy fuck, was she carrying an exacto knife in her back pocket? - before she followed his gaze and her shoulders relaxed. "Jesus, Farrell," she said, "you act like you've never seen a mouse before."
"Ohhhh, I've seen mice. In the gutter, on the subway, one memorable time sitting on a stack of presents at Santa's Village at the mall and if you think that doesn't turn a six year old off Christmas entirely than you were never in the Farrell household circa 1989. And if you think one of those is staying in my apartment, you are sadly mistaken! They are disgusting, they are dirty--"
"This is Bartholomew," Lucy said, overriding his salient points entirely.
"-they spread disease-"
"Gracie rescued him from the lab. Can you believe they were going to dissect him?"
The rodent took that moment to rise up on its haunches and stare at him through the metal bars of its cage. Its beady black eyes scanned the bars of its prison, and its little head cocked appraisingly. And Matt could entirely picture the damn thing gnawing through the bars and coming for his throat in the dead of night. So yes, yes he completely can believe it.
He shook his head. Raised his hand to continue ticking off points. "They are covered in bacteria-"
"Oh for fuck's sake, Farrell, Bart was in a lab. He hasn't been crawling around medieval Europe. Get over yourself and listen to his care instructions, because my plane leaves in two hours and if you make me late for my mother's pre-op I will kick your ass into next week."
"Pre-op?" Matt blinked. "But … is everything… McClane didn't say…"
"Focus, Matthew! We're on Bartholomew here." Lucy pushed her long hair out of her face before bending to the cage, and right, okay, maybe he should have been listening to Lucy but his attention was diverted by "pre-op", what an ugly word, and Holly Gennero, who he hadn't met but whose life and work he could recite from memory because he may have researched her thoroughly while he surreptitiously drooled over her ex-husband and waited for his knee to heal from the catastrophically intense pain of the gunshot wound. He kind of wanted to hate her but he couldn't because she seemed all kinds of Betsy Badass, and then all thoughts of John McClane's ex-wife and surgery went out of his head because Lucy put a live rodent on his arm.
For the second time in five minutes, Matt released a shriek in the soprano range that would do any scream queen proud.
"Calm, Farrell. You're gonna give my poor boy a heart attack."
"I'm gonna-" Matt could feel his entire body tensing with the desire to swat the pudgy little white thing into the wall, but he forced himself to take a deep breath. "Okay," he said.
Lucy smiled at him. One of the genuine grins, not the kind that came just before she said something completely emasculating (that he usually had to agree with, because he might have shot a bad guy and landed the completely buff 'n' bald cop but he is also the guy who gets winded going up three flights of stairs and also, Lucy is pretty damned funny.)
"See?" she said. One finger reached out to stroke along the mouse's back, and Matt could swear the damn thing preened. "He's very tame."
"Okay," Matt said again. "This is… not so bad. I have a mouse on me. There's a mouse on my arm. It's just… there's a… oh god it's moving... there's a mouse crawling on me I CAN FEEL IT'S LITTLE CLAWS OH GOD-"
"Aaand we're done," Lucy said. Matt's heart wasn't even close to being finished with its race - it was determined to come in first or die trying, even with Bartholomew peeking up from the cradle of Lucy's palm. Goddddd, he could still feel those claws. "Maybe you don't let Bart crawl on you while he's living here."
"Good call," Matt breathed out. Except then somehow it seemed like he had actually agreed to keep the damn rodent for a while, and-- "Wait," he said. "What?"
"But he does need exercise," Lucy said. She pulled a wad of nylon string from her non-exacto-knife-holding pocket, dangled it briefly in front of his nose before tucking the mouse back behind bars. And for the first time Matt truly focused beyond the rodent's unblinkingly black stare and the sharp canines that wanted to go for his jugular. He cocked his head to take in Bartholomew's rotund belly. "He's got the wheel in his cage, of course," Lucy was saying, "but what he really likes is-"
"Is that a harness?"
"-if you tie the string onto the little clip here-"
"IS IT PINK?"
The sight of Lucy blushing almost made up for having a disgusting rodent in his apartment in the first place. "You tie this end here onto his collar," she repeated through gritted teeth, and this time Matt caught the teeeensy tiny metal ring embedded in the fabric of the harness, "and tie the other end of the string onto a table leg or something. Then he can wander around without getting lost."
"I'm going to be babysitting a rescued mouse named Bartholomew who wears a pink harness and goes for walks," Matt said aloud, just to try it on for size. And yup, it sounded just as ridiculous out loud as it did in his head.
"Only if you can resist screeching like a twelve year old girl every time he moves his head," Lucy said. Matt was still searching for an appropriate rejoinder when she rose from her crouch and swiped her hands onto her jeans. "Seriously, Matt, is this gonna be cool? 'Cause I really need to skip if I'm gonna make my flight."
Right. Pre-op for her mom. Which would be followed by… op. Of some kind. Which would then (hopefully) be followed by post-op. Matt opened his mouth to ask, but what he said was, "Sure. Yeah, it's… cool. Absolutely. Hey, this will be a good case study for some counter-conditioning therapy." He wrinkled his nose, imagined bringing up this latest adventure at Dr. Stringer's office. "I'll run it all by my shrink on Tuesday after we discuss the usual pants-pissing fire-sale dreams and that weird one where Kim Kardashian is my mother."
"You're a strange one, Farrell," Lucy said.
"Right?" he said.
He chose to believe it was admiration her heard in her voice. Yeah, definitely admiration.
* * *
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeeeeack.
Matt huffed out a breath and erased his third line of coding in the past five minutes, then turned to look over his shoulder. Bartholomew paused in his endless pursuit of nothing, his little body spinning in a half-circle before the wheel came to a stop. The mouse looked at him expectantly, and nobody was going to tell him different. That damn thing knew the wheel was a high-pitched creaky annoyance, and it also knew that if he kept it up long enough - don't those teeny legs get tired? - Matt would finally give in and let him out. On a leash. Attached to his pink halter.
Because somehow in the past six days Bart had gone from being a semi-gross peeled potato with feet to… well, to kind of a cute little bugger. That little pink nose just got to him. And the way his ears stood up whenever Matt talked to him? Yeah, that was damn adorable.
And the thing was smart. He'd bet dollars to donuts that the lab in which Bartholomew had been cruelly imprisoned had been planning to cut open his fuzzy little head to examine that mouse-genius brain. The theory only gained momentum when Matt pushed away from his desk… and Bart immediately jumped down from his squeaky exercise wheel to dart over to the cage door and wait eagerly.
"Yeah, yeah," Matt said, "I see ya. You realize it's impossible to concentrate with all that racket, don't you?"
Bartholomew cocked his head. And looked at the battered stereo sitting on the stool in the corner.
"Don't even try to tell me that you don't enjoy a little old school Rammstein," Matt scoffed. He waited for the inevitable ear flick that came whenever he tried to educate the rodent on good music before planting his palms on his knees and standing. "How about a little snack while I grab your string?"
Bartholomew instantly straightened and wrapped his adorable little front paws around one of the bars, his nose twitching as he snuffled at the air. Matt nipped off a tiny piece of donut - plain only, he could only imagine what would happen if Bart got any sugar-dipped in his system, and chocolate was strictly out of bounds - and held it up the bars, waiting until Bartholomew sniffed delicately at the morsel before taking it in his paws. He let the little fellow finish his treat before he opened the door and slipped the string into the ring on Bart's harness, then lifted the mouse out of the cage and set him on the floor. He had barely tied the other end of the string around the leg of his coffee table before Bart was off like a shot, testing the limits of his tether and snuffling happily at the fringe on the old area rug.
Matt watched him for a couple of minutes before wheeling his chair back to his desk and rubbing his eyes. The coding swam into a random string of letters and numbers, but he didn't dare reach for another Red Bull. He already had to hear enough bitching from John about how he was letting that shit influence his system, keeping him on an artificial high when his body needed rest. He told himself that could do this without a stimulant. He wasn't that far behind. It was just that going to that specialty store way out in Queens for the high-protein, low-fat mouse pellets (and then making that detour on the way back for the extra soft bedding and the shelter custom-built to look like a teensy tiny little Death Star) had put him a little behind. But it was worth it. Bart looked healthier already. And Vader had nothing on a white mouse in the Evil Empire's ultimate weapon of destruction.
He felt something at his leg, and looked down to see that particular white mouse looking up at him with what could only be described as an earnest expression. "Don't worry, buddy," Matt said, "I'm not gonna burn out. I got this handled."
Bartholomew twitched one ear, which Matt just had to reward with another little bit of donut. He scratched Bart between the ears as he chewed (and earned a blissful closed-eyed shiver of approval for his troubles) before he straightened. He did glance bleakly at the empty Red Bull can - he was only human, for god's sake - before he moved it behind one of the towers where he couldn't see it and re-focused on his monitor. He cracked his neck, right then left. Swiveled his wrists. Blinked and re-read what he'd written so far.
So he'd already been awake for twenty-nine hours. He'd be fine. It was a fairly simple commission, after all. He should be able to do coding like this in his sleep.
In.
His.
Sleep.
Matt woke with a start. He became aware of three things almost simultaneously: his messenger service notification was pinging regularly, his monitor was filled with a rolling screen of disconnected letters and numbers courtesy of the arm he had propped on the keyboard to cradle his head, and one section of said keyboard was covered with a thin film of drool.
So gross.
So it was only after informing the Warlock that he was fine (he was too foggy-brained to question how the Warlock had known that the coding he was working on had degenerated into a series of gibberish, but later he would find and wipe out that backdoor program the Warlock had clearly neatly and cleanly inserted into his system, oh yes he would) and then swiping the back of his hand over his mouth to get rid of any residual drool that he thought to look down and check on Bartholomew.
And to discover one end of the string still tied tightly to the coffee table and the other… lying bare on the threadbare area rug.
No Bartholomew.
He may have screeched like a red fox looking for a mate. Beat that, Jamie Lee.
He fell to his knees and scrambled along the floor. Looked beneath the sofa, underneath the radiator, carefully picked through the blankets piled on the sagging couch in case Bart had decided to climb up and go for a snooze. His preferred place to snuggle was underneath the fall of Matt's hair at the nape of his neck but the little guy wasn't averse to the flannel or even the ratty old mismatched granny-square blanket his Gran had given him when he was sixteen and headed off to MIT.
No Bartholomew.
He called the mouse's name. Put out treats.
Pulled his hair. Paced while pulling out his hair.
Paced while pulling out his hair and calling Bartholomew's name.
Added more treats.
After an hour and twenty three minutes, he decided it was time to pull out the big guns.
* * *
"Ya wanna tell me again why I'm hoofin' it to goddamn Jersey at eleven o'clock in the fuckin'-"
Matt wrapped one hand around the lapel of John's leather jacket and tugged him into the apartment. One part of him realized that this was only happening because John was letting it happen - Matt was pretty sure that if John planted his feet and was determined enough he could prevent a hurricane force wind from moving him somewhere he didn't want to be, never mind a pasty former hacker with about two percent muscle mass - but most of him was simply focused on getting John over the threshold. Because he had a missing person here and John was a detective and there had to be something that… surely there were some kind of protocols or…
He didn't realize he'd started hyperventilating until he felt the floorboards beneath his knees and John's big hand on the nape of his neck.
"Big breath in," John said, that whiskey and smoke voice soothing and stimulating all at once, waking up nerve endings even as John's calloused fingers on his neck kept him safe and in place. "Let it out slowly. And again. That's good, Matt."
"Okay," Matt said. It sounded strong and confident in his head, kinda high and squeaky (like Bartholomew's wheel, oh god) in real life; he clenched his fists on his thighs and did two more rounds of In-Out while John fingers rested lightly on his pulse point and John's thumb rubbed gently at the edge of his jaw. "Okay," he said again.
It sounded better to his ears and must've sounded better to John's as well because John's hand left his neck and wrapped around his bicep to haul him to his feet. The hand didn't leave his arm, just rested there as simple and easy as you please, but when Matt lifted his head John was wearing his cop face. It was a startling contrast to the light touch of the hand on his skin, the way John's thumb still rubbed up and down soothingly despite the way his eyes had sharpened and his chin lifted.
"It's Bartholomew," Matt said. He hated the way his voice still shook. "He's missing."
John nodded once. "Gimme some details, kid. Who is he to you? Why you worried about this guy?"
"He's not exactly a guy," Matt admitted slowly. "He's a… well, he's sort of a… mouse."
Somebody who wasn't as well versed in the minutia of Non-Verbal McClane-Speak might have missed the tightening of John's jaw or the way his fingers flexed just slightly on the grip they had just above his elbow. Matt, however, was well on his way to becoming an expert in the many nuanced McClane kinesics, and felt his own shoulders slump.
"Never mind," he mumbled. "I shouldn't have bothered you, I can just… I'm sure I'll find…"
John's fingers squeezed again before he released him and stepped back to shut the open door. "All right," he said when the turned back, "it ain't much different than setting up a perimeter around a neighbourhood except…"
There was probably more, but Matt missed it in the great rush of relief that hollowed out his chest and set a roaring in his ears. Later, he'd ponder the feeling, pull it out and analyze it. Now, his knees simply shook with the renewed knowledge that John McClane might mock and tease him, but he would never judge him - not for organizing his DVDs by soundtrack artist, or for the number of hair-care products that were on his bathroom shelf (or by how he'd prioritized replacing them after the fire-sale fiasco even before a simple laptop or even clothes), and certainly not for getting so upset about a lost mouse that he called in the NYPD's best detective to work the case.
"Jeeeeezus Christ, kid," the best detective the NYPD had to offer said now, "what the fuck?"
Matt blinked, stood up straighter and looked past John's broad shoulder into his living room. He scraped a hand over the three-day stubble on his chin. Yes, that stubble amounted to about six long hairs but it still reminded him that he needed to shave and also why was he thinking about this now when Bartholomew was still missing?
He dropped his hand, waved it instead toward the room. "I… put out some treats. To tempt him, you know?"
John stepped carefully around the bits of donuts (Matt had even caved and put down a couple of pieces covered in powdered sugar, because desperate times call for desperate measures) and the tiny piles of spray cheese. Shook his head once, slowly.
"Donuts, Matt? Really?"
"He likes them! And I thought if I put down what he likes… but I've been calling and calling and he's not coming and what if something happens to him, McClane! Huh? What if he's caught in the furnace line getting slowly roasted alive or what if he made it outside and is shivering in the cold or … oh my god what if he's getting stalked by Mrs. Rubenstein's tabby right now? That cat is fuckin' evil, you can tell by just-"
"He's not roasting or shivering or gettin' eaten by a damn cat," John drawls. "You're probably freakin' him out with all this…" he waved a hand and worked his jaw for a moment. "All this," he finished.
"But-"
"I want you to go over there," John waved in the general direction of the futon-bed in the corner, "and keep outta my damn way."
"But-"
"You want my help or not?"
Matt sat. Matt shut up. It was easy when John wiped up all the spray cheese - he was pretty sure most self-respecting rodents would turn their noses up at that stuff - but he had to bite the inside of his cheek when John swept the bits and pieces of donuts into the garbage. He sat on his hands to keep from volunteering to help when John fashioned a humane little no-kill trap and baited it with not cheese or donuts, but peanut butter. He sat quietly on the futon when John perched on one end of the sofa, his big hands dangling between his knees, and stared into space.
It only took about ten minutes for the trap to go off.
John got up quickly but Matt still beat him across the room, gushing reassurances and half-laughing/half-crying while he dropped to his knees and pulled out the pin that held the little trap door in place and … yup, he screamed like a twelve year old at a Timberlake concert.
"I take it that's not Bartholomew?" John asked dryly.
Matt could only shudder at the little brown distinctly-not-Bart that twitched in his palm.
John sighed. "Give it here."
Matt had reset the trap by the time John returned from releasing the interloper-mouse into the wild (aka the overgrown bushes behind his walk-up) but instead of retaking his place on the futon, he sat down on the sofa close enough to John that their knees touched. It was just a little reassurance, but it helped.
Especially when the trap went off three more times… and three more tiny brown mice were released into the bushes.
"I don't get it!" Matt said finally. "I've never seen a mouse in here! This place… Mr. Taglietti assured me that it was clean! 'I wouldn't rent an infested apartment to you, Mr. Farrell, you're a fuckin' hero'," he said in a damn good imitation of Tag's Bronx drawl. He dropped back to his own voice when he swiped a hand through his hair. "This place is a pit!"
He eyed John when he said nothing; slumped down against him. "We're never gonna catch Bart, are we?"
John spread his hands, but was saved from replying when the trap went off again. Matt took a breath, used John's thigh to lever himself off the sofa with its sagging, squeaking springs and slumped across the room. He opened the trap and-
"OH MY GOD, BARTHOLOMEW!"
He ignored Mrs. Rubenstein banging her cane on the ceiling when Bart leapt from the trap and scurried up his arm; snagged the mouse before it could burrow behind his ear and into his hair like he preferred.
"I've been so worried about you!" he said. Bartholomew's head cocked, and then he squeezed his eyes shut in what was surely an indication of remorse. Matt smiled, but tried to put on a grave expression despite his relief. He held the mouse sternly up to eye level. "Never run away again!"
John coughed.
Matt shook back his hair and blinked away the tears as he checked out Bart's little body. No cuts or scrapes, that was good. But he might go online and see if there was some kind of immunity booster he could get for the little guy just in case. Never know what he brushed up against while he was out there in the big wide world.
John coughed again.
Matt looked over to see that John had raised his hand.
"Uh… John? I can never thank you enough for-"
"Is he… wearing a harness?" John asked.
Matt sighed and ignored him, lifting the mouse to snuggle nose to snout. "I've missed you, buddy!"
"A… pink harness," John said softly.
"Yes, he is wearing a pink harness," Matt confirmed through gritted teeth as he lifted himself carefully to his feet to replace Bart in his cage. "Because you know what, McClane? Bartholomew doesn't bend to your gender norms!"
"Uh huh."
"And you have any idea how stressful this must have been for him? Those other mice were probably bullying him to shit. Fucking gangster mice. He's out there in his cute little pink harness and they're all in leather jackets, smoking cigarettes behind the radiator pipe."
John huffed out a laugh. "You're a strange one, kid."
"Right?"
Matt preened. That was definitely admiration in John's voice.
* * *
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeeeeack.
Bartholomew rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling of his cage. He truly loved the dark-haired boy, but he sure wished the boy and the big bald one would finish whatever they were doing over on the old squeaky sofa. All that rubbing against each other was making a hell of a lot of noise.
If they kept it up it was gonna be impossible for a mouse to get a decent night's sleep in this joint.
.
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John/Matt, Lucy
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4622 words
Summary: "Jesus, Farrell," she said, "you act like you've never seen a mouse before."
Notes: Written for smallfandomfest (which is now held over at dreamwidth) for the prompt 'donuts'. Could be labelled 'crack' but I just call it 'rediscovering how much fun writing can be'. Part of the 'mousecapades' series, but it's a standalone. :D
The Babysitting Gig
by Severina
There was a time when getting a visit from a hot girl like Lucy Gennero would have sent Matt into a full blown panic attack, which usually included racing around the apartment throwing dirty clothing, rumpled smut mags and old pizza boxes into the back of the closet and then scrambling for a breath mint. But that was before he A. kinda sorta saved the world with an eleven digit rotating algorithm and B. kinda sorta saved the girl by firing four shots at the bad guy holding her hostage (and one of them even hit the mark) and most importantly, C. kinda sorta started dating the hot girl's dad.
So yeah.
When he hung up from Lucy - who apparently had to run off to L.A. and needed him to take care of some shit for her and yes it was important and yes it had to be right now Farrell jeeeezus put down the joystick for two seconds - he just looked down at his pajama pants and T-shirt and shrugged.
Of course, it wasn't long before he remembered that Lucy could quite certainly report on the state of his (threadbare) pajama bottoms and (Cheetos-smudged) T-shirt to her father, especially if she was in the mood to pull his chain - and let's be honest, that was the mood she was in about eighty-seven percent of the time - which was why he was breathless from shrugging into a clean pair of jeans and still had his head stuck halfway in and halfway out of a (not really clean but definitely not bearing orange fingerprints) T-shirt when he opened the door to her knock a few minutes later.
He did manage to catch the begonia she pushed toward him in a lopsided football hold against his chest before he bumped back into the half-open door and gave himself one fucker of a bruise. (Later he would twist around to show off the purplish contusion on his 'cam and complain to the Warlock that he'd inherited his mother's stupid complexion and bruised like a peach, and the Warlock would roll his eyes and ask him if he had picked out a dress for his wedding to McClane yet and Matt would give him the finger but he'd be blushing to his roots, which would also be noticeable to Warlock even on the shitty webcam that he'd managed to get after his decent gear got blown to shit because hello, he and Mary Lynne Farrell shared one thing and that thing was the pallor of a underfed vampire. But all that was some hours and one squeaky wheel in the future, so.)
"Water it briefly, once a night, just enough to keep the soil moist," Lucy said as she brushed past him.
Matt managed to pop his head out of his shirt far enough to glance down at the flower. And to frown. Because he was the guy who managed to kill a cactus once and if Lucy came home from her trip to Los Angeles to a dead begonia he didn't want to be the guy wearing a flower pot as a hat. 'Cause it wasn't cool when Devo did it and it sure as hell wasn't cool now. And he was opening his mouth to warn her that maybe someone else would be a better caretaker for a living thing like a plant - like maybe John or her physics prof or that dude on the corner who sells those Chinese knock-off DVDs - when he saw what she was setting down on his scratched up coffee table and discovered he shared another trait with his mother.
They both screamed like Jamie Lee Curtis in her best horror marathon.
Lucy looked up sharply, one hand going for her back pocket - and holy fuck, was she carrying an exacto knife in her back pocket? - before she followed his gaze and her shoulders relaxed. "Jesus, Farrell," she said, "you act like you've never seen a mouse before."
"Ohhhh, I've seen mice. In the gutter, on the subway, one memorable time sitting on a stack of presents at Santa's Village at the mall and if you think that doesn't turn a six year old off Christmas entirely than you were never in the Farrell household circa 1989. And if you think one of those is staying in my apartment, you are sadly mistaken! They are disgusting, they are dirty--"
"This is Bartholomew," Lucy said, overriding his salient points entirely.
"-they spread disease-"
"Gracie rescued him from the lab. Can you believe they were going to dissect him?"
The rodent took that moment to rise up on its haunches and stare at him through the metal bars of its cage. Its beady black eyes scanned the bars of its prison, and its little head cocked appraisingly. And Matt could entirely picture the damn thing gnawing through the bars and coming for his throat in the dead of night. So yes, yes he completely can believe it.
He shook his head. Raised his hand to continue ticking off points. "They are covered in bacteria-"
"Oh for fuck's sake, Farrell, Bart was in a lab. He hasn't been crawling around medieval Europe. Get over yourself and listen to his care instructions, because my plane leaves in two hours and if you make me late for my mother's pre-op I will kick your ass into next week."
"Pre-op?" Matt blinked. "But … is everything… McClane didn't say…"
"Focus, Matthew! We're on Bartholomew here." Lucy pushed her long hair out of her face before bending to the cage, and right, okay, maybe he should have been listening to Lucy but his attention was diverted by "pre-op", what an ugly word, and Holly Gennero, who he hadn't met but whose life and work he could recite from memory because he may have researched her thoroughly while he surreptitiously drooled over her ex-husband and waited for his knee to heal from the catastrophically intense pain of the gunshot wound. He kind of wanted to hate her but he couldn't because she seemed all kinds of Betsy Badass, and then all thoughts of John McClane's ex-wife and surgery went out of his head because Lucy put a live rodent on his arm.
For the second time in five minutes, Matt released a shriek in the soprano range that would do any scream queen proud.
"Calm, Farrell. You're gonna give my poor boy a heart attack."
"I'm gonna-" Matt could feel his entire body tensing with the desire to swat the pudgy little white thing into the wall, but he forced himself to take a deep breath. "Okay," he said.
Lucy smiled at him. One of the genuine grins, not the kind that came just before she said something completely emasculating (that he usually had to agree with, because he might have shot a bad guy and landed the completely buff 'n' bald cop but he is also the guy who gets winded going up three flights of stairs and also, Lucy is pretty damned funny.)
"See?" she said. One finger reached out to stroke along the mouse's back, and Matt could swear the damn thing preened. "He's very tame."
"Okay," Matt said again. "This is… not so bad. I have a mouse on me. There's a mouse on my arm. It's just… there's a… oh god it's moving... there's a mouse crawling on me I CAN FEEL IT'S LITTLE CLAWS OH GOD-"
"Aaand we're done," Lucy said. Matt's heart wasn't even close to being finished with its race - it was determined to come in first or die trying, even with Bartholomew peeking up from the cradle of Lucy's palm. Goddddd, he could still feel those claws. "Maybe you don't let Bart crawl on you while he's living here."
"Good call," Matt breathed out. Except then somehow it seemed like he had actually agreed to keep the damn rodent for a while, and-- "Wait," he said. "What?"
"But he does need exercise," Lucy said. She pulled a wad of nylon string from her non-exacto-knife-holding pocket, dangled it briefly in front of his nose before tucking the mouse back behind bars. And for the first time Matt truly focused beyond the rodent's unblinkingly black stare and the sharp canines that wanted to go for his jugular. He cocked his head to take in Bartholomew's rotund belly. "He's got the wheel in his cage, of course," Lucy was saying, "but what he really likes is-"
"Is that a harness?"
"-if you tie the string onto the little clip here-"
"IS IT PINK?"
The sight of Lucy blushing almost made up for having a disgusting rodent in his apartment in the first place. "You tie this end here onto his collar," she repeated through gritted teeth, and this time Matt caught the teeeensy tiny metal ring embedded in the fabric of the harness, "and tie the other end of the string onto a table leg or something. Then he can wander around without getting lost."
"I'm going to be babysitting a rescued mouse named Bartholomew who wears a pink harness and goes for walks," Matt said aloud, just to try it on for size. And yup, it sounded just as ridiculous out loud as it did in his head.
"Only if you can resist screeching like a twelve year old girl every time he moves his head," Lucy said. Matt was still searching for an appropriate rejoinder when she rose from her crouch and swiped her hands onto her jeans. "Seriously, Matt, is this gonna be cool? 'Cause I really need to skip if I'm gonna make my flight."
Right. Pre-op for her mom. Which would be followed by… op. Of some kind. Which would then (hopefully) be followed by post-op. Matt opened his mouth to ask, but what he said was, "Sure. Yeah, it's… cool. Absolutely. Hey, this will be a good case study for some counter-conditioning therapy." He wrinkled his nose, imagined bringing up this latest adventure at Dr. Stringer's office. "I'll run it all by my shrink on Tuesday after we discuss the usual pants-pissing fire-sale dreams and that weird one where Kim Kardashian is my mother."
"You're a strange one, Farrell," Lucy said.
"Right?" he said.
He chose to believe it was admiration her heard in her voice. Yeah, definitely admiration.
* * *
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeeeeack.
Matt huffed out a breath and erased his third line of coding in the past five minutes, then turned to look over his shoulder. Bartholomew paused in his endless pursuit of nothing, his little body spinning in a half-circle before the wheel came to a stop. The mouse looked at him expectantly, and nobody was going to tell him different. That damn thing knew the wheel was a high-pitched creaky annoyance, and it also knew that if he kept it up long enough - don't those teeny legs get tired? - Matt would finally give in and let him out. On a leash. Attached to his pink halter.
Because somehow in the past six days Bart had gone from being a semi-gross peeled potato with feet to… well, to kind of a cute little bugger. That little pink nose just got to him. And the way his ears stood up whenever Matt talked to him? Yeah, that was damn adorable.
And the thing was smart. He'd bet dollars to donuts that the lab in which Bartholomew had been cruelly imprisoned had been planning to cut open his fuzzy little head to examine that mouse-genius brain. The theory only gained momentum when Matt pushed away from his desk… and Bart immediately jumped down from his squeaky exercise wheel to dart over to the cage door and wait eagerly.
"Yeah, yeah," Matt said, "I see ya. You realize it's impossible to concentrate with all that racket, don't you?"
Bartholomew cocked his head. And looked at the battered stereo sitting on the stool in the corner.
"Don't even try to tell me that you don't enjoy a little old school Rammstein," Matt scoffed. He waited for the inevitable ear flick that came whenever he tried to educate the rodent on good music before planting his palms on his knees and standing. "How about a little snack while I grab your string?"
Bartholomew instantly straightened and wrapped his adorable little front paws around one of the bars, his nose twitching as he snuffled at the air. Matt nipped off a tiny piece of donut - plain only, he could only imagine what would happen if Bart got any sugar-dipped in his system, and chocolate was strictly out of bounds - and held it up the bars, waiting until Bartholomew sniffed delicately at the morsel before taking it in his paws. He let the little fellow finish his treat before he opened the door and slipped the string into the ring on Bart's harness, then lifted the mouse out of the cage and set him on the floor. He had barely tied the other end of the string around the leg of his coffee table before Bart was off like a shot, testing the limits of his tether and snuffling happily at the fringe on the old area rug.
Matt watched him for a couple of minutes before wheeling his chair back to his desk and rubbing his eyes. The coding swam into a random string of letters and numbers, but he didn't dare reach for another Red Bull. He already had to hear enough bitching from John about how he was letting that shit influence his system, keeping him on an artificial high when his body needed rest. He told himself that could do this without a stimulant. He wasn't that far behind. It was just that going to that specialty store way out in Queens for the high-protein, low-fat mouse pellets (and then making that detour on the way back for the extra soft bedding and the shelter custom-built to look like a teensy tiny little Death Star) had put him a little behind. But it was worth it. Bart looked healthier already. And Vader had nothing on a white mouse in the Evil Empire's ultimate weapon of destruction.
He felt something at his leg, and looked down to see that particular white mouse looking up at him with what could only be described as an earnest expression. "Don't worry, buddy," Matt said, "I'm not gonna burn out. I got this handled."
Bartholomew twitched one ear, which Matt just had to reward with another little bit of donut. He scratched Bart between the ears as he chewed (and earned a blissful closed-eyed shiver of approval for his troubles) before he straightened. He did glance bleakly at the empty Red Bull can - he was only human, for god's sake - before he moved it behind one of the towers where he couldn't see it and re-focused on his monitor. He cracked his neck, right then left. Swiveled his wrists. Blinked and re-read what he'd written so far.
So he'd already been awake for twenty-nine hours. He'd be fine. It was a fairly simple commission, after all. He should be able to do coding like this in his sleep.
In.
His.
Sleep.
Matt woke with a start. He became aware of three things almost simultaneously: his messenger service notification was pinging regularly, his monitor was filled with a rolling screen of disconnected letters and numbers courtesy of the arm he had propped on the keyboard to cradle his head, and one section of said keyboard was covered with a thin film of drool.
So gross.
So it was only after informing the Warlock that he was fine (he was too foggy-brained to question how the Warlock had known that the coding he was working on had degenerated into a series of gibberish, but later he would find and wipe out that backdoor program the Warlock had clearly neatly and cleanly inserted into his system, oh yes he would) and then swiping the back of his hand over his mouth to get rid of any residual drool that he thought to look down and check on Bartholomew.
And to discover one end of the string still tied tightly to the coffee table and the other… lying bare on the threadbare area rug.
No Bartholomew.
He may have screeched like a red fox looking for a mate. Beat that, Jamie Lee.
He fell to his knees and scrambled along the floor. Looked beneath the sofa, underneath the radiator, carefully picked through the blankets piled on the sagging couch in case Bart had decided to climb up and go for a snooze. His preferred place to snuggle was underneath the fall of Matt's hair at the nape of his neck but the little guy wasn't averse to the flannel or even the ratty old mismatched granny-square blanket his Gran had given him when he was sixteen and headed off to MIT.
No Bartholomew.
He called the mouse's name. Put out treats.
Pulled his hair. Paced while pulling out his hair.
Paced while pulling out his hair and calling Bartholomew's name.
Added more treats.
After an hour and twenty three minutes, he decided it was time to pull out the big guns.
* * *
"Ya wanna tell me again why I'm hoofin' it to goddamn Jersey at eleven o'clock in the fuckin'-"
Matt wrapped one hand around the lapel of John's leather jacket and tugged him into the apartment. One part of him realized that this was only happening because John was letting it happen - Matt was pretty sure that if John planted his feet and was determined enough he could prevent a hurricane force wind from moving him somewhere he didn't want to be, never mind a pasty former hacker with about two percent muscle mass - but most of him was simply focused on getting John over the threshold. Because he had a missing person here and John was a detective and there had to be something that… surely there were some kind of protocols or…
He didn't realize he'd started hyperventilating until he felt the floorboards beneath his knees and John's big hand on the nape of his neck.
"Big breath in," John said, that whiskey and smoke voice soothing and stimulating all at once, waking up nerve endings even as John's calloused fingers on his neck kept him safe and in place. "Let it out slowly. And again. That's good, Matt."
"Okay," Matt said. It sounded strong and confident in his head, kinda high and squeaky (like Bartholomew's wheel, oh god) in real life; he clenched his fists on his thighs and did two more rounds of In-Out while John fingers rested lightly on his pulse point and John's thumb rubbed gently at the edge of his jaw. "Okay," he said again.
It sounded better to his ears and must've sounded better to John's as well because John's hand left his neck and wrapped around his bicep to haul him to his feet. The hand didn't leave his arm, just rested there as simple and easy as you please, but when Matt lifted his head John was wearing his cop face. It was a startling contrast to the light touch of the hand on his skin, the way John's thumb still rubbed up and down soothingly despite the way his eyes had sharpened and his chin lifted.
"It's Bartholomew," Matt said. He hated the way his voice still shook. "He's missing."
John nodded once. "Gimme some details, kid. Who is he to you? Why you worried about this guy?"
"He's not exactly a guy," Matt admitted slowly. "He's a… well, he's sort of a… mouse."
Somebody who wasn't as well versed in the minutia of Non-Verbal McClane-Speak might have missed the tightening of John's jaw or the way his fingers flexed just slightly on the grip they had just above his elbow. Matt, however, was well on his way to becoming an expert in the many nuanced McClane kinesics, and felt his own shoulders slump.
"Never mind," he mumbled. "I shouldn't have bothered you, I can just… I'm sure I'll find…"
John's fingers squeezed again before he released him and stepped back to shut the open door. "All right," he said when the turned back, "it ain't much different than setting up a perimeter around a neighbourhood except…"
There was probably more, but Matt missed it in the great rush of relief that hollowed out his chest and set a roaring in his ears. Later, he'd ponder the feeling, pull it out and analyze it. Now, his knees simply shook with the renewed knowledge that John McClane might mock and tease him, but he would never judge him - not for organizing his DVDs by soundtrack artist, or for the number of hair-care products that were on his bathroom shelf (or by how he'd prioritized replacing them after the fire-sale fiasco even before a simple laptop or even clothes), and certainly not for getting so upset about a lost mouse that he called in the NYPD's best detective to work the case.
"Jeeeeezus Christ, kid," the best detective the NYPD had to offer said now, "what the fuck?"
Matt blinked, stood up straighter and looked past John's broad shoulder into his living room. He scraped a hand over the three-day stubble on his chin. Yes, that stubble amounted to about six long hairs but it still reminded him that he needed to shave and also why was he thinking about this now when Bartholomew was still missing?
He dropped his hand, waved it instead toward the room. "I… put out some treats. To tempt him, you know?"
John stepped carefully around the bits of donuts (Matt had even caved and put down a couple of pieces covered in powdered sugar, because desperate times call for desperate measures) and the tiny piles of spray cheese. Shook his head once, slowly.
"Donuts, Matt? Really?"
"He likes them! And I thought if I put down what he likes… but I've been calling and calling and he's not coming and what if something happens to him, McClane! Huh? What if he's caught in the furnace line getting slowly roasted alive or what if he made it outside and is shivering in the cold or … oh my god what if he's getting stalked by Mrs. Rubenstein's tabby right now? That cat is fuckin' evil, you can tell by just-"
"He's not roasting or shivering or gettin' eaten by a damn cat," John drawls. "You're probably freakin' him out with all this…" he waved a hand and worked his jaw for a moment. "All this," he finished.
"But-"
"I want you to go over there," John waved in the general direction of the futon-bed in the corner, "and keep outta my damn way."
"But-"
"You want my help or not?"
Matt sat. Matt shut up. It was easy when John wiped up all the spray cheese - he was pretty sure most self-respecting rodents would turn their noses up at that stuff - but he had to bite the inside of his cheek when John swept the bits and pieces of donuts into the garbage. He sat on his hands to keep from volunteering to help when John fashioned a humane little no-kill trap and baited it with not cheese or donuts, but peanut butter. He sat quietly on the futon when John perched on one end of the sofa, his big hands dangling between his knees, and stared into space.
It only took about ten minutes for the trap to go off.
John got up quickly but Matt still beat him across the room, gushing reassurances and half-laughing/half-crying while he dropped to his knees and pulled out the pin that held the little trap door in place and … yup, he screamed like a twelve year old at a Timberlake concert.
"I take it that's not Bartholomew?" John asked dryly.
Matt could only shudder at the little brown distinctly-not-Bart that twitched in his palm.
John sighed. "Give it here."
Matt had reset the trap by the time John returned from releasing the interloper-mouse into the wild (aka the overgrown bushes behind his walk-up) but instead of retaking his place on the futon, he sat down on the sofa close enough to John that their knees touched. It was just a little reassurance, but it helped.
Especially when the trap went off three more times… and three more tiny brown mice were released into the bushes.
"I don't get it!" Matt said finally. "I've never seen a mouse in here! This place… Mr. Taglietti assured me that it was clean! 'I wouldn't rent an infested apartment to you, Mr. Farrell, you're a fuckin' hero'," he said in a damn good imitation of Tag's Bronx drawl. He dropped back to his own voice when he swiped a hand through his hair. "This place is a pit!"
He eyed John when he said nothing; slumped down against him. "We're never gonna catch Bart, are we?"
John spread his hands, but was saved from replying when the trap went off again. Matt took a breath, used John's thigh to lever himself off the sofa with its sagging, squeaking springs and slumped across the room. He opened the trap and-
"OH MY GOD, BARTHOLOMEW!"
He ignored Mrs. Rubenstein banging her cane on the ceiling when Bart leapt from the trap and scurried up his arm; snagged the mouse before it could burrow behind his ear and into his hair like he preferred.
"I've been so worried about you!" he said. Bartholomew's head cocked, and then he squeezed his eyes shut in what was surely an indication of remorse. Matt smiled, but tried to put on a grave expression despite his relief. He held the mouse sternly up to eye level. "Never run away again!"
John coughed.
Matt shook back his hair and blinked away the tears as he checked out Bart's little body. No cuts or scrapes, that was good. But he might go online and see if there was some kind of immunity booster he could get for the little guy just in case. Never know what he brushed up against while he was out there in the big wide world.
John coughed again.
Matt looked over to see that John had raised his hand.
"Uh… John? I can never thank you enough for-"
"Is he… wearing a harness?" John asked.
Matt sighed and ignored him, lifting the mouse to snuggle nose to snout. "I've missed you, buddy!"
"A… pink harness," John said softly.
"Yes, he is wearing a pink harness," Matt confirmed through gritted teeth as he lifted himself carefully to his feet to replace Bart in his cage. "Because you know what, McClane? Bartholomew doesn't bend to your gender norms!"
"Uh huh."
"And you have any idea how stressful this must have been for him? Those other mice were probably bullying him to shit. Fucking gangster mice. He's out there in his cute little pink harness and they're all in leather jackets, smoking cigarettes behind the radiator pipe."
John huffed out a laugh. "You're a strange one, kid."
"Right?"
Matt preened. That was definitely admiration in John's voice.
* * *
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeak.
Squeeeeeeeack.
Bartholomew rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling of his cage. He truly loved the dark-haired boy, but he sure wished the boy and the big bald one would finish whatever they were doing over on the old squeaky sofa. All that rubbing against each other was making a hell of a lot of noise.
If they kept it up it was gonna be impossible for a mouse to get a decent night's sleep in this joint.
.