Live Free or Die Hard fanfic: "On The Road Again"
Title: On The Road Again
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John/Matt
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3114 words
Summary: They should know by now that road trips never work out exactly as planned.
Notes: Written for persnickett as her prize for winning our February Frenzy word count challenge. Snick gave me four prompt words (traveling, casino, nape, gun) and I immediately decided to use all of them. Hope you enjoy, Snick!
On The Road Again
by Severina
"Tell me again why we gotta go to this thing?"
Matt closes his eyes against the cool breeze coming through the lowered passenger side window, and counts to ten. Then he adds another ten for good measure. When he is sure he isn't going to remove his sneaker and smack John across the head with it, he opens his eyes. "Because," he says, oh-so-calmly, for the seventeenth time, "this is your daughter's wedding and you are cooperating with all her plans so that you do not win the Asshole Father of the Year award. You're running out of room in the trophy cabinet."
"Wedding, sure," John says. "Happy to go to the wedding, walk my little girl down the aisle, grit my teeth and forever hold my peace. But this? This makes no sense, kid."
"John, we've gone over it a hundred times."
"A blender! And a good set of silverware that you use at Thanksgiving and Christmas! That's what a new bride gets. Bunch of her girlfriends sitting around the living room, make one of those hats out of a paper plate and the bows from the presents-"
"No one wants silver that sits in a box three hundred and sixty three days of the year," Matt answers. "And Lucy and Mark already have a blender."
That last part shut John up. Mentioning, however casually, that Lucy and her fiancée are already 'shacking up' never fails to pull the wind from his sails, even if it is momentarily. Matt has never quite been able to figure out how John reconciles that living with his boyfriend is a-okay but it's practically a mortal sin for Lucy and Mark.
"Lingerie, then," John mutters.
Had to be a good four minutes of silence that time. Matt thinks it might be a record.
"Bunch of frilly lace shit-"
"Just when I think I've pulled you out of 1985 you go sliiiiiidin' back in," Matt says. "No one does hen parties anymore, McClane! Women don't want to sit around someone's stuffy living room opening useless gifts like gravy bowls and… doilies! Have you seen a doily actually in use by anyone younger than your grant aunt Matilda? And don't even start on how you have one underneath the lamp in the guest room because that thing is an embarrassment, John, I tried to get rid of it about eight hundred times when I was living in there."
Matt realizes he may have gone too far when John side-eyes him for a long moment before returning his attention to the road. "Always wondered how that ended up in the pile of Jack's old toys in the attic."
"Don't even want to know what you were doing rooting around in those old G.I. Joes," Matt answers. "Especially when you-"
"Don't say it, kid."
"-are the original action hero."
"Flattery is not gonna get you a blowjob in the bathroom when we stop for gas at the next Mobil," John says. "Not this time."
Matt's mock-pout forces a smirk out of John, and a flash of those green eyes. Matt squirms a little in his seat. The lips might say 'not this time' but those eyes are saying 'sixty percent probability'. It's all he can do not to search frantically for the next 'gas station ahead' sign.
Which might make them late for Lucy and Mark's stag and doe. Which is what they were actually talking about. Right. Focus.
"Annnnyway," Matt says, "I know that in your day the little women sat patiently at home eating cucumber sandwiches and pretending to be really excited about tea towels while the big he-men went off to down whiskey and play poker in some run-down smoky bar where they can also stick dollar bills into the G-string of some big-breasted, bouffant-haired, dead-eyed stripper-"
"Jesus, kid, you've really never been to a strip club, have ya?"
"I get all my knowledge from past episodes of SVU, which I'm sure is quite accurate," Matt says. "And stop changing the subject."
"There's a subject?"
"These days," Matt says, "the couple likes to celebrate together. So instead of getting gifted with a bunch of shit they're never going to use, like a cheese knife and a turkey platter-"
"Hey, a cheese knife can come in real handy."
"-they gather a bunch of their friends and family for a big party. There'll be 50/50 raffles and beer tickets to raise money for the honeymoon, and everyone can drink and dance and be merry, and there's not a single doily in sight."
John huffs, but doesn't say anymore until they are taking the exit off the interstate. Because 'gas station ahead' looms in the headlights. Oh yes. It's an Exxon, not a Mobil, of the type with a big, brightly lit convenience store. Matt prefers the old-fashioned kind where you have to get a key and go around to the side of the building to use the bathroom - and he can't believe he now has a mental 'best type of gas station in which to get a quick and furtive blowjob' list, but there ya go - but John can be creative. Sometimes his eyes practically cross with just how creative John can get.
John pulls into the pumps and turns off the engine before swiveling in his seat. "But at a casino?"
"They rented a private room at Hideaway," Matt says. At John's blank look, he shakes his head. "The dance club? Did you even read the invitation?"
"Figured you'd get the deets."
"The… deets. John, no one says… never mind. There's a separate room for us but people can also go out and dance in the club if they want. Or if you want to go gamble for a bit, you can. No news on whether there's any big-breasted strippers, though."
"I'll pass," John says.
"Good call." Matt opens the door just as John does the same, smooths his palms down his jeans when John reaches for the pump. "So I'll… uh… be in the bathroom. While you're... um… doing that. So you know where I am. If… yeah."
"Good call," John repeats dryly.
* * *
The teenage clerk barely looks up from his lunch as Matt cuts through the aisles and makes for the "Gentlemen" sign near the beer cooler. He scans the shelving as he goes. It's the kind of store filled with what his Gramma Nettles would have called bric-a-brac: a statue of a weeping angel next to a ragged display of silver foil birthday banners next to a wire bin overflowing with winter scarves, despite the fact that it's July.
The bathroom matches the store - all fluorescent lighting and white walls and obligatory reminder to wash your hands. Matt takes a piss and does just that, with a little nod to the sign, and then leans his ass against the counter.
Waits. And waits.
And okay, maybe he read John wrong? But honestly, his McClane-dar hasn't been faulty since their initial hook-up after the fire sale, when he thought John was acting weird because he was ridiculously straight, when it turned out he was acting weird because he thought Matt was ridiculously ageist. Since then he could practically write a manual on the guy, and Sneaky Bathroom Blowjob had definitely been on the agenda.
He gives it another three minutes before calling it and pushing through the door back into the store.
And freezes.
The tableau plays out in a series of pop-flashes in his head.
The wire rack of Doritos and Lays and Miss Vickie's crashed onto its side. The clerk on his stomach in front of the counter, his hands behind his head. The gun. The gun that is pressed to John's nape as he kneels in front of some punkass scumbag two-bit thief with wild eyes and jittery hands.
And he can see the wheels turning in John's head. His hands are raised in the classic 'surrender' pose, which puts his left hand inches from the gun. And he's done this before. It's not in the official reports and John doesn't like to talk about it, but he told Matt the whole story once and only once - the Christmas packing tape, the gun secured between his shoulder blades, the shot that took out the henchman and then Gruber, falling, dragging John's wife with him through the window. John's follow up to that little display was of course something that Matt witnessed himself - the whole Shooting Himself Through The Shoulder thing. Reaching up and grabbing guns from bad guys is practically his whole spiel.
One of these days it's not going to work.
All of this goes through Matt's mind in about two point five seconds. Long enough for him to take a step to the left. Long enough for John to catch the movement and dart a warning glance his way. John's eyes flick to the right and the meaning is clear: Get Out. Whether John expects him to ease back into the bathroom or try to sneak out the front door is unclear. What's totally clear to Matt is his response: Fuck That.
He scans the aisles around him frantically. Aromatherapy candles and rack of condoms and incense burners, nothing that can be used as a weapon. He's vaguely aware of John smarting off to the punkass scumbag thief, of the punkass scumbag thief's sniffling, sneering response. The clerk whimpers and starts crawling toward the safe inset in the floor just inside the door marked 'Manager' and Matt steps carefully around the spilled chips and cheezies as he makes his way to the counter. In every action movie the little bodega owner always has a baseball bat behind the counter. And okay, light-bright E-Zee Convenience isn't exactly a bodega, but still. He looks. And he finds cartons of smokes beneath the counter and the clerk's sushi on the counter and why the fuck isn't this a bodega in Little Italy or something? He turns in a circle, pulls at his hair, aware of the punkass scumbag thief's voice rising--
Everything slows down.
The punkass scumbag thief cuffs John on the back of the head with the barrel of the gun. John leans to the right while simultaneously reaching around with his left hand to grab the gun. John misses.
Matt doesn't think. He simply grabs the first thing that comes to hand and throws.
He has never been good at sports. He was kicked out of Little League because every ball-toss ended up at foot level (and also because he would sit down in left field instead of trying to chase down the ball. Because he knew that there was a better chance of spraining his ankle while running for the ball than there was of him actually making a catch. He had a spreadsheet to prove it and everything. Didn't stop his dad from cuffing him on the side of the head the day the coach politely requested that they go far, far away and never return.)
But this day? The Gods are somehow smiling upon him, because the object he lobbed with force spins once in the air, catching the fluorescent light and shining like Thor's mighty Mjolnir itself, and then lodges directly in punkass scumbag thief's bicep.
Punkass scumbag thief screams like a twelve year old girl at a One Direction concert.
John is up and moving before Matt can completely finish his celebratory arms-in-air Rocky-style victory dance. Barking out, "grab me somethin' to tie this fucker up with, kid," he's grabbed the gun out of thin air and shoved it in his pocket, got his knee wedged in the small of punkass scumbag thief's back and the dude's arms wrenched behind him all while reciting the Miranda. Definitely a multi-tasker, John McClane. Thankfully the screaming has stopped but punkass scumbag thief is still making this weird whining-whistling sound like a dozen tea kettles at a retirement home, and blood is soaking into his plaid shirt and dripping on the floor, and wow, Matt never really thought that blood bothered him but he's feeling a bit woozy-
"Matthew! Focus!"
"Huh?"
"Rope!"
Matt shakes his head. Rope. Right. He picks up the half-eaten sushi platter which is definitely not rope, jeeeezus, FOCUS and then remembers the winter display rack; hurries across the store to pick out a couple of long scarves in colours that have never been found in nature and quickly returns to John's side to hand them over. John makes quick work of tying punkass scumbag thief's hands behind his back before pulling out his cell phone and calling 911.
"Hungry?" John asks once he's pocketed his phone and is checking on the clerk. The teenager is back on his ass now, hands shaking, but he's pulled a battered pack of Winstons from his pocket and he's getting calmer with every drag on his smoke. Considering the circumstances Matt's not going to say a thing about how it's illegal to smoke inside a convenience store, or about the statistics on lung cancer that he's got rattling around his brain.
"Huh?" is what he says, because apparently dealing with life-and-death situations makes him crazy verbose like that.
John juts his chin toward Matt's hands, which is when Matt realizes that he's still carrying the clerk's sushi rolls.
"Well," Matt tries as he sets the plate down on the counter, "we are going to miss the cocktail hour. And I do love me a good weenie." When John just looks at him blankly - and honestly, that double entendre deserved at least an eye roll, possibly even a 'jeeeezus, kid' - Matt frowns. "The cocktail hour. At the stag and doe. That we were on our way to before we diverted here for… gas. You sure that knock you got on the head didn't scramble something up there?"
"Aaaah, shit, the party," John says before his eyes brighten and he sneaks a peek at his watch. "You think this is enough to get out of it?"
"No."
"We can tell Luce that we're traumatized by the… no, she ain't gonna buy that from me. We can tell her that you are traumatized by the whole experience. Gotta go lay down."
Matt steps aside for the arriving paramedics and deliberately doesn't look at the blood on the floor as he says, "Nice try, McClane. We're going to the party."
Then the local police arrive. More paramedics. A fire truck. Matt hops up onto the counter, swings his legs and lets John give the low-down. He'll have to give his statement soon enough - god knows he's been through this enough to know the drill, and if that doesn't tell him how much his life has changed since falling in love with John McClane, nothing will - but he's got at least fifteen minutes before that happens. When his stomach rumbles he ignores it for a good seven minutes before he gives in and snags a piece of the clerk's sushi. Maybe he's getting better with the whole blood thing.
It turns out to be twenty-five minutes before the cops are ready for him. His statement is pretty straightforward but it still takes a bit longer than normal - and oh god, he has a normal for this sort of thing - because this time he was the one who threw the weapon and actually took down the would-be thief. Well. John did all the real work, but Matt's used to being the bystander who says things like, "I was over there on the side screaming while John swung from the chandelier/fought the bad guy on the moving rollercoaster/dangled from the hot air balloon." He only wishes those were exaggerations.
"Sir?"
Matt blinks over at the patrolman. "Sorry. I get in my head sometimes and-" He twirls a finger at his temple. "Lots going on up there, it's a whirligig. What?"
The cop doesn't look impressed. The cop doesn't look like much of anything, except maybe perturbed that his donut break was interrupted by a little armed robbery. He suppresses a sigh and repeats in a bored tone, "And what was the assailant doing before you threw the cheese knife?"
"The… what now?"
* * *
"You hear that, Matty?" John says an hour later when they've handed over their contact information, John's conceded and allowed the paramedic to put a bandage over the cut on his head, and they are finally allowed to leave. "A cheese knife."
"I heard."
"Never know when one of those is gonna come in handy."
"Stop."
"Maybe we oughta stop off somewhere and pick one up for Luce and Mark."
Matt stops next to the car, turns with a flourish. The knife in his hand shines in the overhead lights. "No need," he says.
John's smirk immediately vanishes. "That's evidence, kid."
"Please, like I'd make off with a piece of evidence," Matt says. He holds up a hand when John opens his mouth. "And that gear I took from the airplane hangar doesn't count, Gabriel owed me for exploding all my shit. Aaaanyway," he continues before John can protest, "Jesse had two of them. Apparently he's only working at the E-Zee Convenience part-time while he goes to culinary school. Turns out he's some kind of cheese connoisseur. Did you know there are over four hundred different types of cheese produced in France alone?"
"I do now," John says dryly.
"So yeah, 'as a token of his gratitude' he was willing to part with one of the pair." Matt turns the knife over in his hands. "Imagine the damage Lucy could do with this."
For a moment the residual noise of the cops and paramedics fades out as he really imagines what damage Lucy could do with a little cheese knife.
Matt meets John's eyes.
"Maybe this isn't that best idea," he says.
"Thinkin' a turkey platter," John agrees.
"Or some doilies," Matt says as he ditches the cheese knife in the nearest garbage can. He opens the passenger door, then pauses to look over the top of the car at John. "Think we can stop at the next gas station to look for some?" he tries innocently.
"The next gas station."
"Yup."
"To look for doilies," John says.
"Sure. Doilies," Matt says. He nods just a little too frantically. "And if I just happened to make my way into the bathroom and you just happened to follow me in there a few minutes later-"
"And my mouth just happened to fall on your cock-"
"I like the way your mind works, John," Matt says. "Let's maybe skip the armed robbery this time, though."
"Good call, kid," John says. "Good call."
.
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John/Matt
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3114 words
Summary: They should know by now that road trips never work out exactly as planned.
Notes: Written for persnickett as her prize for winning our February Frenzy word count challenge. Snick gave me four prompt words (traveling, casino, nape, gun) and I immediately decided to use all of them. Hope you enjoy, Snick!
On The Road Again
by Severina
"Tell me again why we gotta go to this thing?"
Matt closes his eyes against the cool breeze coming through the lowered passenger side window, and counts to ten. Then he adds another ten for good measure. When he is sure he isn't going to remove his sneaker and smack John across the head with it, he opens his eyes. "Because," he says, oh-so-calmly, for the seventeenth time, "this is your daughter's wedding and you are cooperating with all her plans so that you do not win the Asshole Father of the Year award. You're running out of room in the trophy cabinet."
"Wedding, sure," John says. "Happy to go to the wedding, walk my little girl down the aisle, grit my teeth and forever hold my peace. But this? This makes no sense, kid."
"John, we've gone over it a hundred times."
"A blender! And a good set of silverware that you use at Thanksgiving and Christmas! That's what a new bride gets. Bunch of her girlfriends sitting around the living room, make one of those hats out of a paper plate and the bows from the presents-"
"No one wants silver that sits in a box three hundred and sixty three days of the year," Matt answers. "And Lucy and Mark already have a blender."
That last part shut John up. Mentioning, however casually, that Lucy and her fiancée are already 'shacking up' never fails to pull the wind from his sails, even if it is momentarily. Matt has never quite been able to figure out how John reconciles that living with his boyfriend is a-okay but it's practically a mortal sin for Lucy and Mark.
"Lingerie, then," John mutters.
Had to be a good four minutes of silence that time. Matt thinks it might be a record.
"Bunch of frilly lace shit-"
"Just when I think I've pulled you out of 1985 you go sliiiiiidin' back in," Matt says. "No one does hen parties anymore, McClane! Women don't want to sit around someone's stuffy living room opening useless gifts like gravy bowls and… doilies! Have you seen a doily actually in use by anyone younger than your grant aunt Matilda? And don't even start on how you have one underneath the lamp in the guest room because that thing is an embarrassment, John, I tried to get rid of it about eight hundred times when I was living in there."
Matt realizes he may have gone too far when John side-eyes him for a long moment before returning his attention to the road. "Always wondered how that ended up in the pile of Jack's old toys in the attic."
"Don't even want to know what you were doing rooting around in those old G.I. Joes," Matt answers. "Especially when you-"
"Don't say it, kid."
"-are the original action hero."
"Flattery is not gonna get you a blowjob in the bathroom when we stop for gas at the next Mobil," John says. "Not this time."
Matt's mock-pout forces a smirk out of John, and a flash of those green eyes. Matt squirms a little in his seat. The lips might say 'not this time' but those eyes are saying 'sixty percent probability'. It's all he can do not to search frantically for the next 'gas station ahead' sign.
Which might make them late for Lucy and Mark's stag and doe. Which is what they were actually talking about. Right. Focus.
"Annnnyway," Matt says, "I know that in your day the little women sat patiently at home eating cucumber sandwiches and pretending to be really excited about tea towels while the big he-men went off to down whiskey and play poker in some run-down smoky bar where they can also stick dollar bills into the G-string of some big-breasted, bouffant-haired, dead-eyed stripper-"
"Jesus, kid, you've really never been to a strip club, have ya?"
"I get all my knowledge from past episodes of SVU, which I'm sure is quite accurate," Matt says. "And stop changing the subject."
"There's a subject?"
"These days," Matt says, "the couple likes to celebrate together. So instead of getting gifted with a bunch of shit they're never going to use, like a cheese knife and a turkey platter-"
"Hey, a cheese knife can come in real handy."
"-they gather a bunch of their friends and family for a big party. There'll be 50/50 raffles and beer tickets to raise money for the honeymoon, and everyone can drink and dance and be merry, and there's not a single doily in sight."
John huffs, but doesn't say anymore until they are taking the exit off the interstate. Because 'gas station ahead' looms in the headlights. Oh yes. It's an Exxon, not a Mobil, of the type with a big, brightly lit convenience store. Matt prefers the old-fashioned kind where you have to get a key and go around to the side of the building to use the bathroom - and he can't believe he now has a mental 'best type of gas station in which to get a quick and furtive blowjob' list, but there ya go - but John can be creative. Sometimes his eyes practically cross with just how creative John can get.
John pulls into the pumps and turns off the engine before swiveling in his seat. "But at a casino?"
"They rented a private room at Hideaway," Matt says. At John's blank look, he shakes his head. "The dance club? Did you even read the invitation?"
"Figured you'd get the deets."
"The… deets. John, no one says… never mind. There's a separate room for us but people can also go out and dance in the club if they want. Or if you want to go gamble for a bit, you can. No news on whether there's any big-breasted strippers, though."
"I'll pass," John says.
"Good call." Matt opens the door just as John does the same, smooths his palms down his jeans when John reaches for the pump. "So I'll… uh… be in the bathroom. While you're... um… doing that. So you know where I am. If… yeah."
"Good call," John repeats dryly.
* * *
The teenage clerk barely looks up from his lunch as Matt cuts through the aisles and makes for the "Gentlemen" sign near the beer cooler. He scans the shelving as he goes. It's the kind of store filled with what his Gramma Nettles would have called bric-a-brac: a statue of a weeping angel next to a ragged display of silver foil birthday banners next to a wire bin overflowing with winter scarves, despite the fact that it's July.
The bathroom matches the store - all fluorescent lighting and white walls and obligatory reminder to wash your hands. Matt takes a piss and does just that, with a little nod to the sign, and then leans his ass against the counter.
Waits. And waits.
And okay, maybe he read John wrong? But honestly, his McClane-dar hasn't been faulty since their initial hook-up after the fire sale, when he thought John was acting weird because he was ridiculously straight, when it turned out he was acting weird because he thought Matt was ridiculously ageist. Since then he could practically write a manual on the guy, and Sneaky Bathroom Blowjob had definitely been on the agenda.
He gives it another three minutes before calling it and pushing through the door back into the store.
And freezes.
The tableau plays out in a series of pop-flashes in his head.
The wire rack of Doritos and Lays and Miss Vickie's crashed onto its side. The clerk on his stomach in front of the counter, his hands behind his head. The gun. The gun that is pressed to John's nape as he kneels in front of some punkass scumbag two-bit thief with wild eyes and jittery hands.
And he can see the wheels turning in John's head. His hands are raised in the classic 'surrender' pose, which puts his left hand inches from the gun. And he's done this before. It's not in the official reports and John doesn't like to talk about it, but he told Matt the whole story once and only once - the Christmas packing tape, the gun secured between his shoulder blades, the shot that took out the henchman and then Gruber, falling, dragging John's wife with him through the window. John's follow up to that little display was of course something that Matt witnessed himself - the whole Shooting Himself Through The Shoulder thing. Reaching up and grabbing guns from bad guys is practically his whole spiel.
One of these days it's not going to work.
All of this goes through Matt's mind in about two point five seconds. Long enough for him to take a step to the left. Long enough for John to catch the movement and dart a warning glance his way. John's eyes flick to the right and the meaning is clear: Get Out. Whether John expects him to ease back into the bathroom or try to sneak out the front door is unclear. What's totally clear to Matt is his response: Fuck That.
He scans the aisles around him frantically. Aromatherapy candles and rack of condoms and incense burners, nothing that can be used as a weapon. He's vaguely aware of John smarting off to the punkass scumbag thief, of the punkass scumbag thief's sniffling, sneering response. The clerk whimpers and starts crawling toward the safe inset in the floor just inside the door marked 'Manager' and Matt steps carefully around the spilled chips and cheezies as he makes his way to the counter. In every action movie the little bodega owner always has a baseball bat behind the counter. And okay, light-bright E-Zee Convenience isn't exactly a bodega, but still. He looks. And he finds cartons of smokes beneath the counter and the clerk's sushi on the counter and why the fuck isn't this a bodega in Little Italy or something? He turns in a circle, pulls at his hair, aware of the punkass scumbag thief's voice rising--
Everything slows down.
The punkass scumbag thief cuffs John on the back of the head with the barrel of the gun. John leans to the right while simultaneously reaching around with his left hand to grab the gun. John misses.
Matt doesn't think. He simply grabs the first thing that comes to hand and throws.
He has never been good at sports. He was kicked out of Little League because every ball-toss ended up at foot level (and also because he would sit down in left field instead of trying to chase down the ball. Because he knew that there was a better chance of spraining his ankle while running for the ball than there was of him actually making a catch. He had a spreadsheet to prove it and everything. Didn't stop his dad from cuffing him on the side of the head the day the coach politely requested that they go far, far away and never return.)
But this day? The Gods are somehow smiling upon him, because the object he lobbed with force spins once in the air, catching the fluorescent light and shining like Thor's mighty Mjolnir itself, and then lodges directly in punkass scumbag thief's bicep.
Punkass scumbag thief screams like a twelve year old girl at a One Direction concert.
John is up and moving before Matt can completely finish his celebratory arms-in-air Rocky-style victory dance. Barking out, "grab me somethin' to tie this fucker up with, kid," he's grabbed the gun out of thin air and shoved it in his pocket, got his knee wedged in the small of punkass scumbag thief's back and the dude's arms wrenched behind him all while reciting the Miranda. Definitely a multi-tasker, John McClane. Thankfully the screaming has stopped but punkass scumbag thief is still making this weird whining-whistling sound like a dozen tea kettles at a retirement home, and blood is soaking into his plaid shirt and dripping on the floor, and wow, Matt never really thought that blood bothered him but he's feeling a bit woozy-
"Matthew! Focus!"
"Huh?"
"Rope!"
Matt shakes his head. Rope. Right. He picks up the half-eaten sushi platter which is definitely not rope, jeeeezus, FOCUS and then remembers the winter display rack; hurries across the store to pick out a couple of long scarves in colours that have never been found in nature and quickly returns to John's side to hand them over. John makes quick work of tying punkass scumbag thief's hands behind his back before pulling out his cell phone and calling 911.
"Hungry?" John asks once he's pocketed his phone and is checking on the clerk. The teenager is back on his ass now, hands shaking, but he's pulled a battered pack of Winstons from his pocket and he's getting calmer with every drag on his smoke. Considering the circumstances Matt's not going to say a thing about how it's illegal to smoke inside a convenience store, or about the statistics on lung cancer that he's got rattling around his brain.
"Huh?" is what he says, because apparently dealing with life-and-death situations makes him crazy verbose like that.
John juts his chin toward Matt's hands, which is when Matt realizes that he's still carrying the clerk's sushi rolls.
"Well," Matt tries as he sets the plate down on the counter, "we are going to miss the cocktail hour. And I do love me a good weenie." When John just looks at him blankly - and honestly, that double entendre deserved at least an eye roll, possibly even a 'jeeeezus, kid' - Matt frowns. "The cocktail hour. At the stag and doe. That we were on our way to before we diverted here for… gas. You sure that knock you got on the head didn't scramble something up there?"
"Aaaah, shit, the party," John says before his eyes brighten and he sneaks a peek at his watch. "You think this is enough to get out of it?"
"No."
"We can tell Luce that we're traumatized by the… no, she ain't gonna buy that from me. We can tell her that you are traumatized by the whole experience. Gotta go lay down."
Matt steps aside for the arriving paramedics and deliberately doesn't look at the blood on the floor as he says, "Nice try, McClane. We're going to the party."
Then the local police arrive. More paramedics. A fire truck. Matt hops up onto the counter, swings his legs and lets John give the low-down. He'll have to give his statement soon enough - god knows he's been through this enough to know the drill, and if that doesn't tell him how much his life has changed since falling in love with John McClane, nothing will - but he's got at least fifteen minutes before that happens. When his stomach rumbles he ignores it for a good seven minutes before he gives in and snags a piece of the clerk's sushi. Maybe he's getting better with the whole blood thing.
It turns out to be twenty-five minutes before the cops are ready for him. His statement is pretty straightforward but it still takes a bit longer than normal - and oh god, he has a normal for this sort of thing - because this time he was the one who threw the weapon and actually took down the would-be thief. Well. John did all the real work, but Matt's used to being the bystander who says things like, "I was over there on the side screaming while John swung from the chandelier/fought the bad guy on the moving rollercoaster/dangled from the hot air balloon." He only wishes those were exaggerations.
"Sir?"
Matt blinks over at the patrolman. "Sorry. I get in my head sometimes and-" He twirls a finger at his temple. "Lots going on up there, it's a whirligig. What?"
The cop doesn't look impressed. The cop doesn't look like much of anything, except maybe perturbed that his donut break was interrupted by a little armed robbery. He suppresses a sigh and repeats in a bored tone, "And what was the assailant doing before you threw the cheese knife?"
"The… what now?"
* * *
"You hear that, Matty?" John says an hour later when they've handed over their contact information, John's conceded and allowed the paramedic to put a bandage over the cut on his head, and they are finally allowed to leave. "A cheese knife."
"I heard."
"Never know when one of those is gonna come in handy."
"Stop."
"Maybe we oughta stop off somewhere and pick one up for Luce and Mark."
Matt stops next to the car, turns with a flourish. The knife in his hand shines in the overhead lights. "No need," he says.
John's smirk immediately vanishes. "That's evidence, kid."
"Please, like I'd make off with a piece of evidence," Matt says. He holds up a hand when John opens his mouth. "And that gear I took from the airplane hangar doesn't count, Gabriel owed me for exploding all my shit. Aaaanyway," he continues before John can protest, "Jesse had two of them. Apparently he's only working at the E-Zee Convenience part-time while he goes to culinary school. Turns out he's some kind of cheese connoisseur. Did you know there are over four hundred different types of cheese produced in France alone?"
"I do now," John says dryly.
"So yeah, 'as a token of his gratitude' he was willing to part with one of the pair." Matt turns the knife over in his hands. "Imagine the damage Lucy could do with this."
For a moment the residual noise of the cops and paramedics fades out as he really imagines what damage Lucy could do with a little cheese knife.
Matt meets John's eyes.
"Maybe this isn't that best idea," he says.
"Thinkin' a turkey platter," John agrees.
"Or some doilies," Matt says as he ditches the cheese knife in the nearest garbage can. He opens the passenger door, then pauses to look over the top of the car at John. "Think we can stop at the next gas station to look for some?" he tries innocently.
"The next gas station."
"Yup."
"To look for doilies," John says.
"Sure. Doilies," Matt says. He nods just a little too frantically. "And if I just happened to make my way into the bathroom and you just happened to follow me in there a few minutes later-"
"And my mouth just happened to fall on your cock-"
"I like the way your mind works, John," Matt says. "Let's maybe skip the armed robbery this time, though."
"Good call, kid," John says. "Good call."
.