Live Free or Die Hard Fic for smallfandombang: Indelible
Title: Indelible
Author:persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Matt/John, Connie Kowalski, OCs
Rating/Category: PG-13/Slash
Genre: Straight up romance
Word Count: ~16000
Warnings: Not unless emotionally dense cops or cheesy wisenheimer geeks are your trigger or something. There are run-on sentences. Follwed by sentence fragments. I regret nothing.
Summary: It happened mostly at night, when John gave up staring sleeplessly at the ceiling turning his latest cases over and over in his mind until he gave up on sleep and let the memories of old ones take over. He had thought of looking the kid up a couple of times in those wakeful, ill-advised wee hours, but something always stopped him.
Notes: Written for smallfandombang
Indelible
by Persnickett
“Hello?” Connie rattled the ice in her whiskey glass alertingly. “This is Earth calling McClane. Come in, McClane.”
John squinted his eyes, blocking out the distraction. There was somebody outside the window next to their booth, standing under the awning, taking shelter from the rain.
“We were supposed to be going over that new Horse-Carriage Hijacker case…”
Somebody with a lean frame and familiar awkward posture. Somebody with shaggy dark hair.
“Matt?” The muttered syllable was out before John realized he had spoken.
“…And I’m talking to myself over here.” Connie put her glass down, and followed John’s gaze.
“That’s the kid,” John murmured. He could hear the touch of disbelief in his voice, as if the odds of two people living and working in the same city should have never allowed for this kind of coincidence. “The kid I did the Gabriel case with. That crazy Fire Sale thing, remember that?”
“Oh, you mean the kid who saved your life?” Connie asked innocently. “And your daughter’s life? Who you then forbid from dating said daughter, and abandoned in a hospital in Washington with a metal pin and two plates in his leg, without even finding out if he had some place to go home to?” Sure, that about summed it up. “That kid?”
“Yeah,” John said drily, his eyes still out on the street, still on Matt. “That one.”
He hadn’t exactly needed the reminder. It wasn’t as if John had forgotten about Matt, or the day they met. Though sometimes maybe he wished he could.
It happened mostly at night, when John gave up staring sleeplessly at the ceiling turning his latest cases over and over in his mind until he gave up on sleep and let the memories of old ones take over. He had thought of looking the kid up a couple of times in those wakeful, ill-advised wee hours, but something always stopped him.
John had met his share of people under intense circumstances before, sure. It came with the line of work. But nobody before or since Matt had heard the kind of things John had confided that day. Little things about his marriage and his family life, the choices he had made. The regrets. Maybe it was just the situation; the short, crazy bursts of life-threatening action Gabriel had thrown their way, intercut with long, quiet drives in the car, with nothing to do except fight over the radio. But if John was honest with himself, that probably wasn’t the whole explanation.
On those nights - when he wandered the apartment amid the ghosts of smug terrorist telephone voices and remembered gunfire until he gave in and sat down to try to block out the phantom ringing in his ears with re-heated TV dinner leftovers and late night classic movies - there were certain memories he could never seem to shake. Lately, that memory was the one of Matt, all shaky hands and young, wide eyes asking Have you done stuff like that before? …Like killing people?
Matt had a vulnerability that was contagious. Those big, guileless eyes and honest questions made John feel guilty somehow, jaded. Holly had accused him time and time again of being closed off, of shutting down too much. It wasn’t news that the years spent doing what he had to had changed him, but meeting somebody like Matt made John feel almost like it made him some kind of monster. Meeting a guy like Matt made it seem for the first time like it was sort of part of his duty. To try and be more human.
But it turned out picking up the phone and doing it was scary as shit.
So Kowalski’s guilt trip was a wasted effort. John knew it had been his job to protect the kid. A job he definitely hadn’t done perfectly. Matt looked good though. John would have to see him walk to know if he limped at all, but it didn’t look from here like he was favouring the leg that had taken Gabriel’s bullet, or holding his weight off it. He stood balanced and straight in a black coat with a scarf wound around his longish neck.
John watched him pull out his phone and check for messages, then put it away and look around expectantly.
“Waiting for somebody…” John muttered unthinkingly again, only to be yanked abruptly out of his thoughts in reply.
“What are you still sittin’ here for!!?”
Connie’s voice got shrill when she got excited.
John sighed. He abandoned his drink, just like he apparently was so good at, and pushed himself out of the booth.
***
“Holy shit,” was what Matt said, when John pushed open the door to Vinnie’s and came to stand next to him under the awning. “McClane!?” He was leaning back a little in his surprise, taking him in.
John spread his arms in a ‘the one and only’ gesture. Matt gave a sharp “Ha!” of excitement. He ignored the umbrella on offer in John’s left hand in favour of launching himself forward on tiptoe, throwing his arms enthusiastically around John’s shoulders, and hanging on. Apparently the occasion called for hugging.
Matt was damp with the weather, and his hair smelled of a citrus-y shampoo John was surprised to find familiar. Sure, he had had his face buried in this soft mop of hair before, John realized; throwing him to the floor of his exploding apartment, covering him as airborne luxury cars sailed over their heads. But all he could remember smelling at the time was the ash and choking smoke, their mingled sweat. And blood.
John slapped the kid on the back a few times.
Matt pulled away, grinning. John allowed himself a little smile back. It was good to see him. John tried not to think the word ‘alive’.
“So what goes on with you these days?” John asked. And then to satisfy Kowalski, because he knew she would ask: “Living in the city?”
Matt nodded, still grinning widely.
“With Kennedy, actually.” He held up a hand, gesturing out to the sidewalk at a girl on the approach. She had a hood pulled up against the rain, but a long sheath of sandy coloured hair spilled out the side of it and down the front of her jacket.
John nodded. So this was who Matt had been waiting for. “So how long have you two been-“
“Oh no,” Matt said, as the girl walked up to join them under the awning. “No, not since high school,” he went on, as she pulled back her hood and looked curiously between them. Matt put an exaggeratedly lecherous arm around her shoulders, “I mean, I keep trying but…”
“There’s just one tiny problem,” Kennedy said, clearly catching on to the drift of the conversation topic, like it wasn’t a new one for them.
“Tiny? Ouch! Not in front of company, Kenn,” he told her theatrically out of the side of his mouth. “My penis,” Matt clarified, unnecessarily loudly, although the sidewalks were mostly deserted in this weather. “My penis is the problem. …Guess there is such a thing as bad press,” he muttered, removing his arm from her shoulders so he could make a cordial introductory gesture like Vanna White showcasing a Brand New Car. “Kenn,” he announced with a little incline of his head, “prefers the company of the ladies.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” John said, which earned him a grin from Kennedy and a gasp of mock offense from Matt, with an accompanying gesture that might have been meant to represent clutching imaginary pearls.
“Hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying,” Matt said good naturedly when he had recovered. “I mean, can I get a high five for highschool me? Come on,” he said, pointing an appreciative finger at Kennedy and moving it up and down in a general indication that under her bulky overcoat lurked what Matt must consider to be a spectacular figure. “I went to third base with that!” Matt raised his hand in the air and then, without waiting to see if anybody else would, he pulled his other hand out of his jacket pocket and high-fived himself.
“And yet they wonder why we swear off men.” Kennedy rolled her eyes, albeit fondly.
John looked down at his boots, unsure whether he was supposed to smile. Was the kid’s sense of humour always this cheesy?
“You, however, seem very cool,” Kennedy was telling him, holding out a hand. “I’m Kennedy Marshall.”
“John McClane,” he replied.
“In the flesh, finally,” she said, her tone friendly and her handshake firm. “Matt keeps the clippings from the Fourth of July attacks on his-“
“Okay!” said Matt hurriedly. “Settle down, everybody. I’m sure Detective McClane has had enough of my personal humiliation for one night. I know I have.” Matt’s voice went suddenly soft. “We should…let him get back to his date, there.” Matt threw a glance through the window in Connie’s direction then looked down at his shoes, scuffling with the toe of one of his sneakers at something on the pavement.
“Nice work, McClane,” he remarked finally, flipping his hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head so he could look up at them again. “She’s kinda hot, in a…age appropriate kinda way. Right Kenn?”
“Totally.” Kennedy nodded sagely. “Got that tough-as-nails Jodie Foster thing going. Great hair.”
Kennedy reached up and pulled her hood back up over her own long sandy mane. Outside of the lee of the awning, the rain had started to come down harder.
“She’ll be thrilled,” John said, handing Kennedy his umbrella.
Matt put up a hand and rubbed at the nape of his neck. The jovial mood had turned awkward somewhere. Maybe it was time to break up the happy reunion.
“Well listen, I won’t keep you kids,” John said. “I just wanted to catch up, see what you’re up to,” he directed this at Matt. “Where you’re at these days. I uh… always felt like I should have at least asked you that back when I left you at the hospital. Felt bad about it.” He gestured back through the window. “Connie always gives me a hard time that I never even asked you if you had somewhere to go, after all your shit- sorry,” John apologized, with a tip of his head at Kennedy. Lesbian or not, she was still a lady. “After all your stuff got blown up. And me with that whole two bedroom apartment, with just me and all.”
“Ha,” John watched Matt’s eyes go wide a moment. “You mean we could have been roomies?” He wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that reaction. “Could have been fun. And disastrous. Probably mostly disastrous.”
John was probably supposed to make some witty agreement with this assessment, but he couldn’t help but think he would be more patient as a roommate than Matt would probably imagine. He was a lot less pushy and sarcastic when people weren’t trying to blow him up.
Not that Matt would ever need to know it. While the time they spent together had been…intense, to say the least, John supposed they probably didn’t actually know each other all that well. All enthusiastic hugging in the rain notwithstanding.
“Well it looks like you found a much better deal, anyhow,” John said, with what he hoped was a kindly smile at Kennedy.
“Yes, totally,” Matt agreed quickly, launching into his cheesy stand-up comic routine again. “Living with a lesbian is the bomb. I never have to hide my porn, and my place is full of hot girl on girl action every date night.”
“Who are you kidding?” Kennedy said coolly, stepping back to pop open the umbrella and set it on her shoulder. “This is date night.”
“It’s true. We are both tragically single,” Matt confessed with a put-on sigh. “Living with a lesbian is actually less hot girl action and more red wine and cats.”
“There is one cat!” Kennedy exclaimed.
“To which I am highly allergic,” Matt argued smoothly.
“Slightly allergic,” she corrected him. “And you love Kierkegaard.”
“Nobody loves that pussy like you, Kenn.”
“You still got that extra room at your place?” Kennedy asked John, laughingly exasperated.
John smiled for real this time.
“I felt bad about it is all,” he said, seriously. “I shoulda at least checked you were okay,” he said, turning back to Matt. “But you look great.”
Matt blinked.
“Like you’re doing real good,” John went on, not sure why he felt the need to correct himself.
Matt did look good. Unlike the day they had met, he looked like he had showered and shaved in the past twelve hours. He had maybe even gained a bit of weight, just enough to round out his face a little. Which maybe did him the disservice of making him look even younger than he was, but it wasn’t such a bad thing, in John’s opinion.
John ran a hand over the stubble on his scalp.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “You look good too.” And his smile this time was small, shy.
John stopped what he was doing and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He thought it might be about to get awkward again, but Matt cocked his head.
“You know, it’s never too late, McClane,” he said. “…I mean if you want to catch up, why not just take my number? We’ll hang out.”
Hang out. John tried not to think about a guy his age trying to ‘hang out’ in the places Matt and Kennedy would be likely to invite him to. He fished wordlessly in his coat pocket for his phone instead, handed it over for Matt to enter his number in.
“Thanks for the shelter,” Kennedy was saying, offering John back his umbrella.
He held up a hand. “Keep it. There’s about twenty of ’em in the lost and found down at the precinct.”
“Wow. Nice,” Kennedy said.
Her genuine tone struck a contrast with a sarcastically coquettish simper from Matt, who was grinning again and handing his phone back: “Always a true blue hero.”
“That’s Farrell for ‘thank you’,” she said firmly, turning back to John one last time. Then she turned back to Matt and elbowed him squarely in the ribs.
He playfully winced, then offered her his arm so they could huddle together under the umbrella. John watched them go for a minute, listening to the snide murmurs and indignant squawks of their teasing as they sauntered off into the drizzle.
He turned and headed back inside, feeling newly aware of the weight of his phone in his pocket.
When John got back their food had arrived and Kowalski had started on a fresh drink. One eyebrow was raised expectantly.
“The kid’s lesbian girlfriend says you’re hot,” John reported, as he slid into the booth.
“Uh huh.” The eyebrow was still raised. “She’s not so bad herself,” she said without missing a beat. “Ya get the kid’s number?”
“…Yeah,” John resisted a sudden urge to put his hand into the pocket of his coat, where he could still feel his phone sitting as if it had grown heavier, or warmer somehow, carrying its new contact.
“Good,” Connie said. “You owe me a lost and found umbrella, Gene Kelly.” She pointed at him with the french fry on the end of her fork. “And it better be black.”
“Only the best for you, Kowalski,” John replied, picking up his own fork and digging in. He was sure he had seen a pink and orange Hello Kitty one down there last week that would be just the ticket.
Despite what she obviously wanted for some reason, John wasn’t sure he was going to call. What the hell could two people as different as they were find in common to talk about? John didn’t know the first damn thing about hacking and computers, pop music or the latest video games. It wasn’t as if they could just pick up where they left off, either. Their talk on that infamous day had drifted to some places John didn’t necessarily like to discuss too often. Which was disconcerting enough in itself.
What Connie didn’t see about their little reunion scene outside the window of their favourite booth tonight, was that the thought of calling Matt wasn’t comfortable. Thinking of Matt meant remembering cracked ribs and bloodied knuckles and Lucy with her wrists tied up and a gun to her temple. Thinking about Matt had always felt… dangerous. Maybe for more reasons than the ones John could make sense of.
But then, whatever powers that be had brought him and Matt together in front of God, the Universe and all of New York City tonight. And the satellites hadn’t fallen from the sky, not a single building had burst into flame, and the country hadn’t been taken hostage by any cyber-psychos with a death wish.
At least not that he knew of, yet.
***
“You know, I’m glad you called.”
Matt swirled the last of his beer around the bottom of his glass. It had been his idea to come back here to meet up, so he could return Kowalski’s umbrella at the ‘scene of the caper’ as Matt put it, even though John had said repeatedly that he could keep it.
“Yeah?” John replied. In the end, calling had seemed like the polite thing to do, after taking down his number and all.
Besides, it wouldn’t do to mention of course, but it was worth it to get Kowalski off his back about abandoning him at the hospital like a puppy at the pound. He would give her this, the only other woman he had ever met that could work a guilt trip as effectively had been Holly.
John watched Matt give his glass another swirl, let the foam coat the sides of the glass and slide down. The kid really nursed his booze, John was already halfway through his second. Or maybe that was just what happened when somebody spent as much time talking as Matt did.
“Yeah. It was good catching up with you.”
Something about that made John smile over his own drink. ‘Catching up’, Matt called it. If this had been an interrogation, it would have been the easiest of John’s life. Matt had given up everything - starting with his latest jobs, to what sounded like every job he had ever had, his family and upbringing in snooty upstate New York, and his entire dating history …which, it turned out, included a Jennifer, a Melanie, what sounded like more than one Stephanie, a Ryan who was a girl and a Cary, who was a guy.
John had been quick in using a hasty swig of his beer to cover any outward reaction to that last little tidbit. Matt had prattled unconcernedly on, so John counted himself successful at not looking old and out of touch, and what Lucy would call ‘so not PC’.
Matt was quiet now though, looking down into the dregs of his hipster local micro-brew and obviously trying to find a way to signal the end of the conversation, even though John’s glass was still considerably less empty than Matt’s.
“We - heh,” he said finally, looking back up at John with a smirk. “We really went through something together, didn’t we?”
“Something,” John agreed wryly, “yeah.” Because how the fuck else did you describe a day like that one?
They both laughed into their pints. John took a sip.
“Yeah, it was good seeing you too,” he said finally, giving Matt the out he was looking for, and feeling strangely reluctant.
Matt looked up at him gratefully. John smiled and Matt tipped his glass on its heel again, so he could drop his gaze back down into it. It was hard to say with Matt’s bangs falling forward over his face like that, but he might have been blushing.
“It makes sense,” Matt said, nodding a little to himself without looking up. “Meeting up like this. You go through something like that with somebody and they’re…a part of your life after that, you know?”
Matt waited a beat until they were looking at each other again before he finished. “It’s…indelible.”
“Indelible,” John repeated. He was as surprised by the suddenly soft tone to his voice as he was by the fact that Matt seemed to be doing him the courtesy of not explaining what ‘indelible’ means.
Matt was just watching him, smiling quietly. He was uncharacteristically still.
“Well,” Matt said abruptly, and the spell seemed to break. “You should call me again sometime.” He was moving again, sliding out of the booth and getting to his feet.
John watched him button up his coat, and reach under the table for the black umbrella.
“I believe this is yours.”
“I believe it’s raining again,” John pointed out, without bothering to nod at what was going on out the window next to them.
“Oh.”
They both smiled.
“Keep it,” John said. “I toldja there’s about-”
“Twenty of them in the lost and found down at the precinct,” Matt finished for him. “Glad to hear the NYPD is really cracking down on that scourge of rogue umbrellas threatening the peace and running our city streets. True Blue, through and through.”
If the spell hadn’t been broken before, Matt was sure as heck his old smartass self now.
John cleared his throat. “Y’know, it wasn’t a date.”
Matt’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out for a second. The umbrella in his hand moved spasmodically in some sort of failed gesture. “I- what?”
“Last week. That lady you saw me with when we met up here. You said you were gonna let me get back to my date, but it wasn’t one,” John explained, not quite sure why he felt like he needed to.
“Oh,” said Matt, awkwardly. “Okay. Good to know.”
“Hey you gave me your whole life story, it’s only fair,” John pointed out.
Matt gave a self-deprecating laugh of acknowledgement that made his eyes sparkle good-naturedly and ducked his head.
“That was Connie Kowalski, she’s uh - well she’s kinda my boss actually,” John went on. “Do me a favour and don’t ever mention to her that I admitted I know that.”
“Your secret is safe, Detective,” Matt vowed, when he lifted his head again. His brown eyes were still sparkling mirthfully.
John nodded his thanks. Matt tried to put his hands in his pockets and forgot he was holding the umbrella.
“Oh. Right,” he said, fumbling then correcting his grip on the handle. “I will return this next time we meet up,” Matt said, growing serious and pointing the end of the umbrella at him in a pledging gesture.
Apparently they were doing this again. Which, John realized with a mild nudge of surprise, he might not actually mind.
“And I’m picking up the tab on my way out,” Matt continued, “don’t try and stop me.”
John opened his mouth to respond but he was silenced with a jab of the umbrella into the air in front of his face and a sharp sound from Matt like a nanny shushing a protesting toddler. Fine, John thought, snapping his mouth shut. Matt could find out about his tab at Vinnie’s the embarrassing way.
“Next time,” he said, in farewell.
“Next time,” John agreed, and they both smiled again.
Matt turned and made his way to the cash register at the bar. Lo and behold, when Vinnie himself made his way over to serve him, Matt was obviously not only told something like “John McClane never pays for a drink in my bar”, but also something like “any friend of McClane’s is on the house,” because good old Vinnie walked away without even opening the register, and Matt turned around and put the back of his wrist to his forehead in a mock swoon, mouthing the words “MY HERO” before shaking his shaggy head incredulously and walking out.
Leaving all satellites in orbit and the cyber-psycho count still at zero. They were two for two.
John took another sip of his dwindling beer and looked out the window at the black of Matt’s umbrella bobbing away into the distance, slow to disappear into the grey Manhattan drizzle.
“Indelible,” he said again, into his echoing glass.
***
“You’re whistling.”
John stopped the jaunty tune immediately, and put the coffee pot back on the burner. “Huh?”
“Whistling,” Connie said, “you.”
“Sounds like McClane got laaaa-aid!” Mendoza drawled from the desk across from them, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head like he was settling in for a gossip break.
John put his coffee cup to his lips with one hand and flipped him off with the other, instead.
“You’re never this happy,” Connie pointed out, in agreement. “Spill.”
“Just excited it’s Friday and I get to go two whole days without looking at this dumb ass.” John jerked his thumb at Mendoza.
“Take a good look McClane,” Mendoza bantered, leaning sideways enough to lift a buttock off the chair and rub a hand over it. “My mama’s in town this weekend. Three nights of her sweet home cooking and this ass’ll be two sizes bigger, man. Minimum.”
“Your Mama huh? Say hi to her for me,” John quipped, turning his back on Mendoza before he could switch from patting tauntingly at his ass to his traditional conversation-ender, which was usually the tried and true crotch-grab.
“You call that Farrell kid?” Connie asked, changing tack as she followed him. John cut the straightest path he could, weaving in between the aisles upon aisles of desks and uncomfortable old pull-up style office chairs that John knew for a fact had populated the bullpen since the late 70’s.
“S’a matter Kowalski, don’t like your new umbrella?” John gestured under her desk at the item in question as they passed. It looked plain white, but when you opened it up it had the horn and shaggy mane of a unicorn stitched onto it. Googly eyes and all. It wasn’t as good as the Hello Kitty one he was sure he’d seen there the week before, but it was clearly sized for preschoolers which would make it pretty funny when it actually rained.
“You kidding, it’s my lucky day. I lost one just like it just last week,” Connie deadpanned. “So’d ya see him or what?”
“Yeah, yeah,” John said. “Had a drink. Got the whole life story. You’ll be happy to know he lives in a tidy apartment uptown, where he mooches rent off his friend you saw him with the other night.”
“The platonic gay girlfriend,” Connie reiterated, as if she were taking notes.
“She was very into your hair,” John informed her. Connie made an aborted movement, like she had been about to put a flattered hand up to her curls.
“He likes you, y’know,” she said seriously, just as John had taken a mouthful from his coffee cup. He swallowed carefully. “I can tell. Stares at your neck when you talk.”
“My neck,” John repeated, keeping his tone skeptical.
“It’s a nice neck,” Connie shrugged. “When I met Frank, his neck was the first thing I noticed about him. Sometimes at home, I’ll give him a back rub. Just to get my hands on that nice thick neck, and those big broad shoulders.” Connie held her hands up and flexed her fingers appreciatively over her husband’s imaginary physique.
“Too much information, Kowalski,” John said disaffectedly, taking another careful sip of his coffee.
Connie just smiled. “I’m telling you,” she asserted serenely, “a woman knows these things.” Then she walked away back to her desk, smoothing a palm lovingly over her curls as she went.
John set his coffee down and tried not to be too obvious about drawing his hand appraisingly over the back of his neck a couple of times before getting back down to work.
***
The next time Matt decided they should ‘catch up’ happened sooner than John had been expecting.
Matt had been the one to call this time, which came as more of a surprise than it probably should have. John hadn’t given much thought to the fact that his number would of course show up in Matt’s phone the first time he called him, or that Matt might be likely to save it and call him unannounced - but apparently that was the way people did it these days.
The night was full of surprises actually. John thought it would be annoying watching the game with Matt; that he would talk over the action or spend the entirety of half time complaining about the politics of professional sports and What’s Wrong with America, but he didn’t. He sat mostly quietly, sipping at a bottle of the beer he had thoughtfully brought along and swearing intermittently under his breath whenever a good play got sacked.
When Matt had showed up at the door - holding out his offering of a six pack of trendy independent brewery IPA - John had been surprised then too.
“I feel underdressed,” he had remarked as he took Matt’s coat, looking down at his own casual combination of faded blue jeans and a worn, washed out old Henley.
Matt was wearing a steel gray button down in a soft-looking fabric that might have been silk, tucked into a pair of jeans belted with a silver buckle and in a darker wash than John had ever seen on him. His hair was combed unusually neatly and his face was clean shaven. The shoes he kicked off onto the mat next to the door were not sneakers.
“Nah,” Matt said, hastily untucking his shirt to soften the formality of the look. “I had a thing before this, sorry. You look great,” he said, waving a hand at him.
Normally John would have thrown anybody who gave him permission to dress down in his own apartment a salty look and a snappy retort, but looking at Matt now, he was honestly just glad he had opted for the jeans instead of the gym sweats he had been wearing when Matt had called earlier and asked casually what he was up to for the evening.
“Thanks,” John had said drily instead, heading for the fridge with the beer.
Nothing more of note had really happened since Matt’s grand entrance. The evening had progressed through polite conversation about the apartment-slash-neighborhood and having any trouble finding the place, then the obligatory run-down of everything John was working on these days. After that they had gotten down to the business of watching the game and consuming Matt’s bitter organic beer in companionable near-silence, which frankly, John was unexpectedly appreciating.
When he looked at Matt now though - lounging on the opposite end of his couch, neatly dressed and sleekly combed and looking like a page out of the kind of magazine that sold people stylish hippie beer in ‘retro’ brown bottles that would dangle languidly from their slim fingers - something occurred to him. John waited for his opening at the commercial break to ask.
“So,” he said, resisting the urge to clear his throat and trusting his voice to sound casual. “Hot date, or what?”
“Huh?” Matt turned away from the screen to look at him. The beer and tv had turned his gaze soft and distracted.
“Your thing before this, that you got all gussied up for,” John explained, eyeing Matt’s ensemble and giving a wave of his hand in the general direction of the overall effect. “Were you on a date?”
“What? No…” Matt looked down at himself and smoothed a hand over the soft fabric of his shirt. “Oh,” he said, like he had forgotten putting all of this obvious effort into himself, “no, actually, it was a work thing.”
Matt looked back up at him and shrugged. John nodded, but neither of them looked back at the screen.
The thing was, John had seen the way Matt worked. Matt worked out of his home from under a heap of candy bar and nacho chip wrappers, wearing what looked like whatever he had found in the ‘maybe wear again’ pile of the laundry festooned over his bedroom floor.
Granted, John thought, that had been a couple years ago now. And Matt was at an age where a couple of years could make all the difference maturity-wise. There was also the neatening effect a female roommate could have on a guy to take into account, and there was always the possibility that the way Matt looked when he worked might not be what he looked like if he had to meet a client.
John was staring, he realized. The difference was just so striking was all, even from these most recent couple of times they had met up, and John couldn’t seem to stop looking over at him this evening, noticing things. Matt smiled slightly, and turned his attention back to the television.
But not before his gaze dropped unmistakably to the region of John’s neck.
Dammit, Kowalski.
Several thoughts went barging through John’s brain at once and met up in the middle in some kind of mental traffic snarl.
Matt kept the clippings from the day they met somewhere his roommate could regularly see them. His college dating history included a girl named Ryan and a guy named Cary. And John was becoming increasingly convinced he was smelling just the faintest whiff of aftershave.
“Matt,” John said, giving in this time to the urge to clear his throat awkwardly. There was no way to make this next question sound casual. “…Are you on a date right now?”
Matt turned back to look at him again. His hair hadn’t moved since he got here, there was some kind of product in it.
Matt didn’t answer right away. He sat there, just looking at him for a second. Then he smiled.
“No,” Matt said, simply. “No, that’s not where you’re at. And that’s cool.” He gave John another second’s regard with a sincere, open-looking expression then turned back to the game again, bringing his beer bottle tranquilly up to his lips.
That was it? ‘Cool?’ John didn’t feel cool.
“And where are you ‘at’?” He kept his voice steady and unrushed.
Matt didn’t look at him this time. His gaze dropped down to the bottle in his hands.
“I think part of me went there the first time you saved my life,” he mused distantly, picking at his beer label with pensive a fingernail. “It’s probably natural. Humans are pretty unoriginal.”
His mouth curved upwards on one side in half an ironic smile that John could feel tugging at the corner of his own mouth in mirrored opinion.
Matt went to put the bottle detachedly to his lips again, only to interrupt himself. “Holy shit - FOUL. That’s a foul! How is Pruitt not ejected??” he ranted into the neck of the bottle in his hand. “Bullshit,” Matt muttered against the lip of the bottle, finally taking a swig.
If they weren’t cool, it was clear that Matt was hell bent on pretending they were. John turned back to the game, and tried to follow suit.
By the end of the six pack, it had actually worked surprisingly well. The Giants lost, which was no big surprise, and they ended the evening arguing pleasantly about next year’s roster and whether or not Manning should be traded.
Eventually Matt pointed out, not inaccurately, that it was getting late and he should get back home - before Kennedy changed the locks on him just so he couldn’t wake her up stumbling around the apartment at all hours, and found a new roommate who would let her buy three more cats.
They agreed it wasn’t likely, but that it wasn’t impossible either.
At the door, as John was handing him his jacket, Matt said that they should do this again soon.
John agreed. It was polite, but maybe it was a little more than that too - which maybe ought to have stopped surprising him by now. Tonight had been…nice.
But when Matt said next that he had a friend holding tickets for the Knicks on Thursday if John’s schedule was good for it, John still wasn’t feeling ‘cool’ enough to say that out loud. Which meant maybe it wasn’t the best idea.
“Look, Matt…”
“If this is about what we talked about before,” Matt cut in, holding up his hands in a peace-keeping gesture, “I said it was cool, and it is. This is just a couple of guys watching sports. I swear.”
Matt’s shirt was still untucked. His five o’clock shadow had started to come in and he had run his hands through his hair enough times tonight in his ire at the referee’s calls that it was loose and shaggy around his face again. He looked like John remembered him. Like Matt.
With those big vulnerable eyes, and his honest questions. Waiting for an answer.
“Yeah,” John said, nodding. “Thursday’s good.”
Humans were so damned unoriginal.
Matt grinned and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He typed in a message and pushed his free hand into his hair again, waiting for a reply.
It was mere seconds before the screen on Matt’s phone flickered silently, and he presumably got his reply.
“Great,” he said looking up at John. “We’re on, Thursday is officially a thing.”
A thing. Not a date.
As John shut the door behind him, he vowed never to admit to Kowalski (and maybe himself) the way Matt’s eyeline had drifted toward the collar of his Henley as they said their goodnights.
***
When Thursday finally rolled around, there was nothing about Matt’s bright orange Knicks hoodie, his faded jeans with the slightly ragged cuffs, or his comfortably black and white sneaker-clad feet that suggested their ‘official thing’ was anything but what Matt claimed.
Matt had even interpreted the arm John held out in welcome, when they spotted each other on the busy street corner where they had arranged to meet, as an invitation for a hug again. And when John had obliged, he didn’t smell even the barest hint of aftershave. Just that oddly familiar grapefruit-smelling shampoo. And Matt.
They got hot dogs outside Penn Station, because they were too expensive inside the Garden, and they both agreed their money would be better spent on flat, overpriced beer. The beer turned out to be both, which wasn’t a surprise, and the Knicks won, which sort of was. Then they ended up at Vinnie’s again because as Matt put it, walking in there with John was like ‘bringing your own drunken cash cow, and he wasn’t too shy to milk that sweet, boozy teat’.
Their third drink in, without either of them making any sign of buying dinner, John warned Matt that if he got him cut off at Vinnie’s, this would be their last trip to the milk shed. Matt had giggled tipsily and gotten up to order some good will nachos at the bar. The nachos were more or less gone now, and Matt was looking marginally more sober, but not much.
“So, tell me,” John said conversationally, picking out a nearly-naked nacho that he really had no intention of eating anymore, and putting it down on his plate. “Which time, out of all the fucked up times Gabriel tried to kill us, was the first time I saved your life, exactly?”
Matt examined the plate between them, taking his time picking out a chip. Although John suspected he had just about as much intention of eating more of them as John did.
“You don’t remember?” Matt asked smoothly, “I mean, isn’t it a bit early for Alzheimer’s to start kicking in?”
John flipped him the finger, and Matt grinned.
“Guess I was kinda wondering how you remembered it,” John said, letting his tone get a little more serious.
Matt gave up pretending to search for a nacho that still had some vestige of cheese clinging to it.
“I think that’s more of a date story,” he said, leaning back in the booth and regarding him coolly. “This is just a couple of guys out watching sports, remember?”
“Fair point,” John conceded. Matt was smiling now though, so he didn’t back off quite yet. “…Did you really have a work thing before you came over last week?”
It was a bit of a gamble. In John’s long experience questioning people, getting caught in a lie had the tendency to piss most of them off.
Matt’s relaxed smile went full grin.
“Ohhhh, I get it,” he drawled. “You and Vinnie here are in cahoots. Get the kid all liquored up and then fire up the interrogation! Sneaky Detective is ssssssssssssssssneaky,” Matt stage whispered, narrowing his eyes theatrically.
Matt was no dummy either, and boy did John know it. He raised his drink to his smiling lips for something to do, so that he wouldn’t have to eat that dry chip on his plate, and waited.
“So I may have misinterpreted your reaction to hearing that I sometimes date guys,” Matt sighed, punctuating the admission with a roll of his eyes.
“Reaction?” John asked before he could stop himself. Here he was, thinking he had been so careful not to show one.
“Going out of your way to tell me that when I saw you here with your boss that it wasn’t a date,” Matt clarified.
Which, when John thought about it, was exactly what he had done.
“I mean, honestly, I get it, you’re not interested.”
John put his glass up in front of his mouth again. Matt had never actually asked whether or not he might be interested.
And maybe that was for the best.
“When will you get it, man?” Matt was saying, holding his drink in his hand although it was pretty well finished now. “That I like hanging out with you? Even with no ulterior motive? You’re…kind of important to me,” Matt said, realizing his glass was empty and setting it down. “Like, a big influence on my life.”
John put his glass down too.
“…Because we’re ‘indelible’?” Mostly, he couldn’t think what else to say.
Matt never seemed to be at a loss, though.
“Yeah,” he said evenly. And whether or not he was sober, Matt was definitely serious. “Yes.”
That unflinching openness that always got past John’s defenses, even when it was against his better judgement, was there again in the wide brown eyes.
“Yeah,” John said, rather unexpectedly meaning it. “Okay.”
Matt nodded, looking satisfied his point was made.
“And now,” he announced, sliding a little sloppily out of the booth, “I must go and throw down a wicked piss. It shall be worthy of Secretariat. Order me another one of those,” Matt said, with a wave of his hand at his empty glass. “And ask for some menus I guess. We should probably eat some real food, I don’t want this to be the last trip to the milk shed.”
Matt grinned, and turned to go.
“Hey Matt,” John asked, and Matt turned back, waiting. “The day you met me here, to return that umbrella. You didn’t happen to pick a day the forecast was calling for rain on purpose, so we’d have to meet up again, did ya?”
And just like the last time John had pressed him, his gamble paid off, and instead of getting irritated Matt simply smiled.
“The weather report is public knowledge, Detective,” he said, narrowing his eyes in sardonic suspicion again. “Who’s to say either one of us didn’t make judicious use of that tried and true secret weapon known to hackers and detectives alike the world over: Google?”
“Who’s to say,” John agreed, lifting his pint again with an enigmatic smile.
“Sssssneaky,” Matt reiterated happily. Then he turned around and made his way, more or less steadily, to the restrooms.
***
John thumped his fist impatiently on the top of his desk.
The computer monitor jumped in front of his dry, tired eyes, but the cursor just continued to blink belligerently at him. The one thing the JTTF had seen fit to update when they moved in was the technology, so it was a little newer than the furniture but not by enough, apparently. John wasn’t convinced it was much of an improvement, anyway.
He had shut down and re-started this useless machine three times now, and it still wouldn’t open up the interface like it was supposed to. He just kept getting the same error message on the black and white DOS screen he didn’t even know computers had anymore.
Frankly he kind of missed the old black and white tube monitors. Those things had enough real estate jutting out the back you could put a satisfying smack right down on the top of it.
Not that that had ever made the damn things work for him either, but it had usually made him feel better.
“Come on, you hunk-a garbage,” John gritted, leaning down under the desk and giving the whole works a not-so-gentle jiggle.
“You’re shaking the wrong end.” When John pulled his head out from under the desk, Kowalski was standing over it. “The Etch-a-Sketch is up here,” she said drily, pointing to the still frustratingly black and white screen.
“It’d be about as fuckin’ useful,” John growled, punctuating it with a sharp jab at the desk’s edge with his knuckles. Which immediately started stinging like he had taken some of the skin off.
Connie just looked at him. “Why don’t you call it a night?” she said, judiciously. “I already called and told Frank it’s gonna be a late one. We could stop off at Vinnie’s? ”
John made a fist again and checked out his knuckles. Yep, the second and third one were skinned pretty good.
“Nah,” he declined, unballing his fist and gesturing at the stack of paper on his desk. “I should get these filed.”
“You know, you could just call him.”
“Huh?” John responded, although he had a feeling he knew exactly where Kowalski was headed with this.
“The Farrell boy. Just call him.”
“This thing was probably made before he was born anyway,” John said, shaking his throbbing hand distractedly, and casting an annoyed glance at the computer box sitting stolidly under the desk.
Not for the first time that evening, John thought irritably that Matt would indeed probably be able to tell him how to fix it. His gritty-feeling gaze flicked toward the ancient desk phone sitting next to the monitor, but he wasn’t about to give Kowalski the satisfaction.
When John looked back up at her, she was frowning at him in that way she had that meant he was missing the point. Then, she put her hands on her hips in the way that meant she thought he was doing it on purpose.
John prepared for an onslaught.
“Two weeks ago, you meet up with the kid, and start walking around here whistling like Tweety Bird,” Connie enumerated, with the distinct air of somebody getting started on a long list with a title something like Reasons McClane is an Idiot. “Last week he takes you out to the basketball game, and you got everybody around the water cooler cracking up with your story about Simmons and that stalker case that turned out to be an escaped armadillo.” Connie took her hands off her hips and folded them smartly across her chest. “And this week you’re all pissed off and surly again.”
What did any of that have to do with his tech problem?
“He obviously hasn’t called, and I think you should just man up and take the initiative already,” Connie concluded, succinctly.
Okay, so it wasn’t like him to turn her down for an invite to their favourite watering hole. But John was a professional, and he took his job seriously most of the time was all.
“I’m not surly,” John asserted. It was a perfectly legitimate response.
Connie just eyed the edge of the desk skeptically. John realized he was shaking his injured hand again, and stopped.
He put his thumb and pointer finger up to his tired eyelids and pressed, instead. He heard Connie give a sigh that held the unmistakable tone of Giving Up.
“Don’t stay all night,” she said with sudden and unnecessary sympathy, and headed back to her desk to pack up for the evening.
John waited until she was out of the building - jiggling and cursing intermittently at various parts of his computer, though mostly for show at this point - before he went ahead and did the same.
Not that it was anybody’s business, but it was true it had been a while since he had talked to Matt.
If the last few times had been any indication, it shouldn’t have been more than a couple days before Matt called again to set up their next ‘thing’. The rest of the week had gone by without a message from him though. And then the next week. It was getting on for two weeks now since John had heard a word from him.
It didn’t have to mean anything. In fact, John was sure that if he did actually pick up the phone and call him right now, Matt would insist that it didn’t.
Just as he had insisted that their last few visits hadn’t meant much of anything either. Just a couple guys watching sports, he said.
Of course, that last time they had done a lot more drinking - and a lot more talking - than watching of anything. Every now and then John couldn’t seem to help wondering if maybe there was something that had come out over their shared plate of nachos, and what was definitely a few more free beers than was wise, that Matt hadn’t especially wanted to share.
He hadn’t exactly voluntarily offered up the intel that he had come over to John’s place all spiffed up on purpose, for one thing. John looked back on the way he had so obviously tried to gloss over it at the time and wondered if the kid just might be embarrassed about it or something stupid like that.
Matt hadn’t seemed embarrassed at the time though. Not at his apartment and not days later at Vinnie’s when John pressed him about it. Not that that made it okay to press the kid in the first place, John supposed.
He had just…needed to know.
It was responsible, to ask. Matt had been clear for a while now about wanting them to stay in touch, to be friends. And there was no way that was going to happen if Matt was harbouring motives that were going to get in the way. It was important, to clear the air and make sure there was nothing that might mess stuff up, make things awkward between them. Or tense.
…Or pretty much exactly how John was feeling right now.
John sighed. Maybe Kowalski was on to something after all, and it was just simply his turn to call. He looked again at the decrepit old desk phone next to his hopeless failure of a computer.
John made to reach for the receiver, and then stopped. He was getting ahead of himself. Maybe the reason Matt hadn’t called was something else entirely. Maybe Matt was busy, or out of town.
Maybe, John thought - not for the first time - it was nothing at all.
He was thinking in circles. He shut his eyes and rubbed wearily at the creases that had been etched into his forehead for years now, and tried not to imagine they felt deeper than they had a week ago. Before Matt Farrell had walked back into his life - and then consequently apparently walked right back out.
John stopped himself and sighed again. A big deep breath in this time, that he let out slowly through his nose.
He was just tired, that was all, letting Kowalski’s weird romantic - or possibly perverted, John couldn’t be sure - ideas about what was going on between him and the kid get into his head. It was nothing serious, going a couple of weeks without a chat. Any miscommunications about the first couple times they had met up were all put to rest now - that was the whole point of John bringing it up. He and Matt were just ‘hanging out’, Matt had used the words himself.
His problem today was a tech problem, plain and simple. And frankly, it wasn’t the first one Kowalski or anybody else had seen get the better of him, or his temper.
John packed up the last of the papers on his desk, deliberately not looking again at the phone in the corner of it, before he pushed in his dilapidated office chair and headed down the deserted aisles of desks toward the door.
***
Read Part 2
.
Author:persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Matt/John, Connie Kowalski, OCs
Rating/Category: PG-13/Slash
Genre: Straight up romance
Word Count: ~16000
Warnings: Not unless emotionally dense cops or cheesy wisenheimer geeks are your trigger or something. There are run-on sentences. Follwed by sentence fragments. I regret nothing.
Summary: It happened mostly at night, when John gave up staring sleeplessly at the ceiling turning his latest cases over and over in his mind until he gave up on sleep and let the memories of old ones take over. He had thought of looking the kid up a couple of times in those wakeful, ill-advised wee hours, but something always stopped him.
Notes: Written for smallfandombang
Indelible
by Persnickett
“Hello?” Connie rattled the ice in her whiskey glass alertingly. “This is Earth calling McClane. Come in, McClane.”
John squinted his eyes, blocking out the distraction. There was somebody outside the window next to their booth, standing under the awning, taking shelter from the rain.
“We were supposed to be going over that new Horse-Carriage Hijacker case…”
Somebody with a lean frame and familiar awkward posture. Somebody with shaggy dark hair.
“Matt?” The muttered syllable was out before John realized he had spoken.
“…And I’m talking to myself over here.” Connie put her glass down, and followed John’s gaze.
“That’s the kid,” John murmured. He could hear the touch of disbelief in his voice, as if the odds of two people living and working in the same city should have never allowed for this kind of coincidence. “The kid I did the Gabriel case with. That crazy Fire Sale thing, remember that?”
“Oh, you mean the kid who saved your life?” Connie asked innocently. “And your daughter’s life? Who you then forbid from dating said daughter, and abandoned in a hospital in Washington with a metal pin and two plates in his leg, without even finding out if he had some place to go home to?” Sure, that about summed it up. “That kid?”
“Yeah,” John said drily, his eyes still out on the street, still on Matt. “That one.”
He hadn’t exactly needed the reminder. It wasn’t as if John had forgotten about Matt, or the day they met. Though sometimes maybe he wished he could.
It happened mostly at night, when John gave up staring sleeplessly at the ceiling turning his latest cases over and over in his mind until he gave up on sleep and let the memories of old ones take over. He had thought of looking the kid up a couple of times in those wakeful, ill-advised wee hours, but something always stopped him.
John had met his share of people under intense circumstances before, sure. It came with the line of work. But nobody before or since Matt had heard the kind of things John had confided that day. Little things about his marriage and his family life, the choices he had made. The regrets. Maybe it was just the situation; the short, crazy bursts of life-threatening action Gabriel had thrown their way, intercut with long, quiet drives in the car, with nothing to do except fight over the radio. But if John was honest with himself, that probably wasn’t the whole explanation.
On those nights - when he wandered the apartment amid the ghosts of smug terrorist telephone voices and remembered gunfire until he gave in and sat down to try to block out the phantom ringing in his ears with re-heated TV dinner leftovers and late night classic movies - there were certain memories he could never seem to shake. Lately, that memory was the one of Matt, all shaky hands and young, wide eyes asking Have you done stuff like that before? …Like killing people?
Matt had a vulnerability that was contagious. Those big, guileless eyes and honest questions made John feel guilty somehow, jaded. Holly had accused him time and time again of being closed off, of shutting down too much. It wasn’t news that the years spent doing what he had to had changed him, but meeting somebody like Matt made John feel almost like it made him some kind of monster. Meeting a guy like Matt made it seem for the first time like it was sort of part of his duty. To try and be more human.
But it turned out picking up the phone and doing it was scary as shit.
So Kowalski’s guilt trip was a wasted effort. John knew it had been his job to protect the kid. A job he definitely hadn’t done perfectly. Matt looked good though. John would have to see him walk to know if he limped at all, but it didn’t look from here like he was favouring the leg that had taken Gabriel’s bullet, or holding his weight off it. He stood balanced and straight in a black coat with a scarf wound around his longish neck.
John watched him pull out his phone and check for messages, then put it away and look around expectantly.
“Waiting for somebody…” John muttered unthinkingly again, only to be yanked abruptly out of his thoughts in reply.
“What are you still sittin’ here for!!?”
Connie’s voice got shrill when she got excited.
John sighed. He abandoned his drink, just like he apparently was so good at, and pushed himself out of the booth.
***
“Holy shit,” was what Matt said, when John pushed open the door to Vinnie’s and came to stand next to him under the awning. “McClane!?” He was leaning back a little in his surprise, taking him in.
John spread his arms in a ‘the one and only’ gesture. Matt gave a sharp “Ha!” of excitement. He ignored the umbrella on offer in John’s left hand in favour of launching himself forward on tiptoe, throwing his arms enthusiastically around John’s shoulders, and hanging on. Apparently the occasion called for hugging.
Matt was damp with the weather, and his hair smelled of a citrus-y shampoo John was surprised to find familiar. Sure, he had had his face buried in this soft mop of hair before, John realized; throwing him to the floor of his exploding apartment, covering him as airborne luxury cars sailed over their heads. But all he could remember smelling at the time was the ash and choking smoke, their mingled sweat. And blood.
John slapped the kid on the back a few times.
Matt pulled away, grinning. John allowed himself a little smile back. It was good to see him. John tried not to think the word ‘alive’.
“So what goes on with you these days?” John asked. And then to satisfy Kowalski, because he knew she would ask: “Living in the city?”
Matt nodded, still grinning widely.
“With Kennedy, actually.” He held up a hand, gesturing out to the sidewalk at a girl on the approach. She had a hood pulled up against the rain, but a long sheath of sandy coloured hair spilled out the side of it and down the front of her jacket.
John nodded. So this was who Matt had been waiting for. “So how long have you two been-“
“Oh no,” Matt said, as the girl walked up to join them under the awning. “No, not since high school,” he went on, as she pulled back her hood and looked curiously between them. Matt put an exaggeratedly lecherous arm around her shoulders, “I mean, I keep trying but…”
“There’s just one tiny problem,” Kennedy said, clearly catching on to the drift of the conversation topic, like it wasn’t a new one for them.
“Tiny? Ouch! Not in front of company, Kenn,” he told her theatrically out of the side of his mouth. “My penis,” Matt clarified, unnecessarily loudly, although the sidewalks were mostly deserted in this weather. “My penis is the problem. …Guess there is such a thing as bad press,” he muttered, removing his arm from her shoulders so he could make a cordial introductory gesture like Vanna White showcasing a Brand New Car. “Kenn,” he announced with a little incline of his head, “prefers the company of the ladies.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” John said, which earned him a grin from Kennedy and a gasp of mock offense from Matt, with an accompanying gesture that might have been meant to represent clutching imaginary pearls.
“Hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying,” Matt said good naturedly when he had recovered. “I mean, can I get a high five for highschool me? Come on,” he said, pointing an appreciative finger at Kennedy and moving it up and down in a general indication that under her bulky overcoat lurked what Matt must consider to be a spectacular figure. “I went to third base with that!” Matt raised his hand in the air and then, without waiting to see if anybody else would, he pulled his other hand out of his jacket pocket and high-fived himself.
“And yet they wonder why we swear off men.” Kennedy rolled her eyes, albeit fondly.
John looked down at his boots, unsure whether he was supposed to smile. Was the kid’s sense of humour always this cheesy?
“You, however, seem very cool,” Kennedy was telling him, holding out a hand. “I’m Kennedy Marshall.”
“John McClane,” he replied.
“In the flesh, finally,” she said, her tone friendly and her handshake firm. “Matt keeps the clippings from the Fourth of July attacks on his-“
“Okay!” said Matt hurriedly. “Settle down, everybody. I’m sure Detective McClane has had enough of my personal humiliation for one night. I know I have.” Matt’s voice went suddenly soft. “We should…let him get back to his date, there.” Matt threw a glance through the window in Connie’s direction then looked down at his shoes, scuffling with the toe of one of his sneakers at something on the pavement.
“Nice work, McClane,” he remarked finally, flipping his hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head so he could look up at them again. “She’s kinda hot, in a…age appropriate kinda way. Right Kenn?”
“Totally.” Kennedy nodded sagely. “Got that tough-as-nails Jodie Foster thing going. Great hair.”
Kennedy reached up and pulled her hood back up over her own long sandy mane. Outside of the lee of the awning, the rain had started to come down harder.
“She’ll be thrilled,” John said, handing Kennedy his umbrella.
Matt put up a hand and rubbed at the nape of his neck. The jovial mood had turned awkward somewhere. Maybe it was time to break up the happy reunion.
“Well listen, I won’t keep you kids,” John said. “I just wanted to catch up, see what you’re up to,” he directed this at Matt. “Where you’re at these days. I uh… always felt like I should have at least asked you that back when I left you at the hospital. Felt bad about it.” He gestured back through the window. “Connie always gives me a hard time that I never even asked you if you had somewhere to go, after all your shit- sorry,” John apologized, with a tip of his head at Kennedy. Lesbian or not, she was still a lady. “After all your stuff got blown up. And me with that whole two bedroom apartment, with just me and all.”
“Ha,” John watched Matt’s eyes go wide a moment. “You mean we could have been roomies?” He wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that reaction. “Could have been fun. And disastrous. Probably mostly disastrous.”
John was probably supposed to make some witty agreement with this assessment, but he couldn’t help but think he would be more patient as a roommate than Matt would probably imagine. He was a lot less pushy and sarcastic when people weren’t trying to blow him up.
Not that Matt would ever need to know it. While the time they spent together had been…intense, to say the least, John supposed they probably didn’t actually know each other all that well. All enthusiastic hugging in the rain notwithstanding.
“Well it looks like you found a much better deal, anyhow,” John said, with what he hoped was a kindly smile at Kennedy.
“Yes, totally,” Matt agreed quickly, launching into his cheesy stand-up comic routine again. “Living with a lesbian is the bomb. I never have to hide my porn, and my place is full of hot girl on girl action every date night.”
“Who are you kidding?” Kennedy said coolly, stepping back to pop open the umbrella and set it on her shoulder. “This is date night.”
“It’s true. We are both tragically single,” Matt confessed with a put-on sigh. “Living with a lesbian is actually less hot girl action and more red wine and cats.”
“There is one cat!” Kennedy exclaimed.
“To which I am highly allergic,” Matt argued smoothly.
“Slightly allergic,” she corrected him. “And you love Kierkegaard.”
“Nobody loves that pussy like you, Kenn.”
“You still got that extra room at your place?” Kennedy asked John, laughingly exasperated.
John smiled for real this time.
“I felt bad about it is all,” he said, seriously. “I shoulda at least checked you were okay,” he said, turning back to Matt. “But you look great.”
Matt blinked.
“Like you’re doing real good,” John went on, not sure why he felt the need to correct himself.
Matt did look good. Unlike the day they had met, he looked like he had showered and shaved in the past twelve hours. He had maybe even gained a bit of weight, just enough to round out his face a little. Which maybe did him the disservice of making him look even younger than he was, but it wasn’t such a bad thing, in John’s opinion.
John ran a hand over the stubble on his scalp.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “You look good too.” And his smile this time was small, shy.
John stopped what he was doing and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He thought it might be about to get awkward again, but Matt cocked his head.
“You know, it’s never too late, McClane,” he said. “…I mean if you want to catch up, why not just take my number? We’ll hang out.”
Hang out. John tried not to think about a guy his age trying to ‘hang out’ in the places Matt and Kennedy would be likely to invite him to. He fished wordlessly in his coat pocket for his phone instead, handed it over for Matt to enter his number in.
“Thanks for the shelter,” Kennedy was saying, offering John back his umbrella.
He held up a hand. “Keep it. There’s about twenty of ’em in the lost and found down at the precinct.”
“Wow. Nice,” Kennedy said.
Her genuine tone struck a contrast with a sarcastically coquettish simper from Matt, who was grinning again and handing his phone back: “Always a true blue hero.”
“That’s Farrell for ‘thank you’,” she said firmly, turning back to John one last time. Then she turned back to Matt and elbowed him squarely in the ribs.
He playfully winced, then offered her his arm so they could huddle together under the umbrella. John watched them go for a minute, listening to the snide murmurs and indignant squawks of their teasing as they sauntered off into the drizzle.
He turned and headed back inside, feeling newly aware of the weight of his phone in his pocket.
When John got back their food had arrived and Kowalski had started on a fresh drink. One eyebrow was raised expectantly.
“The kid’s lesbian girlfriend says you’re hot,” John reported, as he slid into the booth.
“Uh huh.” The eyebrow was still raised. “She’s not so bad herself,” she said without missing a beat. “Ya get the kid’s number?”
“…Yeah,” John resisted a sudden urge to put his hand into the pocket of his coat, where he could still feel his phone sitting as if it had grown heavier, or warmer somehow, carrying its new contact.
“Good,” Connie said. “You owe me a lost and found umbrella, Gene Kelly.” She pointed at him with the french fry on the end of her fork. “And it better be black.”
“Only the best for you, Kowalski,” John replied, picking up his own fork and digging in. He was sure he had seen a pink and orange Hello Kitty one down there last week that would be just the ticket.
Despite what she obviously wanted for some reason, John wasn’t sure he was going to call. What the hell could two people as different as they were find in common to talk about? John didn’t know the first damn thing about hacking and computers, pop music or the latest video games. It wasn’t as if they could just pick up where they left off, either. Their talk on that infamous day had drifted to some places John didn’t necessarily like to discuss too often. Which was disconcerting enough in itself.
What Connie didn’t see about their little reunion scene outside the window of their favourite booth tonight, was that the thought of calling Matt wasn’t comfortable. Thinking of Matt meant remembering cracked ribs and bloodied knuckles and Lucy with her wrists tied up and a gun to her temple. Thinking about Matt had always felt… dangerous. Maybe for more reasons than the ones John could make sense of.
But then, whatever powers that be had brought him and Matt together in front of God, the Universe and all of New York City tonight. And the satellites hadn’t fallen from the sky, not a single building had burst into flame, and the country hadn’t been taken hostage by any cyber-psychos with a death wish.
At least not that he knew of, yet.
***
“You know, I’m glad you called.”
Matt swirled the last of his beer around the bottom of his glass. It had been his idea to come back here to meet up, so he could return Kowalski’s umbrella at the ‘scene of the caper’ as Matt put it, even though John had said repeatedly that he could keep it.
“Yeah?” John replied. In the end, calling had seemed like the polite thing to do, after taking down his number and all.
Besides, it wouldn’t do to mention of course, but it was worth it to get Kowalski off his back about abandoning him at the hospital like a puppy at the pound. He would give her this, the only other woman he had ever met that could work a guilt trip as effectively had been Holly.
John watched Matt give his glass another swirl, let the foam coat the sides of the glass and slide down. The kid really nursed his booze, John was already halfway through his second. Or maybe that was just what happened when somebody spent as much time talking as Matt did.
“Yeah. It was good catching up with you.”
Something about that made John smile over his own drink. ‘Catching up’, Matt called it. If this had been an interrogation, it would have been the easiest of John’s life. Matt had given up everything - starting with his latest jobs, to what sounded like every job he had ever had, his family and upbringing in snooty upstate New York, and his entire dating history …which, it turned out, included a Jennifer, a Melanie, what sounded like more than one Stephanie, a Ryan who was a girl and a Cary, who was a guy.
John had been quick in using a hasty swig of his beer to cover any outward reaction to that last little tidbit. Matt had prattled unconcernedly on, so John counted himself successful at not looking old and out of touch, and what Lucy would call ‘so not PC’.
Matt was quiet now though, looking down into the dregs of his hipster local micro-brew and obviously trying to find a way to signal the end of the conversation, even though John’s glass was still considerably less empty than Matt’s.
“We - heh,” he said finally, looking back up at John with a smirk. “We really went through something together, didn’t we?”
“Something,” John agreed wryly, “yeah.” Because how the fuck else did you describe a day like that one?
They both laughed into their pints. John took a sip.
“Yeah, it was good seeing you too,” he said finally, giving Matt the out he was looking for, and feeling strangely reluctant.
Matt looked up at him gratefully. John smiled and Matt tipped his glass on its heel again, so he could drop his gaze back down into it. It was hard to say with Matt’s bangs falling forward over his face like that, but he might have been blushing.
“It makes sense,” Matt said, nodding a little to himself without looking up. “Meeting up like this. You go through something like that with somebody and they’re…a part of your life after that, you know?”
Matt waited a beat until they were looking at each other again before he finished. “It’s…indelible.”
“Indelible,” John repeated. He was as surprised by the suddenly soft tone to his voice as he was by the fact that Matt seemed to be doing him the courtesy of not explaining what ‘indelible’ means.
Matt was just watching him, smiling quietly. He was uncharacteristically still.
“Well,” Matt said abruptly, and the spell seemed to break. “You should call me again sometime.” He was moving again, sliding out of the booth and getting to his feet.
John watched him button up his coat, and reach under the table for the black umbrella.
“I believe this is yours.”
“I believe it’s raining again,” John pointed out, without bothering to nod at what was going on out the window next to them.
“Oh.”
They both smiled.
“Keep it,” John said. “I toldja there’s about-”
“Twenty of them in the lost and found down at the precinct,” Matt finished for him. “Glad to hear the NYPD is really cracking down on that scourge of rogue umbrellas threatening the peace and running our city streets. True Blue, through and through.”
If the spell hadn’t been broken before, Matt was sure as heck his old smartass self now.
John cleared his throat. “Y’know, it wasn’t a date.”
Matt’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out for a second. The umbrella in his hand moved spasmodically in some sort of failed gesture. “I- what?”
“Last week. That lady you saw me with when we met up here. You said you were gonna let me get back to my date, but it wasn’t one,” John explained, not quite sure why he felt like he needed to.
“Oh,” said Matt, awkwardly. “Okay. Good to know.”
“Hey you gave me your whole life story, it’s only fair,” John pointed out.
Matt gave a self-deprecating laugh of acknowledgement that made his eyes sparkle good-naturedly and ducked his head.
“That was Connie Kowalski, she’s uh - well she’s kinda my boss actually,” John went on. “Do me a favour and don’t ever mention to her that I admitted I know that.”
“Your secret is safe, Detective,” Matt vowed, when he lifted his head again. His brown eyes were still sparkling mirthfully.
John nodded his thanks. Matt tried to put his hands in his pockets and forgot he was holding the umbrella.
“Oh. Right,” he said, fumbling then correcting his grip on the handle. “I will return this next time we meet up,” Matt said, growing serious and pointing the end of the umbrella at him in a pledging gesture.
Apparently they were doing this again. Which, John realized with a mild nudge of surprise, he might not actually mind.
“And I’m picking up the tab on my way out,” Matt continued, “don’t try and stop me.”
John opened his mouth to respond but he was silenced with a jab of the umbrella into the air in front of his face and a sharp sound from Matt like a nanny shushing a protesting toddler. Fine, John thought, snapping his mouth shut. Matt could find out about his tab at Vinnie’s the embarrassing way.
“Next time,” he said, in farewell.
“Next time,” John agreed, and they both smiled again.
Matt turned and made his way to the cash register at the bar. Lo and behold, when Vinnie himself made his way over to serve him, Matt was obviously not only told something like “John McClane never pays for a drink in my bar”, but also something like “any friend of McClane’s is on the house,” because good old Vinnie walked away without even opening the register, and Matt turned around and put the back of his wrist to his forehead in a mock swoon, mouthing the words “MY HERO” before shaking his shaggy head incredulously and walking out.
Leaving all satellites in orbit and the cyber-psycho count still at zero. They were two for two.
John took another sip of his dwindling beer and looked out the window at the black of Matt’s umbrella bobbing away into the distance, slow to disappear into the grey Manhattan drizzle.
“Indelible,” he said again, into his echoing glass.
***
“You’re whistling.”
John stopped the jaunty tune immediately, and put the coffee pot back on the burner. “Huh?”
“Whistling,” Connie said, “you.”
“Sounds like McClane got laaaa-aid!” Mendoza drawled from the desk across from them, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head like he was settling in for a gossip break.
John put his coffee cup to his lips with one hand and flipped him off with the other, instead.
“You’re never this happy,” Connie pointed out, in agreement. “Spill.”
“Just excited it’s Friday and I get to go two whole days without looking at this dumb ass.” John jerked his thumb at Mendoza.
“Take a good look McClane,” Mendoza bantered, leaning sideways enough to lift a buttock off the chair and rub a hand over it. “My mama’s in town this weekend. Three nights of her sweet home cooking and this ass’ll be two sizes bigger, man. Minimum.”
“Your Mama huh? Say hi to her for me,” John quipped, turning his back on Mendoza before he could switch from patting tauntingly at his ass to his traditional conversation-ender, which was usually the tried and true crotch-grab.
“You call that Farrell kid?” Connie asked, changing tack as she followed him. John cut the straightest path he could, weaving in between the aisles upon aisles of desks and uncomfortable old pull-up style office chairs that John knew for a fact had populated the bullpen since the late 70’s.
“S’a matter Kowalski, don’t like your new umbrella?” John gestured under her desk at the item in question as they passed. It looked plain white, but when you opened it up it had the horn and shaggy mane of a unicorn stitched onto it. Googly eyes and all. It wasn’t as good as the Hello Kitty one he was sure he’d seen there the week before, but it was clearly sized for preschoolers which would make it pretty funny when it actually rained.
“You kidding, it’s my lucky day. I lost one just like it just last week,” Connie deadpanned. “So’d ya see him or what?”
“Yeah, yeah,” John said. “Had a drink. Got the whole life story. You’ll be happy to know he lives in a tidy apartment uptown, where he mooches rent off his friend you saw him with the other night.”
“The platonic gay girlfriend,” Connie reiterated, as if she were taking notes.
“She was very into your hair,” John informed her. Connie made an aborted movement, like she had been about to put a flattered hand up to her curls.
“He likes you, y’know,” she said seriously, just as John had taken a mouthful from his coffee cup. He swallowed carefully. “I can tell. Stares at your neck when you talk.”
“My neck,” John repeated, keeping his tone skeptical.
“It’s a nice neck,” Connie shrugged. “When I met Frank, his neck was the first thing I noticed about him. Sometimes at home, I’ll give him a back rub. Just to get my hands on that nice thick neck, and those big broad shoulders.” Connie held her hands up and flexed her fingers appreciatively over her husband’s imaginary physique.
“Too much information, Kowalski,” John said disaffectedly, taking another careful sip of his coffee.
Connie just smiled. “I’m telling you,” she asserted serenely, “a woman knows these things.” Then she walked away back to her desk, smoothing a palm lovingly over her curls as she went.
John set his coffee down and tried not to be too obvious about drawing his hand appraisingly over the back of his neck a couple of times before getting back down to work.
***
The next time Matt decided they should ‘catch up’ happened sooner than John had been expecting.
Matt had been the one to call this time, which came as more of a surprise than it probably should have. John hadn’t given much thought to the fact that his number would of course show up in Matt’s phone the first time he called him, or that Matt might be likely to save it and call him unannounced - but apparently that was the way people did it these days.
The night was full of surprises actually. John thought it would be annoying watching the game with Matt; that he would talk over the action or spend the entirety of half time complaining about the politics of professional sports and What’s Wrong with America, but he didn’t. He sat mostly quietly, sipping at a bottle of the beer he had thoughtfully brought along and swearing intermittently under his breath whenever a good play got sacked.
When Matt had showed up at the door - holding out his offering of a six pack of trendy independent brewery IPA - John had been surprised then too.
“I feel underdressed,” he had remarked as he took Matt’s coat, looking down at his own casual combination of faded blue jeans and a worn, washed out old Henley.
Matt was wearing a steel gray button down in a soft-looking fabric that might have been silk, tucked into a pair of jeans belted with a silver buckle and in a darker wash than John had ever seen on him. His hair was combed unusually neatly and his face was clean shaven. The shoes he kicked off onto the mat next to the door were not sneakers.
“Nah,” Matt said, hastily untucking his shirt to soften the formality of the look. “I had a thing before this, sorry. You look great,” he said, waving a hand at him.
Normally John would have thrown anybody who gave him permission to dress down in his own apartment a salty look and a snappy retort, but looking at Matt now, he was honestly just glad he had opted for the jeans instead of the gym sweats he had been wearing when Matt had called earlier and asked casually what he was up to for the evening.
“Thanks,” John had said drily instead, heading for the fridge with the beer.
Nothing more of note had really happened since Matt’s grand entrance. The evening had progressed through polite conversation about the apartment-slash-neighborhood and having any trouble finding the place, then the obligatory run-down of everything John was working on these days. After that they had gotten down to the business of watching the game and consuming Matt’s bitter organic beer in companionable near-silence, which frankly, John was unexpectedly appreciating.
When he looked at Matt now though - lounging on the opposite end of his couch, neatly dressed and sleekly combed and looking like a page out of the kind of magazine that sold people stylish hippie beer in ‘retro’ brown bottles that would dangle languidly from their slim fingers - something occurred to him. John waited for his opening at the commercial break to ask.
“So,” he said, resisting the urge to clear his throat and trusting his voice to sound casual. “Hot date, or what?”
“Huh?” Matt turned away from the screen to look at him. The beer and tv had turned his gaze soft and distracted.
“Your thing before this, that you got all gussied up for,” John explained, eyeing Matt’s ensemble and giving a wave of his hand in the general direction of the overall effect. “Were you on a date?”
“What? No…” Matt looked down at himself and smoothed a hand over the soft fabric of his shirt. “Oh,” he said, like he had forgotten putting all of this obvious effort into himself, “no, actually, it was a work thing.”
Matt looked back up at him and shrugged. John nodded, but neither of them looked back at the screen.
The thing was, John had seen the way Matt worked. Matt worked out of his home from under a heap of candy bar and nacho chip wrappers, wearing what looked like whatever he had found in the ‘maybe wear again’ pile of the laundry festooned over his bedroom floor.
Granted, John thought, that had been a couple years ago now. And Matt was at an age where a couple of years could make all the difference maturity-wise. There was also the neatening effect a female roommate could have on a guy to take into account, and there was always the possibility that the way Matt looked when he worked might not be what he looked like if he had to meet a client.
John was staring, he realized. The difference was just so striking was all, even from these most recent couple of times they had met up, and John couldn’t seem to stop looking over at him this evening, noticing things. Matt smiled slightly, and turned his attention back to the television.
But not before his gaze dropped unmistakably to the region of John’s neck.
Dammit, Kowalski.
Several thoughts went barging through John’s brain at once and met up in the middle in some kind of mental traffic snarl.
Matt kept the clippings from the day they met somewhere his roommate could regularly see them. His college dating history included a girl named Ryan and a guy named Cary. And John was becoming increasingly convinced he was smelling just the faintest whiff of aftershave.
“Matt,” John said, giving in this time to the urge to clear his throat awkwardly. There was no way to make this next question sound casual. “…Are you on a date right now?”
Matt turned back to look at him again. His hair hadn’t moved since he got here, there was some kind of product in it.
Matt didn’t answer right away. He sat there, just looking at him for a second. Then he smiled.
“No,” Matt said, simply. “No, that’s not where you’re at. And that’s cool.” He gave John another second’s regard with a sincere, open-looking expression then turned back to the game again, bringing his beer bottle tranquilly up to his lips.
That was it? ‘Cool?’ John didn’t feel cool.
“And where are you ‘at’?” He kept his voice steady and unrushed.
Matt didn’t look at him this time. His gaze dropped down to the bottle in his hands.
“I think part of me went there the first time you saved my life,” he mused distantly, picking at his beer label with pensive a fingernail. “It’s probably natural. Humans are pretty unoriginal.”
His mouth curved upwards on one side in half an ironic smile that John could feel tugging at the corner of his own mouth in mirrored opinion.
Matt went to put the bottle detachedly to his lips again, only to interrupt himself. “Holy shit - FOUL. That’s a foul! How is Pruitt not ejected??” he ranted into the neck of the bottle in his hand. “Bullshit,” Matt muttered against the lip of the bottle, finally taking a swig.
If they weren’t cool, it was clear that Matt was hell bent on pretending they were. John turned back to the game, and tried to follow suit.
By the end of the six pack, it had actually worked surprisingly well. The Giants lost, which was no big surprise, and they ended the evening arguing pleasantly about next year’s roster and whether or not Manning should be traded.
Eventually Matt pointed out, not inaccurately, that it was getting late and he should get back home - before Kennedy changed the locks on him just so he couldn’t wake her up stumbling around the apartment at all hours, and found a new roommate who would let her buy three more cats.
They agreed it wasn’t likely, but that it wasn’t impossible either.
At the door, as John was handing him his jacket, Matt said that they should do this again soon.
John agreed. It was polite, but maybe it was a little more than that too - which maybe ought to have stopped surprising him by now. Tonight had been…nice.
But when Matt said next that he had a friend holding tickets for the Knicks on Thursday if John’s schedule was good for it, John still wasn’t feeling ‘cool’ enough to say that out loud. Which meant maybe it wasn’t the best idea.
“Look, Matt…”
“If this is about what we talked about before,” Matt cut in, holding up his hands in a peace-keeping gesture, “I said it was cool, and it is. This is just a couple of guys watching sports. I swear.”
Matt’s shirt was still untucked. His five o’clock shadow had started to come in and he had run his hands through his hair enough times tonight in his ire at the referee’s calls that it was loose and shaggy around his face again. He looked like John remembered him. Like Matt.
With those big vulnerable eyes, and his honest questions. Waiting for an answer.
“Yeah,” John said, nodding. “Thursday’s good.”
Humans were so damned unoriginal.
Matt grinned and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He typed in a message and pushed his free hand into his hair again, waiting for a reply.
It was mere seconds before the screen on Matt’s phone flickered silently, and he presumably got his reply.
“Great,” he said looking up at John. “We’re on, Thursday is officially a thing.”
A thing. Not a date.
As John shut the door behind him, he vowed never to admit to Kowalski (and maybe himself) the way Matt’s eyeline had drifted toward the collar of his Henley as they said their goodnights.
***
When Thursday finally rolled around, there was nothing about Matt’s bright orange Knicks hoodie, his faded jeans with the slightly ragged cuffs, or his comfortably black and white sneaker-clad feet that suggested their ‘official thing’ was anything but what Matt claimed.
Matt had even interpreted the arm John held out in welcome, when they spotted each other on the busy street corner where they had arranged to meet, as an invitation for a hug again. And when John had obliged, he didn’t smell even the barest hint of aftershave. Just that oddly familiar grapefruit-smelling shampoo. And Matt.
They got hot dogs outside Penn Station, because they were too expensive inside the Garden, and they both agreed their money would be better spent on flat, overpriced beer. The beer turned out to be both, which wasn’t a surprise, and the Knicks won, which sort of was. Then they ended up at Vinnie’s again because as Matt put it, walking in there with John was like ‘bringing your own drunken cash cow, and he wasn’t too shy to milk that sweet, boozy teat’.
Their third drink in, without either of them making any sign of buying dinner, John warned Matt that if he got him cut off at Vinnie’s, this would be their last trip to the milk shed. Matt had giggled tipsily and gotten up to order some good will nachos at the bar. The nachos were more or less gone now, and Matt was looking marginally more sober, but not much.
“So, tell me,” John said conversationally, picking out a nearly-naked nacho that he really had no intention of eating anymore, and putting it down on his plate. “Which time, out of all the fucked up times Gabriel tried to kill us, was the first time I saved your life, exactly?”
Matt examined the plate between them, taking his time picking out a chip. Although John suspected he had just about as much intention of eating more of them as John did.
“You don’t remember?” Matt asked smoothly, “I mean, isn’t it a bit early for Alzheimer’s to start kicking in?”
John flipped him the finger, and Matt grinned.
“Guess I was kinda wondering how you remembered it,” John said, letting his tone get a little more serious.
Matt gave up pretending to search for a nacho that still had some vestige of cheese clinging to it.
“I think that’s more of a date story,” he said, leaning back in the booth and regarding him coolly. “This is just a couple of guys out watching sports, remember?”
“Fair point,” John conceded. Matt was smiling now though, so he didn’t back off quite yet. “…Did you really have a work thing before you came over last week?”
It was a bit of a gamble. In John’s long experience questioning people, getting caught in a lie had the tendency to piss most of them off.
Matt’s relaxed smile went full grin.
“Ohhhh, I get it,” he drawled. “You and Vinnie here are in cahoots. Get the kid all liquored up and then fire up the interrogation! Sneaky Detective is ssssssssssssssssneaky,” Matt stage whispered, narrowing his eyes theatrically.
Matt was no dummy either, and boy did John know it. He raised his drink to his smiling lips for something to do, so that he wouldn’t have to eat that dry chip on his plate, and waited.
“So I may have misinterpreted your reaction to hearing that I sometimes date guys,” Matt sighed, punctuating the admission with a roll of his eyes.
“Reaction?” John asked before he could stop himself. Here he was, thinking he had been so careful not to show one.
“Going out of your way to tell me that when I saw you here with your boss that it wasn’t a date,” Matt clarified.
Which, when John thought about it, was exactly what he had done.
“I mean, honestly, I get it, you’re not interested.”
John put his glass up in front of his mouth again. Matt had never actually asked whether or not he might be interested.
And maybe that was for the best.
“When will you get it, man?” Matt was saying, holding his drink in his hand although it was pretty well finished now. “That I like hanging out with you? Even with no ulterior motive? You’re…kind of important to me,” Matt said, realizing his glass was empty and setting it down. “Like, a big influence on my life.”
John put his glass down too.
“…Because we’re ‘indelible’?” Mostly, he couldn’t think what else to say.
Matt never seemed to be at a loss, though.
“Yeah,” he said evenly. And whether or not he was sober, Matt was definitely serious. “Yes.”
That unflinching openness that always got past John’s defenses, even when it was against his better judgement, was there again in the wide brown eyes.
“Yeah,” John said, rather unexpectedly meaning it. “Okay.”
Matt nodded, looking satisfied his point was made.
“And now,” he announced, sliding a little sloppily out of the booth, “I must go and throw down a wicked piss. It shall be worthy of Secretariat. Order me another one of those,” Matt said, with a wave of his hand at his empty glass. “And ask for some menus I guess. We should probably eat some real food, I don’t want this to be the last trip to the milk shed.”
Matt grinned, and turned to go.
“Hey Matt,” John asked, and Matt turned back, waiting. “The day you met me here, to return that umbrella. You didn’t happen to pick a day the forecast was calling for rain on purpose, so we’d have to meet up again, did ya?”
And just like the last time John had pressed him, his gamble paid off, and instead of getting irritated Matt simply smiled.
“The weather report is public knowledge, Detective,” he said, narrowing his eyes in sardonic suspicion again. “Who’s to say either one of us didn’t make judicious use of that tried and true secret weapon known to hackers and detectives alike the world over: Google?”
“Who’s to say,” John agreed, lifting his pint again with an enigmatic smile.
“Sssssneaky,” Matt reiterated happily. Then he turned around and made his way, more or less steadily, to the restrooms.
***
John thumped his fist impatiently on the top of his desk.
The computer monitor jumped in front of his dry, tired eyes, but the cursor just continued to blink belligerently at him. The one thing the JTTF had seen fit to update when they moved in was the technology, so it was a little newer than the furniture but not by enough, apparently. John wasn’t convinced it was much of an improvement, anyway.
He had shut down and re-started this useless machine three times now, and it still wouldn’t open up the interface like it was supposed to. He just kept getting the same error message on the black and white DOS screen he didn’t even know computers had anymore.
Frankly he kind of missed the old black and white tube monitors. Those things had enough real estate jutting out the back you could put a satisfying smack right down on the top of it.
Not that that had ever made the damn things work for him either, but it had usually made him feel better.
“Come on, you hunk-a garbage,” John gritted, leaning down under the desk and giving the whole works a not-so-gentle jiggle.
“You’re shaking the wrong end.” When John pulled his head out from under the desk, Kowalski was standing over it. “The Etch-a-Sketch is up here,” she said drily, pointing to the still frustratingly black and white screen.
“It’d be about as fuckin’ useful,” John growled, punctuating it with a sharp jab at the desk’s edge with his knuckles. Which immediately started stinging like he had taken some of the skin off.
Connie just looked at him. “Why don’t you call it a night?” she said, judiciously. “I already called and told Frank it’s gonna be a late one. We could stop off at Vinnie’s? ”
John made a fist again and checked out his knuckles. Yep, the second and third one were skinned pretty good.
“Nah,” he declined, unballing his fist and gesturing at the stack of paper on his desk. “I should get these filed.”
“You know, you could just call him.”
“Huh?” John responded, although he had a feeling he knew exactly where Kowalski was headed with this.
“The Farrell boy. Just call him.”
“This thing was probably made before he was born anyway,” John said, shaking his throbbing hand distractedly, and casting an annoyed glance at the computer box sitting stolidly under the desk.
Not for the first time that evening, John thought irritably that Matt would indeed probably be able to tell him how to fix it. His gritty-feeling gaze flicked toward the ancient desk phone sitting next to the monitor, but he wasn’t about to give Kowalski the satisfaction.
When John looked back up at her, she was frowning at him in that way she had that meant he was missing the point. Then, she put her hands on her hips in the way that meant she thought he was doing it on purpose.
John prepared for an onslaught.
“Two weeks ago, you meet up with the kid, and start walking around here whistling like Tweety Bird,” Connie enumerated, with the distinct air of somebody getting started on a long list with a title something like Reasons McClane is an Idiot. “Last week he takes you out to the basketball game, and you got everybody around the water cooler cracking up with your story about Simmons and that stalker case that turned out to be an escaped armadillo.” Connie took her hands off her hips and folded them smartly across her chest. “And this week you’re all pissed off and surly again.”
What did any of that have to do with his tech problem?
“He obviously hasn’t called, and I think you should just man up and take the initiative already,” Connie concluded, succinctly.
Okay, so it wasn’t like him to turn her down for an invite to their favourite watering hole. But John was a professional, and he took his job seriously most of the time was all.
“I’m not surly,” John asserted. It was a perfectly legitimate response.
Connie just eyed the edge of the desk skeptically. John realized he was shaking his injured hand again, and stopped.
He put his thumb and pointer finger up to his tired eyelids and pressed, instead. He heard Connie give a sigh that held the unmistakable tone of Giving Up.
“Don’t stay all night,” she said with sudden and unnecessary sympathy, and headed back to her desk to pack up for the evening.
John waited until she was out of the building - jiggling and cursing intermittently at various parts of his computer, though mostly for show at this point - before he went ahead and did the same.
Not that it was anybody’s business, but it was true it had been a while since he had talked to Matt.
If the last few times had been any indication, it shouldn’t have been more than a couple days before Matt called again to set up their next ‘thing’. The rest of the week had gone by without a message from him though. And then the next week. It was getting on for two weeks now since John had heard a word from him.
It didn’t have to mean anything. In fact, John was sure that if he did actually pick up the phone and call him right now, Matt would insist that it didn’t.
Just as he had insisted that their last few visits hadn’t meant much of anything either. Just a couple guys watching sports, he said.
Of course, that last time they had done a lot more drinking - and a lot more talking - than watching of anything. Every now and then John couldn’t seem to help wondering if maybe there was something that had come out over their shared plate of nachos, and what was definitely a few more free beers than was wise, that Matt hadn’t especially wanted to share.
He hadn’t exactly voluntarily offered up the intel that he had come over to John’s place all spiffed up on purpose, for one thing. John looked back on the way he had so obviously tried to gloss over it at the time and wondered if the kid just might be embarrassed about it or something stupid like that.
Matt hadn’t seemed embarrassed at the time though. Not at his apartment and not days later at Vinnie’s when John pressed him about it. Not that that made it okay to press the kid in the first place, John supposed.
He had just…needed to know.
It was responsible, to ask. Matt had been clear for a while now about wanting them to stay in touch, to be friends. And there was no way that was going to happen if Matt was harbouring motives that were going to get in the way. It was important, to clear the air and make sure there was nothing that might mess stuff up, make things awkward between them. Or tense.
…Or pretty much exactly how John was feeling right now.
John sighed. Maybe Kowalski was on to something after all, and it was just simply his turn to call. He looked again at the decrepit old desk phone next to his hopeless failure of a computer.
John made to reach for the receiver, and then stopped. He was getting ahead of himself. Maybe the reason Matt hadn’t called was something else entirely. Maybe Matt was busy, or out of town.
Maybe, John thought - not for the first time - it was nothing at all.
He was thinking in circles. He shut his eyes and rubbed wearily at the creases that had been etched into his forehead for years now, and tried not to imagine they felt deeper than they had a week ago. Before Matt Farrell had walked back into his life - and then consequently apparently walked right back out.
John stopped himself and sighed again. A big deep breath in this time, that he let out slowly through his nose.
He was just tired, that was all, letting Kowalski’s weird romantic - or possibly perverted, John couldn’t be sure - ideas about what was going on between him and the kid get into his head. It was nothing serious, going a couple of weeks without a chat. Any miscommunications about the first couple times they had met up were all put to rest now - that was the whole point of John bringing it up. He and Matt were just ‘hanging out’, Matt had used the words himself.
His problem today was a tech problem, plain and simple. And frankly, it wasn’t the first one Kowalski or anybody else had seen get the better of him, or his temper.
John packed up the last of the papers on his desk, deliberately not looking again at the phone in the corner of it, before he pushed in his dilapidated office chair and headed down the deserted aisles of desks toward the door.
***
Read Part 2
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