Fanfic -- Live Free or Die Hard -- "Come Together"
The reveals are out at sexy_right, which means I can now post the stories I wrote. WHEEE. Also, great fun to find out who wrote what. Yay, I love challenges and fests!
Here's the first one :)
Title: Come Together
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John McClane/Matt Farrell
Word Count: 4646
Summary: He likes watching the way Matt’s hands flutter in the air like birds when he’s excited, and he likes watching Matt’s lips move a mile a minute even if he doesn’t understand half the shit that comes out of them.
Authors Notes: Written for sexy_right's Winter Fest. Prompts: teasing, first time/kiss, assertive Matt, caffeine.
Come Together
by Severina
Matt eases carefully down into the comfortable new office chair and boots up his system.
“You don’t ask no questions and I don’t have to tell ya no lies,” McClane had said two days ago when he’d lugged the chair into the spare room. Matt had shut his mouth and tried not to stare at the way the muscles in John’s arms rippled when he moved, and the way his T-shirt strained against that mountain of a chest. He tried not to look at the stupid skull-and-top-hat tattoo on John’s bicep; tried not to wonder where he got it, and when, and why; and he most definitely tried not to think about how much he just wanted to reach out and lick it, just run his tongue over it and see if he could feel the imprint of it under his tongue, beneath the mingled tastes of salt and sweat and John.
Yeah, he didn’t think about that stuff at all. Not even a little bit.
Matt tugs a hand impatiently through his hair and makes a face at the webcam before logging on to the website. An evening of RPing is just what he needs to get his mind off… things. Bald, broad, brawny things.
He rotates his neck slowly and stretches his fingers above the keyboard when the images of his friends pop up on the sidebar. Even though it’s only been a couple of months since he’s seen the guys in person instead of making do with texting in a chat room, it feels like forever.
“Steve-o,” he greets, “you got a haircut. Awesome, dude. Makes you look fourteen instead of your usual twelve.”
“Fuck you,” Steve says affably.
“Hey, Farrell, nice of you to grace us with your presence,” Calvin says.
Matt reaches up to adjust the ‘cam before flipping him the bird. He knows he’s supposed to pretend that he didn’t overhear the end of John’s last phone call with Bowman - the one where John threatened to “stuff your security protocol regulations up your ass” if Matt wasn’t removed from the black hat list - but it was only two days after that conversation that the federal watchdog took the cuffs off and Matt got the all-clear to get back into the game. He’d decided to celebrate with an evening of droid-bashing with his friends. And he’s already got two monumentally huge consulting contracts on offer from a couple of the top security firms in the country. Just two more in a long list of reasons why he owes McClane big time.
“Saw you on the news the other day, man,” Steve says. “Matt Farrell shakin’ hands with the mayor, gettin’ the key to the city? One of the signs of the apocalypse, swear to god.”
Matt’s eyes flick to the velvet box sitting on the desk, the ornamental key nestled safely inside. That whole day had been ridiculous - it was hot and the suit that they’d brought him to wear was too tight, and he’d spent the entire ride in the limousine bitching and fidgeting until John shot him a look and reached over, wrapped one meaty hand around his fingers and forcibly stopped him from tugging on his collar.
Matt had sighed and rested his head against the cool glass of the tinted window, closed his eyes. “I hate this,” he had muttered.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, kid,” John had answered.
Matt had raised his head, watched John’s profile as the Washington scenery sped by. “That’s it?” he asked.
John lifted a shoulder carefully, flicked glass-green eyes his way. “What do ya want me to say?”
Right. Because this was John’s fourth ride on this particular merry-go-round, and if anybody knew the score it was him. “Attaboy?” Matt had said, and thought he saw John’s lips twitch before he closed his eyes again.
When they’d arrived he’d resigned himself to standing quietly beside McClane and trying not to squint in the sunshine, the low-grade pain in his leg buzzing along merrily and muting whatever the mayor said in his speech. He had held up his velvet box and posed like a good boy for the cameras and limped back to the relative safety of the limo as soon as possible.
“Rhetoric for the mindless masses,” he says now to Steve, pushing thoughts of that day aside. “Seriously, it’s all bullshit. They don’t get that the country is just as fucked up as it was before. Like shoving a mic in our faces and saying a few words changes that.”
Warlock sniffs. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s real tough being a celebrity.”
Matt spent the immediate days following the fire-sale in a hospital bed hopped up on morphine and listening distractedly to John in the next bed ranting about the lack of decent coffee, but he knows that Warlock got his own visit from Bowman’s boys. And knowing the Warlock as he does, he also knows that the dude spent every waking moment from the time he and McClane left in Mrs. Kaludis’ old sedan to the minute the feds knocked on his door clearing his system of anything even remotely suspect, so the cops didn’t have a chance to nail him with a fucking thing. Matt suspects that Warlock is put-out less by the arrival of the feds and more by the fact that his own assistance in locating Gabriel didn’t make it to the papers.
“No shit,” Steve says. “Every second day there’s an article about you guys in the paper. They talk about you and McClane like you’re the second coming.”
“Must be fucking insane, dude,” Calvin says.
“Yeah, it’s--”
It’s physiotherapy four times a week. Waking up hyperventilating in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and seeing Gabriel’s goon falling down that elevator shaft again and again. It’s reporters camped outside of John’s door for two weeks straight, and not being able to limp to the corner store without being recognized. It’s endless debriefing sessions.
It’s staying in John McClane’s house and breathing John McClane’s air and discovering that the John McClane who cuts his toenails in the living room and can’t cook creamed corn without burning it is just as endlessly fascinating as the one who shoots himself in the shoulder and blows up SUVs.
“…crazy, man,” Matt finishes.
“You can totally work that shit,” Calvin says. “What chick isn’t gonna want to fuck the guy who saved the world?”
Matt shifts uncomfortably, tells himself that his leg is acting up again. “Yell, well, I’m not getting out much.”
“Maybe you don’t want to get out much,” Warlock says knowingly.
Matt frowns. “What?”
“I’m just saying, man. You got every chick in the five boroughs and the sewage state ready to tie your skinny ass to the bed and do indescribable and astonishing things to your body, things that are probably illegal in most of the free world I might add, and you’re staying cooped up in the house with that cop. What does that tell you?”
“No, man, I can’t get out, my leg--”
“Was shattered in four places,” the group choruses.
Yeah, so maybe Matt repeated himself a little bit in those text convos. “Okay,” he sighs, “yeah, that’s… funny. C’mon guys, there’s a 10th level mega droid here that we need to vanquish if we want to move into the power dome. Are we going to do this or are we going to sit here and play Fuck With Farrell?”
For a moment there is silence from the talking heads on the monitor. Then--
“Yeah, so there was actually a photo of you and McClane in the paper last week,” Calvin says.
Matt throws up his hands.
“Two month anniversary or some shit. You’re looking at him like he’s your fucking hero.”
Matt shakes his head, leans back in his chair. “Dude, he saved my life like eight million times. He IS my hero.”
“Fuck no,” Steve chimes in. “I know what pic he means, man. You’re looking at McClane like you’re a rottweiler and he’s a goddamn milk bone. Like you want to eat that fucker UP.”
Warlock snorts. “Like Farrell could ever pull off a fucking rottweiler. Maybe a chihuahua.”
“What are you talking about?”
Matt jumps. “Oh hey! John!” He shoots a wide-eyed frantic look at the webcam before diving for the volume control, slides the bar down before jerking around in his chair. “Hey. Hi. Just, you know. Hangin’. Hangin’ with my peeps.” Matt winces, wishes desperately that he’d turned off the microphone while he was at it. He’s never going to hear the fucking end of that.
“Uh huh.” John takes a couple of steps into the room, glances around him to the screen and cocks his head. “You’re a chihuahua?”
“Oh. That’s… yeah, that’s a computer term. It refers to someone who does binary code manipulation using a pre-set algorithm with executable instruc… it doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t be interested.”
“Right in one,” John mutters. He arches a brow at the monitor -- Matt’s afraid to look behind him to see what John is seeing, so he briefly closes his eyes and crosses his fingers instead -- before turning his attention to Matt. “Game’s on.”
“Right! The game. I forg-no, been looking forward to the game. Excited about the game!” He jumps up quickly, ignores the stabbing flare of pain from his knee and puts a hand on the small of John’s back to steer him toward the door before risking a peek back at the monitor. Calvin is busy making (thankfully silent) kissy faces, and Warlock is…. Oh FUCK. Who knew that the Warlock could mime a blowjob so effectively?
John hesitates in the doorway, looks back over his shoulder. “Sure you don’t want to--”
“No! Them?” Matt snorts, presses a little more firmly on John’s back to urge him to move, even though he’d have just as much luck getting a Mack truck to move as he would a McClane who doesn’t want to budge. “I can hang with them anytime. But the game? There’s only one game, right? Let’s go watch the game.”
John narrows his eyes but allows Matt to guide him through the door. “You have got to cut down on those energy drinks, kid.”
“You know, I will take that under advisement, McClane,” Matt says. He waits for John to sit before perching carefully on the sofa next to him, presses his lips together and tries to think of something to say that won’t make him want to crawl under the sofa in embarrassment. His eyes light up when the camera homes in on one of the Broncos. “Oh, hey,” he says casually, “Tim Tebow. He was actually the first college sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy. Do you know he holds the record for most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback in Division One history?”
John looks at him like he’s got two heads.
“What?” Matt says innocently. “I’m interested! I read! Just because the news is completely manipulated doesn‘t mean there‘s anything wrong with the sports page.”
“Really,” John says. He turns away from the television to give his full attention to Matt, and Matt tries not squirm, he really does, but that stare really is unnerving. “And what’s a rushing touchdown?”
Matt tries to hold the stare, and he probably manages it for about five seconds, but he feels like it only takes him milliseconds to crack. He huffs out a breath, defeated. “Okay, fine. You got me, John. I have no fucking clue.”
John looks at him for another moment before lifting a shoulder -- the one that he didn‘t shoot two bullets through - and then glances away to the television. “You know, you don’t have to hang around out here with me. You can go play with your friends.”
“No! I mean. I want to. Hang around out here with you.”
John smirks. “Instead of your ‘peeps‘?”
Matt feels the blood rush to his face, flops back on the sofa with a sigh. “God. You know if you ever repeat that I said that to anyone, I’ll have to kill you.” When John just turns to him and arches a brow, Matt grins and holds up his hands. “Right, okay, so I couldn’t kill you. I probably couldn’t even break your finger without suffering substantial physical damage to my own person.”
“Probably?”
“But I could totally mess up your records, dude, get you back in uniform and walking a beat so fast it’d make your follicly-challenged head spin. Don’t tempt me, man.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” John says before leaning back as well and concentrating on the game. Matt tugs the bag of Fritos into his lap, watches as the teams start forming up on the field and tries to remember any of the other Tebow stats that he memorized so carefully, but he finds it’s difficult to concentrate when John is sitting so close that their thighs are touching and he can feel the heat radiating off John’s body, and when John keeps reaching into the bag of Fritos just as he does, tangling their fingers together, and when John smells like sweat and old leather and god he just wants to--
“Didn’t know you had a thing for uniforms, kid,” John says dryly without looking away from the television.
Matt chokes on a particularly large Frito, splutters out a shower of partially masticated corn chip while his stomach does a slow languorous flip.
“Okay?” John says, turning to him innocently. And sure he’s all solicitous concern now, patting Matt gently on the back and studying him intently until Matt manages to stop gagging on Fritos sawdust long enough to rasp out a “Fine” from his parched throat. He nods once, rubs at Matt’s shoulder gently. “You want something to drink?”
After he chugs the bottle of water that John fetches him from the fridge, they go back to watching the game like nothing happened. Well, John does. Matt can’t really concentrate on anything at all.
Jesus. He is so fucked.
* * *
John flops down into the scruffy desk chair with a groan and boots up his system.
Nothing.
He jabs a thumb at the little button on the CPU. The green light flickers on, but the screen stays stubbornly blank.
He mumbles out a curse and slams the palm of his hand into the side of the monitor, and that does it -- the screen sparkles to life, but so does every single nerve ending in his battered shoulder, and John sucks in air and sits perfectly still until the pain fades enough for him to breathe again. Restricted duty is bad enough; the last thing he fucking needs is Scalvino sending him back home again.
“Here,” Pinciotti says, setting John’s chipped coffee mug at his elbow. “Don’t say I never did nothing for ya.”
John nods his thanks, lifts the mug and inhales the aroma gratefully before taking a healthy swallow. The precinct coffee always tastes like a combination of primordial ooze and ammonia, and he loves every last mouthful. This is what coffee should be, strong and black and able to strip the paint from the walls. Not covered with sprinkles and foam like that latte monstrosity he brings home for Matt every fucking night. And three fifty for a coffee, jeeeesus. He should have his head examined.
“You got the paperwork on that Chinatown shooting?”
John glances up at Rodriguez, waves a hand distractedly to the other side of the bullpen. “Already on your desk.”
Rodriguez smiles at him, flicks her long black hair over her shoulder and opens her mouth to say something more, and John sketches her a tight-lipped dismissive smile in return before deliberately pulling out a file and turning his attention to the small print. He feels her hovering at his desk for a moment before the clicking of high heels on the worn linoleum indicates that she’s retreated to her own desk. Thank Christ, because he’s not in the mood to deal with junior detectives at the moment. He stares blankly at the telephone transcript of a potential terrorist contact on the lower east side before taking another pull on his coffee.
John knows that if he was responsible even a little bit, he’d be discouraging Matt about putting more caffeine into his system. Kid is already overloaded, judging by the number of Red Bull cans that overflow the recycling bin every week. But he likes watching the way Matt’s hands flutter in the air like birds when he’s excited, and he likes watching Matt’s lips move a mile a minute even if he doesn’t understand half the shit that comes out of them. He just likes that mouth, full and wide and quick to smile. He finds his thoughts drifting to Matt’s mouth more than they should, when he wakes in the middle of the night from a bad dream and can hear Matt’s nimble fingers clicking away on the keyboard in the next room and knows the kid is awake, too, and probably for the same reason. He imagines pushing back the covers and padding quietly into Matt’s room, pulling him up from the chair and tasting him, finally, finally, Matt‘s eyes opening wide in surprise before he leans into the kiss. He wonders if Matt’s mouth would be hot and rough under his, or tentative, soft; if Matt would blush and stammer or push against him, demanding more; if Matt would--
“Somebody likes you.”
John jerks his head up sharply. His gaze goes quickly to door, expecting to see Matt limping across the scarred floor, maybe waving a breakfast sandwich in a brown paper bag and holding one of those preposterous lattes for himself. But the only people in the doorway are two uniforms arguing over last night’s football scores, and Matt has physio at ten on the other side of town. John has his schedule printed out neatly on an index card that he keeps in his wallet next to a dog-eared photo of Lucy at her high school graduation, and tonight he’ll be on the floor helping Matt do his follow up exercises, running his hand carefully up and down Matt’s calf and watching his mouth move as he complains endlessly and telling him to shut up and being secretly pleased that he never ever does.
John huffs out a breath. He feels old, and tired, and the thought of going home and crawling back into bed is suddenly very appealing. Instead he gives Pinciotti an inquiring look, then follows the man’s wiggling eyebrows to Rodriguez’s desk.
Pinciotti leans in conspiratorially, lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “She wanted to get you a present to welcome you back last week. Flowers. We talked her out of it.”
“Well, I told her you like pansies,” Lambert puts in.
John slides his gaze over to the other cop. “That joke just never gets old, does it, Joe?”
Lambert shrugs. “It’s a classic.”
“Could be a good thing, McClane,” Pinciotti says. He eyes Rodriguez over the top of his file folder. “Carmen’s smart. Funny. And hey, she ain’t bad looking. Nice tits.”
John shakes his head, leans back in his chair with a sigh. He waits until Pinciotti mutters something under his breath and turns back to his files before surreptitiously taking up his own study of the other cop. Rodriguez is good looking, tall and curvy, long legs and a great ass. He tries to imagine taking her out, maybe holding her hand across the table in a crowded restaurant. And instead his mind flashes on Matt’s hand on the small of his back the night before, the heat of his palm seeping through the thin cotton of his T-shirt before pooling in his groin, leaving him half-hard by the time they sat together in front of the TV to watch the game.
Rodriguez rises from her chair and crosses the room to the filing cabinet, and John watches the swing of her hips from beneath lowered lashes. Yeah, she’s got a great ass, but as he watches Carmen bend to one of the lower drawers he can’t help picturing Matt instead. Matt as he had looked this morning, fresh from the shower, towel slung low on his slim hips, the lightly muscled planes of his chest still pinkish-red from the hot water and his hair sticking out in a dozen different directions. Matt blinking sleepy-eyed at him as he stumble-staggered to his room, then shooting him the finger when John barked at him to get a move on.
Rodriguez notices him looking, flashes him a bright smile from across the room. John nods once, curtly, before turning back to his files.
Everything he’s ever known in his whole fucking life tells him he should be with someone like Carmen Rodriguez. And the only person he really wants is a skinny hacker punk named Matthew Farrell.
Jesus. He is so fucked.
* * *
Matt wouldn’t say he’s ignoring the insistent pinging of the computer, exactly. He’s just got better, more important things to do - things like refilling the ice cube trays and reorganizing all the dishes in the kitchen cupboards and arranging all of McClane’s books alphabetically by author and genre. When the sun’s going down and he’s on his fourth Red Bull and finds himself pulling out the carpet sweeper in preparation for vacuuming the already pristine area rug in the living room, he stops and shakes his head. He leaves the old sweeper in the middle of the room, pushes his hair out of his eyes, squares his shoulders and pushes open the door to his bedroom with a sigh. He lowers himself into the chair, eyes the computer warily before reaching out to the keyboard.
“Heyyyyy Farrell,” Warlock greets as soon as he logs on. “We were just wondering when you were going to come ‘hang with your peeps’.”
“We thought maybe we weren’t your homies no more. Dawg,” Steve mocks.
Matt rolls his eyes. He waves a hand airily toward the screen. “Yeah, okay ‘peeps’, get all the taunting out of your system. Jeer to your heart’s content. Go at it. Take your best shots.”
“No, no, we get it, dude. You got other things on your mind. Or at least one thing. About six foot, two twenty with a pretty gold badge in his pocket.”
Matt fully intended to take all the shit his friends could dish out and keep a cool head while he did it. But he finds himself shifting in his chair, the Warlock’s words hitting just a little too close to home. He has no idea how the dude figured it out, how he somehow knew that Matt lay awake each night, touching himself and imagining that it was John’s large hand encircling his dick, John’s muscled body crawling on top of his, nudging his knees apart. The whole thing is stupid and pathetic and impossible, and the fact that Warlock knows about his ridiculous little crush makes him inexplicably angry. “You know,” he bites out, “you don’t know shit about my life.”
Warlock just laughs and wiggles his eyebrows. “I know what you want from your big bald cop,” he says, sticking his tongue in his cheek suggestively.
“Really?” Matt says. “No, seriously. ‘Cause I’m impressed that you could mime a blowjob so convincingly when you’ve never had one.”
“Oh. Hah. That’s rich coming from you, Farrell.”
“Coming from me? Wait, raise your hand if you’ve had a date in this millennium. Hmmm? No? Nothing?”
Warlock snorts. “The only date you’ve had is with your hand.”
“Uh, guys?” Steve says.
“Really?” Matt says. “Really. Well at least I have the balls to go after what I want. Unlike you and a certain Sarah1979 at that games expo in-“
Warlock gasps. “You swore you’d never mention that to a fucking soul.”
“Yeah, seriously, guys?” Steve tries again.
“I wouldn’t have to mention it if it wasn’t so fucking pathetic.”
“And balls! Balls! You’re sitting there every night, Farrell, playing with yourself and making up goopy fantasies in your head while the object of your affection sleeps in the very next room completely fucking oblivious and you want to tell me that I’m the pathetic one?”
“You have no fucking idea-“
Matt doesn’t realize that he has risen to his feet and is actually yelling at Warlock’s red face on the monitor until John has slammed his way into the room.
“What the FUCK is going on in here?” McClane yells. He stomps a couple of feet inside, and Matt whirls around to face him. He’s shed his jacket but he’s still wearing his shoulder holster, and he smells of old leather, of the cigarettes that he still occasionally sneaks on the sly and thinks that nobody knows about, of cheap cologne that Matt is pretty sure they stopped manufacturing in 1992, and god Matt wants him. And before he knows it he’s taken the two steps that separate them, wrapped his hand in the fabric of John’s T-shirt and is pulling him forward. He could almost laugh at the expression of surprise on John’s face, but then Matt is smashing their lips together and John is stiff and shocked in his arms and suddenly it’s real, and he pulls his head back quickly, squishes his eyes shut and waits for McClane to explode.
He counts to five and when it doesn’t happen, he opens one eye cautiously. “Um. Hi,” he says.
John’s lips twitch. “Hi,” he says softly.
“Um,” Matt says again. He’s acutely aware this his fingers are still clenched around the soft material of John’s shirt, and their bodies are still pressed closely together, and he has absolutely no idea how he’s going to extricate himself from this predicament.
“I was just-“ he starts, but he can get no further than that before John surges forward, capturing his lips in another kiss, and this time John’s mouth opens under his, John’s tongue presses insistently inside, and Matt’s suddenly glad that he still has that grip on John’s shirt because he’s pretty sure he needs it to actually stay upright. Because shit, McClane’s good at this. McClane’s really good at this.
He takes a shuddering breath when they part. “Okay, so. Wow,” Matt says. “So you’re... interested.”
McClane glances between their bodies, raises an eyebrow speculatively. “It would appear so,” he drawls.
Matt grins, the proof of John’s interest pressing brazenly against his thigh.
John pulls back a little, licks his lips deliberately. “Pitbull,” he says confidently. He cocks his head, considering. “Possibly a Doberman.”
Matt frowns. “Okay, John? The doctor said if there were any more times like this you’re supposed to lie down in bed while I call the after-hours clinic.”
John rolls his eyes before he turns to the webcam. “Definitely not a Chihuahua,” he says loudly before tugging Matt more firmly against his chest. “But that bed thing sounds good.”
Matt laughs as he disentangles himself from John’s grip, reaches out to log out of the system. The last thing he sees is a smirking Warlock giving him a thumbs up before the screen goes dark.
Then John is tugging him toward the bedroom, John’s big hands creeping beneath his T-shirt to palm his skin, John’s lips coming back again and again to his mouth as though he can’t get enough, John’s breath warm and moist at his ear telling him all the things he’s been thinking about for the past two months, all the things that Matt’s been thinking about too, dreaming about, fantasizing about. Except this time it’s fucking real.
Jesus, Matt thinks happily, laughing against John’s lips as John kisses him again. He is going to get so fucked.
.
Here's the first one :)
Title: Come Together
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John McClane/Matt Farrell
Word Count: 4646
Summary: He likes watching the way Matt’s hands flutter in the air like birds when he’s excited, and he likes watching Matt’s lips move a mile a minute even if he doesn’t understand half the shit that comes out of them.
Authors Notes: Written for sexy_right's Winter Fest. Prompts: teasing, first time/kiss, assertive Matt, caffeine.
Come Together
by Severina
Matt eases carefully down into the comfortable new office chair and boots up his system.
“You don’t ask no questions and I don’t have to tell ya no lies,” McClane had said two days ago when he’d lugged the chair into the spare room. Matt had shut his mouth and tried not to stare at the way the muscles in John’s arms rippled when he moved, and the way his T-shirt strained against that mountain of a chest. He tried not to look at the stupid skull-and-top-hat tattoo on John’s bicep; tried not to wonder where he got it, and when, and why; and he most definitely tried not to think about how much he just wanted to reach out and lick it, just run his tongue over it and see if he could feel the imprint of it under his tongue, beneath the mingled tastes of salt and sweat and John.
Yeah, he didn’t think about that stuff at all. Not even a little bit.
Matt tugs a hand impatiently through his hair and makes a face at the webcam before logging on to the website. An evening of RPing is just what he needs to get his mind off… things. Bald, broad, brawny things.
He rotates his neck slowly and stretches his fingers above the keyboard when the images of his friends pop up on the sidebar. Even though it’s only been a couple of months since he’s seen the guys in person instead of making do with texting in a chat room, it feels like forever.
“Steve-o,” he greets, “you got a haircut. Awesome, dude. Makes you look fourteen instead of your usual twelve.”
“Fuck you,” Steve says affably.
“Hey, Farrell, nice of you to grace us with your presence,” Calvin says.
Matt reaches up to adjust the ‘cam before flipping him the bird. He knows he’s supposed to pretend that he didn’t overhear the end of John’s last phone call with Bowman - the one where John threatened to “stuff your security protocol regulations up your ass” if Matt wasn’t removed from the black hat list - but it was only two days after that conversation that the federal watchdog took the cuffs off and Matt got the all-clear to get back into the game. He’d decided to celebrate with an evening of droid-bashing with his friends. And he’s already got two monumentally huge consulting contracts on offer from a couple of the top security firms in the country. Just two more in a long list of reasons why he owes McClane big time.
“Saw you on the news the other day, man,” Steve says. “Matt Farrell shakin’ hands with the mayor, gettin’ the key to the city? One of the signs of the apocalypse, swear to god.”
Matt’s eyes flick to the velvet box sitting on the desk, the ornamental key nestled safely inside. That whole day had been ridiculous - it was hot and the suit that they’d brought him to wear was too tight, and he’d spent the entire ride in the limousine bitching and fidgeting until John shot him a look and reached over, wrapped one meaty hand around his fingers and forcibly stopped him from tugging on his collar.
Matt had sighed and rested his head against the cool glass of the tinted window, closed his eyes. “I hate this,” he had muttered.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, kid,” John had answered.
Matt had raised his head, watched John’s profile as the Washington scenery sped by. “That’s it?” he asked.
John lifted a shoulder carefully, flicked glass-green eyes his way. “What do ya want me to say?”
Right. Because this was John’s fourth ride on this particular merry-go-round, and if anybody knew the score it was him. “Attaboy?” Matt had said, and thought he saw John’s lips twitch before he closed his eyes again.
When they’d arrived he’d resigned himself to standing quietly beside McClane and trying not to squint in the sunshine, the low-grade pain in his leg buzzing along merrily and muting whatever the mayor said in his speech. He had held up his velvet box and posed like a good boy for the cameras and limped back to the relative safety of the limo as soon as possible.
“Rhetoric for the mindless masses,” he says now to Steve, pushing thoughts of that day aside. “Seriously, it’s all bullshit. They don’t get that the country is just as fucked up as it was before. Like shoving a mic in our faces and saying a few words changes that.”
Warlock sniffs. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s real tough being a celebrity.”
Matt spent the immediate days following the fire-sale in a hospital bed hopped up on morphine and listening distractedly to John in the next bed ranting about the lack of decent coffee, but he knows that Warlock got his own visit from Bowman’s boys. And knowing the Warlock as he does, he also knows that the dude spent every waking moment from the time he and McClane left in Mrs. Kaludis’ old sedan to the minute the feds knocked on his door clearing his system of anything even remotely suspect, so the cops didn’t have a chance to nail him with a fucking thing. Matt suspects that Warlock is put-out less by the arrival of the feds and more by the fact that his own assistance in locating Gabriel didn’t make it to the papers.
“No shit,” Steve says. “Every second day there’s an article about you guys in the paper. They talk about you and McClane like you’re the second coming.”
“Must be fucking insane, dude,” Calvin says.
“Yeah, it’s--”
It’s physiotherapy four times a week. Waking up hyperventilating in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and seeing Gabriel’s goon falling down that elevator shaft again and again. It’s reporters camped outside of John’s door for two weeks straight, and not being able to limp to the corner store without being recognized. It’s endless debriefing sessions.
It’s staying in John McClane’s house and breathing John McClane’s air and discovering that the John McClane who cuts his toenails in the living room and can’t cook creamed corn without burning it is just as endlessly fascinating as the one who shoots himself in the shoulder and blows up SUVs.
“…crazy, man,” Matt finishes.
“You can totally work that shit,” Calvin says. “What chick isn’t gonna want to fuck the guy who saved the world?”
Matt shifts uncomfortably, tells himself that his leg is acting up again. “Yell, well, I’m not getting out much.”
“Maybe you don’t want to get out much,” Warlock says knowingly.
Matt frowns. “What?”
“I’m just saying, man. You got every chick in the five boroughs and the sewage state ready to tie your skinny ass to the bed and do indescribable and astonishing things to your body, things that are probably illegal in most of the free world I might add, and you’re staying cooped up in the house with that cop. What does that tell you?”
“No, man, I can’t get out, my leg--”
“Was shattered in four places,” the group choruses.
Yeah, so maybe Matt repeated himself a little bit in those text convos. “Okay,” he sighs, “yeah, that’s… funny. C’mon guys, there’s a 10th level mega droid here that we need to vanquish if we want to move into the power dome. Are we going to do this or are we going to sit here and play Fuck With Farrell?”
For a moment there is silence from the talking heads on the monitor. Then--
“Yeah, so there was actually a photo of you and McClane in the paper last week,” Calvin says.
Matt throws up his hands.
“Two month anniversary or some shit. You’re looking at him like he’s your fucking hero.”
Matt shakes his head, leans back in his chair. “Dude, he saved my life like eight million times. He IS my hero.”
“Fuck no,” Steve chimes in. “I know what pic he means, man. You’re looking at McClane like you’re a rottweiler and he’s a goddamn milk bone. Like you want to eat that fucker UP.”
Warlock snorts. “Like Farrell could ever pull off a fucking rottweiler. Maybe a chihuahua.”
“What are you talking about?”
Matt jumps. “Oh hey! John!” He shoots a wide-eyed frantic look at the webcam before diving for the volume control, slides the bar down before jerking around in his chair. “Hey. Hi. Just, you know. Hangin’. Hangin’ with my peeps.” Matt winces, wishes desperately that he’d turned off the microphone while he was at it. He’s never going to hear the fucking end of that.
“Uh huh.” John takes a couple of steps into the room, glances around him to the screen and cocks his head. “You’re a chihuahua?”
“Oh. That’s… yeah, that’s a computer term. It refers to someone who does binary code manipulation using a pre-set algorithm with executable instruc… it doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t be interested.”
“Right in one,” John mutters. He arches a brow at the monitor -- Matt’s afraid to look behind him to see what John is seeing, so he briefly closes his eyes and crosses his fingers instead -- before turning his attention to Matt. “Game’s on.”
“Right! The game. I forg-no, been looking forward to the game. Excited about the game!” He jumps up quickly, ignores the stabbing flare of pain from his knee and puts a hand on the small of John’s back to steer him toward the door before risking a peek back at the monitor. Calvin is busy making (thankfully silent) kissy faces, and Warlock is…. Oh FUCK. Who knew that the Warlock could mime a blowjob so effectively?
John hesitates in the doorway, looks back over his shoulder. “Sure you don’t want to--”
“No! Them?” Matt snorts, presses a little more firmly on John’s back to urge him to move, even though he’d have just as much luck getting a Mack truck to move as he would a McClane who doesn’t want to budge. “I can hang with them anytime. But the game? There’s only one game, right? Let’s go watch the game.”
John narrows his eyes but allows Matt to guide him through the door. “You have got to cut down on those energy drinks, kid.”
“You know, I will take that under advisement, McClane,” Matt says. He waits for John to sit before perching carefully on the sofa next to him, presses his lips together and tries to think of something to say that won’t make him want to crawl under the sofa in embarrassment. His eyes light up when the camera homes in on one of the Broncos. “Oh, hey,” he says casually, “Tim Tebow. He was actually the first college sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy. Do you know he holds the record for most rushing touchdowns by a quarterback in Division One history?”
John looks at him like he’s got two heads.
“What?” Matt says innocently. “I’m interested! I read! Just because the news is completely manipulated doesn‘t mean there‘s anything wrong with the sports page.”
“Really,” John says. He turns away from the television to give his full attention to Matt, and Matt tries not squirm, he really does, but that stare really is unnerving. “And what’s a rushing touchdown?”
Matt tries to hold the stare, and he probably manages it for about five seconds, but he feels like it only takes him milliseconds to crack. He huffs out a breath, defeated. “Okay, fine. You got me, John. I have no fucking clue.”
John looks at him for another moment before lifting a shoulder -- the one that he didn‘t shoot two bullets through - and then glances away to the television. “You know, you don’t have to hang around out here with me. You can go play with your friends.”
“No! I mean. I want to. Hang around out here with you.”
John smirks. “Instead of your ‘peeps‘?”
Matt feels the blood rush to his face, flops back on the sofa with a sigh. “God. You know if you ever repeat that I said that to anyone, I’ll have to kill you.” When John just turns to him and arches a brow, Matt grins and holds up his hands. “Right, okay, so I couldn’t kill you. I probably couldn’t even break your finger without suffering substantial physical damage to my own person.”
“Probably?”
“But I could totally mess up your records, dude, get you back in uniform and walking a beat so fast it’d make your follicly-challenged head spin. Don’t tempt me, man.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” John says before leaning back as well and concentrating on the game. Matt tugs the bag of Fritos into his lap, watches as the teams start forming up on the field and tries to remember any of the other Tebow stats that he memorized so carefully, but he finds it’s difficult to concentrate when John is sitting so close that their thighs are touching and he can feel the heat radiating off John’s body, and when John keeps reaching into the bag of Fritos just as he does, tangling their fingers together, and when John smells like sweat and old leather and god he just wants to--
“Didn’t know you had a thing for uniforms, kid,” John says dryly without looking away from the television.
Matt chokes on a particularly large Frito, splutters out a shower of partially masticated corn chip while his stomach does a slow languorous flip.
“Okay?” John says, turning to him innocently. And sure he’s all solicitous concern now, patting Matt gently on the back and studying him intently until Matt manages to stop gagging on Fritos sawdust long enough to rasp out a “Fine” from his parched throat. He nods once, rubs at Matt’s shoulder gently. “You want something to drink?”
After he chugs the bottle of water that John fetches him from the fridge, they go back to watching the game like nothing happened. Well, John does. Matt can’t really concentrate on anything at all.
Jesus. He is so fucked.
* * *
John flops down into the scruffy desk chair with a groan and boots up his system.
Nothing.
He jabs a thumb at the little button on the CPU. The green light flickers on, but the screen stays stubbornly blank.
He mumbles out a curse and slams the palm of his hand into the side of the monitor, and that does it -- the screen sparkles to life, but so does every single nerve ending in his battered shoulder, and John sucks in air and sits perfectly still until the pain fades enough for him to breathe again. Restricted duty is bad enough; the last thing he fucking needs is Scalvino sending him back home again.
“Here,” Pinciotti says, setting John’s chipped coffee mug at his elbow. “Don’t say I never did nothing for ya.”
John nods his thanks, lifts the mug and inhales the aroma gratefully before taking a healthy swallow. The precinct coffee always tastes like a combination of primordial ooze and ammonia, and he loves every last mouthful. This is what coffee should be, strong and black and able to strip the paint from the walls. Not covered with sprinkles and foam like that latte monstrosity he brings home for Matt every fucking night. And three fifty for a coffee, jeeeesus. He should have his head examined.
“You got the paperwork on that Chinatown shooting?”
John glances up at Rodriguez, waves a hand distractedly to the other side of the bullpen. “Already on your desk.”
Rodriguez smiles at him, flicks her long black hair over her shoulder and opens her mouth to say something more, and John sketches her a tight-lipped dismissive smile in return before deliberately pulling out a file and turning his attention to the small print. He feels her hovering at his desk for a moment before the clicking of high heels on the worn linoleum indicates that she’s retreated to her own desk. Thank Christ, because he’s not in the mood to deal with junior detectives at the moment. He stares blankly at the telephone transcript of a potential terrorist contact on the lower east side before taking another pull on his coffee.
John knows that if he was responsible even a little bit, he’d be discouraging Matt about putting more caffeine into his system. Kid is already overloaded, judging by the number of Red Bull cans that overflow the recycling bin every week. But he likes watching the way Matt’s hands flutter in the air like birds when he’s excited, and he likes watching Matt’s lips move a mile a minute even if he doesn’t understand half the shit that comes out of them. He just likes that mouth, full and wide and quick to smile. He finds his thoughts drifting to Matt’s mouth more than they should, when he wakes in the middle of the night from a bad dream and can hear Matt’s nimble fingers clicking away on the keyboard in the next room and knows the kid is awake, too, and probably for the same reason. He imagines pushing back the covers and padding quietly into Matt’s room, pulling him up from the chair and tasting him, finally, finally, Matt‘s eyes opening wide in surprise before he leans into the kiss. He wonders if Matt’s mouth would be hot and rough under his, or tentative, soft; if Matt would blush and stammer or push against him, demanding more; if Matt would--
“Somebody likes you.”
John jerks his head up sharply. His gaze goes quickly to door, expecting to see Matt limping across the scarred floor, maybe waving a breakfast sandwich in a brown paper bag and holding one of those preposterous lattes for himself. But the only people in the doorway are two uniforms arguing over last night’s football scores, and Matt has physio at ten on the other side of town. John has his schedule printed out neatly on an index card that he keeps in his wallet next to a dog-eared photo of Lucy at her high school graduation, and tonight he’ll be on the floor helping Matt do his follow up exercises, running his hand carefully up and down Matt’s calf and watching his mouth move as he complains endlessly and telling him to shut up and being secretly pleased that he never ever does.
John huffs out a breath. He feels old, and tired, and the thought of going home and crawling back into bed is suddenly very appealing. Instead he gives Pinciotti an inquiring look, then follows the man’s wiggling eyebrows to Rodriguez’s desk.
Pinciotti leans in conspiratorially, lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “She wanted to get you a present to welcome you back last week. Flowers. We talked her out of it.”
“Well, I told her you like pansies,” Lambert puts in.
John slides his gaze over to the other cop. “That joke just never gets old, does it, Joe?”
Lambert shrugs. “It’s a classic.”
“Could be a good thing, McClane,” Pinciotti says. He eyes Rodriguez over the top of his file folder. “Carmen’s smart. Funny. And hey, she ain’t bad looking. Nice tits.”
John shakes his head, leans back in his chair with a sigh. He waits until Pinciotti mutters something under his breath and turns back to his files before surreptitiously taking up his own study of the other cop. Rodriguez is good looking, tall and curvy, long legs and a great ass. He tries to imagine taking her out, maybe holding her hand across the table in a crowded restaurant. And instead his mind flashes on Matt’s hand on the small of his back the night before, the heat of his palm seeping through the thin cotton of his T-shirt before pooling in his groin, leaving him half-hard by the time they sat together in front of the TV to watch the game.
Rodriguez rises from her chair and crosses the room to the filing cabinet, and John watches the swing of her hips from beneath lowered lashes. Yeah, she’s got a great ass, but as he watches Carmen bend to one of the lower drawers he can’t help picturing Matt instead. Matt as he had looked this morning, fresh from the shower, towel slung low on his slim hips, the lightly muscled planes of his chest still pinkish-red from the hot water and his hair sticking out in a dozen different directions. Matt blinking sleepy-eyed at him as he stumble-staggered to his room, then shooting him the finger when John barked at him to get a move on.
Rodriguez notices him looking, flashes him a bright smile from across the room. John nods once, curtly, before turning back to his files.
Everything he’s ever known in his whole fucking life tells him he should be with someone like Carmen Rodriguez. And the only person he really wants is a skinny hacker punk named Matthew Farrell.
Jesus. He is so fucked.
* * *
Matt wouldn’t say he’s ignoring the insistent pinging of the computer, exactly. He’s just got better, more important things to do - things like refilling the ice cube trays and reorganizing all the dishes in the kitchen cupboards and arranging all of McClane’s books alphabetically by author and genre. When the sun’s going down and he’s on his fourth Red Bull and finds himself pulling out the carpet sweeper in preparation for vacuuming the already pristine area rug in the living room, he stops and shakes his head. He leaves the old sweeper in the middle of the room, pushes his hair out of his eyes, squares his shoulders and pushes open the door to his bedroom with a sigh. He lowers himself into the chair, eyes the computer warily before reaching out to the keyboard.
“Heyyyyy Farrell,” Warlock greets as soon as he logs on. “We were just wondering when you were going to come ‘hang with your peeps’.”
“We thought maybe we weren’t your homies no more. Dawg,” Steve mocks.
Matt rolls his eyes. He waves a hand airily toward the screen. “Yeah, okay ‘peeps’, get all the taunting out of your system. Jeer to your heart’s content. Go at it. Take your best shots.”
“No, no, we get it, dude. You got other things on your mind. Or at least one thing. About six foot, two twenty with a pretty gold badge in his pocket.”
Matt fully intended to take all the shit his friends could dish out and keep a cool head while he did it. But he finds himself shifting in his chair, the Warlock’s words hitting just a little too close to home. He has no idea how the dude figured it out, how he somehow knew that Matt lay awake each night, touching himself and imagining that it was John’s large hand encircling his dick, John’s muscled body crawling on top of his, nudging his knees apart. The whole thing is stupid and pathetic and impossible, and the fact that Warlock knows about his ridiculous little crush makes him inexplicably angry. “You know,” he bites out, “you don’t know shit about my life.”
Warlock just laughs and wiggles his eyebrows. “I know what you want from your big bald cop,” he says, sticking his tongue in his cheek suggestively.
“Really?” Matt says. “No, seriously. ‘Cause I’m impressed that you could mime a blowjob so convincingly when you’ve never had one.”
“Oh. Hah. That’s rich coming from you, Farrell.”
“Coming from me? Wait, raise your hand if you’ve had a date in this millennium. Hmmm? No? Nothing?”
Warlock snorts. “The only date you’ve had is with your hand.”
“Uh, guys?” Steve says.
“Really?” Matt says. “Really. Well at least I have the balls to go after what I want. Unlike you and a certain Sarah1979 at that games expo in-“
Warlock gasps. “You swore you’d never mention that to a fucking soul.”
“Yeah, seriously, guys?” Steve tries again.
“I wouldn’t have to mention it if it wasn’t so fucking pathetic.”
“And balls! Balls! You’re sitting there every night, Farrell, playing with yourself and making up goopy fantasies in your head while the object of your affection sleeps in the very next room completely fucking oblivious and you want to tell me that I’m the pathetic one?”
“You have no fucking idea-“
Matt doesn’t realize that he has risen to his feet and is actually yelling at Warlock’s red face on the monitor until John has slammed his way into the room.
“What the FUCK is going on in here?” McClane yells. He stomps a couple of feet inside, and Matt whirls around to face him. He’s shed his jacket but he’s still wearing his shoulder holster, and he smells of old leather, of the cigarettes that he still occasionally sneaks on the sly and thinks that nobody knows about, of cheap cologne that Matt is pretty sure they stopped manufacturing in 1992, and god Matt wants him. And before he knows it he’s taken the two steps that separate them, wrapped his hand in the fabric of John’s T-shirt and is pulling him forward. He could almost laugh at the expression of surprise on John’s face, but then Matt is smashing their lips together and John is stiff and shocked in his arms and suddenly it’s real, and he pulls his head back quickly, squishes his eyes shut and waits for McClane to explode.
He counts to five and when it doesn’t happen, he opens one eye cautiously. “Um. Hi,” he says.
John’s lips twitch. “Hi,” he says softly.
“Um,” Matt says again. He’s acutely aware this his fingers are still clenched around the soft material of John’s shirt, and their bodies are still pressed closely together, and he has absolutely no idea how he’s going to extricate himself from this predicament.
“I was just-“ he starts, but he can get no further than that before John surges forward, capturing his lips in another kiss, and this time John’s mouth opens under his, John’s tongue presses insistently inside, and Matt’s suddenly glad that he still has that grip on John’s shirt because he’s pretty sure he needs it to actually stay upright. Because shit, McClane’s good at this. McClane’s really good at this.
He takes a shuddering breath when they part. “Okay, so. Wow,” Matt says. “So you’re... interested.”
McClane glances between their bodies, raises an eyebrow speculatively. “It would appear so,” he drawls.
Matt grins, the proof of John’s interest pressing brazenly against his thigh.
John pulls back a little, licks his lips deliberately. “Pitbull,” he says confidently. He cocks his head, considering. “Possibly a Doberman.”
Matt frowns. “Okay, John? The doctor said if there were any more times like this you’re supposed to lie down in bed while I call the after-hours clinic.”
John rolls his eyes before he turns to the webcam. “Definitely not a Chihuahua,” he says loudly before tugging Matt more firmly against his chest. “But that bed thing sounds good.”
Matt laughs as he disentangles himself from John’s grip, reaches out to log out of the system. The last thing he sees is a smirking Warlock giving him a thumbs up before the screen goes dark.
Then John is tugging him toward the bedroom, John’s big hands creeping beneath his T-shirt to palm his skin, John’s lips coming back again and again to his mouth as though he can’t get enough, John’s breath warm and moist at his ear telling him all the things he’s been thinking about for the past two months, all the things that Matt’s been thinking about too, dreaming about, fantasizing about. Except this time it’s fucking real.
Jesus, Matt thinks happily, laughing against John’s lips as John kisses him again. He is going to get so fucked.
.