Fanfic: "Of Ex-Wives, In-Laws, and Other Misadventures"
Title: Of Ex-Wives, In-Laws, and Other Misadventures
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 10,990
Summary: Dealing with an attack on the precinct is bad enough, but when you throw in ex-wives, kids, parents, and one pesky reporter? John and Matt are in for a very busy week.
Notes: Written for smallfandombang; thank you to the mods for putting the project together. Also, a big thank you so much to my fabulous artists -- ceares who made the beautiful chapter title banners, and flitter_and_fly who made the lovely cover art and dividers. Working with them was a truly collaborative experience and one I enjoyed very much.
You can also find flitter_and_fly's work on her journal here and ceares's work on her journal here.
Of Ex-Wives, In-Laws, and Other Misadventures
by Severina
The one really great benefit to working at home is that Matt actually doesn't have to get dressed.
Today, for example. He's working on shoring up the defenses for one of the many, many multinational corporations that got in touch after he appeared at the press conference with John and Bowman and the governor, the "hacker hero" label emblazoned under his face as he wobbled unsteadily next to John on his crutches. Turns out helping a cop save the world - or at least helping a cop save the cop's daughter and America's money - is the best networking ever.
Of course, right now he's "taking a break". Said break is already heading into its third hour, and mostly consists of killing Rising Dead zombies with a high-powered rifle while occasionally stopping to lick cheese doodle dust off his fingers.
Which is also the second really great benefit to working at home.
When the doorbell rings he seriously considers not answering it, except John hates it when he does that. The last five times the doorbell has rung in the middle of the day it's been either someone stumping for a political candidate or a Jehovah's Witness, both of whom he usually scares off by pretending to be a Satanist. John hates that too, but then John votes republican so his opinion totally doesn't count.
When the bell rings a second time he cocks his head, listening for the heavy tread of John's feet on the stairs. But the sound of the chainsaw - or jigsaw or hacksaw or whatever the hell kind of saw - going off in the basement continues unabated. John says that whatever he's making down there is going to be a liquor cabinet. To Matt it currently looks like a snowflake with feet, but when John emerges from these afternoons in the basement he's usually all hot and sweaty and virile and there's no part of that that's not a win, so he gleefully encourages John's use of power tools on his rare weekdays off.
When the chimes go off a third time Matt huffs out a sigh, hits pause just as one of the undead is reaching for his throat, and hauls himself out of the chair. He's mentally preparing his "I am a servant of Beelzebub" speech when he opens the door.
Which is how he comes to meet Holly Gennero while wearing only a pair of low-slung pajama pants, a tattered T-shirt liberally smeared with bright orange doodle dust, and a scowl.
"Uh," he says. Because he's quick on his feet like that.
She looks ten years younger than he imagined, her hair still mostly untouched by grey and the crinkled lines around her eyes proving that she laughs easily and often. When she smiles, another five years drop off and those eyes sparkle and he can suddenly see what he never sees in that tattered family photo in John's wallet -- the reason that John fell for her.
Well, that smile and that she apparently has a mean right hook, at least according to that old archival footage of her decking Richard Thornburg.
"Hello," she says. "You must be Matt. I'm--"
"Holly," Matt say quickly. "Holly Gennero. John's… wow. Hi." He shakes his head, holds out a hand. "Right. Yes. Hey. I'm Matt. Matthew. Matt Farrell."
Her hand closes firmly over his, fingers chilled from the air even through her soft leather gloves, and when she cocks her head he sees a hint of Lucy in the way she appraises him. But her tone is light and teasing when she says, "Well, Matt Matthew Matt, that's quite the moniker you've got there."
"Matt's fine," he says, tells himself he absolutely will not blush in front of John's ex-fucking-wife. He realizes he's still holding her hand and drops it quickly, realizes at the same time that he's standing there with his mouth open and she's shivering in a light jacket that's more suited for California autumns and not a porch in the middle of a New York winter and wow, he's occasionally an idiot. "You're here for… come in, there's snow and… John's in the basement, I'll just get…"
"Holly," John says from behind him.
Matt doesn't think he's ever heard John use that particular tone of voice before. He doesn't say Holly's name so much as breathe it out, leave it hanging on the air like a puff of smoke.
"Hi, John."
John drapes her coat over the back of a chair, brushes the sawdust from his hands and busies himself with pouring out the coffee and fetching cream from the fridge while she tells him about her flight and her upcoming conference.
Holly wraps her hands around the steaming mug, dips her head to inhale the fragrance before taking a tentative sip.
It takes John back, all the way back to the first mornings of their marriage, when he was still driving around in a beaten-up black and white with old Harry Davies and Holly was working on her Masters and pulling swing shifts at the diner. It had been hard, all of it - hard to make ends meet, hard living in a cramped cold-water flat, hard to make time for each other. But he remembers that no matter how rushed Holly'd been she always took the time each morning to savour the anticipation of that first swig of java.
"Mmm," she murmurs appreciatively. "Much better than the swill they're serving in the NEA club lounge."
"Peruvian. I think," John says. Matt usually picks the beans, because Matt's the one who cares about that shit. Back in the day, he and Holly had been happy to have a jar of Maxwell House in the cupboard. Times change.
She nods, leans back in her chair and takes another sip. "I read about your latest arrest," she starts, and when he quirks an eyebrow - those things don't show up in the L.A. papers, no matter how big the bust is to the NYPD - she waves a hand airily. "Lucy sends me the URLs. Jeon-Hoon?"
"Korean nationalist," John says, "with ties to half a dozen suspected terrorist cells. Been working that case for eight months, Hol, with fuck-all to show for it. He had some high tech security bullshit on his system, something using subsonic sound waves. Matt comes in, works his fucking mojo, and boom. We get Hoon on tape six days later. Dates, names, places, the whole fucking shebang. We can take down a lot of players now, mess up a lot of the bad guys plans. That arrest belongs to the kid as much as me."
"I had no idea Matt worked with you now."
"Nah. Comes in one, two times a week for a couple of hours, consulting only. Task force pays him about a tenth of what he's worth, but-"
"But he does it for you."
"He does it because it's the right thing to do," John says. He sets his own mug down on the scarred table, cocks his head. "Why are you here, Holly? You didn't drive all the way out to Brooklyn from some posh hotel in the city just to shoot the shit."
"No, I do have a conference." She leans forward, crosses her legs - she's still got great gams, and John sure as hell ain't above looking - and meet his eyes. "But I also flew in a day early so I could talk to you. About Jack. And… about Matt."
John feels the bristles rise, clenches his fingers around the handle of his mug. What he and Matt have is… different from what he's used to, but it's also right. He feels it in his gut, knows it every time he looks at the damn kid. "You know I'm here for whatever Jack needs," he says, "but you have no right to say shit to me about Matthew Farrell."
"It's something we should talk about-"
"No," John bites out. "You're not my fucking wife, Holly, and you don't get-"
"John," Holly says. "I'm not here to criticize your…" She shakes her head, curls catching in the light, and he flashes back again to another kitchen table on another Monday afternoon, another argument. Holly not understanding why he had to stay in New York, John himself refusing to believe that she'd make it in L.A. Sometimes he thinks he can see all the hurtful things they said to one another still hanging in the air between them, dark images fluttering just beyond his conscious sight, clogging their air and making it hard to breathe.
He sighs, forces his fingers to release their iron grip on the mug. "Holly," he starts.
"I was just surprised," she says, "when Lucy told me about the… nature of your relationship with Matt. Surprised and, quite frankly, a little worried."
"You don't need to worry about me, Holly. I'm fine."
"I wasn't worried about you, John," Holly says, and now there's a trace of that old familiar teasing sarcasm in her tone, the one that she always used to remind him that the world didn't actually revolve around him. "I was worried… wondering… about…" She places her own mug on the table, traces a manicured finger around the rim. "John," she begins again, "we were married a long time. And when Lucy told me about you and Matt, I thought… well, I wasn't sure what to think."
John blinks. Sometimes it takes him a while, but the light bulb does finally turn on. He reaches out, wraps her cool fingers in his own. "It's the first time, Hol. It ain't like I was in the closet when we were married, and there sure as fuck won't be anyone else after him. It's just… Matt. Just him."
Holly holds his gaze for a long moment before pulling her hand away, smiling sheepishly. "All right," she says. When she leans back in her chair the vulnerability is gone as though it never existed, and he sees how she can broker multimillion dollar deals without breaking a sweat. "From everything Lucy tells me, he sounds like a great guy."
"He's a fucking smartass," John grouses. "He talks too much and he drinks too much Red Bull - you ever tasted that shit? Might as well mainline syrup - and he looks like a goddamn hippy. But the worse thing about Matthew Farrell," John adds, leaning back in his chair, "is his regrettable tendency to eavesdrop."
He catches Holly's eye, jerks his head toward the archway just as Matt pokes his head awkwardly around the corner. He's still barefoot, but he's changed into faded jeans and a couple of layers of shirts, and even with his ex in the room John feels the same clench in his chest that he always does when Matt walks into a room, and the twitch in his fingers to strip off those layers and find the warm skin beneath.
"Uh," Matt says. "I can totally explain."
John folds his arms at his chest. "Uh huh."
"Okay, first, John, you have to accept the hypothesis that curiosity is a natural human inclination, one that society frowns upon because of anachronistic social mores. Add to that the expected interest one has in one's self - human are naturally self-centred, okay, and studies have actually shown that-"
"Told you he talks too much," John interrupts.
"What?" Matt huffs out. "No, you asked, I'm just trying to-"
"In other words, you heard us talking about you and you were nosy," John says. He rolls his eyes, turns to Holly. "What do you think?"
"I think you have your hands full," she laughs, "but I'm inclined to forgive him, John. God knows I've been curious enough about him."
"Thank you," Matt says, strolls into the kitchen and grabs his own mug. "And I didn't even mention that I could smell the coffee brewing and it's been hours since…" He takes a sip from his mug, smiles happily into the steam. "Aaaaah," he breathes. "Better. Unless… you want me to go?"
"No," Holly says, standing and reaching for her coat, "it's me that has to get going. I have a briefcase full of reports to go over back at the hotel."
John remembers that, too. Holly on the bed, spreadsheets and graphs and business proposals spread out over the comforter, Holly's furrowed brow as she worked, the distraction in her voice when she spoke to him. It got so Holly slept with her reports more than she did with him.
He shakes his head. That was then, and his now is very different. "You said you wanted to talk to me about Jack," he reminds her.
"Of course," she says. "Well. John. I'm happy to tell you that Jack was finally accepted into the exchange student program." His eyes must widen - the last he'd heard, Jack hadn't made the cut - because she bobs her head and laughs. "One of the kids had to drop out, so Jack got the call for the second semester. He leaves for Paris a week Wednesday."
"Holy shit," he says. "Good for him, Hol."
"We're having a bon voyage party for him on Sunday," she continues. "He'd love it if you could make it."
John scrubs a hand over his jaw. "Jesus, Holly, there's no fucking way. I'm going to be up to my ass in this Hoon thing. I got depositions, reports in goddamn triplicate. The department needs me here."
"Your son needs you, too."
John feels his jaw clenching, tries to will himself to relax. It's the old argument, the one that never ended. He can still hear her voice in his ear, down those long distance phone lines of years past: he's not there enough for the kids, they need him not just his support cheque. And he knows he was never going to win a Father of the Year award, but he tried, damnit. And sometimes Holly didn't make it easy.
"I can't, Holly," he says. "Tell him I'll call him, all right?"
He finds Matt still in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and sipping at his coffee, when he gets back from escorting Holly to her rental car. He rubs his hands together, reaches for his mug, and eyes Matt over the rim.
"Do we need to talk about this?" he asks warily.
Matt lifts one eloquent shoulder. "Not really," he says.
John can see the wheels turning in the kid's head, though, all the questions that he wants to ask about Holly, about Holly-and-John, whirling through that super-smart noggin. He's just glad that Matt's dropping it for now.
"Are you sure you can't get time off to go see Jack?"
John can just picture the look on Scalvino's face if he asked to take personal days right now. "I'm sure," he says shortly.
"But-"
"Matthew," John says. "Don't start."
Matt holds up a hand in surrender, sets his empty mug down on the counter and crosses the room. "Fine," he says. When he brushes that long, lithe body against him, John forgets all about Hoon and Jack and Holly and the damn department; when Matt's warm lips press against his cool neck, John lets the coffee mug clatter to the table and does what he's wanted to do since Matt walked in the room. He finds Matt's shirt hems and pushes past the layers of clothing, splays his hands on the warm smooth skin of Matt's back.
"Jesus," Matt says, jerking against him, "you're freezing."
"Guess you'll just have to warm me up," John says.
It starts off like a typical Tuesday morning. Matt ignores John the first eight hundred and seventy five times that John tells him it's time to get up, and finally hauls his ass out of bed only because John strips away the covers and threatens to douse him with the hose if he doesn't get the fuck up. In the hazy state of his still sleep-foggy brain he's still aware that the garden hose is currently buried under a foot of snow in the back yard, but he also knows that this is John McClane he's dealing with. He knows better than to risk it. And anyway, John makes it up to him later in the shower with a long, slow, mutual hand-job session that lasts until the water turns lukewarm and they're both wrinkly-skinned and weak-kneed.
They eat breakfast in the kitchen, Matt occasionally stealing bites of John's whole wheat toast, John making faces when Matt makes him try Cocoa Pebbles and Matt pretending not to notice when John sneaks three more spoonfuls. John wins the toss so they listen to Fogerty on the drive to the precinct, and they part in the foyer with a nod and a shoulder bump and John's promise to meet Matt for lunch.
It's when Matt pushes through the wide glass double doors into the cyber division that things start to get weird.
For one thing, the place is crowded. Usually there's not much more than the hum of the computers and the muted voices of the techs talking about their latest cases, or more likely their latest World of Warcraft scores. But today there's some kind of tour, a bunch of lab geeks in pale blue jackets huddled like baby robins around Karposki's desk and chattering excitedly. The hard plastic chairs in the vestibule are all full, too. Matt sees a woman with a baby, two nervous looking men, a pretty Asian woman with long dark hair, some dude that looks like a file clerk - most of them talking loudly, their voices filtering through the glass.
When he's shucked his bag and coat and dropped into his chair and hears Mooney's running his Worst of Craptastic 80's Power Ballads playlist, he thinks longingly of his perfect little office set-up in John's spare room, and sighs. He steeples his hands, closes his eyes briefly and tries to ignore the distractions. The modifications he made to the sound wave distribution spectrum got John his Hoon arrest, but he's pretty sure he can tweak the code just a little more, get him wider access the next time he needs to use it. A couple of hours of that and then he'll be sitting across from John at Mendes, and by the afternoon he'll be back in his own office. He can make it.
"Hey," Mooney says. He slides his chair back so that he can see around the dirty fabric partition, juts his chin in the direction of the lab geeks. "Some breakthrough in the McPhalen investigation."
"The multiple homicide?"
Mooney raises a colourless brow, curls his lip at Karposki's back. "That dumbass couldn't find a microkernel in his OS," he says. "Ten to one this is all some shuck and jive, and his ass is on the pavement by the end of the week."
Matt shrugs - he cares as much about office politics as he does, oh, reality television - and pulls his keyboard closer. He squares his shoulders as if that will help to block out the sound of Def Leppard wailing about love bites and concentrates on the code. Before long he's deep into the variations of sound waves and the ways he can see to apply them, not actually aware that he's grinning, and certainly not aware of the rise in the noise level when the door opens. The first indication he has that the day has just moved from average weird into deeply weird is when the gunshots are fired into the ceiling.
"Ohhhhh shit," Matt breathes out.
On some level he's aware of people screaming, shouted voices, the rattle of more gunfire. But he's been here before - his knee aches every goddamn morning to prove it - and he keeps his cool, rattling off an email to John and managing a couple more things before Mooney is grabbing at his elbow and pulling him to the floor. He lands with an mumbled oof, scrambles beneath the desk and peers around the edge while pulling out his cell phone.
"Everyone will stay calm," the shooter calls out. "No one will be hurt if everyone stays calm and our demands are met."
"Yeah," Mooney mutters from beside him, "why don't I believe him?"
Matt flips open his phone, tries to keep one eye on the proceedings while he works. The shooter is pacing now, his long dark ponytail swishing across his back as he moves, and Matt sees the discarded florists box on the floor, the spilled flowers. His mind flashes back to the Terminator, Arnie pulling a gun from the middle of those damn roses. Sometimes the classics still work. Too bad this fucker doesn't know that 1PP has its own version of Robocop.
"One of you will contact Officer John McClane," the shooter says. "Once Officer McClane has been delivered to us, along with the wrongfully imprisoned Jeon-Hoon, you will be set free."
"It's Detective, asshole," Matt mutters without looking up from his phone.
He freezes, however, when the gun barrel presses into his cheekbone.
"What," the shooter says, "do you think you're doing?"
Matt looks up, tries a shaky grin. "Who, me? I'm just… ordering a pizza, got a little hungry-"
The shooter removes the weapon, eyes him. "You think you are funny?"
"Usually," Matt says.
"Maybe Officer McClane will not wish to cooperate with us. Maybe we will need to hurt a hostage to convince him. Maybe," the shooter says, "it will not be so funny when your brains are leaking onto the floor."
"Oh, hey," Matt says, "you don't want to do that, man. Blood's so hard to get out of the carpet and… okay, okay," he says when the gun barrel returns to gouge into his cheek. "I get you, I'm cooperating here, okay? No funny business, no shenanigans, I swear."
For a long moment he thinks the shooter might take him out anyway, releases a shaky breath when the long barrel of the shotgun is pulled away. The shooter reaches out instead, long fingers plucking the phone from his hand, and lets it drop the floor before lifting his boot and sending it crashing down onto the cell. When the thing spatters into a dozen electronic pieces, Matt closes his eyes.
"How did he get in there anyway?" John rages.
"It's cyber division," Connie says, "Land of the geeks. There's no metal detectors on that floor!"
"Yeah? And how did he get past the metal detectors on the main floor, huh?"
"He must have had a key-card," Lambert says. "Who gives a fuck? The main thing is getting up there-"
"He'll be watching the security cams," Ortega starts.
"I can make it up the elevator shaft-"
"Nobody's going up the elevator shaft, John!" Scalvino says. "Everybody, listen up! We've got two shooters and a shitload of unarmed hostages, some of them civilian! I want workable plans here, people!"
John's phone beeps.
"I never thought I'd die like this, Farrell," Mooney murmurs.
"Jesus," Matt says. "You're not going to die, okay? Nobody's going to die."
"I always thought I'd get married, have a couple of brats. Maybe get a dog." He smiles wistfully. "Maybe a german shepherd. I was always partial to german shepherds."
"Holy fuck, Mooney," Matt hisses, "you're not going to die, all right? Now give me your cell phone."
Mooney blinks. "What?"
Matt takes a careful look around the edge of the desk. The shooter is pacing, one eye on the phone where John is due to call in at any minute, and his accomplice - the overweight file clerk from the vestibule - is keeping a wary eye on all the hostages. Matt takes a breath before stealing a glance at the oversized clock above the door. It's not optimal, but it's gotta be now.
"Listen to me, Mooney," he says. "You're going to live a long, happy life. You can marry that chick at the Shop N Save that you're always drooling over if you ever get the fucking balls to ask her on a date, and she can pop out a couple of snot-nosed kids, and you and your wife and your fucking german shepherd can ride off into the sunset and have a goddamn menage a trois for all I fucking care. But none of that is going to happen unless you give me your goddamn phone!"
Matt's seen visual representations of a person's jaw "hitting the carpet" after some startling revelation in a graphic novel. But he's never seen it in real life until he looks at Mooney's face. He reaches slowly into his pocket and withdraws the cell phone, his hand shaking as he hands it over.
"Thank you," Matt breathes out. He snatches a cautious look over to the shooters before flipping it open, scanning quickly through the system. It's not as good as his phone - as his phone was, he amends - but it'll do. His fingers fly over the keys, setting up the program. And then he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and says a little mental prayer.
"They're still not looking," Mooney says softly. "Is there anything else I can do?"
Matt's lip quirk. Maybe Mooney can grow some balls after all.
"Yeah," Matt says just before he hits the button. "Pray that everybody has their speakers on."
"You sure about this, John?" Ortega asks.
"Nope."
"That's comforting," Connie drawls.
Nothing happens at first. Matt has the sickening, dizzying feeling that he fucked up, messed up a line of code somewhere… and then he feels it. It starts as a prickling in his ears, the mental equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, and within seconds it increases in intensity, builds and crashes like waves in his head, the ultrasonic pulse battering in his brain. There's no noise, yet he still can't hear a sound when the doors crash in, when John and his team stalk through the broken glass.
At some point he's fallen over, palms pressed to his ears in a vain attempt to keep out the sound that's not sound, and he watches from his prone position as John stalks to the terrorists writhing on the floor, watches as they're disarmed and someone - he thinks it might be Lambert - pulls out the cuffs.
He's dizzy, thinks his nose might be bleeding, but he manages to drag one hand toward the phone, shakily press down on the button that will end the program.
Then John is dragging the ear protection from his own ears and pulling him to his feet. John's hands everywhere, touching him, making sure he's okay. John talking though Matt can't understand a word he's saying, and John's lips pressing against his hair, his cheek, the underside of his jaw. John's thumb wiping away the thread of blood from his nose. He takes a breath, then another, lets himself lean on John, his hands clenching at the front of John's shirt, their foreheads touching. He breathes John's air.
There's a flash of light, Lambert sounding like he's at the end of a wind tunnel, bellowing at someone to get the fuck out.
Matt opens his jaw wide, feels his ears pop and real sound come rushing back in.
"Jesus Christ, Matthew," John says.
"Okay. I'm okay," Matt says. He manages a wobbly grin, huffs out a shaky laugh. "Heyyyy, it worked."
"It worked," John says, pressing another quick kiss to his temple before letting him go. "Goddamn genius."
"You're lucky I'm a goddamn genius," is all Matt gets out before his attention is diverted by the tall, gangly kid at the door.
The kid looks askance at the blood and broken glass, shrugs and lifts his burden high in the air. "Yeah, okay," he calls out, "somebody order pizza?"
"That'd be me," Matt says.
He pulls away from John and reaches for his wallet, and actually manages three steps toward the kid before he bends at the waist and loses his breakfast on the grey industrial carpet.
The car is blessedly silent on the drive to work. Not that he doesn't enjoy some tunes, but the only reason he flips with Matt for music privileges on the mornings they drive in together is so that he doesn't have to listen to some woman screeching like a cat in pain during the drive to the precinct. And not that John doesn't also enjoy Matt's enthusiasm, his passion. Most of the time he likes listening to Matt's nonstop chatter, and when he doesn't? The best way to shut him involves a lot of tongue, and he likes that, too. But there's something to be said for a relaxing drive to clear his head before he dives into the chaos of work.
The murmurs start as soon as John gets to the front doors.
The receptionist at the security desk grins cheekily at him as he passes her station. The uniform manning the key-card door punches him playfully on the arm. Stankowski from Vice wiggles his eyebrows as he gets out of the elevator.
John scrubs his hand over his head as he makes the short walk from the elevator to the JTTF offices. It doesn't take a goddamn detective to figure out that something's up, and he's going to find out exactly what as soon as he gets to his desk.
He chooses to consider the catcalls, wolf whistles, and loudly shouted innuendo that greet him as soon as he pushes open the door as more 'clues'.
John brushes the snow from his coat before holding up a hand, waits for the final taunt to fade. "All right," he calls out, "what the fuck?"
"Ohhhh ho," Lambert says. "He must not have seen it yet!"
Ortega sidles up to him, wiggles his tongue. "You're in for a treat, McClane."
"Go fuck yourself, Ortega," John says easily as he strolls to his desk.
"Don't let them bother you," Kowalski shouts. "I think it's adorable."
When John finds the newspaper propped up on his desk and the catcalls reach a fevered pitch, he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Ohhhh fuck," he says.
John does his best to spend most of the day outside the office, but there's only so much legwork he can do and only so many places he can find to spread out and do his paperwork. When he gets kicked out of the fifth floor locker room - turns out the Homicide department takes offense to him pacing and muttering next to their showers -he ends up back in the bullpen, striding through the door just in time to see Matt leaving Scalvino's office.
He stops midway across the room, inclines his head in Matt's direction. "Hey."
"Heyyyy," Matt says. He glances over his shoulder, shrugs and shakes his hair out of his eyes. "I was just… I thought you were out doing depositions all day."
"Postponed."
"Okay. Is it too late for lunch?"
John glances at the clock. "Only by about three hours, bottomless pit. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?"
Matt waves a hand in the general direction of Scalvino's office. "Meeting. Yeah. After the whole ear bleeding thing yesterday, he wanted to make sure I wasn't planning any more 'unspecified modifications' to the Hoon code."
John grunts. "Those 'unspecified modifications' might have saved a lot of lives."
"Yeah? Well, tell Scalvino that." He leans a little closer, drops his voice. "Rumour has it that a couple of the civvies are already talking lawsuit."
"Great."
"Yeah, well." Matt lifts his shoulders in a what can you do motion, cocks his head. "Are you okay? You're never a man of many words, McClane, but you're unusually taciturn this afternoon."
"I take it you haven't seen today's Times," John says drily.
"No. What, did the Yankees lose or something?"
John rubs the bridge of his nose. Sometimes he just can't tell if the kid is pulling his leg, but to be on the safe side…
"That's baseball," he says wearily. "It's football and hockey season." He jerks his head, leads Matt toward his desk and pulls open the top drawer. The newspaper flops onto the desk with a thump that seems much too loud in the room. "And I'm talking about this."
Matt eyes him curiously, but he lifts up the paper.
The article is about the attempted hostage taking in cyber division, but it's the photo - that takes up half the page above the fold - that dominates the page. John's hand is cupped at the nape of Matt's neck, his fingers curling in the strands. Matt's hand is fisted in John's shirt. Their foreheads brush, and they are staring into each other's eyes, lips parted. The fact that some joker in the bullpen took the time to encircle the photo in a giant red heart just adds the finishing touch. The shade of the lipstick points a definite accusatory finger to Martinez.
"Huh," Matt says. He lets the paper drop back to the desk. "It's a good photo. Nice composition."
John shakes his head. "Nice composition? That's all you have to fucking say?"
"Look man, I'm just glad they didn't print the one of me puking my guts out." He looks up and grins. "Hey, I guess that was the flash that went off yesterday."
"Gee, ya think?" John mutters.
"What, you're not…? Are you… embarrassed, John?"
"I'm not embarrassed."
"Good, because it's not like we've made this a big secret or anything-"
"No-"
"… and there was that time that Kowalski caught us in the corridor outside the evidence locker, and if that didn't bother you-"
"Jesus, kid."
"… then seriously, John, everyone already knew, and it's sure as fuck not something that I'm embarrassed about-"
John grabs hold of Matt's arms before they can start their usual routine of flailing and flapping, leans him into the desk. "I'm not embarrassed, all right? I just don't like having my private life splashed on the front page of the goddamn newspaper. And," he adds quickly before Matt can interrupt, "I would say that whether I was seeing you or a woman or a fucking monkey, all right?"
Matt huffs out a breath, but he relaxes under John's restraints, raises a bushy brow. "Are you equating me with a monkey?"
"If the eyebrow fits…"
"Hey!"
John can't help it if his lips twitch. "And you do make those weird noises," he points out.
"You make me make them," Matt says, "when you do that thing with your tongue."
John's "Jesus, kid," has a whole different timbre to it this time, and when he closes the distance between them to brush his lips chastely against Matt's, he finds that he can easily ignore the catcalls.
"Thanks for putting up with me," he says when they part.
"It's pretty easy," Matt says. "And hey, you know? If you don't want your face plastered on all the papers, you should probably stop being a superhero."
"Does that mean I have to get rid of my costume?"
Matt grins. "You can ditch the tights," he says, wiggling his eyebrows, "but you have to keep the utility belt."
Continue to Conclusion.
.
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 10,990
Summary: Dealing with an attack on the precinct is bad enough, but when you throw in ex-wives, kids, parents, and one pesky reporter? John and Matt are in for a very busy week.
Notes: Written for smallfandombang; thank you to the mods for putting the project together. Also, a big thank you so much to my fabulous artists -- ceares who made the beautiful chapter title banners, and flitter_and_fly who made the lovely cover art and dividers. Working with them was a truly collaborative experience and one I enjoyed very much.
You can also find flitter_and_fly's work on her journal here and ceares's work on her journal here.
Of Ex-Wives, In-Laws, and Other Misadventures
by Severina
The one really great benefit to working at home is that Matt actually doesn't have to get dressed.
Today, for example. He's working on shoring up the defenses for one of the many, many multinational corporations that got in touch after he appeared at the press conference with John and Bowman and the governor, the "hacker hero" label emblazoned under his face as he wobbled unsteadily next to John on his crutches. Turns out helping a cop save the world - or at least helping a cop save the cop's daughter and America's money - is the best networking ever.
Of course, right now he's "taking a break". Said break is already heading into its third hour, and mostly consists of killing Rising Dead zombies with a high-powered rifle while occasionally stopping to lick cheese doodle dust off his fingers.
Which is also the second really great benefit to working at home.
When the doorbell rings he seriously considers not answering it, except John hates it when he does that. The last five times the doorbell has rung in the middle of the day it's been either someone stumping for a political candidate or a Jehovah's Witness, both of whom he usually scares off by pretending to be a Satanist. John hates that too, but then John votes republican so his opinion totally doesn't count.
When the bell rings a second time he cocks his head, listening for the heavy tread of John's feet on the stairs. But the sound of the chainsaw - or jigsaw or hacksaw or whatever the hell kind of saw - going off in the basement continues unabated. John says that whatever he's making down there is going to be a liquor cabinet. To Matt it currently looks like a snowflake with feet, but when John emerges from these afternoons in the basement he's usually all hot and sweaty and virile and there's no part of that that's not a win, so he gleefully encourages John's use of power tools on his rare weekdays off.
When the chimes go off a third time Matt huffs out a sigh, hits pause just as one of the undead is reaching for his throat, and hauls himself out of the chair. He's mentally preparing his "I am a servant of Beelzebub" speech when he opens the door.
Which is how he comes to meet Holly Gennero while wearing only a pair of low-slung pajama pants, a tattered T-shirt liberally smeared with bright orange doodle dust, and a scowl.
"Uh," he says. Because he's quick on his feet like that.
She looks ten years younger than he imagined, her hair still mostly untouched by grey and the crinkled lines around her eyes proving that she laughs easily and often. When she smiles, another five years drop off and those eyes sparkle and he can suddenly see what he never sees in that tattered family photo in John's wallet -- the reason that John fell for her.
Well, that smile and that she apparently has a mean right hook, at least according to that old archival footage of her decking Richard Thornburg.
"Hello," she says. "You must be Matt. I'm--"
"Holly," Matt say quickly. "Holly Gennero. John's… wow. Hi." He shakes his head, holds out a hand. "Right. Yes. Hey. I'm Matt. Matthew. Matt Farrell."
Her hand closes firmly over his, fingers chilled from the air even through her soft leather gloves, and when she cocks her head he sees a hint of Lucy in the way she appraises him. But her tone is light and teasing when she says, "Well, Matt Matthew Matt, that's quite the moniker you've got there."
"Matt's fine," he says, tells himself he absolutely will not blush in front of John's ex-fucking-wife. He realizes he's still holding her hand and drops it quickly, realizes at the same time that he's standing there with his mouth open and she's shivering in a light jacket that's more suited for California autumns and not a porch in the middle of a New York winter and wow, he's occasionally an idiot. "You're here for… come in, there's snow and… John's in the basement, I'll just get…"
"Holly," John says from behind him.
Matt doesn't think he's ever heard John use that particular tone of voice before. He doesn't say Holly's name so much as breathe it out, leave it hanging on the air like a puff of smoke.
"Hi, John."
John drapes her coat over the back of a chair, brushes the sawdust from his hands and busies himself with pouring out the coffee and fetching cream from the fridge while she tells him about her flight and her upcoming conference.
Holly wraps her hands around the steaming mug, dips her head to inhale the fragrance before taking a tentative sip.
It takes John back, all the way back to the first mornings of their marriage, when he was still driving around in a beaten-up black and white with old Harry Davies and Holly was working on her Masters and pulling swing shifts at the diner. It had been hard, all of it - hard to make ends meet, hard living in a cramped cold-water flat, hard to make time for each other. But he remembers that no matter how rushed Holly'd been she always took the time each morning to savour the anticipation of that first swig of java.
"Mmm," she murmurs appreciatively. "Much better than the swill they're serving in the NEA club lounge."
"Peruvian. I think," John says. Matt usually picks the beans, because Matt's the one who cares about that shit. Back in the day, he and Holly had been happy to have a jar of Maxwell House in the cupboard. Times change.
She nods, leans back in her chair and takes another sip. "I read about your latest arrest," she starts, and when he quirks an eyebrow - those things don't show up in the L.A. papers, no matter how big the bust is to the NYPD - she waves a hand airily. "Lucy sends me the URLs. Jeon-Hoon?"
"Korean nationalist," John says, "with ties to half a dozen suspected terrorist cells. Been working that case for eight months, Hol, with fuck-all to show for it. He had some high tech security bullshit on his system, something using subsonic sound waves. Matt comes in, works his fucking mojo, and boom. We get Hoon on tape six days later. Dates, names, places, the whole fucking shebang. We can take down a lot of players now, mess up a lot of the bad guys plans. That arrest belongs to the kid as much as me."
"I had no idea Matt worked with you now."
"Nah. Comes in one, two times a week for a couple of hours, consulting only. Task force pays him about a tenth of what he's worth, but-"
"But he does it for you."
"He does it because it's the right thing to do," John says. He sets his own mug down on the scarred table, cocks his head. "Why are you here, Holly? You didn't drive all the way out to Brooklyn from some posh hotel in the city just to shoot the shit."
"No, I do have a conference." She leans forward, crosses her legs - she's still got great gams, and John sure as hell ain't above looking - and meet his eyes. "But I also flew in a day early so I could talk to you. About Jack. And… about Matt."
John feels the bristles rise, clenches his fingers around the handle of his mug. What he and Matt have is… different from what he's used to, but it's also right. He feels it in his gut, knows it every time he looks at the damn kid. "You know I'm here for whatever Jack needs," he says, "but you have no right to say shit to me about Matthew Farrell."
"It's something we should talk about-"
"No," John bites out. "You're not my fucking wife, Holly, and you don't get-"
"John," Holly says. "I'm not here to criticize your…" She shakes her head, curls catching in the light, and he flashes back again to another kitchen table on another Monday afternoon, another argument. Holly not understanding why he had to stay in New York, John himself refusing to believe that she'd make it in L.A. Sometimes he thinks he can see all the hurtful things they said to one another still hanging in the air between them, dark images fluttering just beyond his conscious sight, clogging their air and making it hard to breathe.
He sighs, forces his fingers to release their iron grip on the mug. "Holly," he starts.
"I was just surprised," she says, "when Lucy told me about the… nature of your relationship with Matt. Surprised and, quite frankly, a little worried."
"You don't need to worry about me, Holly. I'm fine."
"I wasn't worried about you, John," Holly says, and now there's a trace of that old familiar teasing sarcasm in her tone, the one that she always used to remind him that the world didn't actually revolve around him. "I was worried… wondering… about…" She places her own mug on the table, traces a manicured finger around the rim. "John," she begins again, "we were married a long time. And when Lucy told me about you and Matt, I thought… well, I wasn't sure what to think."
John blinks. Sometimes it takes him a while, but the light bulb does finally turn on. He reaches out, wraps her cool fingers in his own. "It's the first time, Hol. It ain't like I was in the closet when we were married, and there sure as fuck won't be anyone else after him. It's just… Matt. Just him."
Holly holds his gaze for a long moment before pulling her hand away, smiling sheepishly. "All right," she says. When she leans back in her chair the vulnerability is gone as though it never existed, and he sees how she can broker multimillion dollar deals without breaking a sweat. "From everything Lucy tells me, he sounds like a great guy."
"He's a fucking smartass," John grouses. "He talks too much and he drinks too much Red Bull - you ever tasted that shit? Might as well mainline syrup - and he looks like a goddamn hippy. But the worse thing about Matthew Farrell," John adds, leaning back in his chair, "is his regrettable tendency to eavesdrop."
He catches Holly's eye, jerks his head toward the archway just as Matt pokes his head awkwardly around the corner. He's still barefoot, but he's changed into faded jeans and a couple of layers of shirts, and even with his ex in the room John feels the same clench in his chest that he always does when Matt walks into a room, and the twitch in his fingers to strip off those layers and find the warm skin beneath.
"Uh," Matt says. "I can totally explain."
John folds his arms at his chest. "Uh huh."
"Okay, first, John, you have to accept the hypothesis that curiosity is a natural human inclination, one that society frowns upon because of anachronistic social mores. Add to that the expected interest one has in one's self - human are naturally self-centred, okay, and studies have actually shown that-"
"Told you he talks too much," John interrupts.
"What?" Matt huffs out. "No, you asked, I'm just trying to-"
"In other words, you heard us talking about you and you were nosy," John says. He rolls his eyes, turns to Holly. "What do you think?"
"I think you have your hands full," she laughs, "but I'm inclined to forgive him, John. God knows I've been curious enough about him."
"Thank you," Matt says, strolls into the kitchen and grabs his own mug. "And I didn't even mention that I could smell the coffee brewing and it's been hours since…" He takes a sip from his mug, smiles happily into the steam. "Aaaaah," he breathes. "Better. Unless… you want me to go?"
"No," Holly says, standing and reaching for her coat, "it's me that has to get going. I have a briefcase full of reports to go over back at the hotel."
John remembers that, too. Holly on the bed, spreadsheets and graphs and business proposals spread out over the comforter, Holly's furrowed brow as she worked, the distraction in her voice when she spoke to him. It got so Holly slept with her reports more than she did with him.
He shakes his head. That was then, and his now is very different. "You said you wanted to talk to me about Jack," he reminds her.
"Of course," she says. "Well. John. I'm happy to tell you that Jack was finally accepted into the exchange student program." His eyes must widen - the last he'd heard, Jack hadn't made the cut - because she bobs her head and laughs. "One of the kids had to drop out, so Jack got the call for the second semester. He leaves for Paris a week Wednesday."
"Holy shit," he says. "Good for him, Hol."
"We're having a bon voyage party for him on Sunday," she continues. "He'd love it if you could make it."
John scrubs a hand over his jaw. "Jesus, Holly, there's no fucking way. I'm going to be up to my ass in this Hoon thing. I got depositions, reports in goddamn triplicate. The department needs me here."
"Your son needs you, too."
John feels his jaw clenching, tries to will himself to relax. It's the old argument, the one that never ended. He can still hear her voice in his ear, down those long distance phone lines of years past: he's not there enough for the kids, they need him not just his support cheque. And he knows he was never going to win a Father of the Year award, but he tried, damnit. And sometimes Holly didn't make it easy.
"I can't, Holly," he says. "Tell him I'll call him, all right?"
He finds Matt still in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and sipping at his coffee, when he gets back from escorting Holly to her rental car. He rubs his hands together, reaches for his mug, and eyes Matt over the rim.
"Do we need to talk about this?" he asks warily.
Matt lifts one eloquent shoulder. "Not really," he says.
John can see the wheels turning in the kid's head, though, all the questions that he wants to ask about Holly, about Holly-and-John, whirling through that super-smart noggin. He's just glad that Matt's dropping it for now.
"Are you sure you can't get time off to go see Jack?"
John can just picture the look on Scalvino's face if he asked to take personal days right now. "I'm sure," he says shortly.
"But-"
"Matthew," John says. "Don't start."
Matt holds up a hand in surrender, sets his empty mug down on the counter and crosses the room. "Fine," he says. When he brushes that long, lithe body against him, John forgets all about Hoon and Jack and Holly and the damn department; when Matt's warm lips press against his cool neck, John lets the coffee mug clatter to the table and does what he's wanted to do since Matt walked in the room. He finds Matt's shirt hems and pushes past the layers of clothing, splays his hands on the warm smooth skin of Matt's back.
"Jesus," Matt says, jerking against him, "you're freezing."
"Guess you'll just have to warm me up," John says.
It starts off like a typical Tuesday morning. Matt ignores John the first eight hundred and seventy five times that John tells him it's time to get up, and finally hauls his ass out of bed only because John strips away the covers and threatens to douse him with the hose if he doesn't get the fuck up. In the hazy state of his still sleep-foggy brain he's still aware that the garden hose is currently buried under a foot of snow in the back yard, but he also knows that this is John McClane he's dealing with. He knows better than to risk it. And anyway, John makes it up to him later in the shower with a long, slow, mutual hand-job session that lasts until the water turns lukewarm and they're both wrinkly-skinned and weak-kneed.
They eat breakfast in the kitchen, Matt occasionally stealing bites of John's whole wheat toast, John making faces when Matt makes him try Cocoa Pebbles and Matt pretending not to notice when John sneaks three more spoonfuls. John wins the toss so they listen to Fogerty on the drive to the precinct, and they part in the foyer with a nod and a shoulder bump and John's promise to meet Matt for lunch.
It's when Matt pushes through the wide glass double doors into the cyber division that things start to get weird.
For one thing, the place is crowded. Usually there's not much more than the hum of the computers and the muted voices of the techs talking about their latest cases, or more likely their latest World of Warcraft scores. But today there's some kind of tour, a bunch of lab geeks in pale blue jackets huddled like baby robins around Karposki's desk and chattering excitedly. The hard plastic chairs in the vestibule are all full, too. Matt sees a woman with a baby, two nervous looking men, a pretty Asian woman with long dark hair, some dude that looks like a file clerk - most of them talking loudly, their voices filtering through the glass.
When he's shucked his bag and coat and dropped into his chair and hears Mooney's running his Worst of Craptastic 80's Power Ballads playlist, he thinks longingly of his perfect little office set-up in John's spare room, and sighs. He steeples his hands, closes his eyes briefly and tries to ignore the distractions. The modifications he made to the sound wave distribution spectrum got John his Hoon arrest, but he's pretty sure he can tweak the code just a little more, get him wider access the next time he needs to use it. A couple of hours of that and then he'll be sitting across from John at Mendes, and by the afternoon he'll be back in his own office. He can make it.
"Hey," Mooney says. He slides his chair back so that he can see around the dirty fabric partition, juts his chin in the direction of the lab geeks. "Some breakthrough in the McPhalen investigation."
"The multiple homicide?"
Mooney raises a colourless brow, curls his lip at Karposki's back. "That dumbass couldn't find a microkernel in his OS," he says. "Ten to one this is all some shuck and jive, and his ass is on the pavement by the end of the week."
Matt shrugs - he cares as much about office politics as he does, oh, reality television - and pulls his keyboard closer. He squares his shoulders as if that will help to block out the sound of Def Leppard wailing about love bites and concentrates on the code. Before long he's deep into the variations of sound waves and the ways he can see to apply them, not actually aware that he's grinning, and certainly not aware of the rise in the noise level when the door opens. The first indication he has that the day has just moved from average weird into deeply weird is when the gunshots are fired into the ceiling.
"Ohhhhh shit," Matt breathes out.
On some level he's aware of people screaming, shouted voices, the rattle of more gunfire. But he's been here before - his knee aches every goddamn morning to prove it - and he keeps his cool, rattling off an email to John and managing a couple more things before Mooney is grabbing at his elbow and pulling him to the floor. He lands with an mumbled oof, scrambles beneath the desk and peers around the edge while pulling out his cell phone.
"Everyone will stay calm," the shooter calls out. "No one will be hurt if everyone stays calm and our demands are met."
"Yeah," Mooney mutters from beside him, "why don't I believe him?"
Matt flips open his phone, tries to keep one eye on the proceedings while he works. The shooter is pacing now, his long dark ponytail swishing across his back as he moves, and Matt sees the discarded florists box on the floor, the spilled flowers. His mind flashes back to the Terminator, Arnie pulling a gun from the middle of those damn roses. Sometimes the classics still work. Too bad this fucker doesn't know that 1PP has its own version of Robocop.
"One of you will contact Officer John McClane," the shooter says. "Once Officer McClane has been delivered to us, along with the wrongfully imprisoned Jeon-Hoon, you will be set free."
"It's Detective, asshole," Matt mutters without looking up from his phone.
He freezes, however, when the gun barrel presses into his cheekbone.
"What," the shooter says, "do you think you're doing?"
Matt looks up, tries a shaky grin. "Who, me? I'm just… ordering a pizza, got a little hungry-"
The shooter removes the weapon, eyes him. "You think you are funny?"
"Usually," Matt says.
"Maybe Officer McClane will not wish to cooperate with us. Maybe we will need to hurt a hostage to convince him. Maybe," the shooter says, "it will not be so funny when your brains are leaking onto the floor."
"Oh, hey," Matt says, "you don't want to do that, man. Blood's so hard to get out of the carpet and… okay, okay," he says when the gun barrel returns to gouge into his cheek. "I get you, I'm cooperating here, okay? No funny business, no shenanigans, I swear."
For a long moment he thinks the shooter might take him out anyway, releases a shaky breath when the long barrel of the shotgun is pulled away. The shooter reaches out instead, long fingers plucking the phone from his hand, and lets it drop the floor before lifting his boot and sending it crashing down onto the cell. When the thing spatters into a dozen electronic pieces, Matt closes his eyes.
"How did he get in there anyway?" John rages.
"It's cyber division," Connie says, "Land of the geeks. There's no metal detectors on that floor!"
"Yeah? And how did he get past the metal detectors on the main floor, huh?"
"He must have had a key-card," Lambert says. "Who gives a fuck? The main thing is getting up there-"
"He'll be watching the security cams," Ortega starts.
"I can make it up the elevator shaft-"
"Nobody's going up the elevator shaft, John!" Scalvino says. "Everybody, listen up! We've got two shooters and a shitload of unarmed hostages, some of them civilian! I want workable plans here, people!"
John's phone beeps.
"I never thought I'd die like this, Farrell," Mooney murmurs.
"Jesus," Matt says. "You're not going to die, okay? Nobody's going to die."
"I always thought I'd get married, have a couple of brats. Maybe get a dog." He smiles wistfully. "Maybe a german shepherd. I was always partial to german shepherds."
"Holy fuck, Mooney," Matt hisses, "you're not going to die, all right? Now give me your cell phone."
Mooney blinks. "What?"
Matt takes a careful look around the edge of the desk. The shooter is pacing, one eye on the phone where John is due to call in at any minute, and his accomplice - the overweight file clerk from the vestibule - is keeping a wary eye on all the hostages. Matt takes a breath before stealing a glance at the oversized clock above the door. It's not optimal, but it's gotta be now.
"Listen to me, Mooney," he says. "You're going to live a long, happy life. You can marry that chick at the Shop N Save that you're always drooling over if you ever get the fucking balls to ask her on a date, and she can pop out a couple of snot-nosed kids, and you and your wife and your fucking german shepherd can ride off into the sunset and have a goddamn menage a trois for all I fucking care. But none of that is going to happen unless you give me your goddamn phone!"
Matt's seen visual representations of a person's jaw "hitting the carpet" after some startling revelation in a graphic novel. But he's never seen it in real life until he looks at Mooney's face. He reaches slowly into his pocket and withdraws the cell phone, his hand shaking as he hands it over.
"Thank you," Matt breathes out. He snatches a cautious look over to the shooters before flipping it open, scanning quickly through the system. It's not as good as his phone - as his phone was, he amends - but it'll do. His fingers fly over the keys, setting up the program. And then he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and says a little mental prayer.
"They're still not looking," Mooney says softly. "Is there anything else I can do?"
Matt's lip quirk. Maybe Mooney can grow some balls after all.
"Yeah," Matt says just before he hits the button. "Pray that everybody has their speakers on."
"You sure about this, John?" Ortega asks.
"Nope."
"That's comforting," Connie drawls.
Nothing happens at first. Matt has the sickening, dizzying feeling that he fucked up, messed up a line of code somewhere… and then he feels it. It starts as a prickling in his ears, the mental equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, and within seconds it increases in intensity, builds and crashes like waves in his head, the ultrasonic pulse battering in his brain. There's no noise, yet he still can't hear a sound when the doors crash in, when John and his team stalk through the broken glass.
At some point he's fallen over, palms pressed to his ears in a vain attempt to keep out the sound that's not sound, and he watches from his prone position as John stalks to the terrorists writhing on the floor, watches as they're disarmed and someone - he thinks it might be Lambert - pulls out the cuffs.
He's dizzy, thinks his nose might be bleeding, but he manages to drag one hand toward the phone, shakily press down on the button that will end the program.
Then John is dragging the ear protection from his own ears and pulling him to his feet. John's hands everywhere, touching him, making sure he's okay. John talking though Matt can't understand a word he's saying, and John's lips pressing against his hair, his cheek, the underside of his jaw. John's thumb wiping away the thread of blood from his nose. He takes a breath, then another, lets himself lean on John, his hands clenching at the front of John's shirt, their foreheads touching. He breathes John's air.
There's a flash of light, Lambert sounding like he's at the end of a wind tunnel, bellowing at someone to get the fuck out.
Matt opens his jaw wide, feels his ears pop and real sound come rushing back in.
"Jesus Christ, Matthew," John says.
"Okay. I'm okay," Matt says. He manages a wobbly grin, huffs out a shaky laugh. "Heyyyy, it worked."
"It worked," John says, pressing another quick kiss to his temple before letting him go. "Goddamn genius."
"You're lucky I'm a goddamn genius," is all Matt gets out before his attention is diverted by the tall, gangly kid at the door.
The kid looks askance at the blood and broken glass, shrugs and lifts his burden high in the air. "Yeah, okay," he calls out, "somebody order pizza?"
"That'd be me," Matt says.
He pulls away from John and reaches for his wallet, and actually manages three steps toward the kid before he bends at the waist and loses his breakfast on the grey industrial carpet.
The car is blessedly silent on the drive to work. Not that he doesn't enjoy some tunes, but the only reason he flips with Matt for music privileges on the mornings they drive in together is so that he doesn't have to listen to some woman screeching like a cat in pain during the drive to the precinct. And not that John doesn't also enjoy Matt's enthusiasm, his passion. Most of the time he likes listening to Matt's nonstop chatter, and when he doesn't? The best way to shut him involves a lot of tongue, and he likes that, too. But there's something to be said for a relaxing drive to clear his head before he dives into the chaos of work.
The murmurs start as soon as John gets to the front doors.
The receptionist at the security desk grins cheekily at him as he passes her station. The uniform manning the key-card door punches him playfully on the arm. Stankowski from Vice wiggles his eyebrows as he gets out of the elevator.
John scrubs his hand over his head as he makes the short walk from the elevator to the JTTF offices. It doesn't take a goddamn detective to figure out that something's up, and he's going to find out exactly what as soon as he gets to his desk.
He chooses to consider the catcalls, wolf whistles, and loudly shouted innuendo that greet him as soon as he pushes open the door as more 'clues'.
John brushes the snow from his coat before holding up a hand, waits for the final taunt to fade. "All right," he calls out, "what the fuck?"
"Ohhhh ho," Lambert says. "He must not have seen it yet!"
Ortega sidles up to him, wiggles his tongue. "You're in for a treat, McClane."
"Go fuck yourself, Ortega," John says easily as he strolls to his desk.
"Don't let them bother you," Kowalski shouts. "I think it's adorable."
When John finds the newspaper propped up on his desk and the catcalls reach a fevered pitch, he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Ohhhh fuck," he says.
John does his best to spend most of the day outside the office, but there's only so much legwork he can do and only so many places he can find to spread out and do his paperwork. When he gets kicked out of the fifth floor locker room - turns out the Homicide department takes offense to him pacing and muttering next to their showers -he ends up back in the bullpen, striding through the door just in time to see Matt leaving Scalvino's office.
He stops midway across the room, inclines his head in Matt's direction. "Hey."
"Heyyyy," Matt says. He glances over his shoulder, shrugs and shakes his hair out of his eyes. "I was just… I thought you were out doing depositions all day."
"Postponed."
"Okay. Is it too late for lunch?"
John glances at the clock. "Only by about three hours, bottomless pit. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?"
Matt waves a hand in the general direction of Scalvino's office. "Meeting. Yeah. After the whole ear bleeding thing yesterday, he wanted to make sure I wasn't planning any more 'unspecified modifications' to the Hoon code."
John grunts. "Those 'unspecified modifications' might have saved a lot of lives."
"Yeah? Well, tell Scalvino that." He leans a little closer, drops his voice. "Rumour has it that a couple of the civvies are already talking lawsuit."
"Great."
"Yeah, well." Matt lifts his shoulders in a what can you do motion, cocks his head. "Are you okay? You're never a man of many words, McClane, but you're unusually taciturn this afternoon."
"I take it you haven't seen today's Times," John says drily.
"No. What, did the Yankees lose or something?"
John rubs the bridge of his nose. Sometimes he just can't tell if the kid is pulling his leg, but to be on the safe side…
"That's baseball," he says wearily. "It's football and hockey season." He jerks his head, leads Matt toward his desk and pulls open the top drawer. The newspaper flops onto the desk with a thump that seems much too loud in the room. "And I'm talking about this."
Matt eyes him curiously, but he lifts up the paper.
The article is about the attempted hostage taking in cyber division, but it's the photo - that takes up half the page above the fold - that dominates the page. John's hand is cupped at the nape of Matt's neck, his fingers curling in the strands. Matt's hand is fisted in John's shirt. Their foreheads brush, and they are staring into each other's eyes, lips parted. The fact that some joker in the bullpen took the time to encircle the photo in a giant red heart just adds the finishing touch. The shade of the lipstick points a definite accusatory finger to Martinez.
"Huh," Matt says. He lets the paper drop back to the desk. "It's a good photo. Nice composition."
John shakes his head. "Nice composition? That's all you have to fucking say?"
"Look man, I'm just glad they didn't print the one of me puking my guts out." He looks up and grins. "Hey, I guess that was the flash that went off yesterday."
"Gee, ya think?" John mutters.
"What, you're not…? Are you… embarrassed, John?"
"I'm not embarrassed."
"Good, because it's not like we've made this a big secret or anything-"
"No-"
"… and there was that time that Kowalski caught us in the corridor outside the evidence locker, and if that didn't bother you-"
"Jesus, kid."
"… then seriously, John, everyone already knew, and it's sure as fuck not something that I'm embarrassed about-"
John grabs hold of Matt's arms before they can start their usual routine of flailing and flapping, leans him into the desk. "I'm not embarrassed, all right? I just don't like having my private life splashed on the front page of the goddamn newspaper. And," he adds quickly before Matt can interrupt, "I would say that whether I was seeing you or a woman or a fucking monkey, all right?"
Matt huffs out a breath, but he relaxes under John's restraints, raises a bushy brow. "Are you equating me with a monkey?"
"If the eyebrow fits…"
"Hey!"
John can't help it if his lips twitch. "And you do make those weird noises," he points out.
"You make me make them," Matt says, "when you do that thing with your tongue."
John's "Jesus, kid," has a whole different timbre to it this time, and when he closes the distance between them to brush his lips chastely against Matt's, he finds that he can easily ignore the catcalls.
"Thanks for putting up with me," he says when they part.
"It's pretty easy," Matt says. "And hey, you know? If you don't want your face plastered on all the papers, you should probably stop being a superhero."
"Does that mean I have to get rid of my costume?"
Matt grins. "You can ditch the tights," he says, wiggling his eyebrows, "but you have to keep the utility belt."
Continue to Conclusion.
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