Live Free or Die Hard Fanfic -- "Of Computers and Suicide Ribs"
Title: Of Computers and Suicide Ribs
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John/Matt
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2218
Summary: "Whoa!" Matt pinwheels his arms, tries to get some kind of traction on the slippery hardwood as John hauls him across the room. "We've talked about this, McClane! No manhandling of the boyfriend unless sex is somehow… wait, is sex somehow involved here?"
Notes: Written for smallfandomfest for the prompt "John thinks Matt needs to get out more"
Sorry for another lameass title.
Of Computers and Suicide Ribs
by Severina
John is used to Matt giving Oscar-worthy performances when he's working with his little computer doodads. There are the dramatic sighs of frustration. Theatrically flinging himself back in the chair. Swiping a hand through his mop of hair while staring blankly at the ceiling. The one where Matt throws his arms up in the air and mumbles what may be curses or may be entreaties to the Gods of Cyberspace is John's favourite.
Today he's working on a combo-pack of two and four, with occasional forays into number one. It's amusing for the first hour.
Then John decides to do something about it.
* * *
Matt swipes a hand over his face, checks the last few lines of new code carefully before hitting the button to execute. There's a moment where the computer hums happily, and he allows himself to think that he may have solved the problem. Then the sysfail message pops up again, and he's barely able to stifle a groan.
"You about done Meryl-Streep-ing over here?"
Matt drops his head onto the desk with an audible thump, hears John snort behind him.
"I'll take that as a no," John says dryly.
Matt lifts his head, scans the lines of code scrawling across the screen and does his best to ignore John hovering over his shoulder. He flops back on the chair, chews on his bottom lip as he tries to mentally work through the mess. Counting the time he spent yesterday - before John dragged him protesting off to bed - he calculates he's been going round and round on these fucking errors for a good ten hours. Which is about nine goddamn hours too long.
He sighs, cracks his knuckles and rotates his neck. One more hour. He's giving himself another hour before he has to give in and call the Warlock, give him remote access to the system and let him take a shot at it. He'd admit defeat and do it now, but he's holding out hope that he may be able to crack this thing. Even with the headache that's pounding at his temple and the ache between his shoulder blades.
Besides, he doesn't want to give Warlock the satisfaction of swooping in and saving the day. The bastard will lord that over him for the rest of his natural life.
"What's the problem?" John asks. "Maybe I can help."
"Hah," Matt says without looking away from the screen. "Funny. That's a good one. Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but-"
"I mean it," John says brusquely. Matt finds himself pushed to the side when John leans over his shoulder, taps at the monitor with one blunt finger. "What, so you got a little failure message there? Did you try that control-alt-whatever thing ya taught me?"
Sometimes Matt realizes it's a good thing his parents sent him to that therapist back when he was in high school. He tries to remember that whole count-to-ten, in with the warm fuzzies thing as he takes a deep breath, forces his hands to unclench. "John," he says slowly. "I'm experiencing a series of widespread unrecognizable errors in clusters one and three. Restarting is not going to cut it."
"Huh?"
Matt takes another breath while he tries not to roll his eyes. He can't say that he's completely successful. "My system is subdivided so if there's a failure on one node, it won't affect the other…" Matt glances over his shoulder, trails off at John's blank look. "They're like folders, okay? Called clusters. And they're… not working properly."
"Uh huh."
Matt realizes something then, feels his eyes go wide as he swivels in his chair. "Oh my God, John," he says. "This is a literal clusterfuck."
"Uh huh," John says again after a long moment. Then he nods once, sharply, and clamps a beefy hand down onto Matt's shoulder. "Get moving. We're going out."
Matt blinks. "What? No, I can't… John!"
The fingers twisting in the collar of his T-shirt only dig in a little tighter. He tries to hang on, he really does. But John? Strong. Matt might even give a decidedly unmanly squeak as he's being bodily removed from the chair, but he'd deny that to his last breath.
"Whoa!" Matt pinwheels his arms, tries to get some kind of traction on the slippery hardwood as John hauls him across the room. "We've talked about this, McClane! No manhandling of the boyfriend unless sex is somehow… wait, is sex somehow involved here?"
"Get your shoes on," John says.
"Okay, so clearly no sex," Matt says. "In which case you are plainly violating the-"
"I'll violate ya later," John says shortly. "Shoes."
Matt knows he could dig in his heels and launch a loud and particularly eloquent protest. It's all right there on the tip of his tongue, with special attention paid to John's persistent disregard of his personal space and his freaky obsession with footwear. But somehow he finds himself thinking that some fresh air might be a good idea - if only because it'll get John off his damn back. He ends up shrugging into his sneakers and squaring his shoulders before he goes out the door.
"Jesus, kid, you're not heading out to the firing squad."
Matt squints against the sunlight, wrinkles his nose. "No. You're right. This is more like those sweat boxes that they set out in the middle of the prison yard and then lock the convicts inside with the hundred degree sun beating down while they don't even give them any water-"
"Jesus," John says again. "You're really a piece of work, you know that? Tell ya what. If you start to feel faint, I'll run to the store and get ya one of those Red Bulls ya like so much."
"Yeah, like that wouldn't just make me more thirsty," Matt mutters. He catches the unmistakably un-amused look on John's face, heaves a sigh. The things he puts up with, man. He should get a medal. "Fine. A walk to the corner and back. It'll be good to stretch my legs. But then I've gotta get back to the drive, I've got about a dozen different error messages that I've gotta tackle, McClane, I don't know what the fuck happened but the errors are compounding the longer they stay in the system, I've got to-"
"Yeah, yeah," John agrees. "The system's gonna blow up if you don't fix your doodads right this instant. Walk, kid."
Matt walks. Past the corner, but John's got that don't fuck with me because I am getting my way on this look on his face that Matt recognizes from a few instances on that crazy July 4th weekend (and occasionally from those times in the bedroom when John's got his arms pinned just so and Matt really really really wants to squirm but also really doesn't and his cock is rock hard and leaking and just begging to be touched and boy did it just get hotter out here or what?)
"When's the last time you ate?"
"Huh?" Matt says. He shakes his head, 'cause that'll get rid of the porno playing behind his eyelids. He blinks and tries to concentrate.
"Food," John says. "When was the last time you had some?"
"Oh. I.. don't remember. Yesterday?"
"Huh."
Now that it's been pointed out, Matt can't ignore the hunger pains. As if to highlight the fact, his stomach actually growls. Loudly. And then he remembers that Martelli's is on the next block. He wrinkles his nose, tries to stop thinking about pancakes dripping with butter or fresh crescent rolls or god those raspberry crepes that practically melt in the mouth.
"Hey," he says, trying for a nice, casual tone, "maybe we could stop at Martelli's."
"Nah," John says. "Almost got shut down last week. Health violations."
"No shit?" Matt says. "It was the soup, wasn't it? They were jizzing in the soup! That soup always tastes kind of off, like it's too salty or-"
"They weren't jizzing in the… Christ, Matthew, where do you come up with this shit?"
"It happens!"
John snorts. "Urban legends."
"There are documented reports!" Matt splutters. "I have seen photos, McClane, that would make you vomit if you saw them. Actual spewage, your stomach couldn't handle it. I'm not talking diners, McClane, I'm talking five star restaurants here. But you never hear about those getting shut down, do you? No, because they pay off the inspectors, they pay off the FDA, the DEA-"
"The DEA," John repeats slowly. "What the fuck would the DEA have to do with it?"
"I don't know, okay, why do any of those alphabet agencies get involved in this shit? Because they can. And then you get the mom and pops like Martelli's getting issued citations while the uptown places just throw their money around-"
"Speaking of uptown," John interrupts, "Dave O'Reilly's kid just got a job at one of those joints. Sous chef."
"Sure, just ignore me," Matt mutters. "Bury your head in the sand. No problem."
"Think he said the place is called Bistro 47."
"You mean Bistro 44?" Matt answers distractedly. "Got a good review in the Times."
"You read the restaurant reviews," John says dryly. "Thought the only thing you looked at in the paper was the comics."
"Just because I believe the news is being manipulated for the masses doesn't mean I don't read it. I read everything. That's how a person learns, John." He taps his forehead lightly. "Knowledge is power."
"Your kind of knowledge is somethin', all right."
Matt opens his mouth to protest, but John already has him by the elbow and is steering him toward the doorway of the End Zone. Normally the last place he'd want to find himself is in a sports bar surrounded by grunting football fanatics, but his stomach is again growling in protest and the End Zone does make the sweetest suicide ribs known to mankind. So he follows John inside with only a perfunctory grumble. He has to keep up appearances, after all.
* * *
"Not even thinking about it, are ya?"
Matt looks up from his decimated pile of ribs, wipes his fingers on his napkin.
"Your little cluster thing," John clarifies.
Matt blinks. "Huh."
It had seemed so damned important earlier. Had he actually complained when John dragged him off to bed last night? Complained about sharing a bed with John McClane? And he was seriously planning to spend his entire Saturday staring at a computer monitor and tearing his hair out. What was he thinking?
He looks up in time to see John settle back into the chair, smug grin firmly in place.
"Okay, fine," Matt says. "You took my mind off it, opened my eyes to the bigger picture, yadda yadda. Congratulations. What do you want, a reward?"
"Now that's a plan."
When John gets that predatory gaze in his eye, Matt's mouth goes dry and his stomach does a flip-flopping thing that's sort of embarrassing. But they've been together a few months now, and he's learned a few tricks. Two can play at that game. Matt puts down his fork, plants his elbows on the table and leans forward, tries on his most seductive look. "What do you have in mind, detective?"
For a long moment John just returns his stare. Then he also leans forward, cocks his head.
"Well, Matthew," John says, "first I want you down on your knees with your lips wrapped around my cock. Then-"
"Whoa, okay, family restaurant, women and children present!" Matt says. He glances frantically around the room, but aside from a burly guy in plaid giving them the side-eye, it appears that no one else overheard. He glances back to John, eyes wide. "Are you nuts?"
John merely lifts a single brow.
Fine. He should know better than to challenge John McClane, especially in public. Guy has balls bigger than… okay, no, abort, do not need those mental images right now. When they get home, however, he's really looking forward on expanding on John's original idea.
"How fast do you think we can get home?" Matt asks quietly.
"There's this little thing called jogging…" John says as he stands and slaps a few bucks on the table. From his vantage point Matt can see that John is at least mildly interested in claiming his reward. He figures he can work John up to exceedingly interested on the way home - even while jogging. John might have the mad bedroom experience, but Matt can make magic happen with words.
He's just gotta take care of one thing first.
"Hey. Warlock!" he says into the phone. "No time to talk, dude. I'm gonna send you my passwords, I need you to log into my system. … Yeah, my clusters. … I know, that's exactly what I said! A literal… Yeah. Thanks, man."
John's already standing at the open door when he thumbs the phone off and rises from the table.
"C'mon, kid!" John says. "Move it."
Matt smiles as he jogs over to the door, deliberately brushes against John as he steps outside into the sunlight. Yeah, definitely more than mildly interested. And he knows just what to say to get John up to warp speed.
All systems, go.
.
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Characters: John/Matt
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2218
Summary: "Whoa!" Matt pinwheels his arms, tries to get some kind of traction on the slippery hardwood as John hauls him across the room. "We've talked about this, McClane! No manhandling of the boyfriend unless sex is somehow… wait, is sex somehow involved here?"
Notes: Written for smallfandomfest for the prompt "John thinks Matt needs to get out more"
Sorry for another lameass title.
Of Computers and Suicide Ribs
by Severina
John is used to Matt giving Oscar-worthy performances when he's working with his little computer doodads. There are the dramatic sighs of frustration. Theatrically flinging himself back in the chair. Swiping a hand through his mop of hair while staring blankly at the ceiling. The one where Matt throws his arms up in the air and mumbles what may be curses or may be entreaties to the Gods of Cyberspace is John's favourite.
Today he's working on a combo-pack of two and four, with occasional forays into number one. It's amusing for the first hour.
Then John decides to do something about it.
* * *
Matt swipes a hand over his face, checks the last few lines of new code carefully before hitting the button to execute. There's a moment where the computer hums happily, and he allows himself to think that he may have solved the problem. Then the sysfail message pops up again, and he's barely able to stifle a groan.
"You about done Meryl-Streep-ing over here?"
Matt drops his head onto the desk with an audible thump, hears John snort behind him.
"I'll take that as a no," John says dryly.
Matt lifts his head, scans the lines of code scrawling across the screen and does his best to ignore John hovering over his shoulder. He flops back on the chair, chews on his bottom lip as he tries to mentally work through the mess. Counting the time he spent yesterday - before John dragged him protesting off to bed - he calculates he's been going round and round on these fucking errors for a good ten hours. Which is about nine goddamn hours too long.
He sighs, cracks his knuckles and rotates his neck. One more hour. He's giving himself another hour before he has to give in and call the Warlock, give him remote access to the system and let him take a shot at it. He'd admit defeat and do it now, but he's holding out hope that he may be able to crack this thing. Even with the headache that's pounding at his temple and the ache between his shoulder blades.
Besides, he doesn't want to give Warlock the satisfaction of swooping in and saving the day. The bastard will lord that over him for the rest of his natural life.
"What's the problem?" John asks. "Maybe I can help."
"Hah," Matt says without looking away from the screen. "Funny. That's a good one. Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but-"
"I mean it," John says brusquely. Matt finds himself pushed to the side when John leans over his shoulder, taps at the monitor with one blunt finger. "What, so you got a little failure message there? Did you try that control-alt-whatever thing ya taught me?"
Sometimes Matt realizes it's a good thing his parents sent him to that therapist back when he was in high school. He tries to remember that whole count-to-ten, in with the warm fuzzies thing as he takes a deep breath, forces his hands to unclench. "John," he says slowly. "I'm experiencing a series of widespread unrecognizable errors in clusters one and three. Restarting is not going to cut it."
"Huh?"
Matt takes another breath while he tries not to roll his eyes. He can't say that he's completely successful. "My system is subdivided so if there's a failure on one node, it won't affect the other…" Matt glances over his shoulder, trails off at John's blank look. "They're like folders, okay? Called clusters. And they're… not working properly."
"Uh huh."
Matt realizes something then, feels his eyes go wide as he swivels in his chair. "Oh my God, John," he says. "This is a literal clusterfuck."
"Uh huh," John says again after a long moment. Then he nods once, sharply, and clamps a beefy hand down onto Matt's shoulder. "Get moving. We're going out."
Matt blinks. "What? No, I can't… John!"
The fingers twisting in the collar of his T-shirt only dig in a little tighter. He tries to hang on, he really does. But John? Strong. Matt might even give a decidedly unmanly squeak as he's being bodily removed from the chair, but he'd deny that to his last breath.
"Whoa!" Matt pinwheels his arms, tries to get some kind of traction on the slippery hardwood as John hauls him across the room. "We've talked about this, McClane! No manhandling of the boyfriend unless sex is somehow… wait, is sex somehow involved here?"
"Get your shoes on," John says.
"Okay, so clearly no sex," Matt says. "In which case you are plainly violating the-"
"I'll violate ya later," John says shortly. "Shoes."
Matt knows he could dig in his heels and launch a loud and particularly eloquent protest. It's all right there on the tip of his tongue, with special attention paid to John's persistent disregard of his personal space and his freaky obsession with footwear. But somehow he finds himself thinking that some fresh air might be a good idea - if only because it'll get John off his damn back. He ends up shrugging into his sneakers and squaring his shoulders before he goes out the door.
"Jesus, kid, you're not heading out to the firing squad."
Matt squints against the sunlight, wrinkles his nose. "No. You're right. This is more like those sweat boxes that they set out in the middle of the prison yard and then lock the convicts inside with the hundred degree sun beating down while they don't even give them any water-"
"Jesus," John says again. "You're really a piece of work, you know that? Tell ya what. If you start to feel faint, I'll run to the store and get ya one of those Red Bulls ya like so much."
"Yeah, like that wouldn't just make me more thirsty," Matt mutters. He catches the unmistakably un-amused look on John's face, heaves a sigh. The things he puts up with, man. He should get a medal. "Fine. A walk to the corner and back. It'll be good to stretch my legs. But then I've gotta get back to the drive, I've got about a dozen different error messages that I've gotta tackle, McClane, I don't know what the fuck happened but the errors are compounding the longer they stay in the system, I've got to-"
"Yeah, yeah," John agrees. "The system's gonna blow up if you don't fix your doodads right this instant. Walk, kid."
Matt walks. Past the corner, but John's got that don't fuck with me because I am getting my way on this look on his face that Matt recognizes from a few instances on that crazy July 4th weekend (and occasionally from those times in the bedroom when John's got his arms pinned just so and Matt really really really wants to squirm but also really doesn't and his cock is rock hard and leaking and just begging to be touched and boy did it just get hotter out here or what?)
"When's the last time you ate?"
"Huh?" Matt says. He shakes his head, 'cause that'll get rid of the porno playing behind his eyelids. He blinks and tries to concentrate.
"Food," John says. "When was the last time you had some?"
"Oh. I.. don't remember. Yesterday?"
"Huh."
Now that it's been pointed out, Matt can't ignore the hunger pains. As if to highlight the fact, his stomach actually growls. Loudly. And then he remembers that Martelli's is on the next block. He wrinkles his nose, tries to stop thinking about pancakes dripping with butter or fresh crescent rolls or god those raspberry crepes that practically melt in the mouth.
"Hey," he says, trying for a nice, casual tone, "maybe we could stop at Martelli's."
"Nah," John says. "Almost got shut down last week. Health violations."
"No shit?" Matt says. "It was the soup, wasn't it? They were jizzing in the soup! That soup always tastes kind of off, like it's too salty or-"
"They weren't jizzing in the… Christ, Matthew, where do you come up with this shit?"
"It happens!"
John snorts. "Urban legends."
"There are documented reports!" Matt splutters. "I have seen photos, McClane, that would make you vomit if you saw them. Actual spewage, your stomach couldn't handle it. I'm not talking diners, McClane, I'm talking five star restaurants here. But you never hear about those getting shut down, do you? No, because they pay off the inspectors, they pay off the FDA, the DEA-"
"The DEA," John repeats slowly. "What the fuck would the DEA have to do with it?"
"I don't know, okay, why do any of those alphabet agencies get involved in this shit? Because they can. And then you get the mom and pops like Martelli's getting issued citations while the uptown places just throw their money around-"
"Speaking of uptown," John interrupts, "Dave O'Reilly's kid just got a job at one of those joints. Sous chef."
"Sure, just ignore me," Matt mutters. "Bury your head in the sand. No problem."
"Think he said the place is called Bistro 47."
"You mean Bistro 44?" Matt answers distractedly. "Got a good review in the Times."
"You read the restaurant reviews," John says dryly. "Thought the only thing you looked at in the paper was the comics."
"Just because I believe the news is being manipulated for the masses doesn't mean I don't read it. I read everything. That's how a person learns, John." He taps his forehead lightly. "Knowledge is power."
"Your kind of knowledge is somethin', all right."
Matt opens his mouth to protest, but John already has him by the elbow and is steering him toward the doorway of the End Zone. Normally the last place he'd want to find himself is in a sports bar surrounded by grunting football fanatics, but his stomach is again growling in protest and the End Zone does make the sweetest suicide ribs known to mankind. So he follows John inside with only a perfunctory grumble. He has to keep up appearances, after all.
* * *
"Not even thinking about it, are ya?"
Matt looks up from his decimated pile of ribs, wipes his fingers on his napkin.
"Your little cluster thing," John clarifies.
Matt blinks. "Huh."
It had seemed so damned important earlier. Had he actually complained when John dragged him off to bed last night? Complained about sharing a bed with John McClane? And he was seriously planning to spend his entire Saturday staring at a computer monitor and tearing his hair out. What was he thinking?
He looks up in time to see John settle back into the chair, smug grin firmly in place.
"Okay, fine," Matt says. "You took my mind off it, opened my eyes to the bigger picture, yadda yadda. Congratulations. What do you want, a reward?"
"Now that's a plan."
When John gets that predatory gaze in his eye, Matt's mouth goes dry and his stomach does a flip-flopping thing that's sort of embarrassing. But they've been together a few months now, and he's learned a few tricks. Two can play at that game. Matt puts down his fork, plants his elbows on the table and leans forward, tries on his most seductive look. "What do you have in mind, detective?"
For a long moment John just returns his stare. Then he also leans forward, cocks his head.
"Well, Matthew," John says, "first I want you down on your knees with your lips wrapped around my cock. Then-"
"Whoa, okay, family restaurant, women and children present!" Matt says. He glances frantically around the room, but aside from a burly guy in plaid giving them the side-eye, it appears that no one else overheard. He glances back to John, eyes wide. "Are you nuts?"
John merely lifts a single brow.
Fine. He should know better than to challenge John McClane, especially in public. Guy has balls bigger than… okay, no, abort, do not need those mental images right now. When they get home, however, he's really looking forward on expanding on John's original idea.
"How fast do you think we can get home?" Matt asks quietly.
"There's this little thing called jogging…" John says as he stands and slaps a few bucks on the table. From his vantage point Matt can see that John is at least mildly interested in claiming his reward. He figures he can work John up to exceedingly interested on the way home - even while jogging. John might have the mad bedroom experience, but Matt can make magic happen with words.
He's just gotta take care of one thing first.
"Hey. Warlock!" he says into the phone. "No time to talk, dude. I'm gonna send you my passwords, I need you to log into my system. … Yeah, my clusters. … I know, that's exactly what I said! A literal… Yeah. Thanks, man."
John's already standing at the open door when he thumbs the phone off and rises from the table.
"C'mon, kid!" John says. "Move it."
Matt smiles as he jogs over to the door, deliberately brushes against John as he steps outside into the sunlight. Yeah, definitely more than mildly interested. And he knows just what to say to get John up to warp speed.
All systems, go.
.