Archive of Our Own

Matt was in his usual seat, the corner booth with the outlet on the wall, and John realized for the first time that Matt had a "usual" seat.

Matt had been coming to Carmine's for over a year. He'd started some time after he moved to New York - said that D.C. had had too many guys in suits, and Camden was a no-go for the foreseeable future. Matt had moved to a converted loft in Astoria - the fashionable part of Queens - and left a couple of boxes at John's house in the crappy part of Queens. It took him nine subway stops and a train change to get there, but Matt had asked and John said yes and they occasionally repeated what they'd originally said, that it didn't make sense for Matt to pay some jerk huge wads of cash to store things in a storage shed when Matt had nearly nothing left after the fire sale and a studio place with no closets.

It didn't make sense for Matt to go nine subway stops with a train change, and then walk eight blocks, to get to a slightly run-down bar in John's neighborhood that had two pool tables, a draft beer dispenser, and a connection with the burger joint next door that provided hot french fries at nearly any time of the day or night. But Matt did it, quite a bit, until the day that John realized that Matt had a "usual" seat.

And he had a usual seat too - across from Matt.

"Whatcha doin'?" he asked out of pure politeness as he slid into the booth, because they both knew that he didn't care and wouldn't understand the answer.

Out of politeness too, Matt kept it short. "Upgrading Carlos' point of sale software," and left it at that.

John took a pull off his beer bottle, wondered when Matt had become such a regular that he knew, like they all did, that "Carmine's" was owned by a Jamaican-Brooklyn guy named Carlos whose family had also been here damn near since the Ellis Island days but who figured an Italian name was better for business in Queens.

It had been a while ago.

"Sounds like somethin' he should be payin' some guy to do," John observed, watching Matt's blunt fingers travel lightly over the keyboard. For such a skinny guy Matt had surprisingly masculine hands, he thought; wide across the palm, and square-tipped. Could never be mistaken for a woman's hands.

Not that anyone ever would.

"He's paying me." Matt gestured toward the half-eaten french fries, grease spotting the double paper plate underneath them.

John looked thoughtfully at the fries even as he proceeded to start eating them. "Don't you make bigger money than french fries now?"

Matt just looked at him, blinked those big rectangular brown eyes. "Not from Carlos."

John leaned back in the booth, the leather of his jacket creaking.

It made him uncomfortable, the sudden realization that Matt was a part of his bar too. This was his bar. But what was wrong with having Matt in it? Matt had been around for a while. John liked seeing him here every so often -- well, was it almost every week now? It had been quiet when Matt was living in D.C. It had taken John a long time to come down after the fire sale and it hadn't seemed right to have to do it alone. It was almost as if the world had transformed into a place with Matt in it, during all that crap, and then Matt was gone and it was as if the world was trying to pretend none of it had happened.

But it had happened, John knew that. He knew about the crashes and the flames and the dead people. Lots of dead people. It had all happened and John never liked fake normal and when it felt as though the world had rubbed it out, forgotten about it all in favor of the fake normal it was more comfortable with, it made John kind of want to run screaming in the streets.

Then Matt had just shown up one day, asking if he could keep some stuff at John's place since he had the extra rooms and all and that he'd pay rent even as long as it wasn't as much as that jerkoff in Astoria wanted to charge him, four hundred a month, like that wasn't a rate for an apartment, not a storage shed, and he'd followed that up with a bunch of speeches about New York illustrating exactly the sort of evils of capitalism that made people turn socialist, not that he was socialist, and ...John couldn't remember how long ago that had been but it had been a while.

And then last year - it was last year, right? - definitely before Christmas, before it got cold, Matt had asked John to take him to the firing range. And had demonstrated his new silence technique. Not on the gun, on his mouth. Because the kid hadn't said a goddamn thing, just listened while John explained safety, explained the range rules, explained loading, explained ear protection, explained the target system, and explained how to squeeze the trigger, not pull it.

They'd gone a few weekends since then, but not too many. John knew Matt had been back, though, because John himself had been out there practicing - oh, three weeks ago now - and the counter guy had remembered him and told him that his son was getting really good now and he hoped to see them both back again soon.

That had made John wince, though there was no particular reason why, but he'd smiled and nodded and hadn't corrected the guy. It was good, if Matt was getting to be a good shot.

At least, it seemed like it was good. Right?

Matt was stealing his own fries from the opposite side of the plate, as if John had a right to half.

"You don't have to --" but John forgot how the sentence was supposed to end before he got there.

Matt just looked up, quirked a brow under those floppy bangs. His hair was about the same, maybe a little shorter? He still looked like a kid, but John knew now that was at least partly because he worked from home and he liked working around the house in those threadbare jeans and "rock" T-shirts. (John even made finger quotes around "rock" in his head, but only in his head, because he did not feel up to a repeat of the You Have No Taste In Music And I'm Not Kidding argument of '08, not tonight.)

Carlos stopped by with a tall chilly glass of draft beer and took Matt's empty one away.

"Two beers?" John waved a hand. "Two beers is a big night for you. Should you be downing an extra beer while you're ... fiddling around with a man's livelihood?"

Matt looked up, his eyes twinkling as he looked around the edge of the screen at John. "If you only knew what you sounded like sometimes."

Carlos shushed John. "Leave him alone, he's a good man, if he can fix this thing I owe him a lot more than two beers! A thousand bucks it cost me last time this stupid thing broke and the guy was here three times and still it never worked right. Matt says he can fix it, leave him alone." Carlos rested his hand briefly on Matt's shoulder and said it to him. "Good man."

"Oh I know, I'm awesome. I think he's just running low on french fries," Matt pointed to the decimated greasy plate.

"I'ma bring you some more."

"You want some real food? A burger?" Matt asked.

John had the unsettling feeling that Matt was hosting him - in his own place. "Yeah I want a burger, and when did you get to be the king of Carmine's? And I want another bottle too, if you're curious, Carlos. No rush, just when you get a minute."

Carlos nodded before he moved off.

"Two beers, McClane? Big night," Matt mocked him softly as his eyes moved back and forth across the computer screen. Its blue, yellow and red squares reflected slightly off his face, off the whites of his eyes.

"I walk it off by the time I get home," John said mildly.

"So do I. And I got a lot longer walk."

John was about to ask yeah what was up with that, what was up with Matt taking two trains to hang out in his bar all the time, when Matt made a triumphant half-moan, half-squeak. "Ohhhh, yeah. Got it! You cheap piece of crap. How dare they sell you to a decent man trying to make a living."

John didn't examine his own reaction to that curious sound, just stuffed it in the back of his head with... well, with a ton of other stuff that was too dangerous to think about too closely, to be honest. He grinned his half-grin at Matt, who grinned his whole, wide-mouthed, big-hearted grin right back, just as pleased with himself as a five-year-old who'd caught a stray puppy.

"I'm not cheap," John said, trying to make a joke about Matt talking to a computer.

"When I'm talking to you, you'll know it," Matt said, grabbing his fresh beer and taking a long pull even as he rolled his eyes at McClane. "Cheap is the last thing I'd call you."

Yeah, it had been a while, and Matt had --

"You've really settled in, huh?"

Matt leaned back in his seat. "You don't have to sound so thrilled," but his face had genuinely fallen, and John hated himself for a second and he didn't even know what he'd said.

"Sorry. Really. I just -- I wasn't paying attention, you know? One thing leads to another and -- and suddenly you're Carlos' favorite and I wasn't even paying attention. You know?"

Matt's face went blank for a minute -- kind of unnervingly blank, John wasn't used to seeing that outside of the job -- and then he smiled again but it didn't light up his eyes like it had a second ago. "Not trying to cramp your style," he said lightly, but had another drink of his beer.

"It's not like I have any style to cramp," John admitted.

"That's good, so I feel better. Like at least it's not my fault you never bring a date here or anything. Like I'm scaring them off."

John looked at Matt, conceivably the least scary human being on the planet, and laughed. "No, that's totally your fault. You would absolutely scare them off."

Matt laughed too. "I get it. That's okay. I suppose that's better than you never going out on any dates at all."

John's brow furrowed mid-laugh. "I don't go out on dates, kid."

"Well, not here, we've settled that."

"I just --" He just what?

Matt's face went through a series of emotions John couldn't identify - and he was a cop, he was pretty good. "Well that's..."

Matt didn't seem to have a finish for the sentence either.

Carlos stopped by with a new greasy plate, picked up the old one. "Neither of you ever bring dates. You gonna be a couple of sad old men sitting here nursing your beers and bitching at each other about music nobody give a shit about till you so old your dicks fall off."

"Hey!" John objected, but Carlos hadn't stuck around. He'd also left behind John's second beer.

"Jesus," John started to pick at the paper label on his bottle. "He's getting to be a sour old shit."

"He's just cranky 'cause his daughter's dating that douchebag from Montana again and Carlos is pretty sure the guy is soaking her for money and she's asking Carlos for more but he doesn't have any 'cause his son's still got a year of college to go and the kid wants to drop out but Carlos doesn't want him to and he can't convince his daughter to date someone else and give him a break."

John blinked.

"Anything else I've been missing out on?" he asked mildly. "Any tax problems for Robbie at the bar? Alejandro having girl trouble?"

Matt just smiled and shrugged one shoulder as John named the bartender and the dishwasher. "People tell me stuff."

"When did you get nosy?"

"I just... like sitting here. And sometimes people come by and tell me stuff."

Matt had adopted John's own socialization strategy, John realized, the only socialization strategy he had apart from going to the stag parties, divorce parties, and retirement parties of fellow police officers.

"What are you doing, Matt?" John asked softly.

"I told you, I'm fixing Carlos' computer," Matt said, a little testily.

"I mean - learning to shoot, living in Queens, hanging out in my bar - what are you doing?"

Matt squinched up one side of his face like he was trying to decide what to say next, shifted in his seat and then made a little grunt of pain, because the knee, it still froze up sometimes.

At the same time John leaned closer and then made almost the same grunt, the shoulder practically creaking out loud when it shifted position.

Matt tilted his head. "Has it ever occurred to you for a second, McClane, that you and I just --" he spread his fingers as he raised a cupped hand, as if he were letting a bird go "--have a few things in common?"

--

Two weeks later John asks Carlos what's up with the banging downstairs, and Carlos just waves a hand as if to indicate "Go check it out for yourself."

Whatever John expected to see when he went down the narrow raw wood stairs, it wasn't Matt covered in dirt and gunk surrounded by chunks of carpet.

Matt looked over his shoulder where he knelt on the floor and flashed John that megawatt grin. "Hey!"

John stepped carefully through the disaster on the floor. "Hey yourself. Did the, uh, did the computer suddenly need new carpeting or something?"

"I asked Carlos about a place to do some gaming and he said I could use the basement but it's kind of damp down here and I didn't want anyone with a breathing problem getting attacked by mold but Carlos said he hasn't had the money for a while to redo the carpet so I figured how hard could it be?"

"Um; harder than it looks. Find any mold?"

"Yeah, a little, in the corner and over --"

"Matt. Don't you have a breathing problem?"

"Oh. Uh. I forgot?" As if suddenly realizing where he was and what he was doing, Matt looked down at himself covered with dirt and who knew how many mold spores and realized perhaps this was not his wisest plan.

"I'm kickin' Carlos right in the nuts. Come on."

John grabbed Matt's hand and hauled him upright -- that knee was never going to be exactly the same -- and picked up one of the shiny black trash bags Matt had scattered around the place. "Gimme your shirt."

"Uh, what?"

John held out the mouth of the bag. Matt blinked a few times, then shrugged, stripped off his shirt and dropped it in.

John dropped the bag at his feet, then pulled off his leather jacket. It was still cool out but he had a sweatshirt on under it and a t-shirt under that. The jacket was like twenty shades darker than Matt's skin, which practically glowed white in the dim basement lighting. Matt had a weird expression as he took it from John, his fingers closing over the collar a little slowly. Then he just shrugged into it. John thought for a second he was going to leave it like that, and thought about freaking out a little, because Jesus, what Matt looked like with that bare pale chest showing between the open sides of John's worn leather jacket, but then Matt shrugged the sides together and zipped it up.

The jacket didn't hang as loose on Matt as he thought it would. Huh.

And when Matt zipped it up, the look pinged John somehow - the kid was so clearly wearing nothing under that jacket, somehow that was more porno than naked.

No, porno was more naked, John reminded himself firmly before shoving Matt - in his jacket - toward the stairs. "My place," he said gruffly, scooping the black plastic bag up off the floor.

--

After a pause for John to shout at Carlos, they set out on the short walk to John's house. Matt's limping was noticeable. Maybe the kneeling, maybe just the weather.

John made a sucking sound with his teeth, as if he was deciding whether or not to talk. "You're done with the physical therapy, right?"

"Oh yeah." Matt didn't add that he was still going to the gym for a bunch of different reasons.

John nodded. "Look, don't just let it keep hitching. Try to walk smooth like you did before. Slow down. If you get used to hitching it, it keeps doing that. You want all the moving parts working together like they did before."

Matt eyed him speculatively. And slowed down, forcing his leg through the full range of usual motion.

"Smooth," John agreed encouragingly.

Matt barked out a laugh. "Look who's talking."

John nodded. If there was one thing he did know, it was how it worked, putting yourself back together.

--

Matt toed off his sneakers just inside the door. He was familiar with the rituals. John didn't like to have to sweep and mop any more than necessary and kept his shoes by the door.

Several pairs of shoes.

"What, no socks?" asked John as Matt stood there in his living room, with bare feet and in jeans and in John's leather jacket.

"It's April," Matt shrugged.

John held up an index finger. "One second."

He ducked into the bedroom and grabbed a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. He stopped himself, smiled a little smile, and put the T-shirt back and picked out one that said "Creedence Clearwater Revival" across the front, with little silkscreened photos of the band members' heads.

He returned to find Matt sort of shifting from foot to foot, like he couldn't stand still, but still right where John left him.

"Strip, give me your clothes, shower," said John, handing him the pile.

"Not that I wouldn't go gay for you, man, but I thought there would be more foreplay," said Matt, dropping the clean new clothes on the back of John's couch to his left and shrugging out of John's jacket.

"You thought wrong. Stealth gay. All of a sudden, wham."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Matt muttered. He shook out the clean T-shirt, groaned. "Seriously?"

"Shower first. You got all kinda shit in your hair and junk. Give me your clothes, I'll run 'em through the washer."

"I can just take them home - really, you're making too big a fuss about this."

"Yeah? When did you start wheezin' tonight?"

"I'm not -- " Matt stopped, his eyes got wide as he heard for the first time a faint but audible sound as he breathed in and out. "Shit, I didn't even notice."

"You got your inhaler?"

"Yeah, I think, in my bag, it's uh --" Now that he'd noticed that something was wrong with him, Matt's heartrate was speeding up, and so was his breathing - and so was his wheezing.

John grabbed Matt's bag where he'd dropped it by the door, flipped it open and held it out. "Inhaler, strip, shower. One step at a time."

"Yeah yeah. Gotcha."

John didn't watch while Matt did his shaking and inhaling thing. Maybe because he wanted to give Matt a little privacy, maybe because somehow it just seemed an intimate thing and that seemed... wrong to watch.

Matt disappeared into the hall bathroom, then a second later the door reopened and his jeans fell on the floor outside, closed again. John heard the water running.

He picked up the jeans. No underwear - should he have made Matt give them over? No, that was crossing a line.

Of course, so was knowing what kind of underwear the kid wore, but that line was already crossed, so.

--

Should he have given his underwear? Matt studied himself in the mirror, the waistband just visible above the edge of the sink. No, that was a step too far in the parenting direction. Just let's not go there.

He couldn't believe he hadn't even noticed when his airways started closing up. They'd been so much better with the regular exercise his doctor prescribed (well, his doctor had always prescribed it, he'd just never done it before) and it had been weeks, maybe months, since he'd needed the inhaler... He hadn't even thought about the carpet. No, he had, that's why he wanted to pull it up; he hadn't thought about himself.

For a second he felt the panic welling up in him, wondering about black mold spores and where they might be setting up shop in his body right now.

Then he shrugged. One thing he'd learned from John McClane was that life was short and you couldn't stop to worry about every damn thing while you were trying to get something done.

He dropped the underwear before stepping into the shower.

Shit, he thought as the hot water pounded down on him. Of course John didn't have any shampoo.

--

A week later John got a text message. "Carmine's, 7 p.m., bring a change of clothes and your own beer money".

He didn't expect how many other people had gotten that message.

"Jesus, kid, how many nerds are there in this neighborhood?"

"Oh, I got people here from four out of five boroughs, man. Plus Long Island, right, Huey?"

Some kid with a Jew-fro waved his hand but didn't stop working.

They all had breathing masks on, and there were two industrial air filters running top speed so loud that John had to raise his voice a bit to be heard.

So he leaned closer to Matt. "Didn't you listen to a goddamn thing I said?"

Matt's eyes got big. Big brown eyes. "I listened to every word, McClane. Air filters, breathing masks, latex gloves, tools for everybody, and Carlos is paying a guy to do the floor cleanup and sealing once we're done here, I wasn't going to try to do that myself."

No, Matt had been going to try to do that himself - he had the bottles of stuff stacked up right there in the back - but John had read him the riot act on that shit last week, how it was for professionals and not little guys with asthma inhalers.

"I told you this sorta shit wasn't for little guys with asthma inhalers," John pointed out.

"Yeah, I know, but there's always a line, right, between corporate misinformation and actual information, you know? I did my research, and yeah, the chemicals might not be for me and I'm leaving that for Carlos' professional though I'm not sure anybody should be breathing that crap, I even checked in with my doctor like you said." Matt rubbed one filthy hand along one temple, leaving a smudge. "And I know you don't mean me when you make those cracks about little guys, 'cause, dude. I'm five nine, you know."

John did mean him, because in his head Matt was a little guy, someone who fit under his armpit while being dragged across a floor and shot at, someone who... wasn't ready to fight back with his fists.

Well, he looked readier now, with that "DirtyPhonics" t-shirt pulling across his chest, one hand grasping a crowbar and the muscles in his forearms cording up as he twisted the bar to avoid hitting himself in the face as he wiped one sweating temple again with the back of his hand. "Greg, you should take out those full bags, get us some fresh ones."

"Lemme try again. What the fuck are you doing?"

"You said I couldn't do it by myself. So I got help. These guys are all interested in setting up a permanent gaming night, they need a place too. Nerds don't spend enough on beer to make bars give a shit, it turns out. You said I needed to wear a mask, I got my mask." He pointed to it temporarily resting against his throat. "I should be wearing it now, so I'm gonna stop talking, okay?"

"You never listen to a goddamn word I say." John could feel the vein in his forehead popping out.

Matt's eyes got even bigger and browner. "McClane. As I just so carefully demonstrated, I listen to every single fucking word you say. Take your Holly crap or your kid crap and stick it... somewhere deep because maybe that's them. Try to remember I'm me."

Deflated, John watched Matt put his mask on and go back to work.

He knew the kid was right but admitting anything in that category had never been his strong suit.

Sighing, he stripped off his t-shirt and shoved it in the paper bag he'd brought, then tossed the paper bag back up the stairs.

"Carlos, watch that for me, I'm gonna rip you a new one anyways when I get up there," he shouted.

Several of the kids - shit, they were all kids - looked a bit bug-eyed at McClane as his shoulder and arm muscles bulged and he pulled on the Avenue Q t-shirt he'd brought with him.

It fit him too tight, he thought maybe at one point it had belonged to one of Lucy's boyfriends - he was sure she hadn't bought it for him personally, but she'd left it at his house for some reason at one point and he sure did consider it disposable.

He picked up a hammer and walked toward the wall that still needed to be started.

"Ah ah," he heard Matt's voice admonishing him before he took a step. He looked over his shoulder.

"Masks for everyone," said Matt, holding out the white thing dangling by its elastic.

--

When they all left John felt like something was missing. Maybe the part where he looked after Matt.

Matt didn't need looking after. He had it all under control this time: bags for everyone's change of clothes, and free fries for everyone courtesy of Carlos.

He also had a shopping cart that he had clearly liberated from somewhere. John ignored that.

"I'm taking all this stuff to the laundromat down the block tomorrow and you'll all get your clothes back first game night," Matt half-shouted over the heaving horde of bearded baby men scorfing down french fries.

John just shook his head. He asked softly, "What about me, when do I get my dirty clothes back?"

Matt opened his mouth and then closed it, seem to have to think for a while. John could not realize what he sounded like when he said shit like that. "You'll get them back when I feel like giving them back," Matt said primly. "Anyway," he added, dropping the joky tone, "I owe you a set of washed clothes, you washed mine."

"Yeah," John said, his voice so quiet it was almost husky, but though it sounded like he had more to say, he stopped there.

---

John was so used to the sound of sirens he didn't even hear them any more. He also ignored the flashing red lights as he stood on his sidewalk in fluffy bunny slippers, sweatpants and a bathrobe and stared at where the roof of his neighbor's house used to be.

One thing he couldn't ignore was the sound of Matt getting in trouble. The raised voices penetrated his awareness even from a third of the way down the block. He looked around.

Yeah, there, other side of the police line and arguing a blue streak to get through.

John didn't have a badge to flash but most of the cops and firefighters in the city knew him. Hell, maybe most on the eastern seaboard. "He's okay, let him through."

Matt rushed up to him talking a mile a minute and suddenly displaying a massive lack of respect for personal space. "Holy shit, are you okay?" He touched John's arm, his side, the back of his neck, his thigh for crying out loud. He looked jumpy enough to climb John like a tree.

"I'm fine," John said in his best soothing voice. Which was pretty damn soothing; Matt's twitching level turned down considerably. "Maggie's house next door lost the roof. Can you believe this shit? A tornado touches down in fucking Queens and heads straight for my house."

"That is some next-level McClane bad luck," Matt agreed, his eyes still shooting everywhere to take in all of John. "And yet, you know, not, because check it out, your house is fine."

"'Cept for no power and I think my basement's fucking flooded," John said without a trace of bitterness. Because he had to admit: it was a new feeling, having disaster pass by for once. It felt kinda light. Nice.

"Well, that's going to play havoc with the Barbie collection you kept down there. Like you have anything worth owning in your basement."

"I had a washing machine." John looked a little bemusedly at his own outfit. "Some clothes."

"Quit whining. My apartment got blown up in a firefight. You were there, you remember. Talk about a shitstorm." Matt raised his voice a little to get the attention of a firefighter. "Hey, it is okay for him to go inside and get some clothes?"

The firefighter pointed his head at Maggie's house, shook his head no. Matt pointed at John's little row house, the next one next door. The firefighter made the OK sign with his hand.

"Okay, so let's go pack you a quick bag." Matt put a hand at the small of John's back; John could feel it, warm, through the bathrobe. He started to steer John towards the stoop.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Do you want to stay here? With no power and radioactive guppies from the Hudson coming up through your basement? No you do not. Grab enough clothes for a week, who knows how long it'll take to get a basement cleaner in here with everyone calling them right now."

Dazed, John suddenly realized, as Matt stood next to him tossing clothes into a duffle bag in his (dark, no electricity) bedroom, "How did you get here so quick? Emergency services didn't even get here till the wind died down, and that wasn't for like forty minutes after the twister came by at least. And then you got here right after."

"I was already in the subway by then. You got a toothbrush at my place? No, of course you don't."

Of course he didn't. It wasn't like he made a habit of staying at Matt's place. "What the hell were you doing in the subway during a tornado?"

"Started here once the sky went green. I've seen the YouTube videos, I know what that means."

"Are you serious?"

John grabbed Matt's wrist, stopping the packing action. Matt looked up at him with those big brown eyes.

"You went and got on the subway during a tornado?"

"Best idea ever," Matt said unabashedly. "Underground, man. Where they tell you to go if there's a tornado." He tossed a few pairs of balled up socks in the duffle bag. "You need gym clothes, stuff like that?"

"We can grab my gym bag on the way out," John said, feeling like he was being -- successfully -- railroaded.

He stripped off the bathrobe and threw it on the bed, his bare torso twisting with the motion.

Matt's eyes went to a long red mark on his upper back. "Fucking hell, fuck, you did get hurt, let's get the medic," -- raising his voice, "--medic! In here!"

"Nah, nah, it's fine. Got that at work last week."

Matt froze in place. "What?"

John flexed the shoulder, winced. "Yeah, some nutball with a broom went after me while I was breakin' up a fight."

If he'd thought Matt's eyes were big before, it was nothing compared to their saucer size now. "What?? I thought you were a detective. I thought breaking up street fights was for ... beat cops."

"Stuff happens, kid. This wasn't a street fight anyway, it was at the courthouse, and -- Kid, you okay?"

Matt's face had gone white as a sheet. He looked like he might fall down. John had seen Matt freaked out before and this was freaking-out Matt.

Well, at least they had time for the freak-out now.

"Sit down before you fall down." He steered Matt to sit on the edge of the bed.

"I'm okay," Matt said, waving a dismissive hand, but he did sit, one hand still gripping John's duffle bag and letting it dangle between his knees. "Sorry, just a lot of, you know, adrenalin up and then down and then up again. Thank God I'm too young for a heart attack." He looked up through the fringe of his hair. He needed a haircut, thought John with a burst of something like tenderness. "I'm too young for a heart attack, right?"

"You're nearly too old for the ass-kicking you should get for going outside with a tornado reported," John told him, grabbing the duffle and zipping it closed.

"Yeah, I gotcha, but, um? If you could just do me a favor? Would you, like, tell me when someone breaks your shoulderblade and nearly takes your head off with a broom handle? I just want to know, you know, for my own edification. It's not like I don't know it's gonna happen, we both know you're... " Their eyes met. "--That guy. I'd just like to know about it when it happens and not when you let's say collapse from a punctured lung the next day at Carmine's or something."

"I don't have a punctured lung. Or broken anything." John stretched again and winced a little as he did so, but really it was going to heal fine. It was already stinging, which meant blood was back in the tissues. The bruising must be spectacular. He was glad he couldn't see it.

He wished Matt couldn't see it either.

"Come on," he said, but Matt waved a hand to indicate he was still busy sitting on the bed.

"Thinking about hyperventilating. Just give me a second. Would you tell me? Could you do that please?"

"The roof next door gets ripped right off and you're worried about --"

If Matt had insisted or ordered, like Holly always used to do, John would have dug in his heels. But maybe he was older and wiser now. Or maybe it was just that Matt was nothing like Holly.

Nothing like Holly, he told himself firmly.

Matt hadn't insisted or ordered. Matt had asked. Practically begged.

John said, "Yeah, kid, I'll text you or something."

"Any injuries?" Matt's hands were waving now in what John figured was some sort of questioning wave.

"You want a message every time I stub my fucking toe?" John grumbled ungraciously. He was being cooperative here.

"That is just -- Sure, that would be fine with me. If you want a threshold, let's say any wound bigger than an inch in length or diameter, or which requires stitches -- OF ANY SORT --" he raised his voice to say when John tried to cut him off, " -- or will take longer than three days to heal. That about cover it?"

"You're a pain in the ass," John mumbled because he had no good comeback for that, and stomped out, still shirtless and wearing sweatpants and bunny slippers.

"You cannot possibly realize the things you say," Matt muttered and shook his head, hair flopping around the edges of his face, as he levered himself slowly off the bed, looking and feeling way more than twice his age.

--

By the time they got to Matt's place John was ready to admit he was tired. It did wear one out, having a tornado miss you by a few feet.

And he was glad not to be sitting in the dark alone.

"Let's make up the bed and you can crash whenever you want."

The studio didn't have a ton of space but it had big windows and good light - "Way too cold in the winter," said Matt, as if he didn't want to admit the place was pretty - and a big bed. The two of them could have easily fit in that bed, John very much did not say.

Matt of course did not suggest it. He pulled out from underneath the bed something that slid and unfolded and then boom, it was its own double-sized bed - a double! - with a pretty decent mattress on it.

But Matt just rubbed his hands together like a crazed Christmas elf and pulled another big bag out of a closet; then there was a foam mattress topper on the bed. Another bag, and a wool topper on that.

"Voila!" said Matt, looking pretty damn pleased with himself as he threw a fitted sheet over his concoction.

"Probably more comfortable than mine back home," John admitted, tucking in his side of the sheet.

He was only maybe eight feet from where Matt was sleeping. He tried to think back to when they'd been in the same hospital room together, to remember if Matt snored.

Nothing was coming to him. They'd both been so hopped up on painkillers it would have been tough to remember anything accurately.

John stripped to his T-shirt and boxers and fell face down on the bed before Matt could commit any further acts of bedmaking.

Matt just chuckled and left him there.

John had been mostly being silly but once he was there, in the sinfully soft and warm bed, he didn't feel any major inclination to move.

He just lay there, not quite dozing, not needing to say anything to anyone and Matt moving around the place quietly.

At one point Matt laid his hand on John's ankle, just briefly, as if confirming John's presence, his whole-bodied existence, in his apartment; then he tossed some sort of a blanket over John's reclining body and stepped away.

The warm imprint of Matt's fingers against the inside of his ankle stayed with John long after Matt had gone and John had fallen asleep. He didn't remember it, but he dreamed about the imprint of Matt's fingers on that skin.

--

Three days later John found himself putting away laundry like a housewife. He could've just put the clean clothes on Matt's bed, but in a studio apartment everything was next to everything else, and he figured he might as well just put them in the bureau drawer. Matt had accumulated a lot of stuff since his apartment had gotten blown up -- electronics, more different electronics, and action figures -- but there were not a ton of clothes.

John had the day off and had already done his morning run. Which was why he'd done laundry. No reason to have his running clothes stinking up the joint longer than necessary.

He'd been thinking during his run, about adding a security system to the apartment; he still thought the neighborhood looked a little sketchy. There were also a few too many isolated underpasses. He was wondering whether or not to get Matt some sort of panic button for walking from the subway. And if so, who should it ring?

He tossed the folded shirts on top of the bureau, like a waiter serving a pizza one-handed. Sure enough the second drawer was nearly empty. John pulled it wide open to lay the shirts in flat -- and saw the gold card tucked behind one edge of the few remaining shirts in there, against the back of the drawer.

As soon as he saw it, he felt his stomach sink.

He took it out and read it. Maybe he shouldn't have, but he was a cop. MATTHEW FARRELL it read in big block caps.

For a wild second John had the urge to toss the room, see what else was lurking in there that he hadn't suspected.

That would be going a good bit too far, he decided.

Hell, he already wished he hadn't even started to put the clothes away.

--

Since Matt worked from home, fortunately John didn't have long to wait with the sick feeling in his gut.

Also, though he knew how much he'd hated it when Holly jumped on him with something accusatory the second he got home, he couldn't think of a better way to deal with it.

The parallels were not lost on him.

He didn't feel too good about thinking about that, either.

Matt stopped just inside the door as soon as he saw John's face.

"What is it, what happened," Matt said immediately, eyes darting all over John first, then all over the apartment, as if looking for the fire.

John just held up the card.

Matt's shoulders visibly sagged with relief. "John, a credit card is not a reason for that face. I swear to you."

"Where did it come from, Matt?" John said in a soft voice.

"It came from American Express, John," Matt said, matching John's sentence and starting to look puzzled. "You have a problem with my credit card? Is this going to get weirder? Do I have time to take off my shoes?"

John let him shed the shoes and his stuff and sit at the other end of the couch before holding up the card again.

Matt's head cocked to the side a little. "I think I should be pissed. Shouldn't I be pissed? Why are you going through my stuff? And why do you have my credit card?"

"It's got your name on it."

John just continued to sit there wearing his "this is serious" cop face. Inside he still felt a little sick to his stomach. How much trouble was Matt in? What all had he done?

"McClane, you know, it's not a communist manifesto. In fact it's the opposite. It is a capitalist manifesto. You fill in a form, and if you are capitalist enough, they send you one of those things."

"This is a gold card, Matt. How did you get it?"

A series of emotions finally played across Matt's face - confusion, disbelief, a tiny flash of amusement, and then hurt. "Ohhhhhh -- you think I stole it. You think I hacked myself a gold card. Is that it?"

"Is that it?"

Matt just blinked.

"Who do you even think I am?" Matt asked himself under his breath.

John just sat there.

"Wow. You really think I am a criminal. That kind of criminal. You don't - well, we already knew you don't really know me at all, didn't we."

His face, young, open, stared into John's for a minute.

John didn't move.

Something crumpled a little bit in Matt's face, but then he planted his hands on his knees and pushed himself upright.

"All right, Mr. Police Man. Give me a second."

He walked over to his always-on computer, tatted on the keyboard for a few seconds. "Oh, come on over, this is for your benefit," he said in a voice John didn't really recognize.

John stood, and took the few steps over to stand behind Matt's shoulder.

"Paying attention?" Matt was logged in to a bank, the one John himself used, and another website for a company John knew handled investments; he saw their commercials on TV all the time.

Matt did something to make the screen magnify. "See this number? This is my current bank balance. In this account, anyway, which is my primary account. This number? Is my current total on investments. That does not include my 401k balance or Roth IRA accounts."

For the first time John didn't feel sick; he felt confused, and a little worried. What was going on? He knew Matt could fake websites, but what would be the point of faking all this?

Matt was looking back over his shoulder at John's face. He turned back to the screen. There was a weird little waver in his voice now. "So what you're looking at is, I took a stake I made with a freelance job in college and put it into a dot com at just the right time, and then took it out at just the right time - turns out it can be useful to just go with your gut when people annoy you enough. And because numbers are one thing I grasp, I sorted it into the variety of investments you see here for my future benefit."

He finally turned in his chair. John thought he might have seen Matt dash something away from the corner of one eye. Matt said, "Can I have my gold card, please?"

John handed it over.

Matt turned back toward the screen, slid open a desk drawer and tucked the card inside. "Wow, you must think a ton of me," Matt muttered and John could only have described his tone as bitter.

"I'm sorry," John rasped.

Now it was Matt's turn to stay silent.

John knew he was going to have to come up with better words, more words, but nothing was coming to him. "It's just that I don't think of you as..."

When he trailed away and couldn't think of what to say, Matt filled in for him, still without looking at him. "Solvent? Competent? At least vaguely ethical?"

"Matt." John laid his hand on Matt's shoulder. He could feel Matt freeze. "I don't know a lot of guys in the computer business. I... you don't live... like you could afford to live."

"I paid five hundred bucks for the action figure you broke in the first five minutes you knew me. I spend my money on what I want to spend my money on." When the silence stretched Matt waved a hand at the screen and said, "Besides, this isn't that much money."

It's more than anyone else I know has, John wanted to say, but didn't. "How much do you make a year?"

That made Matt spin around in his chair. Now his eyes, which were suspiciously damp, narrowed.

"That is not the kind of question you ask a random friend," he said, working his way toward pissed.

"You're not a random friend," John pointed out.

That deflated Matt a little. John was glad he'd said the first thing that occurred to him.

"I make a lot, John. I make six figures. Cyber security did not get less hot after the fire sale. It's kind of a recession-proof job these days. And I'm good at what I do."

John was just having a hard time wrapping his head around it. He'd seen a lot of stuff in his days as a cop; this was just really beyond his experience. Hell, Matt was barely thirty. "How old are you?"

"I'm thirty one next month." Matt ran his hands through his hair, scratched his scalp a little, sighed and let his shoulders slump. He looked back at the screen. "Life doesn't always go in order."

John wasn't sure what that meant. He was still wrapping his head around things.

He looked around the apartment. Nothing in it seemed fancy; he'd helped Matt bring up that table, he knew for a fact that Matt had bought it off a guy on the sidewalk when he'd moved in.

He looked back at Matt.

Still the same Matt.

John looked around again. Noticed for the first time the elegant steel construction on the emergency bed, and wondered for the first time about the mattress toppers Matt had produced.

He wanted to ask Matt why he'd bought that stuff. But he already knew the answer. Matt had bought it for him.

He wanted to ask what it had cost. He thought he better not ask that. He suddenly did not want to know.

"So," he said, trying to sound as normal as possible, "do I take you out to lunch because I'm an asshole or do you take me out to lunch because you're rich?"

And Hallelujah, that at least made a wavery semblance of Matt's smile come and go. Too quick, but it was there. "I'm gonna go with the you're an asshole part, but I'll buy."

John couldn't argue with that. Literally couldn't. He couldn't think of another thing to say.

Matt sighed. "Look, I know when you met me you thought I was some criminal hacker type. You thought you were bringing me in for questioning. You freaked me out and I tried to run and I told you I was on a cop list somewhere. You must have thought I was some badass criminal, huh?" Matt was looking away, not at John, and his eyes were still blinking suspiciously fast. "Like badass criminals try to get out the window on you all the time. Well, I guess they probably do. Anyway, the record was from the computer equivalent of a parking ticket -- okay, maybe not a parking ticket but a person can make a bad decision here and there -- and I was just freaked out 'cause I was pretty convinced you weren't a cop. I spent a little too much time on the conspiracy websites back then. Not so much since, you know, one of those crazy fuckers made a lot of it come true."

John wanted to find a better way to apologize, but he was still figuring his own brain out. One thing was for sure: Matt really didn't need his help.

And that did not feel good.

Matt added, "The hell of it was -- well, one hell, 'cause there was plenty to go around -- but the hell of it was, what I did for Mai -- for Gabriel? Completely legal. They paid me to work, I did the work and delivered it, they paid me. Nothing illegal about an algorithm - they didn't even export it. No legal issues about what I did at all. Till they tried to kill me. Which I personally think of as more than a legal issue."

It was more than a legal issue, John wanted to say. But he knew the expression on Matt's face. Matt was back there, watching his life go up in smoke, tasting the wall plaster and gunpowder.

"You don't owe me any explanations," John said, putting out his hand and helping Matt up out of the chair. That he could still do. Matt's gamy knee still stiffened up on him sometimes. John could at least give him a hand.

"Well." Matt just looked around at all his computer equipment a little forlornly. "I guess if I realized you thought I was an out and out criminal it would explain some things."

"What things?" John asked but Matt just shook his head.

"You promised me lunch, Detective Briscoe," Matt mumbled, hair falling in to his eyes as he disappeared into the bathroom.

John would buy him lunch. And then go home. The basement was getting cleaned tomorrow. He could stop screwing up Matt's life now.

--

After a week of no Matt in his life, John was bored.

Then he was worried.

So bored and worried that he talked to Carlos.

"Seen Matt?" he asked in his most suave investigatory manner as he slid into his usual seat and once again, there was nobody on the other side of the booth.

Carlos looked down at him kind of pityingly. "Yeah, man. He was in here yesterday. Fixing up the downstairs. Gonna have a game tournament of some kind on Saturday."

Was in here yesterday. When John was at work.

Matt knew his schedule well enough to know when to "turn up"; he shouldn't have been surprised when Matt knew it well enough to not turn up.

John nodded. Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand he asked, "Whatcha talk about?"

"Can he put holes in the wall. I told him no. Made him buy that sticky stuff if he wants to hang anything up down there. Also, where are the good gay bars around here."

"WHAT??"

Carlos looked, if anything, more pitying. "Bars for guys. I gave him a couple'a recommendations."

John was doing that rolling-eyed, you-have-got-to-be-nuts look. "Why the hell did he ask you where to find a gay bar?"

Carlos spread his arms wide. "I run a bar, man! In Queens! Yes, I know who my competitors are!"

"What places did you tell him?" Suddenly a pounding tension headache burst out in John's skull.

Carlos shook his head, dreads bouncing along his back, and laid his hand on John's shoulder, squeezed. "Don't you already got a lotta 'pologizin' to do to that boy? You oughta work that through before doin' somethin' else you gotta 'pologize for."

No, screwing up one thing at a time had never been John's long suit. Screwing up everything, that was his chief skill.

"What places," he asked again, not even pretending that he didn't have a pounding headache.

--

The headache did not get better inside the bar.

John had also pulled the asshole move of flashing his badge to get in and look around. He wasn't staying; he wasn't paying a cover.

Neither of them were staying.

He hoped to Jesus, Mary and Joseph that this was the last place. He'd already been through one and the music hadn't been any better.

The shirtless guys dancing with glitter all over their torsos? John didn't even bat an eye. He was a New York cop. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. It was Matt he was looking for.

Thank God, there he was. In a booth sitting way too close to some guy wearing a collared polo shirt with the edges of the sleeves gripping his large and flexed biceps. John sighed. He hoped he wasn't about to get in a bar fight.

"Hey, kid," he said, sauntering up to the side of the table. Never look like you don't belong, never look like you don't own the place.

It was loud in there -- some sort of horrible disco music he would have bet money the kid would have set fire to his hair rather than listen to, before he saw him inside this very bar -- but when Matt looked up and saw him there, Matt's shoulders sagged and the animation went out of his always very animated face.

It felt like a punch right to the gut.

"Hey, John," Matt said with a fake smile and a nod, then turned back to his date.

"Can we talk for a minute?" John managed to get his I'm a cop and I have questions for you tone into it, partly to get Matt's attention and partly to be heard over the noise.

Maybe it wasn't such a good tone to use in non-cop situations, as the look Matt gave him the second time he looked up was one John was very familiar with. It was what-are-you-doing-here, it was I-don't-want-to-talk-to-you, it was my-life-is-not-yours-to-participate-in, and John wondered with a self-hating vicious bitterness if Matt had actually picked that up from Lucy or if he'd developed it all on his own.

"I'll call you tomorrow," Matt said, putting a little warning into his eyes, and then gave the fake smile another try, and again turned back to his date.

The guy was good looking, with a longish face and a clear straight line to his jaw; maybe fortyish, going by the crinkles in the corners of his eyes and the gray scattered through his nearly buzz-cut hair. White guy but with a tan, sunburn scars on the tops of his ears, no marks from rings, calluses, third fingernail on his right hand half torn off and healing up, maybe three, four days old. Automatically John cataloged his distinguishing features as if he'd have to put an APB out on the guy.

Ten years younger than John.

But ten years too old for Matt.

Especially Matt like he was looking tonight, because Matt was wearing a deep blue shirt that made the skin of his neck practically glow where it showed at the open collar, his hair was really brushed and shiny, sliding over itself a little when Matt moved, and he'd shaved so all the little stray hairs that showed up and proved how Matt couldn't grow a beard if he'd wanted to were gone and Matt looked even more boyish than usual.

Thirty one, half a million dollars in the bank, and looking like that. Matt was a prime catch at the meat market and Flexed Biceps looked like he was ready to reel him in.

John ignored the biceps. In his head something said in Matt's voice, "Bitch, please."

But there was the real Matt, giving him the brush-off.

"How 'bout now instead," John said in his fake-pleasant voice he'd developed on the job.

Matt sighed, his eyelids drooping and opening slowly as he looked up at John. Who was trying to stay relaxed but was clearly balancing on the balls of his feet and ready for anything, like a cocked gun.

"Gimme a minute," he said to the guy next to him.

Flexed Biceps looked dubious. "You don't have to do a goddamn thing, Matt. Want me to call security?"

Matt gave a mirthless little laugh. "Oh hell no."

He slid out of the booth and walked a few paces away with John. His face said he had no intention of going any farther than halfway between his date and the dance floor.

If that guy was indeed a date.

"Is he a pick-up?" John asked immediately.

"Wow, this just gets better and better. John, go home."

"I want you to come too."

"I'm busy!"

"Matthew, I am not going to do this here," John said evenly in a tone that shouldn't have cut through the music but somehow did. "And you don't want me to do this here."

"Do what?"

John just stared at him.

Matt clasped his hands together in front of him. "McClane, I have had a shitty week. Some would say a shitty year. Maybe even a shitty life, I don't know, I'm losing track. Do we really have to do this now? Can't I have a few beers with a guy I like and learn how to dance and maybe get laid and have a life of my own for, like, four hours?"

John's eyes narrowed to slits and his head turned slowly back toward Flexed Biceps where he sat in the booth watching them openly. "What're you gonna do with that guy for four hours?"

"Oh Jesus fucking Christ." Matt threw his hands in the air and stomped back to the booth.

John stayed two steps behind.

"Michael, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to ask for a rain check."

Michael came out of the booth and John realized that the biceps weren't flexed, they just looked like that -- at least if the strain of his khaki pants over his muscled thighs was anything to go by. Flexed Biceps could also look John straight in the eye. "Matt, you don't have to go anywhere with this guy."

"No, I don't have to, but I'm going to, because it's the easiest thing to do in a lot of ways I can't even explain and though I'd rather stay with you and I am screwing up this date royally already, trust me, it's one of many ways I could have screwed up this date and in some ways this is better than some of the alternatives."

Michael smiled down at the way Matt's speech rattled on and John would have given him points for at least appreciating the miracle flood of words that was Matt Farrell but then Matt leaned in and kissed Michael on his cheek and gave him a sparkling-eyed look that ruined any chance of John ever giving Michael points for anything. Ever.

The corners of Michael's eyes stayed crinkled as he looked at Matt. "Text me as soon as you get home. Actually, you know what? Text me in twenty minutes." Michael looked up and down John's frame appraisingly and the crinkles disappeared. "And then the hour after that too. In fact, don't text, call. I want to hear your voice."

John's eyes narrowed but Matt just laughed. He patted Michael's chest with one hand but also said, "Okay, I will."

Then he turned and walked out, John following two steps behind.

Before they crossed the crush of the dance floor Matt turned around, waved to where Michael still stood. "Sorry!" he mouthed before they shoved through the crowd and then Michael was lost behind them.

Outside it was cooler than it had been during the day, late summer evening air making it possible for the dance party to spill out over the sidewalk.

Matt didn't look festive any more.

He just shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged.

Two blocks later he finally said "Subway or just walk it?"

"I'm good to walk."

"Why did you do that? Goddammit, McClane, that is a really nice guy and I have been looking forward to this date all week and I'm only human too, you know? I need to get laid. I have civil rights. Even ex-cons have civil rights, though I am not one, though I guess this is just more of your charming cop habits, right? Treating everyone as if they have to do whatever you say all the time."

Matt snapped his head back, flinging hair out of one eye to glare at John. "I've never been a big fan of abuse of civil authority."

John was having his own hard time keeping up. His stomach had done something hard and painful when Matt had said he needed to get laid and he was trying to figure out what, if anything, he could say here, and feeling the gut-clenching awfulness of a fight with someone he cared about that was all too familiar and trying to push through it without just rehearsing a thousand fights he'd already had with everyone else in his life.

Matt didn't wait. "I can't believe it, I can't fucking believe everything was just the way Lucy said."

"What did Lucy say?"

Matt didn't even appear to have heard him but was already on a roll. "He's unavailable to everyone, he's not gonna be there for you, Matt, he isn't going to trust you and he's gonna make you feel like you disappoint him in a million ways but he is not gonna be there for you, and just when you feel like you have a chance to feel happy, like about anything, he's gonna show up and stick his foot in whatever connections you make to anyone else and screw them up because he is deeply paranoid and also possessive but completely fucked up."

John didn't have too much trouble figuring out that he himself was the "he" they were talking about. It did not make him feel better to know that his baby girl thought that way about him. It also did not make him feel better how close she was, apparently, to being right.

"I'm not trying to ruin your life," he tried out.

"Maybe not but you're managing it."

That was enough to get John to shut up the rest of the way home.

--

They walked all the way to the train transfer point, and that was how John figured out that Matt was not coming home with John. Matt was going to his own place.

That was okay with John. He walked with Matt through the sketchy underpasses and he didn't even pretend not to listen when Matt called Michael with a progress update on the trip.

"I'm surprised he could even hear his phone over that noise," John observed blandly as he watched Matt let himself into his building.

Matt glared. "Subtle. He's not still at the bar picking up someone else. He was not a pick-up anyway. He was a date. As in, we made a date to go out."

"Why go out to a gay bar, then? You hate that kinda music."

"He's had it with people who can't be out. I figured picking a super-gay place and then going out to dinner or something from there would give him the memo. It doesn't frighten me."

Matt trudged slowly up the flight of stairs to his apartment, taking the stairs one at a time with his good leg. Goddammit. John should have realized his bad leg would get tired with all the walking.

"Why didn't you take the subway sooner if your leg was bothering you?" John scolded as he followed Matt into the apartment.

Matt tossed his keys on the table, sighed, and dug the heels of his hands into his own eyesockets like maybe if he pressed on his brain long enough his life would sort itself out. "I have to exercise it. I'm not gonna get anything else done tonight. Plus, I wanted time to breathe. Outside air, not stuffed in a subway car. Because I did not want to get here and just start screaming at you. Screaming at you is not something I want."

"Well, I'm on board with that." John watched him limp across the studio to the fridge, take out a cold Red Bull. "You gonna do that stuff at this time of night?"

Matt stared at him. "Unbefuckinglievable." But he put the Red Bull back and took out a 7-Up. Shook his head while slowly looking John up and down. "Okay," he said unenthusiastically. "You said 'we're not going to do this here'. What is this, and can you do it please and get the fuck out."

"Why didn't you tell me you were gay?"

Matt's eyes got huge, really huge, in his pale face that was suddenly even paler, then turning red. From bottom to top. With rage.

"You asswipe fascist overbearing Neanderthal motherfucker. If there was one thing I know for a fact you did not want to hear me say out loud, that was probably it."

He looked like he was going to throw his soda at John, then thought better of it.

He wasn't done talking yet though. "If I thought for one second I could land any kind of a punch on you I would give my last breath trying, I swear to FUCKING God."

There was more swearing, and swinging his arms around as if he really did want to punch something, and then he had to wipe up the soda that he spilled, and John just let him go on till he seemed to wind down a little. Matt was still red but he wasn't looking at John any more like he was about to kick him in the shins, and that had to be an improvement.

"I don't do labels!" he shouted from where he was rinsing out the towel at the sink after wiping up the 7-Up. "I don't give a single fuck about any of that shit! I am who I am and who I fuck is my business and nobody's business but mine till the government makes sex illegal too and starts actually watching the spy footage they make of me through every computer camera they can get their hands on!"

"You told that guy you were gay." John couldn't bring himself to say the name and he couldn't make himself stop either though he did have an inkling, somewhere in his forward cerebellum, that he was not making things better with Matt and that if the last week without Matt was lonely the years ahead were not looking good right now and he should probably just shut up. But he couldn't.

"He needed to hear it! He's been screwed up enough by guys who can't admit it!"

"And you?"

"Oddly enough, I appear to have an extremely high tolerance for a lot of different types of bullshit!"

"Matty."

John had never before used a nickname, certainly not that one. Matt actually took kind of a deep breath and slowed down for a second.

He met John's eyes.

He hadn't been paying attention. John, standing immobile in the middle of his apartment and doing nothing, looked... awful.

"I can't do that."

Matt didn't ask what John couldn't do. He would never do that to John. That was why they were having this conversation in the first place.

He sighed, blowing the hair out of his eyes, and took a step back. "I didn't ask you to. I would never ask you to."

"But you're..."

Matt suddenly reached the end of his vagueness rope. He knew it would run out with John McClane sooner or later.

"I'm in love with you, John, that's all."

And that face right there, the stricken look and John's eyes, disbelieving, horrified, that was exactly the look he'd expected and exactly why he had not wanted to have this conversation.

"Please do not make it into a big deal." Matt looked down at himself as if suddenly realizing he were still in his date clothes, then looked as if he wanted to strip and put a comfortable t-shirt on, then realized that McClane was still in the middle of the room. He groaned. "Let's pretend I didn't say it, everything can go back to normal, c'mon."

"It is a big deal." John's voice was still husky. "It should be a big deal."

"It is what it is." Matt shrugged. And his face looked so not-young, so hopeless, that John felt something twisting inside him - this time less in the gut, more in the chest area.

He cast about for something else to say. "Does Lucy know?"

The look Matt shot him for that one was priceless. "She's a McClane. Of course she knows."

"I didn't know."

"You knew, John. It was just easier to pretend you didn't."

That had an uncomfortable ring of truth.

"Please, please, please can't we just pretend I never said that." Now Matt was shaking his hands, looking around as if he could pull some wish out of thin air. "I wish I hadn't said it. You have no idea how many times I wish I hadn't said something and you can never just make it not be said. It sucks."

"Go back to --" John couldn't even make himself finish the sentence.

"You pretend you don't know, you agree not to cockblock my future dates, like you did to poor Michael, who is a really nice guy and also a worrier, what is this thing I have for worriers, because I'm going to have to call him again in fifteen minutes, he wasn't kidding, and now I have to dump him because he's already too attached and I don't have space in my life for two pushy butch alphas even if one of them will do me."

"Jesus." McClane didn't think he could take Matt referring to getting laid one more time. "So you don't want him if he actually fell ...? You just wanted, what, a quick fuck and move on?"

"No, preferably a nice slow fuck, especially if I'm on the bottom I hope it's slow because it's been a long time but I hope to God I am, and if I'm a very, very good boy, the chance to get to do it again sometime. That's what I was looking for, that's what I asked for, that's what he was getting himself into, just because you've decided I'm a dishonest cheap thief, doesn't mean that other people weren't told exactly what I was looking for and what they would be getting in return."

"And that's enough?" John still felt more confused than anything else. Well, that wasn't true, he felt more terrified than confused but we weren't dealing with that right now, so let's just not.

"I've been reading. You and I --" There was the lit up look to Matt's face, the spark of life, of humor, of brilliance, that John...

...that John...

...that John spent so much of his time looking around for.

Matt had stepped closer. "This is a perfect platonic relationship. I mean perfect. We like a lot of the same things, we have similar habits, we have enough different opinions to talk about things -- I mean, if you talked, which we know you don't but it's like talking, you know? Perfect."

John just shook his head. "That's not perfect."

"It is. And as long as I get my sexual needs met elsewhere and you get your sexual needs met elsewhere -- and it's been over a year I've lived here and I still don't know which I absolutely, totally don't want to, so that's lucky there -- this is, like, the absolute perfect relationship."

John just looked at him. "Kid, that's messed up."

Matt threw his hands up in the air. "Well it works for me, and it was working for you till you had to go and get all protective and weird on me, and now I've gone and fucked it all up though I swear this is not my fault. Fuck it anyway."

John looked up at the ceiling, sighed. Looked back down at Matt, standing there looking ... he would never know what he looked like right now, so passionate about everything like he always was, so beautiful, so very Matt, and too many things that John had to let pass by.

John looked around, casting about for a conversational out, sighed again. Somewhere in the distance someone was playing music, and it drifted in through the open windows on the cool summer night. He put a hand out to Matt.

"You said you wanted to dance."

Matt's mouth dropped open a little but he didn't move.

John opened and closed his fingers. "Come on. I can't be Michael but I do know how to dance."

Brows drawing together, slowly as if he expected a trap door to open up under his feet, Matt stepped forward, one step, two, three and then he was right in front of John, so close John could smell the warm bright-dark scent of Matt's shampoo and cologne and warm body mixing together.

"C'mon," John said softly, holding out his hand.

He drew Matt close, unwittingly taking the male dancing lead position with one hand on Matt's hip and the other holding Matt's hand; it was reflexive.

Matt didn't say anything, just let his body drift next to John's, swaying back and forth to the sound of the distant music.

John did let his cheek brush against Matt's hair, because he was, after all, only human and this had been a hell of a night.

It was easier to talk when Matt wasn't looking at him. He couldn't stop the huskiness in his voice but maybe it didn't matter.

"I hear you're gonna be thirty one next month," John said softly just past Matt's ear. "You got a lot of years ahead of you. Some of them will be good, some bad, but a lot of them. You got a good head on your shoulders and you're a catch, Matt, though you don't even seem to realize it. Women, men, whatever, you should be giving someone a chance to love you. All of you."

Matt's hand spasmed in John's but John didn't let go.

He went on, "In ten years you're going to be a great looking forty with a lot of time still ahead of you. I'm going to be a sixty-two year old ex-cop with a shitty pension who's going to spend the rest of his time on this earth fighting leaks in the basement and arguing with the neighbors about who didn't put the lid on the garbage can, unless I sell up and move to Florida with the rest of the old farts."

Okay, he let his cheek brush Matt's hair twice. He was only human.

"I had my shots and I blew them all. You have all your shots still ahead of you. If you're smart you won't end up old and alone and pissing off everyone you ever loved. And you are smart. You're actually the smartest guy I know."

Matt's heart was beating so hard John could hear it, could see it in his throat, could feel it, practically, and then Matt suddenly pressed himself, full length against John. Matt rested his face against the curve of John's shoulder, fitting there perfectly, and John decided that this had been a bad idea after all, a very bad idea. The soft ends of Matt's hair tickled along John's neck and the hand on Matt's hip slid around, just slightly, and held Matt firmly at the small of the back.

Matt was not a girl and he was not tiny. He was actually pretty big, and solid, and it felt weird having two hard flat chests fitted against one another, except in the ways that it didn't feel weird at all.

Matt shuddered and he let out this noise, the tiniest noise, somewhere between a huff and a sigh of contentment and a something else John couldn't quite place but which he knew was going to make him hard if he thought about it. So he didn't.

He made to step back and this time both of Matt's hands squeezed. "Don't --"

"Sorry," John said, inexorably moving back. "End of the song." He avoided meeting Matt's eyes. He didn't want to see them. "The next dance is for someone else."

Then he turned and left.

--

John McClane knew perfectly well that life went on no matter what.

It went on no matter what blew up, no matter who died, no matter how unjust it was. It went on no matter who left who, who loved who, who needed who. It went on no matter what you didn't get.

He bought a bigger bottle of Tums and cut down on pizza because of the stomach acid. He knew he ought to check in with the doctor, who'd told him last time he'd been in the hospital (last time he'd been injured on the job) that stomach ulcers were virtually guaranteed for him at some point, but he just didn't see the need.

It wasn't like he stopped seeing Matt at all. They were not fourteen year olds on the school yard, freezing each other out. They waved, occasionally shared a plate of french fries at Carmine's, mostly didn't see each other, never talked. Once Matt called to ask if John had a power saw he could borrow. John did. Matt came by, picked it up, stood about five feet from the front door, made small talk for six minutes, then left.

John didn't bother to call him up and ask for the return of the saw. If he needed it, he knew where it was.

He noticed when it got to be two weeks between Matt-sightings, then four, then six. He was a cop. He noticed things.

He'd made this happen so he didn't regret it. That was his policy, anyway.

Didn't mean he didn't think about dropping by the bar on Saturday afternoons when he knew the gaming was happening downstairs at Carmine's. Didn't mean he didn't have himself an extra beer, waiting to see if Matt was going to be the person who came upstairs for extra french fries. (That was where a lot of the waves happened.) He didn't go downstairs.

And he didn't ask Carlos if Matt had brought that Michael guy by, or if Matt had asked about any other gay bars, or if Matt ever mentioned John.

He did ask once, "Does he smile?"

Carlos just made a face like "Whatever, you crazy person."

John pursued it. "You know what I mean. Does he ever look happy? Do you see him smile? 'Cause when I see him just walking past, you know, he's never smiling."

Carlos dropped into the seat across from John. Matt's seat.

John had never seen Carlos sit down in his own place.

Carlos said, "People think bartenders know shit. People think I am a bartender. Neither one'a these things are true. But I like you, cop man, so Imma tell you something true. You wanna see him smile? Go downstairs, give him a hug, tell him you gonna stop bein' so stupid like you being."

John gave up the pretense that maybe Matt hadn't told Carlos every damn thing. Of course he'd told Carlos.

So he leaned in and said to Carlos, "How old are you, man?"

Carlos harrumphed. He didn't pretend they weren't talking about what they were talking about. "I'm fifty eight. My wife she sixty one."

Good for her, cradle robber Carlos' wife. "Okay. Now let's say she dumped your sorry ass and you had to start all over again. Look around." He jerked his head toward a gorgeous young woman sitting with her friends at the bar, wearing a dress like it was painted on her perfect, taut, juicy body and skin glowing with youth that didn't come out of a bottle. "You willing to start all over with her?"

Carlos took a good long look. "Jesus yes. I should be so lucky. Look at that body."

John let out an exasperated grunt. "Okay, you're a dirty old man, but I'm not just talking about doing her. I'm talking about life with her. You want to live with her, wait for her to get tired of your tired dusty old ass, watch her start looking around for something else? Or worse, you want her to just have this --" he waved a hand up and down indicating Carlos' entire person, "-- to come home to? Look at her. What if she could've ended up with a millionaire? What if she could've ended up with a model? What if she could've ended up with a millionaire model? What if settling for your used-up scarred-up carcass, she gave up her chance at a hell of a lot more?"

Warmed up to his subject and not having had anyone else to talk to about this, John's words came tumbling out. He had been a more talkative guy, in his youth. "I'm not just askin' you to picture if you could catch her. I'm not just talkin' about if you got to sleep with her. What if you loved her. You'd be taking her whole future away. And giving her what?"

Carlos looked at his own hands, the gray edges of the gnarls on his knuckles.

"You gonna have kids with her? What if you don't? You gonna make her make that choice now? Hell, you got kids older than her. That's gonna make Christmas awkward. More awkward than it already is. Now here's the kicker, stick with me now."

John jerked his head toward the opposite end of the bar where a sturdy young man with the sleeves of his button-down rolled up was downing half a frosty mug of beer in practically one gulp. When he lowered the mug he gave it a bit of a slam on the bar, and the friends with him laughed and his blue eyes laughed back at them, licked the last of the beer's foam off his lush lips.

"Now let's ask the same question about that guy. Now he's young, he's white just for conversation's sake, and he's a he. Not so sure of your answer now, are you? I know what you're thinkin', you're thinkin' well no, that guy's not even in the running. I mean you're fifty eight, right, Carlos? You know yourself pretty well by now. You think that guy is never gonna turn your crank. But then you wake up one day and realize he does, and now what are you gonna do? All the same questions about him being so young and you being the used-up old shit you are, but now you're not even sure what's going on. I mean, what are you actually talking about now? What are you gonna do for him? Are you talkin' future? You don't know, you have no clue, because this is like an alternate universe or somethin' and you never even asked yourself these questions before. And who the hell knows what the right answer is? You can't find out, because he's maybe the only guy who ever turned your crank that way, and how exactly are you going to phrase your speech about I don't know, I never wanted to do this before in my life but maybe let's try getting horizontal, and if it doesn't work out, hey, no harm no foul, I hope we can still be friends, and if it does please throw away the best years of your life on me because I'm a selfish ancient asshole with no other friends or family who can stand him and the alternative is me drinking myself to death?"

John leaned back in his seat. "You got a better way to put that speech?"

Carlos looked at the young man at the end of the bar with his blazing red hair and his laughing eyes, and then he looked back at John, and his eyes were sad and serious. He had bags under his eyes, John realized. Carlos wasn't young, and Carlos had problems of his own.

He thought Carlos was going to say something wiseass. Instead Carlos said, "My wife fall in love with me when I was eighteen. She was twenty one, smart, college degree already, so... sophisticated, so sexy. I never think she might look at me. I never think she say yes when I ask her out. I take her out to dinner, man." He closed his eyes and smiled a little. "She wore a dress so red, it was like I couldn't see the sunlight for her. Her smile was like fireworks. I didn't know why she even wanted to talk to me. She let me take her out for a month, dinner, dancing, to the movies. Every time I was so grateful. Then one night she said she wanted to see my place. I didn't have no place, man. I lived at my parents' house. So we went to her apartment. She ripped my clothes off and we made so much love I still think maybe my heart could have exploded."

Carlos rubbed one of his graying dark knuckles.

"Why did she want me so bad? I don't know. I still don't know. I know I'm still grateful. There was not anything I, I was willing to do anything for that woman. There is still not anything. I didn't know why she wanted me when I was eighteen, I don't know why she want me now I'm fifty eight. I don't know a goddamn thing. Except I am luckier than anyone else in this bar. Maybe this borough. Maybe this city."

He ducked his head left and right, dreads bouncing as he turned. "Anyone in here, anyone. Those young people at the bar. They think they want all kinds of things, but really they just wish they was me. The mortgage on this place is a rock on my neck, my kids sometimes as useless as anything, and these perfect young people? They still wish they was me."

He pointed his index finger at John. "You got a shot at something even half as good and you throw it away, everyone in here, they gonna think you an idiot. Because you an idiot."

"Carlos." He wasn't taking this the right way at all. John just shook his head. He took a twenty out of his pocket. "Give those two kids a beer and tell both of them the other one bought it for them."

Carlos slid out of the booth and the pleather on the seat creaked as he left. John picked up his beer, watched over the edge as the beers were delivered to the two young people, watched the redhead approach the gorgeous black girl across the way, watched them get confused because each one thought the other one had made the first move. They talked for a few minutes, then the bartender, turncoat Robbie, waved in McClane's direction, and they looked just as confused but they laughed, and they spent the next hour talking with each other, friends forgotten for the moment.

John watched them talk together, pretended he wasn't hoping to catch a glimpse of Matt coming back upstairs, for the whole hour. Then, done with his two-beer limit, he went home.

--

Matt called him, the week after Thanksgiving.

"I need your help."

John sat bolt upright at his desk. "Where are you? Are you hurt?"

"No, no, Jesus... I have a job I'm doing where I need your advice, maybe your help. I think your help."

"Oh."

Several more seconds of silence, then Matt's voice added, "Can I come over to talk about it?"

John looked around the precinct office, the gray chairs and people being booked for all kinds of offenses and cops filling out paperwork. "You want to come to the precinct?"

"...Would you rather I did?"

"No, no, you should just come by the house. Come in and sit down this time. Bring me back my saw."

Matt's laugh sounded relieved and real. "I think I can do that."

"I'm gonna make it home by like seven, do you want to come by tonight?"

"Yeah. I'll see you then."

Just like that.

John stared at the phone for a while, forgot about the paper under his hands.

Just like that.

--

"If the job smells bad, then don't do it. You gotta go with your gut."

Matt looked at him in a way that made John feel about two inches tall, not that he would ever show it. "You... do not get to tell me that."

John's stomach twinged him. Maybe this had been a bad idea. "Look, I'm --"

"We're not gonna talk about anything personal. I didn't come over for that, I'm not asking for that. I sure as fuck don't wanna do that. I need to do this job and I think something's wrong with it and since danger is not my middle name, I need your help."

"Look, first rule of a trap is don't walk into it. How is this even a thing anyway? Are computer jobs that dangerous?"

"Stuff can go wrong in a black hat operation. I'm not the only person working on this one but I'm the only one going on site. And the people who arranged it..." Matt shook his head, bit his lip. "In a black hat op the top level knows but the people on the ground don't know. They're supposed to treat you as a real intruder. That's part of the test. And this building... The guards are armed to the teeth."

"Fuck that shit," John said immediately. "Don't go."

"But are they gonna shoot a janitor on sight? Just for not being a real janitor? That's not the way it's supposed to go."

"Can't you just do this through the wires?"

"Someone has to go inside. I want it to be me."

"What for?"

"I need... okay, I need to prove to myself that I'm not afraid of getting shot again." John winced. Matt went on. "I need to prove to myself that I can do this kind of thing, that I'm not who I used to be. I don't want to just sit on my couch at home bitching about the world. I want to be useful."

"Matt." John risked making his voice a little softer. Matt did not meet his eyes. He'd cut his hair a bit shorter than usual; it was weird to see him without it flopping around, the hair. "You can be a lot more than just useful."

"Useful's all I want." Matt continued to watch his own hands, pulling at a loose thread on the hem of his T-shirt. "Anyway it's not a bad place to start."

John must have made some sort of frustrated sound because eventually Matt did look up. "Look," Matt finally said, "I'm not asking you to run a gauntlet of rifle fire with me. I just need someone I can trust in case things get... more physical than I'm comfortable with. I could hire an outside security guy but I'd rather you went with me. I need to be able to focus on what I'm doing, not if I'm safe."

"Just because I'm there doesn't mean you're safe," John pointed out, trying to keep his voice from sounding sour. The kid had fake cartilage and scars all up and down one knee to prove that already.

"Let me put this in language you will understand. I'm not being that guy. This is not a hero-ing situation. I would totally bet on me and you should too. I just could use a hand." He cocked his head at John, fingers absently twisting the hem of his shirt into a wrinkled mess. "You in?"

You had me at I need you, John thought, but what he said was, "How much you gonna pay me?"

--

"So you still seeing Michael?"

"You crashed my date with Michael, do you even remember that at all? You broke it up. Do you even realize what you are doing?"

John just stayed silent. So the Michael guy was out of the picture.

Matt made some sort of teeth-clenched noise, slammed up the tray table with unnecessary force. "No personal conversation, McClane, I said it and I meant it."

"It's a five hour flight!"

Matt huffed and turned in his seat. John wondered if Matt was going to wiggle around the whole way. Sitting still was not his forte. "You know what I want?" The eyes were just the same even if there was no brown hair flopping in them. His neck looked wider. John stopped looking at his neck, met his eyes.

He did not ask what it was that Matt wanted.

Matt went on without an answer. "What I want is to pretend it's, oh, eight months ago. You and I had a beer at Carmine's last night, nobody said anything they regret, you think of me as a fairly decent if punk-ass hacker kid, and I think of you as that guy, and we both can just talk because we met each other once while we were saving the country. How about that."

"Matt --"

"Think of it as my own personal Christmas gift, McClane. Could you do that for me? I'm asking so, so nicely. Christmas is only three weeks away. Would you please do that for me? April in December. C'mon, I'll never ask you for another thing."

John just nodded. "Sure, kid. I can do that."

Matt huffed out a huge puff of air. "What did we talk about in April?"

"You were fixing Carlos' computers."

"I was?"

"April 18th."

Matt stared at John, mouth more than slightly agape. "Do you remember every little detail about everything you do all day?"

I remember April because I remember your bare feet and the way you looked in my jacket, he could have said.

Instead he said, "I'm a cop."

"So what were we talking about?"

We were talking about how we have things in common, John also did not say. "You were tellin' me about Carlos' daughter givin' him shit and I asked you if Robbie and Alejandro confided in you too."

"Of course." Head back against the seat, Matt grinned, one of his actual, big grins, and that was the best part of the trip already as far as John was concerned. "I remember the software."

"Tell me how you fixed it," and John settled back to let the meaningless waterfall of Matt's words wash over him for the first half hour of the flight.

Truth be told, he enjoyed it. He didn't understand a word of it, but it didn't matter.

--

"These rooms are nice," John observed, unlocking the door between his and Matt's.

"Hey! Knocking! Trying knocking, would you, people love it."

John ignored Matt pulling on a fresh T-shirt the rest of the way. "I'm security, I have to check out the room."

Matt's eyes got big. "Really?"

John just nodded. "Really." He started a clockwise search, checking lamp shades and bulbs, burning his fingers on one. "You told me the company booked this room for you, right?"

"You think they bugged it?"

John took out a flashlight, examined every inch of the wooden box that lay under the bedframe to keep things from being lost under there. He pressed along all of its edges with his fingers. "I'm looking for bugs, bombs, guys with Uzis, whatever."

"What? Why would they blow me up in a hotel?"

"I dunno, Matthew. You said you got a bad feeling about them. Trust your instincts. Assume they're up to something. What? We don't know. Maybe they just want to cook the books and blame it on you. Or maybe they want to kill you in your sleep." He moved on to the edges of the sealed window. "My kids, my wife, everyone's always on me for being paranoid. But that's because they don't know that there are people out there that if they don't like you enough, they can feed your body to hungry pigs and sink what's left of your bones in the river and once they wash the blood away, you will have disappeared completely. If you're lucky, you'd be dead when the pigs started in on you."

When he looked over his shoulder Matt was just standing there, staring, ashen. "Jesus."

John went on, his fingers running over the edges of the seal of the window looking for holes, looking for wires. "They can sell your organs to someone in the Middle East and ship you out of the country alive without a passport and no one will ever know where you went. They can sell you into prostitution where you'll just wish you'd died and when you don't sell any more, they will bury you in the basement of the same building where you've been whored out for the last ten years. Then eventually they just bulldoze the building down and start over again someplace else. And then there could just be a bad day and a junkie with a habit gets desperate and shaky both at the same time and you're on the wrong side of a bullet and you're still dead, even if your family has the pleasure of knowing where your body is."

Matt put out a hand toward John, then dropped it. Both hands started in with that conversational waving thing he did. "How do you stay sane? I mean how do you have all that shit in your head and still just get up every day and go to work?"

"How do I do it?" John shrugged. "I piss off my wife and kids enough to drop me, I don't have friends who aren't cops too, I drink too much and take too many pills and then I stop before I croak myself. A lotta cops do a lot of those things."

"John."

"What?"

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way but I really, really need to give you a hug. Like, I'm going to regret it the rest of my life if I don't give you a hug right now."

"No."

"I mean it. It's got to happen."

John rolled his eyes and gave that half-smirk but he also held out an arm. "You don't have to be so dramatic, kid."

It felt good to fold Matt into his arm. He hadn't been there, under John's arm like this, since they'd been getting shot at together. It seemed to erase time, truly. He squeezed a little. Matt's body was reassuringly solid and warm, if a little thinner. Actually, more muscles too.

"You lost weight," he said, his mouth against Matt's hair. It didn't matter if he closed his eyes, Matt couldn't see him anyway.

"You gained a few pounds," Matt said into his shirt, squeezing his arms around John's stomach.

Which made John laugh. Okay, time to stop enjoying this before it got too crazy. He let Matt go. "Fuck you," he said fondly.

"You could join Weight Watchers for New Year's. They always run a special. I know this one guy who only watches TV after 10 p.m. and he clocked it once at eight ads an hour."

John just shook his head. "Where's your doorjamb."

Matt pulled the security bar out of the suitcase. John had made him pack it. Plus a bunch of other stuff. Besides that, half of the suitcase was taken up with four laptops and a variety of wires.

John's eyes crinkled as he looked down at it. "You saved the world last time with less."

"This time I'm better prepared. And getting paid. I'd also like it if no one shot at me."

John nodded. "That would be an improvement."

--

"That asshole SHOT at me!"

The metal blast door wasn't even finished sliding shut, but Matt already had his laptop out, plugging it into something with flashing lights in the middle of the room -- the data center, he had called it when they were reviewing the maps.

Matt went on, "That shit gets old SO fast," even as his fingers were flying over the keys.

"I don't think this is an improvement," said John, surveying all four of the blast doors closed around them on all sides. He tried pulling one of them up with his fingers; nothing.

"It isn't," Matt bit out, his fingers flying over the keys. "I'm sure they - yep, there they go."

He stopped there so John might be forgiven for a slightly bug-eyed, panicked tone to his "There they go what?"

"It's a prime and fire system -- give me a minute." Matt seemed to be going a mile a minute even though he was just sitting still at the keyboard.

"What is a prime and fire system??" John was frantically searching around the perimeter of the room.

He heard a bunch of clicks.

Valves at the top of the room.

"Fire suppression," Matt half-moaned, but his brow was knit, he was staying focused. "Just give me a sec --"

"Matt?"

John didn't care how pathetic he sounded right at this second, because as near as he could tell the room was about to be flooded with something anti-oxygen, and whether it was halon, water, or CO2, it wasn't going to be good for human consumption.

Matt looked like he was about to bite right through his own lip and John counted down seconds when the valves clicked again, and then started to make the faintest, the very faintest hissing sound...

"GOTCHA!" Matt half-screamed but never lifted his hands off the keyboard. "Now what are you hiding and where are you hiding it, you motherfucking piece of shit..."

"What are you doing, Matt?" John assumed that the fire suppression system had been shut off due to the fact that they weren't dying. However, their position did not seem to be drastically improving.

"I'm going to rip this guy's spine out through his neck and beat him with it," Matt said grimly into his keyboard, never lifting his head. "Digitally."

Long seconds ticked by. "Are you calling the cops or...?"

"Phones dead. Lines off, wireless jammed. Plus, basement," Matt bit out telegraphically. "IP's out too, or so he thinks, but he can't manually shut off all the switches from where he is, so."

John hated to be a bother at a moment like this, but he had no guns, was trapped in a metal box room wearing a janitor's overall, and had no idea what to do to help, so... "Open the doors!"

"McClane, SHUT UP!"

It was only a few seconds after that, or so it seemed, when an alarm blared and one of the doors started to slide open upwards.

Matt didn't seem to regard this as a good thing. "Fuck a fucking fuck fuck... I'm not doing that."

"Mr. Farrell, the exercise is over now," came a man's voice, and John put himself between the door and Matt, who was still typing away at his keyboard.

"Close the doors, Matt!" John decided this was an okay time to change his mind.

Still viciously swearing under his breath, Matt pulled two of those USB thumb drives out of his pocket and, flipping their caps off into oblivion, plugged them into ports on the rack full of flashing lights where he knelt.

"Mr. Farrell."

"Fuck off!" shouted Matt at the top of his lungs.

Which all in all might not have been the most politic response. When the door finished sliding up the man in question, wearing a fairly nice dark gray suit and not at all looking like he'd just been chased down four sub-basement levels by armed goons, was pointing a basic Glock 19.

At Matt.

"Hands up, away from the keyboard," he said.

Matt snarled, "Yeah, the last time I had someone holding a gun on me like this I'd already done my damage. Give me just one second, I'm not quite done with you."

"Mr. Farrell, away from the keyboard."

"Fuck you."

The gun fired; in the small space it was devastatingly loud.

The laptop screen Matt had been staring at exploded in a flash of broken glass. Matt winced, tried to cover his face.

John dove for the guy, just as Matt yelled "Don't!", but John already had a hand under the guy's gun wrist, shoving it up toward the ceiling.

The suit fired the gun again and the bullet ricocheted a bit even as John was kneeing the guy in the balls, then elbowing him in the stomach, before finishing wrenching the gun away.

The suit was a retching ball rolling on the floor by the time John, panting just a little, forced himself to his feet. Casting his eye wildly around, all he could find as a source of restraints was the janitor's cart. John pulled one of the thin garbage bags off the cart, twisted it into something of a rope, and yanked the guy's hands behind his back to tie his wrists together.

He checked the clip on the gun. Empty. Of course.

Matt had already plugged in a second laptop and was typing away on that, balancing it on the gunshot ruins of the first laptop. Blood was trickling down his face in a few places.

Easy to rattle these days Mr. Farrell was not.

"What the fuck are you doing now?" John's tone was getting more high-pitched and, he knew, a little panickier sounding.

"I already copied the books for this guy's internal shipping 'operation' --" here Matt actually lifted his fingers from the keyboard for a split-second to make air quotes -- "Posted them on a dozen websites around the world. I'm just routing the video feed from the last ten minutes in here to a couple of police stations and the FBI. And since I have a few free minutes, I thought I'd see why you're so angry with the board, huh, Greenleaf?"

The guy on the floor just moaned.

"That's your sister who's the CEO, isn't it. And she brought my company in because she knew you were doing something illegal but she didn't know what, and I don't think she's going to be happy with you when she finds out that you were using her shipping containers to move human people across the border with Mexico illegally. Among other things." Matt's fingers kept flying. "You've been very bad, Mr. Greenleaf."

"MATTHEW!"

"WHAT??"

"Remember those guys with guns who chased us down here? Remember them?"

"Shit."

Matt left the computers lying there and ran to the open door. He spent a valuable half-second trying to decide whether or not to kick Greenleaf where he was still writhing on the floor in pain. John could see that he wanted to; he even drew back one foot a little. He just couldn't bring himself to do it.

Sweet boy.

"Is this an elevator situation?" Matt panted as he pounded after John down the hallway. John worried; they didn't have Matt's inhaler on them.

"Yes," said John in a split second decision. They were so many levels down and the bad guys were not, he hoped, trying to kill them, nor were they going to bring the building down.

Nonetheless every second in the elevator John felt his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest. He watched the numbers on the floor counting up, up. Only five floors to the lobby. They could make it five floors. Five floors was nothing.

He felt Matt's hand slide down his forearm, grab his own hand, squeeze hard.

He squeezed back.

The lobby. Ding.

"Just get out the front! Just go!"

John pulled Matt along behind him as he raced for the glass doors at the front of the lobby, praying they didn't slip on the marble floors.

"Stop!"

Sonofabitchgoddammit -- The guy at the front desk. Was he one of the bad guys? John could tell he himself was on high adrenalin, high alert. He didn't want to kill anyone who didn't deserve to be killed. But this guy was between the door and Matt and John didn't think he could dial it down for anyone. He intended to get Matt out that door.

They slid to a stop. John shoved Matt behind him.

"We're just going outside for a breath of air."

"No," the man said calmly, then into a walkie talkie, "Jeff, I need you at front."

"We aren't looking for any trouble." John spread his hands, took a step forward.

"One more step and I will shoot you," the man in the security guard outfit said calmly.

That wasn't the kind of thing security guards said.

"Sorry if we pissed you off. Didn't mean anything by it. Just heading outside for a breath of fresh air."

"No." Into the walkie talkie again, "Jeff, where are you?"

A fellow in an ill-fitting uniform came puffing around a corner. "Sorry, sorry."

"Oh good, you made it."

The man in the uniform shot Jeff.

Who groaned, before he fell to his knees.

"What the -- " Matt started, but John just kept him shoved behind his back.

The first guard walked over to where Jeff had slumped entire to the floor, shot two more times. John felt Matt's body jerk with the explosion of each shot.

This was not good.

"You're Greenleaf, right?" John said in his soft voice.

"You're dead. And you -- " he gestured to where Matt just peeked out from behind John's shoulder, "you're coming with me. You made a mess, didn't you? You're going to have to help me clean it up."

"I'm not doing jack shit for you," Matt said in a raised voice but when he tried to move out from behind John's body, John just stepped in front of him again.

This time John's heart really was threatening to pound its way out of his body. Matt didn't get it. This guy was ten times more dangerous than goons, and all they'd seen so far was goons. This guy was the real problem.

And he had a gun, and he was between them and the door, and he'd just shot a guy in cold blood right in front of them.

John had no weapons but John.

Shit, he really didn't want to die today.

"Farrell, get out here." Greenleaf waved the gun to gesture for Matt to come out from behind the shelter of John's body.

No fucking way.

"So who did I just kick in the balls and leave tied up in the basement?" John asked conversationally.

Because he was hoping that what Matt had done was going to get them some help sometime soon. Quick, maybe. The next few seconds would be good.

The guy wasn't going for it. "Farrell, out here now or my next bullet goes into your buddy here."

Matt instantly stepped out into the clear, both hands up. He walked slowly away from John -- and John could tell his trajectory would take him past the dead body on the floor.

"Matt, don't."

"Don't shoot, no need to shoot anybody else," Matt said, and his voice was wavering a little now. "We'll follow directions, we're very cooperative that way. Just watch."

"Sorry. Your friend here died in a firefight with Jeff. That will be a shame." The man's face was so calm. John kept looking around for something, anything. He was in the middle of a wide-open polished marble floor with nothing around for yards.

"No loose ends? Is that your thinking? Because if no loose ends is what you're going for, I don't think I should go with you. Sounds like the kind of situation where I get dropped out of a helicopter or something."

"I'm going to need you to record a few statements for the police, about how you fabricated the evidence you released, how you cracked under the pressure of your first major job assignment, and then a very sad video suicide note that will look good on YouTube."

"Okay, well, that's going to take some time. I guess we will get to know each other a bit better after all that. You should know that nobody calls me Farrell."

John had felt this type of panic before. He hadn't felt it in a long time. This was the panic of being about to lose someone he loved desperately. Someone who maybe didn't know how much he loved them.

"Matt, you know I love you, right?"

Matt turned pleading brown eyes his way for just a second. "Not the time or the place, man."

He saw where Matt was. He knew what Matt was going to do. Obviously Greenleaf didn't, or he would have ordered Matt to stop his slow occasional shuffle on a tangent with the dead body.

Everybody underestimated Matt.

John wasn't going to any more.

"NOW!" he screamed as he launched himself toward Greenleaf - diving arms first and sliding on the floor, his janitorial uniform slick as greased lighting over the marble, to grab Greenleaf's ankles and yank for all he was worth. He just had to destabilize Greenleaf's shot.

Greenleaf's shot went over John's sliding body - no one expected someone coming straight at them flat on the floor - and then Greenleaf adjusted fast, too fast, and aimed toward Matt but by then John already had his hand around one ankle, yanked like he could split the guy like a wishbone. The second shot went wild too.

And he didn't get to make a third one because by then Matt had dived for dead Jeff's gun and he was kneeling, knees spread, one hand under the other, in perfect position, emptying the clip into the chest of the guy who was shooting at him and John.

Greenleaf seemed to fall slowly, but he did not get up.

John heard the click of the trigger as Matt kept squeezing it after the clip was empty. His head was ringing with all the gunshots but he could hear that.

"Matt," he rasped, staggering his way to his feet and over to Matt.

He put down his hand to help Matt up but Matt was still staring at Greenleaf's fallen body, now leaking blood that was pooling on the floor, his hands still wrapped around the automatic.

John dropped to his knees, took the gun away from Matt, dropped it on the floor.

"This wasn't supposed to be like this," Matt whispered to himself. "Nobody was supposed to die. This was supposed to be security. I do security work. Online security. Not like this."

"Matt, it's okay," and John tried to put his arms around Matt's stiff, locked body, but the younger man wouldn't move.

"No, it's not okay. He shot at you. He shot at me. I don't want people to shoot at us."

"No, nobody wants to get shot at, I know," John said soothingly. "Matt, come on, look at me."

Matt looked behind him. "My God, he killed that guy!"

Mentally John apologized to Jeff -- someone else he hadn't been able to save -- put out both hands and cupped Matt's bleeding face. "Look, I didn't even get hurt. It's a Christmas miracle."

Matt huffed out something like a shocked laugh, then looked at the two dead bodies on the floor and made a different huff, like all the air had gone out of him. He looked back at John, tears leaking from his eyes even though they were still big and wide. "I think I did get hurt. There's something wrong with my eye."

John steadied Matt's head with a hand on either side. There were tiny cuts all over Matt's face, work of the flying glass from the screen that had been shot, and one eye did have blood trickling from the lid. It was entirely possible that one of the fragments had cut Matt's eye -- or was still inside it.

"We'll get it fixed," and John sounded positive even though he felt that burst of panic again inside. Never show your panic. Act like you own the place.

"Fucking, fuck, he shot at you!"

Matt was shaking now, but in the distance, might that be a siren?

John grabbed on tight, sort of levered Matt off his knees and into a sitting position, on the floor. He knew shock when he saw it.

"That fucker downstairs shot at me! This guy shot at me! I'm a computer hacker, for Christ's sake! That shit is unreasonable!"

John just started laughing, a high-pitched giggle he couldn't control. Yes, they'd gotten shot at and yes, there were two dead bodies but it was three weeks to Christmas and nothing had gotten blown up and Matt was here and he was going to be okay and really, this was the most fucked-up computer job he'd ever seen.

They were still sitting there when the first responders finally arrived on the scene.

--

John grabbed a catnap on an empty gurney in the emergency room, because he knew how to do that.

He'd also asked like everyone in the hospital how good the eye doctor was who was working on Matt now. The last thing the kid needed was for some quack to screw up instead of fix him in the hospital. They said it was a little sliver of glass that had penetrated the eyeball but that it should heal fine, that it hadn't damaged the lens or the iris and that Matt shouldn't even notice it. That sounded suspicious to John. He was pretty sure eyeballs weren't designed to have stuff in them.

He'd even called Holly to ask her to look up eye surgeons back home. She was on it, but she also sounded worried.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"Weird as it sounds, yeah."

"Well you have to admit, that doesn't sound like you," she said dryly. "You don't need me to fly out there?"

"Nah, it's under control. We'll be home day after tomorrow, unless Matt can't fly for some reason."

"Okay." She sounded a little confused, and why not. John was confused himself a lot these days.

"Hol," he said into the phone, "do you think I could be in love with a guy?"

Silence.

"I know, right? That's nuts, right?"

Then Holly's voice, thready with the distance of a thousand miles, said into the phone earpiece, "I've known you for thirty years, and I think you could do anything if it would save someone's life. Would it save someone's life?"

"Probably not." Then he thought about it a second more. "Maybe just mine."

More silence.

"Never mind, I'm not having a big conversation with you about it or anything. I'm just... And a guy twenty years younger. That's nuts, right?"

Another pause. And then she said, "John, you're thoughtless, paranoid, controlling, uncommunicative, probably five days from having a heart attack, and your feet stink. The age of the person is really the least of your problems."

"Jesus. OK, thanks a lot, talk to you later," said John and hung up the phone.

--

"What do you want to eat?" John said as he maneuvered the furniture around, making wider pathways for a guy with (temporarily, he hoped) less depth perception.

"Order one of everything and you can feed it to me in the tub," said Matt, exhaustion coloring his voice a darker, huskier sound than usual.

They didn't quite do that but close, John carrying in dishes and carrying some of them away. Matt ate a few bites of the hamburger, half the fries, most of a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and all of a hot fudge sundae that John put in first so that he could eat it before it entirely melted.

At least the kid could still put away a fair amount of junk food.

He ignored the pale still form of Matt's body in the tub, handed him the handheld shower unit so he could at least rinse his hair without soaking his eye bandages, hovered over him when it was time to get out.

It worried him that Matt ignored all the fussing and all the intimacy. He was almost listless as he let John wrap a bathrobe around him. Hell, John even tied the belt.

Matt shuffled out of the bathroom to lie on the bed. Closed his good eye.

"Lie down with me?" he asked. "Unless that's too creepy, in which case don't."

John couldn't think of a sufficiently flippant answer, so he just lay down, on the far side of the queen size bed.

Matt sighed.

It was silent for long, too long, and John felt like he might fall asleep again himself. "Just yell if you need me."

Matt's good eye closed. "I need you."

John sat up. "What d'you need?"

Matt's head rocked toward him, eye opening again. It was sweet and dark chocolate brown and kind of tearing John apart. "I need you to put your arms around me again and tell me you love me again and that's exactly what's wrong. I shouldn't be asking you for anything. I shouldn't have brought you on this job. I wanted you here for me, so I would feel safer. It was selfish of me and I put you in danger. I'm so sorry. Putting you in danger was the very last thing I wanted to do."

"Are you kidding? You think I would have wanted you to do this by yourself?" John's disbelief was palpable.

"You're a good guy and I took advantage of that to be selfish because of my ... stuff. And it almost got you killed. Fuck, it almost got me killed. This is not... this is not the guy I am. I am not the guy who kills the bad guy. I'm not even the guy who would be in that situation. I'm not trained for this, I... this is not who I thought I was. Not who I was trying to be."

Matt laid a forearm over his good eye.

John felt like he was walking on thin, thin ice, like any second his feet could slip out from under him and his weight would crack the surface and maybe they'd both go under. "Well, I'm sure we could get into that, but it's also true that you saved my life." He swallowed to clear his throat which seemed unaccountably thick. "Again."

Matt just clenched his one good eye tight shut. He rocked his head back and forth on the pillow, shaking his head no. "This is so not right."

John felt like it was important to get this right. He had listened to some of what other people yelled at him over the years; he knew it was a better idea to listen to what the other person was saying than just tell them they were wrong.

He just couldn't figure out what Matt meant when he said that it wasn't him. To John, that moment burned in his memory where Matt was kneeling on that floor, shooting like he knew how to in order to save John's life, to save his own life, was exactly the Matt he knew.

He tried to forget for a second how much shorter Matt's life was than his own and realized that however long it was, that was what you had. And in Matt's life, there was long stretches of nervousness and maybe being unnoticed at the back of the room, punctuated by these two incidents of unfortunately violent rescuing. Thirty plus years of using his brain, punctuated by two incidents of using a gun - that resulted in somebody dying.

"It's normal to regret --"

"I don't regret a fucking thing." Now Matt sounded less like the Matt John knew, not even determined and angry like he'd been in the basement, more cold and hard. "If someone walked in that door right now and pulled a gun on you I would shoot them dead in a heartbeat."

Okaayyy. "Then it is you. A part of you, at least. There's a part of you that took those shooting lessons and when push came to shove that part of you didn't give up."

"It... that's not it, it's -- the whole thing, it's just not who I am."

"What, you're not that guy?"

Matt's eye closed again.

"Matt," and John couldn't keep his voice from sounding soft, not when they were this close together on the bed, "you've been that guy for me, twice."

"I almost got you killed." Matt's voice was loud, and rising in pitch.

There was nothing else for it. John didn't second-guess himself; he slid his arm under Matt's neck and pulled his head against his chest, sliding his arm around Matt's shoulders and pulling Matt's arm across his own chest.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Matt mumbled into his shirt, and John could feel the tears leaking through the cotton.

"You're going to get your eye bandage all wet," John murmured into Matt's damp, slightly waving hair.

He felt Matt's shoulders shaking, small uncontrollable movements. He squeezed.

John went on in the same soft voice. "I'm trying, here. I guess it sounds like you just picture yourself as failing when other people need you most? Or weak or somethin'? That's what's not you, Matt. And I am listening, I really am, but I'm having a hard time reconciling the you I know, the you today, and the you at the fire sale, with a you who isn't... well, you. I know you didn't take those lessons planning to shoot anyone else and I know how awful it feels but I woulda felt a helluva lot worse if you hadn't brought me and then got yourself killed."

He sighed. "We did not ask that guy to shoot at us. We did not ask him to do all that shit he did. You got hired to investigate because you're good at it. I'm glad that the you I know was smart enough to ask me to come along, I'm glad I was there, and everything you did today seems to me like it was, given the situation, very much you. Maybe there are just parts of you that are more than you think, when you picture yourself. I mean, there's you, being you, so that's stuff's all part of you. You followin' what I'm sayin' at all?"

Matt sighed a little into John's shirt but he didn't say anything.

John stared at the ceiling, at the weird stucco pointy shapes of the thing, and thought. He couldn't make Matt feel better because he didn't really get it. Here Matt was, being Matt, and it was all right there as far as he could see.

And then all of a sudden he kind of did get it. Because he was the same way, wasn't he? He was right here, holding a man he knew damn well he loved, wishing he could kiss Matt into smiling again but pretending he didn't because... because why? Because it didn't fit his picture of himself? Because that's not "who he was"? Who he was was a fairly miserable old bastard most days - why the fuck did he feel like he had to stay inside the edges of that picture of himself?

He'd always hated hero worship from the people who didn't realize that he was mostly just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. They thought he was something he wasn't. But Matt, Matt didn't think he was something he wasn't. Matt knew exactly how stubborn he was, exactly how far his intellectual achievements went, exactly how uncharming and uncivil he was, and Matt loved him anyway. Matt somehow saw John as he was and still had a picture in his head of John that was a hell of a lot more than John pictured himself to be.

It was kind of a breathtaking point of view, when John thought of it that way.

And why wouldn't it be better to live up to that image of himself, the bigger version of himself, than the one that felt like maybe it was holding him back, freezing him up, closing him off?

"Sorry," he said into Matt's hair. "Here I am yappin' when you said you needed me to put my arms around you and tell you I love you. Love you, Matt." And he locked his forearm behind Matt's back, ignoring the dim ache in his shoulder muscles.

Matt just shook his head, face still pressed into John's shirt. "You don't have to --"

"Have you ever. Known me. To give in to pressure."

"I wasn't asking for a pity ... whatever, I wasn't --"

"Matt."

Matt looked up with his one good eye, red as it was. Listening.

John said, "Just kiss me."

He thought Matt might cling to him like a drowning man on a life preserver but instead there were a bunch of emotions chasing Matt's face that he really couldn't read because the goddamn eyepatch kind of was in the way but it seemed like Matt was thinking really hard himself.

But then Matt was looking at his mouth and when he let himself think about it, it was amazing that Matt looked at him that way. It was awesome that Matt looked at him that way. It gave him kind of a swelled head, to be honest. Because there was no denying Matt Farrell was a hot young dewy thing, a catch, in fact, and he was looking at John McClane as if John was the only cold bottle of water in the middle of a desert.

Then Matt's lips met his and yeah, that was even better, because Jesus. Lush, warm, sweet lips, tasting a little of hot fudge, moving on his, rubbing a little, exploring the feel, the taste of him, then the tip of a tongue and that was all it took before John felt himself get so hard his cock felt like it was strangling itself against the seam of his jeans.

Then Matt moaned a little into his mouth and John found out that he could, indeed, get harder.

He groaned and adjusted himself.

Matt pulled back in astonishment, looked down to the palpable evidence of John's erection. "Wow, is that from me?"

"Absolutely," said John and put his hand around the back of Matt's head to pull him back down for another kiss.

This one got deeper and John just lost himself in it, in the feel, the smell, the taste of the surfaces of their mouths meeting and tasting and touching one another. How had he not realized that all he wanted was to breath in the air that Matt Farrell breathed out?

Because he wasn't a sappy lovesick meathead? Because that wasn't who he was?

He chuckled a little against Matt's lips and Matt seemed to take it as an invitation. He hitched himself closer to John's body, then caught himself. "Can I...?"

Why he was suddenly too shy to say John had no idea, but he said, "You get a free pass to do anything you want. I'm still gettin' used to the idea so I'm just gonna enjoy holding you while you do it."

"You have to tell me," Matt said even as one of his hands traced up John's chest to his throat, feeling the pulse there, "if I do anything you don't like, even anything you don't want. I'm not trying to ruin your life here."

John chuckled again. "Pretty far from ruined, thanks." He tightened his left arm again. He was enjoying the way it squeezed Matt's shoulders, enjoying how Matt felt solid and warm and real. He nuzzled the side of Matt's head, that shiny dark hair, and murmured into Matt's ear, "Love you."

Matt shivered and his eye closed and his arm gripped around John's chest like a vise. His good knee clamped over John's leg. "Say it again."

"Love you, Matty." John could feel where the bathrobe had come loose and Matt's hot flesh was pressing against his hip. It should feel weird, an erect cock rubbing up against him, but it didn't, it just made him feel proud that he could affect Matt this much. "Love you so much. Was really afraid I wasn't gonna get a chance to tell you. I'm sorry I busted it out like that."

"So this is love me like one loves a decent Star Wars movie, or is it love like for ice cream, or for the nerdy cousin no one likes but you have to invite to Thanksgiving anyway, or..." Matt was wiggling against him, breathing hard, but he held still for a second as if he didn't want to lose the answer.

John marveled in the feel of Matt's thigh thrown across his own, the concave hollows of Matt's groin fitting perfectly against him, the throb of Matt's very serious hard-on against his jeans. Matt pictured him as the kind of guy who did this. It was kind of an awesome type of guy to be, he decided.

"I love you like I oughta love a guy who's smart like you are and looks like you look and looks at me the way you look at me. I love you in a way that is really not appropriate, for how old I am --"

"We're going to have a major ban on the topic of age," Matt said, groaning into his ear as he ground his cock into John's thigh and holy fuck if this wasn't one of the hottest things that had happened to him, ever.

John growled, "I love you like a guy my age shouldn't love the sweet young thing makin' an offer he shouldn't make. I love you like no more dates in bars that aren't with me, no more dudes with biceps that aren't me, no more talkin' about getting laid that isn't with me. I love you like I shouldn't, Matthew, but I do."

Matt was panting now, little moans on each one that just made John that much harder, and he said in a voice that was more like John's normal Matt and yet very new, "I don't want to be a drag on the romantic moment here but I think I'm gonna come on your jeans."

And ever practical, John flipped the edge of the bathrobe up and slipped a hand around Matt's cock, let the fabric fall back down around where the two of them joined together.

"Shit!!" Matt yelled and John was kind of lost in all the sensation. Because Matt was warm and squirming against him and his cock was incredibly hard and kind of soft at the same time and when John moved his hand back and forth rubbing him with the moisture at the tip, Matt made this full-on groaning, shouting noise that was insanely hot and totally worth the embarassing phone call this was going to get him from hotel security if anyone else was in their room listening to this and decided to complain.

Though who could complain, John thought as he rubbed his thumb against the ridge -- he'd always loved that himself -- and Matt jerked all over and again, John felt about eight feet tall and wondered why they hadn't been doing this for months.

Mumbling a bunch of words John couldn't catch - moaning them, really - Matt latched his hands to the sides of John's neck, bit John's earlobe, and ground down.

John felt Matt's cock expand and then felt the dam burst, felt the pulses as Matt came in his hand, and that was amazing too, felt the warm wetness pool against the inside fabric of the bathrobe where he'd held Matt in literally the palm of his hand.

Matt wasn't even finished shuddering yet, his tongue sliding along the earlobe he'd trapped in his mouth, and one of Matt's hands reached out, even a little tentatively, so sweetly, and laid itself against the rock-hard ridge in John's jeans.

"You don't have to do anything for me right now," John rumbled in Matt's ear, still rubbing his face against the side of Matt's head. The kid's hair was so silky and he felt so damn good. "We have time."

"No one knows how much time we have," Matt told him, gasping, coming down from his orgasm high, and John realized for the first time that Matt had maybe gotten way too old for his age. All this time and he'd been catching up to John, in ways John wished he didn't have to. His heart hurt him a little.

It was this determined, fuck-it-all version of Matt he held gasping in his arms who brought both hands to bear on John's button and zipper, almost ripping his jeans open. The touch of those hands, both hands, grabbing him like a golden prize, like an ice cream cone on a hot day and like the filthiest dirtiest sex all at the same time, snapped something in John's brain, and he grunted as he rocked Matt backwards onto his back.

He nestled his balls, too confined in his jeans, against Matt's bare thigh above his good knee, and used both of his own hands to spread open the bathrobe, damp with Matt's come.

And there was his Matt, the dip of his stomach below his rib cage, the dark pink of his nipples on the bare smooth expanse of his pale chest, the hollows of his pelvis on either side of his shrinking cock, a red just deeper than the shade of those lips he'd been looking at and pretending he wasn't thinking about all these months, and John grabbed himself, cock rock-hard and heavy and throbbing now that Matt had freed it from behind its zipper, stroked himself once, then again, and again, and growled something that might have been "mine" as he squeezed the tip of his own cock and came, harder than he'd come in years, spurting over Matt's chest and stomach and thighs, with one particularly enthusiastic burst even reaching to the hollow of Matt's throat, and felt a totally primitive, totally nonplatonic flood of caveman satisfaction at the sight.

Matt's one good eye was wide as he watched and though he still seemed too limp to make a fist ("good" growled the caveman part of John's brain) Matt's fingers wrapped around John's arms, squeezing the muscles as they slid over each other as John spasmed, sliding his thumbs along John's skin and making fireworks sparkle there as the last of the orgasm died away.

John sat there, gasping a little himself, Matt just staring and both hands holding on to him.

"We should have been doing that months ago," John heard himself say out loud. Well, mostly out loud given the difficulty John was having catching his breath.

"That's what I was saying, McClane," Matt said also in an attempt to sound like his usual self but having it spoiled by the fact that he was red-faced, limp from an orgasm, and literally had John's come dripping down his skin.

"I... did not expect that to go so far right now," John added, sinking down on an elbow next to Matt but otherwise not moving.

"I didn't expect that to happen at all," Matt reminded him, using the bathrobe to mop himself up a little - which was too bad, John reflected, but then reminded himself to be a gentleman, it couldn't be that comfortable lying there with that stuff drying all over you.

He did that, he thought smugly to himself.

"You want to shower?" John offered gallantly though he still refused to move the leg he had thrown over both of Matt's.

"In a sec," Matt said, turning so that he was facing John and resting his hand kind of shyly against John's still-clothed ribs.

"Love you, Matt," said John, the grin in his eyes going all the way out to the edges as he squeezed his arms and Matt inside them.

"Holy shit," whispered Matt.

"You didn't think I would keep sayin' it?"

"I didn't think you'd say it at all."

"I told you last night."

"While a murdering fuckhead was holding a gun on us. Not your most romantic moment. Not romantic at all, to be very clear about it in fact."

"Crap. Am I gonna hafta learn how to do romance?" John winced a little, looked at Matt out of squinted eyes.

Matt snuggled closer -- there was no other word for it, this was snuggling -- and just said happily, "Nah, you're good."

John felt his heart unclench yet more at those simple words. Matt wasn't asking him to be anything he wasn't already. All Matt wanted was him. He could do that.

--

John woke up feeling fantastic.

His body knew he was post-orgasmic, and that he had a sexy young thing plastered against his side, and that he was still alive despite someone trying to kill him again.

His arm squeezed, and there was solid, real, warm, Matt. Which was also fantastic.

Then his brain caught up to his body and he stifled a groan. Ah shit, what had he done? What about all those noble thoughts about Matt not throwing himself away on an old shit like him?

"I can hear you thinking, knock it off," Matt said, his voice half-muffled into John's shirt. His shirt -- hell, he hadn't even managed to get undressed before he went all caveman on the kid.

Matt's head popped up and even with the eyepatch he looked like a happy little five-year-old kid who'd gotten what he wanted for his birthday.

Well, he had, hadn't he?

McClane hoped to Jesus, Mary and Joseph that he wasn't actually blushing right now. He had a hard time looking straight at the kid. Matt practically glowed.

And rolled his one good eye. "Don't even try it, McClane. We are totally doing that again. Maybe now-ish. How do you feel about now?"

The freaked out part of him deep inside screamed like a girl but his cock twitched. Well, he figured that was about the size of that.

He figured he had to make one more try at being decent. "So when you have this out of your system, in a week or two --" involuntarily his arm spasmed around Matt again, "--or in a month or two, I want you to look for someone closer to your own age you can settle down with and stuff."

Matt just said "No," and proceeded to unbutton John's shirt.

There was no point in pursuing this train of thought while Matt was opening his shirt like a Christmas present.

--

"We think you'll find the settlement terms generous, Mr. Farrell."

Matt just nodded, tapped his fingers on the table, not nervously, because he looked totally in control, but almost absently, almost as if he were bored. "I'm glad we're both thinking that same word, generous. I can tell you what generous is, it's four million dollars."

Expensive-haircut-woman winced at that. "Perhaps if you review the papers we have prepared for you --"

"Yeah, thanks," and Matt glanced dismissively at the folder for not even half a second. "I think you're probably going to have to redo them. And just to be clear, I'm talking about four million as the settlement for me, not with my company. I mean, I know my company signed an indemnification form but I don't think that's going to hold up in court against dead bodies and an eye like this, do you?"

She shifted in her seat and, to her credit, did look maybe a little worried about Matt and not just about her company. "Mr. Farrell, we deeply regret everything you've been through and we do want to make you whole. We think we're making a very generous offer because we want to make you a generous offer."

"Terrific! Then we are on the same page. Generous is four million dollars. So that part's done, right? And I'm glad we're thinking the same thing, we're, like, on the same wavelength. Because then we both don't want you to sue me for releasing data about your business into the wild that wasn't authorized, and we both don't want me to sue you for bodily harm, endangerment, and a truly egregious failure to disclose."

"No, we don't."

Expensive-haircut-woman was easily fifteen years older than Matt but Matt was holding his own just fine, John thought proudly.

"Not to mention what my associate here might sue for. He's a lot less generous than you or me. And he was also endangered and almost killed in what was supposed to be a computer security investigation. I don't know how he even feels about that. He doesn't talk a lot. I figure he must be upset. Maybe upset enough to sue, I don't even know." Here Matt looked at John.

It was time for John's line. "Maybe."

Matt nodded sympathetically. "And really four million is a very small figure aside from whatever your legal liabilities are because of what your brother did."

Her jaw locked. "The corporation has no legal liability for the illegal actions of one of its employees."

"Well that's, that's all legal stuff that's over my head. I mean, he was a shareholder but also a corporate officer, right, so he had some fiduciary responsibility for the company, right? And that might supersede his other roles. But I wouldn't know, like I said, I'm not a lawyer."

Now she was looking daggers at Matt. Who just smiled his big smile.

"Not my area of expertise. I'm just speculating. So if you could just write up a nice note expressing your willingness to recompense us for our time and trouble, we'll take that with us, get out of your hair, and you can go on about the business of cleaning up this mess." His tone was bland but his eye was fixed on her and his expression was suddenly no nonsense Matt when he said, "You've got a lot of work to do in that area, right? Easier for you if you can just get us off your plate and move on. I'll be recompensing my security subcontractor --" here he jerked a thumb towards John, "-- out of the same amount, so one check covers all your business with us."

She sat back in her chair, looked at Matt again not unkindly. Maybe she really was sorry, John thought, as she smiled a very small smile and stood. "If you can wait here, Mr. Farrell, let me step out and make a few phone calls and I'll be right back."

Matt just nodded and said "Sure, sure," but he also stood because she stood and hell, when did Matt get manners?

--

When they got back to the hotel Matt was practically dancing.

He'd already taken a picture of the letter with his phone and sent it to his lawyer, but he kept patting the inside pocket where he had it stored.

"I can't believe she went for it. I mean, I can, she should, it's a drop in the bucket compared to her annual revenues but I didn't think it would actually work."

John hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the phone calls Matt had been making to his company and his lawyer for the last day and a half, probably because in between phone calls Matt kept ripping his clothes off and then John eventually found himself gasping and covered in come on the bed and honestly he didn't give a shit about lawyers anyway.

"It's not legally binding and it could take years to clear but if she just writes a check, after we pay the taxes we're home free."

John just grinned. "I think we're home free now. Does this mean we get to fly home now?"

"No, John, you don't get it." Matt bounced up to him and grabbed on to John's biceps. "We are home free, we. After we pay half in taxes, do you know what two million dollars means? Two million dollars means about a hundred thousand a year just in interest income. Do you know what that means?"

"Means you're rich." John untucked Matt's shirt so he could slide his hand against the smooth skin at his waist. Matt's breath hitched a little. John loved that. "Far as I'm concerned you were already rich, but now you're richer. That's nice."

"No, you're not listening. We are home free. As in, like, where do you want to live, because you don't have to go back to work if you don't want to. I don't have to go back to work if I don't want to. We can do whatever we want."

John's brows knit together a little. What was the kid going on about?

Matt grabbed the front of John's jacket, pulled. "We can do whatever we want." And Matt kissed him.

The kid was crazy. He could go anywhere, do anything that he wanted -- and he said "we" like it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

John's hand pulled, inexorable as steel, at the small of Matt's back and he smiled a little satisfied smile because it made Matt's body, flexible but strong, press up against his. Then Matt wiggled a little under the pressure -- not trying to get away, enjoying it in fact -- and John's smile got a little less smug and a little more sappy because of that. Dammit.

"I like New York," said John and brought his mouth down again over Matt's which he had already discovered was just about the only thing that made Matt stop talking.

Though it didn't last forever.

When the kiss ended Matt looked a little dazed for a second, rubbed his nose against John's nose and John thought his heart might explode from joy right there, right then. But then Matt just started talking again. He had an inexhaustible supply of talking.

"Okay, I get that, but you know the cities aren't currently sustainable, not to mention New York is the biggest nuclear target on the planet, and I thought maybe we might want to try living, like, a little farther from ground zero? And maybe someplace with fewer government surveillance cameras and maybe a little more regard for civil rights? The statistics on stop and frisk are --"

John kissed him again just because he could.

And this time when he was done (just for the moment) he said something first. "We'll talk about it."

Because if you lived fifty two years you did learn a few things and one thing you learned was when you had someone happy in your arms you didn't ruin it by telling them right off the bat that there was no fucking way you were doing whatever they were happy about.

And who knows, maybe Matt would talk him into moving out of Queens. His basement leaked and some of his neighbors were assholes.

Matt had talked him into stranger things before.

--

John didn't think of himself as one of the people who lived in Pennsylvania, but as it turned out it was surprisingly easy to do. Matt bought a farmhouse and put in underground storage lockers and stocked them with food and supplies for the end of the world, though they had already seen it once. He also put in a windmill and a satellite dish and a metric ton of solar cell panels. When he started talking about an armory John took that task off his hands. Also John refused to learn how to farm, as in how to grow crops. He put some gentle brakes on some of Matt's crazier ideas, and that was good. In a burst of stubbornness Matt at least put in some raised beds and as the days lengthened Matt started to grow peppers and lettuce and tomatoes, and that was good too because it got Matt into the fresh air every once in a while.

He thought he's miss the precinct; he didn't. It was close enough that he could head up there any time, but he didn't miss the paperwork or the nutballs with broomsticks. He thought maybe he felt bad by leaving while other guys were still doing the job. He mentioned that to Matt once and Matt pointed out, with all seriousness, that maybe John had actually done his share in his day.

Of course John hadn't ever really expected to get the chance to walk away from the job. Getting to do it felt like starting a new life.

Half of John's brain couldn't figure out what was going on at all day to day. It all seemed crazy, unreal, like it was happening to someone else.

The other half of John's brain acted like every day was Disneyland with a free pass for all the rides.

All in all it didn't suck.

Lucy came to visit twice with the boyfriend du jour and that was an occasion for video gaming. Jack hadn't made it back to the country but John had hopes.

And then Holly even came by with Lucy for John's birthday -- on Matt's invitation, for Christ's sake.

After the first two hours, the puzzled look creasing her brow went away.

"I get it," she said to John over a whiskey late that night, her slender fingers twisting her glass in the air. "You finally have someone to fuss over who doesn't hate it. And he's clearly crazy about you."

John chuckled into the golden depths of his whiskey glass. "If you get it, you get more than I do. I still can't believe it most days."

Holly's eyes twinkled. "Oh, I think deep down somewhere in you, you can believe it."

"Luce brought pie," yelled Matt triumphantly, emerging from the kitchen bearing two plates, Lucy behind him carrying two more.

He'd put two scoops of vanilla ice cream on the plate with John's pie.

That was love.

--

When Matt got his eyepatch off and his gunky messed up eye was revealed for the first time, John was there, holding his hand.

Holding his hand too while they cleaned him up, did all the tests, and found out that, as predicted, the eye was just fine.

That was love too.

--

The way Matt ripped his clothes off and wrapped his hands and his mouth around John's dick every chance he got ...

...that was just plain fantastic.

So John reciprocated with that every chance he got.

--

John couldn't shake the feeling that this was all just temporary. He loved it, but temporary. Guys like him didn't get lives like this.

He wondered when he was going to fuck it all up.

Yes, he'd had department shrinks point out to him the self-defeating prophecy of that kind of thinking before.

He'd pointed out that airports didn't blow up just because he had a glass-half-empty tendency of mind.

--

John was running his fingers through Matt's hair as Matt lay with his head on John's lap, watching TV.

The scars from the flying glass were fading, and honestly, the kid was even more ridiculously hot than he had been a year ago when John first noticed Matt nudging his way into his life.

"When you get tired of me," John said, his fingernails gently scraping Matt's scalp, "I want you to find someone younger you can really spend a lifetime with."

Matt looked up at him with two brown eyes peeping the fringe of silky hair; his hair had grown out a bit and he didn't mind leaving it a little longer just because John liked it that way. He pushed himself upright, twisted and climbed up on John's lap. With his thighs stretched wide apart, trapping John's thighs on either side, he started unbuttoning John's shirt, slid those square, capable hands up John's belly to spread his fingers through the hair on John's chest.

"No," he said right before he bit John's nipple, rather too hard, John thought, but then the kid had been showing a bit of a sadistic streak lately. That sorta thing usually meant that Matt was in the mood for John to play bad cop.

So John got distracted.

--

By the time the check cleared John felt like it had been so long ago, he couldn't even pick what's her name Expensive-haircut-woman out of a lineup.

But Matt remembered, and he pulled out his checkbook to write John a check for his share.

"No fucking way."

Matt's thick brows pulled together. "But that was the deal."

"I didn't make any deals."

"McClane. If I'd known you were going to be a dick about it I would have negotiated a separate settlement for you. My lawyer told me it might be good for them not to be reminded that you are, y'know, John McClane, said they might decide that all bets were off around someone who tended to blow a lot of shit up anyway."

"I don't want any more of your money, Matt." Fuck, he was living in a house that Matt had bought, even if he was paying his half of the costs. He had his pension and proceeds from the sale of that house which, once he'd decided to sell, he realized that he was actually super happy to be rid of. The place was full of sad memories of sad years.

Matt's eyes were narrowed. That was not a good sign. "Play nice, man. If I'd known you were gonna play it hard, I'd've played it hard."

"Not gonna happen, Matthew." 'Matthew', Matt had learned, was reserved for very serious situations, whether they had to do with terrorists, bill paying, lack of beer in the house, or sex.

"Fine, old man, I can take the gloves off as well as the next guy."

John cast about desperately for some alternative answer. By now he knew that Matt didn't have any family, not that he spoke to, liked kids but had never had any plans to have any, didn't really care for pets or anything that would die if he forgot to feed it, which he would, and often had cold feet, but only in the literal sense -- his feet really got cold in the winter. He worried about the kid's circulation.

The whole picture was terrifying. Matt had carted him out here to the wilderness of Pennsylvania to play house, and it was working.

He was doing some retirement-appropriate consulting in Philly from time to time, but if Matt started writing him a big check, he was really going to start feeling like he'd dropped his balls somewhere along the roadway to this house.

Not that he thought of Matt as the girl in this relationship.

--

But he should have quit when he was ahead, he realized, two weeks later when Matt presented him with a notarized pile of paper.

"What the fuck is all this?" John asked with his typical brevity.

"Just copies for your records. Your name was on the deed of the house and the mortgage, of course. I made you beneficiary for all my accounts and insurance."

John's head vein was starting to bulge. "All your accounts? Even the stuff you had before that Greenleaf crap?"

"All."

Matt was standing there, legs spread, arms folded across his chest, looking all macho, the effect only spoiled by the way his bangs fell over one eye.

John had discovered in the past months that one way to avoid a fight was to take a deep breath and just decide to fight it later. "Okay, fine. You can undo it all later when you find yourself in a real relationship."

"Hold on." Matt put up a hand. "Define how this is not a real relationship, please."

"Matt, be serious."

"I am one hundred and twenty per cent serious right now, and let me warn you to choose your words carefully, or the This Is What Happens When I Let You Eat In The Car incident of ought nine is going to pale in comparison to what happens next."

That had been a serious incident and John felt himself struggling to find the words that were not going to end up with him sleeping in said car. "C'mon, Matt, I mean..."

He had nothing.

Matt was nodding. Glaring and nodding. Feet still planted. Arms still crossed. "I know what you mean. You mean, when I settle down and find a nice girl and have some two point five kids that you are picturing. With, like, what, a fucking dog or something just because that's what you're picturing in your head."

"I like dogs," John muttered.

There went the waving arms. "Look around, McClane. That future is not happening. This is the future that is happening. This is the life, you are the nice girl."

"Watch it," McClane breathed, drawing himself up to his full height and not accidentally squaring his shoulders and the full thickness of his chest.

"Stop picturing some magical day when I am going to throw you out of my life like a used toothbrush. It's insulting, and it's stupid as hell when you know damn well I'm in love with you. Even if you still think of me as a child who doesn't know what he wants, you gotta stop saying it. Plus you should probably stop fucking me if that's really what you think, 'cause that's kind of sick."

"Uh..."

"No, I didn't think that was going to happen. Glad we still have a meeting of the minds on that one."

"Technically I'm not actually fucking you," John muttered, just to get one more shot in. Fighting with Matt wasn't tons of fun; Matt was much smarter than he was, and anyway he was a lot more fun when he was happy.

Matt's eyebrows both climbed his forehead. "Technically? As in, there's no dick insertion? What, my mouth doesn't count now? Okay, that's fine, we can fix that right now, old man, let's go. I got plenty of lube and plenty of time."

"Jesus, Matthew."

"Oh, wait, did you want to wait to try it in the bedroom?" Matt pointed theatrically at the stairs. "Or just right here, right now?" He popped the button at the top of his worn, loose-around the hips jeans.

This was dangerous territory. "See, this is what I'm talking about. I know you want someone who can fuck you --"

" -- in the ass, yes, that would be lovely," said Matt without missing a beat.

"Holy mother of God, I can't believe I kiss you on that mouth," swore John out loud. "And that's not my thing and you shouldn't be shortchanged, Matty. That's exactly the sort of thing that is eventually going to catch up to this."

"I don't feel shortchanged. I am not the one hung up on what gets stuck in where. This is a thing with you, McClane, that I don't get. Some sort of generational dick thing that I am not a part of. But if you want to actually know what I think -- I know you didn't ask, by the way -- I think that if you really are worried that I am getting shortchanged, you will fuck me in the ass. And if you don't, I don't really give a damn, because I like the way we make love and I'm not missing anything and if I were, it's not like I don't have a universe of dildos to choose from." He waved the stack of papers again, dropped them on the dining room table. "Which we can afford to buy whenever we want because we have an income, which, and I think you're going to like this callback, is documented here." Pointing to the goddamn pile of paper.

This whole thing required a tactical retreat.

John couldn't think of one. Forward had always been more his direction.

"I'm not askin' you to do anything different! I'm not askin' you for anything! I'm just realistic enough to know what this is and what it isn't!"

"Oh, this will be the good part. Please, Detective McClane, enlighten me as to what this isn't."

"This isn't happily ever after!"

Matt just blinked.

"See, I thought it was," Matt said, his voice a little thick, and then he disappeared quick as lightning up the stairs.

Wow, that knee was really not slowing him down any more.

Thirty minutes later John was still trying to figure out what was the best way to apologize when Matt reappeared, a small backpack slung over one shoulder. "I'm going out," Matt said nonchalantly, even though John had a horrible suspicion the kid had been crying.

Fuck.

"See you later tonight?" John tried for equally nonchalant.

"No, I don't think so."

Immediately John started for the door but Matt just shook his head no. It was a more effective stop sign than throwing up a hand. John froze in his tracks, quite literally, a chill running down his spine.

John heard tires crunching in the gravel of the driveway. This was a farmhouse for fuck's sake, the nearest neighbors were football fields away.

"Taxi," Matt said, jerking his thumb at the window by way of explanation. "To the train station."

"Matt, don't."

"Don't get too dramatic, McClane. I'll be back. I just need some time off. Do me a favor, don't put out an APB on me or anything assholish like that, okay? Just remember, if you do surveillance on your own time, it's stalking." He waved his phone before shoving it in his pocket, one foot out the door. Their door. "Text me if you need me."

"Don't do this."

But then Matt was gone, and he hadn't even given John a kiss goodbye.

--

This was worse, way worse, than when he had walked away from a Matt who said he was in love with John.

He knew what he was missing now, when he went to sleep alone that night, when he tossed all night, and when he woke up in the morning without anyone's elbow in his ribs or snoring in his ear.

He put in the sliding drawers Matt had asked him to do in the cabinets. They were nice. But the whole house, which had had a sort of storybook brightness to it all along, had lost its glow. The stupid daisy prints over the door they'd been meaning to paint over; the way the fridge door refused to close on its own because the floor was crooked; the little blue origami bird Lucy had sent them that was thumbtacked to the kitchen window sill; none of it was as homey as it had been just twenty four hours before. It was just a house, another house, with no Matt in it.

John watered the late seedlings Matt was setting on the sun porch. He was worried he was going to get them too wet.

He wrote tons of apologies in his head. He could text some of them, but they were mostly too long for texts and anyway that just felt lame. He didn't want to apologize by email. Writing was not his strong suit anyway. He wanted Matt in his arms to apologize to.

And he also wanted to figure out what to say that wouldn't dig this hole any deeper.

He thought about getting in the car and going up 95 just to go have a beer at Carmine's. But he didn't want to see Carlos any more than he wanted to see his old buddies from the precinct. They'd all been happy for him, the ones he bothered to tell where he was going, and they didn't get it. Carlos would just give him a lot of grief he didn't need. Carlos didn't get it either.

Nothing was changed just because he'd grown a pair and admitted he loved the kid. It was still not a good idea. It was going to hurt like a motherfucker when the kid got tired of him and dumped his tired ass. Maybe that had just happened. It sure hurt like a motherfucker now.

John managed to last about thirty eight hours before he climbed in the car. He knew where Matt had gone; he only had so many places to go.

--

"Hey, Mrs. Kaludis, long time no see."

John put on his biggest, fakest smile. At least the world wasn't ending today. Well, only his little corner of it.

"Is Freddy home?"

Mrs. Kaludis hadn't looked like she thought much of him the first time he'd visited and she didn't look like she'd revised that opinion now. Maybe she didn't think much of any of Freddy's friends.

Not that he was a friend of Freddy's.

He paused at the bottom of the stairs, tried the doorknob. The door was locked.

"Hey Freddy, uh... Warlock, is Matt in there?"

"No he's not. Sorry I can't talk now, I'm busy," Warlock yelled without opening the door.

Fuck, Matt was so in there.

John banged on the door with a fist. Old cop habits died hard.

"Matt, I just wanna talk to you."

Inside Matt didn't even budge from the depths of the recliner next to Warlock's. They were deep inside a mission in an illegal beta of some new game called Skyrim and though fantasy RPGs weren't really Matt's cup of tea, he was finding the misty landscapes and the warmaidens with inflatable boobs kind of soothing.

"I thought it would be at least another eight hours before he showed up, I'm sorry," Matt said sincerely to his host. At least his hands were only shaking from the Red Bull. He thought.

"Are you gonna talk to him?"

"You know, I don't wanna be too eighth grade girl about this, but I really don't feel like it."

"That's a steel blast door, you're not gonna get through it even with your meaty cop fist!" Warlock yelled over his shoulder back toward the door.

There was a pause, then McClane's voice through the door. "Bullshit. You think I can't tell a steel door when I see one, Planet of the Apes?"

"There's no point in lying to him, it's not like he's going to try putting his fist through it anyway," Matt said pragmatically, trying to aim his bow on the screen. "Dude, this controller sucks. Just give me a keyboard and a mouse."

"Matt, just please come talk with me for a minute," McClane's voice was faint on the other side of the door only because the door was thick. Matt felt sure McClane was yelling.

"There's only so much cop-pounding I can take on the door of my command center," Warlock pointed out. "Not because the door can't take it, it can, but because it's gonna give me a headache. And also piss off my mom."

Through the door, "Matt. Hey. I know you don't want to hear it but I figured out something I really need to say to you."

Matt sighed, let his head fall backwards, banged his head on the back of the chair a few times. At least it was pretty soft; it was upholstered.

"All right, let me see if I can get rid of him."

"And tell my mom to bring down more Cheez-its."

John heard the bolt sliding back and a lock snick open and then there was Matt. Delicious Matt, with the color high in his face, no doubt because he was pissed off, in those perfectly fitting jeans and the shitty band T-shirt. He looked better than a hot fudge sundae to John.

"John, go home," Matt said, huffing his hair out of his eyes. "I'm entitled to a couple of days of down time and I did not invite you here."

"Neither did I!" Warlock put in helpfully from where he still sat in his recliner, over the noise of the game on his surround sound speaker system.

John really wanted to kiss Matt but the look on Matt's face clearly said that he was not currently invited. "Can I talk to you a minute?"

"By 'talk' you better mean 'talk' because the command center cannot take contamination with gay sex spooge," Warlock put in helpfully from his chair.

John had never been a big fan of counting to ten but it seemed like it might be his only option now. "Does he have to be in here?"

"Do I have to be in here? Do you have to be in here. It's my fucking command center!" Warlock was still banging on the keyboard, manipulating some sort of armored-up character on the screen, and yelling over his shoulder.

"What do you want?" Matt said and the look in his eyes as he looked up at McClane wasn't flippant or dismissive. Matt was still in pain and it was still his fault; John had to fix this.

John fired his last weapon. "Please?"

He and Matt regarded one another for what seemed like a long time.

"Warlock, I gotta borrow your command center," Matt said finally, looking to John like he suppressed a sigh.

"Hell no. You're not kicking me out of my own place."

"We might have to have gay sex in here, can't be sure, but if it happens I don't think you want to be in here to watch."

"Oh Jesus fuck!"

John tried, at least a little, to hide his smile as Warlock came stomping up to them, the game sounds finally on pause.

"That is just rude," Warlock said as he sidled past where the two of them still stood, on either side of the door. "You know I didn't invite you, Matt --"

"Yes you did. Last October."

"-- and I sure as hell didn't say 'please take over my command center and queer it all up' either. Why you couldn't stay home to play out your gay General Hospital scenes I do not know."

Having squeezed past both of them, Warlock continued up the stairs, muttering darkly to himself.

"Oh please," John couldn't resist throwing after him as he disappeared up the stairwell, "like a black light wouldn't light up that room like a Christmas tree. As if you do your jerking off upstairs."

He was still smiling that little half-smirk when he looked back at Matt.

God, he looked good to Matt.

Matt backed up three steps, just to let John into the room. He didn't want to budge farther than that. He had no good reason; he just didn't feel like it. "You said you had something to say. Make your speech and make it good."

John loved that Matt always cut to the chase. "I realized I forgot to tell you that I need you."

"What?"

"I told you that I love you but I forgot to tell you that I need you. I don't need you for your money; I need you to take care of and I need you to be you all over the house and I need you to need me. I need all that stuff."

"Uh huh." Matt's brain was ticking over at a mile a minute; John loved that he knew how that looked. "I need you not to be a dick sometimes."

"Can't make any promises on that one."

"When you tell me that you expect this to be over, it kind of feels like you're plunging a knife into my heart," Matt said conversationally. "I know I'm not anything like you ever pictured as a happily ever after but I feel like this is happily ever after. And yeah, I know happily doesn't always last ever after, and I'm still waiting for you to figure out that while I am undoubtedly a hacking genius, I'm only so-so in bed and you have had enough of your little gay experiment."

Oh Jesus. "No, Matt, no. That's not it at all. Matt, you are the one getting the short end of the stick here."

"Hard for me to think of it that way; you're hung like a bear."

John loved that he knew that Matt got cruder the more comfortable he got. "You picked up a toy that's already half run down here. You know I didn't want that for you."

"I want that for me. I'd like a little more consideration of what I do actually want, thank you."

"It scares me to need you." There, John had it off his chest. He didn't feel lighter; in fact it felt like a phalanx of armed mercenaries were aiming AK-47s at his head. But this was the only way to go. He'd known it for hours now and standing here in front of Matt he was even more sure. He had to play all his cards, not keep any of them hidden, or he was going to lose. "People I love have been in danger too much. I try to keep the panic down to a minimum by not loving any new people. Then you come along and make me love you and I'm screwed, Matty, I really am because I have to admit I love you. I don't know why that's easier to say than I need you; it was fucking hard the first time as it was. But the terrifying part isn't loving you. It's needing you."

Matt's brow was a little pulled together, his mouth a little open. Matt thinking face.

Finally he said, "I think we can work with that."

John let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Not fix it, because there was no fix; not forget it, because he couldn't forget. Work with it. Work with it sounded good.

"Will you come home now?" John asked, taking a step closer.

"Maybe tomorrow. I still need to relax a little more."

"Will you kiss me?"

There was a smile playing around Matt's mouth, around Matt's eyes. It was an awesome smile. "Probably."

John didn't wait for the full invite; he surged against Matt, pinning him to the wall, and licking into his mouth like he owned the place. Always act like you own the place, something in the back of his mind said, and the rest of him agreed. This was the place that he owned, though he felt like now was not the time to try to explain that to Matt.

His arms came around Matt and squeezed. Matt groaned. "Christ, it's like making out with a tree made of concrete," Matt mumbled into his lips as he ran a hand over the smooth surface of John's head.

"You hate that?" John nuzzled one of Matt's ears.

"Fuck no, it's awesome. If you knew the kinds of dreams I have these days about being pinned to the bed by a concrete tree," Matt whispered against his neck.

John grinned, chuckled. "Maybe we do have to have gay sex in Freddy's command center."

"YOU GUYS GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" Warlock yelled from the floor above.

--

Matt wasn't ready to go home. He didn't feel like he had a knife hilt sticking out of him any more, but he wasn't ready to go home.

Still, that night as he and Warlock were about to fall asleep (right in the recliners, no shit, no need to go upstairs), Warlock murmured, "Dude, you have a badass supercop totally wrapped around your little finger."

Matt didn't open his eyes, just smiled. "I know. Sick, right?"

Warlock was silent for a minute. Then he said, "I'm kinda jealous of your dick right now."

"I have to say right now I'm pretty impressed with it myself," Matt nodded as his head sank further back into the cushions.

--

Two days later Matt was on the regional line home when his phone rang.

"Matt? It's Holly."

Matt wished that his palms didn't start to sweat when shit like this happened. "Oh, yeah? Holly? How are you doing?" He looked around frantically as if his boyfriend's ex in California was going to be a reason he was going to have to suddenly exit this train. Too many people with luggage between him and the door. Didn't anyone take emergency exits seriously anymore? "Everything okay?"

"John called me yesterday. Don't take it personally, he -- just has a habit of calling me when things blow up."

"Yeah, sure, I get that." Matt totally didn't get that. What else had happened? Had John blown up the house while he was gone?

"I just wanted you to know that I'm rooting for you guys. I want John to be happy, I do, and -- he seems really happy with you."

"Oh, good, uh, thanks." Was she really just calling him to tell him not to dump her ex-husband?

"He uh --, look, Matt." Suddenly she sounded like she'd decided something. "John was never around unless it was life or death and that was actually terrible for our family. But he's taken it to be -- he thinks it's, uh... I don't know, I can't explain what's going on in his head, I don't think I was ever very good at it, but I think he thinks he's just -- I guess doomed in love is the best way to say it, though just saying it out loud sounds terrible. I joined this book club and I don't think it's improving my vocabulary. In fact I think it's destroying it."

"Okay, hmm, uh... How can I help with that?" Silently Matt slapped himself in the forehead.

"Maybe you can convince him... that love wasn't the part he was bad at. It was family he was bad at. And not because he didn't love us all. Just... so many other things."

Blinking, Matt looked around the train, at the couples and college kids and grandmas with big bags of knitting. Maybe that was why they worked so well together. Matt had never been good at family himself. Didn't need to be. But he did need John McClane, and apparently John needed him.

"So how do I get him to stop saying stuff about how we're gonna break up? Because it feels really horrible, I hafta tell you. Every time he says it. I don't think he realizes how often he says it."

"I think you can help him with that. And I think you're going to have to let time do a lot of it."

--

John totally did not have rice and green beans waiting for Matt's train's arrival or steaks waiting to go on the grill. Because he was not a goddamn housewife waiting for the husband to get home.

He had them ready because he figured Matt would be hungry.

Matt texted him from the train station and John threw the steaks on and when Matt walked in the door the whole place smelled of butter and juicy steaks and John figured that couldn't hurt.

Of course, he would never be sure whether the big grin and all the kisses were for him or the grilled meat.

--

"Okay, I think I have a plan," said Matt, bare feet in John's lap, stomach full of steak and ice cream (John was not a fancy cook but he did get the job done).

Matt put his hands behind his head. Maybe it was accidental, how that made his chest look so solid and kind of crying out for John to run his hands over it.

Yeah, maybe accidental, John thought wryly.

Matt said, "Every day when you get up, your job is to tell yourself, this relationship thing is going great."

John snorted. "Can't make promises like that, kid."

"No, but you can try. You're just going to remind yourself that things are great -- unless you fuck them up. You don't get to give yourself a pass for saying the dumb shit and hurting my feelings. And we both know it's just a matter of time before you pull some other bullshit maneuver like the gold card thing because you're a cop and you're trained not to trust people, but that has to not come in to this house. You gotta try to believe."

John thought about it a little. He dug his thumb into the arch of Matt's foot and Matt moaned, writhed around a little on the couch. He did not want to lose this, that was certainly true.

"So it's all on me, huh?"

"No. I'm gonna remind you that the money is not that big a deal. You look out for me and I appreciate it. It's my only way of looking out for you, really. I think you should suck it up. I want you to be okay no matter what happens to me because I am crazy about you." Matt wiggled a little, pushing himself down into the couch cushions and pressing his feet to John's thigh. "My job is to tell you how crazy I am about you. I think I might have been a little self-centered, soaking up all the McClane I could get and maybe not putting my share back into the system."

John felt like his ears might be getting a little pink. "I dunno, kid, a little bit of hero worship goes a long way."

"John, I'm not going to pretend I'm not doing one of the hottest, baddest, sexiest human beings on the planet. Just look at you. Jesus."

"That might just be the footrub."

"It might be your fucking hands on me, whatever they're doing."

That made John put the feet down and tug on Matt's hand till Matt was lying on top of him, sprawled on the deep, soft couch together.

"Missed you," John said huskily before he got down to seriously kissing Matt.

Matt definitely lost his train of thought in there somewhere, but eventually, when he could pull back enough to look John right in eye and run his thumb over the bridge of that magnificent nose and then feel the stubble along that jaw, Matt said, "You are my happily ever after. Suck it up. Maybe there are pots of gold out there at the end of some other rainbows, I wouldn't know. When you already have a big pot of diamonds, you don't go looking for something different."

John's eyes closed. When he felt Matt sprawl across his chest, all heavy and solid and real, he felt like maybe he had been overlooking that he had really won the lottery.

"And don't tell me to get out again unless you mean it," Matt added.

"I didn't --"

"'Go find someone else' is not sufficiently distinct from 'get the hell out'. And if you think it is, think again, real hard, about whether you really want me fucking someone else."

The detonation of a surge of helpless rage in his gut at the thought made Matt's point clear enough. "Got it."

John wasn't about to pretend that he didn't get that most of the rules were for him. Matt had made this nothing but easy. Matt wasn't the one who had a poor relationship record to get over. The downside of being older and having screwed up relationships before.

Matt sighed like he'd been lifting weights. "Can we stop talking now? It's exhausting and I'd really just rather move on to the make-up sex."

"Can do," said John, shoving Matt off him and on to his own feet.

Matt looked surprised. "Where are you going?"

"Bedroom."

Matt just looked at him and smiled that slow, wide, indulgent smile. "McClane, the couch is just fine."

--

CODA

--

John knew that, theoretically, he could do this. He just had to breathe, remember what they'd practiced, and stay the course.

He'd had his therapeutic breakthrough about the same time as the Halloween decorations had gone out. Matt didn't screw around with orange paper. Matt built Halloween decorations that moved, and screamed, and ejected zombie parts on to the lawn.

The kids from all around loved it. Matt had had a bucket of candy on the porch for three weeks and the kids kept showing up in truckloads. Matt's yard was a freaking tourist attraction. He showed the interested ones, old and young, how to hook up motion detectors to the motor that shot the chewed zombie arms out on to the grass.

John looked at him one of those nights, laughing, sparkling, and realized something that Matt probably didn't realize. John realized that his problem wasn't with gay sex and it wasn't that he wasn't interested in every inch of Matt Farrell. His problem was that he might do something to put out that spark of joy that Matt brought to everything. Zombie parts, programming, John's life. Matt lit everything up. John was terrified of hurting him.

He knew all the talk around the shop and sodomizing someone was not considered a friendly action.

When he finally managed, in his not actually talking about it way, to get his point across, he did not feel better when Matt just laughed.

"Christ, McClane, if that's all that's holding you back you should let me do you first. Trust me. It does not suck."

Which was an asinine thing to say but actually got John to thinking. Because yeah, Matt had a point there.

Which had led to a creative use of Saran Wrap and lube and revelations about what Matt's tongue could do. Not that he hadn't already had a great deal of respect and affection for Matt's tongue. He just had no idea how sensitive it was there, and Jesus.

So yeah, Matt had made his point, and for the next round, after --

--yet more discussion,

--then two days of giving Matt the silent treatment when Matt had wondered out loud if all this talking was really necessary and if McClane was secretly a twelve-year-old girl, he was so nervous about some perfectly normal ass-fucking,

--and then another round of goddamn talking because true, not everything was for everybody and he didn't want McClane doing anything because he felt railroaded (despite the idea that anyone railroading John McClane into anything was patently ludicrous),

... Matt was getting rewarded.

"This is different," John said as he worked his thumbs around the dark muscled pucker, the room warm enough for plenty of naked skin even in November because of the long hot bath and shower they'd taken together.

"This is good," Matt said, unabashedly wiggling the perfection of his ass in the air, chest resting on a big pile of pillows, head turned to watch John in the mirror on their closet door.

"I mean, this isn't just touching. I don't want to hurt you." He couldn't deny the appeal of putting his cock someplace soft and tight and hot. But the thought of hurting Matt made him feel literally sick to his stomach.

Already loosened up from one finger, Matt's ass let him press both his thumbs inside. Matt groaned. John kept massaging, pulling very, very slightly, seeing if there could be just the tiniest sliver more room there.

There could be.

"We already talked this to death, John. If it hurts I'm going to stop you. I know you'll stop. I know you don't want to hurt me. Personally I think I'm getting the good end of the deal. I'm not worried. You shouldn't be either."

John couldn't think of a non-dickish way of pointing out that Matt liked to compliment him on his size, and perhaps this was going to be a case of too much of a good thing?

Fortunately Matt's telepathy skills were really coming along. "You're not too big. Remember, we tried that sweet big dildo, and I came so hard I thought I was going to pass out. You didn't hate that, did you?"

No, John had not hated that, and in fact he had so not-hated it that they were here doing this right now.

"You gotta promise me, Matthew, that I'm not making a big mistake here."

Shaking his head as if he couldn't believe how hard it was to get laid sometimes, Matt flipped over on his back, started shoving pillows under his hips.

"The book said the other way was better!" John burst out.

"Christ, deflowering virgins isn't this much work. John. Sweetheart. This is okay. We've been playing with the dildo enough times, I'm not gonna be so tight that you can't do it this way. And I think you might freak out less if you can see my face."

Hard to argue with that; John could feel his heartrate calming down just looking at Matt's smile. Smiles didn't lie, not Matt's smiles anyway.

He needed to pull himself together here. Matt never called him sweetheart. He needed to stop dragging his feet and man up.

Matt still had one more "let's-go-team" speech. "Remember, we said if you hated it, we never have to do it again. I'm not missing anything. And if you only like it every once in a while, that's good too. No matter what, it's good."

John felt like he would just be too pathetic if he asked Matt to promise him this wasn't what drove him into kicking John's sorry old carcass to the curb.

On the other hand, he could well imagine that if he were Matt, dripping hard and with a bunch of fingers and lube in his ass and promised a dick but not getting one, that might well be a cause for disappointment and irritation.

What this took, as Matt had explained several times, was for John to trust Matt.

He could do that.

He could.

"All right, kid," John said with a burst of bravado, "open wide."

Matt took him at his word, hooking his hands under his thighs and spreading himself wide. The shiny, relaxed muscle was right there, all pink and beckoning. The sight of Matt ready for him and opening up for him made John's cock jump; it certainly was not that John hated the idea.

He pressed his tip to the dark pink entrance, rubbed it around a little. Both surfaces were covered in so much lube it was dripping, but he wanted to make sure.

Matt moaned a little, deep in his throat, without opening his mouth. When John looked up Matt's eyes were on him. Trusting him completely.

Before he lost his nerve John leaned forward.

Just like they'd planned, the tip of John's cock spread Matt's muscle open, slid inside.

Matt huffed. "Okay. That's stage one. Just hold on a second. Let me breathe."

John tried not to look panicked as he searched Matt's face for signs of pain. Matt looked like he was concentrating, his eyes were closed, but he didn't seem to be hurting.

John felt his heart start up again.

Another breath, a third, and John felt something give.

"Ah, perfect," Matt breathed as John felt himself slide inside.

It was tight, and hot, and John felt himself throb but he held himself perfectly still. This was the deal. Matt was driving.

Of course that agreement had been for a different position but Matt managed to wiggle himself forward a little, sink John's cock into him another couple of inches.

"God," Matt said, throwing his head back, till all John could see was his throat working to swallow.

"Okay?"

"Yes okay, I think I'm gonna see the face of God before we're through so don't give up on me, McClane."

"Never," said John, flexing his ass and sliding in another couple of inches.

The noise Matt made was so encouraging that John was emboldened to press himself right up against Matt, Matt's ass cradled in the hollow of John's groin as they fit together as tightly as they could.

"Hoooooly hand grenades, unicorns are real," said Matt through clenched teeth.

"Matty, I need you to tell me this doesn't hurt," John said. He couldn't help it that he sounded like a cop doing an interrogation; he only had one voice.

Fortunately, the guy he was in love with was Matt Farrell, and if there was one thing Matt Farrell was, it was verbal.

"Jesus, John, it's like you're splitting me wide open, but it feels good, so good. The muscle's good and relaxed, and you're definitely stretching it, but it's just a stretch. The stretch even feels good, like that kind of ache you get when you stretch before you run but in a truly awesome, very good place. Oh God."

John pulled back, just a little, and Matt whimpered.

Well, okay.

So John pressed back inside.

"Thaaaaat's what I was hoping for. God, John, I'm so full, you feel perfect inside me, like you're pushing and pulling and rubbing and everything feels so good."

Experimentally, John tried a full stroke. He pulled out till just the tip remained inside the ring of muscle (he'd been fully briefed on the importance of that), then gently, slowly, deliberately, pushed all the way back in.

Matt made a choking sound. "Still good, don't you dare stop, oh God."

John looked down to where he was disappearing inside Matt's body. Matt's flesh was clinging to him and Matt seemed so helpless, so open, taking John all the way in; but John couldn't shake the feeling that actually, doing this, Matt was just proving that he was a hell of a lot tougher than John McClane.

He looked back up to Matt's face, which was red, and Matt's eyes, which were, frankly, glowing.

"I want to kiss you." John was surprised at how husky his voice sounded.

"Not sure I'll bend that far today. We'll have to work on that."

John leaned forward and kissed Matt's scarred knee, massaged the taut muscles of Matt's thighs as he held Matt spread open and plunged inside again.

Matt made a sort of gurgling noise, then said, "I need to flip over."

Immediately John backed up. His cock popped out with a really filthy popping sound.

Matt scrambled to put himself back on his chest, knees spread wide. "Okay, big guy, you can do this, no problem."

Well, he could do this, he'd just been doing it. Now Matt was just being condescending.

Without further ado John pressed himself into the right spot, pressed forward, felt the first ring of muscle pop, and waited for Matt to exhale and push himself backward, felt the second ring grip him and he was back in that tight heat.

And now that he thought about it, it was amazing.

Matt was giving him everything, holding back nothing, and it broke something a little inside John, in a good way, to see Matt trusting John so much.

It wasn't like fucking a woman, though maybe that was just because he'd never done this with a woman. It was tight, and he could see that the goal here was not just to start merrily thrusting away. Which was a temptation. Not what asses were built for, as Matt had so carefully pointed out. At least not Matt's.

When he was fully seated again Matt groaned, a low, gritty groan, and John very much hoped that meant that he was hitting the prostate that was supposed to be the Cracker Jack prize of all this work.

He was pretty sure on the second or third thrust that he was getting it when Matt screamed into the pillow "JESUS CHRIST THAT'S GOOD!"

After that he tried to just relax, and thrust. If age was good for anything it ought to be that he shouldn't come too fast, not even with Matty squirming and screaming and moaning underneath him.

Though admittedly it wasn't easy.

He got lost in the sounds Matt was making, in the interest of wondering if he pushed just there, would Matt make a sound like that. There were angles and depths that produced what he could only call squeals; then some that produced moans, and some that produced a lot of swearing.

They were all good, but they were all different.

John felt sweat trickling down his back and the backs of his knees, but if there was one thing worth staying in shape for, it was to keep doing this.

In fact, he got so caught up in watching that his cock went soft.

Sighing, Matt sort of collapsed over on to his side, looked up at John with one open eye amongst all the tousled brown hair.

"Stopped liking it?" asked Matt, panting.

"Hell no," said John, unable to articulate exactly what had happened but knowing that that hadn't been it.

"It's okay, you know, this doesn't have to be your thing. It's not everybody's thing. You certainly gave it a whirl." Matt breathed deep, pushing sweaty bangs out of his eyes. "It was certainly awesome for me."

Which was good enough reason to do it again. In fact thinking of Matt's moans made John start filling up again. "Would you like face up, or face down?"

"Such a gentleman." Matt flopped over on his back, spreading his arms wide. "I'll tell you a secret, it's been a long time and I'm a little sore now and I think I'm not gonna be able to come with you inside."

John felt a little disappointment but he didn't show it. If nothing else Matt had been nothing but generous about this whole thing. He wanted to be generous back.

He looked down at Matt's sweating body, glowing with life, his gorgeous cock slumping just a little to the side, still massively wet with pre-come and beckoning for John's hands. John obliged it.

"Oh JESUS," Matt wailed, as John's big, warm hand closed solidly around his cock and started to stroke.

Still vibrating inside from the pressure of John's cock but free to focus on his own now, Matt seemed almost to implode on himself as John's hand worked up and down his length. John watched his stomach muscles contract, wondered when the kid was going to breathe again. But he didn't worry about it. This was no stress; this was home territory. He knew how this worked.

And he knew what Matt liked.

"I've got you, Matthew," said John's growly voice, menacing and tender at the same time. "I've got you and I'm never gonna let you go. I'm gonna keep you right here, with me, in my hands, and hold you like this till you tell me to stop."

"I'm... never gonna say... stop..," Matt panted, his eyes closing and his head rolling back on his neck and his back arching till till it came up off the bed.

John knew how Matt made himself come like this, and it was going to happen any second.

"Come on, baby, come nice and hard for me," John rumbled, and yep, there he went.

"John," gasped Matt, and thrust hard into John's hand, and again, and then he let out a noise that was a half moan, half scream. John was grateful for the distance around the house but only because he didn't want any nosy neighbors poking around. He could admit to himself - though not to Matt -- that he was smugly proud of himself every time he made Matt make a noise like that.

And this one was guttural and deep, Matt's cock jerking spasmodically, again, again, and John figured that this type of sex was good for more than one thing after all.

Reflexively John gripped himself, his hand wet with lube and Matt's come, and watching Matt come like that had definitely done it for him, because with just a few more seconds of stroking John was there, his orgasm rolling up through him, unstoppable, and he was watching his come fly over Matt's gasping sweaty collapsed body.

Good thing he already knew Matt didn't mind that at all.

"You know, I never told you this," Matt rasped out as John collapsed next to him on the bed.

John opened one eye, feeling sweat trickle down his neck. "What."

"Sometimes when you come like that you make the same roaring sound as when you're throwing cars at bad guys," Matt told him, watching him closely for his reaction.

John just rolled over, his sated body sprawled next to, over, and around Matt's, laughing.

--

Matt Farrell was a good-looking forty, fit and slender except through the shoulders, which were surprisingly broad.

The suit fit him like a second skin, the gray silk shirt setting off his skin and the warmer tones of his eyes and his hair, which flopped a little, unfashionably long despite a few silver strands, around his face.

Behind him his bodyguard stood, and though the guy could easily have been in his sixties, old enough to have deeply grooved wrinkles around the sides of his mouth (a mouth that turned down, with thin lips, like he didn't expect much out of you), his square green eyes were razor sharp and missed nothing, and the sloping muscles of his shoulders said that he was not going to brook any crap, either.

The closed circuit TV gave the two guys in the truck outside a three-hundred-sixty degree view.

"Shit. The job's off. That's Farrell. And you know who the muscle is."

"Who?"

"That's John McClane."

"No shit." The second guy took a good look. "Thought John McClane was dead."

"Look at that guy. He's never gonna die. He would kick Death in the teeth if he came around."

His buddy looked dubious. "That doesn't mean we have to cancel."

"Look, there's no fucking way. We said we were going to finish this even if we had to take down the security detail. But there's no fucking way we're gonna finish this if we have to go through those guys. Either one of them. McClane'll eat your face for breakfast, man. And I heard that Farrell shot a guy. On his first solo job."

"I heard that they were fucking each other."

"Really? No shit." The first guy looked up and down the image again, at the way Farrell shot McClane a big wide grin and McClane just returned it with the tiniest little quarter inch of a half a smile. "Oh yeah, that'll totally make it easier to take them down. No fucking way. I'm out and so are you. We drop the whole thing."

So that whole enterprise ended right there.

Fortunately, their contract specified payouts if they simply scared the bad guys off by showing up.

"New dishwasher," Farrell was saying as they climbed into the car two days later.

"Jesus, you are the biggest housewife," McClane grumbled at him. "How about Madrid, kid." Matt had never been there and he'd promised John a European vacation with no work if this job took less than a week.

Matt shrugged, pulled out a tablet. "We're packed now, right?" He texted the kid who was watching the garden, and John's dog, while they were away. "Two tickets... one stop on the flight okay with you? There's no nonstops from the local airport."

John just nodded. "No time like now for the good stuff."

Matt slid down in the seat, enjoying letting John drive as always. They both knew that you never knew how much time you had. It was just one of the things they had in common.