Rating: NC-17
Words: 3,988
Disclaimer: Characters are from Die Hard 4.0
Notes: This is set a couple weeks after That Guy.
There's a low rumble of orchestral music with a prominent bassline emanating from down the hall when John comes in the front door. He locks up and moves toward it.
"Soldiers of the thirty-first century, prepare yourselves," Matt's voice comes from his open door. "Leet O'clock is upon us, and the battlefields of Stavromula Beta await."
John snorts, as does someone on the other end of the connection, who tells Matt to get the fuck on with it.
"Keep it in your pants," Matt retorts. "It's only one thirty-five. If you log on early, you forfeit."
At least two distinct voices grumble out of the speakers.
John reaches the doorway and leans in. "Hey."
Matt's leaning back in his chair, one hand on the keyboard, wearing a headset microphone. He looks up and smiles widely. "John, hey! What're you doin' here?"
John smiles back. It doesn't get old, the way Matt's face lights up when he sees John. It doesn't make any more sense, either, as the weeks roll by; John doesn't know why Matt hasn't gotten sick of him, yet, but he's not complaining. "Takin' a late break," he says.
"Hey, I'll make lunch. We can--" Matt starts to get up and John waves him back.
"It's okay, I'm just passing. I needed something." He nods toward his own room. "Don't let me interrupt."
Matt grins, abashed. "I'm just gaming... I mean, I was working earlier. This is just..."
"Go on," John says, and lifts a hand in salutation before pushing away from the doorframe. He opens a couple drawers in the file cabinet stashed in his closet and riffles through the mass of "important documents" he's tossed in over the years with plans to organize it all properly later. The newspaper clippings he wants--mainly to help with an investigation and only partially to settle a bet with Detectives Lemansky and Garris--are thankfully near the top of the second drawer. He folds them up and slots them into the inside pocket of his jacket.
"The time has come, troops," says Matt in the other room. "Log in on my mark, and may the leetest man win."
A higher-pitched voice chimes in, and Matt amends, "Leetest person. Sorry. Okay... Mark!"
The music swells in a dramatic fanfare followed by the roar of a jet engine revving up. John glances at his watch: one thirty-seven. He's got a little time before he needs to head back, so he wanders back into Matt's room. He leans on the back of Matt's swivel chair and looks over his shoulder at the screen, where a dozen men and women in fatigues are packed into a troop carrier of some sort.
Matt leans his head back to look at John. "Got whatcha need?"
"Yeah," says John. "So which one're you?"
"Uh," Matt straightens his head to look at the screen. "That one. Look, I don't have to play now."
"I can't stay," John says. "Don't stop doin' what you're doin'."
Matt gives an amused huff. "Alright, alright."
"So, are you winning?"
Matt grins. "We haven't started yet. This's just the intro FMV. It'll start in a sec--" The screen goes dark and Matt leans forward, taking the mouse in his right hand and poising his left over the keyboard. "Here we go."
"Mm," says John. He turns to leave and strokes Matt's head in parting. The kid pushes his head up into the caress, stretching his neck. John stops, strokes to the back of Matt's head and scratches lightly at the base of his skull. Matt tilts his head to one side, closing his eyes for a second, and makes a small, "mm," of his own.
John glances at his watch, then returns to his spot behind Matt's chair, resting his hands on the kid's shoulders. The screen has resolved into a sort of industrial park nestled in a valley. A few soldiers in fatigues crouch behind a low, concrete shed.
Matt glances up again. He closes his fist around the microphone. "John, I can turn this off."
"Not stayin' long," John says. "Pretend I'm not here. I'm curious."
Matt clicks his tongue and shakes his head. "Okay. But this stuff is clinically proven to bore the pants off any member of a pre-X generation who isn't reduced to seizures."
"Do your thing."
Matt releases the mic and puts his hand back on the mouse. "I'm a-doin'."
"What's that?" says the girl's voice over the speakers.
"Nothing," Matt answers. "Alright, let's use the western ridge, y'think?"
"Great minds," she says, and another couple voices reply in the affirmative.
The onscreen soldiers scatter and two characters go creeping up a hill toting large rifles of no make John recognizes. Thirty-first century tech, presumably.
John's eyes travel around the storage room-cum-guest room-cum-Matt's room. A week ago, John had finally hauled the aged futon to Goodwill and replaced it with a twin bed. Matt uses it more during the day than at night, but John thinks it's important Matt has his own space in the apartment. With Matt's leg finally healed, and John's most recent gunshot wound nearly mended, they finished clearing out the storage boxes, and then Matt rolled up his sleeves and put his touch on the place, which meant multicolored cabling veining the walls and floor, band posters, and dolls on every flat surface. Oh, excuse him: action figures.
They're fucking dolls.
Be that as it may, John's pleased with the sense of permanence the decor lends their living arrangement. It's not a guest room anymore; Matt really lives here. The fact that Matt doesn't jump up and try to hide that he's goofing off as soon as John walks in is not unpleasant, either.
Matt's right about the game, though; John doesn't see the draw. He was good at Pong back when it was set into the tops of bar tables in the seventies, and that was the end of his relationship with video games. Matt's clearly into it, though. He's leaning forward, intent; from above him, John can see the edge of a frown of concentration, the rise and fall of his eyelashes--just visible from this angle. John strokes idle circles over Matt's shoulders with his thumbs as he tries to follow the action onscreen. One strays and brushes the bare skin of Matt's neck. Matt shivers; John sees it run straight down him. His dick twitches in response.
"Head shot," announces the game.
Matt swallows and mutters to his teammates to cover a position.
John watches the curve of cheek as he slips his hand under the thick weight of Matt's hair to ghost his fingertips through the short, feathery strands at his nape. Matt's shoulders ripple under his hands.
"John?" Matt asks, low so his mic won't pick it up.
"Don't mind me," John says. "Be gone in a minute."
Matt's jaw tightens, but he goes back to clicking and tapping keys, and when the fingers of John's other hand glide over his throat and along the underside of his chin, he doesn't say anything, but John can feel the stifled tremors, and Matt's pulse under his thumb beginning to rise.
He doesn't have time to start anything; not really. But the thing about touching Matt, the thing John's been discovering lately, is that it's damned tough to stop once he's started.
John turns his face into the soft fall of Matt's hair and inhales the scent of shampoo. His left hand still curled under Matt's jaw, the fingers of his right dip just under the back of his collar, brushing the ridge of his spine.
Matt's breath stutters. He clicks the mouse and the announcer says, "Direct hit."
John's reaches a little lower, tracing Matt's spine so lightly he barely touches the skin, feels the tiny, downy hairs stand up in his wake. Matt's hand clenches on the keyboard. An explosion booms from the speakers.
"Green team controls the reactor," says the announcer, then, immediately, "Yellow team controls the reactor."
"What the fuck, Farrell?" says the girl.
"You can't hold it if you blow yourself up, too, asshat," rejoins another teammate.
"Don't see you doing anything useful," Matt retorts, voice admirably even. "Yeah, wait, what incredibly high kill count do you have? Oh, that's right, two."
"Blow me."
"Just go for the stupid--" John brushes Matt's hair away from his neck and presses his lips to the hairline. Matt gasps.
"What?"
"Nothing!" Matt insists, but it isn't nothing pressed against his inseam. "I said, go for the troop carrier."
Matt turns his head away, pressing the side of his face into his shoulder. It's this--the way he responds to John's slightest touch, his subtlest advance, so powerfully--that makes it hard to keep his hands to himself. Every time, there's doubt in John's mind as to whether the novelty of his touch can last; every time Matt proves it has, the compulsion to touch him grows.
Matt's movement has left a longer stretch of his throat open and John can't resist. He kisses the pulse that speeds even as he lingers there. He strokes his fingers down from Matt's chin, over the taut tendons of his throat, along the hollow above his collarbone. He darts his tongue out to taste the skin behind Matt's ear and feels the moan vibrate under his fingers; the sound is drowned out by crackling gunfire from the speakers and the announcer's exultant, "Triple-frag. Rampage!"
Matt yanks the headset off and lobs it across his desk, upsetting a cupful of pens and a stack of CD jewel cases. He swings around in his chair, looks up at John with huge, brown eyes, pupils dilated, his rapid breathing visible in the rise and fall of his chest. "You can't just go, now," he says, and there's an edge of desperation to his, "John."
It shakes him. John's own strength, he knows; he's careful when he touches anyone--citizen, colleague, suspect--gauging exactly how much force is needed, never applying more. He's used deadly force far more often than he likes, and he'll never use it by accident. His ability to get someone hot and bothered--that, maybe, he doesn't know so well, anymore. Twenty years ago, there were women who could only--or couldn't even--be dissuaded by the twist of a wedding band around his ring finger. Ten years ago, a smile had still gotten him further than it should have. Recently, he'd been pretty sure all that was over, and he hadn't thought he minded. It almost felt good to have age as an excuse for why he wasn't trying to find a second wife, a girlfriend, or even someone to spend the weekend with. It was a twofold surprise to catch Matt, young, supple and good-looking, watching John when he emerged from the shower in a towel, lips parted, eyelids at half-mast; to see the way Matt's gaze clung, rapt, to John's body as he dressed in the morning. A surprise that it happened, and another the way John reacted. He hadn't expected it to matter this deeply anymore, but those hungry gazes, Matt's rapidly quickening breaths when John touches him just so, they set John on fire. He feels bigger, stronger, potent in a way he shouldn't care about anymore, but finds he does.
"John," Matt says urgently, a pleading expression on his face. As if John could really refuse him, when he looked at him that way.
"Fragged," says the announcer. "Rampage quelled."
Matt's teammates' voices clamor over the speakers, demanding to know where Matt's looking, whether he's mistaken his dick for the mouse, and what mental institution his mother was sleeping around in nine months before he was born. Matt growls, half-turns in his seat, hooks his foot in a cable under the desk and yanks. With an unhealthy-sounding pop from the speakers, the monitor and all the LEDs on the desk go dark.
John blinks. "Thought that was bad for the--"
"Fuck the computer!" Matt's on his feet. He shoves the chair out from between them, clasps John's face in both hands and surges up to kiss him. It's searing hot, messy and urgent, Matt's fingers tense against John's scalp, his tongue questing into John's mouth, twining with his, Matt's hips rubbing against John's like he's gotta show him, gotta communicate this urgency somehow. Message received; John's so hard he doubts he could walk out of here if he wanted to.
He slides an arm around Matt's waist, pulling their bodies flush. He cups Matt's cheek and gently pulls away. Matt's heavy-lidded eyes look black, dilated as they are, in John's shadow. "You can't just..." John's other hand strays down, slips into Matt's back pocket and squeezes. Matt's sentence ends in a soft, "Ah," and his eyes close.
"I wouldn't get you all riled up and leave you here," John murmurs against his lips, then kisses him again. He pushes the loose, unbuttoned shirt Matt's wearing over his shoulders. Matt pulls his hands out, raises them above his head to let John pull off the t-shirt underneath. He reaches for the top button of John's shirt and pauses.
"Is it okay? Can you...?"
John strokes his knuckles along Matt's bare spine to the hollow of his back just above his loose jeans. "Depends what you wanna do," he says.
Matt's eyes widen a little. "Whu--" He bites his lip. "I... want you to..." His loosely curled hands come to rest against John's chest, and they're actually trembling.
John covers them with his own. "Hey," he says softly. "It's whatever you want, kid. No more, no less. You can say it."
Matt swallows. His whisper is almost inaudible: "Fuck me."
It's all John can do not to throw him straight onto the bed. That Matt could want it so badly he's afraid to ask for it... The raw need in his voice, his eyes, his body, is staggering. "Yeah," John answers. "Then all this needs to come off."
He shrugs off his jacket, lets it fall to the ground as Matt makes quick work of his shirt buttons. Matt's cheeks are flushed and he's intent on John's chest as he slides the shirt off, smoothing his palms over the bare skin of John's shoulders. John gives a low rumble of pleasure as Matt's long fingers slip up beneath his undershirt; his thumbs stroke John's stomach as he pulls the thin garment up. John raises his arms, kisses Matt as his head emerges from the shirt. Then they're working one another's belts and flies in tandem, stepping on each other's crumpled pants as they each step out of them.
That's when Matt meets his eyes again. Before he can ask, John grabs him under the knees and sweeps him up, deposits him on his bed and climbs on after. Matt bends his knees on either side of John, making space for him to move up; the bed's narrow and two men can only fit on it one on top of the other... not too bad an arrangement, given the circumstances. John strokes down one lean thigh as he leans in closer, cups the tight swell of Matt's ass. The muscles shift and flex under his fingers and Matt moans softly. John kisses the underside of his chin, nips at the hollow between his collarbones and the soft sounds become sharper. Matt's hips roll against him, the silky skin of Matt's cock brushes John's stomach.
Matt half-rises on his elbows, makes a long-arm for the tiny bureau squeezed into the corner by his headboard. He pulls a tube of lubricant out of the top drawer and hands it to John, blushing fiercely. John twists off the cap; the foil seal underneath is intact. They've only done this in John's room before, and Matt's new bed hasn't been properly inaugurated at all. And Matt's had this prepared, just in case. John smiles.
"John," Matt says softly.
"Yeah, Matt."
Matt's gaze flicks down. "John, um..."
John disposes of the seal. "Get a move on?"
Matt gives a surprised snort of laughter, then gives into it. His eyes glitter. "Yeah," he giggles. "Get on with it. Oh, god. I don't know if I can learn to talk like this."
John smiles back. "Don't have to talk like a porn star. Blunt's good, too. Long's I know what you want."
"Want you," Matt says, and he's still deeply flushed, but meeting John's eyes gravely as he says it. "So much it scares me sometimes. Don't know if I'm supposed to be... you know..." His brow furrows and his mouth twists. "If it's supposed to come on so sudden or so strong. I just..."
John rests his forehead against Matt's chest. "Kid, you're killin' me, here." At Matt's murmur of confusion, John looks up again. "You have no idea, do you?" He squeezes lube into his palm, rubs it warm. Matt's eyes follow his movements. "How hot you are. How hot it is when you talk that way." He reaches his slicked fingers down, slides along the cleft of Matt's ass to the tight pucker of muscle which twitches when he brushes over it.
Matt catches his breath. "I'm not--"
"I know," John says. "That's why."
He pushes his middle finger in and Matt makes a short, sharp noise, then a longer moan as John slides it in to the third knuckle. His muscles clench around the intrusion, but he's lifting his knees higher, and canting his hips up to give John better access.
Two fingers, John does slower, one joint at a time, scrutinizing Matt's face. His eyebrows are angled upwards, mouth open in an expression of almost pained anticipation. Then he's thrusting his hips up, grinding against John's fingers, a low whine in the back of his throat.
"Matt, wait--"
"No," Matt moans. "Now, John, please. Don't make me wait..."
John catches his breath. He twists his fingers slowly, spreading them to stretch those tight walls just a bit more, then pulls them out. Matt's watching him through eyes just slivers of golden brown over the inclined plane of his chest as John coats his erection, shivering under that gaze. John lifts Matt's knees, presses a kiss to Matt's inner thigh; Matt's cock jumps against his belly. John leans forward till Matt's knees are hovering over his chest, John's cock resting at his entrance. He looks up, and Matt sighs, "Yes."
Matt's back arches off the bed as John enters. His left hand slaps against the wall where his fingertips turn white, fingers flexing as if he's trying to punch them through the plaster. "Oh, god," he whispers. "Don't stop. Don't stop."
Matt's eyes are closed, his head thrown back. He whimpers as John seats himself and immediately pulls out to thrust back in. His right hand fists in the blanket and his hips roll up to meet John.
John's head falls forward; his heart hammers in his chest. Matt's soft cries and whimpers of pleasure have him at the edge of his control. Every nerve in him is alight. Each time he sinks into that impossible searing tightness, it's so good it's a miracle he doesn't come. It's taking everything not to, but to come means to stop, and he doesn't want to; wants to stay locked in this give-and-take, his name on Matt's lips, Matt's body pulling him in deeper, closer.
John glances up, the brightly-colored figure of some superhero he doesn't recognize catches his eye on the bureau. He looks around, at the ever-growing mass of computer equipment overflowing from the desk, the stacks of books and magazines on subjects John would be hard-pressed to identify, much less understand, then back to Matt, disheveled, sweaty and gorgeous at the center of it. And he likes this: likes being in Matt's space, in this room that Matt has made his own, almost as much as he likes being inside Matt himself, even though there are posters of bands whose music makes his ears bleed, even though there are dolls.
Matt's eyes flutter open as if he senses John's scrutiny, fixing him with the languid gaze of a sun-drenched cat, and he smiles. "John," he breathes. Desire, acceptance, affection; he infuses it all into the name.
It's too perfect, too good; John surges forward, bringing Matt's knees to his shoulders to kiss him as his orgasm rushes out of him like a tidal wave. The kiss Matt returns is feverish, and then he's coming between them, his cry hot and moist against John's neck.
Matt weaves his arms around John's neck as they settle on their sides--a precarious endeavor on this bed, but they manage it. He buries his face in John's shoulder and breathes deep. His huffed exhalation is like a physical caress. John folds him in his arms, kisses the side of his head.
"You've gotta go, don't you?" Matt says.
"Gimme a minute," John says.
"C'n have as many of mine as y'want." Matt's muffled words tickle his skin. He slips an ankle between John's and snuggles closer. John moves to capture Matt's calf between his own. This, too, is good: skin on skin, shared space, shared heat while November turns two-fifteen into evening outside. It's better than John would ever have been fool enough to ask for, but sometimes, it seems, even he gets lucky. Just as long as he doesn't take it for granted, he figures he'll take it.
It's hard to untangle himself from Matt, but somehow he manages, rolling Matt's warm, pliant form in the blanket as he goes. Tortillaed on his stomach, Matt pouts at him from under a mess of soft hair. "If you didn't have to go make Gotham safe for us ordinary citizens, I'd so make this difficult for you."
"It's difficult enough," John assures him, stroking that hair out of his eyes. He leans down to kiss Matt's forehead, but Matt shifts, seals his lips over John's. He licks into John's mouth, courts John's tongue back into his own where it's soft suction and the twining of tongues. His eyes are bright and intent as he pulls back, holding John's lower lip a fraction of a second longer between his teeth before releasing. The way John's cock throbs, he's actually glad for once he's fifty-two. It's a little too soon to get hard again, which is good, or else Brooklyn's finest would be less one detective the rest of the day. "Goddamn criminal how difficult it is," he says, moving reluctantly away. "You need anything before I go?"
Matt sighs dramatically, flopping back to the pillow. But his smile makes his eyes glitter. "Nah. I have Gatorade under the bed." He laughs. "It wasn't actually for this--it's just the best storage spot. Turns out it doesn't hurt, though." He twists onto his back, arches his body in a long, sinuous stretch, then curls up tightly in the blanket. "Go clean yourself up for the boys in blue, Detective."
"You gonna get back to your troops?" John asks, nodding at the computer.
Matt sticks out his tongue. "GalileoFramed is my second in command. They'll be fiiiine. I think I'm gonna stay right here where it's warm and recover till you get back."
John smiles. "Good plan." He gathers his discarded clothing and moves toward the door.
Matt yawns. "Wake me when you get back, okay? Don't let me sleep."
"You got it." John pauses in the doorway. Matt blinks at him sleepily from his cocoon, amidst the shapes and colors of his new life, the one he's built inside of John's. "See you later, kid." And that trumps everything--the fact that he will, the fact that all of this will be waiting when he gets home. It finally makes this place home. After years of rolling with the punches, he's happy to roll with this.
--Utopian Trunks
August 19, 2008
Sequel: Point B
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