Die Hard fic for help_japan: Sunshine Superman
Title: Sunshine Superman
Author: persnickett
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~12K
Notes/Warnings: I dunno what you call this, fluffy crack or cracky fluff or schmoopy goopy-doopy-doo. I do know it’s slightly silly and that it’s for severina2001who bought one of my fics way back in the help_japanauction, and that I hope she likes it.
The idea for this story originally started way WAY back during the mini-bang challenge at sexy_right with this prompt. When I mentioned -- as I generally do -- my idea to Sev, she jumped up and down and clapped her hands a lot and said SERIOUSLY WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
Apparently? She had to buy me. And when she did she asked for established and gave me the following lovely prompts. Try to figger out which one I used, yo. :D
--48 hours
--for once in my life
--crackerjack box
--John to Matt: “Will you let me?”
--shower
_________________
Sunshine Superman
_________________
Sunshine came softly through my window today,
____
“Matt.”
The sky outside the window was already starting to pinken with the palest beginnings of dawn, but the light inside the bedroom was still a soft pearl grey, washing all the colours of the room into the ashen tones of the old noir films John’s father used to watch, and stretching wan rectangles of watery light across the ceiling.
Still early, but John had a lot he wanted to accomplish today. And his first challenge was lying next to him, curled on his side with both arms tucked up under the pillow, a swath of white light cutting across his shoulder and over the sharp, jutting peak of his shoulder blade.
The kid really needed to get outside once in a while, get some colour. Although it was almost a shame to ruin it; the pale, perfect canvas of this skin - the white of it seemed almost to glow in this light, like moonlight off of marble.
Matt stayed still as a statue too, when John reached out and ran a hand through the strip of light, starting at the neck and moving slowly over young, sleep-warm skin all the way down his spine to cup the firm, round ass. He squeezed.
Still nothing.
“Matty…You awake?”
“Can’t hear you,” Matt didn’t budge or even crack an eye, to give the response that came groggily over his shoulder. “Sleeping.”
“Liar.”
Matt’s only response to the accusation was to raise his head off the pillow just long enough to flip it up with one of the arms underneath it and bury his head under there too.
John could still see the corner of an ear sticking out from under the pillow, and he smiled silently. He knew just what to do with that.
John slowly slid his hand up to curl around the sharp curve of Matt’s hip bone. He stroked his thumb over the sensitive silken skin there a couple of times before he really went to work.
He could lean forward and simply murmur “wake up” into that ear, but first he bent his head to just nuzzle that neck a little. He started at the spot where it curved into Matt’s shoulder, then slowly ran just the tip of his nose all the way up to where his hair curled under his ear. Kid’s hair was getting too long too, John could bury his nose right in it.
Damn but he loved this smell. He breathed deep, taking in the heavy, intoxicating extra dose of him that was Matt before his morning shower. Matt always showered right away when he got up, couldn’t wake up otherwise. He’d drag himself around the house until nearly noon if he didn’t, with bed head and sleep crusted eyes. Matt gave a deep, slow, sighing breath of his own, that told John his attentions were finally getting him somewhere.
“Matt,” John said quietly, putting his lips to the shell of his ear. “…Wake up, Matt.”
“No.” The pillow wasn’t enough to muffle the meaning of the terse, definitive syllable, but then Matt was already starting to push back into John’s grip, where his thumb was still rubbing slow, steady strokes into the skin.
“I’ll make it worth your while.” John gave the words his best deep, purring tone.
Matt turned his head enough that one eye emerged from under the pillow to glare blearily at him.
“You better be talking blow job, not con job. Or like mutual masturbation and not, like, bait shop.”
“Can’t we do both?” John moved his thumb in a little circle.
“Ugh.” Matt pulled his thoroughly sleep-tousled head out from under the pillow and flopped it down in defeat. “You drive a hard bargain, Detective.”
“Mmm. Sounds like a plan,” John said, acknowledging the attempt at innuendo before he leaned forward for a soft, warm morning kiss. He kept it chaste.
“Plan?” Matt blinked at him as he pulled away. “You mean ‘plan’ like for the future and not for right this second kind of ‘plan’?”
John felt his mouth move into a lopsided half-smile. He loved Matt like this, all mussed up and muzzy; funky and warm-smelling. On another morning, he would put lingering kisses on both bleary eyelids, push Matt’s knee up to his chest so he could touch everywhere. Pet and stroke and sink into the warmth of that pliant, willing body, as both of them slowly came awake; as the blood stirred and their bodies woke and came to a shuddering, panting, honest to God good morning. The best kind John knew of.
Just the thought was pretty stirring right now, as a matter of fact. He could feel its effects adding themselves to the usual morning state of affairs, where his body was busy rousing itself from the short night’s sleep.
But not this morning. This morning he was going to take a real day off for once in his life; do some fishing, get some real R&R - get out of the city before the morning traffic could fuck up his mood. He had a plan alright, and he was sticking to it.
So this morning, he merely said “go on,” and gave that round, firm ass a quick slap for encouragement before he rolled himself heavily out of bed and to his feet. “I’ll have the coffee ready by the time you’re out of the shower.”
“Up at the moist, hairy ass crack of dawn for a literal goddamn can of worms, and now I have to jerk off in the shower alone,” Matt grumbled. He sat up on the edge of the bed, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Gotta tell ya John, I’m not even out of bed yet and this is already a contender for worst vacation ever. And just a word to the wise for someone who’s never been on one of the dysfunctional fun-time Farrell holidays: that is saying a hell of a lot.”
“Don’t get me started on crappy holidays, kid,” John said over his shoulder as he made his way across the room to retrieve his bathrobe. “It’s a battle you can’t win.”
Matt pushed his hand into his hair and tried to tug his fingers through his tangled mop before he gave it up as a bad job and dropped it to his side in frustration.
“Story of my life.”
John couldn’t help but smile a tad ironically at that one, as he shrugged the robe on.
“You know,” Matt grumped, finally standing up to peel off his shorts and toss them in the general direction of the hamper, “you are entirely too happy for this ungodly hour.”
“Ten minutes,” John ignored that last complaint. “Then I’m coming in there.”
“This is a deterrent because...” Matt turned to face him, now fully nude and near fully erect, too. He draped an arm languidly over his head and raised the other in the air to stretch brazenly.
The sight was tempting, that was for damn sure. But thankfully John had his robe on already and didn’t have to let on just how much.
Fishing, he told himself. R&R. City traffic. …Plans.
“Because I’ll be holding a cup full of cold water from the kitchen. …If you’re lucky.”
“Right right, and from the toilet if I’m not. Three years in an all guys’ dorm, McClane, I know this one.” Matt yawned and scratched himself in a manner that should have been a hell of a lot less tempting, but wasn’t really.
John ignored another twitch of interest from his groin and held back on a sigh. He was pretty sure he remembered a time when he didn’t feel like a complete out-of-control pervert every goddamn minute of the day.
Instead he just raised an eyebrow that said that immature grabassing or not, his threat stood firm. It did the trick.
“Relax,” Matt said quickly, waving his hand dismissively through the air. “I’m gone! Jeez.” Then he padded away into the hall toward the bathroom, where John was pretty sure he heard him mutter something that sounded like “...Bossy McCrotchetypants.”
**
It’ll take time, I know it...
____
“C’mon, keep up,” John urged over his shoulder, for what felt like the one thousandth time.
“Hey John, out of curiosity…” Matt’s voice sounded out of breath and further behind than he’d thought. John turned around to see him stumble out of the brush nearly a dozen paces behind him. “Of all the times you’ve been shot, how many of them were in the leg?”
Smartass. John scrubbed a hand over his face. He swore he could shoot the kid right now, if he didn’t start staying on the path and keeping up.
“You know if you’re so tired, maybe you should try giving that mouth a rest.”
It had been like this all morning. John had been prepared for the fact that with the drive, and any possible delays, they might not make it to camp in time for him to get on the lake that morning but between getting all Matt’s shit into the car, and a brief but impassioned argument about trying to bring a generator and half is computer gear, by this time it was getting on for noon.
At least there was always the evening, the water should be pretty quiet by then.
“Go on without me,” Matt panted, throwing himself theatrically down on a nearby rock.
“What? Can the drama kid,” John said, but he dropped his pack and headed back to lean over the kid and make sure nothing was actually wrong with him. “You’ve got a blister, not a busted leg. Up.”
He didn’t bother pointing out that that was likely to happen when you wear flimsy canvas sneakers instead of proper hiking boots out into the bush.
“I HAD a blister,” Matt argued. “The blister popped after the first fifteen million miles of this sadistic death march and now it’s just an open sore bleeding through my sock. What I HAVE is a twisted ankle…probably a sprained ankle.”
John squatted down to check both Matt’s ankles for heat or swelling with a careful squeeze. They were both fine.
“And this.” Matt waved his hand vaguely in John’s face.
“It’s a sliver. In your hand. How’s that stop you from keeping up, huh?”
“I think it’s infected,” Matt lamented, looking down at it and either completely ignoring him or somehow, unfathomably, thinking that was some kind of answer. “…And I’m pretty sure you’re standing in poison ivy.”
That damn book. John was going to destroy that book.
Matt wouldn’t be tripping and falling and getting splinters in his hands if he wasn’t trying to walk the trail with his nose stuck in that book. The only other use for the ‘field guide’ Matt had insisted on packing, besides landing him flat on his ass now and then, seemed to be for pointing out how every single thing around them was poisonous.
“That’s a…stump-stabber beetle,” he’d say, stopping to check his beloved guide and point out what looked like a run of the mill bumble-bee to John. “It’s poisonous. Good for it. And see that, what it’s sitting on? Trumpet fungus. …Yup, poisonous.”
As if John were planning on brewing them up a batch of stump stabber beetle and trumpet fungus soup for dinner.
Matt hadn’t put the damn thing away since they hit the park entrance, and he’d said, sardonically, “welcome to Camp Crystal Lake. I totally shouldn’t have watched Friday the 13th before coming out here to spend 48 hours in the middle of - what the hell is THAT!?” Even now the book was still clutched tightly in his hand - the one that he wasn’t convinced was grievously injured and hideously infected.
He was still staring down at the sliver morosely when John took a firm hold of the top of his backpack and hauled him to his feet by the scruff. “I’ll take it out for you when we get to camp, now c’mon.”
**
I'll pick up your hand...
____
It was easier said than done.
“Ow ow ow ow!”
“I didn’t touch you yet.”
“Yeah and there’s no way you’re going to,” Matt said with a sarcastic little laugh. “That’s a needle you’re holding. A needle which you just put in the fire. With pliers. What do we need pliers in the middle of the woods for, again? I’ve seen Saw, okay McClane, if this whole ‘vacation’ deal was some sort of clever ploy to get me out here for some kind of freaky torture porn, you can count me out.”
He wasn’t going to bother pointing out that there was a set of pliers in every tackle box worth a damn in America. Fishing was a bit of a sore point by now. Setting up camp and getting the fire going had taken the rest of the afternoon, but maybe John would head out after getting Matt squared away. Twilight would be the best time for fish to bite, anyway.
“This from the guy who just last night used the words ‘pound’ and ‘harder’ in bed before we left.”
At least his teasing retort was successful in pulling the first smile out of the kid John had seen since they left. But it didn’t last long.
“I’m very selective about how I like my pain to be-don’t don’t don’t touch it!!” Matt exclaimed, and pulled his hand out of John’s gentle hold before he could get any where near it with the needle.
It seemed like maybe he wasn’t altogether joking about this needle phobia business. John sighed.
“Okay okay,” Matt said, holding up his un-injured hand in the air in placation. “I’m serious though John, maybe we should just put a band-aid over it or something instead of sticking red hot needles in there.”
“It’s cooled off already. Look, I’m holding it with my fingers for chrissakes. I had to put it in the fire to sterilize it.”
“I know, I’m just…It’s all swollen and shit.” Matt poked at his palm experimentally with a finger. “It hurts.”
“Yup,” John agreed. “That’s because you were right; it’s infected. That’s why I gotta get the thing outta there. And we should do it before it gets too dark for me to see what the hell I’m doing.”
“Right. Because that’s the last thing I need. Your big blunt sausage fingers fumbling a tiny needle around in my flesh and working blind.”
“Your hands are practically the same size as mine,” he argued, before he could stop himself.
Sausage fingers? Well, hell. John made a mental note that if the kid ever had to have anything like a real surgery in the future, to have a talk with him beforehand about saying shit out loud that could get a guy on the wrong side of the doctor who was going to be wielding the scalpel.
“I know, I know,” Matt was on a roll now, flipping both hands through the air while he talked, so there was no way John could catch a hold of the one that needed attention without probably hurting him for real. “You think I haven’t heard a million times by now - at least half of that million being from your charmer of a daughter by the way - how hilarious it is how skinny I am but then I have these hands and always trip over my own big stupid feet? But these are typist’s fingers, okay?” Matt went on, wiggling them in John’s face to demonstrate. “They’re like very deft and nimble and detail-oriented and I’m just saying your hands are…fuller okay? They’re more suited to feats of strength and things like crushing and punching, and wrapping around- ”
“Matt.” John kept his voice quiet through sheer force of will, but it seemed to work just fine to get his attention. Matt went silent and waited while he rubbed at his forehead and tried to focus on keeping a slow pulse and a steady hand - just like getting ready to fire a weapon. “Will you just…will you let me?”
“Fine.” Matt held out his hand with its admittedly swollen-looking palm and let John wrap his big, crushing, sausage fingers around his wrist. Jesus.
Then he dropped his gaze to the dirt between his sneakers so his hair flopped forward into his face and he wouldn’t have to watch what John was doing with the needle. Didn’t seem to have the same control over his mouth though, not that it came as a surprise.
“…And not to put any pressure on the situation or anything,” Matt babbled, before John could even get started. “I know you’re holding a needle and doing a highly delicate procedure, but I just want to remind you my hands are kind of my livelihood, John, you know when I can’t type for a couple of days I get-OW! Shit. Ok see that? That is what I’m talking about that I would really like to not have happen again, so from here on in can we try t-“
“Done!” John interrupted the stream of prattle, holding up the needle for a good look at the crooked sliver of wood clinging to its tip. “Highly delicate procedure,” he said.
Turned out the bastard was actually pretty long; couldn’t have been comfortable. And John knew from experience that the sting of the disinfectant he brought out of the first aid kit next had to hurt worse than taking the damn thing out, but Matt didn’t bitch about that part. John saw his jaw line harden a little, but that was it.
Then John really did put a band-aid over it, and a little kiss for good measure.
“All better?” he crooned, in an exaggerated, mock solicitous tone.
Matt punched him in the shoulder - the good one - and told him not to be an asshole. Now both of them were grinning. John deemed the surgery an official success.
“I know I was being a baby,” Matt conceded, as they both looked down at John’s handiwork. “I was just joking around. …Mostly. But I am serious that when we get home if I get a huge pus-filled infection from blackened sewing needles and I can’t type I’m going to be in a really…what are you doing?”
“…Highly…delicate…procedure…” John replied, punctuating his words with more gentle kisses to the hot, swollen surface of Matthew’s palm, his fingers, the thin, sensitive skin on the inside of his wrist.
The late afternoon light had already turned golden and the sun had angled down low, to filter through the trees into the camp site. The dappled yellow light was setting Matt off with an inviting looking midsummer’s glow - the merrily crackling fire at John’s back tossing out little sparks that reflected in his eyes, and when John looked up at them, they were giving him that look.
So when he tugged a little on the wrist he was still holding, to push one of Matt’s fingers into his mouth, Matt rewarded him with a sharp hissing noise of surprise and moved eagerly forward, to kneel in the dirt between John’s knees. And when he ran his free hand up John’s thigh, and started to pull on the finger that John was holding so willingly captive toward waiting lips like he had a fish of his own on the line, John figured he still had a little time left before he had to get down to the lake.
**
…and slowly blow your little mind
____
“There are so many,” Matt breathed, from beside him. They were stretched on their backs in the sand with their heads next to each other, bodies pointing in opposite directions like the hands of a clock reading twelve thirty. “It’s easy to forget they’re there sometimes, isn’t it? With all the light pollution from the city.”
Leave it to Matt to refer to something like a man-made city light as pollution. But the awe in his voice couldn’t be faked, for once there wasn’t a trace of irony in the kid’s tone.
It was true, it was a clear night and there really were a lot of stars out. John stayed quiet, looking up at them and listening to the soft lapping sounds from the water’s edge. He never had gotten out on the lake. They’d both been pretty hungry after the things they’d gotten up to by the fire, and cooking anything decent to eat over an open flame always took some time. When they finally tucked into a couple of cowboy steaks and some potatoes wrapped in foil and baked in the coals, though, they’d both agreed it was worth the wait. At least there was always tomorrow morning.
Afterward, with both of them sated and happy, Matt’s suggestion that they grab the flashlight and wander the thirty yards or so down to the water was probably more about finding something to do than trying to burn off the heavy meal.
“Some of them are dead, you know?” Matt mused, still apparently captivated by the night sky. “Gone supernova hundreds of years ago. We just see them now because the light takes that long to get to us, they’re just that far away.”
They didn’t seem that far away. John felt like he could reach right up and grab the Big Dipper by its crooked old handle.
“I did not know that,” he said primly. He put up a hand to wind Matt’s hair between his fingers. “Tell me more, Professor?”
“Just for that I will, jackass,” Matt replied, nudging his head into the touch like an affectionate cat. “Think about it, that means there’s thousands more being born all the time that we can’t see yet. It always kills me how big everything is. …How small we are, I guess.”
John turned his head, trying to make out Matt’s profile by nothing but starlight. He couldn’t see much by the silvery, ethereal light of planets billions of miles away, just the pale curve of his forehead; the bridge of his young, never-broken nose a faintly white line in the darkness.
“When I was eight,” Matt said dreamily, “I got the chicken pox. I had to stay in my room all the time so my brother and sister wouldn’t catch it - David caught it anyway of course, Dave always got everything, even though it was Emily we couldn’t keep out of my room. She was only six, she didn’t really get it - but I was so bored in there. Two weeks felt like forever back then. In the first couple of days I had burned through all the books in the house at least once, so my Dad…”
Matt paused, and John gave up trying to search his features out in the dim light. He could only hope it was to smile, but he doubted it. Matt didn’t talk about his father much.
“There isn’t much to tell,” John remembered him saying, on the rare occasions John asked about it. “He wasn’t around a lot.”
From what John could gather, the one thing Matt’s father had been good at, was buying gifts. The guilty kind. John knew it well. His memory flashed without his permission on the gargantuan teddy bear he’d bought for Lucy the first Christmas after Holly moved the kids to LA.
John flicked at the soft ends of the lock of hair wrapped around his index finger and waited for Matt to find his voice again.
“…My dad bought me this big massive telescope and he helped me set it up by my window and check out the stars,” he was saying now. A pretty slick present, sure enough.
John didn’t need to be able to read Matt’s expression to know why this memory stuck with the kid the way it did; that the time his old man had taken with him setting that big expensive telescope up, and maybe showing him how to use it a little, meant more to him than the showy ostentatious gift ever could. At the time, Matt probably would have been just as happy with something out of a crackerjack box, as long as it came with a little fatherly attention.
“The first night I looked through that telescope, oh man. It blew my fuckin’ mind.” Matt chuckled at the memory. “I got really into astronomy for a while. It was what made me want to go to Space Camp. …Then I guess I got distracted, moved on to other stuff.”
“Freddie,” said John.
Matt had probably come to regret letting it slip, almost a year ago now, that the first time he’d found himself developing a crush on another boy was at camp. John could never get him to say who, but that just made it all the more obvious. To this day Matt’s voice still took on a quiet reverence sometimes when he talked about the guy’s computer knowledge, like he was some kind of a god.
“…I was going to say video games.” Matt snorted. “But yeah,” he admitted.
John smiled up at the North Star, even if Matt couldn’t see it in the dark. He should be jealous or something, and maybe later he would be. Right now he couldn’t be bothered. It was ‘the Warlock’, for fucks sake. Hardly competition.
Besides, he was feeling too laid-back to care, looking up at the stars and taking in this new Matt, relaxed and open. Actually letting him in on what was happening in that big overdeveloped brain of his, without a lot of nervous chatter just to get to the point. Matt talked a hell of a lot, but he pretty much never told John anything. Not about himself that is. About conspiracy theories and poisonous stump beetles and government cover-ups and the evils of genetically modified corn products, sure.
Seeing Matt like this, without the sarcasm and the hard edges was a perk to getting away that John hadn’t figured on. It was new.
Then suddenly he couldn’t see anything at all, something dark had blotted out the tiny myriad lightpoints of the stars altogether. The familiar tickle of hair brushing his forehead told him Matt was rolling up on a shoulder to loom over him.
“Guess I have kind of a hero-worship issue, huh?” he murmured, before leaning down to press his mouth over John’s.
The upside down kiss was a new sensation too. He could feel Matt’s chin brush the tip of his nose, and then rather than going for the bottom lip like he so often did, Matt sucked John’s top lip into his mouth, licked at his tongue, and then moved on to take the bottom one between his teeth for good measure. He ran his tongue over the edge of it, making John grunt.
John took the kid’s face between both his hands, fingers coming to rest under his jaw, and brush at the sensitive flesh of his throat, instead of stretching up into his hair. Matt made a little ‘mmph’ sound as John pulled him closer, putting a little pressure into the kiss and then returning the favour, running his tongue over Matthew’s top lip and drawing it into his mouth to suck firmly. Matt gave a heavy, hot breath into John’s mouth and moved his tongue to slide against John’s, and when John angled his head a little and tangled their tongues together, Matt responded heatedly, pushing closer and moaning in a way that made John feel like he was seeing stars all over again.
But obviously the whole thing reminded Matt of one of his stupid movies because when he finally pulled away he completely ruined the mood by putting on a falsetto twitter and sighing, “do you love me, Peter Parker?”
Okay. If Matt wanted to screw around, that’s what they would do. It had been a long time since he’d done this, but he figured he could still manage it with a guy Matt’s size, and off his guard, too. John arched his back, and reached all the way up over Matt’s shoulder to grab his belt.
“Oh shit,” Matt said, as John’s other arm moved under the spot where Matt was propping himself up on his elbows to snake across his chest but it was too late, John already had his hold.
“Who’s this Peter guy!?” he growled playfully, and then brought his hips down hard, pulling on Matt’s beltline and rolling with the momentum so that Matt’s legs flipped up through the air. Matt tucked his head into John’s shoulder as he somersaulted over him, and John kept rolling with it, so they both ended up in a seated position, Matt’s ass coming down with a dull thump in the sand between John’s outstretched legs.
“Holy fuck.”
John just smiled and tightened the arm around Matt’s chest. Not bad for an old guy. His shoulder twinged with the movement, but he ignored it. It had been a while since it had started feeling good enough to forget about, like he’d just done. He had a feeling he’d regret it in the morning but for now John decided to call that a good sign, and waited for Matt’s move.
There was a time when Matt would have just sat there and whined about shit like asthma, or low blood sugar, but John had been working with him on that, and tonight Matt didn’t disappoint. He dug his heels into the sand, and with a grunt, shoved backward hard enough to take John back to the ground again.
“While I might believe,” Matt huffed, gripping John’s arm still across his chest, “if there is one person in the world who could have missed the momentous, decade-defining moment of cheese that is the upside down kissing scene with Kirsten Dunst,” Matt rolled into the direction of the hold instead of trying to wriggle away from it, just like John taught him. “…plastered all over billboards and broadcasted relentlessly into the living rooms of the nation in that epic trailer, that yes, it would be you,” Matt’s gambit worked, and he broke John’s hold, rolling off of him to the right.
“…I refuse to believe you don’t know that Peter Parker is Spiderman,” he panted. “It’s like not knowing who Clark Kent is.”
“Superman,” John said, simply, raising the arm that was now pinned under Matt’s back to get it behind his head and draw him forward for a headlock. “Too easy.”
“Spoiler!” Matt gasped, wrapping a leg around John’s and pulling upward so his back arched and he couldn’t pull Matt’s head to his chest for the hold. Matt could duck out of it now.
“Batman?” he quizzed, when he was free.
“Bruce Banner,” John grunted, as Matt went for the arm. He still had his leg hooked firmly around John’s thigh.
“Bruce WAYNE, Bruce Banner is The Incredible Hulk!”
Matt was so scandalized my John’s lack of comic savvy he hesitated, and John followed his own advice, rolling toward the hold and up, so that he was leaning over Matt now, pinning him down with a forearm across the lean, heaving chest.
“The green guy?” John asked. “I thought that was Scott…something.”
“Adam Scott is a Green Lantern,” it was hard to make out in the dark, but this close up he could see that Matt’s eyes were rolling.
“The guy with the arrows.”
“The Green Arrow would be the guy with the arrows,” Matt complained. “Now you’re just saying things to hurt me.”
“I could never hurt you, Mary Jane,” John drawled slowly, leaning down for a right-side up kiss.
“Mary Jane,” Matt scoffed, when John drew back again. “I knew it! Nobody could be that out of it about popular culture. For a guy who claims to be able to tell when everyone is lying, you sure do a shitty job of it yourself.”
John couldn’t help a short chuckle. “Eh, it’s why you love me.”
John couldn’t really see Matt’s face, and maybe that’s why he didn’t see it coming. He’d forgotten Matt still had that leg hooked around his thigh. Without warning, the other one came up around the small of his back, while the first one yanked his knee out from under him. Suddenly John was on his back again with Matt straddling him, and holding one arm gently across his throat in symbolic conquest.
Well, damn.
“I love you,” Matt purred, leaning forward to bite at John’s lower lip the way he liked to, “because you’re going to take me back up the hill to our tent and fuck my brains out like you promised this morning.” Matt wriggled against him, letting him feel the effect that all the kissing - and maybe the roughhousing too - had had on him.
The feel of it made a thrill of warmth shoot upward from his gut into his chest, as John’s body started working on a reaction of its own. John realized he was cold and slightly damp. The sand had long ago given up the heat of the day, and the grit on his fingers probably wouldn’t be appreciated if he tried to put them anywhere Matt had him thinking about now.
Heading back to the tent suddenly sounded like a great idea.
“Deal,” John agreed, stealing one last kiss before tapping Matt’s arm a couple of times, both in recognition of his little victory and to get him moving. “Let’s see if we can wake the neighbours, huh?”
**
part 2
.
Author: persnickett
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~12K
Notes/Warnings: I dunno what you call this, fluffy crack or cracky fluff or schmoopy goopy-doopy-doo. I do know it’s slightly silly and that it’s for severina2001who bought one of my fics way back in the help_japanauction, and that I hope she likes it.
The idea for this story originally started way WAY back during the mini-bang challenge at sexy_right with this prompt. When I mentioned -- as I generally do -- my idea to Sev, she jumped up and down and clapped her hands a lot and said SERIOUSLY WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
Apparently? She had to buy me. And when she did she asked for established and gave me the following lovely prompts. Try to figger out which one I used, yo. :D
--48 hours
--for once in my life
--crackerjack box
--John to Matt: “Will you let me?”
--shower
_________________
Sunshine Superman
_________________
Sunshine came softly through my window today,
____
“Matt.”
The sky outside the window was already starting to pinken with the palest beginnings of dawn, but the light inside the bedroom was still a soft pearl grey, washing all the colours of the room into the ashen tones of the old noir films John’s father used to watch, and stretching wan rectangles of watery light across the ceiling.
Still early, but John had a lot he wanted to accomplish today. And his first challenge was lying next to him, curled on his side with both arms tucked up under the pillow, a swath of white light cutting across his shoulder and over the sharp, jutting peak of his shoulder blade.
The kid really needed to get outside once in a while, get some colour. Although it was almost a shame to ruin it; the pale, perfect canvas of this skin - the white of it seemed almost to glow in this light, like moonlight off of marble.
Matt stayed still as a statue too, when John reached out and ran a hand through the strip of light, starting at the neck and moving slowly over young, sleep-warm skin all the way down his spine to cup the firm, round ass. He squeezed.
Still nothing.
“Matty…You awake?”
“Can’t hear you,” Matt didn’t budge or even crack an eye, to give the response that came groggily over his shoulder. “Sleeping.”
“Liar.”
Matt’s only response to the accusation was to raise his head off the pillow just long enough to flip it up with one of the arms underneath it and bury his head under there too.
John could still see the corner of an ear sticking out from under the pillow, and he smiled silently. He knew just what to do with that.
John slowly slid his hand up to curl around the sharp curve of Matt’s hip bone. He stroked his thumb over the sensitive silken skin there a couple of times before he really went to work.
He could lean forward and simply murmur “wake up” into that ear, but first he bent his head to just nuzzle that neck a little. He started at the spot where it curved into Matt’s shoulder, then slowly ran just the tip of his nose all the way up to where his hair curled under his ear. Kid’s hair was getting too long too, John could bury his nose right in it.
Damn but he loved this smell. He breathed deep, taking in the heavy, intoxicating extra dose of him that was Matt before his morning shower. Matt always showered right away when he got up, couldn’t wake up otherwise. He’d drag himself around the house until nearly noon if he didn’t, with bed head and sleep crusted eyes. Matt gave a deep, slow, sighing breath of his own, that told John his attentions were finally getting him somewhere.
“Matt,” John said quietly, putting his lips to the shell of his ear. “…Wake up, Matt.”
“No.” The pillow wasn’t enough to muffle the meaning of the terse, definitive syllable, but then Matt was already starting to push back into John’s grip, where his thumb was still rubbing slow, steady strokes into the skin.
“I’ll make it worth your while.” John gave the words his best deep, purring tone.
Matt turned his head enough that one eye emerged from under the pillow to glare blearily at him.
“You better be talking blow job, not con job. Or like mutual masturbation and not, like, bait shop.”
“Can’t we do both?” John moved his thumb in a little circle.
“Ugh.” Matt pulled his thoroughly sleep-tousled head out from under the pillow and flopped it down in defeat. “You drive a hard bargain, Detective.”
“Mmm. Sounds like a plan,” John said, acknowledging the attempt at innuendo before he leaned forward for a soft, warm morning kiss. He kept it chaste.
“Plan?” Matt blinked at him as he pulled away. “You mean ‘plan’ like for the future and not for right this second kind of ‘plan’?”
John felt his mouth move into a lopsided half-smile. He loved Matt like this, all mussed up and muzzy; funky and warm-smelling. On another morning, he would put lingering kisses on both bleary eyelids, push Matt’s knee up to his chest so he could touch everywhere. Pet and stroke and sink into the warmth of that pliant, willing body, as both of them slowly came awake; as the blood stirred and their bodies woke and came to a shuddering, panting, honest to God good morning. The best kind John knew of.
Just the thought was pretty stirring right now, as a matter of fact. He could feel its effects adding themselves to the usual morning state of affairs, where his body was busy rousing itself from the short night’s sleep.
But not this morning. This morning he was going to take a real day off for once in his life; do some fishing, get some real R&R - get out of the city before the morning traffic could fuck up his mood. He had a plan alright, and he was sticking to it.
So this morning, he merely said “go on,” and gave that round, firm ass a quick slap for encouragement before he rolled himself heavily out of bed and to his feet. “I’ll have the coffee ready by the time you’re out of the shower.”
“Up at the moist, hairy ass crack of dawn for a literal goddamn can of worms, and now I have to jerk off in the shower alone,” Matt grumbled. He sat up on the edge of the bed, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Gotta tell ya John, I’m not even out of bed yet and this is already a contender for worst vacation ever. And just a word to the wise for someone who’s never been on one of the dysfunctional fun-time Farrell holidays: that is saying a hell of a lot.”
“Don’t get me started on crappy holidays, kid,” John said over his shoulder as he made his way across the room to retrieve his bathrobe. “It’s a battle you can’t win.”
Matt pushed his hand into his hair and tried to tug his fingers through his tangled mop before he gave it up as a bad job and dropped it to his side in frustration.
“Story of my life.”
John couldn’t help but smile a tad ironically at that one, as he shrugged the robe on.
“You know,” Matt grumped, finally standing up to peel off his shorts and toss them in the general direction of the hamper, “you are entirely too happy for this ungodly hour.”
“Ten minutes,” John ignored that last complaint. “Then I’m coming in there.”
“This is a deterrent because...” Matt turned to face him, now fully nude and near fully erect, too. He draped an arm languidly over his head and raised the other in the air to stretch brazenly.
The sight was tempting, that was for damn sure. But thankfully John had his robe on already and didn’t have to let on just how much.
Fishing, he told himself. R&R. City traffic. …Plans.
“Because I’ll be holding a cup full of cold water from the kitchen. …If you’re lucky.”
“Right right, and from the toilet if I’m not. Three years in an all guys’ dorm, McClane, I know this one.” Matt yawned and scratched himself in a manner that should have been a hell of a lot less tempting, but wasn’t really.
John ignored another twitch of interest from his groin and held back on a sigh. He was pretty sure he remembered a time when he didn’t feel like a complete out-of-control pervert every goddamn minute of the day.
Instead he just raised an eyebrow that said that immature grabassing or not, his threat stood firm. It did the trick.
“Relax,” Matt said quickly, waving his hand dismissively through the air. “I’m gone! Jeez.” Then he padded away into the hall toward the bathroom, where John was pretty sure he heard him mutter something that sounded like “...Bossy McCrotchetypants.”
**
It’ll take time, I know it...
____
“C’mon, keep up,” John urged over his shoulder, for what felt like the one thousandth time.
“Hey John, out of curiosity…” Matt’s voice sounded out of breath and further behind than he’d thought. John turned around to see him stumble out of the brush nearly a dozen paces behind him. “Of all the times you’ve been shot, how many of them were in the leg?”
Smartass. John scrubbed a hand over his face. He swore he could shoot the kid right now, if he didn’t start staying on the path and keeping up.
“You know if you’re so tired, maybe you should try giving that mouth a rest.”
It had been like this all morning. John had been prepared for the fact that with the drive, and any possible delays, they might not make it to camp in time for him to get on the lake that morning but between getting all Matt’s shit into the car, and a brief but impassioned argument about trying to bring a generator and half is computer gear, by this time it was getting on for noon.
At least there was always the evening, the water should be pretty quiet by then.
“Go on without me,” Matt panted, throwing himself theatrically down on a nearby rock.
“What? Can the drama kid,” John said, but he dropped his pack and headed back to lean over the kid and make sure nothing was actually wrong with him. “You’ve got a blister, not a busted leg. Up.”
He didn’t bother pointing out that that was likely to happen when you wear flimsy canvas sneakers instead of proper hiking boots out into the bush.
“I HAD a blister,” Matt argued. “The blister popped after the first fifteen million miles of this sadistic death march and now it’s just an open sore bleeding through my sock. What I HAVE is a twisted ankle…probably a sprained ankle.”
John squatted down to check both Matt’s ankles for heat or swelling with a careful squeeze. They were both fine.
“And this.” Matt waved his hand vaguely in John’s face.
“It’s a sliver. In your hand. How’s that stop you from keeping up, huh?”
“I think it’s infected,” Matt lamented, looking down at it and either completely ignoring him or somehow, unfathomably, thinking that was some kind of answer. “…And I’m pretty sure you’re standing in poison ivy.”
That damn book. John was going to destroy that book.
Matt wouldn’t be tripping and falling and getting splinters in his hands if he wasn’t trying to walk the trail with his nose stuck in that book. The only other use for the ‘field guide’ Matt had insisted on packing, besides landing him flat on his ass now and then, seemed to be for pointing out how every single thing around them was poisonous.
“That’s a…stump-stabber beetle,” he’d say, stopping to check his beloved guide and point out what looked like a run of the mill bumble-bee to John. “It’s poisonous. Good for it. And see that, what it’s sitting on? Trumpet fungus. …Yup, poisonous.”
As if John were planning on brewing them up a batch of stump stabber beetle and trumpet fungus soup for dinner.
Matt hadn’t put the damn thing away since they hit the park entrance, and he’d said, sardonically, “welcome to Camp Crystal Lake. I totally shouldn’t have watched Friday the 13th before coming out here to spend 48 hours in the middle of - what the hell is THAT!?” Even now the book was still clutched tightly in his hand - the one that he wasn’t convinced was grievously injured and hideously infected.
He was still staring down at the sliver morosely when John took a firm hold of the top of his backpack and hauled him to his feet by the scruff. “I’ll take it out for you when we get to camp, now c’mon.”
**
I'll pick up your hand...
____
It was easier said than done.
“Ow ow ow ow!”
“I didn’t touch you yet.”
“Yeah and there’s no way you’re going to,” Matt said with a sarcastic little laugh. “That’s a needle you’re holding. A needle which you just put in the fire. With pliers. What do we need pliers in the middle of the woods for, again? I’ve seen Saw, okay McClane, if this whole ‘vacation’ deal was some sort of clever ploy to get me out here for some kind of freaky torture porn, you can count me out.”
He wasn’t going to bother pointing out that there was a set of pliers in every tackle box worth a damn in America. Fishing was a bit of a sore point by now. Setting up camp and getting the fire going had taken the rest of the afternoon, but maybe John would head out after getting Matt squared away. Twilight would be the best time for fish to bite, anyway.
“This from the guy who just last night used the words ‘pound’ and ‘harder’ in bed before we left.”
At least his teasing retort was successful in pulling the first smile out of the kid John had seen since they left. But it didn’t last long.
“I’m very selective about how I like my pain to be-don’t don’t don’t touch it!!” Matt exclaimed, and pulled his hand out of John’s gentle hold before he could get any where near it with the needle.
It seemed like maybe he wasn’t altogether joking about this needle phobia business. John sighed.
“Okay okay,” Matt said, holding up his un-injured hand in the air in placation. “I’m serious though John, maybe we should just put a band-aid over it or something instead of sticking red hot needles in there.”
“It’s cooled off already. Look, I’m holding it with my fingers for chrissakes. I had to put it in the fire to sterilize it.”
“I know, I’m just…It’s all swollen and shit.” Matt poked at his palm experimentally with a finger. “It hurts.”
“Yup,” John agreed. “That’s because you were right; it’s infected. That’s why I gotta get the thing outta there. And we should do it before it gets too dark for me to see what the hell I’m doing.”
“Right. Because that’s the last thing I need. Your big blunt sausage fingers fumbling a tiny needle around in my flesh and working blind.”
“Your hands are practically the same size as mine,” he argued, before he could stop himself.
Sausage fingers? Well, hell. John made a mental note that if the kid ever had to have anything like a real surgery in the future, to have a talk with him beforehand about saying shit out loud that could get a guy on the wrong side of the doctor who was going to be wielding the scalpel.
“I know, I know,” Matt was on a roll now, flipping both hands through the air while he talked, so there was no way John could catch a hold of the one that needed attention without probably hurting him for real. “You think I haven’t heard a million times by now - at least half of that million being from your charmer of a daughter by the way - how hilarious it is how skinny I am but then I have these hands and always trip over my own big stupid feet? But these are typist’s fingers, okay?” Matt went on, wiggling them in John’s face to demonstrate. “They’re like very deft and nimble and detail-oriented and I’m just saying your hands are…fuller okay? They’re more suited to feats of strength and things like crushing and punching, and wrapping around- ”
“Matt.” John kept his voice quiet through sheer force of will, but it seemed to work just fine to get his attention. Matt went silent and waited while he rubbed at his forehead and tried to focus on keeping a slow pulse and a steady hand - just like getting ready to fire a weapon. “Will you just…will you let me?”
“Fine.” Matt held out his hand with its admittedly swollen-looking palm and let John wrap his big, crushing, sausage fingers around his wrist. Jesus.
Then he dropped his gaze to the dirt between his sneakers so his hair flopped forward into his face and he wouldn’t have to watch what John was doing with the needle. Didn’t seem to have the same control over his mouth though, not that it came as a surprise.
“…And not to put any pressure on the situation or anything,” Matt babbled, before John could even get started. “I know you’re holding a needle and doing a highly delicate procedure, but I just want to remind you my hands are kind of my livelihood, John, you know when I can’t type for a couple of days I get-OW! Shit. Ok see that? That is what I’m talking about that I would really like to not have happen again, so from here on in can we try t-“
“Done!” John interrupted the stream of prattle, holding up the needle for a good look at the crooked sliver of wood clinging to its tip. “Highly delicate procedure,” he said.
Turned out the bastard was actually pretty long; couldn’t have been comfortable. And John knew from experience that the sting of the disinfectant he brought out of the first aid kit next had to hurt worse than taking the damn thing out, but Matt didn’t bitch about that part. John saw his jaw line harden a little, but that was it.
Then John really did put a band-aid over it, and a little kiss for good measure.
“All better?” he crooned, in an exaggerated, mock solicitous tone.
Matt punched him in the shoulder - the good one - and told him not to be an asshole. Now both of them were grinning. John deemed the surgery an official success.
“I know I was being a baby,” Matt conceded, as they both looked down at John’s handiwork. “I was just joking around. …Mostly. But I am serious that when we get home if I get a huge pus-filled infection from blackened sewing needles and I can’t type I’m going to be in a really…what are you doing?”
“…Highly…delicate…procedure…” John replied, punctuating his words with more gentle kisses to the hot, swollen surface of Matthew’s palm, his fingers, the thin, sensitive skin on the inside of his wrist.
The late afternoon light had already turned golden and the sun had angled down low, to filter through the trees into the camp site. The dappled yellow light was setting Matt off with an inviting looking midsummer’s glow - the merrily crackling fire at John’s back tossing out little sparks that reflected in his eyes, and when John looked up at them, they were giving him that look.
So when he tugged a little on the wrist he was still holding, to push one of Matt’s fingers into his mouth, Matt rewarded him with a sharp hissing noise of surprise and moved eagerly forward, to kneel in the dirt between John’s knees. And when he ran his free hand up John’s thigh, and started to pull on the finger that John was holding so willingly captive toward waiting lips like he had a fish of his own on the line, John figured he still had a little time left before he had to get down to the lake.
**
…and slowly blow your little mind
____
“There are so many,” Matt breathed, from beside him. They were stretched on their backs in the sand with their heads next to each other, bodies pointing in opposite directions like the hands of a clock reading twelve thirty. “It’s easy to forget they’re there sometimes, isn’t it? With all the light pollution from the city.”
Leave it to Matt to refer to something like a man-made city light as pollution. But the awe in his voice couldn’t be faked, for once there wasn’t a trace of irony in the kid’s tone.
It was true, it was a clear night and there really were a lot of stars out. John stayed quiet, looking up at them and listening to the soft lapping sounds from the water’s edge. He never had gotten out on the lake. They’d both been pretty hungry after the things they’d gotten up to by the fire, and cooking anything decent to eat over an open flame always took some time. When they finally tucked into a couple of cowboy steaks and some potatoes wrapped in foil and baked in the coals, though, they’d both agreed it was worth the wait. At least there was always tomorrow morning.
Afterward, with both of them sated and happy, Matt’s suggestion that they grab the flashlight and wander the thirty yards or so down to the water was probably more about finding something to do than trying to burn off the heavy meal.
“Some of them are dead, you know?” Matt mused, still apparently captivated by the night sky. “Gone supernova hundreds of years ago. We just see them now because the light takes that long to get to us, they’re just that far away.”
They didn’t seem that far away. John felt like he could reach right up and grab the Big Dipper by its crooked old handle.
“I did not know that,” he said primly. He put up a hand to wind Matt’s hair between his fingers. “Tell me more, Professor?”
“Just for that I will, jackass,” Matt replied, nudging his head into the touch like an affectionate cat. “Think about it, that means there’s thousands more being born all the time that we can’t see yet. It always kills me how big everything is. …How small we are, I guess.”
John turned his head, trying to make out Matt’s profile by nothing but starlight. He couldn’t see much by the silvery, ethereal light of planets billions of miles away, just the pale curve of his forehead; the bridge of his young, never-broken nose a faintly white line in the darkness.
“When I was eight,” Matt said dreamily, “I got the chicken pox. I had to stay in my room all the time so my brother and sister wouldn’t catch it - David caught it anyway of course, Dave always got everything, even though it was Emily we couldn’t keep out of my room. She was only six, she didn’t really get it - but I was so bored in there. Two weeks felt like forever back then. In the first couple of days I had burned through all the books in the house at least once, so my Dad…”
Matt paused, and John gave up trying to search his features out in the dim light. He could only hope it was to smile, but he doubted it. Matt didn’t talk about his father much.
“There isn’t much to tell,” John remembered him saying, on the rare occasions John asked about it. “He wasn’t around a lot.”
From what John could gather, the one thing Matt’s father had been good at, was buying gifts. The guilty kind. John knew it well. His memory flashed without his permission on the gargantuan teddy bear he’d bought for Lucy the first Christmas after Holly moved the kids to LA.
John flicked at the soft ends of the lock of hair wrapped around his index finger and waited for Matt to find his voice again.
“…My dad bought me this big massive telescope and he helped me set it up by my window and check out the stars,” he was saying now. A pretty slick present, sure enough.
John didn’t need to be able to read Matt’s expression to know why this memory stuck with the kid the way it did; that the time his old man had taken with him setting that big expensive telescope up, and maybe showing him how to use it a little, meant more to him than the showy ostentatious gift ever could. At the time, Matt probably would have been just as happy with something out of a crackerjack box, as long as it came with a little fatherly attention.
“The first night I looked through that telescope, oh man. It blew my fuckin’ mind.” Matt chuckled at the memory. “I got really into astronomy for a while. It was what made me want to go to Space Camp. …Then I guess I got distracted, moved on to other stuff.”
“Freddie,” said John.
Matt had probably come to regret letting it slip, almost a year ago now, that the first time he’d found himself developing a crush on another boy was at camp. John could never get him to say who, but that just made it all the more obvious. To this day Matt’s voice still took on a quiet reverence sometimes when he talked about the guy’s computer knowledge, like he was some kind of a god.
“…I was going to say video games.” Matt snorted. “But yeah,” he admitted.
John smiled up at the North Star, even if Matt couldn’t see it in the dark. He should be jealous or something, and maybe later he would be. Right now he couldn’t be bothered. It was ‘the Warlock’, for fucks sake. Hardly competition.
Besides, he was feeling too laid-back to care, looking up at the stars and taking in this new Matt, relaxed and open. Actually letting him in on what was happening in that big overdeveloped brain of his, without a lot of nervous chatter just to get to the point. Matt talked a hell of a lot, but he pretty much never told John anything. Not about himself that is. About conspiracy theories and poisonous stump beetles and government cover-ups and the evils of genetically modified corn products, sure.
Seeing Matt like this, without the sarcasm and the hard edges was a perk to getting away that John hadn’t figured on. It was new.
Then suddenly he couldn’t see anything at all, something dark had blotted out the tiny myriad lightpoints of the stars altogether. The familiar tickle of hair brushing his forehead told him Matt was rolling up on a shoulder to loom over him.
“Guess I have kind of a hero-worship issue, huh?” he murmured, before leaning down to press his mouth over John’s.
The upside down kiss was a new sensation too. He could feel Matt’s chin brush the tip of his nose, and then rather than going for the bottom lip like he so often did, Matt sucked John’s top lip into his mouth, licked at his tongue, and then moved on to take the bottom one between his teeth for good measure. He ran his tongue over the edge of it, making John grunt.
John took the kid’s face between both his hands, fingers coming to rest under his jaw, and brush at the sensitive flesh of his throat, instead of stretching up into his hair. Matt made a little ‘mmph’ sound as John pulled him closer, putting a little pressure into the kiss and then returning the favour, running his tongue over Matthew’s top lip and drawing it into his mouth to suck firmly. Matt gave a heavy, hot breath into John’s mouth and moved his tongue to slide against John’s, and when John angled his head a little and tangled their tongues together, Matt responded heatedly, pushing closer and moaning in a way that made John feel like he was seeing stars all over again.
But obviously the whole thing reminded Matt of one of his stupid movies because when he finally pulled away he completely ruined the mood by putting on a falsetto twitter and sighing, “do you love me, Peter Parker?”
Okay. If Matt wanted to screw around, that’s what they would do. It had been a long time since he’d done this, but he figured he could still manage it with a guy Matt’s size, and off his guard, too. John arched his back, and reached all the way up over Matt’s shoulder to grab his belt.
“Oh shit,” Matt said, as John’s other arm moved under the spot where Matt was propping himself up on his elbows to snake across his chest but it was too late, John already had his hold.
“Who’s this Peter guy!?” he growled playfully, and then brought his hips down hard, pulling on Matt’s beltline and rolling with the momentum so that Matt’s legs flipped up through the air. Matt tucked his head into John’s shoulder as he somersaulted over him, and John kept rolling with it, so they both ended up in a seated position, Matt’s ass coming down with a dull thump in the sand between John’s outstretched legs.
“Holy fuck.”
John just smiled and tightened the arm around Matt’s chest. Not bad for an old guy. His shoulder twinged with the movement, but he ignored it. It had been a while since it had started feeling good enough to forget about, like he’d just done. He had a feeling he’d regret it in the morning but for now John decided to call that a good sign, and waited for Matt’s move.
There was a time when Matt would have just sat there and whined about shit like asthma, or low blood sugar, but John had been working with him on that, and tonight Matt didn’t disappoint. He dug his heels into the sand, and with a grunt, shoved backward hard enough to take John back to the ground again.
“While I might believe,” Matt huffed, gripping John’s arm still across his chest, “if there is one person in the world who could have missed the momentous, decade-defining moment of cheese that is the upside down kissing scene with Kirsten Dunst,” Matt rolled into the direction of the hold instead of trying to wriggle away from it, just like John taught him. “…plastered all over billboards and broadcasted relentlessly into the living rooms of the nation in that epic trailer, that yes, it would be you,” Matt’s gambit worked, and he broke John’s hold, rolling off of him to the right.
“…I refuse to believe you don’t know that Peter Parker is Spiderman,” he panted. “It’s like not knowing who Clark Kent is.”
“Superman,” John said, simply, raising the arm that was now pinned under Matt’s back to get it behind his head and draw him forward for a headlock. “Too easy.”
“Spoiler!” Matt gasped, wrapping a leg around John’s and pulling upward so his back arched and he couldn’t pull Matt’s head to his chest for the hold. Matt could duck out of it now.
“Batman?” he quizzed, when he was free.
“Bruce Banner,” John grunted, as Matt went for the arm. He still had his leg hooked firmly around John’s thigh.
“Bruce WAYNE, Bruce Banner is The Incredible Hulk!”
Matt was so scandalized my John’s lack of comic savvy he hesitated, and John followed his own advice, rolling toward the hold and up, so that he was leaning over Matt now, pinning him down with a forearm across the lean, heaving chest.
“The green guy?” John asked. “I thought that was Scott…something.”
“Adam Scott is a Green Lantern,” it was hard to make out in the dark, but this close up he could see that Matt’s eyes were rolling.
“The guy with the arrows.”
“The Green Arrow would be the guy with the arrows,” Matt complained. “Now you’re just saying things to hurt me.”
“I could never hurt you, Mary Jane,” John drawled slowly, leaning down for a right-side up kiss.
“Mary Jane,” Matt scoffed, when John drew back again. “I knew it! Nobody could be that out of it about popular culture. For a guy who claims to be able to tell when everyone is lying, you sure do a shitty job of it yourself.”
John couldn’t help a short chuckle. “Eh, it’s why you love me.”
John couldn’t really see Matt’s face, and maybe that’s why he didn’t see it coming. He’d forgotten Matt still had that leg hooked around his thigh. Without warning, the other one came up around the small of his back, while the first one yanked his knee out from under him. Suddenly John was on his back again with Matt straddling him, and holding one arm gently across his throat in symbolic conquest.
Well, damn.
“I love you,” Matt purred, leaning forward to bite at John’s lower lip the way he liked to, “because you’re going to take me back up the hill to our tent and fuck my brains out like you promised this morning.” Matt wriggled against him, letting him feel the effect that all the kissing - and maybe the roughhousing too - had had on him.
The feel of it made a thrill of warmth shoot upward from his gut into his chest, as John’s body started working on a reaction of its own. John realized he was cold and slightly damp. The sand had long ago given up the heat of the day, and the grit on his fingers probably wouldn’t be appreciated if he tried to put them anywhere Matt had him thinking about now.
Heading back to the tent suddenly sounded like a great idea.
“Deal,” John agreed, stealing one last kiss before tapping Matt’s arm a couple of times, both in recognition of his little victory and to get him moving. “Let’s see if we can wake the neighbours, huh?”
**
part 2
.