Die Hard fic for smallfandomfest: Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)
Title: Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Category: G, pre-Slash
Prompt: Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt, John Jr reaction about his father’s new relationship
Spoilers: n/a
Summary: “You might have to try, I don’t know, hitting him in the face with a Mack truck. While it’s on fire.”
Notes/Warnings: Written for smallfandomfest. Follow up to Covert Ops, but totally not necessary to read it first, this should stand alone. :)
Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)
by Persnickett
He wakes up reaching under his pillow for the handle of his Makarov. Just muscle memory, but it’s finding it missing that drags him fully awake; his fingers sliding searchingly between layers of heavy, years-pilled fabric instead of meeting the blunt, comforting corners and the rough, sleep-warmed crosshatching.
He feels a pang of adrenaline as he realizes he’s not clear on his surroundings, but his heart rate stays steady. Panic is for rookies. He leaves his eyes shut, takes stock. Fingers, toes, seem to be moving fine. Nothing broken. So why does everything feel like it hurts?
His head is throbbing. He’s sore pretty well everywhere. His mouth tastes like he talked a street vendor into replacing the frank in his hot dog with a Cuban cigar (and not to skimp on the sauerkraut) and then washed that down with a bottle or two of Slivovitz. He also needs to take a seriously urgent piss.
Then he remembers. Getting compromised, getting disavowed. Getting drunk.
Jack groans and rolls himself over on the lumpy old couch cushions. Everything tips on its axis and swoops sharply to the left when he sits up too fast.
The room is dark - when it stops spinning like a vindictive roulette wheel - the sounds, unfamiliar.
It’s ridiculous on his part to think crashing here should have felt on some level like coming home, he knows that. But the fact is that coming to his father’s place for the first time, seeing there was a whole life that he’d made for himself that Jack had missed out on, made him feel like even more of a stranger.
He wasn’t about to get all Melrose Place about it. He’d had his share of couch time - it was a requirement of training - and he hadn’t spent a second of it sobbing that he’d never known his father. It wasn’t as if he cared to know.
Coming back here made him think that maybe he should have, though. And maybe that’s what was doing this little number on his head.
Then again, maybe it was something else. Or someone.
He takes a minute to steady himself, taking in the quiet hum of dormant electronics all over the place, and the dim blue glow of the light on the VCR. At least some instinctive sense of who his father was must have stuck with him over the years, because it comes as absolutely no surprise to find John still stuck in the 90s. In fact, he’s almost halfway impressed the clock on it isn’t flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. But then, there’s a reason for that.
It’s the same reason there’s a an Xbox controller tucked into the TV console next to it; why there’s a row of brightly coloured cereal boxes on top of the fridge - the good, sugary kind Jack had never been allowed as a kid.
It’s same reason his head is ringing, and possibly why his knuckles feel raw.
Sure enough, when he finally heaves himself to his bare feet and makes his way past the ‘spare’ bedroom door, light is spilling out into the hallway, painting a pale triangle on the hardwood. The quiet sounds of typing tell him he’s not the only one awake at this hour. He’s not sure if he imagines the pause in the rapid-fire clicking as he pads past the door, but he’s too committed to his mission to restore peace to the region of his bladder to stop and chat, anyway.
On his way back however, he’s at a much better angle and he’s got a clear line of sight into the bedroom, whether he wants it or not. Matt is wide awake and set in front of his desk, which is loaded with more computer screens than Jack would have seen in a week in Russia, let alone have known what to do with.
Matt’s face is a set of contrasts and angles, lit in the many-faceted blue-white glow of the screens. Jack stops to look, tries to see whatever it is his father clearly sees when he looks at Matt. Whatever attraction has got the bathroom littered with old issues of WIRED magazine and his cynical, emotionally distant, cop father so clearly wound around a pinky finger that probably has more conspiracy theories in it than an entire season of Unsolved Mysteries.
He can’t, which is maybe for the best, if he wants to think about it. Of course he can admit that right now isn’t the best time to be thinking about anything, much less this. His head is still full of a dully throbbing cottony feeling, and all his movements feel laggy and uncoordinated.
Matt just looks like a kid, to him. Jack doesn’t really want to think too hard about that either.
He’s not sure how long it takes him to realize he’s staring, but Matt has spent just as long peering a little too diligently into his wall of tech. Either he’s really unhealthily absorbed in whatever likely questionably legal thing he’s working on, or he’s not all that interested in talking. For once.
Jack can’t really blame him. Tonight’s incident hadn’t been all that comfortable for anyone involved, but Matt looks like he hasn’t been to bed yet, a good clue he had probably been the least inebriated. Meaning he isn’t likely to soon forget.
“Hey listen,” Jack says. It sounds clumsy and too loud against the nighttime quiet, despite the low electronic hum coming from everywhere, and the soft click-clack of Matt’s typing. He moves a little closer to the doorway, enough to rest a hand on the frame. “I should probably apologize for-“
“No, please,” Matt interrupts mock-cordially, giving up on his keyboard long enough to wave a hand through the air at him, and then jam it self-consciously through his hair. “Really, I enjoyed it. Who wouldn’t enjoy being shoved up against a wall by a big burly uber-cop with whiskey breath and being told it’s all their fault?”
“I believe he said ‘it’s not his fault’, not that it was yours,” Jack corrects, before his sleep-and-bourbon-addled mind can catch up. It’s far too late an hour for this level of sarcasm. Or too early. And the ‘shoving’ had been more like ‘looming’, really. …But still definitely inappropriate. “Not that I’m defending the behavior,” he amends.
“It is not his fault that I don’t know when to get a haircut. That much is true,” Matt concedes sardonically, nodding his head so that said hair flops into his eyes again.
Jack smiles wryly. If anything, at least this guy has got a sense of humour. But Matt just turns, deadpan, back to his monitors.
Jack says “Didn’t he also say something like-”
Right at the same time as Matt says “And he’s right, I probably need to stop walking around-”
“Having lips,” they both conclude, completing their mimicry of John’s bizarre homecoming rant in unison.
It’s still awkward. Jack’s evening hadn’t gone exactly as planned.
It started out not so bad. He got John out to the bar just fine, and then let it go a few rounds before getting down to business. Then he’d decided to come at the whole ‘it’s obvious to everyone - except maybe you - you’re interested in cock now’ thing from the side, by going for the age issue first.
When Jack casually brought up the fact that John had a fridge full of Red Bull and more Japanese Anime at home than he ever would have pegged him for; that it might look to some on the outside that John was looking to replace the years he’d lost with his own kids… Well, Jack had meant to finish the thought by pointing out that while they may have grown apart, if there was one thing he knew about his father it was that he didn’t have the best track record for letting people in. So, while it might look that way to some - maybe Matt included - if Matt was still around, and still making himself more and more at home, well then maybe this was more than that. And maybe John needed to do something about it. He really, really had.
But John had retorted that the truth be told, Jack was just jealous (which, incidentally, Jack was more than happy to admit. Hell, here was a kid who would never leave him, and from the looks of it, never grow up. How in hell was he supposed to compete with that?) and then they had rather gotten off the point.
A not-so-short, not-so-quiet, time later they forgot what they were drinking and started ordering whatever the patrons at the tables next to them were having. A-not-so short time after that, they forgot that they should stop.
By the time he worked the conversation back around to the fact that maybe it was time to let Matt start growing up; to move their relationship to the next level, John was nodding sagely - or maybe just wobbling - and saying Jack was right, that he lets Matt act like a kid and maybe it was time for that to stop.
In his state, Jack had congratulated himself on a point well made. In retrospect, it was more likely he had just forgotten what his point had been.
But apparently some of his words about their connection maybe being ‘more than that’ had penetrated the fog of pretzels and Jim Beam, because what had resulted when they returned home for the evening, was an unnecessarily loud, and inappropriately close-up, list of assertions about hair being too long, and jeans being too tight, and whose fault everything was.
They’d gotten him to bed before he did anything as regrettable as puke all over Matt’s feet, or worse, his collection of Star Wars figurines, but Jack had the feeling it was a near thing.
He shakes his head. It still feels woolly and unbalanced, but there’s an explanation in there somewhere, he’s sure.
“You know when I was a kid,” he begins, leaning his aching frame gingerly against the door jamb, “my dad was a real hero…”
“He’s still a hero,” Matt says, looking over at him sharply, and something flashes through the expression Jack can’t quite place. Something fierce. He’s not sure whether it should be more disturbing than it is that it sort of reminds him of his mother, or whether that should just make perfect sense. “He’s John McClane, y’know. He saved my ass, and yours. And he goes out there and does it for literally countless other people,” Matt gives a gesture over his shoulder in the vague direction of the window. “Every day. It’s what he does. He’s always going to be that guy.”
Jack just nods, buying some time for his would-be explanation and trying not to feel oddly chastized. The words are slowly dredging up a fuzzy memory of something his father had said as they argued into their tumblers and peanut bowls. How Matt had saved his ass too, more ways than he could probably count, that he was ballsy and loyal and did the right thing - even if he spent most of the time complaining (John’s word had actually been ‘bitching’) about it.
“The problem some people have is,” Matt is saying pointedly, looking him over like he’s sizing him up. Jack feels suddenly too conscious of the breadth of his chest, the still unexplained bar-scrapes on his knuckles. He resists the urge to fold his arms, and tuck them in under his biceps. “...Even heroes aren’t perfect.”
Sometimes Jack gets the feeling that Matt actually doesn’t like him all that much. Again, he supposes he can’t really blame the guy. The truth was, when he’d first gotten here, he might’ve acted like kind of a dick.
Jack had spent a lot of years blaming his father for breaking up their family, for taking off back to New York and putting all those miles - both physical and metaphorical - between them. It had been a somewhat sudden realization to come to this week that in all that time, he had never thought to ask whose idea it was.
Maybe Matt’s right, maybe his father had never stopped being a hero. Maybe Jack had just stopped needing one. The trouble was he hadn’t stopped needing a dad.
When John left, he hadn’t just left their mother, he’d left Lucy and Jack too. But at least he’d left them together. When John came back here, he’d come alone. And from the looks of things, he’d stayed that way. Until now.
A couple of years in deep cover, and Jack knows a thing or two about being alone, now. He knows it isn’t a thing many people would choose, if they had other options. He watches Matt rumple his hand through his moppy brown hair again, and pull on it a little before he lets go, as if he’s hoping it will stay out of his face this time. It doesn’t.
“Hey Matt,” Jack says, slowly. “It’s been five years since you met my dad, and you’re still here. Which tells me you’re a pretty patient guy. Try to hang onto that quality,” he concludes finally, pushing himself heavily away from the doorframe before he turns to head off down the hall. “…You’re going to need it in this family.”
“Wait.” When Jack looks back into the room, Matt is turned away from his monitors. He blinks. “So tonight…”
“Wasn’t entirely a mistake,” Jack admits.
“I should have known Lucy was up to something when she showed up declaring it poker night and wanted to play for shots instead of money,” Matt says, shaking his head. He looks up with a smile that’s less rueful than fond. “She usually enjoys robbing me blind.”
“Hey,” Jack offers, “now you can officially say you uncovered a CIA conspiracy.”
Matt gives a single, surprised crack of laughter. They both glance down the hall for fear of waking John, but the answering silence is reassurance enough that John is far beyond any worry of that by now.
When Jack looks back at him, the fond contemplation of Lucy’s card shark MO is gone and Matt is lit up grinning; wide and white and open. Then he looks down at his keyboard, rubs a hand over the back of his neck and nods, still smiling good-naturedly in self-deprecating acknowledgement of the joke, and Jack wonders if maybe he can see just a little of what John sees when he looks at his roommate after all.
“I knew I was pale, y’know, with the whole indoorsy, reclusive computer nerd thing,” Matt says, waving a hand around in front of his face. “But I didn’t realize I was completely transparent.”
“Only to everyone except apparently John,“ Jack replies, with a sigh.
“The hints I've dropped!” Matt mutters. “I realize we don’t know each other very well, but I can tell you subtlety isn't my forte, I might as well drop anvils. Hell, I could probably drop my pants, and he'd just yank ‘em back up and say something about eating some red meat, or finding out what the inside of a gym looks like. …Might wanna invest in a belt, kid,” he finishes, in a surprisingly on-point imitation of John’s gruff timbre.
It’s Jack’s turn to laugh now, quietly.
“You might have to try, I don’t know, hitting him in the face with a Mack truck. While it’s on fire.”
Matt cocks his head to the side, like he’s considering it. “Believe it or not, somebody already did that.”
“Oh I believe it. In fact I think I’m kind of jealous.”
“To be fair, I might be over-selling it,” Matt responds, thoughtfully. “It was really only the plane that was on fire. The truck was just sort of a catalyst.”
“We had a flaming helicopter thrown at us,” Jack says, settling himself conversationally against the door frame again.
“Oh yeah. We had one of those too.” Matt nods, refusing to be one-upped. “Two actually. He completely wrecked both of them. If he ever tells you he knows how to fly one of those things, just, walk away man. Walk away.”
They’re both smiling knowingly down at their respective toes when Matt says “well for what it’s worth, thanks, I guess. I feel like most guys’ reaction to finding their father embroiled in the quintessential gay roommate trope isn’t to get drunk and play Yenta.” He stops and shrugs awkwardly to himself. “Okay maybe the first part.”
Jack just nods again. Matt’s tone is more resigned than hopeful.
The thing about living your life alone is, sure it’s hard, but it’s just as hard to stop.
All the more understandable, in this case. Jack was having some trouble with the whole dad-dating-a-dude thing himself. But his father had never been good at letting people in, regardless. A trait it seemed he had passed down to his son.
It isn’t lost on him, the ways they’re alike; the stubbornness, the hero complex. Hopefully not the hairline. It’s not a stretch to look around at the sparseness of John’s life, no pictures on the mantle, no family portraits on the wall - and imagine himself ending up the same way. In fact, if he stays on the path he’s on now, he will. They both will.
But if it’s not too late for his old man to find someone who can get past his walls, maybe it’s not too late for Jack either. At this point it’s obviously still an upward battle he and Matt will be fighting, but it’s worth a shot. Hell, if John McClane had let this kid hook an Xbox 360 up to his TV, then getting him past a simple matter like an extra Y chromosome should be a cinch.
“Look man,” he says, feeling suddenly wrung out and exhausted. “I’m just saying I’m sorry tonight’s operation didn’t go exactly according to plan. But um…maybe don’t give up on him just yet,” he concludes, pushing himself even more wearily away from the wall this time. “I haven’t.”
Matt is looking at him with a steady, intelligent gaze that gives him the oddest impression he knows exactly what he’s thinking. It should be unnerving, but somehow it’s almost reassuring, instead. And just like that, a little more light is shed on the bathroom full of tech magazines and the power of that enigmatic pinky finger.
“Tell you what,” Matt proposes. “If he doesn’t remember this in the morning, you can count me in for that whole truck-on-fire thing.”
“Always have a plan B,” Jack agrees. His voice sounds tired, even to his own ears.
“First rule of CIA training, right?”
“I’m not going to ask you how you know that,” Jack replies, with a glance at Matt’s innocently whirring and glowing arsenal of technology.
“Appreciated.” Matt gives him that bright open grin again and then turns back to his bank of screens.
“Hey Matt,” he says, one last time for the night. There’s one other thing Matt should know about being part of this family. “Lucy cheats at poker.”
Matt’s eyes stay fixed on his monitors but his mouth settles mildly into a placid smile. “And I let her.”
Jack smiles too, and turns to make his way back to the old lumpy couch and the ratty pink blankets he’s becoming increasingly sure are the same ones they used to have to sleep under at his grandmother’s house. As he goes, he can hear a sound that he recognizes as John snoring loudly enough to carry all the way down the hall.
Maybe in some ways this whole thing would turn out to be just a little bit like coming home after all.
END
.
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Category: G, pre-Slash
Prompt: Live Free or Die Hard, John/Matt, John Jr reaction about his father’s new relationship
Spoilers: n/a
Summary: “You might have to try, I don’t know, hitting him in the face with a Mack truck. While it’s on fire.”
Notes/Warnings: Written for smallfandomfest. Follow up to Covert Ops, but totally not necessary to read it first, this should stand alone. :)
Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)
by Persnickett
He wakes up reaching under his pillow for the handle of his Makarov. Just muscle memory, but it’s finding it missing that drags him fully awake; his fingers sliding searchingly between layers of heavy, years-pilled fabric instead of meeting the blunt, comforting corners and the rough, sleep-warmed crosshatching.
He feels a pang of adrenaline as he realizes he’s not clear on his surroundings, but his heart rate stays steady. Panic is for rookies. He leaves his eyes shut, takes stock. Fingers, toes, seem to be moving fine. Nothing broken. So why does everything feel like it hurts?
His head is throbbing. He’s sore pretty well everywhere. His mouth tastes like he talked a street vendor into replacing the frank in his hot dog with a Cuban cigar (and not to skimp on the sauerkraut) and then washed that down with a bottle or two of Slivovitz. He also needs to take a seriously urgent piss.
Then he remembers. Getting compromised, getting disavowed. Getting drunk.
Jack groans and rolls himself over on the lumpy old couch cushions. Everything tips on its axis and swoops sharply to the left when he sits up too fast.
The room is dark - when it stops spinning like a vindictive roulette wheel - the sounds, unfamiliar.
It’s ridiculous on his part to think crashing here should have felt on some level like coming home, he knows that. But the fact is that coming to his father’s place for the first time, seeing there was a whole life that he’d made for himself that Jack had missed out on, made him feel like even more of a stranger.
He wasn’t about to get all Melrose Place about it. He’d had his share of couch time - it was a requirement of training - and he hadn’t spent a second of it sobbing that he’d never known his father. It wasn’t as if he cared to know.
Coming back here made him think that maybe he should have, though. And maybe that’s what was doing this little number on his head.
Then again, maybe it was something else. Or someone.
He takes a minute to steady himself, taking in the quiet hum of dormant electronics all over the place, and the dim blue glow of the light on the VCR. At least some instinctive sense of who his father was must have stuck with him over the years, because it comes as absolutely no surprise to find John still stuck in the 90s. In fact, he’s almost halfway impressed the clock on it isn’t flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. But then, there’s a reason for that.
It’s the same reason there’s a an Xbox controller tucked into the TV console next to it; why there’s a row of brightly coloured cereal boxes on top of the fridge - the good, sugary kind Jack had never been allowed as a kid.
It’s same reason his head is ringing, and possibly why his knuckles feel raw.
Sure enough, when he finally heaves himself to his bare feet and makes his way past the ‘spare’ bedroom door, light is spilling out into the hallway, painting a pale triangle on the hardwood. The quiet sounds of typing tell him he’s not the only one awake at this hour. He’s not sure if he imagines the pause in the rapid-fire clicking as he pads past the door, but he’s too committed to his mission to restore peace to the region of his bladder to stop and chat, anyway.
On his way back however, he’s at a much better angle and he’s got a clear line of sight into the bedroom, whether he wants it or not. Matt is wide awake and set in front of his desk, which is loaded with more computer screens than Jack would have seen in a week in Russia, let alone have known what to do with.
Matt’s face is a set of contrasts and angles, lit in the many-faceted blue-white glow of the screens. Jack stops to look, tries to see whatever it is his father clearly sees when he looks at Matt. Whatever attraction has got the bathroom littered with old issues of WIRED magazine and his cynical, emotionally distant, cop father so clearly wound around a pinky finger that probably has more conspiracy theories in it than an entire season of Unsolved Mysteries.
He can’t, which is maybe for the best, if he wants to think about it. Of course he can admit that right now isn’t the best time to be thinking about anything, much less this. His head is still full of a dully throbbing cottony feeling, and all his movements feel laggy and uncoordinated.
Matt just looks like a kid, to him. Jack doesn’t really want to think too hard about that either.
He’s not sure how long it takes him to realize he’s staring, but Matt has spent just as long peering a little too diligently into his wall of tech. Either he’s really unhealthily absorbed in whatever likely questionably legal thing he’s working on, or he’s not all that interested in talking. For once.
Jack can’t really blame him. Tonight’s incident hadn’t been all that comfortable for anyone involved, but Matt looks like he hasn’t been to bed yet, a good clue he had probably been the least inebriated. Meaning he isn’t likely to soon forget.
“Hey listen,” Jack says. It sounds clumsy and too loud against the nighttime quiet, despite the low electronic hum coming from everywhere, and the soft click-clack of Matt’s typing. He moves a little closer to the doorway, enough to rest a hand on the frame. “I should probably apologize for-“
“No, please,” Matt interrupts mock-cordially, giving up on his keyboard long enough to wave a hand through the air at him, and then jam it self-consciously through his hair. “Really, I enjoyed it. Who wouldn’t enjoy being shoved up against a wall by a big burly uber-cop with whiskey breath and being told it’s all their fault?”
“I believe he said ‘it’s not his fault’, not that it was yours,” Jack corrects, before his sleep-and-bourbon-addled mind can catch up. It’s far too late an hour for this level of sarcasm. Or too early. And the ‘shoving’ had been more like ‘looming’, really. …But still definitely inappropriate. “Not that I’m defending the behavior,” he amends.
“It is not his fault that I don’t know when to get a haircut. That much is true,” Matt concedes sardonically, nodding his head so that said hair flops into his eyes again.
Jack smiles wryly. If anything, at least this guy has got a sense of humour. But Matt just turns, deadpan, back to his monitors.
Jack says “Didn’t he also say something like-”
Right at the same time as Matt says “And he’s right, I probably need to stop walking around-”
“Having lips,” they both conclude, completing their mimicry of John’s bizarre homecoming rant in unison.
It’s still awkward. Jack’s evening hadn’t gone exactly as planned.
It started out not so bad. He got John out to the bar just fine, and then let it go a few rounds before getting down to business. Then he’d decided to come at the whole ‘it’s obvious to everyone - except maybe you - you’re interested in cock now’ thing from the side, by going for the age issue first.
When Jack casually brought up the fact that John had a fridge full of Red Bull and more Japanese Anime at home than he ever would have pegged him for; that it might look to some on the outside that John was looking to replace the years he’d lost with his own kids… Well, Jack had meant to finish the thought by pointing out that while they may have grown apart, if there was one thing he knew about his father it was that he didn’t have the best track record for letting people in. So, while it might look that way to some - maybe Matt included - if Matt was still around, and still making himself more and more at home, well then maybe this was more than that. And maybe John needed to do something about it. He really, really had.
But John had retorted that the truth be told, Jack was just jealous (which, incidentally, Jack was more than happy to admit. Hell, here was a kid who would never leave him, and from the looks of it, never grow up. How in hell was he supposed to compete with that?) and then they had rather gotten off the point.
A not-so-short, not-so-quiet, time later they forgot what they were drinking and started ordering whatever the patrons at the tables next to them were having. A-not-so short time after that, they forgot that they should stop.
By the time he worked the conversation back around to the fact that maybe it was time to let Matt start growing up; to move their relationship to the next level, John was nodding sagely - or maybe just wobbling - and saying Jack was right, that he lets Matt act like a kid and maybe it was time for that to stop.
In his state, Jack had congratulated himself on a point well made. In retrospect, it was more likely he had just forgotten what his point had been.
But apparently some of his words about their connection maybe being ‘more than that’ had penetrated the fog of pretzels and Jim Beam, because what had resulted when they returned home for the evening, was an unnecessarily loud, and inappropriately close-up, list of assertions about hair being too long, and jeans being too tight, and whose fault everything was.
They’d gotten him to bed before he did anything as regrettable as puke all over Matt’s feet, or worse, his collection of Star Wars figurines, but Jack had the feeling it was a near thing.
He shakes his head. It still feels woolly and unbalanced, but there’s an explanation in there somewhere, he’s sure.
“You know when I was a kid,” he begins, leaning his aching frame gingerly against the door jamb, “my dad was a real hero…”
“He’s still a hero,” Matt says, looking over at him sharply, and something flashes through the expression Jack can’t quite place. Something fierce. He’s not sure whether it should be more disturbing than it is that it sort of reminds him of his mother, or whether that should just make perfect sense. “He’s John McClane, y’know. He saved my ass, and yours. And he goes out there and does it for literally countless other people,” Matt gives a gesture over his shoulder in the vague direction of the window. “Every day. It’s what he does. He’s always going to be that guy.”
Jack just nods, buying some time for his would-be explanation and trying not to feel oddly chastized. The words are slowly dredging up a fuzzy memory of something his father had said as they argued into their tumblers and peanut bowls. How Matt had saved his ass too, more ways than he could probably count, that he was ballsy and loyal and did the right thing - even if he spent most of the time complaining (John’s word had actually been ‘bitching’) about it.
“The problem some people have is,” Matt is saying pointedly, looking him over like he’s sizing him up. Jack feels suddenly too conscious of the breadth of his chest, the still unexplained bar-scrapes on his knuckles. He resists the urge to fold his arms, and tuck them in under his biceps. “...Even heroes aren’t perfect.”
Sometimes Jack gets the feeling that Matt actually doesn’t like him all that much. Again, he supposes he can’t really blame the guy. The truth was, when he’d first gotten here, he might’ve acted like kind of a dick.
Jack had spent a lot of years blaming his father for breaking up their family, for taking off back to New York and putting all those miles - both physical and metaphorical - between them. It had been a somewhat sudden realization to come to this week that in all that time, he had never thought to ask whose idea it was.
Maybe Matt’s right, maybe his father had never stopped being a hero. Maybe Jack had just stopped needing one. The trouble was he hadn’t stopped needing a dad.
When John left, he hadn’t just left their mother, he’d left Lucy and Jack too. But at least he’d left them together. When John came back here, he’d come alone. And from the looks of things, he’d stayed that way. Until now.
A couple of years in deep cover, and Jack knows a thing or two about being alone, now. He knows it isn’t a thing many people would choose, if they had other options. He watches Matt rumple his hand through his moppy brown hair again, and pull on it a little before he lets go, as if he’s hoping it will stay out of his face this time. It doesn’t.
“Hey Matt,” Jack says, slowly. “It’s been five years since you met my dad, and you’re still here. Which tells me you’re a pretty patient guy. Try to hang onto that quality,” he concludes finally, pushing himself heavily away from the doorframe before he turns to head off down the hall. “…You’re going to need it in this family.”
“Wait.” When Jack looks back into the room, Matt is turned away from his monitors. He blinks. “So tonight…”
“Wasn’t entirely a mistake,” Jack admits.
“I should have known Lucy was up to something when she showed up declaring it poker night and wanted to play for shots instead of money,” Matt says, shaking his head. He looks up with a smile that’s less rueful than fond. “She usually enjoys robbing me blind.”
“Hey,” Jack offers, “now you can officially say you uncovered a CIA conspiracy.”
Matt gives a single, surprised crack of laughter. They both glance down the hall for fear of waking John, but the answering silence is reassurance enough that John is far beyond any worry of that by now.
When Jack looks back at him, the fond contemplation of Lucy’s card shark MO is gone and Matt is lit up grinning; wide and white and open. Then he looks down at his keyboard, rubs a hand over the back of his neck and nods, still smiling good-naturedly in self-deprecating acknowledgement of the joke, and Jack wonders if maybe he can see just a little of what John sees when he looks at his roommate after all.
“I knew I was pale, y’know, with the whole indoorsy, reclusive computer nerd thing,” Matt says, waving a hand around in front of his face. “But I didn’t realize I was completely transparent.”
“Only to everyone except apparently John,“ Jack replies, with a sigh.
“The hints I've dropped!” Matt mutters. “I realize we don’t know each other very well, but I can tell you subtlety isn't my forte, I might as well drop anvils. Hell, I could probably drop my pants, and he'd just yank ‘em back up and say something about eating some red meat, or finding out what the inside of a gym looks like. …Might wanna invest in a belt, kid,” he finishes, in a surprisingly on-point imitation of John’s gruff timbre.
It’s Jack’s turn to laugh now, quietly.
“You might have to try, I don’t know, hitting him in the face with a Mack truck. While it’s on fire.”
Matt cocks his head to the side, like he’s considering it. “Believe it or not, somebody already did that.”
“Oh I believe it. In fact I think I’m kind of jealous.”
“To be fair, I might be over-selling it,” Matt responds, thoughtfully. “It was really only the plane that was on fire. The truck was just sort of a catalyst.”
“We had a flaming helicopter thrown at us,” Jack says, settling himself conversationally against the door frame again.
“Oh yeah. We had one of those too.” Matt nods, refusing to be one-upped. “Two actually. He completely wrecked both of them. If he ever tells you he knows how to fly one of those things, just, walk away man. Walk away.”
They’re both smiling knowingly down at their respective toes when Matt says “well for what it’s worth, thanks, I guess. I feel like most guys’ reaction to finding their father embroiled in the quintessential gay roommate trope isn’t to get drunk and play Yenta.” He stops and shrugs awkwardly to himself. “Okay maybe the first part.”
Jack just nods again. Matt’s tone is more resigned than hopeful.
The thing about living your life alone is, sure it’s hard, but it’s just as hard to stop.
All the more understandable, in this case. Jack was having some trouble with the whole dad-dating-a-dude thing himself. But his father had never been good at letting people in, regardless. A trait it seemed he had passed down to his son.
It isn’t lost on him, the ways they’re alike; the stubbornness, the hero complex. Hopefully not the hairline. It’s not a stretch to look around at the sparseness of John’s life, no pictures on the mantle, no family portraits on the wall - and imagine himself ending up the same way. In fact, if he stays on the path he’s on now, he will. They both will.
But if it’s not too late for his old man to find someone who can get past his walls, maybe it’s not too late for Jack either. At this point it’s obviously still an upward battle he and Matt will be fighting, but it’s worth a shot. Hell, if John McClane had let this kid hook an Xbox 360 up to his TV, then getting him past a simple matter like an extra Y chromosome should be a cinch.
“Look man,” he says, feeling suddenly wrung out and exhausted. “I’m just saying I’m sorry tonight’s operation didn’t go exactly according to plan. But um…maybe don’t give up on him just yet,” he concludes, pushing himself even more wearily away from the wall this time. “I haven’t.”
Matt is looking at him with a steady, intelligent gaze that gives him the oddest impression he knows exactly what he’s thinking. It should be unnerving, but somehow it’s almost reassuring, instead. And just like that, a little more light is shed on the bathroom full of tech magazines and the power of that enigmatic pinky finger.
“Tell you what,” Matt proposes. “If he doesn’t remember this in the morning, you can count me in for that whole truck-on-fire thing.”
“Always have a plan B,” Jack agrees. His voice sounds tired, even to his own ears.
“First rule of CIA training, right?”
“I’m not going to ask you how you know that,” Jack replies, with a glance at Matt’s innocently whirring and glowing arsenal of technology.
“Appreciated.” Matt gives him that bright open grin again and then turns back to his bank of screens.
“Hey Matt,” he says, one last time for the night. There’s one other thing Matt should know about being part of this family. “Lucy cheats at poker.”
Matt’s eyes stay fixed on his monitors but his mouth settles mildly into a placid smile. “And I let her.”
Jack smiles too, and turns to make his way back to the old lumpy couch and the ratty pink blankets he’s becoming increasingly sure are the same ones they used to have to sleep under at his grandmother’s house. As he goes, he can hear a sound that he recognizes as John snoring loudly enough to carry all the way down the hall.
Maybe in some ways this whole thing would turn out to be just a little bit like coming home after all.
END
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