Die Hard fic for smallfandomfest - Dinner with the Farrells
Title: Dinner with the Farrells
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Category: PG-13/slash
Prompt: Dinner with the Farrells
Spoilers: none
Summary: A little after-dinner conversation.
Notes/Warnings: Maybe it’s his spoiled, whiny attitude but my headcanon always tends to place Matt’s family background firmly in the territory of white American privilege. And maybe it’s the crappy un-parent-funded apartment and solitary career choice, but it also tends to come with some sort of estrangement or rift. But then, Matt also seems to fancy himself some sort of socially advanced hacktivist.
…What if Matt's family background were a little more diverse? Written for smallfandomfest.
Dinner with the Farrells
by persnickett
“So, you were the life of the party.” Matt is right on John’s heels as he turns his key in the lock and steps inside. He’s been chattering away like this since the moment they got in the car to come home. “You had the twins in stitches with your story about Peters and the crazy glue. You’re much quieter now though. It’s almost like…” John hangs his coat on the hook by the door, turns to face him. “You’re pissed at me.”
John can see Matt studying him, searching for clues like he honestly couldn’t imagine what might be eating him.
“Nah. A little warning would have been nice, that’s all,” he says, before he starts off down the hall for the bedroom. “You know, that your parents are…”
“Interracial?” Matt calls after him. John can hear his sneakers bounce off the wall onto the mat, as he kicks them off before following him down the hall. “A little too avid about their recycling? Devout Satanists? Sorry about that but I really thought they did the ritual goat sacrifice thing on Saturdays,” he finishes, as he walks into the bedroom a few paces behind. “…Awkward.”
“Lesbians, Matt,” John says seriously, bending down to remove his own shoes. “Your parents are lesbians. You could have mentioned it.”
“Well maybe it’s just the dick in my ass every night,” Matt quips, pulling his sweater off over his head and making for the laundry hamper, “but I sort of thought, out of all the people I have to give explanations to, that you’d be the last person to be worried about a little homosexuality in my gene pool.” He lets the hamper lid come down maybe a little harder than usual. “So I didn’t make a point of it. What difference would it have made?”
“Well, I probably would have been a lot less likely to make the mistake of assuming Ian was your dad, for a start.”
“You have to admit that was classic!” Matt pauses in unbuttoning his shirt to whirl around and point a jubilant finger at him.
“Yeah, a real riot,” John answers, tucking his shoes away in his corner of the closet.
“So you are pissed at me.” Matt’s arms drop to his sides.
John looks down, focuses on his own buttons. He said he wasn’t mad, and he meant it.
John worries it’s the generation gap sometimes, or maybe his own fault for being a closed off, uncommunicative old crank, but there are times he really just doesn’t understand Matt. He certainly doesn’t know how to explain to him right now, what the last three weeks inside his head have been like.
“I’m just…I’m just a little surprised you spent nearly a year waiting to bring home a man, nearly twice your age, and you never saw fit to mention your sister married a guy even older than me, and - hey, by the way - your parents are gay.”
“Technically just one of them,” Matt offers.
“Don’t pretend the sperm donor from Hokkaido deserves the title of ‘parent’, Matt,” John says over his shoulder, as he finally gets the shirt undone and shucks it off. “It’s an insult to everything Suzanne has done for you all your life.”
Maybe he does sound a little mad. But now Matt is smiling. John tosses him his shirt for the wash.
“So now it’s ‘Suzanne’ again,” he says, as both their shirts follow Matt’s sweater into the hamper. “I mean, not to be the guy who says ‘I told you so’, but I kept saying they would love you. And now, clearly, you like them too. Even if they’re not June and Ward Cleaver.”
“Actually I was sort of picturing Ozzie and Harriet,” John admits, going for his belt buckle next.
“Yeah. I don’t know what that means,” Matt returns, unbuttoning his jeans and sliding them off his narrow hips. “So it turns out we aren’t the biggest freaks in the travelling side show that happens to be my life,” he says, shimmying the jeans down around his ankles and stepping out of them. “I don’t get it. I thought you’d be happy.”
John doesn’t really get it either. He’s known since the day Matt stretched his feet out into his lap as they sat in front of the Knicks game and said ‘you know, I’m getting pretty used to spending basically all my free time with you’ that one day he would have to shake the hand of a man his own damned age, look him in the eye, and try to explain what the hell he was doing with his son. He should feel relieved. Instead he just feels tired. He lays his trousers over the hanger, adjusts the fold so it lines up along the crease. He sighs.
“I would have been happy to hear about it three months ago when you started this whole thing, too.”
“Well now you know,” Matt says, crossing the room toward him and holding out his hand for John’s watch. “Jeez John, why do you think I’ve been pushing this dinner so hard?”
“…Why do you think I gave you such a hard time?”
Matt freezes and forgets all about the watch John is holding out. “Oh my God- you were nervous!”
“Just...a little advance notice would have been nice,” John repeats, dodging past him to put the watch down on top of the dresser himself.
“Uh huh,” Matt says, wheeling around and following right on his heels again. “Notice. Notice for what?”
“I dunno,” John shrugs, making his way back over to the closet. “To prepare.”
“Prepare. Prepare what, like some kind of a speech? Oh my God, that’s what you’ve been doing every time I caught you staring in the mirror all week. You rehearsed!” Matt accuses. “Now your nightstick’s in a knot because it was all for nothing.”
John makes a show of turning around to shut the closet door, to hide whatever telltale scowling thing might be going on all over his face. Matt used to tell him he was a hard guy to read; used to say he did nothing but glower and frown all the time. He used funny Matt-slang like “cop face” or “the McClane eye”. But these days, Matt always seems to be able to read him just fine.
“Well, call the record books,” he’s crowing smugly now. “Alert the media. This has to be some kind of first. John ‘Brass-for-Balls’ McClane actually gives a crap what somebody else thinks?”
John turns around, not troubling to hide his scowl anymore.
“You know what I see when I look in that mirror, Matt?” John asks, with a rhetorical gesture over his shoulder at the offending glass behind him. “What people see when they look at us? They see some dirty old man. A fool who can’t see past the sex, just trying to hang onto his lost youth.” The smug, teasing smile has drained away from Matt’s face now. John turns around, meets both their half-clothed reflections in the mirror instead. “A selfish bastard who’s just gonna take the best years of your life and waste ‘em. Until he dies first and leaves you all alone. A guy old enough to know better.”
The caterpillar eyebrows in Matt’s reflection move closer together.
“And you think people don’t look at me and see your boy toy? Some stupid him-bo too brainless or naive to know he’s being used?” Matt’s reflection takes a step closer to John’s. “Just some talentless leech, using you for your fancy grown-up cop’s salary they think I can’t make on a single job - or maybe I’m just in it for a little reflected glory, dating the famous John McClane! You think I give a shit what they think? Who the fuck cares.” The Matt in the mirror points a finger at himself. “The people around that table tonight took one look at me and couldn’t stop telling you that I never look this happy.”
“They were being nice.”
“No,” Matt says, and his arms wrap themselves around John’s neck. “They are nice.” He lets John turn around to match his embrace. “And they like you.”
John sighs. He presses his forehead into Matt’s, and breathes.
“…If Lucy brought home a guy my age I’d murder him.”
“So the guy gets it, but your sainted, virginal daughter gets off scot-free?” Matt leans back far enough to look at him. “Who gets the honours first if she brings home a woman Holly’s age instead?”
“Not everybody is bi-sexual, Matt,” John reminds him, shaking his head.
“Seriously? Were you not even here that night she brought over that chick Liz, with the half-shaved hair?”
“That was a friend from school,” John argues.
“Uh huh. They sat at dinner all night with their legs touching, and Lucy let her call her ‘Lucille’.”
”…Jesus.”
Matt smiles, and disentangles himself. He turns John back toward the mirror, his hands a warm, gentle pressure on the shoulders.
“You know what I see when I look in this mirror -- besides biceps for days?” he asks, letting both hands slide downward for a squeeze. “It starts with you saving my life from the first moment we met,” he says seriously. “I see the reason I don’t live on a steady diet of Doritos and Red Bull anymore. The reason I get up at some ungodly hour and drag my sorry ass after you to the gym five days a week. You’re the reason I see roughly sixty-eight percent more daylight than I used to.” Matt wraps his arms around his neck again. “You don’t waste my life at all. You make sure I have one.”
John looks at him, and thinks maybe all that is true. There’s no doubt the lithe, lean body in his arms has more muscle definition than it did a year ago today, and Matt definitely has more colour in his face than the pasty hermit-white he was sporting the day they met.
Sure, maybe all that other stuff people must be saying about them is true too. But as he leans forward for a kiss, there is one thing John knows for sure. Nobody they know has ever seen either of them look this happy. And as he feels Matt respond, pressing closer and going warm and pliant in his arms, it can’t be more plain that, frankly, neither of them gives a shit.
“Thanks, kiddo,” John says, when they come up for air.
“Don’t mention it,” Matt grins dreamily.
“So,” John says, heading for the bed and peeling back the sheets. “All ready to meet Holly when she flies in for Lucy’s birthday next week, then?”
“Oh yeah, so ready. Born ready. Couldn’t be more pumped,” Matt says, nodding. He stops halfway to the bed. “What are the chances she’s started dating a sassy lesbian firecracker a good year or two younger than yours truly since the last time you talked to her?”
John smiles. “The odds aren’t in your favour,” he says, climbing in and pulling up the covers.
“Maybe she’s discovered her inner transsexual?”
“Unlikely.”
“Two Spirited?”
“Come to bed, Matt,” John says.
.
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Category: PG-13/slash
Prompt: Dinner with the Farrells
Spoilers: none
Summary: A little after-dinner conversation.
Notes/Warnings: Maybe it’s his spoiled, whiny attitude but my headcanon always tends to place Matt’s family background firmly in the territory of white American privilege. And maybe it’s the crappy un-parent-funded apartment and solitary career choice, but it also tends to come with some sort of estrangement or rift. But then, Matt also seems to fancy himself some sort of socially advanced hacktivist.
…What if Matt's family background were a little more diverse? Written for smallfandomfest.
Dinner with the Farrells
by persnickett
“So, you were the life of the party.” Matt is right on John’s heels as he turns his key in the lock and steps inside. He’s been chattering away like this since the moment they got in the car to come home. “You had the twins in stitches with your story about Peters and the crazy glue. You’re much quieter now though. It’s almost like…” John hangs his coat on the hook by the door, turns to face him. “You’re pissed at me.”
John can see Matt studying him, searching for clues like he honestly couldn’t imagine what might be eating him.
“Nah. A little warning would have been nice, that’s all,” he says, before he starts off down the hall for the bedroom. “You know, that your parents are…”
“Interracial?” Matt calls after him. John can hear his sneakers bounce off the wall onto the mat, as he kicks them off before following him down the hall. “A little too avid about their recycling? Devout Satanists? Sorry about that but I really thought they did the ritual goat sacrifice thing on Saturdays,” he finishes, as he walks into the bedroom a few paces behind. “…Awkward.”
“Lesbians, Matt,” John says seriously, bending down to remove his own shoes. “Your parents are lesbians. You could have mentioned it.”
“Well maybe it’s just the dick in my ass every night,” Matt quips, pulling his sweater off over his head and making for the laundry hamper, “but I sort of thought, out of all the people I have to give explanations to, that you’d be the last person to be worried about a little homosexuality in my gene pool.” He lets the hamper lid come down maybe a little harder than usual. “So I didn’t make a point of it. What difference would it have made?”
“Well, I probably would have been a lot less likely to make the mistake of assuming Ian was your dad, for a start.”
“You have to admit that was classic!” Matt pauses in unbuttoning his shirt to whirl around and point a jubilant finger at him.
“Yeah, a real riot,” John answers, tucking his shoes away in his corner of the closet.
“So you are pissed at me.” Matt’s arms drop to his sides.
John looks down, focuses on his own buttons. He said he wasn’t mad, and he meant it.
John worries it’s the generation gap sometimes, or maybe his own fault for being a closed off, uncommunicative old crank, but there are times he really just doesn’t understand Matt. He certainly doesn’t know how to explain to him right now, what the last three weeks inside his head have been like.
“I’m just…I’m just a little surprised you spent nearly a year waiting to bring home a man, nearly twice your age, and you never saw fit to mention your sister married a guy even older than me, and - hey, by the way - your parents are gay.”
“Technically just one of them,” Matt offers.
“Don’t pretend the sperm donor from Hokkaido deserves the title of ‘parent’, Matt,” John says over his shoulder, as he finally gets the shirt undone and shucks it off. “It’s an insult to everything Suzanne has done for you all your life.”
Maybe he does sound a little mad. But now Matt is smiling. John tosses him his shirt for the wash.
“So now it’s ‘Suzanne’ again,” he says, as both their shirts follow Matt’s sweater into the hamper. “I mean, not to be the guy who says ‘I told you so’, but I kept saying they would love you. And now, clearly, you like them too. Even if they’re not June and Ward Cleaver.”
“Actually I was sort of picturing Ozzie and Harriet,” John admits, going for his belt buckle next.
“Yeah. I don’t know what that means,” Matt returns, unbuttoning his jeans and sliding them off his narrow hips. “So it turns out we aren’t the biggest freaks in the travelling side show that happens to be my life,” he says, shimmying the jeans down around his ankles and stepping out of them. “I don’t get it. I thought you’d be happy.”
John doesn’t really get it either. He’s known since the day Matt stretched his feet out into his lap as they sat in front of the Knicks game and said ‘you know, I’m getting pretty used to spending basically all my free time with you’ that one day he would have to shake the hand of a man his own damned age, look him in the eye, and try to explain what the hell he was doing with his son. He should feel relieved. Instead he just feels tired. He lays his trousers over the hanger, adjusts the fold so it lines up along the crease. He sighs.
“I would have been happy to hear about it three months ago when you started this whole thing, too.”
“Well now you know,” Matt says, crossing the room toward him and holding out his hand for John’s watch. “Jeez John, why do you think I’ve been pushing this dinner so hard?”
“…Why do you think I gave you such a hard time?”
Matt freezes and forgets all about the watch John is holding out. “Oh my God- you were nervous!”
“Just...a little advance notice would have been nice,” John repeats, dodging past him to put the watch down on top of the dresser himself.
“Uh huh,” Matt says, wheeling around and following right on his heels again. “Notice. Notice for what?”
“I dunno,” John shrugs, making his way back over to the closet. “To prepare.”
“Prepare. Prepare what, like some kind of a speech? Oh my God, that’s what you’ve been doing every time I caught you staring in the mirror all week. You rehearsed!” Matt accuses. “Now your nightstick’s in a knot because it was all for nothing.”
John makes a show of turning around to shut the closet door, to hide whatever telltale scowling thing might be going on all over his face. Matt used to tell him he was a hard guy to read; used to say he did nothing but glower and frown all the time. He used funny Matt-slang like “cop face” or “the McClane eye”. But these days, Matt always seems to be able to read him just fine.
“Well, call the record books,” he’s crowing smugly now. “Alert the media. This has to be some kind of first. John ‘Brass-for-Balls’ McClane actually gives a crap what somebody else thinks?”
John turns around, not troubling to hide his scowl anymore.
“You know what I see when I look in that mirror, Matt?” John asks, with a rhetorical gesture over his shoulder at the offending glass behind him. “What people see when they look at us? They see some dirty old man. A fool who can’t see past the sex, just trying to hang onto his lost youth.” The smug, teasing smile has drained away from Matt’s face now. John turns around, meets both their half-clothed reflections in the mirror instead. “A selfish bastard who’s just gonna take the best years of your life and waste ‘em. Until he dies first and leaves you all alone. A guy old enough to know better.”
The caterpillar eyebrows in Matt’s reflection move closer together.
“And you think people don’t look at me and see your boy toy? Some stupid him-bo too brainless or naive to know he’s being used?” Matt’s reflection takes a step closer to John’s. “Just some talentless leech, using you for your fancy grown-up cop’s salary they think I can’t make on a single job - or maybe I’m just in it for a little reflected glory, dating the famous John McClane! You think I give a shit what they think? Who the fuck cares.” The Matt in the mirror points a finger at himself. “The people around that table tonight took one look at me and couldn’t stop telling you that I never look this happy.”
“They were being nice.”
“No,” Matt says, and his arms wrap themselves around John’s neck. “They are nice.” He lets John turn around to match his embrace. “And they like you.”
John sighs. He presses his forehead into Matt’s, and breathes.
“…If Lucy brought home a guy my age I’d murder him.”
“So the guy gets it, but your sainted, virginal daughter gets off scot-free?” Matt leans back far enough to look at him. “Who gets the honours first if she brings home a woman Holly’s age instead?”
“Not everybody is bi-sexual, Matt,” John reminds him, shaking his head.
“Seriously? Were you not even here that night she brought over that chick Liz, with the half-shaved hair?”
“That was a friend from school,” John argues.
“Uh huh. They sat at dinner all night with their legs touching, and Lucy let her call her ‘Lucille’.”
”…Jesus.”
Matt smiles, and disentangles himself. He turns John back toward the mirror, his hands a warm, gentle pressure on the shoulders.
“You know what I see when I look in this mirror -- besides biceps for days?” he asks, letting both hands slide downward for a squeeze. “It starts with you saving my life from the first moment we met,” he says seriously. “I see the reason I don’t live on a steady diet of Doritos and Red Bull anymore. The reason I get up at some ungodly hour and drag my sorry ass after you to the gym five days a week. You’re the reason I see roughly sixty-eight percent more daylight than I used to.” Matt wraps his arms around his neck again. “You don’t waste my life at all. You make sure I have one.”
John looks at him, and thinks maybe all that is true. There’s no doubt the lithe, lean body in his arms has more muscle definition than it did a year ago today, and Matt definitely has more colour in his face than the pasty hermit-white he was sporting the day they met.
Sure, maybe all that other stuff people must be saying about them is true too. But as he leans forward for a kiss, there is one thing John knows for sure. Nobody they know has ever seen either of them look this happy. And as he feels Matt respond, pressing closer and going warm and pliant in his arms, it can’t be more plain that, frankly, neither of them gives a shit.
“Thanks, kiddo,” John says, when they come up for air.
“Don’t mention it,” Matt grins dreamily.
“So,” John says, heading for the bed and peeling back the sheets. “All ready to meet Holly when she flies in for Lucy’s birthday next week, then?”
“Oh yeah, so ready. Born ready. Couldn’t be more pumped,” Matt says, nodding. He stops halfway to the bed. “What are the chances she’s started dating a sassy lesbian firecracker a good year or two younger than yours truly since the last time you talked to her?”
John smiles. “The odds aren’t in your favour,” he says, climbing in and pulling up the covers.
“Maybe she’s discovered her inner transsexual?”
“Unlikely.”
“Two Spirited?”
“Come to bed, Matt,” John says.
.