Die Hard fic for smallfandomfest: Secret Ingredient
Title:Secret Ingredient
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Slash: R/Slash
Prompt: it never fails
Spoilers: no
Summary: Matt gets Pokemon Go. John deals with it.
Notes/Warnings: Written for smallfandomfest
Secret Ingredient
by persnickett
John shut off the ignition. He let his forehead come down against the steering wheel, and let out a breath.
“Shit.”
It had been that kind of day.
Just about everyone on the investigations team had to suspend casework for the day, simply to get enough hands on deck to manage processing for the unbelievable number of idiotic collars pouring through the place like it was a revolving door. All the uniforms were sent out.
The calls that were coming in were frankly laughable - loitering, large group gatherings without a permit, and suspicious behaviour out the damn yin-yang. Dozens of cranks reporting mysterious night-time meetings in usually quiet neighbourhoods; shady vehicles sitting outside people’s homes and places of business at bizarre, crack-of-dawn hours. There were even a couple of shootings called in. One of them involving a pellet gun, but still.
This thing - this Poke-a-man thing or whatever it was called - was busting John’s balls in a way he was really starting to take exception to.
Not that John had had taken a poke at his man in days.
And that was probably the worst of it, if he was honest. The constant strain coiled just below the base of his skull all day long. The one that had prickled with a cold, nagging fear every time some new pack of idiots got hauled across his desk for wandering onto private property and right into a trespassing violation, or getting into a fist-fight over some apparently extremely rare imaginary digi-critter called a Lapras (the nerdy, weedy guy with the bloody nose who looked all of forty - and definitely single - had had to spell it out so John could put it in the report) that one of those idiots would be Matt.
It never failed. Every time some new computer game or gadget was due to come out on the market, Matt got all amped up about it days before the release, and then when it hit the stores he took his new toy and disappeared into some kind of geek hibernation state for days on end.
When the iPad was invented, Matt ‘lined up’ three times. Once online, once - for reasons John still didn’t fully understand - to get a bracelet, and a third time to pick the goddamned thing up at the store. And John had learned the hard way that once Matt went into his nerd cocoon, ribbing the kid about shit like getting scurvy from a subsistence diet of Bugles and Jolt Cola, or knowing of an addiction therapist at the Department Matt might like to meet, was definitely no way to break him out of it.
To this day, they still didn’t speak of the infamous Halo 4 Fight of 2012.
So while maybe John should be used to this kind of thing by now, this was the first time that Matt’s latest obsession had taken him out of the house. There was a time when John might have said that Matt getting out a little more would have been a good thing, but John had barely seen hide or hair of Matt since the minute this crazy thing dropped.
Thursday morning had seen Matt out of bed and into the shower before John opened his eyes. And then out the door - cell phone in one hand, travel coffee mug in the other, and a rushed kiss dropped onto John’s freshly shaven cheek - before he had finished his first cup. Since then, the extent of their interaction had consisted of a few muttered words of half-asleep greeting when Matt curled into his side in bed each night at some frankly ridiculous hours.
So when he dragged himself out of the car and pushed open the front door, John was surprised to find not a deserted hallway leading to an echoingly empty house, but the entryway full of the sound of Matt’s voice chattering animatedly away.
“Oh,” he said into his phone when he heard John come in, “I gotta go. Listen, just max out the CP on the Wigglytuff and I’ll meet you at the gym in about 20. …Hi,” he said, turning to John and stowing his phone safely in his back pocket.
“How was work?”
When John just gave him what he hoped would come out as a smile, and turned to hang up his keys, Matt’s face squinched up into a knowing wince.
“That good huh?” he asked, coming a few steps forward to meet him.
John remembered Halo 4, and didn’t mention sitting jammed up in the uncomfortable old desk chairs in Processing for eight hours straight due to Matt’s favourite new fad. He didn’t mention skipping his lunch.
He just opened his arms up and let Matt walk right into them. Then John wrapped him up tight, and breathed.
“Hey,” Matt said, winding himself under John’s arms and into the hug. He tucked his cheek into John’s neck and John could feel him smiling slightly. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” John said, pulling back a little. He ran his hands over the length of Matt’s arms, feeling that young, taut skin that always seemed to John like it was thrumming subtly. As if Matt was just lot of doe-soft skin pulled drum-tight over a big ball of vibrating, almost-nervous energy. Matt, this gift he had mysteriously been given that he would never be quite sure he deserved.
“You sure?” Matt asked him, leaning back and looking him in the face. “I just made plans to meet up with a couple people out on Flatbush…”
“Yeah,” John assured, letting him go and looking around the hallway. “Yeah, I’m good. You said something about going to the gym?” There wasn’t a gym bag in sight.
Matt’s hand went to the spot on his elbow where John had just been holding him, like he was chasing the echo of his touch. He blinked. “I did? Oh. Yeah, I--”
John held up a hand in a silencing ‘let me guess’ gesture. “They got ‘gyms’ in this game?”
“Well it’s a-“ Matt started, awkwardly. “Sort of. Yeah.”
John felt his eyebrows move a little higher up his forehead, but he didn’t have anything to say that wasn’t going to just end up in a repeat of the Halo Incident.
“It’s pretty hot out,” he said instead. “Take a bottle of water with you, at least.”
“Already covered,” Matt said, indicating the hall table where his keys, portable phone charger, and the aforementioned water bottle sat waiting. And his fond smile at John, even if it was still mixed with that anxious electricity that said all Matt wanted was to get back out there chasing down wild Pikachus, was well worth John holding his tongue.
Besides, over the years he had learned a few tricks. And if people were wandering around like something out of the zombie feature of the week, staring at screens and watching cartoon monsters get virtual exercise instead of going to real gyms now…well it was time to pull out the big guns.
But first, John pulled Matt close again for a quick goodbye kiss.
“Hey keep your head up, okay?” he said when they broke apart. Because the thing about gifts you didn’t deserve was you never knew how long you got to keep ‘em. And if a day was ever going to come where he had to lose Matt, it sure wasn’t going to be over anything this stupid. “Don’t, uh, wander into traffic, or walk off a pier or anything, hunting for Snoopy and Wigglestock.”
Matt didn’t even bother to correct him, even though he knew that wasn’t even half-way right.
“I won’t be out late,” he said, moving gently away from him, to collect his stuff from the hall table.
“Good,” John said. And then he laid down the bait. “Dinner’s at 8.”
“You’re cooking?” Matt’s hand froze over the bottle of water he had been about to retrieve on his way out the door, and he twisted backward to look at John over his shoulder. “What-can I ask what…is it gonna be meatloaf?”
John turned and walked into the kitchen so Matt wouldn’t see his smile. His meatloaf was always a no-fail trick.
“Guess you’re gonna have to wait and see,” he called back into the hallway.
*****
Matt was home promptly at 8:02. By 8:57 he was in John’s bed, riding his cock rough and hard bronco-buster style, with so much energy and enthusiasm that John could feel the cool air hit the sweat at the small of his back each time they bounced up off the mattress.
“Man!” Matt sounded ragged, when he finally collapsed in a heap next to John. “What is in those potatoes?”
“Potatoes?” John wanted to ask, but all he could manage was a twist of his head in Matt’s direction and a quizzical look. His neck felt like he might have whiplash. In a good way.
“I love game releases,” Matt panted, raising a rubber-jointed-looking arm like he had planned to roll over toward him, then dropping it back down to the sheets in defeat.
“No shit,” John wanted to reply, but the only communication tool his body seemed to be able to control still seemed to be his eyebrows, so he let them say it instead.
“No,” Matt said, totally getting John’s drift anyway. “I mean. Yeah I love new games, but I love how-I know I get super into it, and I’m sorry, it’s probably kinda boring for you, but I mean, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? I mean it never fails. A couple days in, you decide you want a home cooked meal. Which: score,” Matt enthused, successfully lifting a finger into the air this time to draw an invisible ‘one’ on an imaginary scoreboard. “And then-I don’t know what you put in those mashed potatoes man, but you always have a second helping, and then-I am always always guaranteed a full and thorough fucking. Seriously. It’s always, like this intense…fuckin’… I can’t think of a better word than thorough.” Matt breathed, worshipfully. “I’m boneless here, man,” he lifted a knee up off the bed and let it wobble back down again to demonstrate. “I mean, do you have some kind of secret aphrodisiac ingredient, or is it just the complex carbs?”
John could manage a low chuckle, now.
“Or maybe you just miss me,” Matt said, putting in the effort to lift his head so he could give him a shrewd look.
“Maybe,” said the crinkle in the corner of John’s eye.
“I’m onto you, tough guy,” Matt sighed, curling satedly onto his side and dropping his sweat-damp head onto John’s waiting shoulder.
“You’re onto me,” John agreed, with actual words this time. Which was all for the best, because if he let his eyes do the talking again they might have given something away.
Like the fact that the only reason John had to fill up on potatoes was that Matt always went to town on the meatloaf. Or that John’s particular meatloaf recipe happened to call for a cup of red wine. And that one cup meant opening an entire bottle, which would naturally have to be finished off between the two of them with their dinner.
Of course ‘between the two of them’ generally meant a scant near-glassful for John, and as many casual re-fills of Matt’s as it took to loosen his tongue enough about his latest game, gadget, or political cause that John could ask him if he ever planned on shutting up and finishing his broccoli. And then Matt could slant him a coy look and respond with some variation on ‘how ‘bout you come over here and make me’.
And then John would.
Because Matt was right, John thought as he turned in toward Matt, dropped an arm over him, and shut his eyes.
It never failed.
.
Author: persnickett
Fandom: Live Free or Die Hard
Pairing/Characters: John/Matt
Rating/Slash: R/Slash
Prompt: it never fails
Spoilers: no
Summary: Matt gets Pokemon Go. John deals with it.
Notes/Warnings: Written for smallfandomfest
Secret Ingredient
by persnickett
John shut off the ignition. He let his forehead come down against the steering wheel, and let out a breath.
“Shit.”
It had been that kind of day.
Just about everyone on the investigations team had to suspend casework for the day, simply to get enough hands on deck to manage processing for the unbelievable number of idiotic collars pouring through the place like it was a revolving door. All the uniforms were sent out.
The calls that were coming in were frankly laughable - loitering, large group gatherings without a permit, and suspicious behaviour out the damn yin-yang. Dozens of cranks reporting mysterious night-time meetings in usually quiet neighbourhoods; shady vehicles sitting outside people’s homes and places of business at bizarre, crack-of-dawn hours. There were even a couple of shootings called in. One of them involving a pellet gun, but still.
This thing - this Poke-a-man thing or whatever it was called - was busting John’s balls in a way he was really starting to take exception to.
Not that John had had taken a poke at his man in days.
And that was probably the worst of it, if he was honest. The constant strain coiled just below the base of his skull all day long. The one that had prickled with a cold, nagging fear every time some new pack of idiots got hauled across his desk for wandering onto private property and right into a trespassing violation, or getting into a fist-fight over some apparently extremely rare imaginary digi-critter called a Lapras (the nerdy, weedy guy with the bloody nose who looked all of forty - and definitely single - had had to spell it out so John could put it in the report) that one of those idiots would be Matt.
It never failed. Every time some new computer game or gadget was due to come out on the market, Matt got all amped up about it days before the release, and then when it hit the stores he took his new toy and disappeared into some kind of geek hibernation state for days on end.
When the iPad was invented, Matt ‘lined up’ three times. Once online, once - for reasons John still didn’t fully understand - to get a bracelet, and a third time to pick the goddamned thing up at the store. And John had learned the hard way that once Matt went into his nerd cocoon, ribbing the kid about shit like getting scurvy from a subsistence diet of Bugles and Jolt Cola, or knowing of an addiction therapist at the Department Matt might like to meet, was definitely no way to break him out of it.
To this day, they still didn’t speak of the infamous Halo 4 Fight of 2012.
So while maybe John should be used to this kind of thing by now, this was the first time that Matt’s latest obsession had taken him out of the house. There was a time when John might have said that Matt getting out a little more would have been a good thing, but John had barely seen hide or hair of Matt since the minute this crazy thing dropped.
Thursday morning had seen Matt out of bed and into the shower before John opened his eyes. And then out the door - cell phone in one hand, travel coffee mug in the other, and a rushed kiss dropped onto John’s freshly shaven cheek - before he had finished his first cup. Since then, the extent of their interaction had consisted of a few muttered words of half-asleep greeting when Matt curled into his side in bed each night at some frankly ridiculous hours.
So when he dragged himself out of the car and pushed open the front door, John was surprised to find not a deserted hallway leading to an echoingly empty house, but the entryway full of the sound of Matt’s voice chattering animatedly away.
“Oh,” he said into his phone when he heard John come in, “I gotta go. Listen, just max out the CP on the Wigglytuff and I’ll meet you at the gym in about 20. …Hi,” he said, turning to John and stowing his phone safely in his back pocket.
“How was work?”
When John just gave him what he hoped would come out as a smile, and turned to hang up his keys, Matt’s face squinched up into a knowing wince.
“That good huh?” he asked, coming a few steps forward to meet him.
John remembered Halo 4, and didn’t mention sitting jammed up in the uncomfortable old desk chairs in Processing for eight hours straight due to Matt’s favourite new fad. He didn’t mention skipping his lunch.
He just opened his arms up and let Matt walk right into them. Then John wrapped him up tight, and breathed.
“Hey,” Matt said, winding himself under John’s arms and into the hug. He tucked his cheek into John’s neck and John could feel him smiling slightly. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” John said, pulling back a little. He ran his hands over the length of Matt’s arms, feeling that young, taut skin that always seemed to John like it was thrumming subtly. As if Matt was just lot of doe-soft skin pulled drum-tight over a big ball of vibrating, almost-nervous energy. Matt, this gift he had mysteriously been given that he would never be quite sure he deserved.
“You sure?” Matt asked him, leaning back and looking him in the face. “I just made plans to meet up with a couple people out on Flatbush…”
“Yeah,” John assured, letting him go and looking around the hallway. “Yeah, I’m good. You said something about going to the gym?” There wasn’t a gym bag in sight.
Matt’s hand went to the spot on his elbow where John had just been holding him, like he was chasing the echo of his touch. He blinked. “I did? Oh. Yeah, I--”
John held up a hand in a silencing ‘let me guess’ gesture. “They got ‘gyms’ in this game?”
“Well it’s a-“ Matt started, awkwardly. “Sort of. Yeah.”
John felt his eyebrows move a little higher up his forehead, but he didn’t have anything to say that wasn’t going to just end up in a repeat of the Halo Incident.
“It’s pretty hot out,” he said instead. “Take a bottle of water with you, at least.”
“Already covered,” Matt said, indicating the hall table where his keys, portable phone charger, and the aforementioned water bottle sat waiting. And his fond smile at John, even if it was still mixed with that anxious electricity that said all Matt wanted was to get back out there chasing down wild Pikachus, was well worth John holding his tongue.
Besides, over the years he had learned a few tricks. And if people were wandering around like something out of the zombie feature of the week, staring at screens and watching cartoon monsters get virtual exercise instead of going to real gyms now…well it was time to pull out the big guns.
But first, John pulled Matt close again for a quick goodbye kiss.
“Hey keep your head up, okay?” he said when they broke apart. Because the thing about gifts you didn’t deserve was you never knew how long you got to keep ‘em. And if a day was ever going to come where he had to lose Matt, it sure wasn’t going to be over anything this stupid. “Don’t, uh, wander into traffic, or walk off a pier or anything, hunting for Snoopy and Wigglestock.”
Matt didn’t even bother to correct him, even though he knew that wasn’t even half-way right.
“I won’t be out late,” he said, moving gently away from him, to collect his stuff from the hall table.
“Good,” John said. And then he laid down the bait. “Dinner’s at 8.”
“You’re cooking?” Matt’s hand froze over the bottle of water he had been about to retrieve on his way out the door, and he twisted backward to look at John over his shoulder. “What-can I ask what…is it gonna be meatloaf?”
John turned and walked into the kitchen so Matt wouldn’t see his smile. His meatloaf was always a no-fail trick.
“Guess you’re gonna have to wait and see,” he called back into the hallway.
*****
Matt was home promptly at 8:02. By 8:57 he was in John’s bed, riding his cock rough and hard bronco-buster style, with so much energy and enthusiasm that John could feel the cool air hit the sweat at the small of his back each time they bounced up off the mattress.
“Man!” Matt sounded ragged, when he finally collapsed in a heap next to John. “What is in those potatoes?”
“Potatoes?” John wanted to ask, but all he could manage was a twist of his head in Matt’s direction and a quizzical look. His neck felt like he might have whiplash. In a good way.
“I love game releases,” Matt panted, raising a rubber-jointed-looking arm like he had planned to roll over toward him, then dropping it back down to the sheets in defeat.
“No shit,” John wanted to reply, but the only communication tool his body seemed to be able to control still seemed to be his eyebrows, so he let them say it instead.
“No,” Matt said, totally getting John’s drift anyway. “I mean. Yeah I love new games, but I love how-I know I get super into it, and I’m sorry, it’s probably kinda boring for you, but I mean, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? I mean it never fails. A couple days in, you decide you want a home cooked meal. Which: score,” Matt enthused, successfully lifting a finger into the air this time to draw an invisible ‘one’ on an imaginary scoreboard. “And then-I don’t know what you put in those mashed potatoes man, but you always have a second helping, and then-I am always always guaranteed a full and thorough fucking. Seriously. It’s always, like this intense…fuckin’… I can’t think of a better word than thorough.” Matt breathed, worshipfully. “I’m boneless here, man,” he lifted a knee up off the bed and let it wobble back down again to demonstrate. “I mean, do you have some kind of secret aphrodisiac ingredient, or is it just the complex carbs?”
John could manage a low chuckle, now.
“Or maybe you just miss me,” Matt said, putting in the effort to lift his head so he could give him a shrewd look.
“Maybe,” said the crinkle in the corner of John’s eye.
“I’m onto you, tough guy,” Matt sighed, curling satedly onto his side and dropping his sweat-damp head onto John’s waiting shoulder.
“You’re onto me,” John agreed, with actual words this time. Which was all for the best, because if he let his eyes do the talking again they might have given something away.
Like the fact that the only reason John had to fill up on potatoes was that Matt always went to town on the meatloaf. Or that John’s particular meatloaf recipe happened to call for a cup of red wine. And that one cup meant opening an entire bottle, which would naturally have to be finished off between the two of them with their dinner.
Of course ‘between the two of them’ generally meant a scant near-glassful for John, and as many casual re-fills of Matt’s as it took to loosen his tongue enough about his latest game, gadget, or political cause that John could ask him if he ever planned on shutting up and finishing his broccoli. And then Matt could slant him a coy look and respond with some variation on ‘how ‘bout you come over here and make me’.
And then John would.
Because Matt was right, John thought as he turned in toward Matt, dropped an arm over him, and shut his eyes.
It never failed.
.