Archive of Our Own ^beta

"This is a bad idea", she thinks. When Lucy had asked her dad to bring Matt with him down to Camden, it had seemed like the perfect solution. Part of it had been not wanting to be alone with her dad – she knew they were less likely to blow up at each other with someone they both liked there as a buffer – but she had also wanted to see the two of them together, before her trip home to her mom and Jack for Christmas. So now it's going to be the four of them for dinner, which really had seemed like a great idea at the time, but the closer she gets to it, the more she thinks that maybe it's just a longer fuse that's now leading to an even bigger powder keg.

As they wait outside the restaurant – cold, but much better than the too many people crowding into the entryway – Lucy stands close enough to Jim to share his body heat, but she's keeping an eye out for anything that looks like a rental car with her dad in it. She has no doubt that her dad will remember Jim. It'd be nice to have the chance to ease them from adversaries to something less homicidal, and she's not going to get that chance if the first thing John McClane sees is some guy with his hands all over his baby girl again.

When she finally spots them in a car pulling into the parking lot, they're close enough to on time given the length of the drive, and she discards the hope of using righteous anger to guilt John into behaving. The car pulls into a space in the far corner of the lot, and Lucy is halfway across the lot on her way to greet them when she registers that,Whoa, they're kissing in the front seat, something more than just a quick peck silhouetted against the streetlight behind them.

She spins around to retreat back to the restaurant, and nearly collides with Jim, standing like a wall, or a lump, right behind her. He stares over head a moment, his hands resting on her shoulders where he'd automatically reached out to steady her, before he leans down and says, "You didn't mention he was gay." He hiss-whispers the last word like he doesn't want someone to hear it, which is ridiculous for any number of reasons, like how there's no one close enough to hear their conversation even at normal volume.

He's right on that point - Lucy never said her dad was gay because he's not - but she had said that he and Matt were together. But listening has never been Jim's strong point, and she isn't in the habit of having long talks about her family with her dates, even the steady ones. "I told you we were meeting my dad and his partner for dinner. You knew there were going to be four of us. You even made the reservation."

"Yeah, but he's a cop. I thought you meant partner, not, you know, partner." Jim probably doesn't realize how narrowly he escapes digging himself into an even deeper hole when he leaves off the accompanying hand gesture.

"God," she thinks, "I need to stop dating frat boys, no matter how hot they are." Out loud, she says, "Is this going to be a problem? Because you can go. They can drive me back to campus." Lucy's pretty sure that the steel in her voice makes it clear that she means 'go' in every sense of the word 'disappear' but if it doesn't, she's not going to have the fight necessary to get it through his skull in the parking lot of a freaking family restaurant. Thankfully, Jim shakes his head no, so she pushes him back towards the entrance to wait like civilized people.

When she sees her dad and Matt emerge from the car a minute later, her dad is mercifully unruffled in his typical macho cold-weather gear, bald head uncovered and coat open over his dress shirt. In contrast, Matt has a bulky coat fastened up, a hat on his head, and probably mittens on his hands inside his pockets.

Jim snorts as he watches Matt skid on a bit of ice near the curb. "How old is that kid? He looks like a freshman."

"I don't know. Older. And he does not!" Not up close anyway, but she's not going to encourage Jim by acknowledging that Matt does look weirdly young all bundled up like that. She can only hope that he comes across as more of an adult in normal conversation tonight. They haven't had one of those in person yet, between terrorists and serious pain meds, but surely her dad wouldn't be involved with someone who was actually a child.

She turns back to Jim, patting his arm before shoving him towards the door. "How about you go inside and tell them we're ready to be seated now?"

Maybe John should have listened to Matt when he'd suggested they should just stay in the car and make out. Or any of the times he had suggested pulling over at a rest stop in the gathering dark on the way down the turnpike. "C'mon, John," he'd said, grinning as he fiddled with the power seat until it reclined back, "it'll be like the good ol' days, at the drive-in," and the real benefit of Matt's reclined seat had been that John had to make do with punching him in the thigh instead of swatting at his head in retaliation.

He's pretty sure that Matt's scared that Lucy's going to do something to him, even though they've talked on the phone a couple times. They've had this plan since Thanksgiving, and Matt keeps saying he's fine with it, but the past couple days Matt's been increasingly handsy, like maybe he's storing up good memories before the apocalypse, or trying to make himself indispensible, or possibly he's just been distracting himself with sex. As a result, John's found himself the recipient of blow jobs at unexpected times, and with company in the shower in the mornings even though it's usually a fight to get Matt conscious enough to speak before John heads to work. John hadn't said anything, because, hey, but also because he knew Matt had no reason to be worried, and wouldn't believe him until after the fact anyway.

Of course, John's a little apprehensive too, but he knows that as far as Lucy's concerned, not showing up somewhere he's supposed to be is a hundred times worse than anything that could go wrong between them if he does show up. Mostly, though, it's the fact that getting caught having sex in a car is way at the bottom of the list of possible ways to out himself to the police department that had kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.

When they get to the door, some pop-music Christmas abomination is blaring from tinny speakers, and Lucy's polite, but her smile's a little tight when she says hello. It only takes him a second to figure out why when he 'meets' Lucy's boyfriend. "Actual boyfriend, now," he thinks with a smirk, suddenly looking forward to having ammunition of his own. John's impressed with Lucy's calm when she says, "Dad, Matt, this is my boyfriend Jim. Jim, my dad, John McClane, and Matt Farrell," and he meets her eyes so that she sees that he remembers this kid, but that he's not going to push it.

No, he isn't happy to find out that the guy Lucy is dating is that same idiot kid who was pawing her in a parked car over the summer, but he should have expected as much when she was cagey answering his questions about who she bringing to dinner. It's some reassurance that this Jim kid is a known quantity, and knows John's got his number, so if he's sewer-water, at least he's shallow sewer-water. He earns a couple points back towards neutral when he shakes John's hand and says 'Sir' instead of trying to pretend they're friends like last time.

Waiting the couple of minutes to be seated isn't too painful, mostly taken up with the requisite complaining about the drive and the weather. On the way to the table, Matt stops to stare at a particularly tacky piece of art on the wall. After a pause long enough for it to sink in that Matt's not moving under his own steam anymore, John reaches out to grab his hand and tug him along before Matt gets a chance to express what is sure to be a very colorful opinion on the glorification of kitsch and the downfall of American civilization.

Once they're seated, there are menus to look over, and Jim doesn't flirt with the waitress, so John settles in to try and not hate him. There's a too-long discussion of Rutgers football, which John can't imagine anyone outside the Big East caring about, but he's willing to discuss it well past polite interest if it keeps everyone else happy. Lucy tunes out early though, not much interested beyond the fun of going to the games, and starts talking to Matt about her classes and his work. By some miracle, the big oaf is some sort of computer engineering major instead of Marketing or Recreational Studies, and Matt manages to keep his eye-rolling to a minimum when Jim joins in the discussion, too.

They've got a local beer on tap that's pretty good, and John manages to keep his eye-rolling to a minimum when, of course, Jim has also a lot to say about beer. On the plus side, he's legal, because not even he is stupid or ballsy enough to pull out a fake ID with a cop at the table, and none of the beer discussion is accompanied by stories about keggers that John would just as soon pretend don't happen anywhere near his daughter. So, there's another hurdle cleared. It turns out that the food is excellent, if simple, and there's lots of it, and their conversation holds up through appetizers, salads, entrees, dessert and enough coffee to keep John alert on the drive back to the city. Still, when he pushes back a couple inches from the table, everyone jumps right on the cue, ready to escape.

He's used to steering Matt around in the apartment, too-late nights from couch to bed, or anything resembling a morning without caffeine, and manhandling him out of, or less often, into clothes, so it's nothing unusual for John to guide Matt back to the door and help him bundle up in the entryway before they go back outside. It's hardly risqué, even with Matt smiling at him, babbling warmly and possibly a little tipsy, and John's hand lingering on Matt's neck for longer than necessary before herding him towards the door, but John catches a middle-aged woman shielding her kids and giving him the stink-eye.

He's pretty sure that he was intended to hear her muttered "disgraceful" but he can't be bothered to figure out exactly what she has a stick up her ass about, and no one else seems to have noticed. Dinner went really well, but there's no telling whether Lucy will come down on his side or call him a Neanderthal if he doesn't just ignore the woman. So, summoning the holiday spirit of love and forgiveness, John thinks, Fuck 'em, and heads out the door. He hates Jersey, anyway.

They all manage to say their goodbyes and get into their separate cars, and like some kind of Christmas miracle, John and Lucy have made it through a whole evening in each others' company without any sort of fight, and without John having to fight the urge to clock Lucy's boyfriend. He even gets a hug from her, which is always a victory, and so does Matt, which means this really must have been a success.

Lucy turns to look out the rear windshield of Jim's car in time to see John reach out and run his hand up Matt's back and then tuck Matt against his side as they pick their way across the icy lot. Their heads are tilted together like they're talking, and then Matt bursts out in a laugh that nearly lands him on his ass despite John's help.

It's weird to see her dad so casually in someone else's space. It's been years since she and Jack had been huggers, and longer since John had been around often enough to do it. She has happy memories of her parents from when they were living together, but looking back at it now, the manic highs and lows of their relationship drown out the quiet moments. She has to imagine what it would have been like to see them curled up quietly on the couch together, without a sleepy kid or two as a buffer.

John - and even though she thinks they're genuinely getting along now, it's easier to think of 'John' and Matt instead of 'Dad' - seems so much steadier around Matt than she ever remembers him being. She wonders how much of that is Matt's influence, or if he's just mellowing, finally. Maybe something about the fire sale had finally ground the edges off of him.

Jim catches her staring, and his voice calls her back from her mental wandering. "I don't know, Luce. I don't think I'd be so cool with that, if it was my dad."

Jim's parents are still sickeningly happily married, and he's got a kid brother who's 15 years younger, so the odds of his dad suddenly bringing a boyfriend home are pretty slim, but she just takes his statement as a conversation starter.

Honestly, she'd expected it to be creepier, too. She'd had friends, growing up, whose parents had gotten divorced and remarried. She'd heard horror stories about watching parents date, but her mom had never seen anyone seriously enough to be introduced to the family, so this was her first taste of it. It should have been weirder. Why wasn't it weirder?

She turns to face forward as Jim pulls out onto the road. "I think Matt's a good guy, don't you?"

"Yeah, he's okay, I guess. I mean, I'm not saying I'd do him, but he seemed cool."

Leaving his typical lack of tact unacknowledged, she plows on. "And they seemed happy, right?"

Jim stops his drumming on the wheel to turn down the radio. "What do you want me to say, babe?" He shrugs. "He didn't threaten me this time, so if Matt's responsible for that, great."

Jim's right. Happy was fine. Happy was good, because a happy John McClane means that he's not indiscriminately taking his anger out on everyone else.

More than happy, though, he'd been patient, and quietly attentive, and she was a little jealous of that part. She hadn't seen that side of her dad since way before the divorce, like negotiating with Mom had taken it all out of him. She remembers what it had felt like, when he'd taught her things during her vacations with him. Even as she admits that she hadn't wanted to learn anything from him in a long time, she still misses the freedom to make mistakes that had been clear in John's eyes as Matt rambled along.

Matt's part of the conversation had been a little wooden when they first arrived, betraying a reticence that hadn't fit with any of her memories of him, so she'd been keeping an eye on Jim to make sure that he wasn't doing anything to intimidate or alienate Matt. Once they got to the table, though, Jim stopped acting like he expected Matt to be wearing body glitter and leather pants under his coat. His choice of conversation topics hadn't been ideal, but he hadn't said anything out of spite.

Matt and John had been seated on the same side of the table in their booth, and for most of the time that they were in the restaurant, she doesn't think anyone would have picked them out as a couple. John had sprawled in the corner, his arm along the back of the seat, and his eyes focused out on the room more often than on anyone at the table.

After his initial hesitance had worn off - and she still can't say whether it was her or Jim that was making him jumpy - Matt had been leaning into the table, gesticulating broadly in the small space. It turned out that the fervor of his conversation hadn't been a side effect of the pain meds, and he was a lot more articulate when he didn't have a gun trained on him.

He had wound down from time to time, listening intently to Jim's strat for some computer game she didn't recognize, or later in the evening when she and Jim had shared some of their roommate horror stories. When he quieted, he'd leaned back against the seat so that John's hand rested just behind his head, his fingers combing lazily through Matt's hair. That was all of it. They hadn't shared food any more than anyone else at the table had exchanged bits and pieces, and while it's possible they had been playing footsie under the table, she didn't think that her dad, even her suddenly-dating-men dad, was the type. She knows what claiming someone looks like, when people demonstrate their couplehood to everyone in the room, as well as the studied avoidance of people who are trying to behave and end up looking like someone they're not. John and Matt had just looked like they fit, without anything to prove.

Their drive back is quiet, Matt humming along with the radio and mostly staring out the window at the snow that's starting to swirl across the highway. John's waiting until they get back to his apartment before mentioning anything about the woman in the restaurant, partly because he's still turning it over in his mind, and partly because Matt's been doing his damndest to wind him up the whole drive back. He's continued to keep his hands mostly to himself while they're on the road, but John knows him too well by now to believe that the little touches and the occasional breathy sigh aren't being used for effect.

It's sheer force of will and the knowledge that he's probably going to pass out as soon as he comes that get them up into the apartment before he lays more than a hand on Matt. They scatter a trail of clothes and shoes from the front door to the bedroom, and John spares a moment to think that that's really going to piss him off in the morning when he stumbles over something, but only a moment because every trip hazard is another bit of skin uncovered, until Matt's wrapped around him on the bed and clothing, or ever leaving this bed again, are the last things on his mind.

Afterwards, as they're curled around each other in a sort of awkward pile in the middle of the bed, Matt makes a contented noise and says, "Good day, huh?" which reminds John that he'd had something he was going to say.

He stumbles around it for a couple sentences before he gets to what had been occupying his mind, but he's trying, dammit, to talk through these things as they come up. "So I don't know whether she's just a bitch, or if it was a gay thing, or if she thought I was parading my boy-toy around or what."

It turns out that any worried thoughts about how Matt would take it had been wasted, because Matt thinks it's hilarious, though he tries to hide it. "So just so I'm clear here, does that mean one of us is using the other for sex?" he asks.

Relieved, John muffles his own laugh on Matt's shoulder before nipping at him. "Dunno, never had one before. Think it's worth looking up?" He pushes up onto his elbow and looks over at Matt's laptop. "I'm sure the internet has something to say about it."

Matt's face registers his usual horror at John interacting with computers. "No way. I'm not going to be responsible for the scarring if you type 'boy-toy' into a search engine." He stretches, and then scoots up to strike a pose against the pillows. "We'll just have to figure it out ourselves. Maybe it means you're my sugar daddy, and all I have to do is sit around and look pretty. Or would that mean I'm a whore? Wouldn't want to bring Vice down on you."

"Too late for that. They've been saying for years that paid companions are the only ones willing to put up with me." John runs appreciative eyes over Matt's body before kneeling up to tug Matt back down flat on the bed. "Besides, I wouldn't know what to do with all this pretty, all the time."

"Oh, I'm sure you could figure something out." Matt tilts his hips suggestively, but it's ruined by the yawn he stifles immediately after. John feels himself slipping that way too, but Matt's next string of words wipes some of the haze out of his mind and pulls him back from the edge of sleep. "You know, things are slowing down at work now that there's less project-type stuff that they can parcel out. I've been thinking about setting up shop for myself again. I could work from home, be at your beck and call." When he pauses, John realizes they're talking about something serious here. "There's a word", John thinks. "that they use for pauses at moments like this." Matt's face is a little flushed, and his expression is hopeful. "Here, I mean." he clarifies, though John already knew what he meant. "I could work from here."

John wraps an arm around Matt's waist and snugs them up against each other, having finally learned that his pauses to think are Matt's opportunities to panic. They both know that Matt's apartment is only a technicality, but John's only ever really lived with one person, and he'd been married to her. The thing is, though, John had liked being married. He'd been in love with Holly and all, but he had also just liked being married. Most of the reason that he hadn't thrown the kid out when he'd started showing up was because of that. Being married wasn't about sex; there's a thousand jokes there, but it's true. It wasn't necessarily even about love. It was about something to be sure of, and sharing. He had been happy enough to have that again. He is definitely also happy to have this, the lazing around in a warm bed on cold evening, and the sex, and the soft, heavy look in Matt's eyes sometimes since they've been together, but there's a good chance that they were already married in John's head well before that first kiss happened. Living together, for real, isn't even something that needs thought, now that it's come up.

It would figure that it'd happen like this. Matt and his light-speed brain had invited himself into John's life, and invited himself into John's home, and now it seemed like he was doing so on a permanent basis. Someday, John hopes he won't be the one playing catch-up, but even if he's always the last to arrive, he likes everywhere Matt's leapt so far. "You're serious? You want to move in?" He pokes Matt in the ribs."You trust me around your stuff?"

Matt nods, and traps John's poking finger before shifting to sit up so he can see John's face. "Yeah? I mean, if people are going to say horrible things about us, I at least want to be getting all of the benefits."

He trails a hand along Matt's leg, consistent reassuring contact in case this conversation runs longer than John expects it to. "I can name at least three people, and maybe a couple hundred more, who would not count living with me as a benefit."

"Oh, none of that. I find you highly live-with-able. You make excellent coffee, you get a staggering number of sports channels, and you excel at folding socks. It's their loss, if they can't appreciate all that."

John chuckles and concedes the argument. "Well, when you put it like that..."

"So, yeah? Seriously?" There's a warm, happy look on Matt's face that John would do about anything to keep there, so he doesn't waste any time in confirming his agreement. When Matt drapes himself back over John and pulls the covers up around them, they're wrapped in a contentment that feels new, even though they've slept like this a hundred times already. It's a better Christmas than John thinks he deserves, but maybe he's earned some accidental happiness to go with all the accidental disasters.

When John wakes up a couple hours later, it's still full dark. Matt's awake and staring out the window at the snow that seems to be getting heavier, the flakes clearly visible now and a small ridge of snow on the fire escape railing outside. "That's the only good thing about snow in this city," John says. "Watching the flakes. The rest of it's pure hell. Tomorrow you get your introduction to slush and sand that you track everywhere, and a whole new level of pissed-off commuter."

"That's okay. In Camden, it was people who'd run you over 'cause they hadn't bothered to clean all the ice or snow off their car. I can handle a little mess."

"Yeah, I'm sure you can." John nudges a leg between Matt's to go with the arm around his chest, and closes his eyes again, content to drift until Matt says something else, or not. After a minute or two, Matt twists in his arms and pushes John over onto his back so Matt can slide in between his legs.

"I'm making a mockery of everything I believe by even thinking this…but it's kind of fucking magical, you know?"

That's just too good to pass up, and John grabs onto Matt's hips before opening his eyes as he presses their bodies together. "Magical, hmm? That's a new one."

Matt glares, but doesn't pull away. "Fuck you, I'm having a damn moment here. It's just, like, it should be horrible, the Christmas cards and keepsake ornaments and millions of hugely inefficient strings of lights that are heating the earth and killing off the highly marketable Coca-Cola polar bears. Even the Grinch is just another corporate construct. Ruin of a perfectly good story."

John lets go with one hand, reaching up to ruffle Matt's hair. "You're so cute when you get all riled up. I don't know where you find the energy." Their eyes meet, and John knows that Matt sees the genuine feeling behind the teasing.

"Seriously. It's like they put something in the water. It makes you want to believe all those crap movies about love and family at the holidays. White Christmas. Miracle on 34th Street. It's a Wonderful Life."

"A Christmas Story…" John interrupts, and Matt claps his hand over John's mouth, and shakes his head in what John thinks is mock-disappointment.

"No. That? Is a classic. A cautionary tale, even!" Matt stares down at him, evaluating. "Oh, John, John, John, we have so much work to do."