The Offer John McClane Couldn't Refuse

John’s gaze flicked over the printout he had bullied one of Bowman’s lackeys into getting him from the electronic file.

“Farrell, Matthew Andrew,” John muttered under his breath and realized he had been expecting something more geeky like Alfonse for Matt’s middle name. He had to squint to focus on the print and could almost hear Holly’s voice nagging at him that he needed reading glasses. “Mother deceased, father unknown. Ward of the state from the age of fifteen.”

“Reading up on the kid?” Bowman asked the obvious and waved at the papers in John’s grip.

“I’m surprised you Feds don’t have his shoe size on here.”

“If it mattered, we would,” Bowman answered. “And, if we wanted it, we could get it. We keep extensive dossiers on all hackers on our potential threat list.”

John tapped his fingertip onto the page near the bad picture of a Matt who looked scared and all of twelve years old. “You’ve got his juvie record on here. Looks like he’s been keeping his nose relatively clean since then.”

Bowman shrugged his shoulders. “Once a perceived threat, always a perceived threat. Truth is before Firesale the kid wasn’t high on the list. He rated a low threat.”

John was used to reading perp records, but trying to make heads or tales of the techno babble on Matt’s profile was making his brain hurt. “Translate this mumbo jumbo. What he’d do?”

“He was part of a group of vigilante hackers. They set up a Trojan virus into a virtual file, loaded it up on one of those perv websites for pedophiles. When the pervs downloaded it, the Trojan virus hijacked the perv’s computer, emailed all of the target’s vital stats and location, along with a zip file of all his illegal porno to the local LEAs.”

John blinked. His head definitely hurt now. “He busted some pervs targeting kids and he ended on an FBI watch list?”

“Vigilantes, McClane. That’s the official line. We can’t encourage virtual vigilantes anymore than we can allow groups of neighbourhood thugs rounding up the local pervs and serving up justice with a baseball bat.” Bowman hesitated for a moment and smirked, “Even if that’s what they deserve. Truth is Farrell also made it onto the watch list because he’s self taught. They’re scared of him. All of the heavy math encryption and hacking skills he’s learned without a high school diploma.”

John hadn’t even been thinking about Matt’s education. He had just assumed the kid was some sort of genius who went to MIT or Harvard. “He didn’t graduate high school?”

“Nope.” Bowman shook his head. “He first started hacking through the high school computers and got expelled. Didn’t have any parents to keep him in line after his mother died. Foster care isn’t an easy ride for a small, skinny geek like him. His mistrust of authority probably has its roots in his personal experience in falling through the cracks of the system.”

“He said he went to space camp…”

“He did.” The smirk on Bowman’s face was back. “On a scholarship. We’ve thought about shutting that place down for years. It’s a breeding ground for misfits. Farrell met Frederick Kaludis there and some other hackers.”

“You should just recruit them out of camp instead of shutting it down,” John commented.

Bowman clapped John on the back. “Funny you should say that, McClane.”

“No,” John responded automatically. He had no idea what Bowman had in mind, but when a Fed looked at you that way, you should always say no if you had half a brain. Too many concussions might have rattled his melon, but he wasn’t that dumb. “No way.”

“Now that you’re retired…”

John felt his chest tighten. “I’m not retired…”

Bowman smacked John’s good shoulder and smirked again. “Funny thing about that…”

John pushed away from Bowman. “Bullshit.”

“You no longer have a job with the NYPD. Director of the FBI put a call into the Mayor, who put a call into the Commissioner… you get the idea. Their insurance rate will go down by pawning you off on us,” Bowman said. “You do, however, have a job with the FBI.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Too bad,” Bowman insisted. “You’re our guy.”

“Fuck off, Bowman…”

“Your country needs you,” Bowman insisted.

“Get someone else. Anyone else.”

Bowman sighed and slid his hand into his slack pockets. “Funny thing about that... it seems that you have a rare skill.”

“I blow shit up. Any ol’ Jarhead could do that.”

“I’m talking about another skill…”

“What?” John snapped.

“Geek taming and wrangling.”

John was almost wishing he could get shot now rather than try to understand the gist of this strange conversation. “Excuse me?”

“During the Firesale you managed not only to protect Farrell, but assure he stopped the Firesale. If you read that dossier you would have realized that Farrell was a paranoid, anti-government nutbar who helped initially code the Firesale program. After you got through with him, he was a patriotic pussycat who took a bullet for Uncle Sam.”

“He took a bullet for my daughter,” John automatically corrected. It was freaky, but now Lucy and Matt were close friends.

“Fine, for your daughter. And, on top of that, you managed to talk Frederick Kaludis into aiding federal agents and got into his secured location.”

John swallowed thickly. “I don’t…”

“I never thought a Luddite like you would have the knack for handling and harnessing them,” Bowman continued. “If we want to avoid another Firesale, we need to harness that generation, and the next, of hackers. We’re starting a special project…”

John crossed his arms over his chest and refused to grimace when he felt the tight, healing skin on his shoulder pull too quickly. “I don’t want anything to do with it…”

“If you don’t recruit Farrell, he’s going to serve time,” Bowman cut off John with the truth, framing it not like a threat, but a directive from on-high. Bowman held out his hand, waiting for John to shake it. “Welcome to the FBI, Agent McClane. Good pension. Medical benefits. Ridiculous pay for your services.”

John glared at Bowman and most people would have run from the man after seeing that psychotic look. The perks weren’t what sealed the deal. What sealed the deal was that he was certain that if Matt didn’t start working for the FBI, they would ship him off to prison. The kid didn’t deserve that and would end up someone’s bitch or dead in under a week. John wasn’t going to let that happen.

“If you call me probie, I’ll kill you,” John growled, refusing to shake Bowman’s hand.

“That means you know where to find Farrell?”

“Yeah, I know where to find him,” John snapped back and turned his back on Bowman.

He hated goddamn Feds. That meant he hated himself now, but that was nothing new.

<><><><><><>

After each of what he liked to call “incidents” John made a tradition out of picking up and moving. It wasn’t like the bad guys couldn’t find him at a new address, but it was just something he did out of habit since Holly had kicked his ass the first time. This time he had gone from a rat hole of a one bedroom to a rat hole of a two bedroom after the Firesale.

When he moved into this apartment, he wasn’t alone. They moved in the middle of the night and John had a shadow on his heels when the landlady stuck her head out of the door wondering who was hauling boxes down her hallway at some godforsaken hour. What she saw was John ushering a pale and shaky Matt into the new apartment. With his hand possessively on Matt’s lower back, John had glared at the lady and then slammed his door, muttering about people minding their own business.

As he started to unlock one of three deadbolts he had installed to make Matt feel safe, he heard the door across the hall open. It was Mrs. Weathers, the landlady John preferred to call The-Old-Bat-Across-The-Hall most of the time.

“You’re home unexpectedly,” Mrs. Weathers stated the obvious. Her hair was swept in a purple headband that matched her purple velour gym suit. “Checking up on your boy?”

“He’s not my son, lady,” John huffed.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve figured that out,” Mrs. Weathers shot back.

“Keep your nose outta my business.” John banged on the door hard waiting for Matt to unlock the chains that could only be unlocked from the inside. His ire was rising with her questioning and her stink face. “Farrell, open the goddamn door!”

“You should watch your temper,” Mrs. Weathers snapped. “He’s a nice boy.”

“Stay away from him,” John warned her even as he heard the last chain slip out of place and the door crack open.

Through the slightly opened door John caught sight of a brown eye shielded by floppy black bangs. “Password?”

“Ha ha. Open fuckin’ sesame. It’s me and I’ve had a hell of a day.”

The door opened more and John stepped inside without another word to Mrs. Weathers and slammed the door like he was prone to do when she ambushed him in the hall.

“I hate The-Old-Bat-Across-The-Hall,” John grumbled and shucked off his jacket.

“She’s not so bad,” Matt said with a shrug of his shoulders. “She made me cookies once.”

“Cookies?”

“I ate them all before you got home.”

John walked further into the darkened apartment and flicked on the light over the stove in the kitchen. “You’re lucky they weren’t poisoned.” He dropped the back pack he had been carrying with a heavy thud onto the kitchen countertop. “I brought you some more shit.” Matt’s gaze was fixated on the bag, but he was frozen on the spot. “Go on, open it.”

Matt crossed the short distance and all but tackled the bag, quickly opening the zipper. He reached inside and started to pull out books, glancing at each of the covers. A smile ghosted over John’s lips as he watched the kid. Since the Firesale the Feds had let Matt stay free, but under the condition that he wasn’t allowed to own or use any computers. The closest thing he got to software these days was the television. He wasn’t even allowed to have a gaming system because they were online compatible. The kid was clearly some sort of genius and twitchy wasn’t an apt description of what happened to him when his mind wasn’t occupied.

So John had resorted to a low tech solution and resurrected his library card. Stopping by the library, he had brought back bags full of books much to Matt’s delight. Since then he had figured out the kid would voraciously read anything, but really liked books on math, science, crime novels, and the comics were a no-brainer. Stacked around John’s apartment where computer equipment would probably be located were stacks of books instead. John’s basic rule of thumb was that if it was something he would rather bash his head against a brick wall than read, then it was safe to bring home to Matt.

“Oh, wow, yeah… this is good,” Matt rambled and opened the book on Ancient Roman plumbing to the index page. “Awesome.”

“Fill the bag up with stuff you’re done with and I’ll drop it off on my next run.”

“Sure.” Matt nodded and was already onto examining the next book on the schematics of World War One tanks. “This is cool.”

With a stack of four books in his hands, Matt looked up to see that John was watching him. Matt never seemed disturbed about the way John watched him like the way Holly or even Lucy did. John watched people and he couldn’t help it if other people thought it was creepy. Matt never seemed to register that his behaviour was inappropriate or socially retarded as he had been called on more than one occasion. It wasn’t John who started this thing between them because of the hero worship that was blatant across Matt’s face when the kid wasn’t blathering at him about something stupid. John had given Matt the gruff comfort before what he could only refer to as “The Other Stuff” started.

Looking at Matt, John could see the kid’s colouring was still too pale. The FBI’s file on Matt was incomplete as far as John was concerned. It didn’t list that the kid was a hero in his own right, or the injuries that Matt had sustained during the Firesale. No one but John knew that Matt woke up screaming at night from nightmares or he would break into a cold sweat during the day from a flashback. Leaning against the couch was other evidence of the Firesale’s effect on Matt. He hated using the cane, but the kid could only shuffle and limp around the apartment so much without its aid. The adrenaline and morphine had initially worn off, leading to a bullet wound that had torn up ligaments, leading to permanent muscle damage. Matt was healing slowly, but he would always walk with a limp.

Not that Matt went out that much these days. John wasn’t sure if Matt had been anti-social and a loner before, but he was now. He stayed up, the damn insomniac, reading for days and then he would pass out in the weirdest places. John would inevitably end up waking him up and dragging, half carrying Matt to bed. No one except them knew that these days Matt spent most of his nights in John’s bed because when he slept alone, the nightmare were worse.

Matt tilted his head to the side and considered John. “You had a bad day. What’s up?”

“I met with the FBI.”

That one word set off another side effect of the Firesale. When Matt heard the FBI, he started to hyperventilate and grasped at his chest. John didn’t have to search the apartment for one of Matt’s inhalers because he always carried a spare one on him these days. John pulled the inhaler out of his pocket and strode over to Matt. Slipping his arm around Matt’s waist, he pulled Matt against his chest, supporting his weight and held the inhaler up to Matt’s lips with his other hand.

“Breathe,” John commanded.

Matt’s lungs had been burnt by the hot air during his exposure to the flames. They were already weakened by his asthma and his condition simply got worse. It was triggered by excessive physical or mental stress these days, and John should have known bringing up the FBI would trigger a panic attack.

John still held the inhaler and felt Matt’s fingers wrap around his own as Matt pressed down and inhaled the mist. John’s hand crept under Matt’s shirt, palm laying flat on Matt’s stomach because John had discovered that his touch calmed the younger man.

John slowly rubbed over Matt’s stomach and he whispered, his lip right next to Matt’s ear, “Take it easy, Matty. Breathe.” Matt’s wheezing breaths started to slow and John praised in a gravely whisper, “That’s it, good boy.”

John pulled the puffer away from Matt’s lips but didn’t let him go and never said anything when Matt kept holding onto his wrist.

“FBI?” Matt croaked.

John tightened his hold around Matt’s waist, hand still caressing the soft skin. His lips brushed the back of Matt’s head and he lightly kissed the top of Matt’s head. “They offered me a job.”

“Oh…”

“They offered you a job, too,” John whispered into Matt’s hair.

Matt’s grasp on John’s wrist tightened and Matt gaped. “They…”

“You’re gonna take it,” John told him. He wasn’t going to tell Matt about the threat of prison yet. That was his last option and he didn’t want to scare Matt. “We’re gonna take it.”

“I don’t…” Matt stammered. “We?”

“Uh huh,” John answered. “Idiots want us to work together. You’ll be spearheading some Egghead project, I’ll be there doing stuff.”

Matt’s brows drew together and John knew he was sleep deprived again because Matt’s brain was having trouble reacting. “Stuff?”

“I don’t know, like making sure you eat,” John said. “And peeling your ass off the ceiling when you drink too much of that Redbull shit. Shooting anyone who touches your keyboard?”

“They’d let me have a computer…” Matt’s voice was childlike and hopeful.

“Yeah, kid, they would. Plural. Top of the line. The best shit money could buy. I’ll beat ‘em up if they don’t.”

Matt drew John’s arm to his chest, still holding onto John’s wrist for dear life. Matt swallowed and licked his lips. “I thought it was just a matter of time before they threw me in prison.”

“I won’t let them,” John promised.

It was the same promise he had made to Matt in the hospital. All of the kid’s friends except Warlock were dead. Lying in that hospital bed, no one had visited Matt and he had no home to go back to. No family to comfort and protect him from the downfall of the Firesale. John had personally called in a few favours to make sure the Feds kept the media vultures away from the kid until he found out they were intentionally keeping both of their names out of the media reports. It had been two months since the Firesale and Matt was still under John’s protection, seemingly not wanting to be anywhere else.

“Okay,” Matt agreed with a slight nod of his head.

“Okay? No fights? No rants about working for ‘The Man’?”

Matt turned his head at an awkward angle to look back at John. “You promise I’d be working for you?”

“Working with me,” John corrected. “Yeah, that seems to be the gig. Anything else and we can tell them to go blow themselves.”

“I might pay to see that,” Matt said and giggle-snorted under his breath.

“I don’t think Bowman is that limber…”

<><><><><><>

Bowman walked up to John who was looking through the bullet proof window of the computer lab. Anyone who wanted to get into Matt’s lab had to get through McClane’s office first and John liked that just fine.

“Congratulations, you’re head Geek Wrangler,” Bowman said, smacking John on the back.

“Don’t let them hear you call me that,” John grunted.

“Oh please, did you know they gave you your own theme song? Big Bad John. They adore you.”

John unconsciously did a head count of the room. Sometimes one of his geeks tended to wander away, even though he always knew where they were. If they didn’t come back in the time frame he thought they should, he would be forced to go looking for them. John preferred to keep them corralled for his own sanity. Some says he considered putting up big traps by the exits baited with Redbull and stale donuts.

“They’re gonna be the death of me.”

John always grumbled, bitched, and moaned about his job, even though it was an alright set up even if some days he would rather face another terrorist than a room of computer geeks hopped up on caffeine. The last big project one of John’s probies had been stupid enough to let them sneak in a keg of homemade energy drink. By the time John had gotten back from an assignment, it was like a room full of evil squirrels. When they finally dropped, the project was done two days ahead of schedule and John had to face a room full of crashed geeks. Someone had started a sticky note war with shrapnel all over the place. John had to peel his own personal geek out of his chair, take off the note that read ‘Mensa Wannabe!’ and literally carry Matt out of the office. When John had pulled off Matt’s top shirt that night he had found two hot pink sticky notes, one over each of the kid’s nipples on his undershirt. John had heeded Matt’s warning not to read the notes, but had to feel sorry for the culprit because Matt had been muttering about revenge.

Bowman and John watched over what the geeks had nicknamed ‘The Watchtower’, which was supposed to be significant considering they called themselves ‘The Justice League’. Matt was wheeling around in his chair and smashed into the back of Frankie’s chair.

“Do I want to know what they’re doing?” Bowman asked.

“Bumper cars,” John sighed. Frankie had just grabbed a slinky from his work station and tossed it at Matt. Matt in turn hit Frankie with his cane that he liked to brag was a replica of Yoda’s walking stick. “They’re blowing off steam. It’s harmless. Now, if they start reaching for their dolls, that’s a bad sign.”

“Dolls?”

“Yeah, they call’em action figures. If they start reaching for them, it usually means they’re too tired and about to start some stupid argument about comics, or some cartoon. I’ve had to separate them before. Usually means they’ve had too much stress, caffeine, or both. They’ll work themselves into a stupor if you let ‘em. And I need a new probie. Last one lasted a day. The kids scared him off with a box of elastic bands and paper clips.”

“Huh huh.”

Bowman knew that John McClane was head goon in a loony bin, but it worked. However, he went through staff like toilet paper. Bowman was pretty sure John had a perverse glee that his band of computer geeks had frightened away and made some of the FBI’s supposed best cry. When they first recruited the pair, Matt had written up a wish list of hackers he felt would make up a perfect team of people he thought could be trusted. At the top of that list had been Frank “Warlock” Kaludis.

Just as John had called it, things seemed to settle back down in the lab and each of reformed hackers went back to their various projects. Each of them had a private workstation that was cluttered with non-regulation materials. Matt’s was decorated with action figures that John would never admit he had purchased for the kid. Beside Frankie’s workstation was a pink nightmare of a Hello Kitty shrine that was clearly defined as the only female territory in the lab full of male geeks.

“I still can’t believe you managed to get all of them to work for us,” Bowman commented. “No one’s been able to do it before. You’ve astonished the higher ups.”

“Don’t give a shit about the higher ups. Matt wanted them, so he got ‘em.”

“You just have to know how to speak their language?”

“Nah,” John snorted. “I don’t speak geek. I don’t listen to their bullshit. Take Frankie for example.” John tapped the glass in Frankie’s direction. “He’s all yap. Threats wouldn’t have worked. Not even calling on his non-existent patriotism.”

“He thinks with his dick like any guy.” John smirked and motioned over to the Hello Kitty workstation where a small Asian woman in pigtails and short skirt was furiously typing away. “Her. Nana-chan. Talented hacker in her own right, but we got her and Matt was right. Frankie was willing to miraculously chat once he found out he’d be in the same room as her all day.”

“Nana-chan.” Bowman had stopped short of letting the geeks get ID issued with their computer names on them. “You know you’re the only one he lets call him Frankie. He’s lucky we didn’t throw his ass out for flooding that agent’s inbox with gay porn for not calling him Warlock.”

John still thought that one was funny but wasn’t going to let Bowman know that. “It’s like their call signs. They’re just as fussy as chopper jocks and pilots.”

“You want to tell me how Farrell got the handle of Ferret?”

“Nah,” John snorted. He glanced down at his watch and saw that it was two o’clock. John gave them until two o’clock to be adult enough to eat on their own. They never did, so he was forced to take alternative means to secure sustenance. He glanced at the bulletin board that had a plethora of take out menus tacked to it. “It’ll be feeding time soon at the zoo. If they don’t eat regularly, then they get cranky, or crash. If they do remember to eat, it’s crap.”

Then John saw Frankie reaching over to nab one of the chick’s squishy panda dolls. He saw Nana’s eyes narrow and he groaned, “Oh, shit. I gotta go stop World War 3. Frankie’s trying to make moves again. Last time he tugged on her pig tails he had to call in sick for four days until the swelling in his balls came down. She’s feisty…” John pushed open the door and bellowed, “Frankie, back away from the lil’ girl’s doll slowly. Hands in the air, asshole!”

<><><><><><>

John grunted in the back of his throat. He was holding Matt’s face turning it sideways to get a good look at the bruising that was already forming around Matt’s right eye and the bridge of his nose.

“What happened?” John demanded.

Matt let John manhandle him and check for injuries. “I fell.”

“You fell?”

“Yeah,” Matt sighed. “Then I… sort of hit a doorknob.”

Sometimes Matt’s injured leg didn’t work the way he wanted it to. He would stumble and it would sort of turn to jello. Matt was already a klutz, so this didn’t help matters. The kid was always dropping stuff and running into inanimate objects like walls when he was half asleep. It led to an assortment of bruises and injures. Just last week Matt had dropped some mystery computer part onto his left hand and luckily hadn’t broken any fingers, but John still dragged him to a doctor. Matt’s hand was still bandaged up.

“Christ, kid,” John grumbled and gently patted Matt’s cheek. “I should keep you locked up. I can’t trust you.”

Of course, that was when Mrs. Weathers opened the door and scowled at John. “Don’t you threaten him!”

“Oh, hey, Mrs. Weathers,” Matt coughed. “I was just…”

“How’d you get that black eye?” she demanded.

“I fell and hit a doorknob,” Matt answered.

John had been a cop long enough to know that sounded like a lame excuse, even if it was the truth. Matt was a terrible liar, but he was even worse at telling the truth.

He laid his hand on Matt’s shoulder, stepping in front of him. “Shut up.”

“And your fingers?” Mrs. Weathers continued on. “Did those just break themselves?”

“Oh no,” Matt said. “They’re not broken. It was an accident.”

John thought he was protective, but anyone in life told him he was possessive and controlling. It had smothered Holly and pissed off his kids. Matt seemed to relish John’s possessiveness. Then again, Matt wasn’t the poster boy for mental health and had a shitload of abandonment and daddy issues. When John was in his possessive routine, Matt often smiled or sighed with exasperation, but there was always a pleased glint his eyes.

Mrs. Weathers gave Matt a pitying look. “I hear the screams...”

<><><><><><>

Matt had a variety of reasons to scream. The most common cause was the night terrors, filled with tortured memories of blood and carnage. It didn’t matter if the men Matt had killed deserved it, the guilt still ate away at him. The worst nightmares had been confessed to John through tears as Matt babbled that the Firesale had succeeded and it was all Matt’s fault the world had fallen apart on him.

In the confusion between the dreams and waking, sometimes Matt clung to John whispering that Lucy and McClane had died. Some days Matt’s injury caused terrible muscle spasms and cramps that John had learned to massage out. Matt would lie on John’s bed, or the floor, howling with pain while John massaged his leg and whispered nonsense to him. Even once the pain was gone, John kept running his callused hand over Matt’s softer skin, caressing back and forth over his thigh. The debilitating nightmares were how Matt ended up in John’s bed on the first night he was able to sleep outside of the hospital. There were other reasons Matt had stayed in John’s bed.

<><><><><><>

John McClane was like most guys. Most mornings he woke up with morning wood. Back in the day, when they were newlyweds, Holly used to take care of it. Two kids later and John got used to either ignoring his morning erection or taking care of it himself. After a long night, the first night of dealing with the kid’s nightmares, he had fallen into an exhausted sleep with Matt tucked protectively into his arms and Matt’s face pressed against his neck.

After that night, the last thing John expected to wake up to was the feeling of a warm mouth sucking on his cock. With a loud groan, his fingers threaded through longish hair, but too short to be the remembered locks of his ex-wife. As he tightened his fingers in the hair and pumped his hips up, he looked down to see Matt between his thighs. Matt was making obscene and needy noises as he sucked.

John tugged on Matt’s hair, pulling him off. “Farrell, no…”

John’s heart broke when a sad sigh slipped from Matt’s lips. Matt buried his face against John’s thigh, rubbing his cheek as he started to beg incoherently. “Please, McClane… please, John… I’m s-sorry. Don’t…”

John tried to tug Matt away from his groin by laying a solid hand on the back of his neck. Matt was surprisingly unmovable. “No. You don’t have to.”

“Please… I want,” Matt begged and babbled at the same time. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask. You were hard and I thought… if I started before you realized it was me… I can finish you… just close your eyes. Think of your ex-wife. Please, I need… ”

It was Matt’s big brown eyes that did him in. No one should look at him like that. As if he, John McClane, was the be all and end all. No one should look at him with such blind, desperate need.

“Shut up,” John growled with no menace. “Take what you need…”

The wounded happy noise Matt had made shouldn’t have gone straight to John’s dick, but it did. He felt like a louse getting turned on by how quickly Matt latched back onto his cock with that damn mouth. It didn’t take much more to come, but even after he had sworn and Matt swallowed it all, Matt still refused to relinquish John’s cock. He kept sucking and tonguing it as it softened, making those soft needy noises.

John knew the boy probably thought this would be the last time and only time. If he were a better man, John would have made sure of it. Instead, he didn’t have the balls to tell Matt never again. Instead, he let Matt continue sucking.

He caressed Matt’s hair and stared up at the ceiling, telling him, “You can have this whenever you need it. I won’t take it away from you…”

When his cock slipped from Matt’s mouth, John pulled Matt up until he was lying across him. John’s stomach clenched when Matt winced as John moved his hand too quickly. The damn kid probably thought John was going to hit him. John let his hand settle on Matt’s ass, palming it through the thin cotton boxer briefs. He slipped his thigh between Matt’s legs, feeling his hardness.

“C’mon…” John had to urge him and noted how Matt shivered at being told what to do. If that’s what it took to get the kid off, then he was game. He didn’t feel like such a jerk if Matt got a thrill out of it. “Do it.”

It was so fucked up, but then again, John’s life had always been fucked up. Having the kid in his life was like falling down a rabbit hole. It wasn’t much of a self sacrifice to wake up every morning to an eager mouth sucking him off. It was weird when it became a morning ritual. It set precedence for Matt getting what he wanted in this relationship.

Matt had been pushing for John to do more. To fuck him. He begged for it when he was sucking John off in the morning, but John always ignored the desperate, nasty pleas. When John came home one night from visiting with Lucy, it wasn’t such a shock to find Matt laid out on their shared bed. Matt had his legs splayed and was fucking himself with a toy. John watched from the door way before Matt slowly coaxed him closer as jealously flared deep inside John.

John wasn’t sure how his hand ended up gripping the toy, pulling it out. The thing was lewd and John didn’t want that for Matt. His heart had pumped too past as John slipped fingers into the slick hole. John liked to think he was straight, but having his fingers up another guy’s ass really didn’t help that line of thinking. Funny thing was John really didn’t care. He liked the power trip he got from getting Matt this way.

His own cock was hard when he growled, “My fingers better than a damn toy, boy?”

The way Matt arched and begged for more. The way the younger man clutched at the sheets and arched his back, shoving his ass back deeper onto John’s fingers. He begged for John’s cock, but John found himself laying a hand on a slim hip and making Matt come from just his fingers.

When Matt was quivering on the bed, John had slapped his ass and demanded, “No more toys. You need this, you come to me.” He had palmed his hardness through his jeans, seeing Matt lick his lips. “Now take care of me.”

And another routine had crept its way into John’s life. He would have shot anyone twenty years ago who told him when he was over fifty that John would get off on pinning some slim hipped and shaggy headed kid half his age to the wall with his hands over his head, or bending the same kid over the kitchen table and making him come just with his fingers. He would have shot that motherfucker and then laughed. Yippee-ki-yay, Motherfucker. Except it was true now. Now John McClane did all of those things and it wasn’t such a grand leap to go from putting his fingers into Matt, to slipping his cock into that tight heat.

John still laid awake at night with Matt plastered to him thinking that he was the world’s biggest jackass taking advantage of the kid. He was a battered, bitter old cop who didn’t deserve happiness. Holly had left him for a reason, the voices whispered. The same voices whispered that he was screwing up Matt and taking advantage of the unbalanced young man Matt didn’t love him, but stayed with him because he was too fucked up to seek out a better relationship with someone his own age.

But the guilt never last too long when he saw how Matt was thriving with his new job and since “The Other Stuff” had started. He caught Matt grinning like an idiot in the bathroom mirror as he examined the bruise marks on his ass. Matt seemed more settled and less jittery. Instead of snapping at John’s possessive ways, he grumbled with good humour and the damn lil’ shit was an enabler. He seemed to find ways to encourage John’s possessive streak and discovered kinks John had tried to repress for decades. It wasn’t his fault if the kid looked good with bite marks on his pale skin, or if Matt just turned his head to the side when John started nibbling on his neck. The way Matt rubbed at the marks John left only encouraged the older man. The kid was a kinky lil’ shit.

But there were still nights that John felt guilty and the biggest sore point with him was someone accusing him of hurting his boy.

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“I hear the screams…”

The rage boiled up in John and he wanted to hit something. So he did. It’s just that simple. He put his fist through the old plaster in the hallway. He could barely think straight as Matt pulled his balled up fist out of the wall. Matt’s hands were on him, restraining him and his voice was desperately trying to reach John. The words din’t reach John since he was in that mental zone where someone threatened someone he loved. It didn’t matter if it was an old lady.

Then Matt was caressing his face and a kissing him, whispering and forcing John to look at him.
Some of the words got through the blind rage. “McClane... it’s okay, calm down… please, John…”

John unballed his fist and his arms wrapped around Matt, pulling him tight against his chest. He glared at The-Old-Bat-Across-The-Hall.

“He’s mine.” With his tone, low and threatening, John growled, “Keep your fucking mouth shut, bitch. I don’t abuse him and I never will.”

“He’s right, Mrs. Weathers,” Matt added and started to push John back towards their apartment door. “It’s not like that. Please, just mind your own business.”

Matt managed to get the door open and John through it. With John still holding onto him with an iron grip, Matt kicked the door shut with his foot.

Matt grabbed John’s face, framing the older man’s face with his palms. “Don’t,” Matt demanded. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is us, so just don’t. I love you.”

This entire time and John had never said those words. During his entire marriage to Holly he had only said them to her a total of seven times. On their wedding night, when the kids were born, after each attack, and the night she told him she was divorcing him.

The funny thing was that Matt didn’t need to hear the words to know. He was already kissing John and muttering, “I know… you’re mine, too.”

END.

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