Matt wouldn't have believed it, if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes.

The idea of John McClane, undercover cop, is ridiculous. The whole point, as far as Matt can tell, of being John McClane is that he's immutable. He has always been the same dogged, fiercely protective, independent, incorruptible, unthreatenable guy. The papers had nearly made his face into a trademarked image of a New York cop, and Matt has seen all those movies about people who work undercover: chameleons or charmers, or John Does so unremarkable that people just pass them by. John doesn't come within a mile of any of those descriptions.

That was before Matt watched John pull a knit cap on and down low over his eyes, saw him somehow hunch his broad shoulders in under a patched and worn surplus jacket. Suddenly Matt found himself face to face with… he wasn't sure who that was exactly. Someone a little twitchy. Probably homeless, maybe a user. Certainly the type of guy that John saw on the streets a hundred times a week in the city. Honestly? Someone who Matt wasn't all that comfortable being two feet away from.

"You- That's- Wow," he stutters, mouth nowhere near keeping up with his brain. "I mean, do they teach classes in that? Because you're- that's- you're not you anymore." Matt's eyes widen as he tries to catalogue the changes.

"I've never… I mean, I don't know any actors, not since high school anyway. I've never watched someone stop being himself before. That is really freaky, man." He resists the urge to reach out, close his eyes to the mask and see if he could still recognize the topography of John's newly-familiar face or body with his hands instead.

Because, sure, John McClane had this whole life before Matt ever met him – and that's fine, if something he doesn't plan to dwell on – but this? This John is like he could have a whole life that Matt never knows about, and that is way scarier.

Matt's brain is still ticking so fast that he only realizes his mouth has gone silent when he senses movement, and John is back in front of him, hat gone, one hand tipping Matt's chin up, looking into his eyes. "Hey, you in there kid? Don't go getting lost in that brain."

"No- I'm… I'm here. Jesus." Matt touches John's wrist, briefly, and then backs up a few steps so he can see all of John again. And it, wow, yeah it's remarkable, how he can hardly see a shadow of whoever was standing in the living room a minute ago. John's raised eyebrows indicate that he's waiting for something more coherent, so Matt tries again.

"Sorry, no, that was just… Um, can you…? I'm not… good? With people? And I just. What I." He gives that up for lost, and huffs out a breath before trying again. "The thing is, you don't BS; you don't play games. It's easy to trust you. I don't… trust. People." He sees John's lips try to quirk into a smile. "Yeah, yeah, or the media, or the government. I'm trying to be serious here."

Matt turns back towards the window, fingering the cord for the blinds while he corrals his thoughts. "So, I just need you…to be… to stay you." The second it leaves his lips, he regrets saying "need" because he's seen those movies too, about cops' wives who can't cope with the hours or the dangers, and are bossy or needy, and a) no one in this relationship is the girl, much less the stereotypical wife, but b) even if Matt was, he wouldn't do that to John, because John is a god-damned certified hero, so there is no way that Matt is going to try to tell him how to do his job.

Besides, Matt doesn't know what kind of friends McClane has had, but he's pretty sure that they're not the type to make demands, and his family certainly hasn't kept him in practice for being needed. Matt likes this, likes being whatever kind of thing they are, and he's not about to start pushing at John the Immovable Object because Matt's feeling a little insecure. He hadn't mean to turn this into A Talk, so before he can say anything more embarrassing, he steers back toward what triggered this excursion into neurosis.

"I mean, not that it- Do you do that often? Go undercover?"

Matt hears John shrugging off the jacket onto the arm of the couch, shoulder popping as he rolls it. "Nah, not as much as I used to. They've got too many years in me now to waste me sitting around waiting for something that may never happen."

"So you're gonna stay under until they catch the guy?"

"Or until it's too cold to stay out the night, yeah. Defeats the purpose if I spend the night in a shelter. I need to blend in with the guys he's targeting."

"So a week? Two?"

"God, I hope not. There's more than one reason they usually put the young guys on this crap."

Matt feels hands settle on his shoulders, tugging him back a little against John's chest. "You wanna go get something to eat? I figured I should get one last hot meal in me before I have to go in."

***

Dating that doesn't involve scheduling time to avoid roommates or parents is sort of a novelty for Matt, and dating a man is, as far as Matt can tell, sort of a novelty for John. So far, they've just drifted along, their relationship only distinguishable from the camaraderie that sprung up after the fire sale by the sex.

Matt's willingness to have the FBI as a patron while he got his life reorganized hadn't stretched so far as living under the cyber division's thumb in DC. Philly wasn't in bad enough shape that they needed contract help, and on top of that, Bowman had admitted, in a rare display of personality, that the Bureau office there attracted assholes like some kind of beacon. Once he'd gone back to pick through the scorched remains of his life, Matt hadn't had a good reason to stay in Camden anyway. The only thing he'd had in common with his friends there was the gaming, and talking trash about headshots and kill counts had lost its luster after facing the possibility of being shot in the head for real for a couple of hours.

New York, though, was totally swamped, monitoring the rebuilding of financial networks on top of the daily traffic of 8 million people, so they were happy to take him on just Bowman's recommendation, and with provisional security clearance. By the time Matt had been mobile enough to fend for himself, McClane had even managed to find him a first-floor sublet in his neighborhood - someone's cousin or uncle fed up with the recovery effort - that left him enough money to eat and piece together a computer that he wasn't embarrassed to own.

Not that he needed anything more than a glorified PDA, since he was keeping his hands clean, and remote access was still like a dirty word, even months into the recovery effort.

Matt had a key to John's apartment within a week of moving into his own, way before he thought they had anything more than sarcasm and hero worship. As soon as he'd been able to hobble the few blocks between their buildings without passing out, he spent as many hours as possible there as he could without McClane threatening to beat him to death with his own crutches.

McClane was equal parts comfort and distraction. The worst of Matt's nightmares had faded while he was still in the hospital, but he wasn't in the best shape, and New York still had its share of dystopian moments poking at his peace of mind. Matt had suffered through his few sessions of trauma counseling about as well as he'd put up with the debriefing meetings, but by the time he was discharged, he'd been pretty set on keeping the government out of his brain. McClane didn't seem like the type to go in for therapy, but he had a steady confidence in his actions, and the belief that Gabriel's crew had deserved whatever they'd gotten that helped settle Matt's mind more than any exhortation to verbalize his feelings had.

So he hadn't moved in with John, exactly, but he's spent enough time there that he might as well have. All the same, it's not like John has plants that need watering or a pet ferret to keep alive, so Matt chooses the non-creepy-stalker route, and plans on spending the time while John's under in his own apartment. He's got a couple months' worth of video game reviews saved that he hasn't had a chance to check out, and his guild has probably forgotten he exists.

Three days after John disappears into the streets or the wilds of Prospect Park or wherever the hell he went, Matt gives up on pretending he's not lonely. He loses himself in code for as many hours as they'll let him stay at work, and then goes straight to John's apartment and curls up with something to read or his laptop. More often than not, he passes out mid-sentence on John's bed and is a little disoriented when he wakes up, which is what happens the night John comes home.

"Mrph?" John's skin is a little cool from the damp of the shower when he slides under the sheet, which is enough to rouse Matt's brain to the fact that John's back and spur him try to string together a few words of welcome or something. What comes out is a muffled "hey" against John's collarbone and a smile he hopes John can feel. He tips his head back after a few seconds, hair snagging on the whiskers that John hadn't taken the time to shave. He must have just rinsed the street off before coming to bed. "What time's it?"

Blunt fingers brush Matt's hair out of the way before settling his head back on the pillow. "Middle of the damn night, kid, go back to sleep." A twist of his shoulders and a sleepy roll of his hips earns Matt an arm around his chest and then a solid weight against his back. "Sleep," the grumble sounds again. "It'll all still be here in the morning," and Matt drifts back to sleep wrapped up in the one thing he can be sure of.