found this sorting through my google drive, it was already written just needed some polishing, so i figured i may as well post it. i'm just saying, there's no way bozer came away from that without some major aftershocks. mac too. so, here they are. additionally, let's give me a round of applause for finally writing a fic where mac is both conscious and coherent the whole time, i've finally broken pattern here.
at any rate, i'm still working at my longer chapterfic, 'stay in the game', no worries, just figured i'd post this instead of leaving it to gather dust in my hard drive!
title from the sleeping at last song 'bright & early'.
(fun fact, the jeopardy! thing is taken from a real life habit of my own roommate/dear friend's. she's out of the country at the moment and i miss her very much.)
They let Bozer come home on a Thursday. It's just before noon and the sky is cloudless, a milder than usual sun lighting the parking lot. Jack and Riley have insisted on being there too - nothing less than expected of them - and Mac hangs back a little, letting them load Bozer carefully into the car. His eyes roam across parked cars and the errant pedestrian, focus skipping from input to input, categorizing them benign. Not a threat.
(Not that a hospital parking lot is an especially threat-rich environment, but if there is one thing Mac has learned this week, this month, this year , learned from Patti, and Murdoc in his house, and the siege on the Foundation, it's that threats are everywhere. There's nowhere that's safe anymore. Not for him. Not for Bozer either, but guilt clouds focus so for the moment, he lets it go, concentrates on watching.)
Jack and Riley keep a conversation going from the front of the car, drawing Bozer into it and keeping his mind off the discomfort surely caused by transferring from the hospital to the car. Mac knows. He's been stabbed before. Pain medication only goes so far, especially after it's been tapered down. Things like this are felt, and felt deeply, and Mac is glad Jack and Riley are there to talk Bozer away from focusing on it.
Back at the house, the door opens and a rush of life fills an empty, silent room. Standing on the threshold, watching Riley turn lights on and Jack escort Bozer carefully to the couch, Mac feels a stutter of breath catch in his chest, a sting building behind his eyes. It takes a moment to collect himself and move, to come sit on the couch and participate. He's glad they're distracted enough not to have noticed.
For much of the day, Jack and Riley hang around the house, and shortly after they leave, Matty stops by. She's busy and overwhelmed by the recent upheaval - it never pays, from Mac's point of view, to be the one in charge - but she's come around anyway.
"I wanted to see how you were doing," she says to Bozer. "Both of you," she clarifies, and Mac ducks his head.
Matty speaks quietly with Bozer for a few minutes, then leaves. On her way out, she stops for a moment, hand clasping Mac's wrist.
"You did good," Matty tells him. Mac nods, face impassive.
"Thanks," he says stiffly.
For a moment her grip tightens and she says, insistently, " Mac ." His nickname isn't a word that crosses her lips frequently in direct address to him, and he looks up. She holds his gaze intently, eyes piercing and acute. Not for the first time, Mac is left with the sense that Matty is staring right into the core of him, and it would be impossible to lie to her; she would know immediately. "You did good ."
This time, he doesn't respond verbally. The lump in his throat is too restrictive to speak around. He does nod again, and Matty seems satisfied with this. With one final and this time gentle squeeze, she takes her leave of the house.
Mac stands in the hall watching her leave through the open door. Even after she's disappeared out of the driveway he stays put, like the effort of deciding to move, of lifting his feet from their place on the ground, is too great a weight, keeping him rooted to the spot. Only once he hears his name, called half bewildered half amused in Bozer's familiar voice, does he move. He clears his throat, breaking the lump into a pulsing ache, and does his best to smile as he walks back into the living room.
It almost feels like a normal day. With everyone else gone, Mac and Bozer sit on the couch and play video games. They don't talk about what happened, as if a thing ceases to exist because you don't look at it. Just like a normal day, Bozer wins more than Mac does, if only because the rules of physics are different in the pixel world and Mac keeps forgetting that. Just like a normal day, Mac gets bored first. Bozer switches the game to single player while Mac drags a box out of a closet. Just like a normal day, that box makes Bozer smile when he catches sight of it. That box had been his idea.
It feels like forever ago now but had in reality been a handful of short weeks. They'd been in the middle of nothing overly important, or at least any more important than literally all the work they do, and Mac was restless. For a time then, Bozer had seen him get more and more unsettled, uncomfortable and accompanied by an air of malaise. Years and years of experience led to the question - When was the last time you built anything or took anything apart just for the hell of it?
Thus began the box. It contains the assorted "metal doodads" Bozer gave him for his birthday, an odd collection of broken household appliances and circuitry, a generous handful of paperclips and rubber bands, and whatever else they had a mind to toss in there. Now, Mac will drag the box out when he finds his mind wandering or his fingers twitching. It feels good to tinker with things outside the context of 'do this or you/Jack/Riley/Bozer/random citizen/the whole world will die', and it has a calming effect on him.
The sounds of the video game resume, and Mac sits on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, a tangled mess of multicolored wires and a small circuit board in front of him. He's propped up by the couch at his back, and every so often, a shift of one of them bumps the side of Bozer's knee against his shoulder. It's almost comical, the wide space left on Mac's other side that he's steadfastly ignoring in favor of staying where he is.
Just like any other day is somewhat broken by the proximity. Recent events don't lend themselves to distance, though, and the reassurance conveyed by the periodic bump against his arm is strong enough that Mac stays put. Bozer doesn't point it out.
The knot of wires is just about undone, each piece laid out neatly beside the next, when the sounds of the video game stop again, and the couch at Mac's back shifts. Mac ignores it because there's no way Bozer is about to-
"Ow," Bozer yelps as his decision to get up doesn't end the way he'd planned for it to.
"Bozer." Mac quickly scrambles up himself, catching his friend before the injured man can fall.
The clock ticks out several wordless, frozen seconds while they stand there in the middle of the open floor, Mac holding them both upright, Bozer's forehead jammed against his collarbone, back heaving under Mac's hand. Neither moves until Bozer catches his breath and Mac's nerves calm enough for him to hear anything above the sound of his own thundering pulse. He's stared down bombs so complicated only a handful of people in the world could disarm them and barely blinked, but one cry from Bozer, here in their own living room, and adrenaline had washed ice cold out from his spine through every limb.
"Alright," Mac mutters. "Take it easy."
Getting Bozer to the kitchen island is a slow, teamwork based process. Mac has been here before, on both ends of the interaction, but Bozer has never been the one whose shaking, uncooperative body was suddenly without the power to traverse the room alone. It's a terrifying feeling to hand yourself over to someone else like this, Mac knows, and the thought makes him feel suddenly protective. As he finally forces himself to let go, Mac gives Bozer a final pat on the shoulder, squeezing a little. The smile he gives is strained and small, he's sure, but he hopes there's at least something humorous there.
"So where were you headed to?" Mac asks, raising his eyebrows and trying to act like he hadn't just had the life scared out of him.
"Got hungry, figured it was about dinner time," Bozer says as though that makes sense at all.
"Well why don't you let me handle that, given you're fresh out of the hospital."
"You. Are gonna make dinner."
Mac makes an offended face and then exaggerates it, drawing a small laugh out of Bozer, one that thankfully doesn't disturb his injury.
"I know how to make dinner, Bozer, thanks." Mac rolls his eyes and rounds the kitchen island, opening the fridge. Sorting through a mental catalogue of the things he knows how to cook that are quick and easy, Mac settles on BLTs. Simple steps, a formula. It's like chemistry, and that's relaxing. Do these things in this order and everything will go the way it is supposed to.
While Bozer, from his stationary place at the island, provides a steady stream of sound, recounting times he can remember when giving over the stove ended poorly, more than one of which involved liquid nitrogen, Mac goes through the steps, repeating the ingredients to himself. He lays out bread from the cupboard, sets bacon in a frying pan to cook, and starts to cut tomatoes. Or, gets ready to cut tomatoes, because before he can actually start, it all goes pear shaped.
Mac moves the kitchen knife over the tomato, turning the blade this way and that, trying to find the best angle from which to turn a round tomato into several flat tomato slices. He's sideways to where Bozer sits at the island, perpendicular orientation giving a full view of what he's doing, and when there's a choked sound followed by far too thick a silence, Mac turns sharply to look. The knife turns with him. The knife that Bozer's wide, panicky eyes are fixated on.
Great job, Mac thinks acidly to himself, quickly turning to put the knife down, out of view. He gets stabbed and then you go and wave a knife around at him. Great job.
"Sorry," Mac says. Bozer still hasn't resumed breathing. "Sorry, I didn't think. I should've- Sorry."
The sense that there's something he should be doing grips Mac, seizing his chest and digging mocking claws into his muscles. Before he can overcome his paralytic inability to find a solution, a course of action to fix this, the air breaks. Taut horror goes slack as Bozer's shoulders suddenly heave once, up and down, sputter through a few experimental breaths like an engine on a freezing cold day, until his breathing settles back into a functional rhythm of in-out-in. He's still watching the area of counter Mac put the knife down on, still digging the tips of the fingers of one hand into the surface of the island, but he's breathing. He's breathing, and when he speaks it's only a little shaky.
"No," Bozer says, and Mac hates the brave smile he puts on. It's a smile that says 'I've just been scared shitless but I'm trying to drag myself back together, I'll be okay'. "I've gotta get used to it, right?"
"I can..." offers Mac, making a move to put the knife away, only to be stopped by Bozer's voice, stronger still.
"No. Don't." He swallows and nods. "Just… Keep going."
It doesn't escape Mac's awareness that Bozer's hand is still flexed and rigid over the counter, and he's stuck frozen in place, once more caught in a terrible conflict of not knowing what to do. Should he listen to Bozer and continue making dinner, possibly driving his friend's panic up until it's a much bigger situation than it already is? Or should he err on the side of caution and dump the knife in the sink, thus overriding Bozer's decision on a matter mostly to do with his own feelings and possibly creating a much larger situation later on by not addressing the issue now?
Bozer was hurt. Bozer was stabbed, but he was hurt in more ways than one, and all ways have echoes. Wounded tissue takes time to heal, and so does a wounded mind, a wounded spirit. All those echoes now are ringing through their kitchen, and Mac doesn't know what to do. Doesn't know how to help.
What would Jack do?
The thought occurs seemingly randomly, a jolt of coherent words jumping out of the cacophony of Mac's brain. With it comes a memory, a sudden flash of nitrogen forced down his lungs, fear and pain and panic. Another mask so like the first, oxygen to soothe damaged lungs, not that Mac had known that. He'd been too out of it to differentiate, to tell one the masks apart, one bringing death the other life and no way to know which was being forced on him now.
It hadn't been until Jack had started talking to him, taken the mask in his own hand and and put the other on the side of Mac's neck, thumb stroking along the line of his jaw to calm and comfort him, that he'd begun to grasp what was going on. Jack's familiar voice had explained that it was necessary, it was safe, it wasn't going to hurt him. And because it was Jack, because it was Jack's voice and Jack's hands, Mac had relented and allowed the mask to be brought to his face.
Looking down, Mac finds the knife on the counter and picks it up again. It feels heavier than it had before, an uncomfortable shape in his palm. He looks from it to Bozer, whose eyes are fixed on Mac's hand, and hopes that he's doing the right thing, that this is going to help at all.
"We're at home," he says, and Bozer's eyes go from the knife to Mac's face. He looks like he's about to ask a question, but Mac goes on before he finds it. "We're at home, it's just you and me. I'm not going to hurt you." Mac's hand lifts just a little, indicating the knife. "This is a tool. It's not a weapon. It's not going to hurt you. It's a tool and it's in my hand, and it won't hurt you."
Bozer looks like he doesn't quite get what Mac is saying or why he's saying it. Mac doesn't push, but returns to the tomato. He starts slicing it, setting it aside and picking up another when the task is completed. Bozer's hand is laid loosely over the counter now, fingers lightly curled and resting on the surface without digging into it when Mac cautiously peeks over to check on him. Relief loosens something in Mac, and he nods shallowly, turning back to the task at hand.
Despite the jokes and recounting of past events when it hadn't, Mac's efforts at making dinner yield a not-at-all ruined, completely edible meal. It is enjoyed in a mostly-quiet companionship that has recovered well from the near-incident with the knife. Mac watches Bozer out the corner of his eye and muses that really, it could've gone a lot worse. A near panic attack was one of the milder reactions, he figures, to suddenly reminding someone who had for the most part lived a stable and safe life of a severe trauma they'd only just experienced. It could've gone a lot worse. He keeps reminding himself of this, and tries to swallow down his own lingering panic along with bites of a sandwich he can only barely taste.
For the second time that day displaying what Mac sincerely hopes to be a general lack of familiarity with what stab wounds do to your body, no matter how neatly they missed vital organs, and not a tendency towards Mac's own stubbornness, Bozer gets up after they've finished eating and attempts to start cleaning up. Mac quickly lets him know exactly how good an idea that is - not even a little bit, for the record - and banishes him from the kitchen for the duration of the post-cooking chores.
"Fine, I'll go," Bozer acquiesces, beginning to head slowly and stiffly towards his room. He pauses when he's barely breached the threshold of the kitchen, looking over his shoulder with minimal movement of his torso and telling Mac, "But come hang out when you're done, I want to playJeopardy !"
A small burst of acute fondness warms Mac's chest and he smiles, nodding. "Sure."
The Jeopardy! thing is a habit Bozer picked up when the app version of the show was first released, a game he had quickly downloaded and become enamored with. After the first couple of times he had conveniently been within earshot of Mac when a difficult or particularly science-based question came up, Bozer had come to the conclusion that proximity to Mac was a definite ace up his sleeve when it came to trivia games. Since then he has developed a routine of locating his roommate wherever Mac happened to be at the time and posting up near him in order to make use of his encyclopedic knowledge of an eclectic assortment of facts, thus boosting his score greatly. It was an arrangement that Mac himself didn't have any objections to, given he liked trivia well enough, and it was exactly the kind of low-stakes 'hanging out and doing things near each other' activity that had sustained his and Bozer's friendship for roughly a decade and a half.
When he was just putting the dishes into the drying rack, his phone buzzes on the counter, signalling an incoming text message. It's from Jack, checking in on how Bozer's doing in the whole half a day it had been since Jack had seen him. By the time Mac has finished calming Jack's worry from afar, he's got a couple messages from Riley, and he smiles as he repeats the conversation he's just had. With both cases of satellite fussing having been addressed, Mac stuffs his phone in his pocket and heads on his way to make sure Bozer didn't collapse in the hallway (something he's immensely proud of himself for not doing before the dishes were done) and to lend Bozer his chemistry knowledge.
On his way, something catches his attention. Mac diverts a few feet to grab a few things from the box, then continues on to Bozer's room. The objects are solid and tangible in his hands, and he tries to focus on that rather than the amorphous fear that has been swelling again since he lost sight of Bozer. This is a type of fear he's not used to feeling, this new fear. Being afraid for Bozer isn't anything Mac is used to. Not like this.
It would be wrong to say he's less afraid for Jack and Riley, that their safety and lives being on the line matter less than it does when it's Bozer, but it's different. He met Riley on the job, met Jack in a haze of dust and conflict, there was never a question that one day he could be standing next to them when it all came to a violent end. Mac was never comfortable with it, woke gasping from many a nightmare about that precise thing, but he knew that was the order of things. Bozer, though. Bozer he met in the hallways of an elementary school. Bozer he grew up with. This was never a kind of danger Mac expected Bozer to be in, and it's been a bitter, barbed-wire pill to swallow.
Reaching the threshold of Bozer's room, Mac is drawn back to earlier, to sitting on the couch and pretending at a normal day. If this were a normal day he may take a running start, would flop heavily down on the unoccupied half of the bed, draw a startled burst of laughter from his roommate. It isn't a normal day, though, isn't a normal anything, and Bozer sits on the far side of the bed propped up against a few of what Mac estimates to be his half a million pillows. His phone is on in his hand, screen flashing bright colors, and his other arm curls guardedly over his stomach.
Mac moves slowly, like too quick a step could shatter the calm and pitch them back into chaos and blood and fear. The mattress dips gently under him as he eases down onto it, stretching out on his side facing Bozer. He's spent hours here when he was bored or wanted company, someone to talk to, sprawled out on his stomach or propped on an elbow, working on some fiddly project or other. They'd talk, lines of thought on a way to improve the thermostat controls met with plot ideas for Bozer's latest script, punctuated by Jeopardy! questions. There's no conversation today, but the sounds of the familiar game are doing at least a little to calm Mac's nerves.
"What year was the Rutherford-Bohr atom model introduced?" Bozer asks.
"1913," Mac tells him absently, laying the objects he'd brought with him down on the bedspread. He's been toying with the idea for a while now of constructing a moving matchbox car with a simple functioning wind-up engine out of paperclips and rubber bands, and he's about halfway through the body now. Why he'd brought the pieces with him here is not entirely clear, perhaps as a distraction for his twitching fingers, or an excuse not to look at Bozer while he works up to saying what he feels like he has to say.
A couple minutes of silence, punctuated by the sounds of the game and a couple questions about space and nitrogen compounds, end in the apology Mac has been building the guts to make since he first found Bozer on that floor.
"I'm sorry I brought you into this." Mac's voice is barely audible next to the background noise of Jeopardy! and if it weren't for the way Bozer's fingers still on the screen, letting the question run out without answering it, he wouldn't have known he'd been heard at all. "The job, all the danger that comes with it, you didn't sign up for this."
"The hell I didn't," is what Bozer comes back with. "Have you ever known me to do anything I didn't want to do?"
"Well-"
"I'm not talking about chores, Mac, I'm talking big stuff. Important stuff." Bozer snorts softly, a sound more amused than annoyed. "There were other options. Thornton explained them to me. I chose to come work for the Phoenix, with you, and Riley, and Jack. I chose this."
Mac shakes his head, cheek scuffing the bedspread. He's made no progress on his paperclip car, one thin metal strip twisted between his fingers, growing brittle at the point where he's bent and unbent it enough times to interfere with the integrity.
"How're you feeling?" he asks eventually, twisting the paper clip again, bending it at the same spot.
"Did you know that, as it turns out, all of your whole body is connected directly to the exact muscle I got stabbed in?"
Somehow, that manages to draw a laugh, Mac's shoulders jerking with a huff of amusement. He hears a similar sound from next to him, and he glances up, finally looking at Bozer again. Bozer's got a half-smile on his face, focus on the screen of his phone where he's begun playing Jeopardy ! again, but there's a tightness around his eyes that betrays the fact that he hadn't been kidding, that just because he was joking and they were hanging out at home didn't mean the wound had been erased.
Mac sighs and pushes himself up, slumping back and pulling the pieces of the paperclip car into his lap. The same unfolded clip is still caught between his fingers and as he bends it again it snaps, one of edges digging sharply into the pad of his thumb. He yelps reflexively, dropping the halved paperclip and examining the skin for damage.
"Are you okay?" Bozer asks, worry seeping into his voice, and Mac looks at him in disbelief.
"Am I okay?" Mac repeats.
"Yeah, you… You sounded…" Trailing off, Bozer's smile turns a little confused. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Mac shakes his head. Because you're recovering from a life-threatening injury and you're asking me if I'm okay, and that is so exactly what I should've expected, given who you are as a person. "Nothing. It's nothing. I'm fine."
This is the part, Mac supposes, as he stares back down at the snapped pieces of steel, where you're supposed to tell people how you feel about them. When your best friend almost dies, when you watch him bleed all over the floor then come home held together with stitches and gauze, and then he keeps reminding you everything you like most about him, you're supposed to tell him that, right? When someone you love almost dies, you tell them you love them.
Mac has… never been good at that.
When it comes to expressing emotion, there are people of words, and people of actions. Mac has never really been able to find himself in either category, caught in some kind of coward's limbo. He's damned by a voice that chokes in his throat, hands that hang lead-heavy at his sides, and he's frozen.
"I-" And, of course, it sticks. Mac swallows hard and tries to find a way to say it, to make the words come out of his mouth, I love you, you're my family. I was terrified when I found you like that and I'm so glad you're okay. It would kill me to lose you. "You're my best friend," he finishes, a fierce assertion that falls far short of what he was trying to say, so inadequate compared to what he'd meant to get across that anger bubbles up in his chest, squeezing his lungs. This happens every time he tries to tell someone something important, and he's furious with himself for letting it happen again, for not just growing up and finding the words already.
"I love you too, Mac." Bozer's voice is light and affectionate, just this side of teasing.
It's easy to forget, how many years it's been. Bozer knows how to speak his language by now, though Mac loses sight of this sometimes, knew exactly what he'd been trying to say even if he hadn't been able to actually say it. Mac shakes his head and twists to the side, thumping his forehead against Bozer's shoulder.
They spend almost another hour there, Mac twisting an unbroken paperclip into a wheel for the replica car while Bozer continues increasing his score on the Jeopardy! game. It's late by the time he takes his leave for his own room, exhaustion surging as the last couple of days finally catch up to him. Rest is what he needs now, what they both need.
Unfortunately, rest doesn't seem to be in the cards. Not tonight. Mac has been fitfully asleep, barely dozing, for less than an hour when hoarse shouting wakes him up. He's barely registered what woke him and he's already on his feet, running the short distance between his room and Bozer's as fast as he can. Mac isn't sure what he's expecting to find, but somehow he's surprised that it's nothing life threatening. There's no assailant, no shadowed figure Mac can put up his fists and fight. There's just his roommate, about to rip his stitches struggling against an attacker that isn't there.
"Get him off me," Bozer is yelling, hand flinging out over his bedside table and sending his phone to the floor, "Mac, get him out, get him out."
An entirely new kind of panic wells up in Mac and he crosses the floor in a few rushed strides, dropping to the ground and barely registering the way the impact jars his knees. He reaches out to grab Bozer by the shoulder, other hand flattening against his chest, just over his thundering heart.
"There's nobody here, Boze," Mac says urgently, trying to keep his voice reassuring despite the fact that he's freaking out inside too. "You're gonna rip your stitches. It's just us. We're fine, there's nobody here."
"He was here." One of Bozer's hands has latched an iron grip onto Mac's wrist, gripping so hard it hurts. "He was here, Mac, fake Dr. Zito, he was- He was-"
"He wasn't." The grip doesn't ease at all and Mac doesn't flinch, doesn't mind at all, as long as Bozer is keeping still. He responds in kind, squeezing his best friend's shoulder. "It was a dream- a nightmare. You're safe. It's just us."
And it should be over then, because the man who'd stabbed Bozer isn't there. It's just them, and the night is calming from its panicked high, reality replacing half-coherent dream-truth. It should be over but it isn't, because Bozer is still breathing in quiet pants, and he could be crying, and nothing is okay, and Mac doesn't know what to do . He can disarm bombs and scale buildings from the outside with a harness he built himself in less than ten minutes, he can save the world, but he can't figure out how to comfort a traumatized friend without panicking and feeling completely useless.
The thought occurs to him out of nowhere, borne of memories of Bozer's outline in the dark, of his roommate sitting next to the couch into the early hours of the morning, fingers combing through his hair, a reminder that he isn't alone, that someone cares enough to watch over him at his worst, at his most afraid.
"I'll stay here," Mac blurts. "If you want. I can- I can stay."
Bozer's hitching, uneven breaths stop, a struggling silence until he secures enough composure to speak. "Stay."
"I'll stay," Mac promises. He stands, ignoring knees that protest his place on the carpet. His eyes have adjusted to the dark and he navigates easily around to the other side of the bed, laying back down where he'd been earlier, but pressing closer this time, close enough to feel the way his friend is shaking.
"I keep seeing him." The whisper comes through the dark after several moments of silence. The shaking gets worse. "Every time I close my eyes- there were agents at the hospital. There were always people around, a security guard in the hallway, but now we're- I see him when I close my eyes and I can't sleep."
A choking almost-anger lodges itself in Mac's throat and he tries to swallow it down, to make his voice as steady as he can when he speaks. "Nobody can get to you here," he says, voice quiet but fierce. "Nobody is going to hurt you here. If- If anyone comes through that door they've gotta get through me to get to you. And they're not going to get through me."
More silence, and in the space left where words aren't, Bozer moves, a pained, slow shift. He presses his forehead against Mac's shoulder in a reverse image of how they'd been earlier, and Mac can feel him slowly stop shaking.
"Thanks," Bozer says, and Mac nods wordlessly.
He still doesn't know what to do, if any of this has helped, if there's ever really any coming back completely from your first time on the receiving end of what people are capable of doing to each other. But right now, the shaking has stopped. The shaking has stopped and just like when they were kids, just like now when nightmares took over Mac's world and made everything feel unsafe, they're at the very least not going to be alone. Maybe it's not okay yet, maybe it won't be okay tomorrow, but there will be a tomorrow. And that's going to have to be enough.