Jack helps an injured Mac after he is hit by a car. A dash of whump, a pinch of fluff - you know, the usual!
In This Safe Haven, Take Shelter From The Storm
Jack was a notoriously light sleeper.
When he was younger, he had been able to sleep through anything. His mom used to say he could sleep through a twister and one time he actually proved her right. It was when he was fourteen and his family had taken a weekend trip to check out a new mare for the ranch. When he woke up the next morning, a huge section of fence had been ripped out, including several trees pulled right out of the ground by the roots, and he spent most of the day chasing cattle that had run off, but he had slept soundly through the entire F2.
Ever since joining Delta that had changed. Now he woke at the tiniest sounds, it didn't matter what caused them.
It got even worse since meeting with Mac. He had never felt so protective over anyone in his life. He shared a special bond with Riley and would do anything for her, but Mac was...Mac had come into his life like a wildfire - courageous and intense, a force to be reckoned with. And so smart, it was actual crazy how smart he was.
Thunderstorms were the worst. He liked the soft sounds of a gentle rainfall but the sky-cracking, house-shaking rumble of thunder kept him up like nothing else, save maybe fireworks or car backfires.
Jack rolled his eyes as yet another bolt of lightning lit up his dark bedroom, casting crazy patterned shadows over his walls, and the glass in his windows rattled with the following atmospheric grumbling.
It literally never rained in Los Angeles but the one night when he actually had to wake up a little earlier than usual to do finish a few field reports, that's when the sky decided to crack open and explode.
The soft knocking on his front door was nearly swallowed whole by another round of cacophonous thunder but there was a part of Jack's mind always listening for the small sound.
It started about a month after their disastrous mission in Cairo. Jack was still in a full leg cast and annoyingly still under concussion protocol. Mac could barely stand upright; the gunshot wound to his abdomen had barely even begun to heal. And his right shoulder was still in a sling thanks to the second bullet the kid took that day. The kid looked sheepish as he stood, bruised and hunched in Jack's doorway. It was the first night Jack had left him alone, Bozer was still in the dark and thought they had been mugged, but he had promised he would keep a close eye on Mac.
Nightmares and pain had brought Mac to his door that night.
The second was after Lake Como, when Mac was recovering from yet another bullet wound, to the chest that time, and they thought Nikki had been killed. He looked wrecked, leaning heavily against the doorframe like he might collapse at any second.
Heartbreak and grief brought him that time.
Their last mission hadn't been as bad as those two in the sense that none of them came home with any bullet holes but they nearly lost Riley. When the sabotaged plane she was on went off radar and none of them knew if she was going to survive, well that had been more than rough on all of them.
He half expected it to be Riley at his door this time. As he pulled himself out of bed and made his way to whichever kid needed him most right now, he wondered how he got to that point in his life. Jack had been on many teams during his career and he had been close to a lot of those guys, but this was the first time he actually considered the members of his team to be his real family. He would never admit it but sometimes he felt like a mama bear protecting his cubs. Maybe he was just getting older and more sentimental - or maybe he had just finally found his kids.
He clicked on the hallway and living room lights and unlatched his two deadbolts before swinging the door open. He didn't know what he had been expecting but a dripping wet, glassy-eyed, bloodied and bruised Mac was not it.
"Jeez, kid, what happened? Looks like ya went ten round with a grizzly." Jack said, anxiety skyrocketing at the almost shell-shocked look on the younger man's face.
"Jack? What?" Mac said, uncharacteristically confused. The kid swayed on his feet, his face chalky pale, and Jack could see that the blue of his eyes was practically swallowed whole by his slightly uneven pupils - so concussion, then.
Jack lunged forward and caught Mac under his left elbow when his knees gave out and he tried to take a nosedive onto Jack's carpet.
"You get your bell rung since I last saw you?" Jack felt fear fluttering around his gut as he led his stumbling friend toward his couch, not caring one bit that he was getting rain water, mud, and blood on everything between the door and the couch. "What happened?"
"Went for...run?" Mac asked, he looked up at Jack with squinty eyes as if Jack would have all the answers even though he hadn't actually been there when whatever happened to Mac, well - happened.
A quick glance at Mac's attire told him the kid was right. He was wearing his old MIT t-shirt, dark blue sweatpants, and running shoes. The familiar, usually light grey shirt was nearly black it was so soaked through from the storm. Clearly Mac hadn't expected rain.
"Now what would possess you to do something like that in this weather, it's like two a.m., man." Jack reached forward and pressed his thumb to Mac's upper eyelid, trying to get a better look at his pupils. Yup, definitely a concussion, but where else was he injured, and how did he get that way?
"Had to clear my head." Mac explained. "After everything."
"I get that, dude, but you look like hell. Wanna tell me what happened or are you gonna make me play twenty questions to get it out of ya?"
"Don't remember, Jack." Mac told him, leaning back against the couch and rubbing shaky hands into his closed eyes. The kid looked beat, in more ways than one. "Running on the hill, headlights..."
"There was a car? Did it hit you?" Jack was horrified by the thought but Mac wasn't wearing anything reflective and visibility had to be terrible out there. It made sense.
"Think so, it hurt." Mac's quiet voice told him and Jack was more concerned by the honesty than anything else. Mac was not one to so easily admit pain.
"I bet it did, kid." Jack said, pulling a plain blue blanket off the back of the couch and wrapping it around Mac's trembling shoulders. "What happened to the car, what'd they do after they hit ya?"
"Left."
Jack felt his body go rigid. Someone hit his kid and just left him there, bleeding and dazed on the side of the road? What the hell!
"They left you there?" Jack asked, trying to conceal the absolute rage eating away all sensible, rational thought.
Mac nodded before wincing sharply and Jack grit his teeth hard, he couldn't believe the asshole who hit Mac hadn't even checked to make sure he was okay. What if he hadn't been able to limp his way back to Jack's? What if he had been hurt so bad he couldn't move? How long would he have had to lie there in the rain and mud before he was found? Jack couldn't stop the small shiver that ran up his spine at the horrible thought.
Mac, of course, noticed. Jack could never get anything past the overly observant genius.
"You okay?" Mac asked, blinking rapidly a few times before squinting to get a better look at Jack's face.
"I'm fine, bud." Jack smiled sadly. What was it with the kid and always putting other's before himself? There was no reason for him to be concerned for Jack but of course that's where his brain would immediately go.
"What time is it?" Mac asked, glancing around Jack's living room curiously and flinched when a particularly sharp crack of thunder exploded outside, as if the storm was trying to rip a seam right through the Earth.
"Two in the morning, man. Really not the time for a light jog." Jack told him, again, and watched carefully as Mac's eyes widened, clearing a little. He was shivering so hard his teeth were loudly chattering.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have woken you up. I don't know why I came here?" Mac said quickly, trying to shrug the blanket off his shoulders. Once he had successfully escaped from the confines of the blanket he tried to stand but merely succeeded in gasping in pain before sinking back down into the couch cushions before he even got halfway.
Jack reached out a steadying hand and gripped Mac's upper arm gently. He hadn't noticed it before but there was a slowly growing red stain on Mac's shirt. Mac's eyes were clenched shut, his back pressing hard into the cushions, as his hands gripped his side.
"Hey, it's okay. I wasn't sleeping anyway. Just take a deep breath and let your ol' pal Jack take a look at what you've got going on there, okay bud?"
Mac did as he was told and took a deeper breath than the short pants he had been taking in before; his eyes hazily opened and stared trustingly at Jack before he pried his newly bloodstained hands away. He kept them close by as he grabbed onto the shirt higher up his stomach and hiked it up so Jack could see. Jack helped by gently pulling the still soaked material over the wound and whistled when he finally saw what they were dealing with.
There was a painful looking rip in Mac's side, in the junction between his hipbone and lowest rib. The split in his skin was a few inches long and still leaking enough blood to tell Jack that it was going to need stitches.
"Ouch," he said sympathetically. "You sure you got hit by a car, this looks an awful lot like a bullet graze?"
"Yeah," Mac said, glancing down and swallowing hard. "Think I landed on something sharp."
"No kidding, dude." Jack said, his fingers palpitating the wound to see how deep it was, hating himself when Mac hissed and flinched away from his probing hands. He used a corner of the discarded blanket and pressed down against the cut, knowing their first course of action had to be getting the bleeding stopped. "Sorry, man, you got lucky and this isn't that deep. A few stitches and some antibiotics and you should be good to go. Where else you hurtin?"
"Shoulder's a little sore," Mac admitted. "Hip, too. But it's just bruising."
"Oh, and have you suddenly developed the powers of x-ray vision, homie? Because I've got to tell ya, that would certainly come in handy in our line of work."
"No," Mac rolled his eyes, trying and failing to hide the wince when it hurt his concussed brain. "But I've had bruises before, Jack, so I know what they feel like - which is exactly like this, by the way."
"I'm not saying you're wrong but we should still get that checked out a little better than 'I know what a bruise is, Jack' when we get you to medical." Jack said and was surprised when Mac didn't immediately react to what Jack would consider his spot on Mac-impersonation and instead tried to stand up again.
"Sit still, would ya, what are you doing?" Jack asked nervously when Mac's face paled and his eyes went glassy again.
"I don't need to go to medical, Jack." Mac said, his eyes pleading with him in a very good impression of a golden retriever puppy. His pain filled face and drying blond hair sticking up all over the place made him also look like a little kid trying to get out of going to the dentist.
"Of course you do, man, you're bleeding all over my couch right now. I mean, in case you hadn't noticed." Jack couldn't believe they were having this argument.
"You can do it." Mac said simply.
"Do what - sew you back together in my living room? I don't think so; let's let the professionals handle that, hoss."
"You've done it before, I trust you." Mac was getting desperate and Jack could see he was right on the brink of a full blown panic attack. It was so unlike the kid it took the wind out of Jack's sails immediately. How could he say no to him - the answer was he couldn't.
"I don't know," Jack said. "You have a concussion, man; I don't want to glue you back together just to have you slip into a coma in your sleep."
"We've had enough concussions that we know how to handle them on our own." Mac said quickly. "Please."
It was the 'please' that did Jack in. Mac was like a brother to Jack, a son even. His best friend. The kid had been through a lot lately and now he had gotten hit by a car and was left bleeding and concussed on the side of the road like roadkill. He was shaken up and for some reason the idea of going to medical was making it worse. Jack sighed, if Mac needed to be here to feel safe he wouldn't make him go. His injuries weren't life threatening. Sure, they would be painful as hell for a while but Mac was right, they had handled worse than this on their own before. They could do it again.
"All right," Jack conceded and it was worth the additional worry when Mac's face lit up in gratitude. "Now, sit right there and don't move a muscle. I'll be right back."
"Thanks Jack," Mac said quietly.
"You're welcome, kid." Jack said with another small sigh and raced straight for the first aid kit he kept well stocked in his bathroom. He grabbed the kit and a few towels and made a quick pit stop in his small kitchen for a bottle of water before making his way back to Mac's slumped form. Mac's eyes followed him the whole way as he tried to distract himself from the full body discomfort bombarding him from all over, getting hit by a car truly sucked.
"I don't have much to help with the pain, bud." Jack explained, opening the kit and taking out a small, orange bottle of pain pills from one of their previous injuries. "And I think these are expired."
"It's okay, I don't need them." Mac said stoically but Jack wasn't having it.
"I'm about to stab your already injured side over and over again with a tiny needle and pull thread through your skin to close that gash, man. I know you know how much that's going to suck if you don't have something besides fading adrenaline in your system to help out a bit." He uncapped the pill bottle and shook out two small, oblong pills and handed them to Mac. Mac glanced at the pills accusingly before reluctantly taking them from Jack and dry swallowing them. Jack handed him the bottle of water and Mac chased them down with a few big gulps.
"There, happy." Mac said, there was no anger, only playfulness in Mac's tone and Jack smirked.
"Ecstatic, bud." He said. "But not nearly as happy as you're gonna be once we get going with this. You ready?"
"Go for it." Mac said, forcing confidence and levity into his voice to hide his growing nerves. Jack didn't buy it but he wouldn't call the kid out on it either. He still wanted to drag Mac back to Phoenix Medical to get properly checked out, kicking and screaming if need be, but knew deep down he would never be able to do that to him.
"All right, homie, you know the drill. I've gotta clean it out first." Jack winced for the kid when he watched Mac swallow hard before nodding.
"It's okay; I know what I signed up for here." Mac said. Jack placed a towel under Mac's side and uncapped a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He knew the most effective way to do this was to just pour some onto the cut directly. It was the only way to get the disinfectant into the wound enough to do any good. He got the injury from rolling around on the ground after getting hit by a car, who knew how much dirt and germs were in there.
"Maybe we should wait a bit, just to let the pain killers kick in?" Jack said and Mac shook his head.
"It's better to do it sooner rather than later. It's already been at least an hour since the accident, if we wait any longer the chances of infection increases up to…"
"All right, I get it, bud." Jack cut him off to stop the unnecessary info dump Mac was about to drop on him. He didn't need to know all that. If Mac was sure, that's all he needed to know. "You ready?"
"Yeah," Mac said and clenched his teeth in anticipation.
Jack tried to apologize with his eyes before he quickly dumped the contents of the brownish bottle directly onto the seeping wound. Mac grunted, eyes widening before slamming shut, as his body tried to pull away from the intense, burning pain. Jack winced the whole time as if feeling the pain himself but kept pouring until he stopped seeing dirt coming out of the wound. It took nearly the entire bottle.
Jack placed a washcloth over the wound and pressed down hard, hating the way Mac's whole body jerked in reaction. The kid's eyes were still closed, his face a mask of pain.
"Almost there, kid." Jack promised. He pulled Mac's hand up to the washcloth and instructed him to keep up the pressure, which he did. Jack wasted no time in threading a suturing needle he always kept on hand. He had a bunch of them stocked away for just such an occasion as this, and unfortunately this wasn't the first time they had come in handy, and most likely wouldn't be the last. "You know the drill, just breathe through the pain and after a few pinches you'll be good as new."
Mac nodded and lifted the washcloth away from his side. Blood had soaked completely through it but it looked like the bleeding had stopped almost entirely. That was good, now they just had to keep it that way.
Jack worked quickly as he stitched Mac up, not wanting to cause the younger man any more pain than was absolutely necessary. With every pull of the thread, Mac grit his teeth a little harder and Jack hated every second of it. It only took a few minutes before he was done but to both men it seemed to take hours.
"That should do it." Jack said as he taped a square bandage over the neat row of sutures. After a few more deep breaths, Mac finally opened his eyes. They were shining with unshed tears but he smiled despite it all.
"Thank you." He said, his voice weaker than anticipated and it broke Jack's heart a little more. He squeezed Mac's knee reassuringly before packing the kit back up.
"Anytime, bud." He said. "But let's try to not have to do it again for a while, okay?"
"Sounds like a plan to me." Mac agreed, shivering again. His clothes had dried a little since he had arrived but they were still damp.
"Stay here a second, okay hoss?" Jack said and Mac nodded, leaning his head back against the couch again and closing his eyes. "No sleeping yet, you hear me?"
"I hear ya," Mac said but didn't move. Jack ran into his bedroom and riffled through his dresser until he found a pair of pajama pants and an old Army t-shirt and went back into the living room where Mac hadn't moved a muscle since he left.
"We've gotta get you into some dry clothes before you catch pneumonia," Jack told him. "And then you can go to sleep for a bit." They both knew Jack was going to have to wake him up every hour to check his mental status because of the concussion, but at least one of them could get some sleep tonight.
"Kay," Mac said and blinked his eyes open slowly. The kid looked beat. He started to pull himself up but didn't get far before Jack had to help him the rest of the way. Mac swayed for a second once he was upright. Jack let go of his upper arm when he seemed more steady and Mac immediately tried to pull off his shirt but hissed when his shoulder protested.
"Let me help ya," Jack said and glared pointedly when it looked like Mac was going to refuse. It's not like it was the first time one of them had had to help the other get dressed while they were injured, the roles had been reversed so many times Jack couldn't remember who the last one to need help was. He gently pulled Mac's shirt over his head in a way that didn't force his right arm to move very much and sighed when he saw the deep bruising already forming over Mac's shoulder and back. He held his tongue as he pulled the clean shirt over Mac's head and helped him maneuver his arm back into the sleeve. He'd see how the kid was doing in the morning and decide then if he was going to bring him in regardless of any protesting. They made quick work of Mac's sweatpants and in a matter of seconds he was in dry clothes and looked all of about twelve in Jack's slightly larger-sized wardrobe, messy hair, and bleary, bright blue eyes.
"All right, time for bed." Jack said and directed Mac toward his bedroom with gentle hands on both shoulders. Mac stumbled in the direction Jack moved him and groaned faintly when Jack helped him down onto the mattress and under the covers.
"I'm sorry for bothering you, Jack." Mac said as he sank further into the pillows. Jack smiled sadly and simply brought the blanket higher up Mac's chest.
"You could never bother me, bud." Jack told him, brushing a stray strand of hair off Mac's forehead. The kid's only response was to groan quietly as he dropped off into sleep. Jack continued to comb his fingers through the blond strands until the lines of pain disappeared from Mac's face and his expression relaxed as he fell into a more peaceful state.
There were many different versions of Concussed-Mac and apparently this time it was Back-and-Forth-Mac, between him not wanting to ask Jack for help and only wanting Jack's help. Jack didn't mind. If he was being completely honest, it was nice to be needed like that. It felt good to be the safe haven in the storm the kid automatically went to when he was hurt or needed help. He would rather Mac live a life where he never got hurt but that had never been in the cards for the brilliant young man; Mac was destined to be a hero and Jack knew he would stay by his side to protect him from the dangers that came from that fate forever.
He watched Mac sleep a few moments more, simply watching his chest rise and fall with every life affirming breath, and smiled.
"Sleep easy, bud. I've got ya."
The End.