AN: Heavy spoilers for 3.17, Seeds + Permafrost + Feather, both in the tag and my thoughts at the end.
MACGYVER'S RESIDENCE
LA
Matty opened the front door, a six-pack of Mac's favourite beer in hand. She walked past the kitchen, where Bozer was stirring tomato soup with great focus and greater concern, a foot-high stack of not-yet-grilled grilled cheeses on a plate next to him.
Bozer gestured with his head towards the deck, where Mac was sitting by the unlit fire-pit, staring into the distance, a bowl of paperclips next to him, a small pile of paperclip shapes on his other side.
'He's been like that for over an hour.'
You didn't need to be as good a reader of people as Matty to hear the concern, born from unconditional, deep love, in Bozer's voice.
Far from it.
Matty nodded, just as much concern on her face, at least to Bozer's eyes. Then, she put the beers in the fridge, grabbed two cold ones from the stash buried in the typical mess, and headed out onto the deck.
'I'm sorry, Mac.'
Mac, a paperclip in hand that appeared to be taking the shape of some kind of molecule, probably a drug, turned his head to face Matty when she spoke.
He stared at her for a long moment, before he gave a little nod of acceptance.
Matty had known. Of course she had.
But she hadn't been able to tell him.
Just like she hadn't been able to actually tell him Oversight's identity.
(Of course, she'd have found a way to pull that little trick off again if Jim hadn't told Mac sooner rather than later, but she was a master of knowing when to push and meddle, and when to step back and let things play out.)
Matty put the beers down, and stepped forward. Automatically, Mac held his arms up for a hug, looking startlingly young, like the child he'd never really had the chance to be, between his mom dying and his dad leaving and his brilliant, different (too brilliant, too different) mind.
She hugged him back tightly, running her fingers through the ends of his hair, just like she had that fateful day.
Then, she let go, and sat down next to him, passing Mac the beers.
He opened them with his Swiss Army knife, passed one to her, and took a sip of his own.
After a moment of silence (of Mac wandering his own mind), Matty picked up one of the paperclips, shaped like a lily, and inspected it.
She arched an eyebrow at him.
'Not bad, Blondie.'
That didn't quite get her a smile, but it got an attempt at one, and an exhale that might have been a snort.
It got Mac out of his head, at least for a moment.
Matty definitely counted that as a win.
As Bozer put the first grilled cheese in the pan, the front door opened again, and in came Riley, with several pints of ice-cream (half of them rocky road) and, for some reason, a bag of spicy ranch chips.
She nodded in response to Bozer's questioning eyebrow, then shrugged as the eyebrow shifted to ask a different question.
As blunt and honest and opinionated as Desi was, it was hard to understand what was going on in the other woman's mind. She was like a puzzle, with her little contradictions, little mysteries.
(She was a woman who didn't do friendships with co-workers, yet dropped everything when a friend called in a favour, who had risked her life and her career to help another friend, and had now twice bought them her favourite chips, going out of her way to do so, no matter what she claimed.)
(Riley knew there was a soft underbelly under all those prickles, but Desi defended and hid it well. Really, really well.)
Riley glanced out at the deck, where Mac and Matty were sitting, Mac making paperclip shapes and drinking beer, Matty apparently critiquing his work to force him to interact and not wander the labyrinth in his head.
She put the ice-cream in the freezer, then grabbed a lighter and some fire-starters, striding out to the deck with them and the chips in hand.
Riley sat down opposite Mac around the fire-pit, tossing him the spicy ranch chips before she got to work lighting the fire.
'Desi thought you could do with a pick-me up.' She shrugged. 'Guess she thinks spicy ranch is the cure for everything.' Clearly, Desi really, really liked spicy ranch. In response to the questioning look that Mac shot her, she shrugged again, holding up her hands. 'No idea if she knows, Mac. She's Desi. And if she does…' Riley shrugged yet again. 'She'd say she didn't care and not talk about it.'
Mac stared at the chip packet for a moment, brow slightly furrowed like it sometimes was when he was puzzling something out.
(He was pretty sure Desi wasn't as good as Matty or Cage at reading people and sniffing out secrets. The fact that she wasn't was possibly less a reflection of raw ability and potential and more a measure of the fact that she apparently didn't consider it her place, didn't really care.)
(He wasn't actually convinced that she didn't care anymore anyway. He knew for a fact she cared about his head not being in the game. He also had a feeling that no matter what she said, Desi cared about them, at least a little bit, and ergo, would care a little bit about this…disturbance to his emotional equilibrium.)
Riley and Matty took heart in the fact that he was at least using his brain to try and work out the enigma that was Desiree Nguyen, instead of obsessing over his Dad's illness.
(One was a riddle he might one day solve. One was a problem he couldn't fix.)
Eventually, he shrugged and opened the chip packet and took a handful, before passing it to Riley as she sat back down as the fire-pit sprang to life.
'They are pretty good.'
Riley nodded in agreement as she, too, grabbed a handful, before passing the bag over to Matty. Then, she smirked mischievously, channelling Jack as best as she could.
'Oh, boss, do we have the footage from the fight re-enactment saved?' The smirk widened. 'As evidence…and for posterity?'
Mac glanced at her gratefully for a split-second, before he, too, smirked mischievously (the effort a little wobblier than Riley's), and pulled out his phone.
'I forgot to tell you; Sparky's reporting a new disturbance in the lab, clocking in at over fifty decibels…'
He played the audio of Riley snoring, causing Matty to quirk an eyebrow at the hacker, and Riley to toss one of her chips at Mac.
In the middle of the night, Mac paced along his bedroom floor, near his desk. His laptop was open to several peer-reviewed publications on the chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs his father was on, and there were molecules scribbled all over the open pages of a notebook. His relatively small collection of medicinal chemistry and medical biology textbooks was scattered all over his desk.
He ran a hand through his hair in frustration, muttering to himself.
'…impossible is not a scientific term.' He stopped in his pacing, voice frustrated at his own powerlessness, and a little angry. 'You told me yourself that with enough intellect, knowledge, creativity and determination, any problem can be solved!'
Granted, that'd been a lesson taught to an eight-year-old boy.
Mac sighed, all the anger going out of him at once, running a hand through his messy hair again.
He flopped down into his desk chair, pulled open the nearest desk drawer.
The first thing that caught his eye were Jack's dad's dog tags.
Mac swallowed. His partner (Mac refused to use the term 'former partner' in his head) had entrusted them to him before he'd left, for safekeeping until his return.
(At least, that's what Mac insisted on thinking, pushing away and locking up the dissenting voice that pointed out that Jack had wanted him to have them, in case something happened to him.)
He picked up the tags, stared at them for a long moment.
Mac had admittedly started missing Jack before he'd even left. He supposed that was what happened when you spent so much time with someone, and nearly died alongside them and had your life saved by them and saved their life countless times over seven and a half years. More than a quarter of his life.
(He supposed Bozer and Riley had been right to talk to them about their co-dependency issues after their trip to Puerto Rico to help Carlos.)
But he had never, ever missed Jack so keenly. Not even when he'd been in Nigeria, trying to leave his old life behind and build a new one.
He missed Jack's constant complaining and terrible puns and long-winded, nonsensical stories that never went anywhere. The white noise that helped him think…and sparked the banter that kept him from going down the rabbit hole and staring into the abyss.
(Everyone else was trying. He really, really appreciated their efforts, loved them for it, even…but none of them were quite as good at it as Jack.)
And he missed those nuggets of wisdom that Jack dispensed from time-to-time too. He knew his friend would have a few for this situation.
He wanted someone he could go to for advice, someone older and wiser who would listen to him without judgement and just talk to him and support him.
A parent, really. Unfortunately, his only parent was the very person he wanted to talk about…and he and his dad, while their relationship had drastically improved…well, they were definitely still in the rebuilding phase.
(Mac didn't really remember having two parents. All his memories of his mother, while beloved, where blurry at best. Most of what he knew about her came from stories and photos and home movies.)
(He realized now that for at least a few months in the last year, he'd had two parents, in a way. A slightly-improvised, jury-rigged, quick-and-dirty way, but two parents nonetheless.)
Mac eventually put down the tags, before grabbing his phone. His finger hovered over a well-used contact for a moment, and then, he dialled.
Jack picked up the video call after six rings. From what Mac could see, he was in a bathroom, a little one like they had on the Phoenix jet.
'Hey, brother.' Jack's brow furrowed with concern as he took in Mac's dishevelled and probably-sleep-deprived appearance and the fact that he was sitting in his bedroom. 'It's the middle of the night in LA, man.' Jack pointed seriously at him. 'You better tell your boy what's up.' He jabbed his finger at the screen again. 'No trying to pull the wool over Ol' Jack's eyes, I been 'round the block too many times for that, and you're a terrible liar, brother! 'Sides, I can sniff out a lie at two hundred feet!'
That got a tiny, tiny hint of a smile out of Mac, which told Jack that this was very, very bad.
'My…my dad's got cancer.' Mac swallowed. 'It's very serious, and the doctors don't know how long he has left…'
Jack listened.
Interjecting, of course, as he always did (Jack wasn't good at shutting up), but when it came down to it, he listened.
And then, after half an hour, after platitudes and advice and reaffirming what Mac's dad had told him (that this wasn't his mission, wasn't his fight, wasn't a problem that he could fix…and warning him off obsessing over it, for his own good), Jack looked the younger man in the eye.
'Mac, son, look…' Jack was well aware that his partner had issues with loss. There was only one thing in the world bigger than Mac's brain, and that was his heart, and Mac had been losing people he loved and cared about (which was a lot of people, because Mac really kind of cared about everyone when it came down to it) since he was a little boy. His mom. His dad. His grandfather. Archimedes. Alfred Pena. Zoe. A dozen anonymous Afghani civilians. In some different way or the other, Nasha, Penny Parker, Frankie and Smitty and all his friends from MIT, Thornton, Nikki, Griggs and Hadley…the lists went on and on. And now, in a way, Jack himself. '…Every day, I'm giving 110%, I'm fighting, son, fighting, 'cause I wanna come home to you guys. ASAP, man, ASAP. I'm always gonna keep fighting for that, son, promise. Hear that? I promise.' It was a realistic promise. They both knew that it was possible Jack would never come home, either because this mission and whatever it brought up would suck him so deep into the belly of the beast he couldn't get out, or because of the unthinkable. Jack paused, making sure that Mac understood that, and got a little nod and a smile (a little shaky but very genuine) from the younger man. Then, he continued. 'And your old man? Trust me, son, he's fighting just as hard to get every moment he can with you.'
In the morning, well after the time Mac had usually gone for a run and showered and eaten two large bowls of Honey-Nut Cheerios, Bozer knocked on his best friend's door, and when he got no reply, opened it and walked in.
He took in the fact that Mac was slumped over at his desk, fast asleep, hair askew with what looked like a paperclip in it, and that his phone was on the desk beside him, showing a one-hour phone call with Jack in the middle of the night. He also noted the papers on Mac's laptop and the textbooks and the scribbles of molecules, and sighed internally in a way that was worried and affectionate and exasperated, all at once.
Then, Bozer pushed that aside, grinned (shakily at first, then stronger) and held out a waffle that he'd made and brought along for this express purpose with a pair of tongs.
(He'd learned from the time he'd woken Mac up in costume as General Wang, and figured no bad guy had ever attempted waffle-based torture.)
He held it under Mac's nose.
'Come on, bro, it's breakfast time, and I made your favourite! My world-class, award-winning, secret-classified-recipe waffles!'
Thirty minutes later, Mac polished off his sixth waffle, and got up to put the plate in the sink, stopping along the way to pull his best friend into a side-hug.
'Thanks, Boze.'
The for everything was left unsaid, but Bozer heard it loud and clear, smiling back at the taller man.
'BFFs forever, bro.'
Mac smiled back at him for a beat, before his head tilted a little to the side and he noticeably reached for something teasing, something light.
'That's a tautology, Boze.' Bozer looked confused. 'Best friends forever forever?'
AN: Because I have major feels from that ep. Mostly 'Team as Family' feels, 'Mac and Bozer are BFFs' feels, 'poor Mac deserves way less drama/tragedy/general sadness and angst in his life' feels and 'I miss Jack' feels.
Thoughts on the ep: I enjoyed that. It was a very MacGyver ep, with the storyline I think being written to do three things – 1. Showcase Mac's nerdy, badass brilliance and overly empathetic, big heart. 2. Showcase and highlight the team's relationships, and bring Desi further into the fold. 3. Parallel the mission with Mac's life and what's going on with his dad/has gone on with his dad and do the big 'Jim has cancer' reveal. I think they executed all three quite well, with the typical lack of subtlety/sledgehammer-style that the show has.
In terms of Desi in this ep – I think her dynamic with the team is better when it's her, Mac and Riley, rather than just her and Mac. She and Riley play pretty well off each other, I think (I really liked that little smile they exchanged prior to Desi re-enacting the fight with 'Karl'), and I don't know, I just feel it works better with the three of them. The opening gambit was rather fun (albeit a little awkward to watch, I felt – I am not very comfortable with partial nudity, though), and consistent with what's been done on previous seasons (Mac kissing Katarina on the train, the trick Mac and Riley pulled with the cuffs in the casino), the show's tendency to make fun of certain tropes in the spy/action genre and Desi's bluntness and snark. I also liked the moment with her, Mac and Riley on the jet – consistent with characterization, methinks (with the potential exception of Riley telling Desi about Mac's thing with his dad, but Lucas Till and Tristin Mays sold it very well, in my opinion), and I admit I liked both the fact that Mac tried to hide it from her, and Desi's bluntness (but not excessive prying, I reckon – given it's established she thinks it's important to keep Mac's head in the game, I think it was reasonable) and her understanding.
I also really loved the B-plot with what Bozer was doing – we've been a little low on Mac and Bozer moments lately, I reckon, but I think this ep really showcased Bozer's strengths. He's not the best spy (understatement…) but he is a loyal friend with a big heart who will do everything he can for the people he loves. There was also a bit of tension (fundamental tension, I reckon) between him and Leanna, which might be groundwork for something?
In terms of Jim having cancer – well, that was a twist I didn't see coming. I honestly thought he was going to pull off some asshole move again and run off after Walsh (his obsession). I actually felt bad for him by the end of the ep, and felt a stirring in my heartstrings! (Though to be honest, it was more 'poor Mac, who is probably going to lose both his parents…and has lost his pseudo/substitute dad to boot.')