Big thanks to Deliwiel for encouraging me to write this when I was angry.
He sat at the edge of the fire pit, staring at the fire, a glass half-filled with water clutched loosely in his hand. To an outsider, it would seem that he was slipping towards sleep, but a rare anger simmered beneath those barely-open eyes, slitted in pain and fury and frustration.
His free hand twitched towards the flames, and then- clutching the glass so tightly it threatened to break in his hand- he stood.
HIs movements were precise, deliberate, sharp and defined. Shakily raising the glass to his eyes, he stared at the water for a moment. The next second the arm was flung out and the glass was shattering against the wall, clear shards tinkling against the brick.
He didn't stop there, though. He crossed the deck in a few quick strides, reaching for the nearest chair as soon as he was close enough. Once he grabbed it, he shoved it away as hard as he could, sending it clattering onto its side. Then he moved on to the next chair, and the next, and, finally, the table.
The deck was a mess of disarrayed furniture, with jagged shards from the other glasses that had been outside littering the ground at intervals.
He surveyed it, chest heaving, fists clenched. Twisting his head, he spotted some papers lying haphazardly on the ground.
He picked them up and saw that they were the ones that had caused his rage- not that it hadn't been festering for a long time, no. They had merely been the spark that lit the fire.
He dropped the papers into the fire, one by one, watching as the flames consumed them.
Once they were no more than ashes, he turned, his movements still clear-cut and painfully precise, and walked towards the fence at the edge of the deck. He collapsed against it, sliding down to stare at the ground, long fingers twisting painfully in blond hair.
The urge to hit something, to destroy something- because wasn't that what the man was trying to do to him, wasn't this what he wanted, what did he do wrong- finally ebbing, and a dull pain taking its place.
He didn't know how long he sat there, struggling to draw air through a tight throat, staring blankly at wood planks that stared accusingly back.
Your fault, the wind that blew murmured in his ear. Your fault, your fault, your fault. Always your fault.
He couldn't breathe.
When it had been night long enough for the air to grow cold, for the neighbor's lights begin to shut off, there was the sound of footsteps on the porch. He knew it wasn't Bozer, because he was at Riley's house for the night, having crashed on her couch after a stay-in movie night.
He couldn't bring himself to care enough to look up.
The footsteps stopped in front of him, the owner crouching down to gently place a hand on his shoulder. "Mac?"
When the blond didn't answer, didn't even respond to the sound of Jack's voice, the brunet began to become concerned- well, more concerned. "Hey, buddy, what's wrong?"
Mac still didn't reply. His hands twisted further in his hair, grasping for some semblance of control. Jack reached up and carefully, gently, disentangled the long, pale fingers from the blond hair. Mac let his hands fall listlessly into his lap.
They were shaking.
Jack placed a hand beneath Mac's chin, bringing the young man's gaze up to meet his own. "Mac, come on, brother, what's wrong?"
Mac dropped his gaze to the wooden floor again. It would be easier to look at than Jack's face when he found out what Mac had done, what he had messed up now. "He's not coming back."
Jack frowned, thrown off balance by the non-sequitur. "What do you mean?"
Mac swallowed painfully, speaking past the pain. "He's got another family now, Jack, and he doesn't want to hear from me again. He sent me a letter back, and he said he had found someone else, and that he's happy, and that I shouldn't try and take that away from him, and that I was selfish just trying to contact him, and that he doesn't want to be a part of my life anymore, and he thought he made that clear when he left, and- and-"
He was gasping now, trying to breathe through the lump in his throat. "He said he doesn't want me anymore."
He looked up at the older man, his face twisted in agony. "Why?" He tried to breathe, but he couldn't. "Why wasn't I enough? What did I do? Why didn't he want me?"
Helpless, Jack clutched the blond to his chest, letting him sob. "What did I do?" He repeated the words over and over, as if they would provide him with the answer.
The next morning, Mac woke in his bed, wearing an old pair of pajama pants and a faded shirt that had been Jack's at one point years ago before Mac had found it at his house after one of their many missions and claimed it as his own.
The blond lay there for a moment, replaying the events of the previous night in his head. After a minute or two, he made himself sit up and walk towards the kitchen, wanting to see if he had imagined Jack coming or if it was actually real.
It was real. Jack was sitting on the couch and reading a book on film that Bozer had left on the coffee table. As the younger man entered the room, the brunet looked up, his face growing serious as he closed the book and stood. He motioned to the couch, and MacGyver obeyed wordlessly, unsure of where this was going.
Once the younger man was seated on the chair across from Jack, the older man leaned forward, letting out a small sigh before asking, "Mac, what happened last night?"
Mac shrugged. The older man's expression contorted from calm to furious faster than Mac could blink. "No, don't give me that. Something's obviously wrong, and I'm worried enough about you without you hiding it from me."
Mac sighed, picking at his pajama pants absently. He took a minute to collect himself before he spoke. "You remember how you told me to write a letter to my dad a while back?"
Jack nodded. "Yeah."
Mac continued, resolutely not meeting Jack's gaze. "I got a letter back from him yesterday."
Jack sat back. "I'm guessing it didn't have good news."
The blond let out a soft, bitter laugh. "That's an understatement."
Jack waited, knowing that now the younger man was talking, he'd open up in his own time about what had happened. Sure enough, after a minute or so of silence, the blond began talking. "He, uh, he said that he found- he found someone else. A widow with three kids. That he has a new family now, and that he doesn't really think he can be a part of my life, because it wouldn't be good for his wife and kids. He basically said that he didn't- didn't want to ever see me again."
Jack scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to push down all the anger he felt. Getting mad at the younger man's father wouldn't help the kid right now. Mac continued, his voice cracking. "He wrote about the kids he adopted, and Jack, I could just hear how proud of them he was, and how much he loved them, and I don't know why he didn't ever talk about me that way and what did I do wrong?"
The blond swallowed hard, fighting to talk through the pinch in his throat. He finally met Jack's gaze, then broke away a moment later, and the older man felt his heart crack at the sight of the unshed tears brimming in the young man's eyes. Mac let put a bitter laugh as he continued, the edges of the sound brittle and sharp and almost shattering. "I just- I don't understand what I did. I tried to not talk about mom around him, because I knew that that made him upset, and I obeyed him, and I don't- I don't know what else I could've done-"
Jack cut the now-pacing young man off, raising a hand to catch his attention. "Stop that. There's-" He paused, then pulled the blond down to sit by him on the couch. "Look, Mac, there's something you gotta realize."
The young man shot him a miserable look, then dropped his gaze once again. Jack rubbed the palm of his hand as he continued. "This wasn't your fault. There's nothing you did that made your dad go away. What he did, what he chose to do, that was his decision, and his alone. You were eleven years old, you didn't make your father- your adult father- leave you."
Mac had moved his gaze to Jack's face again, and the brunet took that as a good sign.
Mac whispered, "You really think it wasn't my fault?"
And that, oh, that made Jack's heart just about break. He nodded. "I know it, kid. Whatever choices your dad made, he made them because of his own issues, his own problems. It wasn't because you weren't good enough or because you did something."
Jack placed a hand on the side of Mac's head, ducking his own head a bit to catch the young man's gaze. "You hear me, kid? It wasn't your fault."
The young man let out a shaky sigh, bringing his hands up to scrub at his face. Then, slowly, he crumpled against Jack's side, letting the older man place an arm around him. Jack turned and hugged the young man close, pressing a hand into blond hair as Mac buried his face in the older man's chest. He remembered the promise he had made to himself, years ago: he would protect the young man, no matter what.
He renewed it now, with an intensity that almost surprised him. There would be many more days like this, where Mac's low self-esteem would use this as a chance to make the kid beat himself up over every little mistake, but Jack would be here with the kid, would help him fight through those days.
He would keep that promise until he was dead, no matter what it cost him.
(And when Mac's father called one day, asking for money, it was Jack that picked up the phone, Jack who told him to stay out of the kid's life, to leave it permanently and to never contact him again. He finished with, "And if you even think about trying to contact him when I'm not around, don't think for a moment that I won't know, and don't think that I won't hunt you down and make you sorry for leaving the kid in the first place."
He hung up viciously, satisfaction warming him.
Mac looked up at the older man as he came back into the living room, where the blond was working on his motorcycle. "Who was that?"
Jack shrugged. "Nobody important.")