The Oldest Mission
When twelve-year-old Bozer opens his front door to a bedraggled Mac holding a soaking Archimedes, he is too stunned to invite him in out of the pouring rain. They just stand there looking at each other. Mac tilts his head and raises his eyebrows, trying to look like nothing is wrong, but the absurdity of his situation and the trembling lips give him away. Bozer sidesteps numbly away from the doorframe to let Mac enter. Shedding his coat releases rivulets of water that drip onto the floor. He just looks so pathetic standing in the narrow front hall, dark blonde hair plastered to his neck. Bozer thinks he hears a choking noise before he realizes it is Mac awkwardly clearing his throat.
"My, uh, my dad left," he gulped. The explanation falls flat on its face, an unspoken question hanging in the air between them. Bozer's mouth finally catches up to his racing thoughts. If there is one thing he can never do, it's stand by and watch while Mac doubts his place in the Bozer household.
He's only twelve and not sure how to express the depth of his protective instinct in words, so he just points at Archimedes, "Looks like maybe Archie could use a bath." He's not wrong, with his fur clinging to his body, Archimedes looks about half his normal size, and even from a distance Bozer can see him shaking - much like the human friend standing next to him. It's a woefully inadequate statement, it barely even counts as a greeting, but Mac looks so grateful that Bozer almost cries.
They pass the night watching Star Wars and eating popcorn. Mac doesn't talk much, but Mac hardly ever talks much anyway, so Bozer fills the silence. He's usually the more open one and it's an easy role to slip into. Sometimes Mac will stop responding to his rambled sentiments, and his voice will falter, but he's always quick to catch it and continue on with his stories. Other times Mac will get lost staring at something Bozer can't see, and Bozer will do something ridiculous to try to win back his attention. When he crashes out of his third headstand, he realizes Mac is asleep.
Relieved and exhausted, he almost follows him off into dreamland, but lying on his basement floor under the duvet they dragged from his upstairs bedroom, he can't stop seeing the blank look in his best friend's eyes. It disturbs him on some deeper level, and he can't quench the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. If there's one thing he's learned today, it's that he never wants to see that look on Angus MacGyver's face again. He has trouble falling asleep that night.
**line break**
Bozer doesn't understand why Mac wants to join the army. He knows him too well to believe he's seeking glory, or redemption, or even punishment. War is an awful thing, and he tells him as such, but Mac's explanations is simple, "I know that I can help save people, so aren't I obligated to try to do that?" The look he gives Bozer is so desperate for his understanding that all Bozer can do is nod numbly and pretend that he gets it. He spends the next three years watching the deterioration of his best friend through video calls, but Mac is so determined. He believes so doggedly in the good that he's doing – Bozer can't bring himself to take that from him.
When Mac comes home it's like a chance at atonement. His reclamation of Mac is a slow and steady process, and progress is slow. On the nights when Mac is thrashing in his sheets so violently that Bozer can't get near him, he calls Jack. He can't believe he used to be jealous of the times Mac would describe Jack's crazy antics over an IPad screen. It took him all of thirty seconds of watching them interact when they first got home for Bozer to realize what a vital part of Mac's life Jack had become. It hurt at first, it felt as though a great divide had opened up between him and his best friend. He hated that there were things Jack knew about Mac that Bozer would never get to see. But the first time Jack came charging into Mac's bedroom at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday night and made a beeline straight for his distressed partner, Bozer's animosity evaporated. Watching tough ol' Texas boy Jack whisper comfort in dulcet tones, words all slippery and soothing, rousing Mac from the throes of a nightmare, made him re-evaluate the dangerous connotations he associated with him.
As Jack murmured to Mac in the dark, Bozer stayed frozen in the corner of the room, the image of Mac's agonized expression still pressed up against his mind. He didn't understand what Mac was going through, couldn't at all relate, but Jack could. Bozer was starting to see that invisible connection between Max and Jack taking the shape of a shared suffering. More than anything he wishes he had stopped Mac from joining the army in the first place, but he doesn't have any desire to relate to Mac. Maybe selfishly, watching the way the war weighs down the two of them, he hopes he never has to understand their experiences as soldiers. It's a burden he doesn't want to bear, because even though he'd stay up all night to help a friend, he can't seem to stem the fear that whatever the desert did to Mac, it's not something he'll ever fully recover from.
**line break**
Bozer didn't ask to be thrust into this world of espionage and secret operatives, but when the rest of his friends leave to hunt Murdoc, all he can think of is 'How could I not know?' Looking back at all those impromptu business trips and secretive injuries, how could he not have questioned it? The excuses didn't even make sense; Mac has always been weirdly graceful, there's no way he would break his arm falling down a staircase in Bolivia. So when Mac returns to the war room and explains what the Phoenix foundation really is, he's angry, just not surprised.
Mac takes Bozer's silence on the subject as confirmation of his worst fears. He's worried that Bozer will hate him, will never trust him again, and Bozer wants to correct him, but he can't. He wants to tell MacGyver what he's really worried about, that he is afraid of what it says about their friendship. What it says about Bozer as a friend, that he never noticed his best friend was a spy. That he feels inadequate, like he's failed Mac in some way - but he doesn't say that. There's not a single thing Bozer can think of that would hurt Mac more than to admit that Mac's betrayal has caused him to doubt his own competency as a friend, so he keeps his mouth shut. He is, after all, the first friendship Mac ever had. His priority mission has always been to soften the emotional blows the outside world aims at Mac - has been since the moment he walked through his door holding a drenched dog an armful of abandonment issues. Seeing Mac look at him with the same boyish expression and hopeful eyes as 15 years ago, he knows his mission remains the same - and dammit if becoming a secret agent is going to stop him.