Summary: We know Jack and MacGyver met in the army overseas- but that's all we know.
Their first escapade together was far from calm.
(Featuring train of thought, Southerness, and an abuse of italics)
Warnings: torture, but nothing too graphic. It's not worse than what is in the show.
This could actually be canon. I mean, as far as I can tell, it fulfills all the requirements for canon. Which was a little odd writing, lol, because I normally don't comply fully with canon.
Just a quick reminder, it's canon that Jack was in Delta Force and MacGyver worked as an EOD.
Jack opens his eyes to the sound of laughter and grunts of pain and the sight of a grimy ceiling over his head.
The ceiling's weird, because last he remembers he was outside in the desert, but hey, things happen.
He turns into his side and sees the source of the laughter and grunts of pain, and oh yeah.
Everything comes back to him. He's been taken hostage by some losers with a grudge against Americans (don't ask him why, everyone over here seems to have a grudge against Americans), and that kid he was with (Mac? Mark? Max? His name was M-something) had apparently been taken as well.
Jack had been watching him disarm bombs, they had been complaining to each other about the heat, and the next thing Jack knew there was a dart sticking out of his neck and he was falling towards the ground and-
-and he woke up here.
Right.
There's a particularly loud yelp of pain, and Jack looks over, and hey, not cool, y'all, the thugs are beating the blond kid up. They've got his hands in manacles that are attached to the roof of the (hut? Cell?) whatever this is, except the manacles are set at a height that's just a little too tall for the kid. His toes (his boots have vanished) are barely scraping the ground, and his shirt's been ripped off, and the losers have all got crowbars that they're using to hit the kid. Not too hard, not hard enough to break something, but definitely hard enough to leave some nasty bruises.
Jack winces in sympathy. Now that he's not, you know, unconscious, he realizes that the kid's repeating something is that the actual Preamble to the Constitution, oh my gosh it actually is in between yelps and grunts of pain. It's driving their captors crazy. They keep asking him stupid questions like they're expecting him to answer, because yeah the kid's totally going to tell you where the U.S. is going to be camping next, wow, these guys are amateurs the dude probably doesn't even know that information, they think he'll answer.
After a moment, Jack hauls himself to his feet (no, he didn't stagger, he just stepped forward menacingly) and leans against the cell bars casually. He makes some snide comment, getting their attention, keeping it away from the kid and wow he's scrawny the dude can't be more than nineteen, tops.
The captors apparently think that someone from Delta Force is gonna know more than an EOD, which yeah, fair, he probably does.
They decide to use the kid to convince him to talk, though, which honestly? They're really going to beat up a teenager?
Apparently, yeah. Because they do, and Jack tries to keep his cool (he succeeds, but it's one of the hardest things he's ever done) like he's been trained.
The thugs get tired, eventually, and decide to lay off the kid for a bit. By this time, he's panting (his thin chest heaves in a way that no kid's should) and bruised and ouch, that's gotta hurt, man because by this time he's been strung up for an hour (that Jack knows of).
They don't cut him loose, though, when they leave with a (vaguely threatening in a cliche-movie-mobster type of way) promise that they'll be back.
Jack leans against the cell bars and listens to the kid wheeze, trying to get air into his strained lungs.
They sit (stand and hang) like that for a while, and they even eventually strike up a conversation.
("Wish the heat was all we had to deal with," Jack says.
The kid laughs, then lets out a groan almost immediately. "Yeah," he says, his voice strained and cracked and barely audible.
They don't talk anymore after that.)
The wannabe mobsters come back, this time with two fewer men. The leader is looking smug in a way that makes Jack want to punch his face in, but, to be fair, he's wanted to do that from pretty much the time he woke.
They cut the kid down, letting him collapse on floor and cough in an effort to draw air into his lungs for approximately half a second before they haul him up by the hair? Isn't that overkill, y'all? and force him to his knees just outside Jack's cell.
A large tub is dragged into the room and is filled with buckets of icy water. Jack sees a gleam in the kid's eye that tells him that the younger man is preparing himself for the inevitable.
Jack's glad to see that the blond's brain has kicked in and he's stopped repeating the Preamble in order to focus on drawing air into his lungs.
Then two of the men grab the kid by his arms and shoulders and shove into the tub, and ouch, that's gotta hurt, the flat metal edge is pressed hard enough against the young man's chest to form a bruise. Jack can see it beginning to become visible when they drag him up from the water and let him gasp a few desperate breaths before they force him under again.
The only real breaks the blond gets is when their captors stop every so often to beat him.
When, an hour after the waterboarding started, American soldiers rush the compound, Jack can't feel thankful enough. They get Jack out of his cell quickly and then they get MacGyver, hah, I knew that was it to a medic.
The next time Jack sees the kid, they're both working on another bomb together, and Jack thinks that the dude's gonna be a bit mad at him because you were tortured and all I did was watch but the kid just makes a joke about bluer skies ahead and Jack finds himself thinking that hey, I like this guy, maybe we'll work together some more.
And they do.
Hope y'all enjoyed! Also, if you like Madam Secretary, I posted a MacGyver/Madam Secretary crossover that's gotten positive feedback. Not sure why, but people like it. If you're looking for a laugh, I'd recommend checking it out.
