[heart eyes emoji x10, crying emoji x10, sparkly emoji x10]

thank you so much, for the theories and the feelings and the encouragement and the yelling in the comments, it makes this really fun, i'm so stoked to share this fic with you guys and i'm so happy you're having as good a time as i am with it.

(playlist has reached 'from the ground up' by sleeping at last)


They're gone for ten days this time, and it's the longest Jack and Mac have been out of the country on a mission together. It's an exhausting one too, especially for Mac, who finishes out the mission on ten hours of sleep in the last four days, and somehow he doesn't sleep on the plane home either. Jack watches him across the aisle, no small amount bothered by the fact that, despite his evident exhaustion, he won't so much as close his eyes and let his head fall back against the seat. Throughout the flight, Mac is alert and focused, though with nothing in particular to focus on, and Jack can see out of the corner of his eye that the kid's hands are trembling, fidgeting with a Swiss Army Knife he's pulled out of his jacket a couple of times.

They get back to Los Angeles in the middle of the day but may as well have been two or three o'clock in the morning for all that Jack feels exhausted and ready to sleep for a minimum of ten hours - and he's the one who did manage to catch some z's on the plane.

He stops in the hall of directors to speak to Matty for a moment before he heads home for the day, give her a pre-empted copy of the after action cliff's notes, so she can add it to her folder of data to analyze later. Then it's off home and… Except, the moment he steps out into the lobby, he sees something that stops him short. He sees his partner, sitting on a bench near the front lobby. Mac is slumped back against the wall, hands hanging limply at his sides, staring with blank non-focus at the wall across from him. Near as Jack can tell, he'd been headed out to leave, and felt the gruelling nature of their mission catch up to him, along with the absolute lack of sleep he'd gotten the whole time. Probably hadn't felt well enough to drive, and sat down for a moment, only to stay there and not get up.

Closing his eyes and telling himself he's really getting way too attached way too quickly, and Mac isn't a puppy he can take home from the pound, Jack sighs and walks over to him.

"Come on, kid," Jack says quietly, sitting down on the edge of the bench next to Mac but leaving a good two feet of space separating them. Don't want to spook him when his nerves are already fried from the hard work and bone-deep exhaustion. "Come get in the car, I'll drive you home."

Mac's head turns to look at him, slowly, and he looks surprised to see Jack there, but doesn't have the energy to flinch or so much as blink hard. "Hm?" the hum is distracted and distant, sluggish like his movement had been.

"I'm taking you home," Jack reiterates. The brief interaction is doing nothing to dissuade the concern that had been growing in him the whole mission. He did his best to keep Mac safe in the field, but didn't quite feel he had the ground to stand on from which he could bug Mac about his personal habits, about how much sleep he was getting or care he was taking of himself. "Grab your bag, we can get going now, if you're ready."

"No," Mac mumbles, shaking his head. He reaches up and scrubs at his face, head still wobbling slowly from side to side. "It's fine. I'm fine, I was just…" The sentence meanders off into silence and he looks around the hall like he can't quite figure out for himself what he was 'just', never mind tell Jack what that was.

Of course, just like everything else with this kid, this is going to be an ordeal. Oh well, though. Never let it be said Jack Dalton is a quitter. Once he's committed, he's committed.

"You were just about to pass out right here in the hall, is what you were just about to do," he says with a snort. "Come on. I'll pull the car around so you don't have to walk all the way across the parking lot, and then we'll get you dropped off at home safe and sound. It'll make me feel better to make sure you're not passed out on the side of the highway or something."

Mac looks at him with narrowed eyes, and Jack can't quite tell if they're narrowed due to suspicion, or tiredness, or some combination of the two.

"Not a trick question, I promise. I'm not trying to dupe you or anything, whatever you're trying to work out in your overheated harddrive of a brain, alright?" Jack gives it a few seconds to sink in. "C'mon. My job doesn't stop at that door, just. Let me drive you home. For my own peace of mind, if not for you."

After a long pause, long enough that Jack stops worrying he's going to flatly refuse and starts worrying the kid's fallen asleep with his eyes open, Mac nods.

"Okay," he mutters, the word barely audible. He looks confused, and so beat he may lose consciousness at any moment, but at least he's being agreeable now.

"Okay," Jack repeats, clapping his palms to his thighs and standing up brusquely. "Come on out to the door in a minute or so, I'll pull the car around. If I don't see you there when I get there, I'll assume you've passed out on the bench and come in to grab you, got it?"

He's rewarded with a deeply puzzled hint of a smile, and another nod.

Jack leaves the building, shaking his hands as he goes to try and rouse himself back to full alertness. Though he'd gotten more rest than Mac had, he's still half-dead himself, and can't wait to get back to his own bed for a well-earned rest. As he walks out to his car, keys jingling brightly in his hand, Jack thinks on what he's about to do. This is going to be the first time he's ever seen where Mac lives, and he's got to admit, he's deeply curious.

The absent thoughts about Mac's life outside of DXS, the life he barely breathed a word of, have been drifting through Jack's mind more and more often since Siberia, and since his discussion in Matty's office in particular. He gets in the car and starts it up, and wonders what he's going to be dropping Mac off to, if it's going to be an apartment in the city, or a duplex on the outskirts. Maybe he lives with James still, and this is going to be the world's most awkward way to run into your boss outside of work hours. Or maybe he lives alone, and Jack is about to drop him off to some empty, echoing home where he'll be alone with his exhaustion and his fried nerves. Either way, Jack figures he'll know soon enough.

Luckily, Mac seems to have enough of his faculties about him that he manages to make outside in one piece and before Jack has to go back in and get him, which kicks the worry sitting like a lump in Jack's throat down a notch. He's also able to rattle an address off with only a few moment's deep thought, and Jack programs it into his GPS and sets the device into the cradle on the dash. He figures addresses may be one thing but expecting Mac to be able to give actual directions right now might be a bit much. They're driving through Los Angeles, Mac's head against the window and his eyes still resolutely open and focused forward, the radio playing through the air of the car's interior, when Jack loses his battle with his self control and asks.

"So, anybody waiting for you at home?" He tries to be casual about it, to conceal his burning curiosity, but Mac seems out of his head enough to not pick up on the obvious fishing for information.

"Mhm." The answer is hummed and distant, but coherent.

"Oh?"

"Roommate." Mac clears his throat and sits up a little straighter, eyes looking a little more focused. "Bozer. 'S my best friend, I've known him... Known him forever."

"That's good," Jack says, and thinks, as a silent afterthought, thank God. Because it is a relief to hear that at least Mac has something to go home to, something outside the walls of DXS. That he isn't alone outside of his job and his father. Jack has given up at this point, as he's driving his young partner home and worrying about his living circumstances, on wondering when he started getting this attached, and just accepted that Mac is as much a part of his life as any partner before him had been.

He pulls up outside a house that is not at all what he'd been expecting. In his consideration of where Mac lived, this quiet, sun-drunk street hadn't made the cut at all. It's a beautiful area, really, with a nice house at the bottom of a gently sloped driveway waiting at the address Mac had given him. As he pulls into it, stopping near the end, he sees the front door swing open, and a young man approximately Mac's age step out. He looks confused and suspicious, until Mac swings the passenger's door open and steps out, at which point the look on his face turns to relief and joy.

"Mac!" the young man, Bozer, Jack assumes, calls out, and Mac stumbles a little in his haste to get to the door, practically falling into his roommate's waiting hold. Mac is caught in a tight, relieved embrace, and Jack can see him returning it without hesitation, arms coming up to clutch at his friend, head ducked into his shoulder.

Jack stays there for a few more moments before he starts to feel weird just sitting in the driveway and watching, and puts his car in reverse to back out and head home. As the shift in the idling engine is registered, he sees Mac's roommate and old friend look up, and they make a brief few seconds of eye contact. Bozer lifts a hand from Mac's back, fingers twitching in a short wave of acknowledgement, possibly thanks, and Jack returns it. He pulls back out of the drive and watches out of the corner of his eye as the boys disappear back into the house, the door closing behind them and leaving the street to sit quiet and peaceful around them.

As he sets off towards his own home, ready to collapse and sleep like you do when it's well earned and much needed, something inside Jack's chest feels lighter, more at ease. Mac isn't alone. He wasn't leaving that kid alone to knock around an empty house, or to endlessly rehash details of a mission with his father. There had been someone waiting for him, someone who obviously cared, and to know that is a greater relief than Jack had been expecting.


"You look like you're about to pass out standing up."

Mac supposes he can forgive Bozer's observation its bluntness for the fact that his roommate is currently providing him the stability to ensure he gets inside the house without actually doing that. He and Bozer get inside without incident, and stop in the hall.

"Where to this time?"

It's the kind of question asked in the kind of way that you can only really pull off with any degree of clarity if you've known someone very well for a long time. Bozer's been around the block with him enough times to know that when he stumbles in after being gone for a week or more, on what he has been unforgivably deceived into believing are 'business trips' for the think tank he works for, he doesn't always want to go to his own room. Sometimes he prefers to collapse on the couch and sleep there, with the sounds of his roommate moving about his life around him to prove that it's over and he's home. Today is one of those days.

"Couch," he says, and Bozer turns toward the living room without further question or comment.

"I don't suppose you can tell me where you were this time." The words are dry and don't even pretend to be a question. But despite the sense that, like always, Bozer isn't enjoing the fact that Mac takes off to various corners of the world, 'consulting' with his think tank that focused primarily on international and cyber-security fields, and comes home exhausted and unable to breathe a word of what happened, his grip never falters, and he doesn't let go until they're both seated safely on the couch.

Mac cringes and shakes his head. He hates this part, the part where he has to lie to the person he's closest to in the world. He's already talked himself around in knots to give Bozer the most accurate information possible, explaining that yes, he works for a think tank, but the work they do there takes them all over the world, and sometimes into very dangerous situations. Dangerous enough that he needs to take a bodyguard with him on jobs, which is how he's explained his partners with DXS to Bozer as long as he's worked there. A few have been over for dinner, even, the ones that have lasted long enough.

"Figured as much," Bozer mutters, though the squeeze of his hand on Mac's shoulder says without words, it's okay, I forgive you. I get it.

He'd be less forgiving about what Mac said and half-said and didn't say if he knew the whole truth about how solidly he was being kept in the dark, but it has to be this way. James made it clear that secrecy was of utmost concern, even when it came to Bozer, someone he's known since Mac was in elementary school. It's probably one of the things, if not the thing Mac hates the most about this job.

"You want anything to eat?" Bozer calls from where he's stood up and walked around the couch into the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge.

"Nah," Mac answers, wondering if he sounds as listless and run-down as he feels. "'M okay. Thanks though." He lets his eyes drift shut and fumbles a hand around on the back of the couch for the blanket that's kept there. It's left purposefully for nights like this, where he doesn't feel like sleeping in his own room quite yet, needing the comforting sounds of life going on around him to prove that everything is fine and everyone is, for now at least, safe.

"How's it going with new guy?" comes the next question, floating across the kitchen island. "Saw he dropped you off today, which is good, cause you look like you'd probably have driven your car off the road if you'd tried to drive yourself. What kind of think-tank, even if it consults with foreign governments and whatever, doesn't let its employees sleep? Nah, don't answer that. Some scary dudes in SWAT gear would like, bust through the window and tackle you or whatever."

Mac's chest heaves in the worn echo of a laugh.

"For real though, how is it with him, is he a total loose canon like O'Reilly or dull as a… what did you call Haken?"

"Dull as a box of single-size socket wrenches," Mac finishes for him, slumping over into the couch and pulling the blanket with him. "He's fine, I guess."

"Fine, you guess," Bozer echoes at him, imitating his tone. "That's a top-rated review."

With a sigh, Mac wrinkles his face into a frown half hidden by the couch cushion. He still doesn't look up, doesn't so much as open his eyes, despite the fact that he can hear Bozer moving around, settling to sit on the coffee table just a few feet away.

"He's… I dunno. Got great recommendations, I guess. From like. Matty, and stuff." Mac is aware he sounds pretty bad, speaking in short, chopped up sentences in direct contrast to his usual vocabulary and speech patterns. If it was anybody here but Bozer he may be trying to cover it up, exactly how drained he is, but it's Bozer and Bozer has seen him far worse off than this. There's no face left to save when it's just the two of them here, and it's freeing, in a way. "But he keeps… He's fussy."

"Fussy." There's something amused in Bozer's voice and Mac cracks one eye open wide enough to squint up at him and take in the raised eyebrow, the general sense of entertainment around Bozer's expression.

"Wouldn't let me drive home. Hovers. Won't let me do anything myself. Fussy." It's hard to explain without getting into the details, and Mac doesn't have the mental power to come up with cover-appropriate equivalents of the anecdotes that will accurately explain Jack's behavior.

"Well," Bozer says, not able or not trying to keep the soft rebuke out of his voice, "as the person who's expecting him to come home from work at the end of his trips to wherever it is he can't tell me about, consulting on who-knows-what kind of dangerous nonsense, I appreciate 'fussy' as a quality in my best friend's bodyguard, thanks. Anything else you don't like about him, or is it just that he won't let you crash your car on the side of the highway?"

"Very funny," Mac mutters. "I dunno. Feel like he doesn't trust me. Won't let me do anything myself. Thinks I'm just where 'm at because of my dad." He admits it with less reservation than he'd have had if he'd been fully conscious, what he was afraid he was being labeled as in Jack's head. If maybe his concern, all this emphasis on 'let me watch your back', 'let me take point on entry', 'let me drive you home' was all because he thinks Mac is some incompetent child riding on his daddy's coattails into a job he had no business being in.

"Well, you'll make him see the light soon enough, if he sticks around."

There's an unquestioning confidence in Bozer's voice that makes Mac's cheeks heat up, and he ducks his face further into the couch cushion.

"Whatever," he says, embarrassed. The normalcy of the conversation is seeping into Mac's shoulders, loosening the knotted muscles and easing the tension that's gripped him throughout the mission. Without the tension and adrenaline around to hold him up, he's losing his war with sleep quickly. His limbs feel heavy, pulled down into the couch, which is becoming the most comfortable surface he's ever laid on. He hears Bozer say something that he thinks is about Jack, maybe an instruction to invite his new partner over for dinner some time, and he hums in response, a wordless agreement to a suggestion he'd only partially heard.

A quiet chuckle follows it, and with the familiar sounds and scents of home around him, Mac only tenses a fraction when he feels a hand grasp the blanket covering him, pull it a little higher around his shoulders, then straighten it over his bent legs. Before he can register if Bozer says anything else, Mac loses his battle completely, and the day slips away into unconsciousness. The house remains warm and safe around him, and he sleeps without disturbance, through to the following morning.