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(chapter title from all time low's 'something's gotta give', for those of you playing along with my little soundtrack)


It was another one of those missions where Mac goes and goes until he's running on fumes and still doesn't really sleep. It's hard for him to sleep on missions, and the more complicated, stressful, or high stakes the work is, the more difficult it becomes. It's not that he doesn't try - he'll put his head down in the safe houses they stay in, he'll lean back in his chair on the jet, but whenever he tries to close his eyes they snap open again, heart kicking into high gear and breath catching in his chest. Mac can't imagine what the DXS-employed psychologist would have to say about that, but he's never deigned to bring it up. Instead he toughs it through missions that require long enough stays away from home that sleeping becomes a real problem, and crashes when he returns.

Again, Jack drives him home. He doesn't ask if Mac wants a ride this time, just says he'll bring the car around and then does so. They weren't even gone that long that time, but Jack still insists on driving him. While he probably could have driven home okay, Mac does find he's too tired to fight his partner about it, so he goes along with it. He gives a little sarcastic wave from the door when he looks back and sees that Jack is still at the end of the driveway, like he's waiting to leave until he sees Mac get inside in one piece. Because he can't walk inside his house on his own, apparently.

Later, after he's had a nap and reheated something out of the fridge for dinner, Mac's phone buzzes on the coffee table in front of the couch. He leans over and peers at it, the late hour making his eyes fuzzy. He blinks at it a few times to clear his vision and read the name displayed on the screen. Jack Dalton. With a snort, Mac reaches out and snags it, eyes flicking over the short message on the screen.

"That from Jack?"

Mac looks over at Bozer, who's sitting on the other end of the couch working on a script he's been writing, and puts the phone down without answering the text. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"You've got a face. So do you still need a ride in tomorrow?"

On days in the past when Mac has been so tired after a job that he was unable to drive home and took a rideshare service or caught a begrudging ride with James, Bozer has given him a ride back to the lot his car was left in the next morning. Mac, while appreciating the kindness and Bozer's willingness to go out of his way, he's never really been comfortable with the arrangement. Though DXS was designed to be completely under the radar even from the interior of the actual lobby, it's entirely too close to his worlds colliding for Mac. It feels like his carefully constructed house of cards is moments from toppling and scattering every time Bozer sets eyes on the building.

He can't shake what his father had said to him, when he'd started at DXS and refused to move out of the house he shared with Bozer, either on his own or back in with James, and ignored the advice to kick his roommate out as well. The man had stared him straight in the face for a long, silent moment, and then said, in no uncertain terms, and he had to be aware of what he was doing by keeping Bozer so close in his life. What he was risking.

James said, deadly serious, that if Mac told Bozer anything but his provided cover of a high security clearance think tank employee, then he would be putting him in unimaginable danger. Mac would be, in James' words, functionally putting a gun to his best friend's head and pulling the trigger. It was an image that he'd never shaken, and it plays uninvited through his mind whenever Bozer gives him a ride to work.

"No, I don't need a ride," Mac says, shaking his head and forcing it out. "Jack's gonna pick me up in the morning, I guess."

Accepting favors from Jack without knowing when or how he's going to come collecting on them is not something Mac wants to be doing. However it's preferable - barely - to having Bozer anywhere near his job.

"No complaints from me." A slight pause, then Bozer is quick to add, "Not that I mind, obviously, it's just, the hours you work are insane and I, unlike you, value sleep on a regular basis."

"If you had your way," Mac says, matching his tone, "the day would start at eleven in the morning at the absolute earliest."

"You're damn right." The teasing grin on Bozer's face breaks into a wide yawn, and he shoves the script off his lap and onto the coffee table. "Alright. I'm about to turn into a pumpkin. Try not to give Jack too hard a time tomorrow." He gets up and rounds the couch, walking behind it towards the hallway down which lies his and Mac's rooms.

As Bozer passes behind where Mac is sitting, he reaches over and clasps Mac's shoulder in a wordless 'goodnight'. Mac catches and squeezes his wrist in return, the moment of affection leaving him feeling warm even after Bozer has left the room. It's the type of thing he appreciates Bozer for, fiercely and privately. Nobody else in his life really… touches him much, if it at all. He's at arm's length - literally and figuratively - from most of his coworkers, and if anyone puts hands on him on a mission, it ends in blacked eyes and split lips. And his father… James is the opposite of Bozer. Impossible to read half the time, and Mac can't remember the last time the man hugged him. His roommate, though, is a different story.

Bozer is as open and affectionate as James is shuttered and cold. He always welcomes Mac back home with a tight, relieved hug. He's safe and familiar and kind, and Mac almost wonders if he'd be better off if he didn't have Bozer around, that one source of easy, simply expressed care and fun. He knows it isn't true, practically speaking, but he sometimes entertains the thought that maybe it's Bozer that keeps him human, and maybe being human feels like more trouble than it's worth.

Sometimes, times like now, slumped against the arm of the couch and tired enough that even his internal filters are failing, Mac allows himself to mull over the concept of what it would be like if he just… wasn't. He closes his eyes and permits himself the daydream that he's an android, a robot, artificial intelligence brought to life. Perfect and moldable and precise. Infallible, without this inconvenient human body that bruises and breaks and wears down, the mind that makes mistakes and lets the heart that aches lonely in his ribcage override it far too often. Without the skin that burns to be touched, held. He'd be all the good parts of himself, the ones that make James proud, and none of the bad, the ones that make his father look at him like coming home had been a mistake, all those years ago.

Or, if he has to be human, Mac thinks, opening his eyes and looking at the wall, he could at least do himself and everyone around him the decency of not being the sort that gets thrown into a melodramatic tailspin of acute loneliness by someone touching his shoulder. He may as well be ten years old, for all the maturity he's demonstrating right now, and it's with this thought, accompanied by a spike of irritation, that he gets up.

Time to interrupt that unproductive line of thinking and go to bed before he's completely out of it on the ride in tomorrow. The last thing Mac needs to add to this partnership is to make a fool of himself when Jack is already going out of his way for him. As he passes the cracked door of his roommate's room, the lack of light seeping out of it indicating he's gone to bed for real, Mac cringes. He regrets the brief idea that he'd be better off without his best friend in his life, no matter the reasoning - there's no world where having Bozer around doesn't make him a better version of himself, and he knows it. He'd apologize, if it weren't for the fact that Bozer wouldn't have any idea what he was talking about. So he just mouths 'sorry' at the closed door, and heads for his own room.

By the time Mac realizes he set the wrong alarm the next morning, it's going off and he's running thirty minutes late. He bolts his way through his morning, running out of the house to meet Jack with his hair still wet from the shower and without having eaten breakfast. He's flustered and rushed, and when he finally gets himself and his work bag into the car, closing the door and turning to apologize to his partner for running late, he's confronted with Jack's bright, smiling face. He seems completely unbothered, and Mac can't figure out is going on here.

If he's Jack, he's seeing his partner has shown up late and unprepared, after he'd already needed to be driven home the day before, and that's not something to grin about. And yet there he sits, like everything is completely fine, nothing's gone wrong, and Mac doesn't have anything to be embarrassed about. It throws him off enough that he almost glares back on instinct and asks what the hell he thinks is so funny, but he catches it just in time, choking down the words and forcing his brow to unfurrow before it can become a full-blown frown.

Jack is trying. He's trying an awful lot harder than most all of his past partners to make their working relationship not just function but function well, and he seems like he's trying to be a friend to Mac to boot. It doesn't make any sense, and Mac is still trying to work out what he gets out of it, what his angle is, but in the mean time, it's not fair to be rude to him when he's putting this much effort in. So Mac swallows hard and returns the smile, hoping it looks halfway genuine. Jack just keeps grinning back, and pulls away from the curb to start on the drive to work.

It's a nice morning, and with the coffee that Jack has inexplicably brought for him as well, Mac finds himself relaxing and waking up fully. Jack keeps up a steady stream of chatter about nothing of particular importance, commenting on the flight home from their last mission, the traffic on the main street by Mac's house, and the line at the coffee shop he'd stopped at on the way. The radio is on again, the same station Jack always listens to, LA ninety-five point five. It reminds him of the day in the Research lab, sitting there working on his project with Jack just hanging out, chatting about anything and nothing at all. It had been a good day and the thought gives Mac the hope that, despite his late start, today might be a good day too.

When they arrive in the parking lot, Jack gets out of the car and starts to round it, heading for the building. Mac stops, though, putting his work bag on the seat and reaching deep into it, pulling out a locked case. He fishes the small key out of a compartment on the outside of the bag and unlocks it, taking from inside it the gun he's required to carry on missions and holstering it as his hip. He doesn't wear it at home, or leaving the house, in case Bozer notices something, but also because he hates the thing. Mac hates owning the gun, hates using it even at the range, hates so much as touching the thing. The longer he can postpone it the better.

It's settled against his leg now, and he turns to Jack, flashing a thumbs-up and a tight-lipped smile. They head towards DXS together, and Mac hopes Jack doesn't notice his awkward gait, still trying to get used to the gun, like he has to every time he wears it. It feels like he's got a live bomb strapped to his waist, like there's some kind of monster latched onto his thigh with claws dug in so deep that one wrong move would cause them to sever an artery. He'd never wear the thing if he had an option, but James hadn't given him one when he'd been hired on.

The gun isn't optional, carrying it or knowing how to use it. James has a close eye on him about it, too, requiring him to recertify at the shooting range, an instructor evaluating his marksmanship every couple of months or so. Mac knows his father doesn't trust him to keep up with his training regarding the weapon, knowing full well how much he hates the thing, and James has taken precautions to keep him in line about it.

The man himself is waiting inside ready to brief them when Mac and Jack walk in, and he doesn't look pleased about the ten minutes that have passed since their arranged meeting time.

"Why is your hair wet, did you really not get up in time to dry your hair before you came to work this morning, Angus?" The tone is incredulous and unimpressed, and Mac can feel his cheeks heat up. He looks to the side, avoiding making eye contact with James, and hopes he'll move past it now that he's aired his immediate criticism with Mac's appearance.

Luckily, he seems satisfied with that and moves on quickly. Mac shuffles completely into the room and turns his attention to the screens that have come alight on the wall, deliberately not looking at Jack. If Jack has some sort of opinion about either James' comment or the state of Mac's hair, he doesn't want to know about it. The first thing he sees is a map of Brazil, with the section containing Rio de Janeiro circled and enlarged. It wouldn't be the first time he's ever been to the area, but it's been at least a year and a half, and the last time he was there, it hadn't gone well.

That had been while he was working alongside a man named Adam O'Reilly, a partnership that had ended with O'Reilly mistaking him for a hostile and taking a shot at him. Only his own reflexes, catching sight in the reflection of a screen of a barrel pointed at him seconds before it was fired, had saved his life that day. It was after that incident that Mac stopped arguing with James about making him carry a gun. Even including the partner he'd been working with when a lapse in judgement allowed him to be shot in the neck, nearly dying alone in an alley in Stockholm, had left less of an impression on him than that man had. There wasn't a day that he and O'Reilly were working together that Mac hadn't been quietly terrified, absolutely no idea what he was about to do next or how he was going to react.

(It reminded him of James. A more trigger happy, manic James, but his father none the less, the same kind of unpredictable roller coaster, happy with him one day, furious the next, and indifferent in between.)

So, given who he'd been with last time, just the two of them alone in an unfamiliar place, he's not extremely excited about the idea of going back to Rio again to repeat the situation. Even if the partner he's with this time isn't anything like O'Reilly had been.

James doesn't waste any time launching straight into the problem. The problem, in a nutshell, seems to be that there is a man hiding out in a warehouse somewhere in Rio, who has built the technological equivalent of a time bomb. He's an American national already wanted on cybercrimes charges in his home state of Vermont, and the tech found when Homeland Security raided his apartment was quite near the most advanced they'd ever seen. There's a time frame during which he has to be apprehended and the program he's written stopped, or a cyberterrorist event will target the internal systems of countless of local and regional governments. It doesn't sound like a big deal on its head, but the chaos and costs and general panic involved in just one city losing the ability to access or use its networks, nevermind a dozen or more, is a major threat, to be dealt with swiftly and soundly.

Not to mention what will happen if this man is successful, and this tips off a string of copycats, who attempt to recreate the event. Anyone else who has the skill to pull it off could witness the fallout and decide to try it themselves, for either generalized chaos or to essentially hold an entire city hostage. It's a bad outcome with the potential for a global cascade effect, and for the good of everyone with the potential to be involved, it needs to be stopped before it can get anywhere near that far.

Mac is nodding along, with James that far on the explanation of what they're being sent to do and why, and he doesn't see any kind of issue with the proposed plan of action. That is, until the end of the briefing arrives, and he sees a glaring error, a major piece of the mission that's been completely overlooked.

"Uh, dad," he says, realizing his mistake a fraction of a moment after the word leaves his mouth. The expression on James' face has gone from a determined neutral, to an irritated frown, lips pursed together and eyes narrowed. He holds up a hand, and Mac knows what's coming before he says it.

"We have talked about this," James hisses at him, as if lowering his voice somewhat at all makes this conversation private. Jack is standing no farther from him than Mac is, and if Mac can hear him perfectly clearly, it stands to reason Jack can too, and his cheeks burn at the thought.

"I know, I'm sorry," he says quickly, in an attempt to forestall the rest of the reprimand before it happens. No luck. Once James is started on something, there's no stopping him, especially if he feels as if he's been disobeyed, disrespected, or like Mac isn't representing him well as both his top agent and the sole legacy of the family name.

"While we are in this building," James continues, voice sharp and quiet, and Mac wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole, "I am not your father. I am the Director of this agency and you will remember to address me with respect. It's sir or Director and nothing else, do you understand me?"

Mac nods shortly. His throat feels tight, and his face is on fire. He's sure that if he could see himself right now he'd be flushed bright red. This is one of the most humiliating dressing-downs he's received in front of Jack so far, and he can't imagine it's doing anything to improve his partner's image of him. If anything, it reinforces the idea that Mac is a petulant child, gotten where he is for no reason other than by virtue of who his father is. James has a tendency of speaking to him like an incompetent toddler, and Mac knows it's influenced some of his partners in the past. How could it not? He's the Director.

The hope that this was all over seems to be futile, because when he looks back over, James is still staring at him expectantly. It's clear what he's expecting - a nod isn't sufficient, and he wants a verbal response.

"Yes, sir," Mac says, marginally proud of how his voice manages to rise above a whisper and sound halfway solid. "I understand." He resolutely does not allow his eyes to wander over to where Jack is standing. The man hasn't said a word, and whatever his face is doing, it's not going to be a good element to add to this situation.

"Good. Now can we get on with it?" James doesn't wait for an answer and turns back to his presentation of the information.

They can't, actually, get on with it, however. Because, regardless of his slip up with addressing his father as 'dad' in front of work colleagues, the original problem Mac was trying to raise persists. And they can't really do anything else before it's addressed.

"No, we can't," he says, and moves on before James can speak again, having whipped back around and given him a wide-eyed look that clearly says 'I know you're not actually embarrassing me like this in front of your partner'. "The cyberterrorist we're going after, he's good. From what you said, he's better than good, might be one of the best hackers we've ever run into. There's no way he doesn't have fail-safes in place for if he gets interrupted before he plans to launch his attack."

"I'm sure he does," James agrees, giving him a withering look. "Great job, you've identified a basic characteristic of a half-decent criminal, Angus, what's your point?"

"My point is I'm not a computer specialist, and neither is Jack." There's a quiet snort from Mac's left, Jack making it pretty clear what he thinks of the idea of him being any kind of computer specialist. The day down in the lab comes to mind, Jack referring to the 3D printer he'd been attempting to miniaturize as a 'doohickey'. It would be enough to make Mac laugh, if it weren't for the fact that he's hyper-aware of the expression on his father's face, indicating James is not taking his concern about the technical aspect of this mission seriously.

"Neither of us are computer specialists," Mac repeats, gesturing over at the screen, "and this guy is about as highly specialized as you can get. Whatever his systems look like, whatever failsafes he's set up? I don't think I'm qualified to deal with it."

The look on James' face doesn't change, and he waves a hand dismissively. "You'll figure something out," he says. "I have complete faith in you and you haven't let me down on a mission yet, not one like this. I know you can do it."

With that announcement, that leaves Mac feeling even less reassured than he'd been before, which is saying something, James turns and sweeps out of the room.