i'm glad you enjoyed The Hug Chapter (FINALLY!) and i hope you enjoy what's in store next!
enjoy this chapter, a bit of decompressing after all of that.
(title from mother mother's 'family')
When the car pulls into the driveway outside and the sound of the engine gets Bozer's attention, he's carrying a basket of folded laundry back to his room. It's quite sizeable, given it is the result of having put off that particular chore until he literally couldn't any more, and so after he verifies the car in the drive is one he recognizes, he opts to finish putting it away before coming to the hall to greet his roommate. It's a little odd that, as he pulls open drawers and returns neatly folded piles of fabric to their rightful homes, Bozer doesn't hear the front door open. It doesn't take that long to walk from the car to the front door, but it's not like Mac hasn't ever been known to linger for a moment, exchanging a few last words with Jack before coming inside, so he doesn't pay too much mind to it. Until he finishes with the laundry and comes back out to an empty house, Mac having still not come back inside yet.
Bozer frowns and tries to ignore the growing unease in his chest, trying to tell himself that he probably got sidetracked bickering with Jack about something unimportant. They both have a tendency to dig in on the most ridiculous stuff, each refusing to give in until they've been going back and forth on the same irrelevant point of contention for twenty-plus minutes. Last time, Bozer thinks it was about whether the neighbors down the way had two almost identical cats who took turns sitting in the front window, or if there was just one who sat in the window nearly constantly and looked slightly different depending on the lighting. He'd thought Riley was kidding when she'd texted him about that one, but then they'd still been going when they walked inside the house, and no, that really was what they were at each other about this time.
Eventually, it's been too long even for Mac and Jack to be locked in some ridiculous argument - they'd have just brought it inside by now, it's still early enough in the year that it starts getting chilly this late in the day - and Bozer walks to a window, pulling aside the curtain and squinting outside. What he sees makes his heart stutter in his chest, breath catching in his throat, his whole body going cold. Mac and Jack are, sure enough, still there by Jack's car, but they're not bickering. They're on the ground.
They're on the ground, and from what Bozer can see from this angle, Mac is slumped over in Jack's arms, and as he's processing this information, he's already taking his first frightened step towards the door. Then, something stops him. While they're on the ground, and that very fact brings to mind scenarios where Mac has abruptly passed out, been shot, stabbed, had any number of mortal injuries inflicted on his body, the part of what Bozer is seeing that stops him is Jack. He looks, from a distance at least, calm. Jack isn't on his phone, or shouting for help, or hauling Mac's bleeding body up into the car and screeching off to the nearest emergency room.
Focusing on this, and the reality that if something were seriously, dangerously wrong with Mac, there's no way Jack would just be sitting there with him, is what allows Bozer to back slowly off the panic he'd crashed into when he'd first seen them out there. As the instant jolt of frozen fear eases and passes, a different kind of unease rises and takes its place.
On one hand, this is a good thing - it hasn't slipped Bozer's attention, the way Mac has been keeping Jack literally at arm's length as well as figuratively. It's a contradiction that makes Bozer's heart hurt to see, the way Mac reacts to being touched like he's a plant that hasn't seen sunshine in a decade while simultaneously turning himself away from it, refusing to let any but a sparse few actually touch him. Most of the time, Bozer can at least understand why - he's known James MacGyver for a very long time, and he's not what could be described as an affectionate man, nor encouraging of such behavior in his son.
But with Jack… Bozer's seen how he's been reaching out, over and over proving himself someone who is steady, consistent, worthy of their trust. This is someone safe, someone dedicated to proving that he's safe, and it's good to see Mac finally letting himself believe that. Once moving past the relief that not only is Jack holding Mac, but Mac is letting him, the question of what precipitated this crashes abruptly into Bozer's brain, cutting off any relief or warmth he feels at the scene outside. Because for this to be happening, for them to be huddled on the ground together like this, for Mac to cast aside image and the illusion of not needing anyone and definitely not needing Jack…
Bozer looks away. He drops the curtain and turns sharply away from the window. This moment, what's happening outside between Mac and Jack, he knows that no one else was meant to see it, and to stand there watching it feels wrong and invasive. He paces down the hallway, back towards his own room, then pivots when he runs out of floor and starts walking again, back towards the kitchen. Over and over he walks, feeling like he must be wearing some sort of physical groove in the floor by now, waiting for Mac to come inside. Bracing for what kind of state he's going to be in when he does.
When the door finally eases open, stopping Bozer in his tracks, he doesn't know how long it's been and he deliberately avoids checking the time to see. Mac and Jack enter together, and Bozer is surprised to note that when they do, they haven't yet broken contact. As Jack turns to close the door behind them, Mac is still tucked under his arm and pressed hard against his side, one of his hands clutching onto a fistful of his jacket. It's when they turn back around, moving almost as one entity, that Bozer catches his first real glimpse of his roommate's face, and it feels like dry ice in his lungs, cold and breathless.
Mac has never been able to hide it when he cries. His emotional state paints itself across his face, has done since he was a child, and Bozer knows it's gotten him in trouble with James, who seems to have very specific opinions about what Mac should be feeling and when, taking great personal umbrage when these expectations aren't met. Right now is no exception. And so Bozer can tell, just by looking at him, the reddened eyes and flushed cheeks, the tremor still occasionally shivering through his jaw and his bottom lip, that Mac hasn't just been crying. He's been sobbing, hard enough that it's sapped the energy clean out of him, leaving him exhausted and too shattered to stop himself from hanging on to whatever strength he can find - in this case, Jack.
"Hey," Bozer says, around a dry throat, trying to sound normal. Years of practice has by now taught him that the worst thing you can do when Mac is upset is draw attention to it. You've just got to act like everything is normal, and deal with things as calmly and nonchalantly as possible. Only very rarely will he allow any pain he's experiencing to be openly acknowledged without shutting down completely, and he seems way too far gone to risk pushing right now.
"Hey," Jack says back, speaking for both of them. Mac doesn't say anything at all, his adams apple visibly bobbing as he swallows hard.
Looking between the two of them, Bozer makes a quick decision. He pushes down the instant fear he feels prickling up and down his spine at the thought of something that could've made Mac that upset, reassures himself with the knowledge that at least he looks like he isn't physically damaged this time, and straightens out his shoulders.
"Okay," sighs Bozer, taking a slight step towards Mac and making it clear through body language and eye contact that he's talking to his roommate directly, "why don't you go ahead and go get ready for bed, it's getting late and it looks like you guys have had a long day. Go on and head to my room when you're ready, I'll be in in a minute."
Mac is either comfortable enough with Jack's presence or too worn out to care that there was someone else standing there when Bozer suggested, for all intents and purposes, a sleepover, and he nods. For his part, if Jack is surprised, it doesn't show at all on his face, not so much as a twitch to betray what he thinks of that arrangement.
"Alright," Mac agrees, the first word he's spoken since he and Jack came inside, and the sound of it makes Bozer wince. The word splinters between syllables, coming out cracked and gravel-rough from a throat that's obviously painfully raw. He moves with a deep, bone-tired slowness as he straightens up, pulling away from Jack with a reluctance Bozer might not have noticed if he wasn't paying such close attention.
Before he can turn and head down the hall, Mac stops. He looks at Jack and opens his mouth like he's going to say something, only for his voice to seemingly fail him, a soft, almost whined breath coming from his chest, followed by silence.
"It's okay," is what Jack says in response, and his slight smile, worried around the edges, is enough to stop whatever Mac had been trying to come up with. "You heard the man. Get some rest, kid." He reaches up to first clasp Mac's shoulder, then squeeze the side of his neck, before turning his own body to encourage Mac down the hall, guiding him along the way with a gentle push so feather light it barely wrinkles the back of his shirt.
They both stand there and watch him go together, until Mac's disappeared down the end of the hall and, echoing through from elsewhere in the house, water starts running. Only then, with Mac safely out of both eyesight and earshot, does Bozer round on Jack and demand, in a slightly hushed tone, "What the hell, Jack? He looked like- He looked- What the hell?"
Jack sighs, a sound that belongs to a man much older and more tired than he, and runs a hand down his face. It's interesting to watch, in a halfway-infuriating sort of sense, the way the gears in Jack's brain visibly turn, sorting through what happened to try and locate a version of it he could tell Bozer without disclosing information he can't give up.
"Did you ever meet Alfred Peña?"
It's just about the last name Bozer would've expected to come up, and he feels his heart plummeting through the floor when Jack says it. Unable to bring himself to speak, Bozer just nods. Mac's first security detail had been a good man who Bozer liked quite a lot and had mourned deeply when he died. If whatever happened today that put Mac in that kind of state had something to do with Al… Knowing he never got the full story of what had happened there does not have Bozer feeling extremely confident about the rest of this conversation.
"The same… man," Jack says, in a slow, careful voice that means he's picking his words like he's sorting through shards of glass to find pieces that are safe to touch, "that is the reason he died was the reason for what we were doing today." That's not it. It'd be enough, that's for certain, but that's not where it ends, and Bozer is too heartsick and frustrated with worry to let it drop there.
"And?" he challenges, then waits. Watches as, again, Jack's mind mulls over how much to say and how much not to say, what to twist and what can remain as it is.
"We had a close call," is what he eventually lands on. Then, Jack winces, and amends the statement. "I did, really. I had a close call. And Mac was… It shook him, y'know. Pretty bad."
In the seconds after Jack says, not in so many words but clear enough that Bozer understands perfectly, that he'd almost died today, in front of Mac, two things come one after the other into Bozer's suddenly empty brain. He thinks about Mac, the day he'd come home from that job that had taken him somewhere he'd only say had been very, very cold, and told Bozer that they'd nearly lost Jack. There had been a devastated grief on his face, left over from a terrible loss that only barely hadn't happened, and Bozer can still hear the edge in his voice when Mac had admitted, quiet as anything, that he didn't know what he'd do if Jack died.
In the immediate aftermath of hearing that this has happened once again, Bozer thinks about that day, and he thinks about pie crust.
Mac had passed out cold on the couch, midway through some action movie both Bozer and Jack had seen a collective dozen or so times. Jack had eyed him where he lay, crumpled over against the far left armrest, and wondered out loud if he ought to wake him up, or just try to move him to a more comfortable place to sleep. From the kitchen, Bozer had advised in a hushed voice not to, that it was better to just let him keep sleeping these days. So, instead of doing anything about Mac's less than ideal napping spot, Jack had turned the movie down a few notches, gotten up, and walked over into the kitchen.
For the better part of half an hour, Bozer had been trying and failing to make a fruit pie. Or, rather, in that specific moment, trying and failing to make a crust that would, hopefully at some point, contain a fruit pie. Nothing about it had been turning out, though, and since the pie was the one he was planning to make for his mother's birthday, he was determined to get the recipe right in a trial run before he made the real thing.
Seeing that he was having something of a difficult time, and upon finding out why that was, Jack had offered his family recipe, one his own mother had patiently taught him standing at the kitchen counter in his childhood home in Texas. He and Bozer had then made the crust together, while Mac slept like a rock in the other room, quietly laughing and enjoying each other's company. It was the first time they'd really done anything together without Mac's direct participation, and it was proof that they had more in common than a mutual investment in the survival and wellbeing of a friend. It was the first time Bozer had directly thought of Jack himself as a friend, rather than just Mac's security detail, the man tasked with keeping his roommate alive.
Mac's stricken face and a pie crust. That's what Bozer thinks of when he hears that today, once again, Jack and death had brushed shoulders.
"Shook him," Bozer repeats, and his voice sounds a little distant. He can still hear the running water, somewhere back behind him, white noise that seems louder than before. The tips of his fingers are tingling on the edge of numb, and there's a tightness in his chest he's grown all too familiar with, when Mac comes home with a limp he thinks he's hiding, withdrawn and barely talking for days. "Right."
They regard each other there in the front hallway, a novel's worth of words unsaid between them, and for a second, just a second, Bozer is absolutely sure Jack is about to tell him everything. And, for the space of that second, Bozer is sure he's about to ask. If he asks right now, Jack is going to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. And maybe what stops him is cowardice. Maybe it's not wanting to know the truth for fear of what shape it's going to take. Maybe it's spite, wanting Mac to have to own up to everything himself. But regardless of what the reason is for his hesitation, the moment passes, and Bozer doesn't ask.
Instead, he just shakes his head, glancing back down the hall towards where Mac had disappeared to. Tonight, they'll sleep side by side, he and Mac, in Bozer's bed, the steady rise and fall of his chest enough to quell Bozer's fear for the time being at least. It would be easy to assume this ritual of theirs, the way they'll sometimes still end a difficult, terrible day close enough to hear a beloved friend's steady, healthy breathing, is mainly for Mac's benefit. That Bozer tolerates this in deference to his roommate's capital-I Issues, far outgrown needing such comfort himself. That assumption would be wrong. Just as often it's Bozer's heart that beats too loud too fast, locked in a living nightmare of bruises and long silences and imagined funerals, and today is no exception.
With a deep, shoulder-heaving breath, Bozer turns back around to face Jack and tries to put the thought of the man's death out of his mind. The sound of the shower has shut abruptly off, the water silenced after a few brief minutes. Bozer feels suddenly exhausted himself, ready to fall into bed and sleep for a year, hopefully to wake up in a world where the people he cares about are safer, or at least one where he understands the shape and nature of the threat. He starts to thank Jack for bringing Mac home, tell him he's glad everyone made it out okay, and wish him a goodnight, when something stops him.
Jack seems like he'd been about to start leaving himself, angled towards the front door with his hand lifted towards it, but stopped before he could take a step. His face is troubled and hesitant, and Bozer would imagine his own looks much the same just then. When the offer falls out of his mouth, he's not entirely sure where it came from or why, just that he's monumentally glad Jack is alright, and knows that things are likely to be difficult for Mac tonight.
"Look, do you want to stay?"
At first, Jack is sure he's misheard. Bozer's standing there in the hall of his and Mac's house, looking like he's aged ten years from the happy-go-lucky kid Jack's gotten to know, looking like he'd been about to wish Jack a goodnight, only to say something completely different.
"Sorry?" Jack says, instead of answering the question.
"I just mean…" Bozer looks a little embarrassed, then shakes his head, and the look vanishes, replaced by something definite and a little stubborn. "No, that's exactly what I meant. Tonight's gonna suck for all of us, I think, and maybe we'd all feel a little better if you were here. So, just- if you don't want to you don't have to, but if you do, I think you should stay."
And so Jack stays.
He settles on the couch in the living room, a pillow tossed on one end and a spare blanket pulled from a hall closet set on top of it. Even after Bozer's disappeared into his room, Jack doesn't settle down and try to sleep, not yet. Instead, he sits on the couch and looks out through the living room window into the dark of the night, settled heavy over the back porch. The city glitters somewhere in the distance, and Jack wonders about Senator Roger Delaney, the man whose life Mac saved for a second time that day.
Somewhere out there, that man has gone home to his family, probably frightened and more than a little shaken, but alive and well. And here in this house, Jack himself is alive and well, though admittedly also frightened and shaken by the whole thing. Tomorrow likely holds a visit to Jack Senior's grave, that's for sure. Trying to avoid ruminating too extensively on the portion of the day where he'd nearly been blown sky high, Jack goes through a series of breathing exercises he'd learned after he'd been discharged. He closes his eyes and counts inhales and exhales, feeling his body slow and calm. He's okay. Mac is okay. Everybody got out of today okay.
Mac, crumpled against his chest, sobbing violently in his arms until he was sure the kid was going to make himself sick, the look on his face when he'd thought Jack was pushing him away, guilty and embarrassed and hurt.
Alright, so maybe 'okay' might be pushing it a bit. But they're all still alive, and that means there's still hope for 'okay', and, Jack would argue, there's a strong case to be made for 'good'.
He's been sitting there for a while, calming his own nervous system and still somewhat reeling from the shock of having Mac break down like that in the driveway, clinging to him after barely allowing Jack to touch him for months on end, when the light knock sounds at the door. A glance to the clock tells him it's far past when anyone should conceivably be visiting other people, and Jack stands up slowly. Experience and instinct sends his hand into his pocket, fishing out a knife and setting his thumb on the spring-release trigger that will extend the blade.
The knife goes tucked back into Jack's pocket immediately when he sees who's standing there on the porch, backlit by the pale white light of the street lamp up by the sidewalk. Riley doesn't acknowledge him or betray any amount of surprise that the person who'd answered Mac and Bozer's front door was neither of the two of them, instead just brushing straight past Jack and into the house. He just stands there and blinks for a moment, baffled, still holding the door open, then shakes his head and follows her into the living room.
There's a shoulder bag set on the floor by the couch, which is where Riley has seen fit to park herself, and she's got her jaw set in a line that means she's angry, or upset, or maybe both. She looks like she's dressed for bed, wearing the kind of sweatpants she's always favored as pajamas and a grey and orange sweatshirt reading 'CALTECH' across the front in bright, aggressive lettering. Jack recognizes it as the one she'd borrowed from Mac that day in the front yard, when Bozer had brought the foam swords from his friend's play and the three of them had spent an evening acting their age for once while Jack watched, a light, proud feeling in his chest. Evidently, 'borrowed' wasn't quite the right word, as it seems to have never made it back to its original owner.
"So…" Jack says eventually, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch from the one Riley has claimed for herself. The rest of the question asks itself and he lets it, not saying anything in favor of letting her take the lead.
Shrugging one shoulder, Riley says dismissively, "Well, I went to your apartment first, and you weren't there, so I came here next." What of it? her expression challenges, and Jack holds his hands up in the universal, silent message of surrender. This is not the time to interrogate her motives for looking for him, or assuming this is where he'd be, or point out that she has a perfectly functioning cell-phone he knows for a fact she goes nowhere without and keeps charged at all times.
Speaking of cell-phones, Jack slides his out of his pocket, figuring it's probably a good idea to let Bozer know, if he's still awake at this point, that there's someone else in his house. He sends a quick text, alerting the one likely conscious resident of the house that they have a second visitor with them. Bozer shuffles out of his room a few moments later, blinking sleep from his eyes and giving Riley a little wave.
"Can have Mac's room if you want, he's with me tonight anyway," he tells her, voice slowed and fuzzy the way a person tends to sound when they'd been nearly asleep. He doesn't seem at all surprised to see her there and already anticipates that they're going to have another overnight guest, if the unprompted offer is anything to go by. She acknowledges him with a nod, and without another word, Bozer returns to his room, stumbling slightly across the floor with heavy, tired steps.
Riley doesn't get up and head off to bed herself, not just yet. Instead she studies Jack for a minute, expression unreadable, and then reaches down into the bag she brought with her. It's the same game she and Mac had played together earlier that same endless, dragging day. She sets the Mancala board on the coffee table then pauses, her hand hesitating over the felt bag of flattened marbles.
"Tired?" she asks, and Jack reads around the one-word question into everything else she hadn't asked.
"Nope," he tells her, and she looks away, beginning to set up the board.
They begin in an odd, slightly tense silence, the kind that bends and gives like an ancient dam, holding back water that will burst at any moment. Jack doesn't have to wait long for Riley to start talking. She doesn't look at him when she does, instead focused on distributing the marbles out into the pots past the one she'd selected.
"Matty drove me home, and when she dropped me off, she gave me something."
"Oh?" Jack tries to keep his voice light, allowing her to set her own pace with what she's telling him. He takes his turn, scooping an overflowing pot into his hand, reaching down to capture one wayward piece that's fallen onto the floor. As he's straightening up, she continues.
"Yeah. Boxes of after action reports. There's a lot of yours and Mac's, but there's older ones too. It's gotta be a couple hundred pages, easily. She wants me to go through them, start documenting things, so that when she takes it to the Oversight board she'll have something to show them other than instincts and some weird things she's seen."
It's a big step. If Matty's asking Riley to start documenting evidence of James's misconduct like this, combing back through reports that were probably classified to the gills, she must have been deadly serious when she'd told Jack about escalating the investigation. And her timeline is a lot more concrete than he'd thought it was when they'd talked before Amsterdam, before the Ghost, before the hazy dust storm of the last few days.
"Wow," is all Jack can find to say. It's useless and inadequate, but she nods, the hint of a smile quirking up the edge of her lips.
"Yeah," Riley agrees, voice soft and tired. "Wow is right." She reaches out and chooses her next pot, earning herself a second turn when the last marble lands in her end of the board.
They play round after round of the simple game, the only sound in the dimly lit living room the gentle clack of rounded marbles in the polished grooves carved into the board. Jack doesn't keep score of who wins how many times, nor does he push to keep talking about James or the investigation, content to sit here and spend time with her. The night wears on late until Jack can feel his eyelids growing heavy, see the slow in Riley's hand when she reaches over to scoop a handful of marbles out of her chosen dish. They finish through that game and then she stands, stretching just like she had when she was a kid, face scrunched up in a way she'd always hated when Jack described as 'cute'.
Wordlessly, Riley starts heading for Mac's room, and Jack sits up on the couch. He snags the pillow and straightens it at one end, beginning to spread the blanket out as well when something stops him. Riley's footsteps have returned, come to a stop just behind him on the couch, and now her arms are around his neck. He can feel her breathing, her hair tickling the side of his face, and it's a long pause before she speaks.
"I'm really, really glad you're okay," Riley tells him, and before he can answer her, she's gone, nothing left behind but the phantom feeling of her arms around him and the intense sincerity of her voice echoing in his ears. If there had been any question before, there isn't one now, that this visit had been about far, far more than updating Jack on the progress of their underground inquiry with matty.
Jack has to admit he's feeling pretty special, by now. Both of his kids have now hugged him today, both of them stopping suddenly behind him and throwing their arms around him when he wasn't expecting it. All in all, he's going to call this one a good day. Sure he nearly died, and that part hadn't been so great, but Mac had hugged him without prompting, and Riley had come to find him, just to prove to herself he was still okay. It's enough to make a man feel pretty loved, and it's with this feeling, heavy and warm in his chest, that he lays down and closes his eyes, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
