so uh. this chapter is a doozy and it's... really long i'm sorry sldfjs. a lot of things are coming together at this point of the fic as we speed towards some explosive moments and truths, so i suppose there's lots to get in. enjoy!
(chapter title from the unlikely candidates' 'your love could start a war')
(chapter warnings: emotional/verbal abuse escalated from usual levels in this fic, frequent discussion of injuries and medication. james as a whole.)
Mac surfaces from sleep in the slow, weighed-down way that comes from having been on heavy-duty medication. He reaches awareness after long, unsettling moments of hazed static, and the first thing he knows is pain. His head is aching and his entire body rather feels like he's been tossed in a washing machine on the spin cycle with a couple dumbbells thrown in with him for good measure, leaving him with more questions than answers. Rising above it all, though, quickly winning out against the rest of the damage, is his arm. Left arm, Mac figures out after some concentration. The shoulder is worse than the wrist, and all of it is surrounded by an odd, tight feeling.
Resigning himself to the reality that he is in fact awake, and is going to continue to feel like this as long as he remains so, Mac tries to open his eyes and sit up. In both objectives, the operative word proves to be 'tries'. The light, when he cracks his eyelids, is intolerably, stabbingly blinding, and his attempt to shuffle upright is interrupted by the sudden realization that not only does his left arm feel like he's been dangled off a roof and swung around by it, he also can't seem to get it to move. It's gathered tight up against his chest, and Mac can't lower it, can't pull it away, leaving him lopsided and off-balance. Panic is just beginning to rise in him, his lungs starting to feel tight, every discomfort he's experiencing ratcheting up in tandem, until it's all interrupted and brought to a grinding halt.
Someone's hands have caught him, by his right shoulder and his left side, palm pressed warm against his ribs as Mac is eased back down onto the surface he'd been laying on when he woke up. Ordinarily, this would have made things worse by a factor of a hundred - he's injured, had been unconscious, obviously been dosed with something pretty intense, unable to move his wounded arm, and to top it all off, when he'd tried to sit up, a pair of large, strong hands had stopped him. Somehow, though, it hadn't. Rather than send him spinning off completely into an anxiety attack, or triggering his well-trained instinct to fight off the person pushing him back down, that grip served instead to calm Mac, ground him and allow him to be still enough to catch his breath.
"Hey, Mac, it's alright. Calm down, kid, you're safe, everything's okay. We're at my apartment, things got a little dicey and exfil had to give you some meds that didn't agree with you too good." Jack. The words, the touch, the presence that gave him the sense of being able to stay here safely, vulnerable laid out on his back without use of one of his arms, it's Jack.
Identifying the person who's here with him gives Mac the push he needed to finally open his eyes, squinting hard against the still far-too-bright light streaming into the room and all around them. It takes a long moment for Mac's vision to clear, to allow him to focus enough to actually make out any detail of his surroundings, and while he lays on what appears to be a couch and gets his bearings, Jack doesn't let go.
Memory is a fickle, funny thing.
The feeling of that touch, Jack talking to him, it sends a kaleidoscope burst of disconnected recall lurching into Mac's mind. Fragments of hours past all crash into one another, contextless and uncooperative.
Mac. Partner. Buddy. Kid. He hears it all in Jack's voice, those names, and another too, softer and more affectionate and almost entirely forgotten, which is probably a good thing, because Mac doesn't know what he'd do with the feeling if he remembered it. The names come along with the words that had followed them, anchorless and floating detached from whatever sentences they had originally been contained in, here, okay, easy, safe, safe, safe.
Most of it, though, the flashes and disjointed splinters Mac can recall from what had apparently been a pretty disruptive night, is the feeling of hands. He remembers coming half-awake at sudden moments, afraid and hurting, no idea what was going on, and those hands being there every time, soothing and holding him until he went back under again, gentled back to sleep by the feeling of someone's fingers forming careful lines of guarding pressure over his side, knuckles brushing his cheek. Mac both wants to hold onto that partially-recalled feeling forever, and to avoid thinking about it too closely at all, because he knows he'd leaned into it, let himself accept and encourage the support and, worse, the comfort offered.
Blinking hard, Mac tries to focus on the here and now, on actually being able to sit up this time. The source of the inability to move his arm reveals itself to be the hoodie he's wearing, zipped up over his arm, effectively trapping it against his chest and not letting him move the injured limb too much in his sleep. He'd imagine it also would've been rather complicated to get the sleeve over the braces he's noticed he's wearing, once Jack helps him settle against the back of the couch and undo the zipper, freeing his arm. There's thick, reinforced fabric and wide straps of tough black velcro immobilizing both his shoulder and his wrist, and he pokes at them experimentally, letting out a hiss when the damaged nerves respond with a hot, bright flare.
Having deemed him awake and with it enough to know what's going on, Jack explains how they'd ended up here. Mac's shoulder had been dislocated, and his wrist as well though only partially, and they're both in place now after simple reductions. DXS medical had run x-rays that showed no damage, and the prognosis was good. The final word from the doctor overseeing his case was that he should make a quick recovery with no lasting damage, and it's a relief to hear. There's always a question at the back of Mac's mind, whenever something like this happens, if this might finally be it for him. If this might be the mission that, one way or another, took him out of the game. Most people, he can remember being cautioned by one of his old partners, Cassandra Hall, stiffly and disapprovingly after he'd nearly drowned on a mission once, save at least some of their nine lives for after they hit their thirties, MacGyver.
Jack doesn't scold him. He doesn't narrow his eyes or purse his lips or tell Mac he should've known better than to end up in a situation leaving him with one-and-a-half dislocations and an intolerance to medications reducing him to camping out on his partner's couch all night, disturbing him a dozen times when he woke up incoherent and freaking out. Instead, he sits on the coffee table in front of Mac, filling in the rest of what happened after Mac was too out of it to remember in an easygoing, casual voice. Eventually, he must decide that Mac isn't going to keel back over again if he's let out of his sight, because Jack claps his hands to his knees and stands up.
"I was just about to throw on some breakfast," Jack says as he walks back around the couch, towards the kitchen. Mac's been here before a handful of times, and has a pretty good grasp of where things are, even without contorting his aching body to visually track his partner's movements. Though he has to admit, spending the night is a first.
From the other room, slightly raised so as to carry clearly, Jack's voice continues. "Medical sent us home with some more pills. Dr. Coyle said it was stuff she'd given you before, she's been with DXS longer than Matty has, but I wanted to wait until you were totally with it to try and give you anything. They're on the coffee table, see if you recognize the label and take two. I know you've gotta be in a lot of pain."
Mac doesn't respond verbally. His gaze flicks to the coffee table next to where Jack had just been sitting, and sure enough, there's a truly cliched orange bottle with a white cap, perched innocently on top of the polished wood. He's able to reach out and nab it without too much strain, and a look at the label tells him that it is indeed a drug he's familiar with, one he's taken before with no adverse side effects. Even so, Mac hesitates, doesn't try and remove the cap himself or ask Jack to come and help him get it open.
The pain isn't that bad, objectively speaking. Mac knows he can grit his teeth and tough it out without losing track of what's going on around him or becoming unable to speak as it seized his body in riptides. It had only been bad enough to do that on the plane because he'd been panicking. Freaking out just makes things worse, he knows this, and he only has his own nerves to blame for getting him so worked up that it had reached that point.
During his first major in-the-field injury, Mac had been partnered with Seth Haken, who he'd later describe to Bozer as 'duller than a box of single-size socket wrenches'. His father had been in the field with them for once, needing a rather squirrely contact of his in Beirut to cooperate to get the intel they needed. Mac had taken a bad fall when evading their bad guy of the month, and when Haken had suggested mildly that maybe they ought to call exfil in early or take him to a local doctor for something to dull the shooting blades of hot pain in his leg leaving Mac crouched on the floor gasping, James had cut him off. He'd snapped at Haken to watch the door while he had a word with Mac.
Haken had backed off and rolled his eyes when James's attention was off him, stepping outside to do as instructed. He'd never really cared much about what was going on beside his specific marching orders anyway. As uninteresting a person as he was, he was equally as uninterested in the world around him, and never asked a question he didn't have to. A good operative, Haken had lasted longer than most, but Mac had always known he was an irritating mission objective to the man at the best of times.
Once Mac's partner was gone, James had crouched down next to him and said, "Angus, you need to calm down."
Half breathless with pain and still slumped on the floor, shoulder braced against a cold cement wall, Mac had blinked at him, unsure what he'd meant.
"I said to calm," James repeated slowly, voice firm and just slightly raised from his normal speaking volume, "down. I know it feels like it's bad, but it only hurts this much because you're freaking out. If you just calm down, it'll feel better, the pain will lessen, and you'll be able to focus."
And Mac tried. He really did, breathing in deeply and slowly, trying to focus past the way he feels like his ankle's been crushed in a bear trap. When he snuck a look at it, it looked fine, which had lent credence to what James was saying. But then he tried to move, and it surged back up again, all of Mac's attention focused on the screaming limb.
"You just have to find it in yourself to overcome this," James told him, still in that calm voice. "Try harder. Deep breaths, calm down."
"I can't." It came out in a pathetic wheeze, airless and edged in a whine. "I can't."
When James responded, it was louder. Harder. "When you signed up for this world, you checked 'I can't' at the door," he'd said, and Mac had cringed, hands hovering over his own injured ankle, away from the anger he'd thought he might have caught hint of behind the words. "Don't ever let me catch the words 'I can't' coming out of your mouth again. You will."
So Mac had nodded, swiftly and jerkily, and grit his teeth, forcing himself up off the floor. He'd breathed as calmly as he could, waiting for the pain to die down. It never really did, just eased slightly over time, as he focused harder and harder on the job still left to do.
His ankle had been fractured. They found out when they got home.
"Food's almost ready, if you wanna make your way in here at some point." Jack's voice cuts through the memory, bringing him back to the present with a small, sharp inhale.
Mac doesn't know how much time he lost sitting there on the couch, and it's an unnerving thought that it could have been full minutes spent staring off into middle distance, thinking about Seth Haken and Beirut and a broken ankle. He tries to clear his mind of that mission, just one in a long line of missions that had been successes with asterisks attached. Instead, he focuses on the feeling of the sun on his face, streaming in from the bright day outside, the sound of Jack in the kitchen clattering around.
His arm gives a dull throb, and Mac looks down at it, face twisted in distaste. He's still wearing a hoodie that doesn't belong to him and he studies it for a moment. It's a shamrock green color, with the Dallas Stars hockey team logo split in half by the open zipper, something he only recognizes because Jack has put games on TV before, when he was at the house while Bozer was out and Mac was working on his motorcycle or another project.
Slowly, stiffly, trying his best to ignore how much it hurts to move at all, Mac levers himself up off the couch one-handed. He shuffles into the kitchen, sits down heavily at the small table off to the side, and watches Jack cook. The man is standing at the stove stirring something in a pot, and Mac cringes. He's not really feeling too hungry, and honestly a little nauseated thinking of eating, but he's going to try, because Jack is cooking breakfast for him and he can't be rude. Not when Jack never had to do any of this and Mac already owes him so deeply by now it's dizzying to think about.
He looks down when Jack sets a bowl in front of him. The contents appear to be some kind of oatmeal or grits or other hot cereal, with pieces of cut fruit mixed in. It smells sweet in a kind of mild, unassertive way that doesn't have his fragile stomach turning, and Mac is lost for words.
It's a little overwhelming, to be sitting here in somebody's sun filled kitchen on a bright, calm morning, with breakfast they hand-made for him, wearing someone else's sweater they'd helped dress him in when he'd been unable to handle dressing himself. Mac's eyes feel hot and itchy, his throat tight. He's finding himself getting choked up by the simple, unbearable kindness of it all. And because that's ridiculous, he clears his throat and starts to slowly eat his cereal.
So distracted is he by the odd feelings he's trying to swallow down with spoonfuls of fruit and cereal that Mac doesn't notice when Jack walks out of the room or back in again, at least until there's a plastic rattle, a hollowed tap, and the bottle of pills is on the table next to his water glass. Jack doesn't say anything, but he doesn't need to. The message is in the bottle, untouched and still full.
"Don't need them," Mac mutters, barely refraining from doing something unforgivably childish and pushing the pills away like a kindergartener confronted with a plate of vegetables.
"I beg to differ, kid, I can see it in your face. You're in way too much pain."
Too much pain for what? Mac almost asks, because they don't have a task in front of them right now, no objective to tackle, no time-sensitive mission to complete. He can't puzzle out what it is Jack thinks he's in too much pain to be doing, or what he's gauging to be 'too much' and how. The orange plastic bottle doesn't hold the answers either, though Mac keeps staring at it like it does, like there's something there for him besides a clouded mind and slowed reflexes. When he's silent for too long, Jack lets out a muted sigh and pulls the other chair up to the table, sitting down with Mac.
"Okay, it's time to talk about this," he says, and the words are gentle and quiet, almost resigned. Like Jack is sad to say them, and it's this that causes Mac to look up. "You said something yesterday on the plane, about how it wouldn't hurt so bad if you stopped panicking."
Had he said that? Mac can't remember, but he wouldn't be surprised if he had. It's what he's been taught, over and over, and for some reason in moments like those, fearful and hazed, he's always had an easier time finding James's words than his own.
"Seemed to think," Jack goes on, "that the reason you were in pain was because you were, quote, 'freaking out', and not because you were seriously injured."
Mac still doesn't say anything, but Jack doesn't seem cowed by this. His voice continues in that soft but unwavering tone, almost like James's had been when Mac broke his ankle that day in Beirut, except somehow exactly the opposite.
"I need you to hear something, even if you don't understand it yet."
Unable to bear the look on Jack's face, Mac looks down and away. Takes another spoonful of food, though it tastes like ash in his mouth and he can barely swallow it down. The rest stays where it is, slowly cooling as Mac can't bring himself to take another bite.
"When someone is violent to you," and if Mac gives just the slightest flinch at the word, he figures he can blame it on a twinge in his wrist, "physically violent or- or emotionally violent, Mac, the pain that comes from that is real. The pain you feel, any pain you feel, kid, is real."
There's pain now alright. Mac's throat has closed off again, and it feels like someone's got a vice grip around his chest, squeezing until his lungs are about to pop. He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to sit here at this table, wearing this hoodie that's so soft and warm and comfortable, listening to Jack talk to him like he's small and scared, because isn't that just the truth of the matter? Mac feels small and scared, far more often than he likes to admit to even himself, and right now he feels something else, too. Seen. He feels seen, like he's been stripped of everything he's pretended to be and fooled a lot of people into thinking he is and all that's left is a kid in over his head, wishing someone would come around on a life-raft and hold out a hand.
"It's not your fault, and you didn't cause it." Apparently, Jack still isn't done. "Feeling pain is part of being human and you should never be expected to act like that's not true. I see it, I can see it in your face. So please, if you can bring yourself to at all, please take the pills. Whatever you're worried I'm gonna think, whatever you think it says about you… I won't and it doesn't."
Mac takes the pills. He finishes his breakfast, too, and then stays seated at the kitchen table for a long time while the medication takes effect, listening to the rote, domestic sounds of Jack cleaning up. One of the strangest things he'd noted about his partner's apartment is the man doesn't have a dishwasher, preferring instead to hand-wash his dishes and set them to dry in a rack set up on the counter. At some point, Mac thinks, he ought to ask about that. There's sure to be a story behind it - there usually is, with Jack.
As the morning drags on late and slow, the loud, bright sunlight warming the living room air, Mac sits on the couch. He feels fuzzy and spaced out, losing track of his thoughts more than once and having a little trouble following the handful of conversations he and Jack drift into, but an injury like this will keep their team grounded for at least a week, and he has nothing he needs to be doing today, so it's not the end of the world. And it's done its job too. The pain is, while not totally gone, dimmed and dulled down to more of a bruised throb than the sense that someone is yanking on his arm every few seconds, trying to pull it out of its socket again. For a while, for a long, calm while, things are okay.
They watch more of some show Mac can't recall the name of that has a lot of snow - he thinks the protagonist is a doctor or something - and he takes another dose of painkillers after a couple of hours. Riley stops by at some point, dropping herself down on the couch next to him and playing some number puzzle game on her phone. It's not entirely clear why she's there - it's not like Mac is great conversation at the moment - but Jack doesn't ask questions, so neither does he. At some point the conclusion is drawn that Mac will be able to go home tonight, now that he's more with it, and able to recall his story clearly.
After a while, Riley leaves, wishing them both a warm goodbye and briefly scratching her fingers through the back of Mac's hair, nails skimming his scalp in an affectionate move that has him closing his eyes and leaning into it, on her way to the door. It's once she's been gone for at least twenty minutes, Jack poking around in the other room doing something Mac is sure he's been told about and promptly forgot in the still hazy swirl of his fogged brain, that everything changes.
There's a buzz at Mac's hip, and he frowns down at the pocket of the hoodie he and Jack had, in a coordinated effort, worked his braced arm into so he wasn't left with it half actually on, half draped awkwardly and continually slipping off his shoulder. It's a good thing Jack is bigger than him, because it leaves room in the sleeve and shoulders for the material strapping his strained joints in place without too much strain on the fabric. Mac's phone had, somewhere during all of that, ended up in the pocket. This is the first time it's gone off, and he fishes around for it awkwardly, wondering why he'd put it in the left pocket when it was his right hand that he was capable of using, and then every other thought in his mind freezes still.
"Jack," he says around the lump that's suddenly formed in his throat.
"Yeah, bud? What's up?" Jack pokes his head back into the living room, leaning casually against the wall.
"Can you drive me in to work? Later, I mean. I just- I can't drive with…" Trailing off, Mac shrugs his good shoulder awkwardly, hoping the rest of that explanation will take care of itself. His mouth feels dry and his words slowed.
Now Jack walks all the way into the living room, a frown overtaking his face. "Why are you going in? You're in a sling, and I didn't get a call."
"He's got me coming in for review, y'know," Mac explains, trying to rush through it too fast for either of them to get caught up on what that means. The attention focused on him has him feeling embarrassed, cheeks heating when Jack's frown doesn't lessen, rather getting deeper. More worried. "It's fine, I can probably call a taxi or something-"
"No, you're not going to call a taxi," interrupts Jack, shaking his head. "Of course I'll drive you, but a review? Today, after that? I'm just… surprised." Surprised doesn't sound like the right word.
Nodding, Mac tries to brush it off. "You gotta admit, things went pretty badly. It'll be fine, it's better to get it over with." They don't talk about it more than that, but there's a different feeling now, a heavy weight over what was previously a light, easy day.
On the drive in, Mac tries not to pay too close attention to the look on Jack's face. He's got plenty to distract him at least - he'd timed his last dose of painkillers so that it would be wearing off by the time specified in the text from James, and his shoulder is feeling worse than it has all day. By the time he reaches the conference room he's been summoned to, he's much sharper, completely aware of what's going on around him, but the pain is slowly mounting, and he can see the concern on Jack's face when they part ways.
James, waiting for him in the conference room, studies him a long moment when he walks in. His eyes are calculating and evaluating, and his eyebrows are creeping up as he takes in what he's seeing, the obnoxiously green Dallas Stars hoodie Mac is still wearing, the sling he's got on over it. The edge of the wrist brace, poking out from the sleeve.
"Heard you didn't break anything," is the first thing he says, neutral and almost bored sounding. Wordlessly, Mac nods, and James moves on, asking in a slightly more stern tone, "Do you know how you're going to explain… all that to your roommate?"
Rather than follow the acidic instinct lurching into his mouth to point out that James has known Bozer for going on fifteen years and very well knows his name, Mac swallows it down and says instead, "Flight of stairs."
With a slight scoff in the back of his throat, James gestures to his good hand, where the sleeve has ridden up somewhat, exposing the bruising left behind on both his wrists by the handcuffs he'd been wearing when he'd gone down. "Because that's going to justify your little bracelet there. Though I guess… whatever the hell it is you're wearing right now's got long sleeves, try and keep them pulled down."
This is not exactly Mac's first rodeo, and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from pointing this out. The pain has left him with a shorter fuse than usual, on the verge of saying something that would land him in far deeper trouble than he's already surely in, and given it's only been a minute or so, that's not a good record to start with.
"So you know why I called you in here today, I'm sure," James says, finally getting to the point. This is a trick question. It always is, but Mac knows he has to answer it anyway.
"Because things went wrong."
"Because things went wrong," James repeats back to him, voice going suddenly hard, "and you need to explain to me exactly what happened and exactly how you're not going to let it happen again. How you're going to let something like that," referring definitely not to the injury itself, but to the incident with the adverse reaction to the medication after it, "from happening in the middle of a mission rather than just at the end of one."
"That's gonna be hard, given that it happened because you took my medical information out of my file and I was in too much pain to think straight never mind remember my allergies and tell anyone about them." It's about before Mac can stop it, and while two for three is not a bad record, this was the worst retort of the three, and objectively the one he should've tried hardest to keep to himself. No matter, though. It's out, now, and he can't take it back.
"Don't be dramatic," snaps James, now definitely irritated, and going to land in angry shortly if something doesn't happen to diffuse things. "You don't have any allergies, Angus, you have a handful of sensitivities and if you didn't want to deal with the consequences, you shouldn't have let them give you anything until you calmed down enough to, as you put it, think straight. Pain is a panic response, you just need to-"
"Calm down, I know," Mac shoots back, because he's in for a penny at this point, he may as well pay the pound of flesh for getting to speak his mind for once, Jack's words from that morning throbbing at his temples like a headache. "I didn't stub my toe, dad, I got my shoulder and my wrist dislocated. At the same time."
"You address me with respect in this building, I'm done reminding you about this." And there it is, the helpless inevitability of the anger, crashing down on them both, a curtain call signalling the epilogue act, the one the audience never gets to see. "Your wrist was a partial and your shoulder was reduced by one exfil agent on a moving plane, stop trying to make me sound like some kind of monster here. I'm just trying to keep you from being too reliant on things that will dull your performance."
Something feels different this time. Maybe it's the pain in his arm, maybe the lingering inhibition lowering properties of the pills, but this time, Mac feels it too. The anger that characterizes these meetings, rising in his chest and making him feel breathless and fevered.
"We were on exfil," he says, voice pitching up, incredulous and upset. "My performance was over, and I needed painkillers, I was in- It hurt. It hurt so bad I couldn't think, I-" Mac stops, breath caught up in a surprised hitch, sharp and stinging.
It's been more than a year since the last time he made the mistake of letting himself get so worked up he actually started to cry during a review, but standing here, trying desperately to get James to understand exactly how much agony he'd been in when he let Lucia Sosa drug him, it's a narrow thing. Because James is still glaring at him, something shocked in his thundered brow, like he can't believe this conversation has gone in the direction it has. Mac abandons that angle, hope for getting his father to understand how it had felt to be in that much pain, that he'd needed the meds, falling away, replaced by something else. Anger is easier to take. Anger is safer than… than this.
"Why is my file still gone from the system?"
James actually rolls his eyes, arms folding tightly over his chest. "You know why I took your file out of the system. We've been over that, you understand why I did it. The kind of things the people who got into my agency could have done with that information? What someone like Walsh could do?"
"The infiltration is over! You figured it out, you fired anyone involved in the breach and then a bunch of other people for good measure-"
"Are you actually questioning my decisions as director of this agency right now?"
"-there's no reason my file still needs to be out of the system. They need that information, exfil and medical need to know my medical history, they-"
"We're here to discuss errors made on your recent mission-"
Now it's Mac's turn to interrupt, launching into the sentence and cutting the rest of whatever James had been about tos ay dead as he almost shouts, "Your error could've risked my life, why was my-"
"Angus, shut up! Listen to me and just shut up!" As he repeats the order, loud and furious, James takes a step forward, and that's what does it, what finally takes all the air from his lungs, reducing Mac to silence. His shoulder gives a massive pulse of pain and it takes everything in him not to flinch hard and retreat, to bolt out of the room at the anger on James's face and the tension radiating from his posture.
When he was still living at home with his father, this is what preceded the moments knew Mac he was on the thinnest ice he's ever stood on with James, the small gasp of empty space between the yelling and a cupboard door cracking shut, or a book slamming onto the table. What would then follow was a quick exit, James either storming from the room or the house itself, leaving Mac alone in an empty room with the reverberating bang of the door deafening him, shaking and scared shitless, feeling like he's narrowly escaped something. Like he got very, very lucky.
There's a long pause, like the one when he'd first walked into the conference room, but this one isn't empty. It's charged and crowded and Mac has no way of knowing what's about to happen next. And it's in that precise moment that Mac, frozen in place and barely able to breathe, looks over James's shoulder and comes to a realization that stops his breath entirely. Nobody had frosted the glass, this time, when they went into that conference room, and it's through the pristine, clear glass of the walls that Mac makes direct eye contact with Jack.
The first thing Jack takes in is Mac's posture, shrunk rigidly back in on himself with a harsh stiffness that's sure to be aggravating his injuries. Then, it's the look on his face, some combination of anger and hurt and blatant fear, and how quickly it switches off when they lock eyes, until there's nothing there, expression gone dead and blank. Jack can't hear what's being said but he can read Mac's lips as he responds to the loud hum of whatever James is railing at him. He says nothing aside from two phrases, short and piercing.
Yes, sir.
Sorry, sir.
Jack steps out of the way around the corner, hoping not to be noticed, when James starts to turn away. His heart thuds in his throat, so hard he wonders if it's audible outside his own body. When the door opens, he hears the tail end of some piece of whatever James had been on the warpath about, including a name. It's not one he's heard before, and Jack files it away for future reference, because now the door is slamming shut behind James, leaving Jack to wonder how reinforced the glass of the door is, that it didn't shatter on impact, if it was designed that way due to the nature of the building or if James had ever cracked a door when he punctuated one of his 'reviews' with needless violence against the room itself.
It takes a long time for Mac to come out of the room. Jack knows that Mac knows he's there, had seen him and knew he was watching at least part of the review, and it takes a lot of effort to refrain from going in himself. The last thing he wants right now is for Mac to feel cornered and trapped, interrogated all over again. So he stands outside, moved back to the middle of the hallway now that the threat of James seeing him has passed.
When Mac does leave, he walks right past Jack and starts for the door. Following him, Jack takes the moment to openly scrutinize him, and what he sees is not encouraging. Mac is shaking slightly, trembling visible in the stiff line of his shoulders, and he's moving like he's hurting again, like Jack's suspicions had been correct and he hadn't actually taken his last dose of medication
They're back in the car, engine started and idling in the parking lot, when Jack breaks the silence between them. "So do you want me to-"
"I just want to go home," Mac says, interrupting and then immediately cringing, looking sharply away out the window. Jack doesn't respond verbally, just picks the bottle of painkillers out of the center console of the car and holds it out, then passing him a water bottle. It's enough of a win when he takes them, with just enough hesitation that Jack wonders if he's actually going to.
They're almost to Mac and Bozer's house when Jack can't resist any longer, asking the question that's been in the back of his mind for a long time. He has a suspicion he already knows the answer, but he needs Mac to confirm it before he'll actually believe it.
"So, these reviews," he says, trying to keep his voice as light and casual as possible. "When's my number gonna come up?"
"It's not going to." The answer is short and clipped and sends a cold stillness into Jack's body.
"Come again." He'd understood perfectly the first time, but there's a lot here he still doesn't understand, and this might be his chance to get Mac to talk about it. "You've been in how many of these mission review thingies, and I've definitely been around long enough to start doing them too."
"It's not about how long you've been here. He doesn't do that with everybody."
"So just…" Jack trails off, letting Mac finish putting the last piece into place, the truth forming around itself in a clear picture.
"Just me." Mac sounds exhausted, but there's something else there too. It's a tension Jack barely picks up on and can't categorize, definitely not well enough to know that what he is about to do would go so terribly wrong.
"These meetings, like the one I just saw part of, going over things that went wrong on our very dangerous, highly stressful missions, they're something he only does with you. That kind of one-on-one, you're the only one that gets pulled into them."
They're just pulling around the corner of Mac's street, three houses down from his front door, and that's when the kid snaps.
"Yeah," he says, voice sharp and verging on mad. "Sorry to disappoint you, Jack, but if you want to get a crack at him, then you're gonna have to do it some other way." His shoulders are moving up and down rapidly, his breathing audible in the sudden, shocked silence in the car.
"Mac, I-" Jack starts, and stops again, dread surging in his gut. "Do you want to talk about what went down with him? It looked bad, it looked like-"
"I can't do this right now." The seatbelt comes undone with a loud snap, and before Jack knows what's going on, Mac is stepping out of the car. "I have to go. Good luck finding someone else to answer your questions about the Director. Just go, Jack."
The door shuts behind him, and as Mac's retreating back grows smaller and harder to see in the dim of dusk, Jack has no option but to keep sitting there, watching him, wondering what the hell just happened. The dread building in him gets stronger, heavier, and he's left with the distinct impression that he's just made some kind of terrible mistake and he doesn't have the faintest idea what it could've been.
