this is one i've been thinking about since before i started writing this fic and i can only hope to have done it justice. that said, it's a heavy one, so see warnings at the end of note.
additionally - all information in this chapter pertaining to swifts and their migratory patterns is sourced from having lived many years in the state of oregon. i have ZERO idea if they are in california or if they migrate there like they did up in oregon, i'm just making some stuff up. apologies to any ornithologists or bird enthusiasts who may be reading this.
(chapter warnings: dream sequence involving mac's near-death experience in sweden in moderate detail, discussion of the graphic warning james gave mac about the consequences of telling bozer what they do, a good amount of focus on the fear of losing someone you love, discussion of bozer's brother josh's death when they were kids.)
The investigation into whatever it is his team thinks is rotten at the core of DXS is deep and expansive and Mac, when he's not busy being sick to his stomach, is reluctantly impressed by it. He doesn't rescind his refusal to help them try and pin it all on James, but what he does agree to is being interviewed. There are apparently dozens of after-action reports they want to ask him about, moments that are unclear or that have possibly had pieces altered or removed, things that happened before Jack's hiring that only Mac could possibly provide answers about. In all honesty, Mac doesn't know if he'd have agreed to it, were it not for the way he was asked.
"Nobody is going to make you do anything you're not comfortable with." Matty says it with such grave seriousness you'd think she was talking about something of life-or-death importance. "It's true that there are questions in this investigation that you are the only person with the answers to, but that doesn't mean we're going to back you into something you don't want to do. It's your choice, and there will be no consequences if you say no."
Mac debates it, internally, for several long moments, whether or not she actually means that. It could be a trick question - it usually is a trick question - but Riley is sitting next to him, her leg pressed against his from hip to knee, a sustained point of pressure and warmth that feels like some kind of reminder. And Jack is there as well, the look on his face a kind of determined protectiveness that Mac is only just starting to recognize, like if anyone tried to force Mac into anything they'd have to go through Jack first, and they wouldn't make it through Jack.
It's that offer of a way out, and the promise that it would be honored, that allows Mac the ability to decide to stay. And so he agrees, and it begins.
It's a long slog through old missions and reports, slogging through things and past people that Mac hasn't thought about in literal years. In the process, things get dredged to the surface, too, things that now won't leave him alone. He's thinking about old partners, and people he's met on ops once and never seen again, days so long he thought he'd age a decade by the end of them and weeks that passed in the blink of a frantic eye, and it all mixes together.
There's a twinge of guilt at how much effort Mac puts into masking it, exactly what going through these reports like this is doing to him. If Jack and Riley, Matty even most likely, were aware of the extent it's affecting him, they'd probably shut it down, or at the very least talk about the idea that he might be better off outside the investigation. After being kept in the dark, now knowing what's going on, Mac can't stand the thought of that.
Besides, he has to get to the bottom of what he can, piecing together the bits that they don't, can't know about. As much as he's willing to tell them what he remembers about these missions, there are parts he can't talk about, not even now. Parts to do with Walsh, with instructions James gave him that need to stay between them, as he's been so recently reminded. So Mac sits there and talks and talks, watches Riley create folders with names on them, Cassandra Hall, Adam O'Reilly, Seth Haken, Daisy Bradley, Derek Riggs, Karen English.
The worst part is the dreams.
Most of them he doesn't really remember, just waking with a sense of anxious, off put deja vu, but there's one in particular he's having over and over again, sometimes multiple nights in a row.
Sweden haunts him when he sleeps. The alley in Stockholm is the backdrop to his dreams more often than not these days, but something is different. In the dream, Mac doesn't lose consciousness to the sound of his old partner, Karen English, shouting somewhere that sounds very far away, but likely hadn't been farther than the end of the street. No, in this grim replay of events, it's eerily silent. In the dream, Mac lays on the damp pavement, shuddering and gasping as pain overloads his nervous system and his body registers the catastrophic damage the bullet has done to him, the taste of copper wetting his lips, and the only other person who is ever there is James.
His father stands over him and watches impassively, face carved from stone and eyes disappointed. He doesn't chastise or berate or lecture, he just stands there, wordlessly, and watches Mac bleed to death on the slowly saturating ground, the city still and careless around them. Mac is never sure how much time passes in the dream, but he always wakes feeling like it's been hours, hand flying up to clasp over the side of his neck, to defensively block the site of that terrible wound from suffering any further damage.
Bozer knows something is wrong. How could he not? He's shaken Mac awake mid-nightmare more than once, sitting at the side of his bed and talking quietly while Mac trembles and breathes in broken gasps, clutching the side of his neck. It's obvious in the way he looks at Mac in the mornings even when there wasn't enough noise to alert him to his roommate's ongoing nightmares, squinting at him over the kitchen island, troubled. At least it isn't every night that the dream wakes them both up, though Bozer's suspicious looks at his unsteady hands and the bags under his eyes tell him it's not overly reassuring.
It's something that never happens when he isn't at home, the yelling in his sleep. If it did, he'd have heard it from one of his partners long ago, but nobody has said a word, including James, and Hall at least would've mentioned it, if not one of the others. Something tells Mac that part of how exhausted he always is coming off long missions is the fact that, when he can get to sleep at all, his sleep on missions is far from deep or long enough to sink truly into the depth of the kind of nightmares that end with him bolting upright, throat hoarse and his own voice echoing in his ears.
Home, though, home is where his body knows he's safe enough to rest, which brings with it the side effect of knowing he's also safe enough to make noise at night, let the nightmares rip out of his throat and into the real world. If it happened any more often, Mac would be looking into some kind of sleeping medication to put a stop to it, if only because it isn't fair to Bozer for Mac's turbulent nights to disturb him too. And at the rate he's going now, since the investigation, things are going to need to change, soon.
The first mission they're assigned to after the tragedy in Bosnia is a lowball mission that's over in less than a day. It keeps them local, apprehending an internationally fugitive who'd decided that Los Angeles was the best place to hunker down and hide from the long arms of the laws of the no less than six different countries who had claim to his prosecution. Thanks to Riley's hack of his home security system and just how… persuasive Jack can be when he's standing in your living room with a weapon and a 'don't even try it' look on his face, the entire operation is over in less than twelve hours. They don't even have to leave city limits.
While he's glad for the success, Mac can't shake the feeling that they're being punished for something, that maybe this is the Director's version of putting him on probation until he's sure that Mac can handle their usual workload. He goes home feeling unsettled and itching to do something that feels more useful, more active, and that's why he supposes he does it. It's the first meeting to discuss the investigation that Mac has called himself.
The plan is that Jack and Riley will be by shortly to pick him up, and together they'll head to Riley's apartment to resume the massive undertaking of going through the backlog of reports from missions Riley had identified as having something go wrong. That list is long and the details complex, and Mac doesn't always remember right away without immersing himself in the context of what was going on around him at the time, and so it's been slow going. Especially given he's taking his own mental notes, things to compare and cross-check, trying to recall what had been related, under the table, to Walsh. He's sitting at the kitchen island, twisting at a paper clip from a box Jack left here for him at some point, already trying to put himself back in time.
The mission they're going to talk about today is one he'd been on with Adam O'Reilly, objectively his scariest partner, a combative loose cannon whose partnership with Mac had ended because he'd, in a moment of reckless gung-ho hysterica, mistaken Mac for a hostile and tried to shoot him. This is not Mac's favorite partnership to think back on, and the mission they're supposed to talk about had been a pretty rough one, only two prior to the one on which Mac had looked down the barrel of his partner's gun a moment before it was fired at him. He's lost in thought when Bozer comes into the kitchen, doesn't see him at all until his roommate's standing right next to him.
"Car's out front."
Mac nearly falls off his stool, he reacts so sharply to the sudden sound of Bozer's voice. He hadn't noticed someone else enter the room - something else that wouldn't happen anywhere but at home. It takes several long moments for his breathing to restart and for his heart to slow from its wild, terrified rabbit pace, and that's apparently enough time for Bozer to reach a breaking point they both know he's been approaching for a long time.
"Are you good?" he asks eventually, in a voice far more clipped and stiff than he usually speaks to Mac in. When he receives a nod and Mac goes to head for the door, Bozer shakes his head, stepping to the side to block his path and saying, "No."
"Bozer, what-" Mac doesn't get any farther before he's interrupted.
"Sit back down, I'll be back in a minute." With that, Bozer whirls away and heads for the door.
Shocked and confused, Mac watches him go without the wherewithal to say anything to stop him. He watches Bozer step out the front door, something in his chest lurching at the sight, then calming when he hears the raised voice call for Riley and Jack to come inside. The air buzzes as Bozer re-enters, and Mac is overcome with the sense that something has shifted, and not for the better.
Riley and Jack look absolutely baffled as Bozer shepherds them into the living room, then turns and gestures for Mac to join them. He gets all three of them in front of him before he says anything to explain, and his expression strikes Mac to the core. He looks upset in a way Mac can't remember ever having seen him get before, a miasma of anger and something else, something that flits in and out of shape too fast to be identified.
"I'm not an idiot," is the first thing that comes out of Bozer's mouth, and because he's felt it before, Mac knows that this is what it feels like when your ribs snap, sharp and searing, stealing your breath away. "And also I've got eyes, so you know what, you can have your secret meeting at the freaking table rather than the Applebees or wherever it is you keep sneaking off to, because I'm done. I'm done pretending I don't know something's going on, and I'm done pretending you guys work at a think tank or anywhere close to that, because it's a lie and I know it is. You've been lying to me for years and I'm done pretending I don't know about it. I'm done."
Mac's ears are ringing and his heart is beating in his throat. He'd always hoped it would last longer, this version of safety, of peace, the illusion that at least here, nothing from the job could touch either of them. He never had any idea what 'longer' meant, just that every time he contemplated the inevitable collapse of the house of cards he and Bozer live in together, a world where his best friend is safe and untouched by the evil Mac brings to their front door every time he comes home, he couldn't bear the thought.
"So that's it, huh? You don't even have anything to say?" It's louder than normal, accusing, and Mac can't blame him. Jack tries to say something and Bozer doesn't let him get past two words, holding up a hand and saying, "No, I need to hear this from him. So, Mac, are you going to finally tell me? Or are you just going to keep lying?"
With the sound of a gunshot echoing in his ears and his father's words beating against his ribcage with every lurch of his petrified heart, the day you tell him is the day you put a gun to his head and pull the trigger, Angus, Mac tells him the truth.
For a moment there, when the truth finally sits between them, released like a wild animal from a zoo cage that leaves everyone around it unsure if it will remain docile or strike out and destroy all in its wake, Bozer's patience is gone. The anger that simmered on a backburner for years, barely noticeable and almost entirely outweighed by the rest of his irreplaceable, precious friendship with Mac, surges into a roiling boil, leaving no room for anything else to exist beside it. His patience is gone and with it goes his understanding of Mac and the complicated Catch 22 way he moves through the world, the way he exists in their friendship like he's clumsily trying to speak a language he was never taught, even after all these years.
DXS. It doesn't even sound real. Terrorists and arms dealers and international spy organizations and all Bozer can focus on is the scar. He stares at Mac and all he sees is the scar, the off-colored, uneven tissue rising beside the loose collar of his shirt, not hidden by the jacket still draped over the back of his chair. With the explanation now out and in the open, Mac has stopped talking, and Bozer can see the scar moving with his shoulders, stuttering up and down with shallow, panted breaths. For a moment, he's worried, and then the worry is lost under another pulse of bright anger, white hot and overpowering. Bozer knows he can't open his own mouth because if he does, he's going to say something that he knows he'll regret.
Mac isn't talking but Jack is, Riley's voice occasionally joining in, and Bozer can't hear any of it. It's faded into a background hum, and then in an instant he's outside. He's outside and he's alone, the Los Angeles hillside stretching out empty and hollow around him, and he can't even remember making the decision to leave the house. Turning slightly, his peripheral vision catches the moment that Mac bolts from the living room, and the sight makes him turn abruptly back, facing out toward the city center.
It's maybe the angriest Bozer can ever remember feeling in his life, humming in his shoulders and inside his lungs, tingling numb in his fingertips. He's not an angry person, never has been, though he's always been passionate about things, and it's not a feeling he's comfortable with. It hurts, this anger, lurches in his chest with his heartbeat, screams in a hundred different voices in his head. The air has grown thick and Bozer pulls at the front of his shirt. It's hard to breathe, around everything battering him from the inside out.
Realistically, he's known for a long time. Years, he's known for years that the think tank didn't hold any more water than a fishnet, there's no reason simply having confirmation of what he'd already known should be hitting him this hard. And yet here Bozer stands, on the back porch of the home he shares with one of the people he loves the most in the world, feeling like he's about to either combust or collapse at any moment.
'I tried to tell you as much as I ever could,' Mac had said, and honestly, that somehow makes it worse, because now Bozer can't help but go back over it. Everything Mac ever said about his job, about his partners, about where he goes and what he does when he leaves the house every day.
As bright as it burned, the fire in Bozer's chest doesn't last very long. The accelerant poured over the spark that has smouldered for years when he finally got the truth out of Mac must be one that burns fierce and fast, rapidly running through its reserves in proportion to its heat. He's sure that Mac would be able to name one that works like that, and it's this thought that turns Bozer back around. He can breathe easier now, peering in through the large windows, trying to make out what's going on inside.
Nothing is going on inside. Nothing visible at any rate. Mac hasn't returned from wherever he ran to, and it seems Jack and Riley have either joined him or left. The thought that they might have gone, might have misguidedly decided that he and Mac were better left to work out their issues on their own, is one that sends a lurching feeling through Bozer's gut, sharp and nauseating. Because if they're gone, then Mac is alone.
Mac is alone, after just having watched the one person who's been a constant through most of his life storm out of the house, eyes blazing and hands balled into enraged fists. And much as Bozer is still mad, is still struck reeling and without solid ground to stand on, the rest of the world and what he knows of it has begun to seep back in around the edges, and if there's one part of the world he knows through and through, it's Mac. And knowing Mac means knowing what the look on his face during that confession had meant, seeing the way his hands shook when he explained what his job actually is and realizing how he must be tearing himself to shreds inside, alone in his room.
Which... Much as Bozer is angry, is furious and confused and hurt, he doesn't want that. He's mad at Mac but that doesn't mean he wants his best friend to punish himself far more viciously than anyone else ever could. It certainly doesn't mean he can stomach the thought of allowing it to go on for even one minute longer. So he walks back inside, navigating the living room and hallways like he's walking through a dream. Nothing feels entirely real, everything distant and static fuzzed, until he reaches Mac's room, and it all gets too real too quickly.
At least, as becomes immediately obvious when he hears the voices overlapping each other in a combination of low soothing murmurs and too-quick panicked tones, Jack and Riley didn't actually leave. Bozer looks in the doorway before anyone realizes he's there and takes in the scene unfolding in Mac's room, heart lurching up and down from high in his throat to through the floor and back again. Mac is sitting on the edge of his bed, Riley and Jack on either side of him, and he's very clearly hyperventilating. He's saying something, too fast and jumbled for Bozer to make out what it is, but
When she looks up and notices him, Riley says, "Jack, hey," and then gets up, motioning for Jack to join her. They step away from the bed, hovering near the door as Bozer walks over to Mac, allowing the two of them space but not quite leaving. When he sees who's approaching him, Mac makes a sound in the back of his throat like he's trying to speak but can't get it out right, then looks down at his hands, fingers knotted together in his lap so tightly they're a bloodless kind of pale. Bozer moves slowly but determinedly, and when he reaches the bed he sits down.
Whatever he'd been building up to say while walking through the house is gone now, and so Bozer follows his instinct and leans over. Mac is stiff and trembling in his arms, still breathing like he's just run a marathon, and it takes him a moment to react, to reach up and rest his hands against Bozer's back in a return grip that starts out hesitant and quickly becomes desperate. Within moments they're both clutching each other with a bruising kind of strength, and Bozer can feel the cold damp of the cheek pressed to his neck against the aching throb of his pulse.
"I'm not going anywhere," is what Bozer says when he finally finds his voice again. Mac's chest heaves against his in a great, shaking breath, and Bozer's arms go fractionally tighter around him. "I'm… I'm pissed as hell, and it's not okay, it's far from okay, but I'm not leaving. I need a minute, but I'm coming back. I'm not leaving."
Mac doesn't respond verbally, doesn't agree or say he understands either what Bozer has said or why, but he does nod, and that's enough. It has to be enough, because as difficult as it is to do, Bozer has to pull himself away again, walk back out of that room and outside once more, where the air is at least marginally easier to breathe.
What's a little surprising is that this time, someone follows him. Not right away, Bozer has a few minutes to hunch over the wooden railing and try and get some semblance of control over the storm wreaking havoc inside him. The anger, with its heat and its noise, has all but faded now, but something else has risen to take its place. This feeling is cold and deep and chokes him not with the sense of a hand around his throat but with that of lungs that just can't expand. When the sliding door opens, he glances over his shoulder once, then looks back out to the city. Focusing on its distant, anonymously glittering lights is the only sense of stability he can find right now, and he can't afford to let go of it for more than a moment.
For a long time, Jack doesn't say anything. He doesn't go back inside either - Bozer doesn't hear the door again, though he's half-listening for it this time - but he doesn't speak, waiting with the kind of patient space that makes Bozer suddenly understand the progress he's made with Mac after these months. Eventually, tearing his eyes off the haze of downtown LA, Bozer turns around. He braces his back against the railing and looks at Jack, who looks back at him with calm, patient expectancy.
Funny, Bozer never would've pinned Jack Dalton for a man with an abundance of patience to spare. Not with the way he gets on board game nights, or watching a hockey match, or whenever the topic of James MacGyver comes up. But here he stands, leaning against a wood post supporting the trellis overhead and waiting, arms folded and expression neutral.
Shifting slightly, Bozer's palm slides over to press against his own side, over a tattoo that sits under the fabric of his shirt, one he's had since he turned eighteen years old. The only one he has. He swallows and opens his mouth to speak, though all that comes out is a faint, airless croak. A few seconds slip away and he tries again, and this time it works, though his voice is hoarse and unsteady.
"I knew," he says, and Jack nods. "I already knew. I told you I knew, the day I met you, I mean, I didn't know exactly what, or that it was so- but I still… I knew." It's like once the words have started coming there's no stopping them, tripping over each other out into the still, heavy space between them. "If I already knew, and I've known for years it's not like this is recent, then why am I still… How come I'm…" His side is throbbing sharp and acute, and it's almost like he can feel the tattoo gun all over again, the sting and burn from the day the artwork was indelibly inked into his skin.
"There's knowing, and then there's knowing."
Despite the fact that it shouldn't make sense, it does, and Bozer's chin dips down towards his chest. "Yeah," he murmurs, quiet and exhausted.
There's knowing and then there's being unable to escape knowing, there's losing the last vestige of plausible deniability, of 'maybe I'm seeing things, maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, maybe it's all in my head'. As mad as he is- was- as mad as he got at Mac for the lies and the secrecy, Bozer has to admit that he really hadn't wanted to know. Not for a really long time, not until he couldn't stand it any more and finally asked.
"Why did he do it?" The question comes out of nowhere, not even Bozer expecting it until he asks, looking up and straight at Jack. Jack, who has gotten closer to Mac than anyone has been able to in a long time, who made an oath to Bozer the day they met that he'd do whatever he needed to in order to keep Mac safe, who dropped everything and came when Bozer called the day of the heat-stroke nightmare. If anybody is going to have answers, it's going to be Jack.
"Do what?" Jack asks.
"Lie to me. I know it's not because he didn't think I could keep a secret and he wouldn't work himself up that bad on his own, so someone had to… Why would he lie to me like that for so long, about so much?" Even as he asks, Bozer has a sneaking suspicion he has a pretty good idea who is likely responsible. It's confirmed when Jack looks away, face going hard as he thinks, and then answers.
"You know now that James is the Director of DXS."
"Yeah," agrees Bozer. And I'd imagine he's an absolute nightmare, he doesn't add out loud, though he can't imagine Jack would disagree.
"Seems he had a pretty strong conversation with Mac, right at the beginning of all this. Told him he couldn't tell you anything, or else… He was pretty persuasive."
Now, another day, he might've let it drop there, but this isn't another day, and so Bozer pushes. "I've had just about enough of people keeping parts of things from me, so why don't you come out and tell me whatever piece of that you just left out."
Jack's face twists into a deeper grimace, and the gnawing pit in Bozer's gut grows wider.
"If you think it'd be better, I can ask Mac myself." That seems to do it, because as soon as he says it, Jack turns back to face him, shoulders squared. There's an apology in his eyes and Bozer almost regrets asking, though he knows he can't take it back, can't tell Jack he actually doesn't want to know. He has to know.
"Bastard told him that if he let you find out, he was as good as killing you himself." The words send a shock of ice through Bozer's chest and his hand clamps down harder on his side, pressing so deeply into his own body that he can almost imagine he can feel the lines of the tattoo, somewhat raised like a braille message only he can read. But Jack isn't done yet, because he goes on, and says, "If I'm to understand right, there was evidently some pretty colorful imagery used, I think it was that if Mac told you, he was essentially putting a gun to your head and… well, you can put the rest together yourself, I'm sure."
Bozer sure feels like he's been shot, and with the breathless sense of a brutal impact comes the anger again, rushing back harder and hotter than it had been before. This time, it's not Mac he's angry at - though what he'd said inside still stands. This isn't okay yet, maybe won't be for a while, but as upset as he is with Mac, it pales in comparison to the sheer hatred melting a crater in him when he thinks about James.
"That… He told Mac… That… How could he..." It won't come out all the way, and it's probably for the best. Bozer doesn't generally like using that kind of language, though he'd make an exception for this man in a heartbeat.
"Yeah, I know." Judging by the tone of his voice, Jack would agree. "Trust me, least favorite part of the job is answering to him. If it weren't for Matty, and Mac obviously, I'd probably have jumped ship months ago."
Even the thought is enough to scare Bozer, and he feels a jolt of cold adrenaline spike up the back of his neck. His eyes have gone wide and the panic must show in them, because Jack shakes his head and gives something approximating a smile.
"Don't worry, kid, I'm not going anywhere," Jack says, and hearing it out loud does something to at least fractionally slow Bozer's heart rate back down. Coming from anybody else, it might have sounded patronizing, the term of address, the reassurance itself, but not from Jack. From Jack it sounds warm and solid, a promise without a hint of judgement at having needed to hear it. For the umpteenth time, Bozer is glad that this is the man out there working to keep Mac alive, that this has somehow translated into a friend Bozer himself never would've met otherwise and has come to deeply appreciate.
Thinking of how Jack entered their lives takes Bozer down another road entirely, to the need for his existence at all. The explanation Mac gave him about DXS is somewhat hazy and disjointed in his mind, disrupted both by Mac's agitation in telling it and in the shockwave of anger and disbelief that had rolled over Bozer in hearing it. But somewhere in there had been that Jack was basically what he'd been explained to be - a bodyguard, a security detail, though obviously it's a lot more complicated than that. The crux of it is that his job is to keep Mac safe, to keep Mac alive. A job that's a lot harder and involves a lot more active rescue from the razor jaws of death than Bozer had initially known it did.
Looking down, he sees that the hand he doesn't have tucked up under his arm, against his ribcage, is shaking. He watches it for a few seconds, fascinated by the involuntary movement, as a lump rises in his throat and his eyes sting. The identification of what has risen in place of the anger comes in a soft sigh, and Bozer can't believe he didn't realize it before. After all, he's spent years growing close with this particular emotion, never quite too far away from it though it's eased and dimmed somewhat in the years that have passed since the worst day of his life.
Grief. Welling up in him, suffocating Bozer from the inside out, is bone-deep grief. His fingers curl that much harder into his side and he can imagine he can feel his own heartbeat through his shirt, fluttering like the wings of the silhouette of the common swift that lays immortalized on his body, soaring mid-flight above the inked script of his baby brother's name and the dates of his birth and death.
They'd gone as a family, every year, to watch the swifts on the day of their migration. There was an elementary school near the house where scores and scores of common swifts made a nest in the vast, decommissioned chimney stack that sat in the center of the low, nondescript building. Every year, when it came time for the migration, families from all over the neighborhood would gather and sit on the grassy hill beside the school to watch. It would start as a trickle, one by one, until all in a rush as if communicating by some kind of networked thought, the birds would cascade into the sky. They'd circle and funnel around each other, a cloud of flapping wings and tiny feathers, leaving Bozer awestruck and staring up into the darkening dusk sky, unable to describe how he felt seeing the vastness of the world around him displayed so starkly.
It was Josh's favorite thing in the world. Not even Christmas could hold a candle to the swifts. And so, as soon as he'd turned eighteen, Bozer got the tattoo. He got it as a memorial and a reminder, a way to carry his brother with him even though the boy was gone, ripped from his life before he'd gotten to find out what it was like to be teenagers together, to know who Josh would have been as an adult.
Now, standing outside his house opposite Jack, Jack who turned out to be some kind of elite secret agent, one who worked with Mac in the same capacity, Bozer chokes on a miasma of old and new grief, and thinks about his other side. The memorial to Josh is on his right, and he can see it now, the tattoo he would get at his left, the outstretched wing and the long neck of the heron that would fly forever over Mac's name and the numbers representing the day he was born and the day he died. He's thought about it before, fleeting and brief, in the dead of night when Mac was away on what he now knows were missions, saving the world or some part of it.
"He's…" Bozer looks from Jack out over the patio, at the string of lights wound around the trellis, looks back again. He can almost feel Josh's name burning an imprint into his palm, the reminder that the grief almost killed him the first time, and he doesn't know how he'll survive it a second. Not when the pre-emptive rise of it, the way he's been mourning since Mac told him the truth, is almost enough to take him to his knees. "He's not going to stop, is he."
It's not even a question, but Jack answers it anyway, saying, slow and tired, "No, he's not. I don't think he'd know how, even if he wanted to."
Nodding, Bozer lifts the hand not still jammed over the tattoo, brushes it across his forehead, presses his thumb and forefinger over his eyes. He'd figured as much. "And there's nothing I can do to convince him to, is there."
Still not a question, and still Jack answers, empathy so deep in the words it makes Bozer's breath catch. "If there was, I'd have already tried it. All I can do is keep doing my best to make sure he makes it home, just like I promised you."
"You have to." He isn't expecting it to come out so fiercely, hand jerking away from his eyes as it does, but Bozer can't bring himself to regret it. It doesn't matter if they've had this conversation before, he'll say it as many times as he needs to, until he feel like Jack gets it, gets what it will do to him if Mac dies.
"I will," Jack promises, and it isn't enough.
"Losing a brother," Bozer says, everything in him rebelling at the words, because this is something he does not talk about, and yet he has to, because it is vitally important for Jack to understand, to get what this means for him, "rips out a part of you that you can never get back or fix. I can't do that again."
If it takes Jack by surprise, the knowing in his voice, the 'again', he doesn't betray so, and he doesn't ask. Instead, he closes the distance between them, walking up to Bozer and putting two strong, steady hands on his shoulders, and says, "I swear to you, on my momma's life and my daddy's grave, Bozer, I'll die before I let him even come close to not making it home. And just so you know, a lot of things have tried to kill me so far, some of 'em with a pretty massive bodycount. None of it stuck. I'm a hard man to kill, and I plan on staking all of that on him, every day of my life. Okay? He's coming home, if I have a single word to say about it. I promise. God's honest, kid, I promise."
Because he can't stand the thought of anything else, because he barely made it through the first session in the tattoo artist's chair, because Jack sounds so sure it's hard to believe he could be saying anything but the truth, Bozer decides to allow himself to believe it.
Mac is already asleep by the time he goes back inside. It's been something of an exhausting day, to be fair, and it's worn late by the time the eye of the hurricane has blown over. He walks through the house in something of a daze, the familiarity of it soothing and stinging at the same time, a bandage wrapped over the top of a fresh wound. Bozer stops in the doorway of Mac's room, sees him curled on his side facing away from the door, Riley sitting next to him with her legs stretched out over the top of the bedspread. She looks up when she hears him approach, and her hand is on Mac's upper arm when Bozer walks in, almost like she's guarding him.
For some time, Bozer just stands there next to the bed and looks at his sleeping roommate, heart throbbing in time with the ache in his left side, the blank space where the heron would go. Riley doesn't say anything, but she does lean a bit when Bozer gets close enough, her shoulder bumping into his hip and staying there for a beat longer than can be explained away as an accident. He touches her back in response, light and brief, and when she gets up and steps away, walks around him out of the room, he feels like they've had a whole conversation in those few moments.
Slowly, tired and sore like he's done a triathlon he didn't train for, Bozer climbs up onto the mattress in the space Riley left vacant. He thinks for a moment about waking Mac up, then thinks he might not have to when there's a soft sound somewhere from the blanket covered chest and Mac rolls over, facing him now. Despite the noise and the movement, though, the swap of people beside him, Mac doesn't wake up, and Bozer decides not to encourage him to. Instead, he leans over and flicks off the lamp, leaving the room cloaked in darkness and calm.
There's a box of paperclips, on the table next to Mac's bed. On an odd impulse, Bozer reaches over him and snags them, the slight rattle of thin metal strips against each other inside the cardboard loud next to the backdrop of his and Mac's off-beat duet of breathing. He shifts in place, easing downwards until he lays fully stretched out on the mattress, the blanket pulled up over him against the slight chill of the deepening night. The movement is enough to have jostled Mac slightly, one of his arms falling to the side until the knuckles of his curled hand brush against Bozer's shirt, over the tattoo of the swift.
Fumbling slightly in the low light left by the illuminated numbers on the clock, Bozer manages to get the box of paperclips open without spilling any. He sets the box down on the mattress beside his hip and picks a few of them out. Whatever magic Mac works on them is lost to him, so he settles for locking them together, sliding the curved ends around each other until they snic into place. There's something soothing about it, he has to admit, the repetitive motion of linking paperclip after paperclip into a chain. Mac makes a sound at one point, barely audible and completely unintelligible, outreached hand flexing just enough for his fingertips to catch against Bozer's shirt, the faintest suggestion of holding on.
By the time he drifts off into a light, dreamless sleep, there's a trail of glinting silver going all the way down to the floor.
