[announcer voice] and now, folks, for what we've all been waiting for...
i'm so excited and so nervous to be posting this chapter. i hope you enjoy it, but be aware there are pretty strong warnings attached, so be careful.
chapter warnings: murdoc is his own warning honestly, but add to that some moderately graphic violence (nothing exceeding show-level) and serious psychological violence, including taunting about abuse. later, frank and extensive discussion of abuse.
Mac never feels quite so glad that James hardly ever goes into the field as he is on missions when James joins them in the field. The air has been thick with tension and awkward discomfort since they departed Los Angeles bound for San Miguel, El Salvador on a find-and-retrieve mission. Their target is a high ranking member of a homegrown terror cell out of the American heartland, someone even the FBI's most wanted list doesn't have ahold of the dossier on. Devin Rask just barely evaded a DXS team sent to hunt him down in Nebraska, and now his whereabouts have been tracked to a run-down sector of San Miguel slated for renovation and redevelopment in the coming months.
With any amount of luck, it'll be a quick in and out, just locate and grab Rask then head home. Mac sits in the car with James driving, Jack in the backseat behind him, and tries not to look at either of them. The tension that's been present the whole time seems louder in the enclosed space, not just between Mac and James, but between Jack and James too. And it's not just about how much his partner very obviously doesn't like his dad, and the extent to which the feeling is returned.
Mac is also unable to shake the sense that, just like every time there's been something he's kept from his father, James is going to find out about the investigation at any moment, now that Mac knows about it. Either that or Mac is going to turn around at some point to discover James already knew, and has just been letting him dig himself in deeper and deeper by pretending everything is fine.
This mission is the longest stretch of time they've spent together since he was brought in on what Jack, Matty, and Riley have been up to. More than once, Mac has caught himself on the verge of blurting it all out, flighting down the instinct to tell James everything with no small amount of effort. It's something he's had trained into him since he can remember, that the only way to lessen James's anger was to confess it to him before he could discover it, light the pyre himself before his father is forced to do it.
This time, though, he doesn't. Mac successfully reigns it in, because he knows that James will absolutely lose his mind over this one, but even more than the threat of that, he cannot stomach the idea of doing that to Jack and Riley, or even to Matty. So he ignores the part of him panicking and telling him that James is going to find out one way or another and the only way to avoid making it worse is to own up now, pushes through it, and keeps his head down and his mouth shut.
Luckily, the trip to El Salvador from California was far from the longest they've ever gone on, and one perk of having the Director with you on a mission is your intel and support services are top priority. This means that, by the time they touch down in San Miguel, Rask has already been tracked to a specific street. Now, why James insisted on tagging along on this mission in the first place is anybody's guess, as it's far from highly complicated and certainly not the most important assignment they've had recently.
Except, it isn't really Mac's guess at all. He has a solid hunch he knows why - it's the same reason he always does. James doesn't go on field missions at all unless there's a chance of Walsh's involvement, or someone in the area with connections to him, proven or rumored. It's why he'd taken off right after the tragedy in Sarajevo, spent the next week or so probably combing through Bosnia looking for Walsh, who he's still convinced had been the one to leave that note. This time, James hasn't said anything to Mac about it directly, which he tries not to read too much into. Sometimes Mac is read in, sometimes he isn't. It depends on the day and on whether James has a specific task for him.
As they approach their designated street, Mac has never been so glad to get the order to split up, because while it means he won't be working directly with Jack, and that makes him more nervous than he's entirely excited to realize, it also means that he won't be working with James. And, maybe most importantly, Jack won't be working with James either.
Standing on the sidewalk around which stretches the three buildings they've identified as possibly being Rask's hide-out, Jack tries to argue the point for a minute. Not surprisingly, James overrules him basically immediately, and as soon as his back is turned, Mac risks rolling his eyes at his partner.
Despite the initial relief at the order, Mac can't help but not like the actual experience much either. There's a moment when he first actually loses sight of Jack inside his designated building where Mac feels a small spike of panic jump to life in his chest like the tracking line of a heart monitor. It only lasts for that moment, though, because in the very next one comms go live, and Jack's voice is in his ear grumbling about the debris he's already running into looking like, "a Home Depot a year and a half into the zombie apocalypse."
Even as James's transmitted voice responds, icily requesting, "five minutes of professionalism, Dalton, please," it helps Mac feel more at-ease to know that even if he can't see him, Jack is still there, and still incorrigibly Jack.
Starting into his own assigned building, the back of Mac's neck prickles and his hand flexes uneasily around the flashlight he's just switched on. He's got a bad feeling about this, all of a sudden, beginning out on the street and ramping up the farther inside he goes. Just for something to say, to remind himself he isn't actually here in this place alone, he makes an offhand comment while starting up the stairs about how creepy it is without any lighting. Nobody answers, which is probably for the best as he can't imagine James is thrilled with his commentary, but it's unnerving nevertheless.
It's especially unsettling in light of what he can remember Riley saying before they left her at their established temporary base with her surveillance setup. They hadn't really had a good excuse to bring her with them into the field, not with James right there, and so they'd been forced to leave her behind, something none of them had felt good about doing. She'd caught Mac by the wrist as he was heading after James and Jack for the car, and told him to be careful. Riley said, brows furrowed and voice quietly troubled, that she felt like something was wrong, and they were being watched.
Mac felt it too, he couldn't lie to her about that, but he'd chalked it up to the presence of James with them, and told her as much. He promised he'd keep an eye out anyway before he left, and though he's done so, there hasn't been any indication that it's anything other than James that's throwing either of them off. Until now, as the feeling mounts, and Mac finds himself looking over his shoulder and darting his eyes around rooms even after he's cleared them, wondering what he's missing.
On the third floor of what used to be an office building but is now just an abandoned property awaiting renovation and relisting on the market, Mac is rounding a corner by the stairwell when it happens. There's a blow to the back of his head that's hard enough he sees stars and his arm, the one he'd dislocated not that long ago, is pulled up and wrenched behind his back. The angle puts enormous pressure on the still residually healing joint as he's forced face-first into the wall, and it hurts so bad he can barely see or think. The flashlight clatters to the floor in a pinwheel of light until it rolls against the far wall and settles there.
"Angus MacGyver." It's hissed into Mac's ear in a soft, velvet smooth voice that sounds just this side of excited. "I've been waiting for this moment for some time now."
Mac tries to say something, to call out for Jack to help him, but as soon as the strangled sound leaves him, his arm is twisted harder and whatever words he'd been about to say are cut off. He gasps, the pain shooting up to completely intolerable levels, and it's everything he can do not to scream. It's hard to tell what's making the panic soar to higher levels in his head, the person who has him pinned or the fact that Jack doesn't answer.
"Now," the person, a man if the pitch of his voice and the fact that the voice is coming from somewhere indicating he's taller than Mac is anything to go by, says in that same sybillant near-whisper, "before you try and go sounding the alarm, there's a few things you should probably know. The first is that I have here in my pocket a handy little gadget that's currently blocking your ability to transmit. Information gets in but it doesn't go out, so your team cannot hear you."
They hadn't answered him, back on the stairs. It's a jolting realization that, from the moment he's set foot in this building, Mac doesn't actually have a moment he can refer back to in order to prove they've heard a word he's said at all.
"The second is that I have cloned the signal of your earpiece, so that when you get the inevitable check-in sound off, I will know. The third is that I have available to me not only your home address, but darling Wilt Bozer's work schedule and a contact in Los Angeles who has a gun and owes me a favor."
If the force of being pushed so hard into the wall wasn't enough to do it, that would've driven any last cubic inch of air out of Mac's lungs. The grip on his arm eases somewhat as he reels, trying to process the completely nonsensical situation he's found himself in, letting the pain ebb until it's not quite so blinding. Only a few moments later, the predicted call does come through, Jack's voice in his ear requesting a check in."
"Now, are you going to behave?" the man behind him asks, the grip he has on Mac's wrist going slightly tighter, a threat that punctuates his point.
"Yes," Mac grinds out, because whoever this is and whatever he wants, there is no way he's going to risk Bozer's life on the off chance that this man, who knows their names and far too much about them, is bluffing. There's a click of a switch being flipped somewhere out of Mac's line of sight, just as James's voice comes through the earpiece, an irritated snap of, "Angus," clearly indicating that Mac has taken too long to answer.
"All good here," he forces himself to say, hoping his voice comes out as normal as he's trying to make it sound. "Nothing so far."
Another click sounds and Mac knows with a sickening drop of his stomach that he's alone again, alone in this gutted, drafty building with… First thing's first, it might actually be a good idea to figure out just who the hell this is, since it seems like the man doesn't plan on killing him right away. Information is power, and right now, he has none.
"Doesn't seem really fair," Mac says, steadying as he focuses in on the immediate plan of action, "that you know my name but I don't know yours."
"Fair. You really are too funny. Such a boy scout, talking about fair."
The grip on his arm disappears in a flash and the man grabs him by the collar of the shirt, spinning Mac around so that his back is now to the wall, facing his assailant. The man is disconcertingly pale, with black hair and dark, piercing eyes that focus on him intensely. He's narrow but strong, going by the force with which Mac had been pinned, and there's a gun in his hand, casually pointed at the hollow at the base of Mac's throat.
"I guess it can't do much harm though," he muses in that odd, lilting voice. "I've had an awful lot of names over the years, but at the moment I'm particularly fond of Murdoc."
"Alright, Murdoc, now explain to me what the hell it is you want from me." Snapping at the person holding a gun on you is probably not the world's smartest plan, but at this point, if Murdoc is going to shoot him then he's going to shoot him, and being polite probably won't change that one way or another.
"Want from you? Oh, not much at all. Just your attention. I've been watching you for a while, now, and decided it was time for us to finally meet. See this," he uses the gun to gesture between them, like it's a prop, like it couldn't easily go off and send a violent projectile through either one of them on the flip of a coin, obliterate anything in its path, "this was never supposed to happen. Our relationship. But you're just too good an opportunity to pass up. It's been a long time since I've met anyone even half so… compelling."
"Our relationship? We don't have a relationship, I don't even know you." Mac can't help it. The more this man- Murdoc talks like there's anything between them but right now, the more he talks like he knows Mac, the more Mac wants to run. He wants to get away, to crawl out of his own skin, but he can't, and so the best he has as far as a way to distance himself goes is his words, rejecting the idea outright.
In a flash, Mac could've sworn the expression on Murdoc's face went momentarily hurt. He tuts softly, then says, "Oh, but we do, Angus, we do have a relationship, because you may not know me, but I know you. And that's why it was so important for us to meet. See I had my suspicions right from the start, when I began gathering information, when I saw you in Amsterdam and then when you saved your oafish bodyguard out there from the Ghost. But after I had my chance stolen in Bosnia, I watched you so much more closely, and I just knew I had to meet you. Cat and mouse is a much less interesting game when the mouse doesn't even know you're there chasing him. The fear is half the fun."
"Bosnia…" The note. That note, left with the dead college student's body, the one saying to 'tell MacGyver' that next time he should come himself. It had been aimed at Mac, after all, not some kind of taunt from Walsh like James had been so convinced it was. "That was you."
"Surprise," Murdoc sing-songs, teeth flashing white as he grins through the low-light gloom. "Imagine my intrigue when not a day later, your dear old dad lands in Sarajevo. I knew I had to watch you both so much closer after that, and my, what I found." He whistles, low and mocking. Mac is quickly beginning to hate this man more than just about anyone he's ever met, and it's only been a few minutes. "I was just hooked. You two are so… spectacularly dysfunctional, it's better than daytime TV, and you especially, Angus, you… You are just going to be too fun to play with. That's why I couldn't just kill you outright, no matter what the contract said."
Contract, Mac thinks, noting this piece of actually useful information, plucked from Murdoc's generally unhinged ranting. Unhinged ranting which, evidently, isn't done, because he keeps going, saying something that makes Mac's heart kick oddly.
"You know, I heard somewhere that once someone is brainwashed once, it's easier to do it again. Do you think that's true?"
The implication is obvious and Mac grits his teeth. He ignores the odd tight feeling in his chest and, not quite sure why he's bothering to argue with somebody who is obviously just trying to mess with him, "I'm not brainwashed."
Murdoc smiles at him again, this time dripping with condescending pity. "And I'm sure it helps you to believe that."
Quicker than anything, his hand suddenly flashes back, the intent to crack across Mac's face in a hard slap obvious in the movement. It's so fast and so against the almost casual tone of Murdoc's general demeanor, changing in a flash of a moment, that Mac can't reign in the flinch. His eyes snap shut and he inhales sharply in preparation for the blow, head knocking back into the wall in an uncontrollable instinctive move out of the way. It doesn't come
When he opens his eyes again Murdoc is grinning, excited and bright-eyed.
"Can't you see how well trained he has you?" The still-raised hand lowers slowly and Mac forces himself to hold still this time, not jerk out of the way when Murdoc pats him on the cheek twice, light and demeaning. "Didn't even have to use his fists to beat you into shape, did he? Bet he'd even be furious if he knew how you brace for it, expect it. Wouldn't want to damage his reputation as a father."
It yanks itself out of Mac's mouth, angry and too-loud, undercut with a note of panic sewn there by the words, "You don't know anything about me or about my dad." It was a viscerally descriptive characterization of James and him, piercing and cruel, and Mac wants to bolt just to stop thinking about it, to get away from the implications. From Murdoc's language that had swung into him like a cudgel, beat you into shape.
"Oh come on now," Murdoc says, mock-patiently like he's talking to a child having a difficult time grasping a homework concept. "I think you and I both know that's not true." He leans in closer, crowding Mac's space and speaking next to his ear. "I know everything. Even what you don't seem ready to admit."
Somewhere downstairs there's what Mac thinks is a faint clattering sound. He latches onto it immediately, looking towards the stairway and away from Murdoc, straining to hear more. Maybe it's Jack. Maybe this entire bizarre ordeal is about to be blessedly over.
"No one is coming to save you," Murdoc snaps, and then he's grabbed Mac's chin with hard, angry fingers. Squeezing brutally hard, Murdoc uses the iron grip to turn Mac's face back towards him, forcing eye contact. "And it is so rude to ignore someone when they're speaking to you. I'm amazed that's a lesson James missed with you- or maybe you're just a slow learner." As he says it the grasp cinches impossibly tighter, and Mac holds his breath tight to avoid letting out a whimper.
"Now. Where was I." And just like that, the conversational tone is back, Murdoc letting go of his face and raising the gun again. "Right! I had just one more little piece of my message, something I need you to know, something very important to me. You didn't show in Bosnia, but the contract remained, Angus. I was supposed to kill you today. And I could have. Easily. I decided not to, and I want you to remember that. You lived today because I decided to let you."
The man's attitude flips again before Mac can brace himself for it, and then he's on the floor, Murdoc having shoved the gun into a holster in favor of grabbing Mac by the shirt and spinning him, tossing him across the room. The landing is hard enough to drive the breath out of Mac again. He's just heaving himself up, braced on one hand and an elbow when the first kick lands, taking his arm out from under him and sending him back down in a heap. A second kick follows the first and it's all he can do to curl up, shielding his head with his arms.
It's only because of an instinct telling him to move, rolling with the moment of impact, that Mac avoids getting half his ribcage caved in when Murdoc rears back and tries to stomp on him. It still lands hard, though, and the downward drive of the boot is enough to leave Mac completely winded, coughing violently and trying to catch his breath. He's still laying there, chest heaving and bracing for whatever's about to come next, when he notices the blows stopped after that one.
By the time his vision clears and he can get up, he realizes both James and Jack are trying to get his attention over comms. Mac forces his body, which feels like one big throbbing bruise, slowly to its feet and starts after where Murdoc has to have gone, determined not to let the attack deter him from going after the man. He makes it downstairs and runs into Jack and James just outside, evidently having come after him when he didn't answer their calls for too long.
Immediately, the moment he puts eyes on his partner, Mac wants to run to him. He wants to let his exhausted, beaten body collapse and let Jack catch him. Let Jack hold him and tell him he's safe, to know he'll be protected even if Murdoc and his evident obsession, his stalking and incomprehensible taunts about James, were to come back. Mac can literally feel the sob as it builds in the back of his throat, fear and confusion and anger snarling around each other inside him in a multicolored ball of yarn that clogs his lungs and threatens to choke him.
Except that Jack isn't the only person there. And so Mac pulls himself up short, making the split second decision that they can't know. His ribs might be broken and pain is pulsing where he'd initially been struck in a way that threatens a concussion but he can't say anything. Not while James is right there too.
If Mac admits he's been hurt, then James will grab him to get a look at the injuries, and Mac thinks that if he's manhandled by his father right now, grabbed and turned this way and that without regard for whether he wants to be touched and by who, he might actually lose it completely. So he holds himself rigid and distant and explains in a breathless clip that there had been somebody in the building and he'd been attacked, but it was over quickly and the man got away.
James turns, following the direction of Mac's pointing finger and beginning to snap something to Riley over comms. As he does so, Jack looks at Mac. He reaches out just slightly, open palm asking the same question his eyes are, and Mac quickly shakes his head, then swallows a sound when the movement makes his headache surge.
They're too late to catch up to Murdoc. That much is obvious and not a surprise, as Mac has no idea how much time he'd lost laying on the floor trying to get his body to remember how to breathe. He explains it to them as best he can, gives a brief description of the narrow, dark-haired man. Though it's almost definitely an alias, he tells them the name Murdoc too, and that he'd known far too much, including the part where he'd said he was watching Mac and the rest of the team too for some time now.
There's a lot Mac leaves out. The majority of the physical violence and the content of the words exchanged stay with him, guarded close to the vest where James can't begin to guess at their shape. He doesn't want to admit the details of what had happened there, and he'll certainly die before he repeats them to his father, before he looks the man in the face and echoes Murdoc's words, the jab about how James-
-didn't even have to use his fists to beat you into shape, did he?
The trip home is mercifully short. Rask's base was discovered in the building Jack swept, and James waved off the suggestion that they stick around and finish the job, saying airily that the original team can be dispatched now that they've verified his whereabouts. They can be left to 'clean up their own mess,' as James describes it, and Mac doesn't have it in him to argue the point.
What's even stranger than leaving without completing the original mission they'd gone all that way to execute is James's reaction when Mac asks about who he'll be giving his statement to when they get back and which sketch artist they'll be using. James waves that off too and tells him that it can wait, and Mac's eyes narrow in confusion. He sees the same looks on Jack and Riley's faces when he glances over at them, though their confusion is tinged with a lot more suspicion as well.
Something is definitely odd here, but Mac can't say he's sad about this version of plans. The last thing he wants to do right now is an interview. He doesn't want to sit in a cold room with James and some stranger to describe the man who'd beat him after taunting him with accusations about the admittedly deeply messed up relationship he has with his father. Especially not with his father sitting right next to him.
Riley seems like she believes Mac is as fine as he says he is even less than Jack does, but she doesn't push. She lets it go willingly, though Mac strongly believes that has more to do with Jack than anything else, whatever it is Jack says to her when he pulls her aside as they leave the plane. James goes ahead to his own car before they can say much of anything else, and Mac is once again confused. He's torn disorientingly as he watches James's retreating back, not sure if he should feel relieved or bereft now that he's gone.
Walking to the remaining car is hard and getting harder, every step a struggle as Mac's head still pounds and his ribs are jarred harshly every time he moves. He knows there's a non-zero chance something in his torso is broken, possibly badly, and he knows he can likely figure that out himself - it's not as if he hasn't before - but… Something gives him pause this time. Stopping just before getting into the vehicle, he looks at Jack, and Jack looks back at him, Riley looking between both of them, and imagines lying about this, only to find he just can't do it.
Not this time. Not any more.
So when they're in the car, after they've dropped Riley off, he tells Jack, "Not my place. Is it alright if- Can we go back to yours? There's something I need your help with."
Jack agrees without demanding further explanation in the moment. As he turns the wheel of the car away from the road that would take them towards Mac and Bozer's house, onto the one that will lead them to Jack's, it feels like something under Mac's feet has shifted, the world tilting and settling on its new axis.
Even before it happens, Jack has a suspicion he knows what this is going to be about. The first thing he does when they get inside, after Mac's odd request led them both back here rather than dropping him off home, is situate Mac at the kitchen table. The light is better there than anywhere else in the apartment except for the bathroom, which is on the small side, and there's something he'd noticed in the car.
"Hey," he says, careful to keep his voice gentle and far from accusatory. "Can you look at me for a second? Something I wanna get a peek at here."
Mac does as he's told immediately, easy and compliant in the tilting of his head in a way that sends a jolt of apprehensive fear through Jack. The more Mac trusts him, the more power he has, and it's a responsibility he doesn't look on lightly, even just in getting him to turn his face towards the light.
The odd marks on his face haven't faded. What Jack had initially assumed were smudges of dirt from whatever scuffle he'd been involved in have survived Mac washing his face on the plane, standing out now against the unnatural pale of his jawline. Frowning, Jack steps closer and crouches down, studying the marks. From the way he's looking down it's hard to get a good look, but there seem to be one larger spot low on the right side of his face, with three more on the left that are darker towards his chin, fading as they go farther back.
Waiting for Mac to notice and ensuring he's tracking what's happening, Jack reaches out and takes ahold of his chin, gently turning his face up to get a better look at the discoloration, and as he does, his heart lurches. When he tilts Mac's face up, Jack's touch has slipped into the exact placement of what he abruptly realizes are bruises. His thumb covers the larger mark on the right and his fingers line up perfectly with the ones that grow fainter as his grip grows weaker, and Jack lets go like he's been burned.
Fingermark bruises. There are fingermark bruises on Mac's face where someone has grabbed his jaw hard enough to leave marks, and Jack feels sick. Whatever happened when he was alone in that building with the person who'd attacked him, it's far worse than he'd told them when James asked. Before Jack can ask again now, in a move that startles him more than just about anything else could have at the moment, Mac voluntarily tells him.
"It's worse," he says, and his voice is quiet and awkward. "It's worse than I told you, and I think... I think I need help."
"Okay." Jack tries to sound calm and even as possible, like this is totally normal. Like Mac just hasn't taken a massive, monumental step, like Jack isn't nervous beyond belief. "Can you show me, and we'll go from there?"
Mac stands up and leans back against the table itself, which is more than sturdy enough to hold his weight, and starts unbuttoning the front of his flannel shirt. He lifts the shirt he has on under it enough that Jack can see the damage, and it sends his heart rocketing into his throat when he does. As if the fingermarks on his face hadn't been bad enough, there is what is unmistakably an honest-to-God footprint on his side, just over the bottom of the left half of his ribcage.
"He kicked you," Jack says flatly. He feels almost numb as Mac nods.
"He had me on the ground and kicked me, got my side and my shoulder, the bad one, and uh… stomped on me. A bit." Jack's stomach lurches, and Mac adds quickly, "But I rolled so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, and um. I think he hit me with a gun."
"Hit you with a gun," Jack repeats, faint and shallow. The room feels like it's gotten smaller around them, walls shrinking as it all sinks in.
"Yeah, he had one and when he first found me he hit me in the head with something pretty hard, so it makes sense it was probably the gun, y'know." It sounds like Mac is trying so hard to be casual about this, to recount the attack as if it were nothing, but it doesn't exactly work. Not all the way.
Hit you with a gun, Jack thinks again, but manages not to actually say out loud. Instead he just nods and tries to process this information, catalogue it into a list of potential injuries to be concerned about. It ends up looking something like broken ribs, really broken ribs, further shoulder damage, concussion.
Once Mac's shirt is fully off, a task that takes both of them considering the difficult time Mac is having lifting his arms very high, Jack is able to see that the shoulder is probably okay. He feels around it just to be sure, gently manipulating the joint and asking a few questions, and ultimately decides it's just going to be very bruised in the morning. Moves on to the ribs, Jack presses with firm but gentle hands, open palm and flat fingers pushing over bone that thankfully, mercifully doesn't give or shift the way it would if they were really in trouble.
The whole time, Jack talks. He keeps up a steady stream of words, narrating for Mac what it is he's doing before he does it like he's teaching a beginning EMT class, throwing in anecdotes from his own life between the warnings. And as he does this, as he talks and conducts the exam, Mac shakes. It starts subtly, a slight shiver going through him when Jack first makes contact, but it increases steadily as things go on. Mac shakes harder, and his breathing gets ragged in a way that Jack has a sneaking suspicion has nothing to do with pain.
Jack's fingers are in his hair, carefully feeling for blood or raised lumps left behind by the gun, when he says it, unprompted and surprising in its bluntness.
"I didn't say anything because I didn't want him to know."
Continuing what he's doing, Jack reigns in anything he could have to say to that, letting Mac have the room to react however he needs to.
"If he'd known I was hurt," Mac goes on, voice tired and quiet, "he would've ordered me to show him and he wouldn't have taken no for an answer, and I didn't- I didn't want him grabbing me, that's all. I'm sorry I lied. I didn't want to lie to you."
Jack's hand slips down from his head to the back of his neck, no longer searching for damage but just holding, feeling a different kind of damage against his touch as Mac continues to tremble. It pulses in his chest like the beating of his heart, I didn't want to lie to you, and despite the circumstances, the words are precious. They don't sound like obligation, like a fear of retribution, they sound like something else. Something Jack doesn't quite know how to name, but has been fighting for almost as long as they've worked together.
"What's important is that you told me, as soon as it was safe to," Jack tells him, and Mac cringes at that characterization. He probably would've pulled back and looked away entirely if it weren't for Jack's hand still holding him by the nape of his neck. "Thank you for doing that. For telling me, I know that was hard."
Mac swallows hard and nods and doesn't say anything more.
The exam is concluded without discovery of major injury. None of Mac's ribs are broken and his shoulder hasn't been majorly damaged, and as far as Jack can tell, he isn't concussed either. He's going to be in a world of hurt when he wakes up with those bruises tomorrow, but it's better than the alternative. Which means now Jack has nothing left to do but ask the one question he's been dreading at the same time he knows he has to do it. There can't be any more putting it off.
He lets Mac walk into the living room, re-buttoning his shirt without help, with the kind of determination that says he needs to do something for himself today. Jack follows and waits until he's settled sitting on the couch to approach, finding his own place on the edge of the coffee table. There's something about Mac right now that seems like a live wire, raw and exposed and friable, and Jack can't stop thinking about it. The shaking. The way he'd sat there while Jack touched him and breathed with shallow, unsteady breaths, and barely spoke, and shook, and shook, and shook.
"Do you remember the mission in hungary?" is how one of the hardest conversations of Jack's life starts. "With that scientist, Dr. Parker, I think?"
Mac nods like he can't find the point and Jack doesn't blame him. It's something of a non sequitur, but it seems better than just launching in with the real question.
"We had a talk outside, while we waited for Riley to do her thing, and I haven't been able to shake it since." He really hasn't. Not since the moment it happened has a week gone by that something hasn't reminded him. "Because we got to talking about your dad, and when I said I didn't feel right letting him hurt you in front of me, you got pretty worked up. Said he didn't hurt you, but thing is, I didn't believe that. Not then and not now. So I'm gonna ask, and I want you to know you can tell me the truth. Your dad, he hurts you, doesn't he?"
Mac's not shaking anymore. It's almost worse now, because he's gone still, so still Jack doesn't think he's breathing. The only part of him that moves is his throat and the muscles of his jaw, flexing and working as he tries to say something, or maybe to choke something down before he can say it. The bruises on his face ripple with the gritting of his teeth, and Jack fights down the impulse to touch him again, to smooth a calloused, worn thumb over those marks like he could erase them just like that.
"He…" It's nearly airless when it comes out, a half-exhale of a word Mac struggles to allow past, dying into silence before he tries again. "He doesn't… my dad doesn't. He doesn't beat me, or anything like that. He's never hit me."
Jack's heart gives an almighty lurch and feels like it's tearing, atrium from ventricle. That wasn't what I asked, he thinks. I didn't ask if he hit you, kid, I asked if he hurt you, and if you have to give that specific of an answer, we both know what the truth is. He doesn't say any of it though, because it's clear Mac isn't done yet. There's still more that needs to come out, and it's not going to if Jack cuts him off or pushes back now. They're far too close for him to risk that.
"He's never hit me but I've always-" Mac makes a sound that's almost like a small laugh but far too incredulous and wounded to ever be called that. "I've always known that he wants to, sometimes. He wants to, and he never does, he doesn't even threaten that he will, and I don't know how to explain how I know but- I know." He shakes his head, hands knotted into tight fists in his lap, one arm coming up around his middle in an unconscious kind of self-hug. "I know it doesn't make sense, and I really can't explain it, but.." Mac trails off, cheeks going from pale to flushed as he falls silent.
And he's right. It doesn't make sense, and Jack can't understand it, this thing Mac is talking about. He would imagine that is the sort of thing it's impossible to describe by the very nature of it, to get somebody else to understand if they haven't known it themselves, felt what it was like first-hand. So no, he doesn't get it, and it doesn't make sense, but he's not the kind of person who limits the realm of his belief to his own lived experience.
So instead of trying to understand something he gets the feeling he can have no hope of understanding, not really, Jack just leans forward, catching Mac's gaze and saying merely, "I believe you."
"You… you believe me." It seems like Jack has identified one of the main problems, judging by the way Mac's eyes have gone huge and as hopeful as they are uncomprehending of the idea. At the thought that this won't be a fight, a battle to prove that what he's failed at describing was, nevertheless, real and terrifying.
"Yeah. I believe you."
Mac's shoulders hitch and jerk like he's about to burst into sobs and Jack starts to reach out, ready to catch him and hold him as long as it takes, but at the last moment he seems to snap himself together. His arms are back folded tightly over his stomach and jaw set. His eyes are bright and brimming, embarrassed and angry at the same time, and staring at the wall over Jack's shoulder, and he sounds like the cadets in basic trying to be big tough soldiers when he says, "I'm sorry. It doesn't- it doesn't matter, I'm sorry, this is ridiculous, I should… it's not like he's- or I'm-"
It takes Jack a second to breathe through the way this feels. He's been shot more than once and this is worse than each one of them. Without question. Then, when he knows he can speak and sound at all steady, he decides to try something.
"Okay sit with me on a hypothetical for a moment," he proposes, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his call phone. "I got a nephew about your age, right? He's in vet school, bright kid, name's Evan. good kid, see, this is him." Jack holds up the phone, a picture on the screen of his sister Laurie's oldest.
"I know what you're doing-" starts Mac, voice going stiff and slightly exasperated, and Jack waves the phone slightly, a shallow movement without a hint of a threat. He interrupts before Mac can finish the sentence.
"Why don't you hush and let me do it then, huh? Now, say I found out something was happening to him. That his dad was just godawful mean to him pretty much all the time, humiliated him and controlled him, ignored him one moment and went on and on about all the ways he wasn't ever good enough the next."
It hurts to say, and it's obvious it's hurting Mac to hear, but he has to say it. The truth of it, as ugly and sharp edged as it is, has to lay out between them in order to validate the reality Mac lives in, the reality he doesn't seem to think anyone else ever sees or believes in. It hurts for the thought of it happening to his nephew, too, but Jack doesn't think either of them could stomach Riley or Bozer in this analogy so Evan has to do.
Later, Jack will call his sister later just to talk to her, and he'll speak to his brother in law as well, just to remind himself it's all a story. For Mac, though, it isn't a story. It's not a what-if, or a hypothetical. It's real, and so this has to happen.
"Would you tell me that it didn't matter cause he hadn't been hit yet? That I shouldn't help him or believe he'd been abused until he had bruises he could show me?"
And there it is, that word, out in the open. Mac hears it and his face twists, shaking his head before Jack has even finished the rhetorical question.
"That's not… my dad isn't…" His hand goes up to his face and back down just as fast and he's shaking again. They're so close. Jack can see it in him, and so he pushes again, far enough that he hopes whatever Mac has bound so tight down in himself will break out and breathe free.
"You hid what could've been serious injuries until we were alone because the thought of him knowing, the thought of him touching you, was worse than the thought of untreated broken ribs or a head injury. You just tried to defend him by saying he doesn't knock you around, you just know he wants to, which is… it's horrifying, Mac, to hear that. Because it is abuse. He hurts you, and he's been hurting you for a long time. I've been watching it happen since the day we met."
Mac crumples in on himself at the same time that Jack gets off the coffee table to come and sit next to him. He turned towards Mac with one leg tucked up under himself, posture completely open and focused. Despite every instinct to reach out and grab, Jack forces himself to move slow and allow Mac to make the decisions. He holds his arm out over the back of the couch and nearly knocked breathless with relief when Mac practically falls into it.
It's not quite clear to Jack whether the shaking has gotten significantly worse or if it just seems that way because he can feel it now in his arms while the rest of the world's gone still. He's turned with his back half out towards the rest of the room, Mac twisted similarly against the couch until he's nearly between it and Jack. Hidden there, sheltered and safe. There's a strange shift against his shirt and Jack realizes that it's Mac nodding, the jerky up and down of his chin as he silently agrees, admitting the truth.
"I just… I need you to know that I see. I see it, and I see you, and I see what he's doing to you, and it's not okay."
There's a sound below where his cheek is pressed against shaggy blond hair, though Jack isn't quite able to make it out. He doesn't have to wonder long, as Mac says it again, gasps it out as he unfolds one arm from around himself and uses it to hang on, to dig fingers into Jack's back just below his shoulder blade.
"It hurts. Jack, it hurts."
"I know," Jack reassures him. His throat feels like there's glass lodged in it, shredding and hot.
It's an odd thought that crosses his mind then, his mother standing outside his little sister's hospital room, thumb stroking the glass of the window over where the girl's face was. He'd stood next to her still in his uniform, having come straight from the plane, and asked her how she was holding up. Twenty minutes passed before she answered. It destroys and remakes you, being a parent, she says, in the memory and in the back of Jack's mind now. Kathleen Dalton's eyes had shone in agonized love, looking older than he'd ever seen her look in his life, and Jack had wondered, young and brash and foolish, why anyone would ever do that to themselves.
"It hurts," Mac's muffled voice says again, pleads like he's been screaming it for years and no one's been able to hear before, and Jack promises him again, "I know."
There's nothing about this that doesn't hurt, but Jack has been around the block enough time to recognize a healing hurt. The kind of hurt that comes from reopening the wound to clear the infection out, the kind he hopes there's more of now than the other kind. Jack feels Mac take a deep, choking breath in his arms, his own eyes stinging and breathing labored and holds on more securely. Splays his fingers out over the side of Mac's head, cradles it against his collarbone, and repeats, intent and sincere, "I know. I see you, and I know it hurts. I see, and it isn't okay."
