It wasn't that Mac didn't appreciate what Jack was doing for him … he did. But by the end of the weekend, Mac was starting to go a little stir crazy. At least he hoped that was all Jack read it as.
He'd been having nightmares for days, and not just the ones he'd almost gotten used to like his dream of chasing down the Mazari and his teammates, but dreams of his childhood, of losing his mother, of how his relationship with his father had changed after that, of his dad leaving.
Of course his body had also betrayed him late Saturday night, with his fever spiking back up over a hundred and two again. Of course, Jack had, what had Jack called it? Gently encouraged, Mac thought was what he'd said after the fact, an understatement which had earned Jack a solid punch on the arm.
Anyhow, gently encouraged, threatened to knock him on his ass and throw him over his shoulder, whatever. It had amounted to Mac going back to the infirmary, being told his current antibiotics weren't cutting it, being given new ones, and then being told he could come back in on Tuesday and if all was well then he could come back to work.
He was fairly grouchy about it, but by Sunday evening he realized that grouchy was all it was. He had no good reason to be as annoyed with Jack or Dr. Anderson as he was, he just hated being sick, and more than that, he hated being bored, and by then he felt better enough to be bored.
Jack was back to work Monday morning and unsurprisingly he woke Mac up before he left so he could fix him breakfast. Jack was a surprisingly good cook, but Mac was forbidden to tell anyone, lest Bozer start expecting Jack to cook instead of making Boze make his heavenly burgers several nights a week.
Jack did his usual thing where he tried to be really subtle about asking how Mac was, making sure he took his medicine, and had everything he needed before he left, but also as usual, subtle wasn't really Jack's thing.
Part of Mac wanted to be totally exasperated with Jack's not so lowkey fussing, but another part thought affectionately that sometimes Jack totally unintentionally reminded him of what he pictured his Grandpa Harry being like as a younger man. He'd had the same completely affectionate, sometimes heavy handed but quietly teasing manner when trying to get Mac to slow down and see the big picture about something.
Instead of snapping that he knew how to take care of himself thank you very much after Jack's third "You sure you're feeling better enough to be on your own?" of the morning, Mac just grinned and rolled his eyes.
"Jack, I'm fine. I had strep. Not even all that bad. If it wasn't for feeling like trash from that vaccine, my body might have fought it off on its own. I'll take it easy today, go see Doc Anderson tomorrow just like he said, and be back at work by lunchtime. And maybe be back in my own house and my own bed tonight." Jack's eyebrows climbed. "If that's okay with you, Mr. Overwatch," Mac teased.
Jack shook his head and just stuffed his wallet in his back pocket and picked up his keys. "We'll see. You ever gonna grow out of being a brat? Askin' for a friend?"
Mac grinned. "Probably not …" Then, because he couldn't quite help himself, he added, "But I mean, I've got a few years before you can totally expect it of me. All the necessary connections for true rational thought and perspective taking in the prefrontal cortex usually don't finish forming until roughly age twenty-five, soooo …"
Jack chuckled as he opened the door to leave. "I don't know what any of that means, so I'm just gonna go. But since you brought up the whole overwatch thing, I'll just say, you park your ass on that couch today, watch tv, drink plenty of fluids, eat the soup Boze dropped off, and maybe have a couple of naps or somethin'. That's an order. Pretend I still outrank you if that helps."
Mac tipped him a sarcastic solute from the sofa. "Yes, sir."
Jack smirked. "You save that sir shit for officers. I was born a gentleman. Didn't take the Army to make me one."
Mac laughed, waving to encourage Jack out the door.
After Jack left, Mac really tried the whole sitting still doing what he was supposed to thing.
It lasted about an hour.
First Mac just decided that he needed a shower and shave to feel like a human being. Then he promised himself he'd park back on the couch. But all getting cleaned up did was point out to him how much better he actually felt. So instead of dressing in clean sleep clothes and lying around, Mac got dressed in his standard jeans, t, and flannel and walked to the market up the street and got a frozen pizza for lunch, which just sounded a lot better than more chicken soup.
Take out was off the table since he didn't have enough cash on him and he refused to raid Jack's secret stash (which amounted to a couple hundred bucks in the back of a book nobody who knew Jack Dalton would ever have accused him of reading). Jack mentioned it before he left, but Mac just didn't feel good about it. When he got back with the pizza, he threw it in the oven, and waited impatiently for it to cook.
He was a little bit smug because he'd walked a couple of blocks in the not inconsiderable heat and instead of it kicking his ass, it kind of made him want to go for a run. When the pizza came out, the smell hit him fully and if he hadn't been alone he'd have been embarrassed at the look he was sure spread over his face. Like a hungry, drooly puppy, he had no doubt. He sliced it into quarter and made no apologies for just grabbing a paper towel to hold it with, not even bothering with a plate.
He stretched back out on the couch, happily munching on his perfectly crispy slice of cheese pizza, his still boot clad feet propped on the coffee table, like he'd seen Jack do almost every time he'd come over since moving to LA, but had never felt comfortable enough to do before. Between Jack's illness and then his own, he'd spent enough time at Chez Dalton the last two weeks that it felt almost as much like home as his place.
Through the first gargantuan slice, Mac just watched part of a little docu-segment on the news channel about tardigrades, a creature that someone who valued adaptability as much as he did found fascinating. When he finished, he sat for a minute, unapologetically licking grease from his fingers. Then he grinned to himself and thought 'screw it, I'm gonna have another'.
He'd barely eaten the last couple of days because he'd felt so lousy and before that he'd been worried about Jack and pretty exhausted (not to mention coming down with this absolutely miserable infection) and he'd been eating kind of light. He was half way through his second slice, or put more accurately, finishing half a pizza all by himself, when he started to take in more details about the apartment for the first time in days.
He began to notice that the apartment was a little on the messy side. He immediately felt a little bad about it. Jack was a very neat guy. It was like that military training had gotten into his blood, hell, into his bones, and he just couldn't not keep things orderly. Mac didn't think he'd ever walked in to Jack's place and seen crumbs on the counter or the bed unmade. As he looked around now, he saw both, not to mention several days newspapers scattered around various tables, the vacuum cleaner unused but parked next to the utility closet, and a full recycling bin next to the door.
He finished his piece of pizza and went and put the rest away in the fridge, carefully wiping up the counter afterward. He stood in the kitchenette for a moment, looking around some more. Jack would probably give him the ass chewing of a lifetime for it since he'd promised Jack he'd do more resting today (regardless of whether or not he felt like he needed it), but he kind of wanted to clean the place up.
He knew Jack had been pretty damned sick at first and was still a little worn out from it, regardless of what line of bull he'd fed Dr. Anderson about how awesome he felt. Mac wasn't about to call him out on it because frankly he felt like he was maybe on the doc's good side at the moment and didn't want Jack butting into his case either.
Combine that with him stepping in to take care of a feverish, not-sleeping, nightmare-having, friend (that Jack chose to wait on hand and foot, admittedly, but the fact that it was a choice wasn't really the point as far as Mac was concerned), and it was no wonder Jack's usual stellar housekeeping had suffered.
Mac glanced at the clock. It was only one thirty. He could clean the place up, have a nap like he'd promised, and maybe even dip in to Jack's money stash to order take out for the two of them (which was different than using the money to order it for himself) by the time Jack got there. And he might still be irritated that Mac hadn't just become one with the couch like he'd promised, but burgers and shakes from the place around the corner delivered as he was getting home would probably soften that a lot.
Mac wanted to say thank you in some way for the way Jack had been looking out for him. If he was honest it wasn't just about his recent illness either. His life felt like it was finally really back on track since Jack had come and invaded that tree stand at the cabin all those months ago.
He looked and felt better than he had since before his discharge from the Army. He liked his job a lot. He and Boze were practically inseparable again, just like all through school. He was living in a house he loved, and part of him regretted not just staying here in LA at the end of that summer after his dad had left.
Gramps had a good job, a girlfriend, a life in Los Angeles. And staying for the summer had been a nice distraction for him after his dad left. But when the fall rolled around, little Angus MacGyver had been found out on the back deck sobbing quietly. He didn't want to change schools, didn't want to leave Mission City. He barely had any friends to begin with and he couldn't imagine starting over in a place as cool as LA. If he was an almost friendless nerd in rural Northern California, what would going to school in a town where there were movie stars be like?
Fortunately, the Bozers had offered that Mac could stay with them. Wilt needed his friend at that time more than ever, and they wanted a noisy, happy, busy home again almost more than anything. Gramps had been so understanding, coming to visit almost every weekend, taking him, and often Boze and Penny too, down to LA for school vacations, for the summers.
And he had Jack back in his life. It was weird, but Mac hadn't really known what it was like to really count on somebody anymore by the time they'd met. Mac had become a singularly self-reliant guy. He was always willing to give of himself for others, but he rarely asked anything in return.
He wouldn't have recognized why at the time, but he thought maybe Jack had a slight point about him not liking to admit vulnerability. Jack hadn't cared if he admitted it or not. Jack's job had been to look out for him when they met, and Jack took that to mean for life and in all things, apparently. Mac had resisted it tooth and nail at first, but by the time he'd come home to take care of his grandfather, Mac had actually missed knowing someone gave a damn.
Not that Bozer didn't care, and didn't try to show it. But Boze sometimes didn't get it, asked the wrong questions, pried too much into what the Army was like and what Mac did there. For one thing, Boze had known Mac long enough to know that unless it was some fact he knew or scientific development he was excited about, he wasn't much of a talker, and for another a lot of Mac's job in the Army was classified. Bozer had gotten upset any number of times when they'd tried to hang out and Mac had said simply that he couldn't talk about something. And Penny was speaking to him again, almost from the minute his plane touched down on American soil. But Jack was different. Jack got it.
Mac smiled to himself as he came back from dumping the recycling out in the apartment building's communal bin. Jack mostly got it, he mentally amended. He was still bound to get a thorough and boring lecture about following orders whether they were from someone who outranked you or a doctor who didn't give a damn how smart you thought you were, which he figured he'd break his buddy of eventually.
Mac started tidying up Jack's small desk next. He bent down to pick up a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it off the floor. That's when he noticed it for the first time, a single drawer locked filing cabinet under the desk. He squatted down to get a better look at it.
"Huh," he said thoughtfully. That was weird. Well, not super weird. Mac had a fireproof safe at his place that had his social security card, his discharge papers, a birthday card his mother had made him when he was little with her own little cartoon of Tommy Pickles from Rugrats on it, important stuff he didn't want to lose. This was probably the same sort of thing.
He turned over the slip of paper in his hands, looking at it more carefully. The phone number started with 757. He could have sworn that was familiar somehow. He thought about it for a minute, rifling through the well-ordered filing cabinet of his mind. Oh yeah, that was the area code for Miles new place. Yorktown, Virginia.
Yorktown, Virginia, which Miles had moved to after the recent unpleasantness Mac had helped him out with, because he'd been offered a job. As an analyst supposedly. With the CIA. Where Jack used to work. Where Jack's contact that was digging into O'Neill and the Mazari was working.
Mac sighed. Jack had been tight lipped about how that was going. He'd tried bringing it up to Jack a couple of times over the weekend, but Jack had shut him down almost immediately. Not in a more typical I'm not going to talk about that because I don't have an answers anyway sort of a way, but more like hey, kid, you're sick, let's not get you all riled up, wanna watch Bill Nye reruns or something kind of way instead. And damn it all, Mac had to admit, it had been effective. Especially when Jack had found some old PBS lectures Neil DeGrasse Tyson had given hiding deep in the documentaries on Netflix.
The answers to his questions might just be in Jack's filing cabinet right now.
Jack's locked filing cabinet.
Mac started opening desk drawers and looking in the little cubbies in the organizer on the desktop, hoping it was one of those not super serious locked filing cabinet situations and there was a key just lying around. Nothing. He moved papers around, even went so far as to check Jack's nightstand before he stopped himself, feeling like a really bad friend. He was being ridiculous, irrational. If Jack had answers, Jack would share them. He'd promised and Jack Dalton took promises insanely seriously.
Mac went back to the living room and sat down on the couch. It was four o'clock now. Jack would be home in a couple of hours and he could ask about it then. What he ought to do is drink a gatorade because he swore Jack counted them before he left, maybe take the nap he'd said he would, and after Jack was back to being agreeable due to excessive amounts of charred cow and blended ice cream, he'd mention the phone number and see what Jack said.
Mac got a sports drink of the counter, not bothering to put it over ice. Once you'd had warmer than body temperature chlorine and iodine adulterated water out of a canteen and been grateful for it, you got a lot less fussy about the temperature or flavor of what you were drinking, Mac had found. He'd sat back down and had a few drinks of it when he felt his forehead crease into a frown almost before he was aware of the thought that was causing it.
Jack had kind of doubled down on his all too familiar protective streak the last couple of days. If Mac was honest, he'd sort of seen it coming. It started the minute Jack had gotten a good look at him out at the cabin and dedicated himself to getting Mac back to civilization and eating regular meals.
Jack had gone full Dad on him, just like he used to to half the guys in their unit and, of course, on him in particular back in Afghanistan. Mac also knew that he'd genuinely worried Jack this week, waking up fighting some unseen assailant like he had, with a fever that was kissing a hundred and three. His friend might not be inclined to let him jump into his end of this investigation yet.
Mac sighed. He was not a patient guy, try though he might to cultivate that particular trait. He guessed he would have to be though. The cabinet was locked and Jack wouldn't be home for a while yet. He sighed again. Well, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell he was going to have any kind of nap now that his brain was turning over the Mazari problem again.
He shifted on the couch. Now he was truly itching to go for a run. But, he wisely thought, Jack would be irritated he'd cleaned the apartment instead of resting. If he came home and Mac had gone out and ran the six or seven miles that were his standard stress reducer, Jack would, quote, flip his shit, end quote.
Jack's apartment had a distressing lack of things to take apart or build. He looked around again. He needed to keep his hands busy or he was going to absolutely lose his mind. His leg was now bouncing up and down with nervous energy. He drained the gatorade and got up to get rid of the container in the newly empty recycling bin. His eyes landed back on the slightly messier than when he'd started desk. Paper clips. That oughta do it. For a few minutes anyway.
Letting him bend, shape, build with, and even destroy paper clips had been something Harry had showed him when he was pretty small to keep his curious mind and restless hands busy. It had been a way to keep him from getting in trouble in school when he had a hard time sitting still, but it had turned into a habit that served him well in all kinds of places and circumstances.
Mac went to the desk to grab a small handful of paper clips to mess around with, but he found himself just standing back, looking at that filing cabinet again. He reached out for the paper clips and turned one of the big ones over and over between his fingers for a minute. His eyes slid back to the simple lock on the filing cabinet.
Ah, man, Jack would be so pissed. But then again, if there was nothing there, Jack wouldn't ever need to know. Mac would just close the cabinet and never say a word. He'd make up his little secret violation of trust to Jack some other way. Besides, he justified to himself, if there was something there, Jack should have shared it with him my now.
Mac put all but the biggest, sturdiest paper clip down on the desk and crouched back down by the cabinet to look at the lock. He didn't even realize that a familiar expression of frank interest had taken over his face. He loved puzzles, problems. A lock was just a puzzle, a problem to be solved. His Grandpa Harry had taught him to pick a lock sort of unintentionally the summer after his mom died.
Gramps had been visiting, well, less visiting and more staying with Mac because once again James was out of town. They'd gone out to eat at The Burger Barn because Harry couldn't cook to save his life or anyone else's and when they got back to the MacGyver house, Harry realized he'd left his keys inside on the table and the door had just locked behind them automatically, as Mac's dad always insisted.
Gramps had said they'd just go next door and call James and ask where the spare key was, because Mac didn't know where his dad kept such a thing. Mac had gotten upset, near tears, shifting from one foot to the other. "Grandpa we can't just … He'll be mad if we bother him at work and he'll yell and I don't want to make him mad so we can just … I don't know, but we can't …"
He probably would have gone on like that or just burst into tears, but Harry had sat down on the steps, making Mac sit too, and just hugged him until he settled down a little, telling him they'd just solve the problem themselves and not to worry. After a couple of minutes, he'd looked up into his grandfather's face. Gramps was always so sure there was a solution. "What do we do?"
Harry had smiled. "What we always do, Gus. We take a deep breath. We think a minute. And we solve the problem." That's exactly what he'd done, too. Mac couldn't remember what he'd used, but it may very well have been a paperclip. He'd bent some piece of wire and used it to open the door, explaining what he was doing to little Gus every step of the way because when he had explanations, young Angus MacGyver, Gus to his grandfather until a few years later when he'd asked him to start calling him Mac like Boze did, was calmer, happier when he had explanations.
Mac smiled a little at the memory. He didn't know what he would have done without Harry. Then he frowned as he felt the tumblers inside slip and the lock click open. In many ways he felt about Jack now the way he'd felt about Harry then. Not that he could say that out loud or acknowledge it in anything more than the most casual offhand way. And this was a betrayal of the trust those men had put in Mac.
Then again, he thought as his frown deepened, Harry had betrayed his trust at least once. Mac had caught him on the phone once when he was thirteen or fourteen and the way Harry had ended the call, the sentence he'd been in the middle of when Mac walked in, well, limped in, he was supposed to be on crutches at the time and he was obstinately not using them to prove he didn't need them, made him sure his grandfather had been on the phone with his father. Mac never asked, sort of didn't want to know at the time, but that little kernel of distrust had stayed with Mac after that. It had made him more reserved with his grandfather. And if Jack had information about the Mazari and what might be happening in LA and he wasn't sharing it with Mac, that was a little betrayal, too.
Mac opened the drawer, tossing the bent paper clip onto the desk. There were file folders full of taxes, old photographs, Jack's discharge paperwork, some banking information, all the same sorts of things that Mac kept in his safe at home. He started to feel a little sick to his stomach.
He shouldn't have done this.
He was going to confess his actions to Jack when he got home and just hope maybe Jack still felt sorry for him because of how miserable he'd been for the last several days. Which Mac thought might be reasonable because after his friend had gotten a look at the many bruises on Mac's arms that had been inflicted on him by Tony Whoeverthehell at Medical, Jack had declared that the guy had a punch face and he wouldn't begrudge Mac a rampage of some sort. Maybe he'd call bygones on this since Mac hadn't actually punched anyone and Jack was a big believer in the idea that pent up anger caused all sorts of bad things to happen to a guy.
He was sheepishly closing the drawer when one of the file folders slipped off the bars holding it up. Mac reached out to fix it. As it slid back into place, Mac saw there was a folder lying flat, underneath the hanging ones. His hand reached out, independent of what his brain was telling him was the right thing to do, and he pulled out what turned out to be a legal-sized mailing envelope.
Written on it in Jack's familiar scrawl was 'Some 007 Shit for Mac'. Damn. Okay. It was what he'd been hoping for at first, but now … he should just put it back, tell Jack what he'd done, plead temporary insanity, and ask to see the contents when Jack was done justifiably freaking out on him.
But that's not what he did.
He opened it and started leafing through the contents. There were a great number of redacted documents with little names and places Mac recognized, but little else. There were pictures, too. Some of them were from the incident that haunted Mac's dreams. There was even one of him, bruised and stitched up and out cold at the base hospital, along with others of the teammates his efforts had seen rescued. As Mac was frowning at a photograph of the compound they'd been rescued from, another small slip of paper a lot like the one with the Virginia phone number fluttered to the floor.
Mac picked it up. On it was neatly printed an address. It was here in Los Angeles. In Inglewood, near Hawthorne. Mac frowned. Lots of warehouses there. He checked the clock again. It was only five thirty. Mac's Jeep was at work because they'd driven Jack's car back to his place last week and of course Jack had taken his car to work today.
No reason he couldn't call a cab though and just see what this address was. He could pick up the take out on his way home. Jack might beat him here, but he'd leave a note that he'd gone to get dinner. He could decide how to handle the conversation with Jack after he saw what this whole thing was.
He called a cab, got his jacket, took a little money out of the secret hiding place so he could get food and maybe a large quantity of beer, and left Jack a quick 'gone out for food' note. He closed the door and locked it behind himself. He realized halfway across town that he'd left the filing cabinet open, and he'd left the folder out on the desk. Jack would know exactly what he was up to.
It wasn't very long before he was glad he'd been so careless.