Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mac raised his eyebrows as he strode into the war room, stopping halfway in and sticking his hands into his pockets. “…where is everyone?”

Matty glanced up from her laptop. “Jack called in sick, so Riley’s working from home and Bozer’s already down in the lab.”

“Jack’s sick?”

“He claimed it’s just the sniffles but since there’s no pressing emergencies anyways I just told him to sleep it off.” Matty looked over at Mac, who had that hint of a ‘I knew you were getting soft on us’ smile that only he would dare pull on her. She elaborated. “I don’t need him infecting all of Phoenix with whatever bug he’s picked up from the other side of the world.”

Mac didn’t respond immediately, and the expected smile and quip didn’t arrive. His vaguely amused look had faded into a thoughtful half-frown.

“Could I have the day off?” Mac asked abruptly.

Yeah, Matty wasn’t that soft on them yet. She gave him a disbelieving raised eyebrow.

“Jack must be rubbing off on you.”

Mac half smiled, looking suitably embarrassed at least. “I know, but you just said there’s no pressing emergencies—“

“—that doesn’t mean your pile of half-written mission reports isn’t still on your dusty-ass desk.”

Mac grimaced. “I know they’re overdue, but they just take forever to write—“

“—they would take a lot less time if you didn’t include equations in them.”

“The equations are a core part of the mission, if I omitted them then it wouldn’t make any sense.” Mac protested, gesturing vaguely with his hands. They’d had this discussion more than a few times. While Jack’s mission reports were littered with omissions, exaggerations, and an overly casual tone, Mac’s erred in the complete opposite direction. They were dense with complex chemical and physics equations and technical jargon that gave Matty a headache to decipher.

Mac hesitated, before he dropped his hands and pulled a rueful expression. “Look, I just… I’d like to check in on Jack.”

“That’s cute, Blondie, really cute.” Matty said, half genuine and half ribbing. “But Jack’s a grown man, regardless of how often he can make us forget that fact. I think he can survive a cold without a nanny.”

Mac flushed slightly. Matty thought that’d be it, looking back down at her laptop in silent dismissal, but instead he stayed standing firmly in place.

“Please, Matty…?” Mac said finally, just a little too earnestly for the situation. “I’ll make up for it, have it use up as many vacation days as—”

“—alright.” Matty cut him off with a touch of bewildered irritation. Mac looked just a little too serious about this, and it was giving her the nagging feeling that she was missing something. If it was Jack wheedling for a day off while Mac was sick she’d be sure he was just vying for a day off while he didn’t have to worry about Mac being in the field without him, but Mac didn’t pull stuff like that. Mac was the type of agent with enough PTO stored up to retire. “Just take your reports with you.”

Mac’s lips twitched up, another teasing ‘I knew you were going soft on us’ smile. “Thank you.”

“Get your ass out of here.” Matty scoffed, returning to her laptop. “Some of us are actually trying to work today.”

***

Mac blew out a breath when he finally reached the landing on the stairs where Jack’s apartment door was. He jammed the cardboard box he was carrying between his hip and the wall to free up a hand to knock. Three knocks in quick succession, then one, then four. After Jack had given Mac a mini heart attack by greeting him at the door with a gun — he’d been expecting a different sort of company — they’d come up with a knock pattern Mac could identify himself with. Jack either hadn’t realized or hadn’t commented on the fact that Mac had chosen the first three digits of Pi.

There was a long few seconds of nothing. During those seconds Mac wondered if Jack had gone out, or if he’d been lying about being sick, in which case Mac was going to throttle him. Then door swung open and Jack leaned out on the doorframe with a quizzical smile.

“Missed me that badly?” Jack quipped. He didn’t look too much the worse for wear. His hair was a little mussed, he was wearing sweatpants and a tank top, and he came across as vaguely tired, but that was about it.

Mac rolled his eyes as he grabbed the box again and gestured vaguely with it until Jack leaned out of the way to give Mac enough room to squeeze past him into the apartment with a mumbled sarcastic ‘yeah, sure, make yourself at home.’

“Just figured I should make sure you weren’t faking it.” Mac grunted as he set the box down on the island of Jack’s kitchen and flipped the top open to begin unpacking it.

Jack came lazily around the island and grabbed Mac’s wrist — to which Mac gave him a strange look but didn’t pull away — and pressed the back of Mac’s hand to his forehead.

Jack let go of Mac’s wrist, smirking slightly. “Proof enough, hoss?”

Mac let his hand linger on Jack’s forehead for another second, frowning, before dropping it. It was definitely a bit warm, though Mac’s preferred readings came from a thermometer and not the back of a hand. Mac was all for approximations, but the accuracy of the approximating method mattered. “Did you take an antipyretic?”

“Mac, I love you man, I really do, but if you’re gonna start throwing big words at me while I’m under the weather I’m gonna have to throw you out.”

“Something for the fever.” Mac clarified, only a touch condescendingly. He returned to his box, pulling out a few cans of chicken-noodle-soup and setting them to the side.

“Nah.” Jack peered into the box and reached in before Mac smacked his hand out of the way. “I’m a believer in just sweatin’ it out. A little fever never killed nobody.”

Mac made a vague hum, neither agreement nor disagreement. “There is some scientific precedence for letting a fever run its course. Also fevers have definitely killed people before.”

“See? Even science is on my side for once.” Jack said, ignoring the latter part of what Mac said. He leaned on the counter, watching as Mac pulled out a few pill bottles of OTC meds. “You really didn’t have to bring the whole arsenal, Mac. I’m a big boy, I have meds and food and all that jazz.”

“Sure you are.” Mac said wryly. “Look, I still think you should take a fever reducer—“

“—No way!” Jack ignored and cut Mac off in excited distraction, grabbing a folder out of the bottom of Mac’s box. “You brought paperwork into my home? That’s pure disrespect, man.”

Mac rolled his eyes, grabbing for the folder. “Not everyone got the day off, Jack, I need to finish some mission reports…”

Jack leaned back, holding the folder over his head and opening it to read. “Wow, Matty wasn’t kidding, you really do staple extra paper to the back of ‘em.”

“Stop getting your germs all over it.” Mac grabbed for the folder again, and Jack freed up a hand to hold Mac back.

“You make Matty do math?” Jack whistled. “How’re you even still alive?” 

“I did the math, she doesn’t have to. I just wrote out my work.” Mac tried to push Jack’s arm away, but it held firm.

“Now I see why she said mine were the second worst written reports she’d ever seen.”

“I’m sure I’m not number one on her list.” Mac huffed, giving up on grabbing for the folder until Jack lowered his guard.

“But you’ve gotta agree that you’re at least up there.”

“I think you’re the last person who can make that judgement.”

Jack’s face screwed up abruptly, and for a bizarre and concerning moment Mac thought Jack was about to cry over his playful jab, but then Jack ducked his head into his elbow and sneezed hard. Mac took the opportunity to snatch his folder back and tuck it under his arm.

“Have you eaten yet today?” Mac asked. Morning was verging on afternoon now, but Mac was well-aware of how being sick could screw with appetite.

Jack grabbed the new tissue box Mac had included in his box of supplies and started opening it. “Coffee counts, right?”

“Coffee does not count.” Mac retorted.

Jack smirked. “I knew I could get you to finally admit that.”

“Soup or ramen?”

“Those really my two options?”

“As long as you want your kitchen intact they are.”

“Shoulda sent Bozer over instead.”

Mac considered threatening to leave, but he knew Jack would happily shuffle him out the door and wish him a nice day off. Instead Mac just leaned against the counter and glowered at Jack.

Jack’s face slowly melted into a fond, amused, smile. “Soup sounds great, hoss.”

***

The first couple hours passed by pretty uneventfully. They had soup, and Jack watched TV while Mac sequestered himself in Jack’s bedroom to get away from the noise and focus on his mission reports.

In a break between reports, lounging back where he was sitting, Mac spotted Jack’s handgun resting on the nightstand. He wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t noticed it before, he guessed his eyes had just skipped over it in the mess of dirty laundry and jumbled chip bags and wrappers.

Mac drummed his pen against his leg, frowning in uneasy thought for a few minutes. Jack having a gun wasn’t the surprising part — the opposite would be more surprising — but the fact that it was so out in the open had Mac wracking his memory. He didn’t spend much time over at Jack’s apartment, but he knew Jack stored his other handgun in a quick-access lockbox in the living room. So he wouldn’t usually just have this one sitting out in plain view, right?

Mac drummed his pen at a higher frequency, before giving into temptation to check the gun, pulling the slider back just far enough to peak into the chamber and checking the safety. Condition zero, nothing in the way of firing the gun, no safety, no racking, the hammer down and one in the chamber.

Mac put the safety on, but otherwise put the gun back down exactly how it had been. As a general rule he tried to handle them as little as possible.

The TV was still blaring in the living room, sound filtering through the ajar bedroom door.

Jack had seemed fine. He’d been joking around, he appeared relaxed, and he’d definitely seemed lucid.

Mac shifted his weight restlessly from one leg to the other. Maybe this was normal. Jack had a certain base-level paranoia inherent to his job. Maybe he liked to keep a gun on hand and ready at all times. Or maybe not.

Mac scooped up his folder of paperwork and headed out to the living room to finish his reports. Jack was lounging back on the couch, in the middle of some movie that Mac didn’t recognize. It looked like the typical action movie fare, some guy running away from a building before it blew up behind him. Judging on the size and proximity of the explosion, the shockwave should’ve done a lot more than just flutter the guy’s jacket, but Mac refrained from commenting on it. The last time he’d gotten started on the scientific inaccuracies on a movie, Jack had ended up throwing a bag of popcorn at him.

“Finished with your reports?” Jack asked, shuffling over slightly to give Mac more room to sit down and spread out his papers. He looked slightly sweatier than before, and a little flushed, but otherwise not much change.

Mac just hummed vaguely in response, figuring that the answer was self-evident. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine.” Jack sniffled and went to rub his nose on his sleeve, realized he wasn’t wearing any sleeves, and grimaced slightly. “Chilly, sweaty.”

“Do you have a thermometer anywhere in this house?” Mac asked with a slightly aggrieved tone.

“Can’tcha just whip one up?”

“I’d have to get the mercury from something. Do you have float valves?”

“No.”

“Tooth fillings?”

“Not yet, take a few more punches to the face and I might.”

“A liquid mirror telescope?”

“To look at what? Smog?”

“A barometer?”

“Isn’t that what you’re trynna make?”

Mac paused, opened his mouth, and then saw Jack’s shit-eating grin and realized his partner was just screwing with him.

“Then no.” Mac huffed, looking back down at his report. “I can’t ‘whip you up’ a thermometer.”

“Shame.” Jack turned back to the TV. He didn’t sound particularly bothered.

Mac drummed his pen against the couch, the sound muffled. “…but you feel alright?”

Jack paused the movie this time, and the sudden absence of the action-movie chaotic soundtrack was blunt. Jack twisted to angle towards Mac fully, bracing his elbows on his knees and giving Mac both his full attention and a tolerant but slightly bewildered smile.

“I’m ok, Mac.” Jack reiterated slowly and warmly. “I appreciate the concern, but it’s just a cold. It’s not gonna kill me.”

Chapter Text

Mac woke up disoriented. He always did when he woke up anywhere other than his bed, like his brain needed to rush to decipher everything before it had the time to fully boot up. It was dark, not quite pitch black but definitely a dark, hazy, grey. He was lying on a couch, leather, and there was a folder resting on his chest. He sat up and felt a pen slide off his stomach, hearing it hit the floor a second later and roll off somewhere. His brain caught up, orienting himself in space. Jack’s living room, the wall that the TV hung from, the direction of the door.

A looming silhouette standing a few feet back from the door, facing it.

Mac tensed, then relaxed as he recognized it as Jack, then tensed up again for a whole new reason.

Not again, please.

Mac swung his legs off the couch and stood up, carefully closing the distance between him and Jack. He didn’t try to walk particularly quietly, he wasn’t trying to ambush the guy, but Jack made no sign that he heard Mac.

“Jack?” Mac asked, when he was a couple feet away. Jack started, hard, flinching away and his hands moving. Mac got a brief glimpse of his right hand folding behind him, back of his hand against his lower back, fingers grasping for the ghost of a holstered gun.

“Christ, kid.” Jack blew out a sharp breath, hands dropping back down to his side. Mac couldn’t made out his features in the dimness, but his voice sounded… off.

“Everything ok?” Mac asked, hushed despite the fact that Jack was speaking more or less at a normal volume.

“Yeah, uh…” Jack’s hands rose again, scrubbing against his face. “I was just… the locks.”

“The door lock?”

“Wasn’t sure I’d locked it after I let you in.”

Mac wasn’t sure exactly what to say to that, he cast a glance over at the door. “…did you?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“I was just thinking of what could’ve happened. Since it wasn’t locked.” Jack spoke, a little breathless and rushed, like he did when something had been just a little too close on a mission. Like he was unnerved and trying to hide it, failing badly. “That it wasn’t just me in here, that you were here too, sleeping, and that anyone coulda just strolled through the door and—“

“—hey.” Mac reached out a hand, landing on the side of Jack’s arm. He was still in a tank top and his skin felt warm and damp. He twitched slightly at Mac’s touch, arm shrugging in towards his body before relaxing again. “It’s fine, nothing happened, no one’s going up and down the stairs of the apartment complex just trying doors at random. You don’t… I mean, probability-wise—”

“Don’t start giving me probabilities, man.” Jack mumbled.

“How’re you feeling?” Mac asked after a brief, hesitant pause. “Do you need anything? Water? Meds?”

Jack turned his head, going back to looking at the door. Mac could see his profile against the faint, greyed light filtering in from the window. His brow was all screwed up, lips pursed, tense. “I’m tired.”

“Get some sleep.” Mac said, half suggestion half order. “Like Matty said, sleep it off.”

Jack huffed, after a couple seconds as if it had taken that long for Mac’s words to filter through. Then he headed back towards his bedroom without saying another word.

Mac rocked on his heels. Unfortunately he was wide awake now. After giving Jack a few seconds to hopefully crash into bed, he went for Jack’s quick-access gun lockbox. It was built into the top drawer of a hip-height cabinet, between the living room and Jack’s bedroom. Mac realized, as he neared it, that his biometrics weren’t going to be encoded into it. He also realized, as he reached it, that it didn’t matter because the gun was on top of it and not in it.

He checked the gun, more fumbling and slow in the dark than he’d checked the one in Jack’s bedroom, but the results were the same. Condition zero. One ready in the chamber, no safety.

Mac put it back down, braced his hands on the gun cabinet and blew out a breath.

He… wasn’t sure what to do. He was probably overreacting, Jack was fine, just a little off balance as a symptom of the fever, and a touch more paranoid than usual.

Mac emptied the gun. He took the magazine out, then pulled the slide back, slowly as to not send the round clattering across the room. Even the sound of the bullet clinking as it fell out onto the wooden cabinet made him cringe slightly and glance at Jack’s bedroom. Then he painstakingly emptied the magazine, dropping each round into his hand to avoid making extra noise.

Mac put the magazine back into the gun and then set it back where it had been. Completely harmless, but visually identical. He wasn’t exactly sure where to put the rounds, so he just stuffed them into his pockets. He felt… dumb. Jack would be confused and irritated whenever he realized one of his guns had been completely emptied and his rounds stolen. He was used to Mac messing with his stuff, so he’d get over it, but it was just so nonsensical.

It was just… Mac scrubbed his hands through his hair. He wanted to pace but he didn’t want to wake Jack up, so instead he slipped out the door. It was chilly outside, night falling and the heat of the sun slowly being leeched out of everything. Mac closed the door quietly behind him, and locked it with the spare key Jack had given to him years ago.

Mac sat down, leaning back against the door and staring out through the slits in the metal railing. There wasn’t much to look at, just other city buildings looming nearby and sparse glimpses of the — admittedly yes, smog-filled — sky. There was a reason this wasn’t really a balcony, just a landing.

Mac drew his knees up and rested his elbows on them and just did what he always did. Thought. He couldn’t drag Jack to the hospital just for seeming a little off, but at least one less fireable gun being involved in the situation made him feel, probably a bit selfishly, better. Mac didn’t like guns. He’d gotten begrudgingly comfortable with them in Jack’s hands — because he trusted Jack — but that hadn’t made him like them any better. When Jack got like this, he liked them even less. He just had never expected this to happen again.

The first and only time had been years ago, not long after they’d both gotten back from the sandbox. They’d been adjusting, back then. Mac was still looking for bombs, a slightly odd-looking sidewalk corner in his suburban neighborhood made his heart race.

Mac had gone to Jack’s apartment, late, because he didn’t sleep much back then, and swung open Jack’s door to find him standing on the other side of it with a handgun. The gun came up, Jack recognized Mac, and it dropped again. He nodded to Mac, casual as anything, and then stepped aside to let him in.

He’d been sick. Feverish and paranoid, acting like him and Mac were encamped somewhere on dangerous territory. It had been unnerving, seeing his partner so… ungrounded. He was behaving the same way Mac had seen him out in the sandbox, mere months ago, except there weren’t any bombs in the street corners, and enemy soldiers weren’t about to break down the door.

Mac had cajoled Bozer to drop a box of food nearby for Mac to pickup. Then he’d coaxed Jack to eat, and take some meds, and finally — finally — go to sleep while Mac kept watch. He’d left Mac a gun for the vigil, which sat untouched on the kitchen counter until morning.

But that had been years ago. They hadn’t really talked about it, and it had been business as usual come morning. Jack had put the safety on and locked the gun back up out of sight. They’d watched Die Hard. It had never happened again.

It wasn’t happening again. Mac was just starting to pick up some of Jack’s baseline paranoia. It had been years. Jack was fine.

Mac let his head fall back against the door with a dull thud and repeated the thought to himself again, like it was a command for the rest of his head to be quiet.

Jack’s fine.

***

Mac startled awake, the disorientation even worse this second time since it came as his body pitched to the side. He scuffed his hand on Jack’s coarse welcome mat to catch himself, and blinked blearily. He was sleeping outside Jack’s apartment. Fuck, how long had it been? Mac tried to check his watch, but in the pitch-black it was useless. At least an hour or so, maybe. He felt achy, his neck and lower back were killing him. He supposed that was what happened when you fell asleep sitting on the floor leaning against a door, a dubious feat that he’d never quite accomplished before. If Jack thought the unlocked door was bad, he would have an aneurysm if he knew about this.

Mac scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to wake up quicker. He wasn’t sure why he was so tired. It’d been a hard week, a backlog of deferred missions that always came rushing in whenever a bigger emergency was finally wrapped up. Maybe it was just that, or maybe Jack had passed on whatever bug he’d gotten. Mac almost groaned at the thought, getting sick was the last thing he needed.

Mac rose painfully, knees creaking, life rushing back into his legs. He fumbled his key out of his pocket and stuck it into the door and tried to ease it open as quietly as possible.

In retrospect, he should’ve seen it coming.

Jack standing vigil at the door, the gun that came up the moment Mac slipped in, the darkness that didn’t permit recognition.

Jack himself was a shadow to Mac in the dark room. An empty shape with a gun and the will to use it, a faceless, cold threat. Everything happened in seconds, it couldn’t have taken longer, Jack was too well-trained for that. He’d lived decades where speed was the difference between life and death, watching others be weeded out around him for just a sliver of hesitation. A few seconds was all you had to recognize, react, and pull the trigger.

Mac thought a lot in those few seconds. Time didn’t move slower, but he sped up. Adrenaline kicked him into overdrive. He thought, that was what he did.

He thought about the two guns. One on Jack’s nightstand in his bedroom, one on the cabinet in the living room. Both were on Jack’s path to the door. One loaded, one completely harmless. Only one of them was in Jack’s hands in that exact moment.

Mac’s arm had come up, almost simultaneous with the gun. His own reflexes were ingrained just like Jack. He had to be faster, he had to be smarter. He had to anticipate the un-anticipatable, like being shot by his best friend in the doorway to his apartment after bringing him soup and sleeping on his couch. He’d failed at that. His palm landed on the muzzle, too slow to deflect it, like he was trying to block the path of the bullet. It was the epitome of a useless gesture, even a 9mm would tear through his hand like tissue paper and continue straight into his chest, or his throat, or whatever trajectory Jack’s gun would reach before he pulled the trigger. Maybe it would be a headshot, something quick.

A fifty fifty shot. Loaded or unloaded, life or death.

Finally, as Mac watched Jack’s finger tighten on the trigger, he thought about how much he hated guns. A petulant, wretched sort of final thought.

The trigger depressed, the gun clicked empty.

Mac felt like his whole body emptied out of the top of his head. He supposed that was what people meant with the phrase about souls leaving bodies. The relief was potent and unbelievable, leaving him lightheaded. He thought he made a little noise, like a choked gasp.

Jack stood stock still, like his brain was finally processing that the gun he was holding was half a pound lighter than it should’ve been. In his right state of mind, that sort of realization would’ve been instantaneous.

Mac sunk down. He thought it was preventative, to fight off the lightheadedness, but he went down a little faster and with less control than he’d anticipated. He crumpled down to perch on the balls of his feet, and then his knees thudded against the wooden floor. He was breathing fast, the adrenaline was choking him. Too fast, but too slow to slow down.

“Jack.” Mac tried to call it out like some sort of entreating command, like calling Jack to recognize him and stand down, but it came out a little too breathless and shaky. It only thinned and faded out more as he kept trying to force out words in one breath until it turned winded and squeaky. “It’s me, christ, Jack, it’s me.”

Jack still stayed like a statue. In the dark Mac couldn’t see his expression or read his body language, or tell to what degree Jack was even cognizant of what was happening. Mac’s pulse was pounding in his throat and his chest felt tight. A flip of a coin. Jesus. He’d been close to death before, in fact he was sure he’d faced worse odds before, but never like this. The suburban street corners never actually had bombs, the enemy combatants were never actually on the other side of Jack’s apartment door. Not until now. Mac wrapped his arms tightly around his chest, forming fistfuls of his shirt on either side of his chest. It felt like his heart had turned into a bird in his chest, wings battering his ribcage as it tried to escape, heavy and frantic and wild. 

Jack had even held a gun on him before, frequently even, before the moment of recognition. Up, as Mac surprised him rocketed around the corner on a mission, then away again before Mac could even process the fact that it was aiming at him in the first place.

He’d felt safe, Mac realized. Despite the shot of adrenaline, despite his logic. Even with Jack’s gun to his chest he’d felt safe right up until when Jack had pulled the trigger.

Mac curled in on himself, his forehead nearly brushed the ground before he reversed directions and started lurching back to his feet.

Jack was still frozen, gun still held out and aimed where Mac’s chest had been before he’d sunk down to his knees on the floor.

Mac grabbed the gun from him. It was a sharp, sudden gesture motivated by both terrified panic and a helpless, impotent sort of rage, and he threw it. He heard it crash into something, almost cacophonous in the near silence. Jack flinched at the sound, away from where Mac had thrown the gun, his first reaction to anything that had happened.

Mac stood, breathing raggedly for a few more seconds. Then he staggered backwards out of the apartment, not turning his back on Jack. He still locked the door behind him, and it took him a while. His hands were shaking badly, and it was only the third try that he managed to even get the key in the lock and turn it. He patted his pockets for his phone. He wasn’t sure who he was even going to call. Maybe Bozer to pick him up because he was too frazzled to safely drive. It turned out to not matter, because his phone wasn’t even in his pocket. He swore to himself, quiet but viciously. The fact his hands were shaking was frustrating him, so he folded his arms and stuffed them under his armpits to try to trap them into stillness.

He swore to himself again when he realized he didn’t have his car keys on him either.

Mac rocked on his heels. Once, twice, then turned sharply with a frustrated, irrational sort of resolve, and headed down the stairs to begin the walk home.

Chapter Text

Jack woke up with his back against his door and bright mid-morning light filtering through the windows. He sat, awake and sluggish for a long few moments before even attempting to think. His head pounded with a dull but crippling headache, he felt warm and chilly at the same time, and was gripped with a profound sense of fatigue. Frankly, he was sick as hell. ‘A case of the sniffles’ as he’d phrased it to Matty over the phone was turning to be more and more of an understatement. He also felt foggy, in the detached, frustrating way that he got when he went down hard with something.

Jack scrubbed his hands over his face, letting out a quiet groan before leveraging himself to his feet with several points along the wall aiding him. If he didn’t already know he was sick he would’ve felt like he had one hell of a hangover, honestly he was still half-suspicious of it as the culprit, despite being fairly sure he hadn’t had anything to drink last night.

Last night… last night felt weird. Jack felt like he’d just woken up from one of those emotionally brutal nightmares that really fucked up the rest of your day, except he didn’t remember it. Maybe that was for the best, Jack’s worst nightmares tended to coalesce with his worst moments and worst fears in a way that formed a trifecta he could only really call ‘fuck that shit’.

Jack staggered into his kitchen, which in his pretty open floor plan was really just a few steps away from the door, and caught sight of the cardboard box on the counter. Right, Mac’s gift box, Jack tipped it towards him to see if there was any Tylenol or something left in it or if Mac had unpacked it all. Nothing, damn, Mac would probably have taken it to the bathroom cabinet then.

Jack took a few steps through his living room before kicking something hard and metal on the floor, sending it skidding a couple feet away on the hardwood before being stopped by the edge of a rug.

Jack swore and curled over instinctively, going to rub his throbbing foot before his eyes landed on the object.

It was a gun. His handgun, to be specific.

On the floor.

Jack was all sorts of disorganized, but it would take a complete dipshit to leave their gun out on the living room floor. Anyone with half a brain cell had a little more caution for something that could take lives. Jack went to pick it up, and meanwhile, following some subliminal instinct, glanced at the wall next to him.

There was the second surprise, because there was a hole in it. A splintering inwards of the drywall, like someone had punched it, but more of a rectangular shape.

Jack picked up the handgun, struggling to tear his eyes away from wall as he did so. He knew the handgun was empty the moment he picked it up. He had years of familiarity with the gun, and it was half a pound lighter than it should’ve been. He pulled the slider back to check the chamber and it was empty too. Then he held it up close to the wall, his sluggish mind forcing him to act out each, painstakingly slow connection his brain made. It matched, more or less, if the gun had struck grip-first.

“The hell…?” Jack muttered aloud to himself in his silent apartment. He peaked over the back of his couch. There were a pile of papers strewn around, Mac’s reports, but no sign of Mac himself. Where was he? Was he in the bathroom? Had Jack given him the bedroom for the night? Had he headed back home last night? The answers to the last two questions were eluding Jack, in a way that was slowly getting more concerning. He leaned around the corner to the hallway to check the bathroom door was ajar. Both it and his bedroom door was. So Mac had headed home.

Leaving his reports behind.

Jack put his gun down slowly on top of his gun locker, tugging it open. A few extra magazines, and an unopened box of ammunitions, but no sign of the rounds for the gun in his hands. Jack took the mag out just to double check it was empty and that he wasn’t losing his mind any more than he already was.

“Mac.” Jack called out, a little loudly, just to double check. There was no answering call. Jack frowned down at his gun before putting it in his gun locker and shutting it. He felt… unnerved, like he was forgetting something important but not in a ‘oh damn I had an appointment today’ way. It felt more like he’d been holding a grenade, blanked out, and was now standing around with just the pin in hand.

Jack scrubbed his hands over his face again, massaging his temples. He tried to take a deep breath, hindered by his clogged sinuses.

His brain circled back to Mac. He should call the guy, make sure he got home safe and that he knew he’d left his folders back at Jack’s place. If Mac had finished them, Jack could just bring them in with him when he next headed back into work. No need for Mac to make the detour all the way back over to Jack’s place, it wasn’t the longest drive in the world but it would definitely be an unnecessary inconvenience.

Jack patted his pockets and found his phone in one of them. He was almost relieved that it was actually where it was supposed to be and not lodged in a wall somewhere. Shit, he’d have to patch up the wall, at least he’d have some time off work to get it done. The hell had happened anyways?

Jack dialed Mac, pressing his phone to his ear.

Then, close by, a ringtone started playing. Jack stood still, like a complete doofus, for a moment before walking over and picking Mac’s phone up off the coffee table.

The sense of foreboding hit again, harder. Jack cancelled the call and put Mac’s phone back down, frowning to himself. Mac leaving his reports behind was possible, but his phone was… weird. Mac could get spacey, or in-his-head sometimes, but Jack had never known him to be forgetful.

Jack dialed Bozer. He picked up in a few rings, and Jack could immediately hear things clattering together, and the soft sound of something sizzling. Breakfast cooking, probably.

“Hey, Jack!” Bozer said cheerily. “How you feeling?”

“Alright.” Jack lied, grinding his palm into his forehead and trying to keep his tone purposefully light. “I was just checking that Mac got home alright, he left his phone at my place.”

A pause, just the staticky crackle of background noise. Then, tentatively. “What d’you mean?”

“What d’you think I mean, man?” Jack got a little irritable despite himself, forcing himself to rein it in the moment a touch of impatience entered his tone. “I mean, did he get home alright?”

“I thought he was— he just texted me yesterday that he was taking off from work to bring you some stuff, and last I heard from him was last night. I texted him asking if I should save him a portion of dinner and he told me ‘thanks but no’ I just figured that meant he was staying at your place…?” Bozer trailed off, sounding confused and tentative.

Jack grimaced, closing his eyes and keeping his palm pressed hard against his forehead. His tired brain spun circles.

“…Jack?” Bozer prodded after Jack was silent for a few seconds too many.

“So he’s not at home?” Jack confirmed flatly.

“No, he’s not.” A little concern was starting to seep into Bozer’s voice. “Are you sure he’s not at your place?”

“Bozer, my apartment ain’t that big.” Jack blew out a breath. “The guy isn’t hiding under my damn bed.”

A pause, then a distorted clatter through the phone as Bozer put down whatever cooking utensil he must have been holding. “I mean, did he say anything to you about his plans?”

Jack stared at the hole in the wall, silent. What was he forgetting?

“Jack?”

“I don’t— I don’t know, alright?” Jack bit out, frustrated.

“What’s that mean?” Bozer sounded bewildered. “Did something happen?”

“No. I mean…” Jack started to wander around the house as he talked, like it was a crime scene, hoping he was going to find some kind of critical clue that would jog his memory. “Maybe, I guess. I’m just a bit spacey right now.”

“You ok?”

“Just… call me if you run into Mac, alright? Or tell him to call me. I’m worried.”

Jack hung up and had to resist the sudden urge to slam his phone down on the counter.

It was that nauseating pit in his stomach again, the constant alarm in the back of his head going ‘something’s wrong’ on endless repeat. The problem was that it always was. Or almost always, at least. Like a faulty fire alarm that went off every time there was a little condensation in the air. Mac would probably call it ‘false positives’ or whatever, if he’d ever talked about it with Mac.

Jack tried to think about it logically, giving in to the little voice that sounded unnervingly like Mac that listed long-suffering facts whenever his gut was telling him something was wrong.

Mac could’ve stayed over but left to work early in the morning, Jack decided. He probably left the reports because they weren’t done yet, and his phone behind was… well, that was still weird but not outside the realm of possibility. He’d probably just drop by again to pick it and the reports up on his way back home from work. There were still some missing threads, like why Jack’s gun had ended up seemingly hurled into the wall, and why Jack had woken up sleeping against his front door. But the theory still dulled some of the alarm bells in the back of Jack’s head. He’d spaced out before, woken up in odd places. If Mac was alright, then Jack could figure out his own bullshit later.

Jack’s comforting theory held water for all of five minutes. In that time he took some meds, made some coffee, and tidied up Mac’s mess of papers. 

Then he spotted Mac’s car keys still on the hook by the door.

Fuck.

***

Mac had given up about an hour into his impulsive trek home. It was pretty dark, even with the artificial lights, and unless he resorted to vandalism there was little he could do to create his own light source. He ran the numbers in his head as he walked. A short drive could translate into hours of walking, and he was quickly realizing that on foot he wouldn’t make it home before daybreak. He was tired, and still shaky, and concerned about getting lost, and not at all interested in dealing with questions from Bozer when he’d rock up to the house in the morning without his phone or car. His options more or less narrowed down to either wandering until he found a 24-hour motel cheap enough that he could pay for it with the little cash in his wallet, or just… sitting on a park bench. He figured once the day crept into the hazy early-morning hours, there’d be enough people mulling about that he could ask to borrow someone’s phone to make a call.

Mainly, Mac could admit to himself, he just wanted to sit down on a park bench in the dark with no one around for a bit. He was tired and a few tiers beyond frazzled, and the last thing he wanted to do was interact with another human being. He wanted to be alone, and he wanted to think.

So he sat, and he thought, and slowly the hours rolled by. Eventually the traffic started picking up on the nearby road which he could hear grumbling and growling behind him, and the sky turned from black to grey, to just the hint of golden. He was tired, chilled, and hungry, but not in enough discomfort to force him to move. Cafes probably wouldn’t open for a few more hours anyways.

A few people started filtering through the park, probably people who lived in the nearby apartment buildings. Mainly joggers and runners at first, which Mac could understand. There was nothing like an early morning jog before the heat of the day crept in. Then couples, and people walking their dogs, and tired parents.

Mac didn’t ask anyone to borrow their phone.

He kept running the night through in his head, like he was locked in place until he could finally sort it out in his mind, until he could fix it.

He was worried about Jack. He knew his partner wasn’t in his right mind, he would never have just shot someone entering his apartment, even with confirmation that it wasn’t Mac. He shot people, Mac knew what their job was, knew what Jack’s job had been ever since he enlisted long before Mac’s time, he wasn’t an idiot… but not like this. Jack only shot people when it was life or death, when it was their gun going off or Jack’s. Mac had been entering Jack’s apartment completely unarmed.

Mac knew there was something he should be doing about that. Calling Matty, maybe, but that felt like such an earth-shattering betrayal of Jack that it stung to even consider. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want access to a phone, because that would mean he’d have to do something. Call Bozer, call Matty, fuck, call Jack.

He knew he wasn’t thinking about it right. He didn’t have the calm, measured concern and reasoning that Jack deserved from him. His concern for Jack blended with the sickening knowledge that he’d almost died. His brain didn’t want to connect the man looming out of the shadows with a gun to his best friend. Jack pulled the trigger to protect him, last night he’d pulled the trigger to kill him. Those weren’t the same people, they just couldn’t be.

Mac realized what he wanted to do was absolutely nothing. He wanted to see Jack in a couple days hearty and hale and joking around. He wanted everything to proceed like this had never happened. He wanted this to have never happened.

He must have looked a little more morose and dejected than he realized, because as early morning bled into midmorning, an older woman stopped in front of his bench.

“I just wanted to check.” The woman started in a somewhat apologetic tone, keeping her voice pitched down so that wouldn’t carry to the other passerby’s. “If you were alright?”

Mac started a little, having sunk into the familiarity of hours upon hours of being completely undisturbed. “Uh, yes ma’am. Sorry, I…”

Mac shifted, he realized his hands were still shaking so he stuffed them back into his armpits. “…I just lost my phone and I’m a bit far from home.” He flashed a rueful, apologetic, sort of smile.

The woman frowned slightly, before moving to sit down next to him. “Oh, you poor thing. Should’ve asked to borrow a phone, is there anyone you can call, love?”

“Yeah…” Mac trailed off as the woman immediately was holding out her phone to him.

“Here, use mine.” The woman insisted in a no-nonsense tone. She waved her phone insistently when Mac didn’t immediately grab it.

“Thank you.” Mac conceded, freeing his hands to take her phone. He was a little impressed by her apparent easy trust. He had to have been looking pretty pathetic.

“Don’t mention it.” The woman patted his shoulder before folding her hands in her lap. “My youngest is about your age, I’d hope any other decent person out there would do the same for him.”

Mac flashed another smile, small and embarrassed but appreciative. Then, with a little hesitation, he dialed a number. The person on the other end picked up.

Chapter Text

Riley’s phone rang. It was an unknown number so she let it ring a couple times before begrudgingly picking up.

“Hello…?” Mac’s voice crackled through the phone.

“Hey, Mac.” Riley pulled the phone back from her ear to double-check it wasn’t Mac’s number before putting it back to her ear. “…there a reason you’re calling me from an unknown number?”

“I lost my phone.”

“You need me to ping it?” Riley spun her chair over to her laptop and flipped it open. She switched her phone to speaker and plopped it down on her desk to free up her hands. She’d definitely gotten calls from the others before begging her to locate missing electronics. Admittedly never from Mac before, predominantly Jack, sometime to the realization that it was in his back pocket. “Just give me—“

“—no, actually, uh…” Mac cut her off. He sounded embarrassed. “I just need a pickup, if you can, or you can call me an uber.”

Riley paused, hands hanging over her keyboard. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’d pay you back for the uber.”

“I’m not worried about that.” Riley said with a touch of exasperation. “You’re calling me cuz you lost your phone and now you’re telling me you’re stranded somewhere? What happened?”

“We can talk about it later. A woman is very kindly lending me her phone and I’d like to give it back to her.”

A reasonable answer, but there was something else to Mac’s voice that was throwing her off. She could sense the muted chagrin, which made sense for the situation, but there was a nervous sort of unease there too. For the average person, losing their phone and getting stranded would be plenty to put them ill-at-ease, but Mac’s job was getting shot at and blowing stuff up — he handled far more unsettling situations with far more composure than she was hearing from him now. There was something off about the situation, something deeper that she didn’t know about. Riley didn’t like being out of the loop regarding one of her closest friends, especially not when something was wrong.

“Is it alright if I pick you up on my bike?” Riley asked finally.

“Do you have a spare helmet?” Mac replied tentatively, like he didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth but also didn’t want said gift horse to kill him.

“Yeah, duh. Where are you?” Riley flipped her laptop shut.

A long pause.

“I’m not exactly sure.”

Riley breathed out a sigh and opened her laptop again. “Give me two seconds and I’ll trace you.”

“Thanks, Riles. I owe you one.”

Mac’s location pinged in a park, significantly closer to Jack’s apartment than her’s. Why hadn’t Mac called Jack? Riley wasn’t complaining, she’d gladly drive to hell to pick up one of her boys, but Jack was normally the first person Mac would call in a situation like this if he’d even call anyone. Mac was renownedly obstinate when it came to asking for any type of help, and until this moment Riley had been pretty sure he’d never ask her for something like this.

“Got ya.” Riley shrugged off her apprehension, and focused on sounding casual. She worried that a little too much concern would spook him, like a skittish wild animal. “I’m on my way.”

***

When Riley arrived, she found some vaguely legal parking and Mac on a park bench. He was sitting side by side with an older woman, both of them angled to each other and the woman had one of Mac’s hands folded in both of hers. The woman was talking to him as Riley approached. He was leaned forwards with his elbows on his knees, looking slightly up at her with the very picture of rapt attention. It was cute, but then Riley realized how lost he looked.

The woman noticed Riley first, straightening up and giving Riley a quick smile. “Looks like your friend is here, Angus.”

Riley gave a quick little wave as Mac twisted around to see her.

“Oh.” Mac popped to standing and gestured between the two. “Riley this is Mrs.—“

“Evangeline.” The woman cut Mac off with a seemingly long-suffering smile as she reached out to shake Riley’s hand. “None of this missus nonsense.”

“Making friends?” Riley teased Mac.

“You didn’t tell me that your friend was such a beautiful young woman.” Evangeline cooed to Mac in almost the same moment, overlapping Riley.

Mac glanced between the two of them with a wry look but a touch of heat in his cheeks. “Thanks again.” Mac told Evangeline, apparently electing to ignore both of their comments. Riley huffed a small laugh and Evangeline smiled.

“It was nothing.” Evangeline dismissed warmly. “Take care, alright?”

“I will.” Mac reached out to shake hands, but Evangeline stepped in to make it a brief hug before pulling apart and continuing on her long-interrupted walk.

Mac looked after her for a long few seconds, until Riley handed him a helmet. He took it with a quiet nod and they started over to her bike.

“What’d you guys talk about?” Riley asked conversationally as she zipped open her pack to pull out the leather jacket she’d managed to cram in. She kept seeing Mac’s face, soft and earnest, looking up at Evangeline like she held some sort of answer he couldn’t figure out himself.

“Her son served in Afghanistan. She was telling me about him.”

“Yeah?” Riley let the word trail, inviting further elaboration. She handed the jacket back to Mac.

“Yeah.” Mac shrugged the jacket on. He did not elaborate. Riley decided to let it go, for now.

***

The ride proceeded in silence. In a way Mac was almost grateful that they were on Riley’s bike instead of a car since it stifled communication pretty effectively. Then Riley pulled in to a diner’s parking lot and parked, which ended the much appreciated ‘let’s not talk about this’ silence.

Mac tugged off his helmet as he begrudgingly got off the bike and raised an eyebrow at Riley.

“I hate to say it, Riles, but this isn’t looking like my house.”

Riley pulled off her own helmet, shaking out her hair. She had a small, self-satisfied smirk. “That’s because you’re going to buy me a coffee to thank me for picking you up.”

Touché. Mac had the sneaking suspicion she was just using it to make him give in so she could interrogate him, but he couldn’t exactly refuse an opportunity to repay her. She’d really gone out of her way for him.

“I’m buying you breakfast.” Mac stated, like they were bartering.

Riley shrugged. “Have it your way.”

Riley turned and strode into the diner, helmet tucked under her arm. Mac followed a little slower, feeling like he’d been duped somehow.

Riley gave him time to settle. They ordered and sat down, made some small talk. Mac knew she was just figuring out the best way to start the real conversation, but he couldn’t help but feel like she was just trying to get his guard down before going for the throat. He was jumpy, sue him.

“Look, Mac…” Riley waited until after they were served to jump topics. Mac just focused on scraping out the butter onto his waffles. “…I know we don’t talk much about— that the heart-to-heart stuff is more Jack’s territory, but you can talk to me too. If something’s up, or if you just— or if anything, ok?”

“I know, Riles.” Mac glanced up briefly. Riley had a small, consternated, frown. “That’s why I called you.”

“And I’m glad you did, I’m just saying that I’m not just a free ride. We can talk about it, too.”

“Or we can not.”

Silence reigned for a little bit. Riley hadn’t even started on her pancakes, Mac took his first bite of his food and despite his hunger it was hard to swallow. He tried not to look at Riley, and he felt guilty for that.

“So there is something.” Riley said finally, more firmly.

Mac closed his eyes for a second. Of course she wasn’t letting it go, she was just as stubborn as Jack. Or himself, for that matter.

“No there isn’t. It’s fine.” Mac dismissed, stabbing his fork back into his food again. “I’m fine.”

“Is Jack fine?”

Mac paused. His fork hung in the air. It was a momentary pause, but he felt like he might as well written the answer on his forehead.

“Jack’s not fine?” Riley’s question sharpened. When Mac just ducked his head and hunched over his plate, she continued in a severe, worried tone. “This isn’t ‘charades meets twenty questions,’ Mac, talk to me for god’s sake.”

“He’s going to be ok.” Mac said roughly, sharper than that sentence probably ever had the right to be said. He also said it with more confidence than he had the evidence to back it up, which was normally a fallacy he avoided like the plague. Maybe he just needed it to be correct. Jack was going to be fine, because Mac didn’t think he could help him. The alternative — Jack not being fine, and Mac not having his shit together enough to help him — was something Mac’s brain cringed away from even considering. “He’s— he has medicine and food and water. He has a phone he can call for help from if he needs it, hell, he has two. I just— I can’t—“

“What the hell is going on? What’s wrong with Jack?”

“He’s sick.”

“Yeah I heard.” Riley bit out, aggravated at his short response. “But you’re saying it’s serious? Does he need to go to the hospital? What can’t you—“

Mac set down his fork with a clatter and dug into his pocket. Slamming down a fistful of bullets on the table shut Riley up, at least for a second, long enough for Mac to try to think.

Riley stayed silent for longer than a second. One of the bullets started rolling lazily towards her and she stopped it, sending a quick, nervous glance off to the side to make sure no one had looked over at the slight commotion.

“He tried to shoot me.” Mac finally confessed, dropping his voice down to a tired hush, as he failed to see a way to claw out of the conversation without honesty.

“No he didn’t.” Riley’s response was reactionary, immediate. It wasn’t accusatory, but an assured and bewildered disagreement. Mac figured her response would’ve been almost identical if Mac had told her the sky was green.

“He gets…” Mac gestured vaguely, lifting his hands to wave them around. Riley reached out to cup the pile of bullets between her hands to prevent them from rolling away. “When he’s out of it, like he’s feverish, he can get… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like he knows what he’s doing but he doesn’t at the same time.”

“…He’s not himself?” Riley attempted to fill in, hesitantly. There was an almost blank look on her face, like shock. Mac tried not to think about how deeply it could be hitting home for her, how similarly her mom might have described her father to her.

“He’s a part of himself, I think. Just… a part of him that’s trying to survive. A part that’s scared, you know, constant fight or flight.”

“He tried to shoot you?”

“Yeah, I…” Mac picked up one of the bullets, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. To his chagrin, his hand was shaking again. “I emptied one of his guns, earlier. Didn’t know it was the same one until he pulled the trigger.”

“Fuck.” Riley said flatly, emphatically. Her voice shook a little. “I mean, fuck.”

She lifted her hands suddenly, and Mac moved his instinctively to replace hers in guarding the bullets, and she grabbed fistfuls of his leather jacket at the shoulders and tugged him in over the table. She leaned over too, meeting him about halfway, and hugged him tightly. One of her arms wrapped around his shoulder, resting between his shoulder blades, and her other hand was cupped around the back of his neck. His head was tucked in the junction between her shoulder and neck, and his cheek squished against her collarbone. He could feel her heartbeat pounding through his skull. He closed his eyes and exhaled long and slightly shaky.

He let her hug him for a long time, until the discomfort of his stomach jammed against the side of the table as well as the creeping self-consciousness made him restless. He twisted his head a little bit.

“I think you got syrup on your shirt.” He mumbled.

“Fuck.” Riley repeated for the third time, emphatic. He didn’t think she was referring to the syrup, but he tried to imagine that she was. She let go and both of them withdrew back to their side of the table.

“Where do you want me to drive you?” Riley asked. She looked abjectly miserable, and she sounded somewhere between morose and apologetic. As if she’d regretted dragging him into the diner in the first place, but she didn’t say that.

Mac looked down at his waffle again, only a couple bites taken out of it. “Let’s eat first.”

“You sure?”

Mac wasn’t really hungry anymore, but he also wasn’t raring to clamber back on top of a motorcycle and go blazing off somewhere. “Yeah. Let’s just… let’s just get the rounds off the table first.”

Both of them fumbled for the bullets at the same time, splitting the pile between them in the process. It was just a little lighter, the difference between ten bullets and five. Half of a loaded gun each.

Chapter Text

Riley stopped her motorcycle on the road by Mac’s driveway, and accepted Mac handing his helmet back over to her.

“You can’t tell Jack.” Mac said abruptly, right as her hands landed on the helmet, as if the words had been pressing on his throat the entire drive and were finally able to escape.

“What the hell do you mean?” She knew what he meant, she just couldn’t believe it.

“If he doesn’t remember it.” Mac said with a slow sort of finality, like he’d convinced himself of it. “It’ll— it won’t do any good for him to know.”

“You’re being—“ Riley trailed off into a frustrated, disbelieving scoff, struggling to even find the right words to respond. “That’s absurd. What’re— you have to—“

“—I have to what, Riley?” Mac cut her off, a little sharply, heavily sardonic. “Go ahead, tell me how to fix this.”

“You can’t just pretend it never happened. What about next time?”

“Next time I drop the care package off at his doorstep.” Mac’s voice was almost cold, which stung, despite her knowing it was a front.

“And just leave him alone? What if he hurts someone else? Or himself?”

Mac looked a little like she’d just slapped him, or maybe socked him in the gut would be the more accurate term. He even recoiled back a step, like her words had physically thrown him off. His face crumpled a little, lips thinning, eyebrows crinkling together, before — with a seemingly monumental effort — he straightened his expression out. His voice didn’t have nearly the same composure, coming out raw and brittle. “I’d take a bullet for Jack. You know that. For god’s sake, I just don’t want to take one from him. Can’t I— can’t I have just a fraction of self-preservation? Is that really so fucking selfish?”

“Jesus, Mac, I know that.” Riley felt helpless, just standing with the damn helmet in hand and watching her best friend fight tears. All the fire drained out of her voice, until it was just a weak, pained sort of appeal. “I’m not saying that, I’m just saying Jack needs to know and needs… hell, needs help.”

The sound of the front door opening, startled both of them, and both of them glanced to where Bozer was stepping out of the door and waving at them with both hands. He had a relieved sort of smile on his face.

Mac turned back to look at Riley first, while she was still watching Bozer. She could feel his energy switch, a sudden desperate need to convince her. He dropped his voice down to a hoarse quiet and took a step closer to her, hands rising to hover near her shoulder. “Please, Riley, it’d kill him. I can’t— if he gets like that again I’ll call you I’ll call— I’ll call anybody. We wouldn’t let anyone get hurt. But if you tell him it’d kill him, I can’t— I can’t deal with that right now. Please, Riley. Please.”

Bozer approached them through the front yard, still out of hearing range but reaching them soon. He waved again, and Riley waved back with a fake smile.

“I trusted you.” Mac grabbed her shoulders, finally, forcing her to look back at him instead of Bozer. Conflicted feelings felt like they were crawling up her throat. She had the frustrated sense that keeping it all under wraps was just going to lead to the mother of all blowups, to something inevitably bad. At the same time she could share Mac’s reluctance to tell Jack. Knowing he’d almost killed the man he’d stuck by to protect for so long? His best friend? She almost couldn’t imagine anything worse. She’d also never heard Mac this desperate, this wrecked. His blue eyes were wide and bright, and fixed intently on hers as if he was searching for some sign in her expression. “I trust you.”

“Ok.” Riley finally rasped out, as if Mac had ripped the word right out of her mouth. The weight of his trust felt like it was crushing all the air out of her lungs until she had to give in. “Fuck. Alright.”

“Hey guys, what’s going on?” Bozer reached them finally, face open and bright and earnest. There was just a touch of concern there too, as if he had the vague, subliminal sense that something was off. He reached out and touched Mac’s shoulder gently, to tear his intent gaze away from Riley. “Hey Mac, Jack was a little worried. Said you’d left your phone at his place.”

Riley watched Mac’s expression, watched it unevenly smooth out into an embarrassed smile. It wasn’t a perfect transformation, at least not with what she knew, but eerily impressive nonetheless. His hands slipped off her shoulders easily, as if it had always been a casual gesture.

“Yeah, that’s a long story.” Mac’s lips twisted, casually wry and apologetic. “Could you give him a call back to know everything’s alright?”

Riley’s heart sunk slowly. What the hell had she just agreed to?

***

When Jack’s phone dinged with a text, he was lying on his back on the ground. As a general rule, the ground was a place he tried not to be. In the moment it had one main benefit, which was that it was colder than the couch.

He had a pillow shoved under his head and an icepack crammed under his neck. In addition to fighting the fever through anti-whatever meds, Jack was a staunch believer in icing it out the old fashioned way. When sweating it out failed, there was nothing to do but attack it from the exact opposite direction. Jack wasn’t really the type of guy to just sit in the middle ground and do nothing. He needed to clear his head, the brain fog was driving him insane.

Jack fumbled across the floor with one hand until he located his phone beside him, then he lifted it up and squinted at it to see what the text was.

It was from Bozer, a simple ‘Mac showed up! All’s good’

Jack texted back ‘what happened?’

‘Dunno, but he’s fine’

Jack closed his eyes and rested his phone on his chest. He wanted to take Bozer’s reassurance at face value — and he was relieved! Immensely! — but there was still that gut feeling telling him that something bad had happened.

Bozer wouldn’t lie to him. Well, Bozer might try but he definitely wouldn’t be able to pull it off. Mac was alright. He’d just, what, decided to walk home? Without his phone? In the dark? Shit, how long of a walk would that be anyways? Jack knew Mac was an avid runner, but his head still spun with everything that could’ve gone wrong. Maybe that was a little overprotective of him, Mac could handle himself just fine.

Still…

Jack blew out a low, long, sigh. An alarm went off on his phone, reminding him to take another round of meds. Jack turned it off and hauled himself off the floor with a groan.

Mac’s ok. He’s just doing Mac things. Jack reassured himself. I just need to get my own shit together.

He took his meds, swept up the plaster dust, triple-checked his gun safe locks, and made a mental note to repair the wall before having any of the others over. As a stopgap solution he hung up a picture frame over it. Then he collected all of Mac’s stuff together — car keys, phone, folders — and put them in the cardboard box Mac had originally brought and set it near the door. He texted Bozer asking if he should drive the stuff over, but didn’t get an immediate reply. It presented a bit of a logistical issue, if Jack drove Mac’s car over with the stuff he’d have to either get a ride or call an uber to get back to his own apartment, which would be a hassle. It probably made more sense for someone to just drop Mac off at the apartment to get his stuff and car on the way to work, but Jack wouldn’t mind either way.

Bozer texted back a few minutes later. ‘Mac says to just put the stuff in his car and he’ll grab it on his way to work’

‘really? The keys too? Someone could steal the car’

‘I guess so, Mac said to just lock the keys in and not worry about it’

‘I hope he’s not planning on breaking into his own car’

Bozer just sent back a shrugging emoji in response. Jack frowned and put his phone away again. Surely Mac knew Jack could just keep the stuff safe in his apartment for him to grab when he dropped by. Was Mac… avoiding him? Was he embarrassed about leaving the stuff and wanted to avoid being teased about it? Had Jack said something that ticked him off? Jack found himself once again hating the fact that he couldn’t remember the details of the previous evening. If he’d pissed Mac off somehow and didn’t even remember what he’d said, it was going to be a hell of a thing to make up for it. Maybe Jack was overthinking it and Mac just needed a little time to brew on something. He was like that, retreating into himself to sort stuff out in his head. Sometimes Jack needed to haul him out of his head, kicking and screaming if need be. Other times he just needed to give the kid the time he needed to go through it, and check up on him whenever he popped back out of his head again. The guy could be almost impossible to read sometimes, always keeping some stuff close to his chest. Throughout their partnership Jack had learned to just accept that sometimes.

It’s just a weird Mac thing. Jack told himself. The only problem was that the more times he told himself that, the less he believed it.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Jack woke up feeling somewhat better. He was still achey and stiff — probably partly from lying on the floor — his sinuses were clogged, and both his head and throat hurt. But the constant and infuriating brain-fog was gone. To dampen his relief however, when he thought to go down and double-check, Mac’s car was also gone. Pros and cons. There was no broken glass littering the area and Jack certainly hadn’t heard car alarms, which meant either a more finessed criminal had come through or Mac had gotten to it. It was pretty difficult to distinguish between the two. Jack shot off a test to Mac’s phone. 

‘Did you get your car or should I be making a police report right now?’

He didn’t get a response for a while. He figured Mac was either driving or at work and busy. Or his car had actually been stolen, in which case Jack was ready to whip out a whole lot of ‘told you so’s’ while helping Mac hunt the guy down.

By lunch he got a response, a simple ‘I got it’ text.

‘coulda dropped in and grabbed a coffee’ Jack offered, trying not to sound accusatory as much as anyone could try to not sound anything over text.

‘I figured you were sleeping’ Mac’s reply was quick, almost rehearsed.

Jack set his phone down on the table next to his bowl of chicken soup, frowning to himself and drumming his fingers. His phone binged again with a text, and Jack nearly knocked his bowl over in his haste to grab it.

‘you’re ok?’

Jack stared at Mac’s text for longer than it probably warranted. It felt a little off, and it took Jack a few more spoonfuls of soup to really place why. It was just a little too serious, in a way that only made sense in their own unspoken and mainly subconscious scale. How’re you feeling/doing? Would’ve been expected for the almost refreshingly mundane ailment of a cold. You good? Was a step up in seriousness, to ascertain injured vs uninjured. Especially when the answer was almost certainly in the affirmative, just a quick check-in after a harrowing chase or if one of them was out of breath for a little too long.

You OK? Was the top of the pyramid. Not even an ‘are you injured?’ But more along the lines of ‘you’re not dying on me, right?’ The only time when answering in the affirmative was allowed even while injured. Asking after OK-ness showed a profound level of concern.

‘Ofc, why?’ Jack texted back abruptly, after realizing he’d waited a little too long.

Mac didn’t respond, though the text showed immediately as read. Jack bit back a frustrated groan.

***

Almost a week passed before Mac saw Jack again in person. In that interval not much happened. He went running more and longer than usual, Jack texted him memes he didn’t respond to, and Riley had started texting him to ‘check in’ with him every night which he also didn’t respond to. The only real event of note was a a short mission with Bozer and Riley, but his own role in it was fairly minimal. It was more or less a typical ‘plug a hard-drive into a certain place, and let Riley do the rest’ sort of mission that just required wearing a uniform and bypassing a few locked doors. 

Bozer had pushed a little on how Mac had managed to leave behind all of his stuff at Jack’s and get picked up by Riley. So Mac had concocted a vague story, and after that Bozer eased off. Mac wasn’t sure if that was because Bozer’s curiosity was fully satisfied and he believed Mac wholeheartedly, or if he just thought the real truth was too embarrassing or sensitive somehow and was kindly letting it be. Mac wanted to believe that the first option was true, but he knew his childhood best friend well enough at this point to be pretty certain that it was the latter. The thought made him feel even guiltier for lying, and inexplicably frustrated. Whenever he’d had to keep important stuff from Bozer in the past, due to the nature of the job, he’d had Jack to confide in. Now, since that was equally not an option, he was just left to simmer in the lie.

At the end of the week, Matty called them into the war room for a mission. Bozer and Riley were already in the room when Mac heard the door creak open again behind him, so he knew it was Jack. Of course it was, he was hale and hearty again, and there was a mission, where else would he be? Still, Mac had to resist the urge to crane around the back of the armchair to watch the door as Jack came in. Bozer murmured a greeting and Jack moved to stand next to the center table as Matty launched back into her rundown of the mission.

Mac noted the gun tucked into the back of Jack’s belt. Jack was standing a little ahead and to the side of him, so it was clearly visible in his periphery. Normally he wouldn’t even have registered it, ‘gun’ was pretty synonymous with ‘Jack’ after all. But this time it caught his attention, even just briefly, and that annoyed him in a way he couldn’t quite put words to.

Mac tore his eyes away from the gun and back to Matty. Riley move a little closer to him,  leaning against the side of his armchair, and Mac tried to convince himself that it was coincidental.

The mission briefing was concise, the walk to the plane short and focused, and Mac and Jack had ended up on seats far away from each other — completely coincidentally — during takeoff. So no conversation, Mac told himself he was just focusing on the mission. Luckily being a bit quiet wasn’t too unusual for him, so he let himself get comfortable with the silence without the fear of it drawing notice. That lasted until the plane was finally in the sky, then Mac heard the click of someone taking off their seatbelt followed by approaching footsteps. Even sitting with his eyes closed and his head leaned back, Mac knew exactly who it was.

“What is it, Jack?” Mac asked, trying his best to pull off a patiently aggrieved tone, as if he’d been trying to sleep and begrudged the interruption.

Jack didn’t respond immediately, there was just the huff of the seat cushion deflating slightly as Jack sat down across from Mac. Mac tried to resist the temptation, but after a couple seconds he couldn’t help but open his eyes and lift his head to look at Jack.

Jack had a small, thoughtful, frown on his face. He was leaning forwards with his elbows braced on his knees, hands folded together, and staring intently at Mac was if he was trying to figure something out.

Great. Mac thought sarcastically. Just great.

Mac raised a single eyebrow, trying to wordlessly cajole Jack to speak. He mused that normally getting Jack to shut up was the hard part.

Then Jack smiled, ruefully, in response to Mac’s question. “Can’t a guy just miss his best friend?”

Mac’s stomach flopped, a sudden acidic pit of guilt and frustration and sadness opening up in his gut. Something about Jack’s words and tone — a mix between playful and achingly vulnerable — was brutally disarming. So much so that it was almost hard to even look at Jack, the half smile, the searching gaze.

Mac swallowed hard, then forced an amused tone. “I just saw you a week ago.”

Jack slouched back into his seat and threw his arms up over the back of it. His hands rested on the backs of the seats to either side of him, loosely curled. “It was a long week.”

Jack was right about that, even more than he knew.

“It’s good to have you back.” Mac returned, mixing genuineness and ribbing. “After your man-flu.”

Genuineness was the hardest thing to fake, Mac mused, at least when you actually do care.

Jack made a face. “I miss anything important?”

“No, just a minor hacking mission.”

“Nobody got hurt or nothin’?”

“Of course not.” A more genuine smile melted across Mac’s face at Jack’s faux blasé-ness. It was so very predictably Jack. He kept his tone light. “You would’ve heard about it.”

“Fair point.” Jack blew out a breath, flashed a self-depreciating smile, as if silently acknowledging ‘that was real silly of me to ask, huh?’ “You’d’ve told me if somethin’ like that happened, yeah?”

Mac’s stomach flopped again, he blamed it on the turbulence. Jack’s tone was mostly rhetorical, but Mac felt pressed to answer anyways. Firmly, like he was trying to crush any hint of doubt. “We’re all good, Jack.”

“That’s — that’s good.” Jack’s smile pinched slightly, then smoothed out. He leaned forwards and patted Mac’s knee before moving to stand up. “I’ll go ahead and let ya get that shuteye now. See you on the ground.”

“See you.” Mac echoed as Jack edged back into the aisle and headed back to his seat. Following Jack’s suggestion, Mac let his head loll back again against the headrest. He didn’t get any sleep, and he would be hesitant to call what he got ‘rest’ either.

I’m not even really lying. Mac argued to himself, against the roiling shame in his gut. I’m just not marching into a confessional either. Jack’s fine, I’m fine, we all just need to keep moving forwards.

He tried to pretend that he hadn’t been watching Jack’s hands the entire conversation.

***

So Mac was mad at him. That’s what it was. Jack resisted the urge to groan and beat his head against a wall. Mac was playing it cool too, no seam-ripping or barbed quips or irritability. He was completely polite, but the cool distance was palpable. That meant Jack hadn’t just annoyed him, but had somehow really ticked the guy off. The hell was it even about? Would admitting he didn’t remember just piss Mac off further?

Most of the flight, Mac pretended to be sleeping. Jack knew him well enough to know when he was faking it. For one, the kid could never sleep sitting up. He always had to sprawl out horizontally to get more than a few seconds of catnapping. Additionally he was sitting a little too stiffly, arms crossed over his chest, and face neutral rather than lax.

Jack wasn’t aware that he was staring a little too long and a little too intently at Mac for the first hour of the flight until Bozer leaned across the table between them and raised a single eyebrow.

“Dude.” Bozer said, a mix of amused and incredulous, his voice pitched down politely to not disturb either Riley on her laptop or Mac on the other end of the plane. “One of you have got to tell me what’s going on with you two.”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” Jack dismissed, almost imperiously. “What, did Mac say something?”

Bozer made a face. “You’re really not slick.”

“I’m plenty slick. I’m slick enough to be a slip and slide. The hell did Mac say?” Jack broke his gaze off from Mac and leaned likewise across the table until both of their faces were conspiratorially only inches apart.

“If Mac confided something to me, in confidence, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.” Bozer retorted, indignant and self-righteous.

“Did he?” Jack returned, not interrogatively but just openly curious.

“No.” Bozer slouched back down, almost pouting. “But it’s got to have something to do with that night when Riley picked him up, right?”

“When Riley what now?”

“You know, when he left all his stuff at your house.”

“Riley picked him up? On her bike?”

Bozer raised an eyebrow. “Jeez, you’re still hung up on Riley getting one? I thought you liked motorcycles.”

“I like ‘em just fine.”

“Just don’t like her or Mac riding them.” Bozer observed wryly.

“Seems like an unnecessary amount of risk, s’all.”

“Are you hearing yourself? Do you know what we do for work?”

“I do, and that’s the difference between unnecessary an’ necessary risks. Ya’ll nearly get killed often enough on the job, I don’t need any of you guys wrapping yourselves around a tree when I’m off-duty too.”

“They were using protection.”

“Please don’t phrase it like that.”

“Whatever. Point is, that’s where this all originates from, right?”

“Let’s just rewind a sec here.” Jack waved a dismissive hand. “Ri picked Mac up on her bike?”

“For the love of god, Jack—“ Bozer groaned.

“—I’m not still on about the bike, it’s just, he called her? Had her pick him up? Why? When?”

“I told you, when he left his stuff at your place. Apparently it was crazy early in the morning and he was too far out to walk home, so she gave him a ride.”

“He didn’t call me?”

Bozer hesitated, as if a little uncomfortable and completely unsure of what to say in response to that. Or maybe he was just biting back a response that would sting just a little too much.

Jack sighed, scrubbing his hands across his face. “I thought— actually, I dunno what I thought. Did he tell you what happened?”

Bozer stayed quiet.

“Not as in like, confidence-breaking things, just… broad strokes. Logistically.” Jack gestured vaguely with his hands. “C’mon, Bozer, help me out here.”

“He said he went out for a walk before bed, but since he wasn’t totally familiar with the area around your apartment he got turned around and couldn’t find his way back. Hadn’t grabbed his phone since he wasn’t planning on being out long anyways, so he had to just keep walking until he found someone who’d let him use their phone and call. Since you were sick and he knew you were already asleep he just called Riley.”

Jack gave the story all of two seconds to settle. “I mean, that’s a load of crock.”

“Obviously.” Bozer returned. “But that’s what he told me.”

Great. Now he knew Mac had apparently been wandering around all night out in the city without his phone. A great thought. Had he miffed Mac so badly that he’d stormed out of the apartment without his stuff and had been too sore to come back? How’d Jack not realized that at the time and chased after him with his phone, fight or not? How’d Jack somehow forget a comment or a fight so egregious that it had lead to that? The whole thing felt like some sort of vague, strange, story, not at all like something that had actually happened.

“Thanks, Bozer.” Jack said finally, deflated.

Bozer pulled a half grimace, as if caught between whether he should be feeling sympathy for Jack on this one or not. Unable to commit to either recrimination or empathy without knowing the full story. “No problem, just figure out a way to fix whatever this is, alright?”

“Trust me, I’m trying.”

Chapter Text

The mission started, as most terrible things do, fairly well.

It was a snitch extraction. Some money guy was willing to narc on a criminal organization involved in gun running, so they had to grab him and get him out of the country before he got himself killed. Despite its simplicity, it wasn’t an easy mission by any stretch of the imagination. There was always the high probability of cold feet and ambushes awaiting them. Jack was almost surprised when a nervous looking man with a briefcase showed up to the meeting site instead of a bunch of guys with guns.

“Well, wouldya look at that.” Jack whistled, leaning forwards against the wheel and elbowing Mac in the passenger seat. “Maybe it is our lucky day.”

Mac was staring intently out the front windshield, watching the target. The snitch was glancing around himself and at his watch, not seeing their car tucked away into the shadow of one of the abandoned shipping containers. Mac did pull away slightly from Jack’s elbowing, and Jack wondered if he’d done it a bit harder than he’d playfully intended.

“Don’t start celebrating yet.” Mac replied dryly.

“Isn’t Jack supposed to be the grumbling pessimist?” Bozer teased through comms. “What happened?”

“Jack jinxed us, that’s what happened.” Mac grumbled. He didn’t commit to mimicking Jack’s accent, but there was a sliver of a smile on his lips that said he knew what he was doing.

Jack played along. “There’s no such thing as a jinx. The probability of something going wrong is exactly the same as it was before I said anything.”

“Now it’s just gettin’ eerie.” Bozer whined.

Mac swung open his door with a decisive suddenness and started striding quickly towards their target. Jack fumbled with the handle of his door for a second to throw it open and try to catch up to Mac with a quick jog. He bit back a little frustration, he hated when Mac charged in without warning and had half a mind to chew Mac out for it after this was all over. Jack could put up with a certain amount of pissiness from Mac when they were at odds, but that tolerance hit a hard line whenever Mac involved his own safety in it.

Mac was about five feet away from the target — who was looking up with wide eyes at their approach — and Jack was about the same distance back from Mac, when a gunshot went off.

Jack’s gun was in his hand almost immediately, half unaware of even unholstering it, as their target went down in a spray of blood.

Shit. Turns out it probably wasn’t their lucky day. At least it definitely wasn’t the snitch’s lucky day. Mac broke into a sprint, dropping down to his knees to slide next to their target. Meanwhile Jack fired off a couple potshots past them, in the vague direction that the offending gunshot appeared to have come from. The shooter could be anywhere in the dark, blocky, shadows cast by the towering shipping containers. The damn place was full of the things, and in the looming evening and harsh intermittent yellow lighting it was impossible to pick out anybody’s location.

Jack kept scanning as he caught up to Mac. He spared a quick glance down and grimaced. Mac’s fingers were practically dug into the poor bastard’s throat, slick with blood and apparently struggling to find and get pressure on the source of the bleed. It was a noble effort, but it wasn’t too easy to survive a bullet through the neck. The guy’s eyes were already starting to glaze over, and the blood pooling around Mac’s knees was still growing. Jack’s quick and brutally practical assessment was that the guy was a goner, and they were way too exposed.

“Git, Mac!” Jack snapped, stepping over the body to get vaguely between Mac and the shooter. “You can’t help him!”

Mac did in fact ‘git’, and quickly, grabbing the snitch’s briefcase and hotfooting it the ten or so feet to the nearest storage unit. He was normally far too slow to get out of the line of fire for Jack’s taste, so Jack took it as a pleasant surprise. He followed, firing off another few shots and ducking behind the container as the first round of return fire peppered the corrugated metal.

Mac startled as Jack pressed his back to the metal next to him, and hugged the briefcase to his chest. Both the briefcase and Mac’s hands were covered in blood. Hopefully the damn thing had some helpful documents that would keep the mission from being a total disaster, but Jack was more focused on getting himself and Mac the hell outta dodge. The briefcase could be their consolation prize to Matty, if they survived this.

“What the hell is going on over there?” Riley demanded through comms.

“Gonna be a hot exfil.” Jack peaked around the corner of the shipping container and cringed back behind it as a bullet pinged past him, causing a reactionary start from Mac too. “And we won’t be needing that third ticket outta here.”

“Shit.”

Jack poked just the end of his gun around the corner and fired off shots until it clicked empty. He pulled back away from the edge and reloaded.

Mac was watching him as he did it, ejecting the old mag, slamming the new one home, and cocking the gun. Practiced, sharp, and efficient.

“Mac.” Jack called out, raising his voice slightly despite their close proximity since Mac had that distant sort of look in his eyes that usually meant he was off in his head. “Exit plan? Can’t just charge back to our car, they’re sure as hell covering it.”

Mac blinked, his gaze slid from Jack’s hands back to his face. “I need to get a look into one of these storage containers.”

“Yeah?” Jack grinned. “Expectin’ to find bomb-making materials?”

“I’d settle for something that can smoke.” Mac smiled wryly. Jack could practically see the gears in his head already turning, as if sorting through everything that even might be in a storage container in a different country that had been sitting abandoned for at least a decade.  “But I wouldn’t be opposed to—“

Past Mac, at the other end of the storage container they were hiding behind, someone rounded the corner with an assault rifle.

On mostly pure instinct, Jack brought his gun up. He aimed just over Mac’s shoulder, and fired before the enemy combatant had an opportunity to riddle Mac’s back with bullets.

Jack was focused on his target, but it was impossible to ignore Mac’s expression still central in his vision. His eyes went wide, mouth parting slightly, and something like sheer, frozen, horror embedded deep into his face. He looked like a deer in the headlights, if a deer could know the meaning of death. Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Mac look so scared, except he had the unnerving feeling that it was recently. And Mac was looking at him, at his gun, completely oblivious to the threat behind him.

Mac flinched down as Jack fired, shoulder slamming hard into the side of the storage container as he lurched away from Jack’s gun, arms coming up to box around his face. The enemy combatant went down as Jack’s shot caught him right in the head. His aim had been stone-steady, like it always was, no chance of the bullet landing anywhere else.

“Mac?” Jack asked, voice caught between profound concern but also the bewildered urge to laugh as if Mac had just done something absurd to the point of being silly. Mac was straightening back up again, hands sliding to cover his ears as if that had been what he was doing all along. Mac twisted around to look behind him at the person Jack had just dropped rather than answering Jack. His face was hidden from Jack’s view by his arms, but Jack could see and hear him breathing hard.

“Fuck, Jack, I can’t hear in one of my ears now.” Mac said, all in a breathless, aggrieved, rush. He bent down and grabbed the briefcase that he’d dropped. His blood slicked hand fumbled over it briefly before seizing the handle.

“I’m sorry.” Normally Jack would’ve launched into some sarcastic comment about saving his life, but instead a bewildered but earnest apology broke free. Concern still leaked into his voice, all humor fading away. “You good?”

“Yeah.” Mac said, but his voice came out all funny. He was half-turned again, moving right on to the next thing. “Help me get into this container. Here, where the metal is a little weaker…”

Jack jolted back into motion, but as the rest of the mission blurred by he couldn’t help but replay that moment over and over in his head.

Eyes widening, arms flying up around his head, flinching down and away from Jack’s gun. Pure, visceral fear, but as if seeing that in Mac wasn’t bad enough, it was more than that. It wasn’t like Jack had rounded the corner on him and startled him. Mac had been looking him right in the eye, talking to him, but still when Jack’s gun came up it looked like his life flashed before his eyes.

Mac hadn’t been scared of the gun. Mac had been scared of Jack.