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“Mac? Buddy?”
Pain. Blinding pain. It’s all that he’s aware of. He can barely see straight.
“Hoss? You okay? You gotta answer me, man, I’m gettin’ kinda antsy over here.”
“Jack?” His own voice rattles around in his skull and he whimpers, squeezing his eyes shut. Not that he could make out much anyways. The sliver of blurry vision he’d had for just a split second had been tinged in a curtain of red.
Blood. He’s bleeding.
He doesn’t know why or how.
Hands on his shoulders, that’s all he’s aware of.
“Whoa, whoa, it’s okay, I gotcha.” The Texas drawl drops to a soft murmur, and it doesn’t grate quite as harshly on his brain. “Homeboy got ya good, huh? Conked ya pretty hard on the noggin, there. But we’re almost to exfil, they’ll check ya over. I don’t even gotta bother with a concussion check, cause I know you got one.”
Mac thinks his feet are moving. They at least feel like they’re still attached to the end of his legs.
“You gonna pass out on me? Hey! Mac! Get those eyes open for me, let ol’ Jack see your baby blues.”
He tries. He tries so hard to force himself to do what Jack is asking, but something just isn’t working. Some synapses must be failing to fire between what he wants his brain to do versus what his body winds up actually doing. Or, not doing, in this case.
Though he desperately wants to hang on to Jack’s voice, the familiar twang, plucked with worry, fades to white noise.
It’s the last thing Mac remembers.
Waking in medical is an unfortunately familiar routine for Mac, much to Jack’s chagrin and endless frustration. His overwatch never lets him wake alone, though, if he can help it. This is no exception.
When he opens his eyes, the sterile, white room nearly blinds him.
“S’bright…” is the first thing he says.
A dark blur of movement off to his side makes him jump.
“Easy there, hoss,” comes the unmistakable voice of his partner, and he relaxes ever so slightly.
“C’n we turn off th’lights?” He hates how pitiful he sounds, but he’s still too groggy and disoriented to get his mouth to work right.
“Sure, bud. Lemme get on that, just sit tight.”
Footsteps that are normally so gentle when they’re in medical now clomp loudly in Mac’s head, drawing a low, involuntary moan from him. Seconds later, the space around him ceases to be so harshly radiant, and he can breathe a little easier when his pulse is no longer ricocheting around inside his skull.
More than just shapes, he can now actually see Jack’s face as he walks, much more lightly, back over to the bedside.
“So, aside from clearly feelin’ like your eyeballs are gonna split if you see a lick’a brightness, how are ya doing?”
Mac blinks slowly, trying to process that sentence. “...What?”
Jack chuckles apologetically. “Sorry. Too much jabberin’ right off the bat, I reckon. You’re gonna need a lotta R&R for this one, brother, hate to tell ya.” Then, his expression sobers, and Mac knows exactly where his mind just went.
“Not your fault.”
It’s a mantra that they trade constantly. Any time either of them winds up here, this same old script worms its way into the conversation. So Mac knows what’s about to be said next.
“It’s my job to look out for you, and I let that guy get the jump on ya…”
Mac sighs. “Didn’t let him do anything… My idea to split up.” Each word is a chore, each mumble still setting off the throbbing behind his eyes despite his best efforts.
It’s clear that Jack doesn’t believe him, but he also doesn’t seem to want to argue with Mac while he’s so out of it.
“Why don’t you get some rest, bud?”
He’s obviously dodging the issue, but Mac’s mind is too fogged over to call him on it at the moment, so he lets it go. For now.
“We’re gonna talk about it later,” he murmurs.
Jack sighs and squeezes his hand. “If you say so, hoss. I’ll be right here.”
Mac closes his eyes and lets himself drift off.
The light doesn’t hurt quite as much the next time he wakes. True to his word, Jack is there at his bedside, dozing in the chair.
“H’ve you gone home at all?” Speaking doesn’t hurt nearly as much this time.
“Mm?” Jack blinks blearily at him, suddenly more alert when he sees that Mac is conscious. “Oh, Mac, hey… You with me for real this time?”
Mac frowns. “Huh?”
Jack reaches out and gently clasps his shoulder. “You’ve been in and out for the past day or so, not really takin’ much in when you were awake.”
“That long?”
He looks around, as if the room itself can give him any hints as to what’s been going on.
“Here, lemme get the doc,” Jack says, moving away to do just that.
The loss of contact makes Mac frown, but he stays quiet. Jack doesn’t need him being clingy on top of the guilt he’d clearly been heaping on himself last time they talked. Mac can manage a few minutes by himself.
Jack soon arrives back with a doctor in tow. She’s a newer member of the Phoenix, but one that Mac is familiar with nonetheless. Her name is Michelle Lorenz, and she checks him over using the standard procedure. Mac knows the head injury routine well enough by now that he barely needs to be told what to do.
“So… When can I get out of here?” he asks at last. It’s not a surprising question for any medical staff who’s been here for more than a few months to receive when they work with Mac. Practically all of them are aware of his aversion to receiving medical attention if he doesn’t absolutely have to.
The answer Mac gets is also not a surprising one. A little more time for observation, Doctor Lorenz says. Just need to make sure. Do a couple more scans.
Mac knows Jack can see how antsy he’s getting. Relatively unaware of it or not, he’s already been in the medical center for longer than he’d like. But really, he feels fine. Well, as fine as he usually feels with a concussion. Maybe a little more disoriented than usual, but to be fair, he did get hit pretty hard.
He flashes a pleading look at Jack. It makes him feel a little bit pathetic, but he sees the sympathy in the other man’s eyes.
“Sorry, man,” Jack says. “Gotta do what the doc says. It’s for your own good.”
Mac already knew that would be the answer. He couldn’t help but try anyway. With his overwatch, there is always an abundance of caution, especially when it comes to Mac’s health. Hypocritically, of course, those rules don’t apply when Jack is the one injured.
It’s taken him a long time to understand Jack’s worry. Some days, if he’s being honest, he still doesn’t get it. It had confused him the most back in the Sandbox, where it all began, especially considering how they’d started their relationship. After Jack had followed him, saved him in that alley, things had started to change. Slowly.
That day, Jack began to check in on him more forcefully than he had before. Previously, he’d just do a verbal check, a little ‘You good, Carl’s Junior?’ and leave it at that. But after that incident, he never left it with just a word. He would ask, and then he’d visually inspect for himself.
When he started catching little things that Mac tried to brush off as inconsequential, those inspections quickly became more thorough.
Then, after Mac disarmed a bomb right out from underneath Jack in Paktia, things began to change once again. Check ins came with a hand on his shoulder, a quick pat. Some kind of physical contact to ground the two of them after especially rattling circumstances. It had been a hesitant sort of change, though, because they both knew Jack was about to leave. Two weeks, less than, and he’d be gone. Mac would be given a new overwatch who would no doubt handle things differently, so there was no point in getting used to this little routine between the two of them.
But then, Jack stayed.
Jack stayed, and they had let the routine continue, to gradually strengthen the bond between them from Specialist and Overwatch to something undeniably closer to brotherhood. It wasn’t long before the entire base knew not to try to separate them if one brought the other back injured. Dalton and MacGyver. A package deal.
Back then, Mac thought Jack was just being a good overwatch. Then, they went home, and Jack stayed again, and Mac began to realize that he worried because he cared.
And that made guilt churn in his gut. He never wanted to be the reason Jack worried. Which is why he still tends to hide things, even after all this time.
And why Jack still insists on personally checking him over. Because he knows, and Mac knows that he knows. They never address it. It’s just an unspoken fact of their lives, their partnership, their friendship.
Mac knows he isn’t getting out of this, so he sucks it up and lets himself be poked and prodded and scrunched into scans and tests and further examination.
He’s just tired. He wants to go home and sleep in his own bed.
Finally, finally, the med team announces exactly what he thought: It appears to be a standard, Mac-grade concussion, and he should be okay to head out, with the condition that Jack sticks with him for the next few days to keep an eye out for any new or worsening symptoms.
Yes, he understands. Yes, he’ll be sure to do that. Thanks for everything, he’ll be back for the check in.
He tries not to sprint out of there.
Jack keeps even with the pace he does manage to set, and walks him out to the GTO. Mac heads straight for it, knowing there’s no way he’s going to get to drive himself anywhere for a while.
He folds himself into the passenger seat, exhaustion finally starting to set in.
He must have fallen asleep in the car, because he starts awake to Jack’s hand on his shoulder.
“Mac… Hey, Mac, we’re here. Am I gonna have to carry you in? I mean, I will, but it ain’t gonna be a comfy ride for ya. You know my back can’t handle the bridal carry with your long legs. You may be skinny as a rake, but you’re one heavy lil sucker when you’re passed out.”
He tries to reply, but his tongue is still heavy with drowsiness. All that comes out is an unintelligible mumble instead of the intended jibe at his partner’s age.
Jack snorts. “What was that?”
“M’awake… gimme a sec.” He blinks away the last remnants of the impromptu nap and hauls himself up out of the car. Immediately, he’s forced to brace himself against Jack as a wave of dizziness nearly sends him toppling to the driveway. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just tired.”
Jack takes pity on him and doesn’t push it. He simply helps Mac along to the front door, and takes him right to the couch.
“Now, you just sit down there, and lemme getcha somethin’ to eat.” He paused. “Unless you think it’ll just come right back up-- you feelin’ nauseous?”
Too tired to put up a fuss, Mac just silently shakes his head and obeys the instructions. He leans back into the cushions with a sigh. The faint sound of Jack clinking around in the kitchen is comforting. His eyes drift to the coffee table where the project he’d been fiddling with prior to the most recent mission is lying right where he left it. Absently, Mac reaches out to pick it up.
As he looks over the wires and bits and bobs, a cold sort of numbness comes over him. His gaze turns from idle contemplation to intense scrutiny.
Something is wrong.
Something is very wrong, and he can’t put his finger on exactly what.
Jack sits down beside him, setting a plate with a sandwich on it in front of Mac, along with a glass of water that goes on a coaster. This table has seen way worse than a little condensation, but if Mac says anything to that effect, Jack will just tell him about how ‘My mama would be horrified if I ever even thought such a thing, Mac. Even if I did grow up on a ranch, I wasn’t raised in the stable.’
“I think you’re thinkin’ too hard, homie. Give that brain a rest.”
Mac doesn’t respond. He can’t.
He’s locked in, staring at the thing in his hand, trying to comprehend what’s happening.
“What is that lil doodad, anyways?”
Mac swallows.
“I don’t know.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he nearly chokes on them, because with them comes the sudden realization. The terrible truth becomes clear in an instant.
“Mac?”
“I don’t know, Jack,” he repeats, as if that clarifies anything for his friend. He tries again, his breaths coming faster. “I literally don’t know what I’m holding. I can’t… I can’t think, I can’t--”
“Easy, Mac. Just breathe.”
Jack’s hand presses into his chest, over the scar from Como. He tries to focus in on that contact, to let it ground him, but the tingling sensation right between his eyes tells him he’s not successful. In fact, on the verge of some kind of attack.
“Hey, hoss, look at me… You’re gonna hyperoscillate. Eyes on me.”
Mac manages to tear his attention away from the mysterious thing he’s definitely gripping too tightly, locking onto Jack’s gaze. For a split second, he distantly thinks that it looks like Jack is waiting for something, but he can’t tell what. It’s gone as soon as he registers it, and then the other man resumes speaking.
“Good, good… Now, with me. Breathe in… and out… Real slow. Again, in… and out.” Keeping that hand over Mac’s heart, Jack walks him down from the spinning, dizzying panic. His eyes are marked with thinly-veiled worry. “You with me?”
Mac’s face crumples, but he nods.
Jack is about to ask him, he can tell. He’s going to ask him what’s wrong, and then Mac will have to put it into words. He’ll have to name the situation, and make it real.
“Mac…” Jack’s voice wavers. “You’re scarin’ me, man, please say somethin’...”
Slowly, Mac holds up the former project.
“I made this, Jack,” he says slowly, his own voice shaking. “But I don’t know what it is. Any of it. I can’t remember what I was trying to do, and I can’t figure out what any of the pieces are for. It’s-- It’s just gone.”
Jack studies him carefully, like he’s a skittish horse back on the ranch in Texas, and Mac can’t even be offended because he kind of feels that way, if he’s being honest.
“Okay,” Jack says gently. “Okay, you’re sayin’... what, that you’ve lost the touch? I mean, it’s just one little ball a’wire, maybe--”
“No,” Mac practically whimpers. He emphatically drops the whatever-it-is. It clatters pitifully against the table. “Something is wrong, Jack.”
And that stops his partner short. Mac doesn’t ever admit that anything is wrong with him. He wouldn’t, normally, but he’s definitely freaking out.
“Look at me, Mac. I need you to keep your eyes on me.”
Mac tries. He really does, but his attention keeps darting around wildly, and just under his skin sits the urge to sprint around the house to examine every other project of his, to see if this same muted loss would occur when he looked at those, too. His nails are digging into his skin as he wrings his hands.
Something small and cold is pressed between his fingers. Jack is pushing a paperclip at him. Fumbling, he unfolds the little metal wire and starts to twist it. Slowly, he realigns his breathing with Jack’s. He looks the other man in the eyes.
“I’m… wrong. Something is wrong with me. I don’t know what it is, but I--” His voice breaks. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore.”
The kid’s panic breaks his heart. Jack has only ever seen him like this twice: the day in the Sandbox that ultimately resulted in the two of them coming home for good, and Cairo. There’s a reason why those two topics are firmly off-limits.
He hadn’t even called Jack out on his bungling of the word hyperventilate, and maybe hadn’t even recognized that the word had been bungled at all. Jack can’t deny that he’s worried.
When Mac doesn’t even protest going right back to Phoenix for another checkup, Jack knows it’s bad. By the time they arrive, the paperclip in his hands has been mangled. It’s a formless tangle, unrecognizable as any kind of structure or shape.
Still, he continues to twist it aimlessly as Doc Lorenz speaks, explaining this new development.
“It’s not uncommon with head injuries to experience cognitive challenges. There’s also the possibility of post-concussion syndrome, which we’ll want to monitor for, considering the agnosia MacGyver is experiencing - his current issues processing information.”
“Post-concussion syndrome?” Jack asks, because he knows Mac won’t. His partner is just sitting on the exam table, pale-faced and distant, and Jack’s mental Mac-alarms are blaring wildly.
Lorenz nods. “Yes. It’s essentially an extension of the concussion, or at least the symptoms. It can last from as little as a few weeks or a couple months to a year or more, in extreme cases.”
“Months?” Mac croaks. “A year?”
That paperclip is really starting to take a beating, Jack notes.
Mac shivers. “Is there any risk this could be permanent?”
His attention is fixed firmly on the floor, and Lorenz makes eye contact with Jack above his head.
“...It’s rare with PCS, but yes.”
Mac curls in on himself, like a deflated balloon. Jack reflexively lays his hand across the back of his neck, trying to ground him.
“She said it’s rare, hoss. Don’t go gettin’ yourself worked up over a distant maybe.” He’s speaking to himself just as much as Mac. He can’t deny, he’s worried. Mainly, he’s worried about what it’ll do to Mac if this does turn out to be permanent. Even if he’s just got the mildest case of that post-concussion thing, he’ll take it hard, because he’ll hate feeling useless for even a small amount of time.
Of course, that could never be true about Mac, no matter what happens to him, but Jack knows it’s how he’ll view himself.
And in the event, the rare event, that it is permanent, then they’ll deal with that as it comes. Together.
He takes Mac back home as soon as he can, this time to his apartment rather than the house, diverting course mid-route when Mac asks.
“I just wanna be alone right now.”
Jack is touched that ‘alone’ includes him, but part of him can’t help but wonder if Mac isn’t also trying to avoid having to look at all the MacGyver-DIYs lying around the house that he can no longer make heads or tails of.
He makes sure Mac gets some food and water in him before his partner can just go straight to bed. For a long while as they eat, side by side at the kitchen counter, Jack debates trying to get Mac to talk about the issue, but ultimately decides to let him process things first. They can address it in the morning.
When the dishes have been discarded into the sink, Mac mutters something about turning in for the night. Jack nods, squeezing his shoulder as he passes by.
“You go on ahead, I’ll be right there.” He pushes Mac towards the main bedroom before he can try to make some excuse about taking the couch. There’s no way Jack is letting him be alone tonight, even if he has to make up a place on the floor next to the bed.
Sometimes Mac is fine with sharing, other times he gets too antsy. Ordinarily, Jack is pretty good at judging how close to comfort, but this whole day has been so far removed from their normal that it’s thrown him off his usual rhythm.
When Mac is out of sight, uncharacteristically without protest, Jack takes a moment to call Riley and Bozer, to let them know what’s up. Bozer has a couple of questions, but not much else to say except that he’ll be fixing a whole lot of Mac’s favorite foods for when he’s ready to come back. Riley lets her worry show more obviously, and Jack knows she’s imagining what it would be like if she suddenly lost all of her skill with computers.
His kids are a lot alike, in that way. They both fill a very niche role in the team, and they both put too much pressure on themselves to operate at 100% all the time. Riley internalizes it less so than Mac, and Jack can’t help but wonder if it had been his own brief presence in her youth that ultimately contributed to that. Maybe if he’d been around when Mac was that age--
He abruptly cuts off that train of thought before it even leaves the station. That’s not his to wish for. Mac has a dad. Even if that dad isn’t what he deserves, Jack’s mind adds bitterly. All Mac had wanted at that age was for his dad to come back. And now, James has.
So Jack stays in his lane, mindful of his place, because he’s not about to get in the way now that Mac finally has what he’s been searching for for so long.
By the time he hangs up with Riley, Jack is starting to get lost in his own thoughts. He takes a deep breath, and pushes that aside. Mac needs him. He’ll focus on that first.
He moves slowly into the room, not wanting to wake Mac in case he’s already asleep. But he sees those blue eyes aimed up the ceiling, fixed on nothing in particular. Jack makes his presence known subtly, but enough that he won’t accidentally sneak up on Mac. Unsure where he’ll be making his sleeping arrangements for tonight, Jack heads into the bathroom first to do all the usual nightly wind-down tasks.
When he comes back into the room, Mac has curled up on one side of the bed, in clear expectation that Jack will be hopping in, too. Jack settles down and clicks off the lamp, waiting just a second to see if Mac will say anything.
He doesn’t.
Jack forces himself to let it go, for now. He knows that this won’t be easy. Mac is probably already starting to spiral. All Jack can do is try his best to be there for him.
Tomorrow is a new day.
By the time Mac stumbles into the kitchen the next morning, Jack already has a full breakfast rustled up. He knows Mac might not even feel well enough to have a proper meal, but he wants to do his part to give the kid some sense of normalcy.
“Morning, Sleepin’ Beauty,” he greets, and receives only a brief glance in return.
Mac is quiet and still, and it feels so wrong. He sits himself down at the counter, and stares at nothing, lost in his own head. Jack slides a plate over in front of him, and Mac begins to pick at it without prompting.
“So…” Jack starts, not really sure how to get the conversation going.
Mac glances at him warily. As Jack expected, he’s not going to want to talk about it. But if they don’t, it’s only going to fester and eat away at him in the end.
“I think we oughta chat, Mac,” he says. “I know your mind is chewing on this, and probably gettin’ all tangled up in some dark thoughts. But this ain’t the end of the world.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. I know you’re not, don’t try to put one over on me.”
The fork in Mac’s hand clatters to the counter. “What do you want me to say, Jack?”
“The truth, for a start.”
Mac scoffs.
“Don’t get like that. Come on, now. I mean, you heard Lorenz, this might not even be permanent. It’s just somethin’ we gotta work through.”
“We? Sorry, I didn’t realize you were the one currently dealing with agnosia,” Mac snaps, and Jack doesn’t take it personally because he knows the kid is hurting.
Right now, it’s his job to roll with the punches and soften his own approach.
“Alright now, ya don’t gotta be nasty about it… but you’re right. I can’t know what you’re goin’ through. But I do know you. And I know you’re gonna get all wound up in your own head, tryin’ not to burden anybody, or thinkin’ the worst about yourself, and lemme tell ya right now, hoss, I ain’t gonna let you do this on your own. So yeah, I said we. Cause that’s how we do things, you and me.”
Mac turns his face away sharply, jaw clenched. “It’s not that easy.”
“I never said it was gonna be.”
“Just-- stop, Jack.” Mac’s voice cracks. “I’m not-- I’m not me anymore. I don’t know… I don’t know where to go from here.”
Jack shakes his head. “What in the Sam Hill is that supposed to mean? You’re not you anymore, of course ya are. You think your smarts is what makes you you?”
Mac sits up, fully facing him now, suddenly very confrontational. “Isn’t it? I mean, if I can’t do what I do, then who am I? I can’t be a part of the Phoenix if I’ve become a liability in the field. I can’t go teach somewhere if I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I can’t even get a job as- as a mechanic or something, because I can’t do that.”
Shaking his head, Jack leans over to grasp the back of Mac’s neck, looking him right in the eyes. “Now you listen to me, Angus MacGyver-- Those things are what you do, not who you are. Who you are is the same stubborn kid I met in the Sandbox, who just wants to help people - even a stubborn ol’ Texas mule who nearly goes and gets hisself blown up. You’re the guy who wouldn’t even leave a man who he could hardly stand to die alone, ‘cause you’ve got such a big heart. You care about people, ‘specially us lucky ones you chose as your family. You open up your heart, your house, your life for us. You’re the guy who always wants to lend a hand.”
Blue eyes search his own, glossing over with emotion. Jack hopes it’s because his words are getting through to the kid.
“And you know somethin’? If this thing sticks - and don’t you forget, Lorenz said that’s a slim possibility, hoss - but if it sticks, then that’s not the end of the world. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to work at Phoenix anymore, but we’d find somethin’ else to do.”
Mac blinks rapidly, as if holding back tears.
“We?”
Jack chuckles, flashing a grin. “Yeah, we. I go where you go, brother. Thought you knew that by now. I’m thinkin’ in this theoretical worst-case scenario, I’ll take ya out to Texas with me and teach ya how to do some real honest work on the ranch. And ya know, you could probably get a part-time gig coachin’ at the local high school. You’re not half bad at basketball… And I just know Mama would love havin’ ya around full time.”
Now the tears do fall, and Mac hangs his head. Jack moves his hand down a little and starts to soothingly rub his back, suddenly struck by just how young he looks in this moment. Young and vulnerable.
“Ain’t no such thing as a lost cause, hoss. You taught me that.”
Mac collapses into him, fingers twisting in his shirt. He hides his face in Jack’s neck.
It’s a long time before either of them moves.
They spend the next couple days mostly hanging around Jack’s apartment. After he’s calmed down a bit from the emotional breakfast scene, Mac is feeling a little better. It still terrifies him to death, the thought that he could just be like this from now on, but hearing Jack so confidently declare that he’s going to stay no matter what does serve to put him a little bit at ease about the future, at least to some degree.
At first, Mac wanders the apartment aimlessly. Normally, he’d be finding something to do, but his mind is achingly still. There’s that same, familiar restlessness in his bones, but no outlet for it besides pacing.
Jack quickly puts a stop to that, pulling him over to the couch to insist on a Die Hard marathon. And, despite the fact that they keep winding up as nothing more than tangled spirals of metal, he continues to pass Mac paperclips when he notices him getting fidgety.
Around lunch time on the third day, Jack drags him into the kitchen, much to Mac’s surprise.
“Uh, what happened to the ‘Mac is a fire hazard’ rule?” he asks.
“I got a theory I wanna test,” Jack grins. “Let’s see if your cooking skills are any better when your big brain ain’t gettin’ in the way. I’ve come up with a hypotenuse, here, that the reason you can’t cook is cause of all the other sciencey junk that’s usually swirlin’ around in that complicated spaghetti-brain ya got there.”
There’s that pause again, that expectant glance in Mac’s direction.
This time, it hits him.
“Did you… use a word wrong on purpose?”
Jack shrugs, caught. “Force of habit. Sorry… Unless, did you catch it?” He raises his eyebrows, tentatively hopeful, but Mac shakes his head, subconsciously filing away the confirmation of his own suspicion that Jack has always done the vocab-swapping intentionally for Mac’s sake.
“No… Just… the way you looked at me. Like you were waiting for me to answer some unspoken question.”
It had been a Jack Tell, not a split-second recovery, that caught his attention. Mac looks down at the ground, but Jack doesn’t let him wallow for too long before he moves on.
“Nah, for real, let’s see how this goes, I’m curious.”
Jack making light of the matter did actually provide a decent distraction for Mac.
At least, until he sent a pot of bow-tie noodles up in flames.
Somehow.
“Okay,” Jack coughs over the shrill beeping of the alarm, flapping a dish towel at the thick, black smoke while Mac rushes to open up the windows. “So the can’t-cook thing ain’t a genius problem, it’s just a you thing.”
Jack winds up having to Google how to reset the smoke detector while Mac sits there with a curdling anxiety blooming in his chest. That’s the point at which Jack abruptly insists on going out somewhere for food. Mac knows what he’s doing: trying to distract him. But he doesn’t fight it.
It’s not pizza and skee-ball, like he half expects. Evidently, they’ve already done the important talks this week. They go for noodles someplace neither of them have ever been, and Mac finds it’s actually kind of nice to just sit there together and be somewhat… normal. He wonders if this is a glimpse of what the future may hold in the event he doesn’t recover from the agnosia.
Afterwards, Jack just drives, with no particular destination in mind. They put the top down, and he cranks up Johnny Cash. It’s nice. Peaceful, even.
And then Matty calls.
“Did you not hear from medical, Matty?” Jack huffs into the phone. “Kid got his brains scrambled. He’s in no condition for a debrief right now.”
Matty’s voice comes back through the speaker with a heavy sigh, and what almost seems to be a touch of irritation, but for once, it doesn’t appear to be aimed at Jack.
“Believe me, I know. And normally, I would give both of you more time, but Oversight wants it done now.”
Mac knows Jack doesn’t get along with his dad. His overwatch is protective of him even out of the field, and James leaving when Mac was a kid definitely earned him a spot on Jack’s list of People to Guard Mac From, even after being assured it wasn’t necessary. Mostly, Mac doesn’t want Jack risking his job to get into it with James on his behalf. It’s not worth it. Mac can take it. Above all, he’s not trying to saddle Jack with the burden of playing dad to a grown man just because Mac missed that boat the first go-around.
“We’re on our way,” he tells Matty, and hangs up before Jack can protest.
That doesn’t stop him from protesting after the fact, though.
“Now why in the hell did you go and tell her that?”
“Because I don’t want to cause any trouble for her with Oversight.”
Jack glances at him for a moment too long, to the point that Mac is just about to remind him to put his eyes back on the road, but he returns to that task on his own, readjusting their route back towards the Phoenix.
“Fine. But if he starts kickin’ up a fuss about your injuries, we’re leavin’. I don’t care what he says.”
With a jolt, Mac wonders if James even knows what happened. Well, he’s probably read the medical reports, after all. But… he hasn’t been in touch.
Then, Mac feels a pang of guilt. James hasn’t reached out, but neither has he. What kind of son is he that it never even occurred to him to think to update his father, or worry about how he would take it?
But, counters a voice in his head (one that sounds an awful lot like Jack), what kind of father is James that he never came by or even called to check on Mac? He almost certainly would have heard what happened already, even if he hasn’t had a chance to get his hands on the med center files.
Mac remains deep in thought as the GTO rolls up to the parking garage. Jack has to prompt him to hop out.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Just… debrief…” he answers noncommittally.
Jack snorts in disbelief, but doesn’t press for more.
The two of them head straight to the War Room, where Bozer and Riley are already waiting outside.
“Mac, hey…” Riley greets him with a hug. “How are you doing?”
Bozer steps up and throws an arm around his shoulders in a quick side embrace, likewise waiting for his answer.
“About as well as you’d expect,” he answers, honest but vague.
Riley nods. “You know that we’re here for you. Anything you need.”
“I’ve got a whole big family dinner ready to go, whenever you’re up for it,” Bozer adds.
Mac chuckles a bit. “I appreciate it, Boze.”
The frost vanishes off of the War Room windows, and Matty waves them in. Oversight lingers behind her.
Deep breaths. Here it goes.
“So then what happened, after you decided to split up? Angus?”
Mac takes a slow, measured inhale, clearly calming himself before he speaks. “I went downstairs while Jack went up. He worked to clear the building, and I started looking through their supplies for anything I could use to get into the vault.”
He pauses, and the nervous twitch of his jaw puts Jack on the defensive. His gut is telling him that Mac’s agnosia is affecting his recollection, and he’s ready to haul off (metaphorically, of course…) if James so much as blinks wrong at the kid.
“I had a plan, something to do with the hinges, so I was trying to figure… stuff… out.”
“Please be specific, Angus,” says James, in a tone that might sound patient if not for the hard look on his face.
“I was doing the st… stoker… stom…”
It kills Jack to watch him struggle so hard with something that should be second nature for him to explain. If only he’d been there to stop that guy from clobbering Mac in the head, the kid would be rattling off his explanation at a million miles an hour right now, using big words that nobody but James understood.
Riley is watching Mac with worry in her eyes, but she says nothing. She catches Jack’s eye, and he subtly shakes his head. With Oversight present for this debrief, he wants her and Bozer to lay low. He’ll take the brunt of whatever he can.
Mac presses his eyes shut, trying to process, trying to remember. “Um… calculations, I think. It’s…”
“Stoichiometry,” Jack says. As much as the rest of the team would say otherwise, he really does listen when they explain things to him.
Mac blinks. “What?” He stares at Jack blankly, as if he’s just interrupted with some irrelevant tidbit, or started speaking gibberish out of nowhere.
It’s clear that the kid has no clue what the word means, and the cold realization that he currently knows more about chemistry than Mac unsettles Jack deeply.
“Don’t worry about it, bud. You were calculating stuff.” He hopes to get him back on track, to help keep him calm so they can get out of here quickly. But of course, there’s one little roadblock to that goal.
“And what exactly were you calculating?” James presses, never even glancing in Jack’s direction. “What ingredients? Amounts? For what purpose?”
Mac has gone pale.
“...I don’t know.”
James stares at his son, far more neutral and far less worried than he should be, in Jack’s humble opinion.
“You don’t know?” he repeats.
“Whatever he did, it worked,” Bozer adds, but it’s as much as he dares speak out, especially when Oversight’s cool gaze sweeps over him.
“It’s all…” Mac falters. “My current agnosia is affecting my recall as well. I knew what I was doing at the time, but now, I’m unable to identify any of the components in my memory of the event, or their uses.”
James sighs, and somehow manages to make it the most disappointed yet condescending sound Jack has ever heard. His fist clenches. He’s getting real tired of this, and Mac’s clear discomfort is fraying his already thin patience for the elder MacGyver’s antics.
“Really, Angus…” Oversight starts.
“Did you not read the report from medical?” Jack interrupts before he can stop himself. “Seriously, man. His head ain’t exactly screwed on right at the moment. This debrief coulda - and shoulda - waited til Mac had time to recover. ‘Sides, I can tell ya whatever you need to know from here. I went down and found him bleedin’ pretty good from a blow to the head, and--”
“Yes, thank you, Dalton,” James says shortly. “But I was speaking to Angus.”
Jack crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Yeah… I noticed. And I’m tellin’ ya, you ain’t gonna be gettin’ anything more than that from him til he’s rested up. He was down there doing his thing, popped the vault with whatever it was he did, and got bopped on the head. I caught the assailant trying to escape and put him on the ground ‘fore he could make off with the package. Then, I got MacGyver to exfil. He blacked out, and I had to carry him the last little bit. And that’s all there is to that mission.”
He tries his best to keep his tone neutral and professional, not an easy task when dealing with Oversight. But when he catches a glimpse of Mac out of the corner of his eye, shoulders tense and eyes practically burning a hole in the floor, his resolve strengthens further. Jack is getting them out of here as fast as possible.
James stands there looking like he sucked on a lemon, but he doesn’t say anything for a long time. Finally…
“That will be all. Dalton, Davis, Bozer, you’re dismissed. Angus, I need to speak with you privately.”
Jack doesn’t move, even as Riley and Bozer exchange glances and slink towards the door.
James narrows his eyes. “I said--”
“I heard ya.”
He doesn’t speak further. He just waits, stands there rooted to the spot with his arms still crossed over his chest.
“Jack…” Mac murmurs.
“Nah, whatever he’s got to say, he can say in front of me. You need to get home to rest, so if you’re not done, I’m not done.”
James raises an eyebrow. “I’d like to have a word alone with my son, if you don’t mind, Dalton. Do you have an issue with that?”
Jack smiles. It’s not a nice smile.
“As a matter of fact, I do. Cause see, I know it ain’t just a wellness check. If that was the case, you’d’a been by to see him already. An’ I already told you he ain’t in any condition to finish out a report right now. So if you can look me in the eye and tell me you’re not about to rag on him for an injury that’s outta his control, I’ll walk right outta here and let ya have your little chat. If not, then Mac and I are leaving.”
James watches him for a long time, his face betraying nothing. He’s infuriating like that.
“Angus, why don’t you head home and get some rest,” he says at last, his eyes never leaving Jack’s. “We can pick this up another day.” Though his expression never changes, it’s obvious to the former Delta that James knows he’s been read, and he hates it.
Good, Jack thinks. I’ve got my eye on you, pal. Don’t you forget it.
He throws an arm around Mac’s shoulders, startling him out of the quasi-parade rest posture he always seems to drop into when he debriefs with Oversight in the room.
“Come on, Mac. Why don’t we go on back to the house and see what all Bozer whipped up?”
Once they’re out of the War Room, he feels the tension slowly drop from Mac’s body, and he internally fist pumps at the little victory. Jack knows how hard this is for him, in fact, one of the hardest things that he’s ever had to go through, and the last thing the kid needs is James putting him through the wringer about what a failure he is for having agnosia, or whatever else kinda bullshit he’d be liable to say to his own son.
“You’ve gotta stop doing that, man,” Mac mutters to him.
Jack pauses at that. What if Mac is mad at him for clashing with his dad? He hadn’t meant to overstep any boundaries, but much like with Riley and Elwood all those years ago, he can’t help but get tunnel vision when it comes to James.
Again, he has to remind himself that he is not Mac’s dad. But, another part of him argues, he just can’t stand by and let the man who is Mac’s dad treat him like that.
So instead of backing down, he just grins. Time to laugh it off, like he always does.
“Doin’ what? Gettin’ you out of a debrief you shouldn’t even have been in?”
Mac frowns. “Jack, I’m serious. He could fire you.”
Jack just shrugs. “If he thinks that’ll stop me followin’ your sorry ass into danger, he’s sorely mistaken.”
Though he sighs, Mac says nothing more on the way out.
Riley and Bozer are waiting for them by the GTO.
“Hey, how’d it go?” Riley asks, trying to disguise her worry with a casual air.
Jack grins and claps Mac’s shoulder. “A little of the ol’ Dalton charm got us right outta there. So, whaddya say, Mac? To the house for Bozer’s feast? Or my place to finish up the rest of the Die Hards?” He phrases it that way on purpose. Jack knows that if Mac picks his apartment, it will be for the solitude, not the movies.
Mac briefly glances around at the rest of them, his gaze overall still drawn down to the ground more than to make any kind of eye contact. It’s a switch to see him so lacking in confidence, or even that easy nonchalance he usually has with them, almost as if he’s no longer sure where he stands with the team now because of all of this. At long last, he musters the briefest flash of a smile.
“I could eat.”
Bozer breaks into a grin. “My man, prepare your taste buds. I got all your favorites ready to go. We’ll meet you there. Jack, you got precious cargo, so no speeding!”
Jack dramatically splays a hand across his heart. “Who, me? Never…”
“Uhuh… See you at the house.”
Mac is deep in thought when they arrive. He isn’t sure he’s ready to get back in there, with everything in that house still looking like his life hasn’t completely fallen apart, where every little thing is a reminder of what he’s lost. But, he figures, better sooner than later. Might as well get this moment out of the way.
As he walks the path up to the front doors, his mind wanders back to the War Room. Jack’s behavior earlier, going up against his dad. Mac had kind of wondered what James wanted to say, but at the same time, he could feel he’d been on the verge of a breakdown. Having to go back through everything while still dealing with the agnosia and all of its unknowns had set him off. In the middle of walking back through the mission, he’d come up against a certain point that wouldn’t budge. A metaphorical wall in his cognitive process. He could see his actions in his mind, and he could easily replay the sequence of events back in his memory like a movie.
When he thinks about those last few moments, he can look down and clearly see the shapes and labels of the items he grabbed. But when he searches for the purpose or intent behind those things, he comes up startlingly empty. Just… numb nothingness. He reaches out for knowledge that should be there, but it simply isn’t.
There’s no big headache, no blinding flashes, nothing that obscures the memory. A neutral lack of information. And that, he thinks, is the scariest part. How non-threatening it all feels. It’s a simple sense of wrongness, but there’s nothing tangible to hold onto as to why he’s suddenly so uselessly blank.
When faced with that in the War Room, during the debrief, he’d started to panic, especially when his father was looking at him so expectantly like that. And so, while he’d been somewhat curious as to what James had wanted to talk about, he finds he’s more grateful that Jack stepped in. Even if some of the things he said didn’t make sense.
Did Jack really think James was going to start blaming Mac for the agnosia?
He wanders inside, lost in those thoughts, at least until the smell of Bozer’s cooking reorients him. True to his word, his roommate has fixed a veritable feast for Mac. Stress cooking probably played a part in it, but still. He’s touched by the efforts on display.
“Hey hey hey!” Bozer greets, pulling the last few pans from the oven. “Riley’s already out back getting the fire pit going, and I got plates waiting to go whenever we’re ready to start up this buffet line.”
“Thanks Boze,” Mac says gently, meaning more than just the food.
Bozer meets his eyes and gives a pointed nod. “Of course, man. Now, come on you two, before this masterpiece starts getting cold!”
He herds them towards the heavily laden countertop, and Mac lets himself be swept up in the energy his friends are putting off. It’s easy to pretend things are normal when everyone is treating him normally, for the most part. He can still see their worry, but they’re not coddling him, so that’s something.
They still laugh and joke and tell stories with him as they all eat, making conversation as the sun goes down. It’s like any other post-mission get together.
Except that deep down, they all know it’s not.
Mac is staring out at the cityscape when his phone rings. He spares a glance at the caller ID, and what he sees gives him pause. It’s James.
What could he want?
He debates answering. They already had debrief, and Mac won’t be cleared for the field for the foreseeable future, so it’s not a mission. But… Maybe his dad is just checking in. Is it really so hard to believe?
Mac glances at Jack. He’d probably tell him to let it go to voicemail, insisting that it can wait for tomorrow. Or Jack might do something crazy and answer it himself, and probably wind up getting fired for saying something stupid on Mac’s behalf.
Ultimately, what harm could it do just to see what he wants?
“Be right back,” Mac tells the others. Jack is in the middle of one of his long-winded stories, so Mac is able to slip away without rousing too much suspicion. He ducks into his room and closes the door, staying out of their view from the deck windows.
He takes a slow, deep breath to steel himself.
“Hello?”
“Angus.”
“Hey, Dad, what’s up? Is this about earlier? I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk in the War Room, it’s just that I was pretty out of it, and you know how Jack worries--”
“I’m well aware of Dalton’s… tendencies.” He doesn’t sound mad, but Mac can never really tell. Then, a sigh comes across from the other end. “Angus, I really think we ought to be doing more to clear up your… situation. It’s a serious matter. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t been looking into this already.”
Mac pauses. “What do you mean?”
“Agnosia. It’s treatable, you know. If you had stuck around Phoenix med, or asked the right questions in the first place, we could already be working on it by now.”
“It’s treatable?” He hadn’t said curable, but… “How so?”
“There are various medications, for one.”
Mac suppresses a shiver.
James continues, “Experimental therapies… and surgery is an option as well.”
Mac shakes his head, even though his dad can’t see.
“No. No surgeries. And… No medications. Therapies? It depends on how experimental.”
The next sigh he hears sounds a little more like a huff, but he’s probably just imagining it.
“Angus, don’t tell me you’re just giving up…”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” He recalls what Jack reminded him of earlier. “Doctor Lorenz said this might not even be permanent, anyways. I really don’t see why we need to jump right to- to risky procedures. I just need to give it some time.”
Now that’s definitely a scoff he hears. “If you ever hope to get back to functioning, I don’t see the sense in delaying.”
That stings more than Mac cares to admit. In his younger years, he probably would have internalized the remark and immediately cowed to his dad’s demands. Now, though…
Now, instead of just his father’s critical voice in the back of his mind, he’s got a whole chorus of others who would have a few things to say.
There’s Bozer, for one, whose whole family had never had the best opinion of James after he took off. Mac can imagine him saying, ‘Come on, really? Where does this dude even get off? Doesn’t even bother to check on you, then calls you up demanding you go under the knife? Nah, man. I don’t buy it. Mr. Mac, with all due respect, cool it. Sir…’
His mental Riley has something sharper to say.
‘Hey, Father of the Year, why don’t you back off? Mac’s a big boy, and he’s perfectly capable of making his own decisions without his deadbeat dad trying to barge back in and dictate his life like he’s twelve years old. An age you weren’t even around for, by the way.’
Even Mac’s best estimate of Matty chimes in.
‘James, you need to take a step back and think about what it is you’re really after, here.’
And then of course, strongest (and angriest) of all is Jack’s voice.
‘Are you freakin’ kidding me? Gimme that phone, Mac. Hey you, Jackass! My boy is fully functioning, thank you very much. He’s breathin’ and walkin’ and he’s still capable of smilin’ through it all, so that’s a win in my book. He ain’t gotta do jack shit, I don’t care what you say. You may be his boss, but you sure as hell ain’t never been a father to him. Now it seems to me that you only called him up to try and check in on the one part of him you actually care about-- the smarts part that makes him more of a mini-you. ‘Cept he’s so much better of a man than you could ever be, and he did that all by hisself without your help! You know, maybe leavin’ him was the best thing you coulda done for him.’
Okay, Mental Jack, maybe that’s a bit far.
Except… Mac thinks about it. If his dad hadn’t left, he probably wouldn’t have gone into the Army. In which case, he might never have met Jack.
He tries to imagine that life. The one without his overwatch.
The immediate pain of that speculation makes him abandon it immediately.
Ultimately, even as much as he’d been imagining what Jack might say if he were part of this conversation… that little nugget had come from Mac’s own mind. It was his stray thought, in the end.
And truthfully, if the only way he could have had Jack in his life was that his dad hadn’t been, then… Mac finds himself surprisingly at peace with that.
He isn’t sure how long he left the silence hanging after that little comment. Evidently not long enough for his father to want to start filling the silence. Good, because it’s Mac’s turn, and he isn’t sure how much he’s actually going to wind up saying. There’s a lot on his mind, and he’s spinning up the words as he goes.
“James,” he begins, and from the tension on the other end of the line, he knows his dad senses the shift in Mac that the first-name basis is signalling. “Let’s get something straight right now. You might be back in my life, but that doesn’t mean your role is anywhere near the same as it was when I was nine years old. I’m only going to say this once: I don’t care whether the agnosia goes away or not.” That’s a lie. He definitely cares, and if it turns out to be permanent, he’s definitely going to be an absolute wreck, but he needs to make a point to James. “I am not going to make any reckless medical decisions out of fear or panic, because I’m fine with whatever happens. I’ve got other options.”
He can hear the protest rising from his father and cuts it off. “I’m worth more than what I can do.” Mac lets Jack’s motivational speech from this morning give him more confidence than he actually feels. “And I have people in my life who actually value that, even if you don’t. I function just fine, even if not to your personal standards.”
Mac can’t think of anything else to say, and he’s certainly in no mood to wait around and listen to whatever James is going to come up with in response, so he follows the first impulse that comes to mind.
He hangs up.
And then he tosses his phone down on the bed. If anyone else needs him that badly, they can get in touch through one of the others. He’s officially unplugging for the evening.
With that, he turns to go rejoin the others and sees Jack, standing in the now-cracked-open doorway. Mac must have missed his knock in the midst of that angry haze…
As soon as he lays eyes on Jack, a sudden rush of embarrassment washes over him. Everything that his mental Jack-voice had said came flooding back, and with it, a distant sense of shame. Mostly for the assumptions that Mac’s mind had made, the words he’d put in the other man’s mouth, even if it was just in his head.
Especially the part where Imaginary Jack had claimed Mac as his.
Jack, the real Jack in front of him, raises an eyebrow.
“You good, hoss?”
“How much of that did you hear?”
Jack shrugs. “Enough.”
Mac isn’t sure what to say to that. He wants to apologize, but then he’d have to explain what he was apologizing for and he thinks he’d probably rather die than admit that. He can just imagine the discomfort on Jack’s face now, when he realizes that Mac’s reliance on him has tipped past brotherhood into something much more pathetic and childish.
“I’m proud of you.”
He says it so quietly that Mac almost thinks he imagined it too, but the expression written on Jack’s face - the faint, soft smile, the sparkle in his eyes - confirms that he’s not hearing things.
Mac swallows. “What do you--”
“You know what. Now come on, Bozer’s hollerin’ about dessert.”
Faintly, Mac nods. He feels his feet move of their own accord, walking towards Jack’s outstretched arm, gesturing the way.
He stops in the doorway.
Jack tilts his head, his brow creasing with the softest concern. “Mac?”
Mac moves before he can talk himself out of it, resulting in a little less caution than he’d planned. He none-too-gently plows into Jack’s chest, wrapping his arms around the other man. With his eyes squeezed tightly shut, he presses his face into Jack’s shoulder.
Strong arms circle him in return, one hand running soothingly up and down his back a couple times before coming to rest in a protective grip at the nape of his neck.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“What for?” Jack asks, mirroring his low tone.
Mac just shakes his head.
“Staying.”
There’s so much weight in that word, that one word.
He feels the rumble of a chuckle in Jack’s chest.
“If you think one lil head injury is enough to drive me away--”
“No… I mean, yes that, but…” Mac keeps his face hidden against Jack. “On day sixty-four. When we came home. Cairo. All of it. You stayed… Thank you.”
Jack holds him a little tighter.
“You never have to thank me for staying, Mac. It’s what we do, yeah? There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you. Mutual kabooms, and all that.”
Mac tries to think of how to express what he wants to. It might drive Jack away, but it has to be said. He resolves to just spit it out.
“He never stayed. You always have. … Thank you.”
Jack freezes, and Mac tenses in anticipation of the sudden drop of the embrace, a quick step away, a nervous chuckle in preparation to disguise the awkwardness with humor.
But it never comes.
Instead, the hand on the back of his neck moves up into his hair, a familiar, calming gesture that has never held so much weight as in this very moment.
“I got you, hoss. I got you.”
At last, Mac gathers the courage to pull back, and he’s surprised to find Jack’s eyes glossy with unshed tears, and a huge smile on his face.
He clamps a hand on Mac’s shoulder.
“I’m proud of you,” he repeats, and this time, Mac hears every unspoken meaning behind it.
His throat is tight, and he knows that if he tries to speak, he’ll break. All he can do is nod.
They’ll talk about it outright eventually. Soon, probably. But not this instant. It’s too fresh, too raw. With everything else that’s already happened, they both should take some time to process, to get their thoughts in order. So for right now, this is all they need.
Mac throws his arm around Jack with a quick pat to the back, and they turn to head towards the deck together. They pass by a dozen MacGyver projects on the way out, and while the sight still fills Mac with that distinct lack of recognition, with Jack at his side, he doesn’t feel so panicked.
Out on the deck, Riley and Bozer smile at him in askance, the look in their eyes paradoxically somewhere between worry and relief.
Mac gives them one of the first genuine smiles he’s been able to muster since he got the news. No such thing as a lost cause indeed.
This right here is all he needs.