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When Mack finds him, it’s been 18 hours. He wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t dare break down, because he was trained better than that. He knows, literally and metaphorically, where the bodies are buried, but any good spy would never give them that satisfaction. And Will is a very good spy.
Will had been undercover before, but never for this long, and never without any help. It’s been eight long months without any real contact from anyone. From Mack. And it’s probably the worst possible timing for a reunion.
When Warsofsky assigned this to him, there’d been a pit in his stomach just thinking about being away from his team for a year. As good as he was at undercover work, he liked working with teammates and knowing that someone had his back.
But Warsofsky made it clear Will was supposed to do this on his own, otherwise it wouldn’t be as effective. So eight months ago, he was shipped down the coast with a new alias and a vague mission to get information about Raminar, a data intelligence company. Will had taken to the work like a shark in water, able to win over his targets with charm and ease, trying not to think of the team he’d left behind. Which leads him to last night when there was a gala for Raminar’s investors. Just when he started to get comfortable, of course his cover had somehow been blown, right as he was poised to make a move to trap the office of the Chief Intelligence Officer.
When Mack finds him, he’s chained to the wall of a warehouse in La Jolla, dried blood all down the left side of his face, delirious as shit from trying to stay awake the whole night. “Fuck. I’m really losing it now.”
Mack’s got his signature all black outfit on, hair all slicked back with a tool belt on his hips. He looks really fucking good, and Will can’t remember the last time both of them have seen each other. Was it Antwerp? Maybe Copenhagen? Cologne? He feels dizzy all of a sudden, and reaches out to Mack like a lifeline until the chains pull him back towards the wall.
“Take it easy, Smitty.” Mack’s frowning, and he’s crouching down next to Will, disapprovingly. “I don’t need you hurting yourself while we’re trying to get you out of here.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I’m here. We’re here, I should say. Collin’s guiding us on comms. And then we’ve got Eky, Mis, and Dickie all on the other side of the compound. We’re all here for you.”
“Our rookies made it through training?” Misa and Dickinson were both in the preliminary phase of their training when he had been pulled into this mission, and Will had seemingly missed most of it. He’s not sure why this matters right now, but Mack seems to take it in good faith as he’s pulling out tools from his belt pockets.
“Halfway.” Mack’s eyes go a little soft as he talks about their boys. A normal person wouldn’t notice that, but Will’s never been normal about Mack. He likes to put up this front that he’s cold and detached, but Will has gone through hell and back enough times with him to know the real Macklin Celebrini. And that Macklin was fiercely loyal, and cared about his team more than anything. It’s why he’s going to be the perfect team lead when the organization gets their heads out of their asses and appoints him already. Everyone knows they’re just waiting for him to get a little bit older, because they’d have given it to Toff instead. “This rescue mission is good practice for them.”
A beat passes, and Will watches as Mack’s face subtly scrunches up. He’s probably listening to a member of their team on comms. “Mis and Dickie say hi. And not that they don’t appreciate you checking in on them, but we’re here for you. How long have you been down here?”
“Eighteen hours. It’s been—fuck. I thought I was going to die down here.” Which, like, is only half a lie. They weren’t going to kill him. He figured that out by hour five—if they wanted to kill him, he’d be dead by now. No human being is masochistic enough to abuse someone else non-stop for no reason. Will had information no one else had, and these days, that’s always powerful. And people are scared of power. He tells Mack this while he’s still getting his tools out, but he says nothing back in response.
It goes like this: He’s dressed in a designer tux for the occasion, leaving the top of his dress shirt unbuttoned. It’s hot enough for wandering eyes, but classy enough to stay within the dress code. That, plus his messy curls. The girls love them, and the guys who are into it don’t see him as a threat. He’s done this long enough to know what works, and that one button and perfectly tousled hair has gotten him access to places you wouldn’t believe.
Will feels droopy again, and there’s a hard pinch on his left forearm. “Hey, eyes open. Talk to me, Smitty. Tell me what happened.”
There’s a million things that Will could talk about. He could tell Mack about the flowing wine, and the string quartet and how he’d slipped away during the toast to place some bugs in various jackets inside the coat check. Or he could talk about the way he’d tapped Raminar’s CIO’s phone, and was able to learn a secret that no one else knows. A secret that could get him killed.
What he says instead: “Gabe was there.”
“Yeah I know. He called me.” Mack is nonchalant while he finally starts clipping away at his chains. But Will knows better, and knows that Mack and Gabe don’t just call each other. He wasn’t aware Gabe even had Mack’s phone number.
“Gabe called you?” Mack doesn’t like Gabe, and vice versa. They’ve met on occasion, once in Bogota, and another time in New York, where Gabe is based. Both times were when Will had to ask for his help. And Mack hates asking for help, and especially hates asking for help from Will's junior training partners back from his Boston days. The only person Mack hates more than Gabe is Will’s other former teammate, Ryan, but that’s a story for a different day.
Mack sighs like Will is the unreasonable one here, and nudges him with the electric clippers. “What happened with Perreault, Smitty?”
“I—Gabe accidentally blew my cover. I don’t think he knew, but the Raminar guys, they found out. They pulled me into this back room somewhere in the hall. I tried to fight some of them off, but they drugged me. And they’ve had me here ever since, trying to get information out of me.” Mack’s clipping finally succeeds in getting his left arm free, and he feels a relief that’s been 18 hours in the making. His wrists are rubbed raw from the cuffs of the metal, and have been above his head for longer than he’d like. But at least now he’s able to scratch the itch that’s been on his thigh since hour 5.
“Perrault says he went looking for you, but he figured you’d left.” Mack crawls over to his right side now, and gets adjusted to keep clipping on this arm..
“I mean yeah. But, like, it wasn’t voluntary.”
Mack snips a link of the chain loose, and it falls to the ground with a thud. “Clearly.”
Will watches again as Mack’s nose slightly scrunches, and he eventually lifts his head up to face Will. “Charles Fletcher. He useful to you?” Charles Fletcher. He didn’t recognize the name. Probably one of the guards or scientists they had running around here doing god knows what. Will swallowed and shook his head.
Mack gives him one nod, and then continues breaking his chains. “Make it clean, Dickie. And please, no more casualties on your way out. Just get the files and go. Eky, can you make sure that we don’t go overboard? I’d prefer not to have to deal with any more paperwork.”
At the thought of paperwork, Will shakes his head. “Warsofsky is—”
“Warsofsky is being handled.” Mack cuts Will off, and for the first time, he looks genuinely pissed off. And that’s when Will remembers their cardinal rule–no talking about Warsofsky when any of the others are around. Yes, these are their boys, but all of them belong to Warsofsky and Grier first and foremost. For as long as Will has known him, Mack has felt some kind of way about the system they’d worked in, being recruited and trained as children, and then sent off to bases that needed their specialized skills once they were of age. Mack had been one of the agents who started out early because he had exceptional status. And while Will was a very good spy, he was not as good as Mack, who was shaping out to be not just one of the best agents in their base, but in the system. He’d always likened it to cattle, saying he felt more like property than a human being sometimes. Will would like to think that everyone might also have complicated thoughts about their system, and about Warsofsky as their Operations Director, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. There are men you want on your side because they’d be too powerful against you. And Warsofsky is definitely one of those kinds of men.
He gives Will a really long look, and touches his ear in a way that can only mean that he’s turning off his comms for the moment so they won’t have an audience. He pauses again, presumably to wait for it to turn off, still staring at Will the whole time. “You know that I’d always come to find you, right?”
“I didn’t know how much longer I’d last. They were just shy of killing me. And this is bigger than anyone knows.”
Mack’s eyes are steel. “Warsofsky, I think, wanted to send someone else in. I think he was weighing out his options. Toff was trying to reason with him, but you know how he is. Either way, I had Collin looking into it after Perreault called me. And once he was able to pinpoint where you might be, I just took whoever was around the base and left.”
He’s not sure what to make of that. Warsofsky, above anything else, is tactical. It’s not personal, it’s business. Except this mission feels somehow different than the rest. And one small mistake, that wasn’t even his, ruined everything possibly forever. “It’s really bad this time, Mack. He’s going to make me go into hiding.”
“Hey.” Mack takes his palm, careful not to touch the red lines where the cuffs have left marks.“You’re here. You’re alive. You’re with me. And at least for right now, we’re going home.” His eyes somehow narrow further in as he looks at Will’s demeanor. He must be such a sight, his blood soaked tuxedo that’s been ripped to shreds, hair that feels scratchier than a hornet’s nest, and eyes that will barely stay open. They must be bloodshot beyond belief. “Repeat it back to me, Will.”
Mack’s tone leaves no room for arguments. “I’m here. I’m alive. I’m with you. And we’re going home.”
“You’re a good liar. But I’m not one of your targets. Say it again.”
So Will repeats it again, and Mack makes him do it over and over again until he can tell Will genuinely believes what he’s saying. And finally, when his voice is steadier and the words are rolling off his tongue, Mack nods and says that’s enough. But he tells him he can keep saying it if that helps.
“You know you can put your arm down now, right?” Will looks to his right, and his arm is freed. Putting it down is probably the best feeling in the world. While Will hasn’t cried since he was six, now feels like a pretty good time to break that streak. “And for what it’s worth, Will, I don’t know what happened. Warsofsky is keeping things tight. And I don’t know what will happen. But I’ll be damned if you have to go through it alone. Whatever the agency has to say about it, and whatever fucking goons these people send, will have to go through me first.”
Will squeezes Mack’s hand in response. There’s not much to say. But he hopes that says everything.
Mack uses his free hand to turn his comms on while still rubbing circles in his palm. Will watches for the nose scrunch and head tilt as he probably gets an earful from Eky who notoriously hates when Mack and Will go off comms for a conversation.
“Okay. I’m back, I’m back. Don’t lose your shit over it.” He pauses for Eky to give an update. His head is pounding, but Will knows this song and dance by heart. It’ll be Eky and Mack going back and forth because Eky finds it funny to make fun of the two of them. Then either Dickie or Mis are going to join in too, until Mack reprimands them, despite him not actually being their boss. And Collin will make them all stop because he’s actually trying to do his job. If Will was on, he’d mostly be silent. He’s usually undercover and trying to not laugh at their antics as he navigates whatever social situation they put him through, listening in on two worlds at once. And once he’d have a free moment, it’d be used to tell the rookies to stop trying to make him break cover. In a life that’s unpredictable, it was nice to have some semblance of familiarity.
He and Mack have talked about it before, how dangerously informal their team is getting. It’s reminiscent of Will’s days in Boston, but Mack grew up under rigid protocols and the belief that the agency knows best. But as he grows into the leader he’s going to be, Will can see him changing. He likes this version of Mack, the one who’s not just his partner, but his friend. Not that he’d ever tell Mack that. And that’s maybe the one thing that will help him get out of this situation.
“I don’t know if I’d say he’s fine. But he’s alive. And Collin,” Mack’s eyes meet Will’s again. “We’re ready to get out of here. Let’s get Smitty home.”