Chapter Text
The world was upside-down, at least Mac thought it was. It was hard to tell in the dark and through the spiderwebbing cracks in the windshield.
Mac blinked slowly. All the blood was rushing to his head. His vision was fuzzy, his face felt flushed, and his head throbbed with every heartbeat.
He looked up (down?) his arms were dangling above (below?) his head, hands and forearms half resting in the sea of broken glass that littered the ceiling of his car.
Mac blinked again. He needed to be thinking. That was what he did in situations like this. (Bad situations? Confusing ones? All of them?)
Everything was just so… sluggish, as if his thoughts were army crawling forwards when they normally sprinted.
Catalogue. He told himself sharply. What’s the problem? That was where to start. You had to have a problem to start moving towards a solution.
Head injury. That sounded right. Maybe. Drugs could also cause… this.
Mac stared at the spiderwebbing cracks in the windshield again. Ok. Head injury. A working theory at least.
Catalogue, part two: What do I have to work with?
Mac let his head loll again, looking down (up?) at his hands where they still dangled above him.
His phone. Dark screen nearly blending into the ceiling of his car amongst all the broken glass. Solution: call Jack. Not the most elegant or heroic of solutions, but Mac would need his brain to be more obliging in order to conceive a more… dignified course of action.
He floundered, managing to grab his phone.
With his other hand he jabbed at the release of his seatbelt. It took a little more fumbling, but finally it un-clicked.
Mac dropped painfully down onto the roof of his car. The impact jarred through him, awakening a host of different pains throughout his body that he hadn’t registered. He rolled slowly, agonizingly, onto his side in the cramped space, clutching his phone to his chest as the glass shards awakened little lines of fire across his skin.
A pained, whiny, groan, strangled in the back of Mac’s throat. He opened his eyes again. The world was blurry. His phone was on, his lock-screen lighting up the area a little too brightly. Indistinctly he could make out the figures on it, him, Jack, Riley and Bozer all struggling to pile into a single selfie. Mac was being crushed between Jack and Bozer, Riley was barely peaking over his shoulder, they were all drunk out of their minds and laughing their asses off. It occurred to Mac that his lock screens had become increasingly crowded over the years.
Mac pressed his thumb to his phone. It failed to read his print. Mac realized belatedly that it had blood on it. He tapped out his password instead, leaving red smears across the screen.
He dialed a familiar number. It ringed.
Mac closed his eyes and listened to it. Everything else was silent, as if waiting with bated breath.
“Hey! This is Jack the Dalton speaking. Probably couldn’t catch your call due to doing cool… bathroom tile salesman… stuff. Leave a message and I’ll hit you back up. Ciao!”
Mac squeezed his eyes shut tighter as Jack’s cheery voicemail message filled the crumpled car. What next? He asked his brain. What’s another plan?
His brain hit him back with the mental equivalent of a shrug.
Mac redialed.
***
“And you’re sure you know what you’re doing?” Jack asked, voice skeptical.
“Yes.”
“Like… ‘defusing a bomb in under a minute’ sure or ‘this is a short-cut, I promise’ sure?”
Mac squeezed his eyes shut for a long second to avoid the urge to snap. Hot sand had spilled down the back of his jacket’s collar and had long since imbedded in his hair. The longer he was stuck underneath the Humvee the more he wanted to strangle someone. Considering the only two people within strangling distance were himself and his overwatch he was making great effort to curb that urge. He’d already been there done that with trying to strangle his overwatch just a few months ago, and it hadn’t ended well for either of them. “Yeah. Sure sure.” Mac finally replied, flatly. “You can stop asking, my answer isn’t going to change from the last five times.”
“We could always just wait until someone gets out here to fix it—”
“We don’t need someone else to fix it.” Mac bit back, more sharply. “I can defuse bombs I can sure as hell fix a damn car.”
“Hey now, man.” Jack replied, tone still nonchalant but with the edge of aggravation people got when their patience was being pushed. “No need to get all testy with me. I know neither of us want to be out here any longer than we got to, yeah?”
I know. Mac thought. No one has ever wanted to be out with me longer than they have to.
Except this guy, apparently. A loudmouthed Texan who’d done nothing but complain about dealing with him for months before signing up to another tour with him. Only with him.
Mac didn’t get it, and it was going to drive him insane even quicker than Jack would.
Why didn’t you leave me? Was not exactly the kind of question he could just throw at his overwatch.
Mac worked on the Humvee. Jack started humming some ear-wormy song as he kept guard with his rifle at the ready. The heat buzzed between them.
***
“Hey! This is Jack the Dalton speaking. Probably couldn’t catch your call due to doing cool… bathroom tile salesman… stuff. Leave a message and I’ll hit you back up. Ciao!”
“I don’t know where I am right now.” Mac mumbled. He was aware he was slurring, slightly. He felt like he weighed a million pounds, or maybe like he’d been welded in place into his car. Immovable. Lethargic. His skin felt damp, he didn’t know if he was sweating or bleeding. He felt too cold to be sweating. “But I need help. Can you…”
Mac closed his eyes. Can you what? Find me? Not leave me? Just talk to me?
The voicemail beeped, marking an end to the message.
Mac redialed.
***
Mac fixed the Humvee, or at least the type of fixing that would get it back to base in more or less one piece. He wasn’t looking forwards to being chewed out again by the base mechanics.
Jack grinned and pulled him easily back on his feet once he shuffled out from under the vehicle, all former frustration apparently vanishing into thin air.
Is this why? Mac wondered, raking his hands through his hair to dislodge the sand as Jack drove the Humvee back towards the base. Because I’m able to do this? Disarm bombs from under his feet? Fix the Humvee so he can drive? I’m useful enough?
It didn’t make sense either. Jack wouldn’t have needed bombs disarmed, or Humvees patched up in the middle of the desert if he’d gone back home.
Jack sung along to nothing. He was smiling, bobbing his head, drumming his fingers, the works. He seemed happier now, lacking the worn-out surliness that he’d had in the beginning of their partnership.
It just didn’t make any sense.
Jack glanced over at Mac, launching vigorously into an off-key chorus, one hand lifting off the wheel to hold an invisible microphone.
Mac rolled his eyes, but joined into the second line of the chorus with equal gusto. It was too long of a drive to be listening to only Jack’s voice.
***
“Hey! This is Jack the Dalton speaking. Probably couldn’t catch your call due to doing cool… bathroom tile salesman… stuff. Leave a message and I’ll hit you back up. Ciao!”
Mac let out a shuddering sigh. “D’you remember… back in the Sandbox? When you got sick?”
He set the phone down on his chest. He’d rolled onto his back earlier. There was something he should be doing, he was sure of it, but his brain seemed to be latched onto the most recent coherent objective he’d had. Well, semi-coherent objective at least.
“Remember how I still went out anyway?” Mac continued. He tried to keep his eyes open, to focus on the story. As mentally gone as he currently was, he still knew sleeping was a bad idea. “I didn’t… didn’t get it back then, you know?”
A little beep sounded, marking the end of the voicemail. Mac sighed and redialed.
***
“Yup. You definitely have a fever.” Mac grimaced, lifting his hand off Jack’s forehead.
Jack blinked blearily, rolling his head over on his pillow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Mac reiterated dryly. He rose and moved towards the bathroom.
“Hey, where ya going?” Jack called out, his voice was lower and hoarse. He sounded a bit out of it too, but with Jack it was hard to tell.
Mac didn’t bother to reply, coming back just a few seconds later with a damp cloth. The water from the tap was lukewarm at best, but waving the cloth in the air a little allowed evaporative cooling to bring it down to a nice icy temperature.
Mac laid it on Jack’s forehead, and Jack shivered abruptly in response.
“Ohhh that feels good.” Jack groaned. His eyes slid shut. “Real nice. Whazzit?”
“A wet washcloth.” Mac deadpanned. “Ok. You’re not going into the field like this.”
“Mm. Sick day.” Jack smiled, loose and lazy. “Boy d’we need one.”
“You need one.” Mac corrected absently. “Do you have any meds or do I have to go searching?”
“M’bag.” Jack mumbled. “You can look through it.”
“Look at that.” Mac rose to haul Jack’s pack off the top bunk, keeping up a consistent chatter as he did so. God, Jack had to be wearing off on him. It was a scary thought. “How far we’ve come. I can touch your stuff without getting punched.”
“M’sorry bout that.” Jack mumbled as Mac began his search. “But you were being really annoying.”
Mac snorted. He moved to the next pocket of the bag. He found a laminated sleeve with a battered polaroid of Jack with a group of other guys, all in fatigues but obviously at ease. Two of them triumphantly held empty bottles of some sort of alcohol while the others made a variety of silly poses around them. Mac carefully replaced the photo and kept shifting through the pack. So, crushing loneliness likely wasn’t the reason either. Not that he’d suspected it to be the cause, from the beginning Jack had been bubbling with stories about his huge, eclectic, family back home in Texas. The ones he’d foregone seeing in order to stay in this hellhole with Mac. Every time Mac tried to suss out any semblance of a reason for that decision it got even more confusing. Maybe that was just Jack, put on this earth to confound and bewilder anyone with a logical mind.
Mac crouched down by Jack’s bed with a fistful of pill bottles. He squinted at the worn out labels.
“What… never took OTCs before?” Jack joked, breaking Mac’s concentration. He rolled over onto his side, cold compress falling to the ground with a wet slap. “Shake me out three of the round red ones and a big blue.”
“Ibuprofen and Mucinex?” Mac clarified. He kept reading the label, unwilling to take Jack’s word for it.
“Yeah. Sounds ‘bout right.”
Mac huffed, but obliged. “I’m not a big medicine person.” He admitted as he passed the pills over along with a bottle of water. “My dad and grandad were big believers in toughing it out.”
Jack hummed thoughtfully before taking the pills. “First time.”
“First time what?”
“First time you’ve brought up your folks.”
Mac rocked back on his heels. He carefully retrieved the cold compress, flapping it in the air to get it cold again, and replaced it on Jack’s forehead. He didn’t know exactly how to respond to Jack’s comment, so he just moved on. “You’ll be alright if I head out now, right? Know who to call if you get worse? I can ask someone to check in on you—”
“Head out where?” Jack mumbled. He adjusted the cold compress on his forehead, flopping onto his back again.
“Fortunately, somehow, you haven’t infected me.” Mac smirked and rose. “So some of us have work to do.”
Jack flailed abruptly, catching a fistful of Mac’s fatigue pants. “Wait— alone? No bueno amigo. Nuh-uh.”
Mac tried to step to pull his pant-leg out of Jack’s grip, but only succeeded in making himself almost fall as Jack stubbornly held on. “I’m sure they’ll find me a stand-in.” He finally bit out, a touch irritably.
“You’re gonna trust some… some rando to watch your back?” Jack whined.
“I’m going to watch my own back, because I can take care of myself.” Mac asserted.
Jack blinked up at him. He still looked bleary, but there was a definite concern in his face that wore a little at Mac’s resolve. It had to be the fever. “Look, you’ll be back on your feet in no time and back to regaling me with stories about your… your third cousin Herbert.”
“Dennis.” Jack grumbled. His grip loosened and Mac pulled himself free. “His name’s Dennis.”
“Dennis.” Macgyver obligingly corrected himself. “Just rest up and feel better, ok?”
“Yessir.” Jack slurred, he lifted his hand as if to salute, but then just flopped his elbow over his eyes.
Mac smiled, fond and exasperated all in one, and slipped away.