Work Text:
“Got a crowd startin’ to form at yer eight o’clock. Mind hurryin’ up just a bit?”
“I can either do this right or fast. You can’t have both.”
“Doesn’t seem like a problem for other guys. Think you need to go back to basics and brush up on some things?”
“Doing extra work now makes it easier for others to determine the group the IED came from and help predict their next target.”
“Yeah, sure, but pretty sure they wouldn’t mind sendin’ them the basic disarmed IED cuz yer gonna be in the heart of a fight in a second.”
Mac stopped his hands, looking behind him at the ever growing group of people stopping to watch him work. Not exactly out of the ordinary but it did lead to a confrontation more often than not. It was difficult to have how people felt about them in new towns; everyone usually ignoring them for the most part, perhaps jeers or taunts thrown their way as they were doing their walk through.
“If they know what’s good for them then they’ll stay put.” He went back to the IED.
“I appreciate you thinkin’ I can take all them out, but there’s a limit to human capability.”
“I meant I could easily set this thing off and take everyone and a building or two out, but I’m glad to see where your confidence is.”
“You better not. I’ve put too much effort into you just to have you blow yerself up. You start feelin’ uncomfy then just gimme a sign and I’ll put out a few warnin’ shots so they know what their dealin’ with.”
Truth be told, Mac was already uneasy. Crowds were never good; always hid potential enemies and weapons. He’d never had anything happen when he was out with his overwatch, but there were times when he’d been apart of larger groups where things took a turn, which in itself was odd since taking down one guy would be a lot easier than a group of trained soldiers. The only thing he was glad about with the group was he didn’t see any children.
“I’ll work faster.”
“You don’t do nothin’ that’ll compromise yer safety with that. You need to take yer time then you do it. I’m keepin’ watch. Ain’t no one’s gonna getcha while I’m watchin’.”
Mac snorted. Leave it to Jack to contradict himself. Nevertheless, he did take a more direct approach in disarming it, meaning not taking apart every single thing and just focused on the actual disarming part of if. He couldn’t help the feeling of more urgency in that bomb. The town they were in felt unwelcoming, though there were no outward actions of violence of any kind to them. Mac knew enough about feeling unwanted to know.
It didn’t take long for him to disarm it, quickly packing his equipment and gathering the IED itself, listening as Jack narrated his surroundings and guided him to the doorway of his nest. Needless to say he was calmer when he finally met back up with Jack.
“Ready to blow this popsicle stand?”
“Please don’t use that terminology.”
“My most humble apologies.” Jack rolled his eyes. “You ready to get outta here? This place rubs me the wrong way, and not in a good way.”
“I— that doesn’t even make sense. What’s the good way of something rubbing you the wrong way?”
“It’ll take too long to explain to ya.”
“And when has a long story ever stopped you?”
“Ah, this ones gotta lotta technical lingo and untechnical lingo and it’s just too complicated to try and explain in this situation.”
Mac shook his head. “Yeah, I’m ready to go.”
“Let’s get goin’ then.”
The two of them walked through the town, Mac walking just behind Jack, practically touching shoulders the entire way. It was how they did it all the time when they went to populated towns; Jack was able to scan for any potential threats, and Mac was out of his line of fire. The incidents where something actually happened was rare, even before Mac and Jack started understanding each other, but as Jack always said, he got his bomb nerds home, and Mac wasn’t about to become the one to break his streak.
“This place does make you feel— off.” Mac said once they were at the humvee, putting all the equipment away. “Unwelcoming, but also not.”
“They’re just annoyed we’re here.” Jack said while keeping watch. “This place is recent new territory and I think we’re one of the first teams to get sent in; lotta the people are still on the fence ‘bout us, and unfortunately it wouldn’t be the first time the US military used their good graces to do a complete takeover and change everythin’. I think as long as our teams don’t do nothin’ then we should be alright.”
Mac closed up the back. “Are we setting a good example?”
Jack snorted and pushed him into the passenger side door. “Don’t think it’s possible for you to set a bad example. Yer a Cali Boy Scout after all. Don’t even think I’ve heard you curse.”
“You should have Bozer tell you the first time he heard me say mother—”
Jack shut the door, butting Mac off with a laugh as he walked around to the other side. He opened his own door, smirking at Mac’s annoyed frown. “Don’t taint my innocent ears with yer slander.”
“Yeah, sure, talk to me about slander, but then you go stereotypical army sergeant to new guys. Pretty sure you’ve emotionally scarred a few of them with the things you come up with.”
“Just part of my charm.” He hopped in the vehicle, setting his rifle in it’s appropriate place before starting it up. “We got one more place before we’re done, right? Where we goin’?”
“Looks like— half hour north east.” Mac replied while looking at a map. “It’s the town you got kababs at last time.”
“Hell yeah. Love that place. You gonna get somethin’ this time?”
“Nope.”
“C’mon. It’s good stuff! Just cuz you got food poisoning from a different place doesn’t mean yer gonna get it again, especially not from that place.”
“But I’d rather not take the chance.”
Jack shrugged and started to move out. “Suit yerself.”
***
“You know you wanna try like just a little bit. You deserve it after gettin’ the IED disarmed, and we got a bit of a drive back with stale granola bars and warm water.”
“I can survive a drive on stale granola and warm water.”
They’d been in the last town for just over an hour. Mac had found the IED nearly immediately. Since their faces were known in that town, the citizens were more than cooperative in wanting it out and dealt with. Everyone gave them space, older people stopping kids from running up to play with them, at least while they were working. Once the IED was disarmed and packed in the humvee, they were ambushed by a group of kids all wanting to play.
It was still considered enemy territory, or at least a dangerous area, and Jack did have to put on his all business face when the kids started pulling at both his and Mac’s clothes, effectively scaring them off. It wasn’t a new thing, and a handful of adults even scolded the children for interfering.
So with the actual orders finished for the day, nothing stopped Jack from getting food before they actually left.
“Just one little bite. If you start actin’ like the exorcist then you can tell me off ‘til the cows come home.”
“No, Jack. In all honesty, I’m not hungry and am tired and just want to get back. So can we just get your food and go?”
“Yer Mr. Crankypants. That’s how I know yer hungry, but, yeah, we’ll get goin’.” Jack made quick work of ordering and paying for his food, deciding to save it until getting back to base so he could savor it.
LThey made their way back to the humvee, Mac getting in on his side and Jack walking to his. Though he didn’t quite make it, not really. Instead, he was ambushed by three children, all smiling and laughing, running into and pushing him.
“Whoa guys, not so rough.” Jack said, more or less moving them out of the way. “Go on, back up or I’ll run y’all over.” He got into the humvee and huffed.
“Did you just get beaten up by a group of preteens?” Mac couldn’t help but snort.
“Hey, groups of preteens will do damage to ya. Think one of them punched me in the kidneys.” He held his food towards Mac. “Hold this. And if you wanna take a bite—”
“I do not.”
“Well then you just keep them warm and I’ll see what I can trade one of them for when we get back.”
They started the drive back, talking of nothing important, and Jack taunting Mac of being scared of taking the smallest bite of food. They were a little more than half way there when Mac noticed.
“Dude, you’ve been shifting for like the past fifteen minutes. Are you okay?”
Jack sucked in a quick breath before shifting again. “Yeah. One of the kids musta had somethin’ hard when they crashed into me. Actually feels like one of them stabbed me. Maybe one of them had a rock and just— wham!— ya know.”
“Want to stop so I can take a look?”
“Nah. I can tough it out then go bawlin’ to doc when we get back.”
After a few more minutes of driving though, it had been apparent that whatever injury Jack had obtained from the kids was more serious than they thought.
“We should stop.” Mac said, urgency in his tone. “You’ve been swerving for the last few minutes and you look pale.”
“M’okay.” The slurring in his words and weaving across the barely visible dirt road meant anything but.
“You’re not.” Mac moved closer in his seat. His hand went behind Jack and felt wetness. “Stop the car Jack!”
The humvee slowed and eventually came to a halt. Mac was out and running around to the other side before Jack had an idea of what was happening.
“What’re y’doin’?”
“Lean forward a little bit.” Jack did what he was told, and Mac was horrified to see Jack’s seated coated in blood. “Shit, Jack. You’re bleeding.”
“Hey, what’d I say ‘bout taintin’ my ears?”
Mac got into the backseat, yanking open the first aid kit and pulling out the gauze.
“What’re ya freakin’ out about? It’s just a little blood. I’m okay.”
“It’s not a little. Your seat and pants are soaked.” He went back, keeping Jack forward so he could try and see the wound. “Your vest is so tight and it’s hot. You probably just thought it was sweat.” He pulled Jack’s vest back, pushing gauze onto where he thought the wound was, earning a slight yell from the man himself.
“Be a little more careful.”
“Come on. I need you in the back so I can see what the damage is.” He helped Jack get out. Once he was standing, a good amount of blood that was apparently settled in the puddle in the top of his pants, had spilled out.
That’s when Mac actually started to panic. That was a lot of blood, too much. Way too much. The pressure of having his back against the seat and his vest compressing him had most likely slowed it. Now that half that pressure was gone—
“I can’t see what’s wrong. Your vest is keeping the actual damage hidden and I think it’d be too dangerous to take it off.” He needed not to panic. Jack was in danger and Mac needed to keep a calm head. “Okay… okay, come on. Get in the back.”
He helped Jack get into the back seat, keeping him upright and shoving all the gauze they had under his vest. He buckled him in, keeping it tighter than normal.
“What’re y’doin’?”
“I need you to try and stay still and upright to try to keep the bleeding at bay.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if I was layin’ down? Maybe put my pack on to try and staunch it?”
Mac looked at him and nearly slapped himself. Jack was right. Laying prone was going to make the escaping blood fight against gravity. That would probably give Jack a better chance at survival.
“Yeah— yeah, uh…”
“Hey, take a deep breath. Take a sec to compose yerself.”
Mac couldn’t believe it. Jack was actively bleeding out and coaching him through how to take care of the wound. It was pitiful. Mac was a soldier. He had taken all the first aid training and courses required. He’s treated others in the field before with worse injuries, but when it came to Jack, his kind apparently went blank and everything he knew about basis first aide was gone.
“Yer doin’ fine. I know it’s scary, but yer gonna take good care of me and get us both back to base, yeah? Why don’t we get me settled then head off?”
He was being pathetic.
Mac helped maneuver Jack so he was laying on his stomach, gauze all pack under his vest before getting his pack and placing on his back. He shut up the doors, pausing at the driver’s seat. He didn’t want to sit there. Jack’s blood had left a magnificent mess down the back and on the seat itself. It wasn’t the fact that it was blood, it was that it was Jack’s. He already left Jack down on proving the right care, he wasn’t going to stay in that desert a second longer than he had to.
It seeped through his clothes at he got in.
He grabbed the radio, calling to command to tell them they needed to have medics ready for— what, an injury of some sort. Not a gunshot wound he didn’t think. He didn’t remember hearing any shots fired. Most likely a stab wound. Jack said it felt like he’d been punched. A stab wound or some sort of puncture had the highest possibility percentage.
Jack had been slowly bleeding for half an hour, and they still had a fifteen minute drive back. Jack had only seen Mac drive once before, and it wasn’t for something urgent the first time.
“I need you to talk to me.” Mac said as he started the drive. “Anything— so you stay conscious and I can see if you’re coherent.”
“This yer way of tellin’ me you wanna story?” Mac saw Jack smirk through the rear view mirror. “Well lemme tell ya ‘bout the time we through the apocalypses was happenin’ cuz of all the frogs we found.”
***
Mac felt sick.
He had cut down the drive time significantly, barely stopping enough to get waves through for access of the base. Jack had seen barely conscious when they made it back. The medics had been waiting with a stretcher to take him, one stayed back.
“You alright, Macgyver? Any of this blood yours?”
He didn’t want to think about it, the amount of blood that had soaked into his clothes and stained his hands. He needed to get it off. But the situation was serious, enough that he was barely able to stammer out that he was fine before being called to a superior officer to explain what happened.
“What happened, Macgyver?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t have any idea how this happened? He just started bleeding out of nowhere?”
“No, sir.”
“Then tell me how the hell this happened.”
He couldn’t tell what he didn’t know. He had to recount their whole day, how nothing happened until the last town they’d gone in— one that was always friendly towards American soldiers. Nothing happened until the kids surrounded him at the humvee. It had to have been an accident. Mac wished it was an accident, but the army didn’t tend to care if it was or not, nor if a child had been the culprit.
“It’s a damn shame but insurgents have child soldiers. And if they’ve infiltrated a town that’s supposedly friendly then we need to eliminate them. Besides, there’s no such thing as friendly out here. Go get yourself cleaned up.”
Stripping off his blooded clothes hasn’t been enough. Scrubbing hadn’t been enough. Clean clothes hadn’t been enough.
Mac had panicked.
Jack had nearly died.
He didn’t know if that was true. He didn’t venture to med to see if it was true. He didn’t think— he knew he wasn’t calm enough to hear Jack’s condition yet. Even if it was good news. His mind just kept flashing back to see all the blood on the seat of the humvee and blanking on proper first aid.
Jack would never do that to him. He was always calm and collected, even when under stress and extreme pressure. He always gave Mac a look over after finishing in a town to make sure nothing happened.
Mac didn’t do that for him.
Mac panicked.
He didn’t know how long he’d sat on his bunk, trying not to think about the what ifs of what was happening. He didn’t listen or respond to any of the other guys talking to him. He just waited. He didn’t know what for exactly— maybe some news about what was happening; someone coming in and saying Jack was alright, or that he’s lost too much blood and it was too late.
When someone did seek him out, saying Jack himself was asking for him, he didn’t know what to feel. Relief was there, obviously, but there was also— dread? Guilt? What if Jack was going to blame him for his current condition? What if that was what finally made Jack want to change partners? What if Mac was looking at the whole thing wrong and Jack was actually on his death bed?
“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any paler.” Jack’s voice pulled him from his thoughts, not even realizing he’d made it into med. “I’m the one that lost nearly all my blood and I still ain’t close to yer shade.”
“You barely lost fifteen percent.” Doc Roe chimed in. “Honestly I’ve seen people lose more from a bloody nose.”
“C’mon doc, I’m tryin’ to be dramatic.”
“You can be dramatic when something dramatic happens. Yes, you passed out because of blood loss, but the major factors of it was exhaustion and minor dehydration. You yell at him so much to take care of himself that you neglect yourself.” He gestured to Mac.
“You said my kidney got punctured!”
“I said lacerated, barely, and that’s just technical medical lingo. Barely a scratch, a pinprick at most that probably already healed in the time you’ve been here.” He turned to Mac, ignoring anything else Jack would’ve said. “Inch long incision, inch or so deep. Not as clean as I’ve seen others before; dirty blade most likely so we have him on pain killers and broad spectrum antibiotics just in case. We took a look at his vest and it’s got a puncture to match; went straight through the belting and kevlar and got him. Either way, a couple days of rest and he’ll be fine.”
A whirlwind of emotions was going through Mac, trying to settle on relief of Jack being alright, but he couldn’t get over the fact that he completely overlooked Jack’s vest and any indication of an injury.
“He’s going to stay in here over night, and depending on how annoying he is tomorrow, he might be able to go back to bunks. No field work for a week at least, and if anything gets worse, tell me.” Roe turned back to Jack. “You’re going to be sore for a while, and you might even piss some blood. As long as you don’t over exert yourself, you’ll be back in the field in three, maybe two weeks.”
“You think I’m annoyin’?” Jack smirked, apparently ignoring everything else Roe said.
Roe merely rolled his eyes and ventured to a different part of med, leaving Mac and Jack together.
“Hey, you need to get that look off yer face.” Jack said after a moment. “This wasn’t yer fault.”
Mac took a seat at the end of Jack’s cot. “I panicked.”
“That’s okay.”
“No it’s not. Panicking is what breaks situations. You… it could’ve been a lot worse if you didn’t tell me what to do. And you shouldn’t have needed to. I went through all the same first aid training and courses you did. I have the same knowledge you do. I know what to do in those situations, but every thing I knew went out the door, and you could’ve does from my lack of proper response. If you had a different injury, or if this one was more serious, you could’ve died and it would’ve been my fault.”
“Mac…” Jack pushed himself up so he was sitting. “It happens. Sometimes things happen that we can’t control, and this was one of those times. This ain’t the first time I’ve been injured in the field; ain’t even the first time I’ve been stabbed. This wasn’t yer fault. You panickin’— it ain’t on you, and before you say it literally is, if you really feel that way, I forgive ya. It wasn’t like you consciously did it, and it’s a natural human response. Don’t matter how much trainin’ you’ve had. If you see yer friend in such a position— yer reaction was completely normal. And better yet, you were able to listen to me to help ya in the right direction. That’s a big thing.”
“What if you’d been unconscious? You would’ve lost more blood and been in serious danger.”
“But I wasn’t. No need to be focusin’ on the past. I’ve seen medics in the field completely lose themselves in panic. You did absolutely fine. You immediately took action in helpin’.”
“But it was wrong.”
“Doesn’t matter. What does is the fact that you choose to help. This is just like you choosin’ to join up instead of stayin’ in college. Look, what happened was unavoidable. We both let our guards down, and I paid the price for it. Place like this ain’t gonna be peaches and cream. So, lemme say it again; what happened wasn’t yer fault. Yer actions don’t mean anythin’ towards yer ability. Everyone panics in those situations, I’m gonna be fine, and it shouldn’t need to be said, but I forgive ya even if you can’t forgive yerself.”
Mac sat, listening and replying the words Jack just said, hoping his brain wouldn’t ignore them like it’s done in the past.
“We’re… supposed to watch each other’s backs.”
“And this is a great example of that.” Jack grinned. “You literally watched my back and kept me from bleedin’ more than I already did.” He clapped Mac on the shoulder. “Little bit of time stuck on base, then right back oh in the desert. Minimal harm done. Plus, this gives me a chance to make all the other guys wait on me hand and foot. I’m gonna be alright, okay?”
Mac looked at him for the first time since entering med. He wasn’t on death’s doorstep, nor was he as pale as he declared himself to be. He just looked tired, like he had a long night and just needed to sleep it off.
It was a silent promise, and in their time together, Jack had yet to break one.
“Yeah, okay.”