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Mac
The house smelled like antiseptic.
He'd been home for three hours, long enough for the painkillers to wear off and for the silence to start pressing in. The med-team had patched the gash along his ribs, taped his shoulder, told him to rest. He'd nodded like he would, then spent the next hour pacing his living room, replaying every second of the mission.
Another blown op. Another Mac should've done something different.
He'd taken the blame out of habit. It always stuck to him easiest.
When his thoughts started looping, Mac gave up on pretending he was fine and moved into the kitchen. The ritual wasn't something he thought about anymore. Kettle, mug, the small tin on the highest shelf: cinnamon and citrus. Murdoc's tea. The kind Mac sometimes found already waiting when he woke up in the morning or when he got back from work. Sometimes Murdoc was there handing it to him, sometimes he wasn't.
Murdoc brewed it better somehow, he had a whole method that involved sugar, citrus peel, and a saucepan. Mac refused to learn it on principle.
Steam curled from the mug as he set it on the windowsill. He flipped the latch with his good hand and slid the pane up before stepping back. There. Signal sent. He didn't look at the mug again.
He wasn't even sure what he wanted. Conversation? Validation? The particular brand of madness that came with Murdoc's attention? Or maybe it was just the noise of another human being.
He sat at the table, the antiseptic sting of the bandage cutting through the smell of cinnamon and citrus, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Eleven months.
That's how long this bizarre detente had lasted, Phoenix pretending that letting Murdoc orbit him was containment. It had started after one too many operations ended with collateral damage that could be traced to Murdoc's bad mood. Someone in Oversight had realized that whenever Murdoc's focus was fixed on Mac, Phoenix casualties dropped to zero. No explosions. No kidnappings. Just appearances.
The official phrase was strategic tolerance. The practical result was that everyone looked the other way when Murdoc broke into his house, sat on his couch, stole his food, and talked like they were old friends. Mac hadn't decided if that made him a handler, a hostage, or bait. Maybe all three.
He also wasn't sure who he resented for it at this point, Murdoc, Oversight, or himself for letting it happen. Sometimes he even resented Bozer for moving out and leaving him to deal with Murdoc alone.
Seven months ago the ritual had started on its own. The first time had been a night like this. Too much silence, too much guilt, and a half-forgotten cup left by the open window. Murdoc had shown up twenty minutes later, dripping rain onto the floor, holding the mug like a calling card. He'd sat down and started talking about the weather in Zurich and somehow by the end of it Mac had felt lighter. Annoyed, but lighter.
Now it was simple. Boil the water, open the window, wait.
Murdoc didn't come every time, clearly sometimes he had better things to do than hover, but it worked more often than it didn't. The house ticked around him: pipes, refrigerator, the faint hum of the streetlights outside. He could almost believe it would be just another empty night. That was fine. He could handle fine.
Except fine was a lie, and he knew it. His ribs hurt, his shoulder throbbed, and the image of the mission replayed every time he blinked, the explosion, the shouting, the look on Matty's face when she'd said temporary leave. He'd taken responsibility, like always, because it was easier than arguing that the plan had been bad from the start. Easier than watching everyone else flounder for someone to blame.
A soft click cut through the quiet. Metal on tile. Boots, set down neatly just inside the sill. Then the whisper of a coat sliding off a shoulder.
Mac looked at him and cocked an eyebrow, "Took you long enough."
Murdoc smiled, not the manic grin he wore in the field, but the small, lopsided one that always looked like a secret.
"Traffic." He said, "And I had to make sure I wasn't being followed. You'd be amazed how many people still want me dead. I keep telling them it's futile but they never listen."
He crossed the room, flicked the overhead light off without asking, and the sudden dark made Mac's eyes ache. Then the corner of the room bloomed into soft gold. Murdoc had switched on the string of fairy lights Bozer had left behind when he moved out. Their glow threw long, gentle shadows across the walls.
Mac groaned, "Quit touching my stuff."
Murdoc looked perfectly unrepentant, "Your stuff is terrible at ambience. Fluorescent lighting? Honestly, Macgyver. It's like you want migraines."
"You're a migraine."
"Well that's just rude."
"So is breaking into my house. Just… sit down."
"Gladly." The assassin slid into the chair across from him, folding long legs under the table, the picture of comfort. His bare feet made small sounds on the tile. The faint scent of rain and gun oil came with him.
He tilted his head, scanning the tape showing under the edge of Mac's shirt, "You're patched, at least. Good. Now. Tell me what happened."
Mac stared at the steam curling from the mug, it was important to wait, just to make sure Murdoc didn't think he could get the answer immediately. To make sure he at least thought Mac was considering not telling him a thing.
"We lost a target." He said finally, "Extraction went sideways. I called an audible and got us pinned down. Riley got a concussion, the payload's gone, and Matty thinks I blew the op because I wouldn't wait for confirmation."
He rubbed the heel of his hand against his eyes, "She's right. I should've-"
Murdoc cut him off with a small wave of his fingers, "Stop. Incorrect premise."
Mac's eyes snapped up, "What?"
"You keep starting from the assumption that it was your fault. Let's take that apart, shall we?" He leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice going precise, surgical, "Start from the beginning. Who briefed the team?"
Mac took a slow breath, "Fine. Beginning to end."
"The brief came in three days ago." He started, "Phoenix got intel that the Sokolov Group had smuggled a defected chemist out of Prague. Dr. Alina Petrov. She's the target. They were moving her through a safehouse network on the border. Matty wanted her alive since she's the only person who can confirm what they're cooking up in the Balkans."
"Delightful people." Murdoc murmured, "Continue."
"Jack and I were point. Riley on comms, Bozer driving the secondary evac van. It was supposed to be clean. In and out before sunrise. The intel said the target would be guarded by three men, max. I rigged a door charge to breach from the south side while Jack created distraction on the east. Riley was supposed to jam their radios." Mac stopped, rubbing his eyes.
"Go on." Murdoc tilted his head.
Mac let out a long breath, the words coming flat, "Jack went loud too early. I think he got spotted cutting around the east side, he said later there was a guard posted where the intel said there wasn't supposed to be one. As soon as they raised the alarm, I detonated the door charge, hoping to pull them toward me instead. That worked, except Riley's jamming got knocked out by a power surge before she could loop their internal comms, so half the building knew exactly where we were before I even got eyes on Petrov."
"So, to summarize, the intel was bad, Jack jumped the gun, and Riley's toys malfunctioned. And you're the one benched."
Mac scowled, "It's not that simple."
"It's exactly that simple, Macgyver." Murdoc said, all smooth patience, "You were playing chess with someone else's missing pieces."
Mac rubbed the back of his neck, "Riley's system wasn't wrong, it just couldn't read their hardware. I should've checked it before we moved."
"Oh yes. In the thirty-seven seconds between the team loading the evac van and arriving at the safehouse. You should have personally reverse-engineered the encryption schema out of sheer willpower. How foolish of you not to." Murdoc said dryly, "Please continue. I'm sure you'll get to the part where this somehow becomes your fault."
Mac shot him a look, "You wanted the full picture."
"I want the truth, Macgyver. Those are rarely the same thing."
He exhaled through his nose and kept going, "Inside, there were more men than expected. Eight, maybe nine. They'd moved Petrov down to a cellar. I found her, got the cuffs off, tried to get her up the stairs, but Jack's firefight on the east side had already drawn reinforcements. Riley said the van was boxed in, Bozer couldn't move it without drawing attention."
"Which is code for Bozer panicked." Murdoc rolled his eyes.
"He was outnumbered!"
"He was driving." Murdoc countered, "Outnumbered is not a verb that applies when you're in a bulletproof box with an accelerator pedal."
Mac ignored him, "We needed a way out. I told Matty we couldn't hold the position, but she said the extraction window was closing and ordered us to hold until Riley re-established the jammer. She thought the alarm was isolated. It wasn't."
The assassin's eye twitched, "Ah. So the brilliant puppet-master ordered you to sit tight while the building filled with angry men carrying automatic weapons. Fascinating strategy."
"She didn't have all the information."
"She didn't listen to the information you had, sunshine. There's a difference."
Mac pinched the bridge of his nose, "We were trying to keep Petrov alive."
"And instead, everyone else nearly got killed because your fearless leader wanted plausible deniability. Go on."
"Jack took a hit, just a graze, but he dropped the comms unit when he went down. Riley tried to reroute through satellite, but she couldn't maintain signal while they were jamming us. I grabbed Jack's unit, pulled Petrov toward the stairwell, tried to use the charge residue to improvise a smoke screen. It worked until the floor gave way."
"That explains your injuries." Murdoc muttered.
"The blast from the initial door charge must have compromised it. I went through, caught myself on a beam, Petrov hit the ground floor. Dislocated shoulder, ribs…" He gestured vaguely toward the tape, "Nothing life-threatening."
"And you still got her out?"
"She bolted the second I hit the ground. Ran straight into the line of fire. Jack couldn't cover her; Bozer froze on the comms. By the time Riley got the jammer back online, she was gone." His voice went smaller, "We lost her, Murdoc. That's on me."
The assassin snorted, "No. That's on them. Let's deconstruct."
"Murdoc-"
Murdoc leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, "Lesson one, Macgyver: responsibility is not the same thing as fault. But if you take one, the rest of the world will try and give you the other. Now, point by point."
He ticked them off on his fingers, "One, Matty trusted outdated intel. Two, Jack broke formation. Three, Riley's equipment failed. Four, Bozer froze. At which stage, pray tell, were you given the option of success?"
Mac shook his head, "That's not-"
Murdoc talked right over him, "You improvised a breach that worked, contained the firefight, extracted a hostage, and kept everyone breathing long enough for the idiots to retreat. The chemist running into the line of fire is not on you unless you're suddenly in the business of mind control."
"You're shit at accountability." Mac tried to glare at him but it fell flat.
"Maybe not, I'm excellent at pattern recognition." Murdoc shot back, "You've built a reputation for saving people who don't deserve it, so they assume you can conjure miracles on demand. The second there's no miracle to make, they panic and hang you with the noose they built out of your competence."
"That's… morbidly poetic."
"Thank you." Murdoc sighed, "You think you were reckless. I think you were abandoned mid-operation and made the only choices that left anyone alive. The difference is: my version doesn't end with you bleeding on your own kitchen floor."
For a moment neither of them spoke. The fairy-lights hummed quietly against the windowpane.
Finally Mac muttered, "You make it sound easy."
"Perspective is easy. Especially when it's accurate. Especially when it's about you. And you are far too brilliant for that menagerie you work with, Macgyver. I've said it before."
Mac slumped a little, head tipping back against the chair, "You've also said I'm arrogant, reckless, and prone to self-destructive decisions."
Murdoc nodded, pleased, "And yet I still show up. Imagine that."
"You're creepy.'
"Unapologetically. But I'm right." He pushed the mug toward him again, voice dropping, "Drink up, Macgyver. You're dehydrated and it's making you even grumpier than usual."
Mac's eyes narrowed but he drank the tea anyway, "You keep track of everything, don't you? How do you even know when my missions go bad?"
"Oh, I watch." Murdoc said lightly, "Listen, mostly. There are feeds, chatter, satellites. You'd be amazed how many Phoenix channels still use the same encryption as the last time I broke it."
Mac froze halfway through a sip, "That's-"
"Creepy." Murdoc finished for him, "You already said that. Quit recycling material."
"Quit stalking me."
"Can't. It's a hobby now. You have your inventions, I have you." Then the assassin looked at Mac like he was trying to perform an x-ray on his soul, "Did they put you on leave for it this time?”
"Yeah." The word came out small, grudging, "Matty said I need to reassess operational judgement."
"You know…" Murdoc started, too casual.
"Murdoc." Mac's tone went sharp with warning.
"…she's lucky I'm respecting your boundaries." Murdoc shrugged.
Mac glared, "Do not break into Matty's house."
A small pout, ridiculous on someone wearing a shoulder holster, "Fine, but when you change your mind-"
"I won't."
"When you do, I'll go solve your problems." He leaned back, chair creaking, "Efficiently."
Mac rolled his eyes, but the tension in his shoulders eased. It always did after these nights, no matter how much he told himself it shouldn't. Murdoc had that effect: infuriating, invasive, and somehow comforting.
Murdoc watched him over the rim of the mug, head tilted, studying the lines of fatigue around his eyes, "Eat something?"
"I'm not hungry."
"You never are after you get yelled at." He stood, "You'll humour me, though. Then you'll go to bed."
"I don't need you to take care of me." Mac muttered. It was just as much a charade as his pause earlier, the idea of cooking with his shoulder like this was too much and as he calmed down he could feel his appetite trying to make an appearance.
"Of course you don't." He said simply, already moving to the fridge, "But you're getting it anyway, besides dinner's waiting for you."
Mac blinked, "What?"
Murdoc opened the door like he owned the place. Light spilled across the tiles, washing over neat plastic containers stacked on the middle shelf, "I made pasta salad."
Mac watched him move around the kitchen like he belonged there, the soft pad of his socked feet and the glint of the fairy lights on the counter. He caught himself staring at the container. It wasn't the first time Murdoc had cooked for Mac, far from it. He'd even had Murdoc's pasta salad before more than once. He knew the taste: lemon oil, chicken, sun-dried tomatoes chopped fine. He liked it. He pretended he didn't.
"Sit." Murdoc said again, already spooning out a portion, "You need food and salt. Doctor's orders."
"You are not a doctor."
"You're right I'm better, I cook." He nudged the bowl toward him.
Mac sighed, took the fork, and pushed the food around for a bit before taking a bite. It was good. Of course it was. It always was. He tried to keep his face neutral and failed.
Murdoc noticed. Of course he did, "There it is. The look of reluctant joy."
"Shut up."
"You say that every time you like something I do. I like it."
It was a creepy thing to say. It should've been, anyway. But the way he said it, half a sigh, half a prayer, made Mac's pulse skip.
He focused on the food, "You gonna just watch me eat?"
"Yes. Making sure you finish it."
"You're worse than Matty."
"She only yells at you." Murdoc said lightly. "I feed you, patch you up, defend your honour, and hold vigil while you sleep. I'm an upgrade."
Mac didn't answer. He just kept eating the pasta, bite by bite, the ache in his ribs dulling.
Mac pushed the empty bowl away and leaned back, trying not to wince when his shoulder protested.
Murdoc plucked the fork from his fingers, rinsed it like he'd been born in this kitchen, and said, almost conversationally, "You know what I find fascinating, Angus? Out of all the places you could have gone tonight-"
"Don't start."
"-you didn't stay at medical for the full work-up, you didn't crash at Bozer's, you didn't call Jack." Murdoc set the fork in the rack, turned, bracing his hands on the counter behind him. His voice turned gleeful, "You came home. You made the tea. You opened the window."
Mac felt the heat climb up his neck and he scowled, "You think that means something?"
"I think it means you wanted company and you knew which kind you'd get." Murdoc's smile was small, not smug, just certain, "I'm not pretending to understand the why, but don't think I haven't noticed."
Mac looked at the table instead of him, "You're delusional."
"Oh definitely. But in this case I'm also right."
He didn't argue. The fairy-light glow blurred a little at the edges; exhaustion was catching up with him. Murdoc noticed that too, because of course he did. He crossed the room, snagged the remote off the counter, and clicked on the TV.
The familiar Top Gear theme music filled the quiet. Murdoc dropped onto the couch, patting the spot beside him, "Come on, sunshine. It's tradition."
"It's stalking."
"It's comfort television."
Mac sighed, shuffled over, and sat down. Murdoc didn't crowd him, just angled himself enough that their shoulders almost touched, the heat of him radiating through the thin space between them. On screen, Clarkson shouted about Power. Beside him, Murdoc murmured commentary under his breath.
Ten minutes in, Mac's eyelids felt heavy. Murdoc's voice blurred with the TV, warm and steady, wrapping around the edges of his thoughts. He was half-asleep when he heard Murdoc murmur, softer than the hum of the set, "See? You don't have to fix everything. You just have to rest."
Mac wanted to argue, but sleep pulled him under mid-breath. The last thing he registered was the quiet click of Murdoc turning the volume down lower.