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whumpflumpthump · 4 years

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Mac Whump...again...

Hello again!! I’m back with more Mac whump. However, this fic doesn’t have as large of a focus on whump as my last ones have, because I got kind of carried away... There is also some very questionable science in this fic, but it is based on facts. I will admit this isn’t my best work, but I wanted to get something out today, so here it is...

Warnings: This fic contains a gunshot and other related violence, so if this triggers you, please be safe!!

As always, if you guys have any MacGyver related prompts you would like me to fill, just send me an ask!

So, without further ado, enjoy!!

...

As Mac was running through the woods, being chased by a highly dangerous, armed, and not to mention gigantic gang member, her was wondering how things had gotten so bad, so quick. It had started out as a simple mission, infiltrate a gang of drug dealers who had recently started meddling in more dangerous affairs, just long enough to allow Riley to download some information that they could use to take down the gang. However, as with most missions the team went on, that was not how it ended up. The gang had somehow gotten wind of who they really were, and that unfortunate slip had led to Mac’s current, tiring predicament.

A gunshot rang out through the trees, and Mac risked a quick glance around to each side, making sure Riley and Jack were both still okay. Jack had turned around to return fire, and Riley, seeing Mac’s concerned glance, gave a small thumbs up. Mac sighed in relief before focusing again on not getting shot by the increasingly aggressive gang members chasing him. However, he wasn’t able to relax long, the team was quickly tiring, it had been a long trip and they were all running on low sleep. The hostiles were gaining quickly. He needed to come up with something soon, or this would not end well.

He looked around, and an idea slowly formed in his mind. About forty yards to the left, there was an old shack that looked like an old wood shop. Why it was there? He had no idea, but he was thankful regardless. If he could just get over to it, he would be able to use the saw dust as an explosive, and use it to cause a distraction that should give them enough time to escape and call for backup. But, in order to do that, he would need a distraction of his own. He turned around once again to look at Jack, and nodded his head towards the wood shack, hoping he would get his message.

It turned out all their years working together had paid off, because Jack nodded and almost immediately turned around and started firing.

“Take that you good-for-nothing scumbags. I’ll have you know, no one messes with an angry Jack Dalton and gets away unharmed.”

Jack’s threats seemed to work, at least for the moment. The gang seemed distracted, enough so that they didn’t seem to notice when Mac quickly darted over to the wood shop. As he approached, he was happy to see that his assumption was correct, and there was saw dust scattered in piles all over the ground.

Mac immediately set to work, gathering up the driest bits of dust he could find, and made a pile on an old table. After he had collected a good amount of sawdust, he started to look for something airtight to place them in. After about five seconds of frantic searching, Jack’s firing speed was slowing down as he was running out of ammo, Mac found what he was looking for, a roll of plastic wrap used to cover the wood when it rained. He quickly tore off a decent sized section, and wrapped the saw dust “bomb” he had created, leaving a small hole where he placed a rolled up piece of paper, found on the table for some kind of plans or something, to act as a wick.

As he was busy trying to form his makeshift bomb, Mac was oblivious to the gang member walking up behind him, gun raised and aimed at his chest. Right as he was about to light the paper, he heard a shout.

“Mac, watch out!”

It was Riley, eyes wide, as she watched the scene play out from safely behind a group of trees. She was presumably trying to call for help, before yelling at Mac.

He quickly turned around, and saw the gun aimed at his heart.

Time seemed to slow down as he watched the man’s finger move towards the trigger, a cold smile playing across his face. Just as his finger arrived at the trigger, he was tackled to the ground by Jack, who then promptly knocked him out with a swift right hook to the jaw, but not before a single shot was fired.

...

Mac’s mouth formed a small “o,” as the bullet tore into his body, not at the chest like it was intended, but in his right leg, right above his knee.

He fell to the ground as his leg gave out, and landed hard on the forest floor. For a few seconds, he was blissfully numb as his brain tried to catch up with what had just happened.

He was not so lucky for long.

First, there was a throbbing pain as the blood poured out of the wound, and then came the burning. A searing pain that felt as though his leg was on fire shot through his body, causing him to shudder. His breaths were coming in short gasps as he tried to look down to assess the damage.

Blood was pouring out of the bullet hole, and pooling on the leaf-covered ground. That was as far as he got in his examination, before Jack was kneeling next to him, gently pushing his shoulders back to the ground.

“Hey bud, you need to stay still for me okay?” he said, and then got his first real look at Mac’s injury.

“Oh Mac, that does not look good. I’m so sorry bud, if I had been a little quicker...”

He was cut off by Mac, “Not...your fault.” Mac was already starting to lose focus, and blood was still pouring out of the wound. He looked down again, “How bad?”

“Well, its not great...can’t see an exit wound, so the bullet is still in there. From the looks of things, your femur might be fractured too.”

Mac nodded, before closing his eyes tight as another shudder racked through him.

Jack seemed to have realized that he needed to stop the bleeding, so he was back kneeling next to Mac.

“Okay bud, this might hurt, but I need to try and slow the bleeding. Riley, what’s the ETA of exfil?”

That seemed to snap Riley out of her shock, and she pulled out her phone, while Jack started to push on Mac’s leg.

“Four minutes!”

Mac gasped as Jack pushed the bullet farther into his leg, causing it to put pressure on the already injured bone. Black spots were forming in his vision as his breaths got shorter, he was rapidly losing his battle to stay conscious.

“Sorry Mac, we can’t take the bullet out, and you’ve already lost enough blood as it is.”

“It’s...k” Mac said, his eyes fluttering.

“Come on bud, stay with me. You’re doing so well, just a few more minutes,” Jack said, in vain, as Mac’s eyes had finally closed and he fell unconscious, going limp in the dirt.

“Riley, how much longer?”

“Two minutes now,” Riley responded, looking nervously at the blonde between them.

Jack checked Mac’s pulse, and sighed in relief as he felt it, slower than normal, but there.

They both waited out the next two minutes in silence, and when exfil came, they moved out of the way as the medics lifted Mac’s prone form onto a stretcher, and got into the truck.

As the truck drove away, they were both thinking the same thing, why was it always Mac?

...

Thanks for reading!! I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow should be another creepy Murdoc fic, and I am working on a continuation of my first Murdoc fic, which should be done some time this week.

Thanks again, have a wonderful day!!

#MacGyver #macgyver whump #macgyver whump fanfiction #macgyver whump fanfic #fanfiction #mine #gunshot wound #leg wound #long tags #thanks for reading #angus macgyver whump #mac whump #jack dalton #riley davis #Angus MacGyver

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bloodfromthethorn · 2 years

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Punctured Lung

The job's simple: break into a mansion protected with mercenaries, steal some data, and head out the backdoor before anyone even knows they're there. Sounds like the perfect job for Mac and Riley to get used to working with each other on their own. What could possibly go wrong?

Part twenty-two of the July of Whump 2021 prompt challenge.

Also on AO3.

“This is a bad idea.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like Jack.”

“You know, I hate to say it, but not everything he says is total nonsense.”

Mac snorted, barely muffling the sound against his shoulder. His Overwatch might not be listening to them on comms, but Mac knew that he’d be reviewing the mission records as soon as he got the opportunity and he’d be sure to get a kick out of that one. When Mac got his smile back under control, he said as much.

“Yeah, well, he should stop listening in to other people’s private conversations,” Riley returned petulantly, but it was half-hearted at best. When Mac glanced across at her, there was a blush high on her cheeks.

“We can back out,” Mac offered instead of pushing the matter any further. “If you think this plan’s bogus, there’s still time to bail and try a different approach.”

She shot him an unimpressed look and marched determinedly past him. “Now you sound like Jack. We agreed this was the best way of getting in and out without running into any of the guards.”

“Maybe, but it’s not fool proof.”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“No.”

“Well then, shut up, and let’s get moving.”

Without any immediate response to that, all Mac could do was trail after her. Truth be told, he wasn’t feeling all that great about their plan either, but in the absence of any better ideas or intel, they could only work with what they had. He’d feel a whole lot better if Matty had been able to offer them more information about the type of opposition they might be facing other than ‘a handful of hired mercenaries and a state of the art, digital security system’, but he’d done more with less before. Rarely without Jack at his back though.

Together the two of them crept silently through the foliage, eyes and ears primed to detect any movement besides their own. If everything went to plan, then there shouldn’t be any; they’d timed their approach to a shift-change, which meant any patrolling guards should be bunched up at the main entrance of the compound. That gave Mac and Riley ten minutes of unobstructed access to the rear side of the house and the convenient old servant door they could slip through. A few twists and turns and boom, right to the house’s main study without alerting a soul.

If everything went to plan.

Knowing their track record? Mac wasn’t holding his breath.

In their defence, the first half of the mission did actually go as planned. It was tense, but Mac hadn’t had any trouble in picking the lock on the external door, Riley had been able to hack through the security on the study’s computer in record time, and they’d been heading out again without even hearing a single guard. They really couldn’t have asked for a smoother ride.

Except then, of course, they tried to leave again and all hell broke loose. Quick as they might have been, the shift-change had apparently been faster and they exited the back door only to run almost directly into two men holding heavy duty assault rifles who were just as surprised to see them as they were. There was a comically long pause as the two groups stared at each other in open shock, before Mac’s brain rumbled back into gear and he dragged Riley forcibly into the treeline.

They just barely made it past the first thick trunk before bullets started burning the air around them. Riley had a handgun tucked into her holster, but they both knew without having to discuss it that it wasn’t going to hold up to that kind of firepower. Their only chance was to get the hell out of there as fast as they physically could.

Together, they legged it.

“Hey, Matty,” Mac panted as they sprinted across the uneven ground. “We got problems!”

“What’s going on?”

“Package acquired. Hostiles alerted.” The bark just beside his head exploded in a shower of wood splinters. “Heavily-armed hostiles,” he corrected sharply even as he turned on his heel to throw off anyone trying to aim at him.

“Where are you now?”

“Uh,” he pulled up a mental map, desperately calculating their rough speed and trying to remember useful landmarks. “Running west. Maybe 200 meters past the property line?”

“Riley?”

“Here,” she gasped shortly. “Running.”

“Are you being followed?”

They didn’t need to glance back to know that they were; if the mercenaries had stayed at the property then they would have lost sight of them by now. “Yes!”

“Alright. Your exfil team is still holding position on the other side of the valley; I’ll get them as close to you as I can. Keep me in the loop.”

Mac was half-tempted to snark that the only update they’d be giving any time soon that was of any importance would be their brutal murder, but he wisely decided the air required would be better spent breathing. Matty put up with a lot from her agents, but she had her limits and she’d always been more tolerant of Jack’s quick-fire mouth than Mac’s. Instead, he sucked in a sharp lungful of air, and kept running.

They made it about another three minutes before something else went horribly wrong.

One of the requirements of working as a field agent at the Phoenix was, unsurprisingly, consistent upkeep of your physical health. None of them were slouches in that department, but of the lot of them, Mac had always been the runner; it came naturally to him in the way that upper body strength did to Jack and for all their training, none of them had ever been able to outrun him when it came to distance.

As such, it wasn’t entirely a surprise to realise several minutes into their hare-brained escape that he was starting to outpace her. They were still being shot at, but they’d gained enough distance that the spray wasn’t cutting too close each time. Honestly it was a miracle neither of them had been hit, but Mac wasn’t about to start questioning it.

“We need to hide,” he said breathlessly, slowing himself to match her pace and bring them back level. “Can’t run forever.”

Flushed and breathing hard, Riley just nodded at him, her eyes full of trust. Evidently she was willing to go along with whatever plan he pulled out his ass – it was the kind of faith that always made him feel unworthy of the friends he’d somehow earned.

“Matty, we’re turning south,” he snapped into his comm, making the required turn at speed just as they rounded the edge of a natural rise in the terrain, conveniently cutting the direct line between them and their pursuers.

“Alright. We’re using your comm signals to track your progress, but until you’re out of the trees, our satellites won’t have eyes on.”

“Exfil?”

“Another half-mile ahead of you there’s a road. There’s enough space to get the helicopter down. I’ll make sure they’re waiting for you.”

Riley mumbled something that sounded like a curse at the distance they still had to go – at a jog it would have been nothing to either of them, but they’d been more or less sprinting for several minutes already – but she didn’t break stride. Mac silently agreed, then busied himself with falling behind her so that he was running in her shadow. He wasn’t wild about catching a bullet, but if it came to that, he’d rather it was him than her. From the aggrieved look she shot him briefly out the corner of her eye, she knew exactly what he was doing.

Ironically, it was that decision that ended up being the reason Riley got hurt.

In their haste to get away, they hadn’t really considered the possibility that some of the other mercenaries might have put the road ahead towards to their own ends. It was a textbook pincer manoeuvre and neither of them clocked it before a masked man threw himself out from behind a tree and tackled Riley to the ground in a painful tangle of limbs.

Mac faltered, struggling to cut his speed as quickly as possible while also dodging sideways so he wouldn’t fall over the pair sprawled directly in front of him. Thrown off balance, it took him a painfully long few seconds to whirl on their attacker and tear him off Riley-

It was too slow.

He yanked the mercenary upright, driving his foot down sharply on the side of his knee to cripple him and throwing a heavy fist into his cheek to stun him. With a broken leg and the start of what was sure to be a hell of a concussion, the man flopped to the ground with a yell and didn’t rise again. Mac spun back to check on Riley, only to freeze solid at the sight of red blooming across the side of her ribs. She was looking at the wound herself, one hand coming up to slowly brush against the growing wetness as her mind tried to catch up to what was happening.

The fingers that came away red were trembling.

“Mac?” She said softly, sounding smaller than he’d ever heard her. It was enough to startle him back into action, taking an unsteady step forward as his mind raced ahead to try to plot out their next steps.

And, like all of their plans that day, it went FUBAR in an instant. That single step was the most he got before Riley’s tear-filled eyes glanced up at him, only to immediately widen in concern. She opened her mouth to shout his name, warn him – anything – but Mac didn’t get a chance to hear it before something heavy collided with the side of his head and everything went white.

He crashed to his knees, the world going sickeningly wavy as his consciousness threatened to desert him. Hot, thick blood started streaming down over his forehead, blinding him as it flooded his right eye. For an endless moment, all that existed was pain. His head was screaming at him, the rest of his body distant and faint, and it felt like the only thing still tethering him to Earth was the coarse, gritty loam beneath his stinging palms.

If he’d been alone, he might have given up there. The very thought of standing up, readying himself to fight, felt so impossible that he could almost laugh at it. But he wasn’t alone and he couldn’t give up. Riley was still there, hurt and in danger. If he couldn’t force himself up for his own sake, then he’d damn sure do it for her.

He blinked rapidly, swiping an uncoordinated hand at the blood on his face to try to clear his vision. It only half worked, but the reddish-haze he was left with was enough to see a second attacker holding a baton standing over an immobile and obviously terrified Riley. She’d scooted backwards far enough to press herself against the trunk of a tree, but the pallor in her face and her audibly heaving breaths made it clear she would be going no further under her own power. The mercenary, unconcerned, raised his baton.

With strength he didn’t know he had, Mac threw himself towards the merc, catching him around the waist and slamming him bodily to the ground. To the man’s credit, he recovered with surprising speed and the pair of them grappled, Mac’s consciousness wavering all the while. His limbs felt limp and boneless, but his despair made him strong; with a sharp twist Jack had taught him, he brought his knee down hard on the man’s groin and smashed his head backwards when he tried to jackknife up. By sheer luck rather than intended action, the back of his skull cracked against an exposed tangle of tree roots and he slumped down, unconscious.

Panting and aching in what felt like every bone of his body, Mac didn’t wait before forcing himself up and crossing to Riley’s side. Her skin was washed out and clammy, made all the more stark by the brightness of the blood staining her pale top dark. And still more concerning than that was the wet rasp in her breathing that sounded like it hurt.

“Ri,” he breathed, one hand coming up to feel the pulse point in her neck while his other went to the wound beneath her left arm.

“Mac.” She stared up at him with shell-shocked, terrified eyes. Her lower lip was trembling, her voice strained and desperate. In the face of sudden, overwhelming pain, she was doing exactly what she’d been conditioned to do when missions went wrong: look to him to solve the problem.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he assured, even as he ducked his head to see what they were working with. Her pulse was fluttering and fast, but still going strong; it was her breathing that was troubling him far more. A quick inspection that had her gasping in pain revealed a surprisingly neat stab wound and, unfortunately, confirmed what he feared. “I’m sorry,” he soothed as she instinctively tried to writhe away from his probing fingers. He tore off his overshirt and bunched it up to press down on the injury. “I know it hurts. I’m sorry Ri.”

“It’s- okay.” Eyes which had slammed closed against the pain squinted open again, damp but alert. Whatever she saw in his face made her frown. “What is it?” Already, her voice was almost gone.

There was no point softening the blow. Besides, Matty would be listening and she needed to know. “I think the knife ruptured your pleural cavity,” he said as levelly as he could while his heart tried to beat out of his own chest. “There’s air building up where it shouldn’t be. That’s why you’re struggling to breathe.”

Her brows dipped down, but her lips were already turning ashy and blue and she didn’t have the air she needed to ask him any further questions.

“You’re going to be fine,” he added firmly, trying to make them both believe it. “Exfil isn’t far. I’ll get you there, I promise.”

He carefully picked up her left hand and pressed it down against the makeshift pressure bandage, silently requesting that she hold it. She didn’t have the leverage or the strength to create an effective seal, but even with both of his hands free, Mac wasn’t entirely confident in his ability to carry her what had to still be at least a quarter-mile. Their best would just have to be enough.

With an arm under her knees and another behind her shoulders, he scooped her up with a groan. He staggered as soon as he was upright, the blood rushing to his head making it pound so sharply with pain that he wasn’t sure he didn’t pass out for a fraction of a second. Riley’s free hand gripped tightly at the one he had beneath her legs.

It was all the encouragement he needed to get moving.

“Matty, make sure the exfil team have a decompression needle ready,” he demanded. Their speed was, unsurprisingly, dramatically slowed, and while Riley’s wound didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly – as stab wounds went, at least – Mac didn’t want to take chances with how her lungs were holding up. If they were very lucky then he’d be able to get her treatment before her lung collapsed, but he wasn’t holding out much hope.

“They will. They’ll be coming in to land any minute and I’ll send them out to meet you. Are there any hostiles nearby?”

Truthfully, in the muddle of everything else going on, Mac hadn’t even stopped to think about the mercenaries. Riley was bleeding and scarcely breathing, and his head was so rattled he could barely see – there was a limit to the number of things he could concentrate on at one time. At the very least he was reasonably sure the two mercenaries who had attacked them wouldn’t be coming after them again any time soon.

“Not sure,” he replied as honestly as he could. Riley’s cold fingers tightened on his.

“Are you hurt?”

He would have denied it automatically if he’d had the mental capacity left to process any kind of higher brain function. As it was, just staying on his feet was a near-insurmountable challenge. “Hit my head.”

There was an expectant pause as Matty no doubt lined up her usual questions to bombard him with until she was back on the same page, but rather than ask them she hesitated. From the soft slur Mac could hear in his own voice, it was likely he sounded at least half as bad as he felt and Matty was a perceptive woman. She probably already had a pretty solid idea of just how precarious their position had managed to become.

“Okay,” she said calmly. “I’ll tell the exfil team to expect two casualties.”

“’M okay,” he mumbled unconvincingly. On his very next step he swayed alarmingly to his left as his knees threatened to buckle, but Matty didn’t need to know about that. Tangled up in pain and fear and what was probably verging on oxygen deprivation, Riley barely seemed to notice.

There was, predictably, no response to that. Mac just continued to trudge forwards one step at a time, stumbling and staggering across the uneven ground. For the first few minutes Matty’s question bounced around his aching head, reminding him of the very real danger at his back that would now be getting ever closer, but soon enough the pain narrowed his awareness down to the weight of Riley in his arms, the sunlit green ahead of him, and the unsteady support of his own legs.

With every step, Riley seemed to fade. Shock and adrenaline had kept her going for the first few minutes, but as the suddenness of the attack faded behind them, the pain started to take hold. She was obviously trying to breathe through it like she’d been taught to, but there was a limit to what breathing exercises were capable of when you were down a lung and still a long way from help. The arm that had been holding Mac’s shirt to the wound noticeably slackened and her head came to rest heavily against his shoulder. Her hair tickled his bare arm.

“Stay with me, Ri,” he mumbled, holding her tighter with strength he didn’t have. “Not far.”

Onwards, ever onwards. Mac felt disconnected from his body, so overwhelmed with pain and dread that some primitive system in his brain wisely decided that he was done thinking for the day and just shut everything off. He could still see the trees around them, hear the rustle of the wind and his own footsteps, but all of it felt so very distant, like it was happening to someone else. All that mattered was Riley. Everything else could wait.

And then, with a suddenness that startled him, it was done.

Two figures in combat gear materialised out of the trees in front of him and it was only his own semi-consciousness that stopped panic from rising in his chest. He staggered to an uneven stop, trying to blink his vision clear with limited success and wished, not for the first time, that they’d thought to bring more backup with them on this mission. He was barely in a position to stand, much less fight.

Then one of the figures was at his side and it was only at that point that he realised they were wearing the dark blacks and blues of Phoenix tac gear, not the burnt umber the mercenaries had been sporting.

“Agent MacGyver,” the figure said, and he finally recognised Jasmine, one of their field medics. “Let us help.”

With what was shaping up to be a severe concussion, it was perhaps little wonder that Mac scarcely remembered their exfil flight. He could recall Riley’s weight being lifted from his arms, then being ushered onto a helicopter, but after that it became little more than a blur of Riley’s pale face and the fluctuating stats he could see on the medic’s monitors. He kept himself in the moment by fixing himself to those monitors, watching her heartbeat pulse again and again and for the first time in what felt like hours allowed himself to believe that they might actually make it out of this godforsaken forest.

From there it was a slide show of trees, flight, landing, hospital, waiting room. By the time he remembered he had an actual body to return to, he was already being forcibly steered into an uncomfortable plastic chair as Riley was positioned on a gurney and rushed through a set of swing doors, surrounded by medical staff. Mac wanted to fight to go with her – it felt like something Jack would want him to do – but any strength he’d had was long since burned out. All he could do was sit where he was put, feeling discomfortingly like a pumpkin with all its innards scooped out.

“Mr… MacGyver?” A hesitant voice asked.

Too slow to be played off as natural, he blinked and looked up to see the nurse standing at his shoulder. Exhaustion gripped his tongue; the best he could do was stare at her.

Her forehead creased in a soft frown. “I understand your friend is in surgery,” she said slowly, careful to enunciate every word like she knew how hard he was struggling to follow what she was saying. “I can see you’re hurt too. May I look?” She gestured towards his head and he suddenly remembered that he must be absolutely painted with blood.

It felt somehow like a betrayal to agree. Riley was in far worse shape than he was and she’d been hurt because he hadn’t seen the danger coming, hadn’t been ready to defend her. Even when she was seriously injured, the best he’d managed to do was get himself hurt too instead of offering her actually useful assistance. God, Jack was going to be furious with him.

The thought came out of absolutely nowhere, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, and it shocked him just the same. God, Jack – he hadn’t even thought. He’d only recently agreed to let the pair of them work on their own, relaxing his overprotective tendencies in deference to their collective skill and his trust in their ability to look after one another. And now, barely a few months later, everything he’d feared would happen had come to pass. Mac hadn’t been looking out for Riley. He’d scarcely managed to look out for himself.

He’d failed them both.

“Mr MacGyver?” The nurse asked again, laying a warm hand on his shoulder. Concern painted her voice and he hated it, wished she’d stop because he didn’t deserve-

But it didn’t matter. She was a nurse and he was clearly injured. His face and shirt were covered in blood, Riley’s and his own, and he was scaring the other patients. That wouldn’t do.

“Yes,” he rasped at length, waving a hand vaguely towards his head. “Sorry, yes.”

She offered him a sympathetic smile that did a poor job of hiding her visible concern and squeezed his shoulder. “Can you stand? I’d like to get you into a treatment bay.”

His eyes darted to the doors Riley had been pushed through and the nurse caught his question without it needing to be asked.

“Don’t worry, your friend is in safe hands. She’ll be in surgery for a while yet. I’ll have you back here long before then.”

It wasn’t exactly reassuring, but it proved persuasive enough to get him upright and moving once more. To the nurse’s credit, she was smart enough to put him in the nearest treatment bay she could find to keep his anxiety down, and from there it felt easier to simply let her do as she wanted.

She mopped the blood off his face – a surprising amount of blood, as it happened; he must have looked like a Halloween monster – and parted his hair to get a good look at the gash above his ear. From time to time she offered quiet platitudes, warning him of incoming pokes or wipes, but mostly she let him sit in silence. With careful, practiced hands, she cleaned him up and stitched the wound closed, knitting him back together. It wasn’t until she put her needle down that she tried to properly engage him again.

“Now, Mr MacGyver, I’m sure you’re aware that we need to be careful with head wounds, aren’t you? I can’t feel any breaks in your skull – which is great news – but to be safe, I’d really like to send you for a CT scan. That’ll give us a look at what’s going on in that head of yours and make sure we haven’t missed any injuries we can’t see. Would you be alright with that? I promise you’ll still be back in time to meet your friend.”

After everything that had come before it, it seemed petulant to refuse.

True to her word, the nurse had him back in the waiting room an hour later, still waiting on news from Riley. The scan had confirmed that he wasn’t about to keel over – there was a lot of bruising and the concussion was sure to be a bitch, but it wasn’t fatal. He didn’t know if anyone had been able to say the same for Riley yet.

Sitting there gave him a lot of time to think. Normally he’d use it to drive himself crazy with worry and guilt, but the one upside of concussion was that his brain was seemingly content to just buzz noiselessly. His vision had developed an annoying tendency to bleed into shades of grey periodically and his ears were still ringing, but the doctors had given him some low level pain meds that had blunted the worst of the splitting migraine. He hadn’t been entirely in favour of that plan knowing that he deserved to be feeling every second of this so he wouldn’t ever let Riley down again, but the doctors had been adamant and Mac knew that Matty would order him to take the meds if anyone got her on the phone. Ultimately, he chose placid agreement over pointless arguing. The drugs were barely helping regardless; his skull still felt like it was made of porcelain and his teeth felt distressingly loose.

At hour four of his vigil, a familiar figure marched into the waiting room, glanced around, and then beelined towards him. He blinked, uncomprehending.

“Jack?”

His Overwatch froze two feet from him, intense eyes looking him up and down. Suddenly aware of exactly how much blood he was wearing and, perhaps more importantly, how much of it was not his own, Mac’s battered brain desperately tried to brace itself for what was sure to be a furious tirade. Better to get all the important information out first, he figured.

“Riley’s in surgery,” he reported dutifully, wincing at his own slurred speech. “Suspected punctured lung. I haven’t heard anything for a few hours but the doctors said they’d tell me if anything- If there’s any news.”

Jack absorbed that information in silence, his expression not changing. When there was no further information forthcoming, he raised his eyebrows. “And you? Have you seen a doctor?”

He considered nodding then decided against it. “Yes. Concussion. Few stitches.” It sounded so absurdly pitiful in the wake of Riley’s prognosis that he felt his brow crumple, inexplicable emotion welling up in his gut that he couldn’t put a name to. “I’m so fucking sorry, Jack.”

There was a moment’s pause as Jack parsed that, then his hand was striking out towards Mac. He would have flinched if his reflexes weren’t for shit, but he needn’t have bothered because all Jack did was snake a hand around the back of his neck, haul him bodily to his feet, and drag him into a fiercely tight embrace. Mac froze against him, his sluggish brain struggling to catch up. It wasn’t until familiar fingers buried themselves in the fine hair at the base of his skull that Mac felt the adrenaline drain out of him in one fell swoop, leaving him boneless in Jack’s arms. All his worries bled away as safety and warmth encased him.

“You ain’t got nothing to be sorry for hoss,” Jack murmured, one of his hands sweeping up and down Mac’s back. “I’m just so fucking glad you’re okay. Matty said you weren’t making much sense earlier.”

Mac hummed vaguely. “Hit my head.”

Oddly, that made Jack snort with laughter that verged on hysterical. “Yeah, she said that’s what you told her.”

If he had, Mac didn’t remember. Most of the last few hours felt like they’d happened to someone else. Rather than try to worry about it, he just sank more firmly against Jack and let him take some of his weight. He felt like he’d been carrying the world on his shoulders for so long and this was finally the signal he could put it down again.

“I gotchu,” Jack said. Evidently he was thinking along similar lines. “You promise me you’ve been checked out? You’re good?”

“Had a scan. Bruising, concussion. Not permanent.”

“Yeah? That why you’re dodging full sentences?”

“Tired.”

The hug tightened briefly, almost crushing him against Jack’s chest, then loosened as his Overwatch pulled back to put him at arm’s length. Another appraising eye scanned him, catching briefly on the stitches at his hairline but not tightening in anger as he’d so worried they would.

“Thought you’d be mad at me,” he mumbled without meaning to.

Jack’s expression flickered from surprised, to confused, to faintly despairing. “Because Riley’s hurt? That wasn’t your fault bud. Matty filled me in. You guys got ambushed, remember? Nothing you could have done about it.”

“Should have been ahead. Should have protected her.”

The hands on Mac’s shoulders tightened. “From what I heard, you did bud. You fought off the people trying to kill you and you carried Riley out of there even when you were hurt too. You did everything you possibly could have done.”

The absolution wouldn’t be enough to fully wash away the guilt – likely nothing ever would be – but in that moment it was all Mac needed to hear. His knees wobbled beneath him and if it hadn’t been for Jack’s guiding hands, he would have ended up on the floor instead of back in his seat.

“Easy there, hoss. Don’t pass out on me now.”

“’M not.”

That apparently didn’t dignify a response, because Jack did nothing more than steady him in his chair and then twist to sit in the one beside him. His shoulder pointedly brushed against Mac’s, and he sank into the offered support without hesitation.

“You’re alright,” Jack said quietly. “Get some rest; it’s been a long day and we’ve still got some waiting to do. I’ll keep an ear out for Riley.”

Down to his very last reserves of strength, Mac hummed in agreement and finally let himself relax.

Riley woke to the sound of voices. Even half-awake it didn’t take her long to recognise them as the two members of her team, and before she’d even managed to get her eyes open she knew that she had to be safe. Her body felt heavy and there was a sharp point of pain to the left of her chest, but Mac and Jack were sniping light-heartedly at each other so nothing could be terribly wrong.

“Do you two ever shut up?” She mumbled, her sleep-drunk voice entirely devoid of malice.

Both of them broke off their petty squabble – something about cards? – and when she managed to crack her eyes open a moment later, they were both staring at her with open expressions of delight.

“Hey,” Jack said, eyes bright with tears over a broad smile. “It’s good to have you back.”

On her other side, Mac, complete with a dark black eye and a line of stitches peeking out from beneath his hair, shot her an easy grin. “You’ve been out for a little while. You remember what happened?”

She thought hard, pushing through the fog she could feel lingering at the edges of her mind and suddenly, there her memories were, waiting for her. “Mansion. Hard drive. Forest. Mercenaries.” She hesitated. “Stabbed?”

Mac’s smile faltered but didn’t fail. “Yeah. Pretty nasty one.”

That was a light way of putting the crushing weight she could remember pressing down on her chest, the pain that burned the inside of her lungs every time she tried to inhale. From the moment she’d realised how badly she was hurt, she’d kind of figured that she wasn’t going to be making it home again. And yet, here she still was. “How’d I get here?”

“Mac carried you to exfil.”

The man in question shot his partner a sideways glance. “The exfil team did most of the work. Got us to the nearest hospital and patched you up. You’ve been in and out of surgery for about 18 hours.”

That… felt like a lot to process when she’d only just woken up and had very little idea of what was going on. Rather than try to work through anything that came before, she focused on the here and now. “Surgery?” A memory came back to her, hazier than the rest. “You said something about… pleural? Something?”

“That’s Mac-speak for ‘the knife hit your lung,’” Jack translated, ignoring the way Mac opened his mouth to correct him. “There shouldn’t be any permanent damage, but the docs had a hell of a time getting you breathing right again. The pressure build-up got a bit too high before you reached exfil and your lung kinda… gave up on doing its job.”

It sounded scary, but Jack wouldn’t be wearing that expression of relief if she was still in any danger so she was willing to let it slide.

To her left, Mac shot her a sardonic smile. “Welcome to the collapsed lung club,” he said with false cheer.

Riley considered that for a moment, mulling it over. Then, drily, “This club sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

Jack scowled at both of them, though it was obvious his irritation was fake. “Can you please at least pretend to regret driving me crazy with worry when you two break yourselves?”

The two of them laughed, though Riley’s cut off sharply when her injuries reminded her that they wouldn’t tolerate that kind of excitement for another week at least. The other two definitely noticed the wince, but she did her best to cover it by glancing between them curiously. “Both of you then?”

“Yep,” Mac agreed placidly, letting her redirect their attention without complaint. “Couple of times each.”

“At least I’m doing better than Mr Lopsided, over here,” Jack cut in, jabbing his thumb in Mac’s direction.

Riley raised an eyebrow at Mac and he huffed self-consciously. “Three punctured lungs, always on the left,” he admitted, smoothing a hand down the offending ribs. “Luck of the draw, I guess. Or not, as the case may be. Jack’s on- what? Two on each side? Three?”

Jack shrugged lightly. “I dunno man. I stopped counting past lung number five.”

“You two are certifiably insane,” Riley put in with a touch of baffled wonderment. She knew that she was the one lying in the hospital bed so she didn’t have a lot of room to judge, but she also wasn’t the one tallying off her record of failed organs.

“Pretty sure that’s a job requirement,” Mac said with a grin.

He wasn’t wrong so she didn’t deny it. Instead, she settled back more heavily against her pillows; barely five minutes awake and she already felt exhausted.

Jack, of course, saw what she was doing. “Get some rest Ri. You’ve still got a ways to go before you’re back on your feet and you should enjoy the good drugs while they last. We’ll be here to watch out for you.”

The offer sounded divine. She had a lot more questions, but they could wait for later. Right now, she had every intention of taking that deal before anyone could retract it.

The last thing she heard before she slipped under once more was Jack’s voice, following her into safe dreams: “I swear to god, one of these days you two are going to give me a heart attack.”

#MacGyver #fanfiction #my fanfic #angus macgyver #riley davis #jack dalton #whump of july 2021

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