"Hey you, didn't know how you felt about melty, goey stuff in your hot beverage. Maybe you're vegan. So imma let you make your own decision about the little gelatin nuggets."
Been a while. Let me just jump right into this WIP Wednesday with no explanation for my absence.
A little sequel I'm still thinking about...
--
He’s standing, weight on one foot, at the kitchen sink when he hears soft footsteps, the sound of skin shuffling against the wooden floor and then squeaking to a stop. He turns his head and torso and catches Jack drawing a hand down his face and then pushing his fingers through this hair. Mac isn’t quick enough to cap the orange tinted bottle. Hell, he’s still got the glass of water in one hand and the other one is gripping the edge of the counter, helping him balance.
“Hey, sorry I woke you,” Mac says softly, turning back towards the sink. He snaps the lid back on the bottle, pills rattling against each other and the plastic walls of the container when he slides it into his pocket.
“ ‘s OK,” Jack yawns. “You hurtin’?”
“A little.” It’s too late, or too early, to figure out how to lie.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
it's chapter 7! I can't remember if I posted about chapter 6. Maybe not? Here's some Forced to Watch and some Lack of Oxygen and some Passing Out for the bingo card.
Water poured out of the can’s nozzle like a raging waterfall, splattering hard onto the towel over Jack’s face. It ran in all directions, covering his face, splashing across his neck and darkening the collar of his t-shirt, soaking the towel, falling onto the table and running to the edge to drip in long streams to the cement floor.
Mac held his breath. He didn’t have to, he wasn’t the one being drowned, but he couldn’t help it. He knew what it would be like the moment Jack breathed in. Eyes locked on Jack’s face, he sat frozen, counting the seconds.
Jack was in good health and good shape. Their captors would probably underestimate how long Jack could hold his breath.
But he probably couldn’t hold it as long as Mac. He wasn’t a runner, and he was older. On top of that—
Before Mac could make more frantic calculations, Jack’s stamina ceased to matter because Mugshot Man placed a flat hand against Jack’s belly and leaned down hard, shoving air out of Jack. Lungs forcibly emptied, Jack reflexively tried to breath in, but his mouth and nose were muffled under the heavy weight of the wet towel. The wet fabric outlined the shape of Jack’s mouth as he tried to suck in a breath and got nothing but water instead.
Jack reacted all at once, almost like he’d been hit with a jolt of electricity, with heer, full-body panic. His limbs jerked, hands grasping air as he pulled blindly against the shackles, head rolling. Mac could still see the concave shape of the towel sucked partly into his mouth.
Mac strained against his bonds, leaning forward as if getting closer to the board would help Jack, his eyes locked on every movement that Jack made. He’d be okay when he could catch a breath but with the towel in his mouth and water continuing to fall, he wouldn’t be able to. When he breathed, he’d aspirate more water.
Jack knew that, too. He’d been in the CIA back when operatives were trained to withstand waterboarding by being waterboarded. He’d mentioned it once, and only once, with a look in his eye that made Mac stop asking questions. But no amount of training really prepared someone for it, not really. Jack struggled with the same panic Mac had felt minutes ago when he was breathing in water, suffocating under the stream of it, body crying out for relief. His mind had been empty of training, empty of techniques, empty of plans. All he’d felt was the awful sensation of drowning.
That was how Jack felt now.
I have 2 signed/personalized copies of All Hail the Underdogs up for grabs (shipped to you for free if you’re in the US). You have 2 ways to enter:
1. Like + Reblog this post
2. Make your own post rec'ing one of my books (or fic, if you'd rather) and tag me in it.
Or do both for 2 entries. The contest closes and I'll announce winners on Friday the 6th.
There's another contest happening on Instagram as well if you want to improve your chances of getting one!
Also! I ended up having to order more author copies of AHTU since I oversold the first 100 I offered. If you just want to pay ($20 w/shipping) for a signed/personalized one, you can email me at [email protected].
Ok, ok. Here’s the blurb so any unfamiliar folks can be enticed into buying it:
When seventeen-year-old Patrick Roman is offered a scholarship to a top hockey preparatory school, he thinks maybe his notorious bad luck has finally ended. With a hearing for his legal emancipation on the horizon, he dreams of getting scouted and securing a place on a D1 college team. There’s only one problem: Roman has serious beef with his new winger on the team, Damien Bordeaux. They’re supposed to be perfectly in sync on the ice. But Roman, with his buzzcut and tattoos, has nothing in common with trust-fund-kid Damien, his floral scrunchies, and designer T-shirts that cost more than all of Roman’s secondhand hockey gear combined.
When eighteen-year-old Damien Bordeaux starts his senior year, he tells himself he’s going to focus on hockey and school. No more making out in the stacks, no more dorm parties. He needs to decide what his future will look like. Does he pursue his long-held dream of becoming an author? Or stay in his lane and do what he’s good at: hockey. Regardless, he’s not going to let any pretty boys distract him from figuring his shit out. Except his new center, Roman, is possibly the most beautiful boy Damien has ever seen. And his hockey—the way he moves on the ice—might be even more beautiful. Too bad he’s also probably a homophobic, racist asshole.
But their antagonistic beginning turns into an unlikely friendship and then turns into something much scarier for them both. Navigating relationships is hard enough for normal teenagers. It’s a lot harder when contending with lawyers, NHL scouts, and mutual past trauma. Roman and Damien have to decide: What do they really want in life? Are they willing to fight for each other—including fighting against their own pasts and prejudices—so they can have a happy ending?
First of all, October is my birthday month and this would be an awesome gift!
But honestly, the first three books in this series are 100% worth every minute I spent reading them. I love the reexamining of hockey culture with a lens of queerness but with a nuance that just feels so natural.
1. Maker space: 3d printer, VR..... pretty much free
2. You can check out a CO2 meter. You know, check out the ventilation status of your workplace.
3. You can check out park passes to visit provincial parks and not pay an entrance fee.
4. We abolished late fines after evidence showed they were harmful and not resulting in real revenue.
5. ...should I keep going?
Libraries are most definitely a reflection of the priorities of a community. They're currently being asked to do WAY MORE than funding permits them to do
A question from my math homework except I actually write MacGyver blurbs instead because I'm fucking autistic- (pspspsps gav)
So far, every time Mac has reached for the thermometer, it hasn’t been with intention to destroy it. The opposite, actually, so Jack should be proud of him for doing so.
This particular thermometer will not meet its untimely demise and find itself in one of Mac’s strange builds. Instead, Mac has been using it for its exact intended purpose. Like every hour for the past six hours before now, Mac puts the probe underneath his tongue and angles the stick so he can just barely make out the numbers.
He has to cross his eyes a little to manage it, and sure it gives him a slight headache doing so, but it’s for a short enough time that it’s always worth it.
Pen in one hand, Mac starts a timer with his other.
After the first minute has passed, he scratches down the number that the thermometer reads. He waits for the timer to go off for the next minute, and does the same. Repeats the process one more time until the full three minutes have passed.
Mac grimaces when he pulls the thermometer out of his mouth, allowing his tongue to move and roam around his gums to get rid of the feeling that always seems to linger when he has to put the metal tip under his tongue. While he fixes the feeling in his mouth, Mac sketches another small graph on the scratch piece of paper that he’s been using since this morning, comparing it back to the previous ones from other hours.
The Tylenol that Jack’s been incessantly reminding Mac to take has been good, keeping his temperature down. Not enough to be considered healthy, but plenty to avoid having to go to Phoenix Med. Or back to Phoenix Med.
As if Jack’s reading his mind—which at this point Mac would hardy argue with—his phone begins to buzz, Jack’s name and picture taking up the lockscreen. As soon as Mac accepts the call, he puts it on speaker and turns the volume all of the way down.
“Hi, Jack.” His voice sounds raspier than it ordinarily would, but Mac thinks he’s otherwise doing well.
“Hey kiddo. How’re you feelin’?”
“Good.” Maybe not completely normal, but not as bad as yesterday. “Bored.”
“Yeah, I don’t doubt it. When I’m done here I’ll bring back some knicknacks from the lab to keep you occupied.”
“Or I could just come into the lab myself.”
Mac can practically hear his partner roll his eyes on the other end. “Not so fast. How’s that fever of yours brewin’? You take your temperature anytime recently?”
“Just a minute ago,” Mac reports.
“And?”
“After three minutes, the temperature had a positive first derivative but a negative second derivative.” Could be better. Could be worse, though.
There’s a long pause of silence, before Jack replies, “...I’m not even gonna ask.”
“It can’t always be me, I refuse to believe that I’m climbing into your bed every time I sleep-walk. You have to be putting me in here sometimes.”
“Sometimes. Usually the times that you try to escape the building. Sometimes I can lure you back in with the promise of my bed, other times you kind of just pass out outside my door and I feel bad.”
All the years in the desert and being DELTA gave him a better edge than most guys in being able to read situations without knowing the full picture. Jack knew something was wrong the second he got situated in his nest, but for the life of him he didn’t know what. He’s told Mac immediately over comms, told him how the whole feeling of where they were wasn’t right, and not at all in the normal way.
It felt heavy somehow. An immense pressure that seemed to settle on his shoulders as he got set and watched Mac through the scope. It had always felt tense, something that would never truly leave his person until he and Mac left that god forsaken desert. Every time when they went out for a call that was in an unoccupied town, it seemed to rise because there was no telling what extra traps could be there.
But that time it was just pressure. So many tons that it made Jack feel like he couldn’t take in a full breath.
And it scared him.
Not because he was worried for his own safety, no, but because there was literally nothing different about that town from others. There was no obvious sign that there was something extremely wrong there. It looking the same as any other just seemed to add to the complete wrongness of it.
Jack had trusted his gut over anything else, and at that moment it was telling him to get Mac and drive away, no matter the consequences that might befall him.
The only reason he didn’t was because he trusted Mac more than himself when it came to explosive ordinances. Mac had said he had an idea of how the IEDs were detonating, but he needed to be there to test his theory.
Theory, as in it might be wrong, which meant Mac could get hurt.
Jack hated it; going off an idea instead of facts. But that idea came from Mac, and he trusted Mac with his life. So when Mac denied wanting to leave in lieu of testing to see if he was right, Jack ignored his gut and stayed put.
I’m rewatching the 2016 MacGyver reboot and I’m reminded just how special the show is to me. It’s got its faults for sure, but I feel a special connection to it because in real life my nickname is Mac and my grandfather (who is like a father to me) is named Jack and he also happens to be former EOD. Bit of a role reversal there but we each fit the characters so well.
He’s also been absolutely golden reference for scenes in my MacGyver fics where explosives are involved and I can’t quite crack the science and process behind it all.
Anyway, all that to say, I am feeling emotional about Angus MacGyver and Jack Dalton on this fine day.
~ Please read our extensive event info posts before sending us an ask ~
WHUMPTOBER is a month-long, prompt-based creation challenge (think: Inktober, but whumpier). There are 31 official themes this year - one for each day of the month - which can be used, skipped, or combined in any way you’d like. The 'theme' of each day is the line of lyrics.
The prompts are merely to serve as inspiration without being taken literally (e.g. you don’t have to include the exact wording of prompts into your work). Feel free to run rampant on interpretation. For example, if the prompt is "flame", you could create something with reference to a candle/campfire, your character could have suffered a burn, or the flame could be related to an 'old flame' - an old relationship. It's truly down to you!
In total, there are 4 prompts for each day: there's lyrics, an object, a trope and a line of dialogue to choose from. We want to give everyone as much creative freedom as possible, as well as increase event accessibility for folks with triggers and squicks. There is also a list of 15 alternative prompts that can be subbed in for any day, again to give participations as much creative freedom as possible.
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Whumpers who produce content for 31 total theme days are considered event completionists and will be tagged in a masterpost at the end of the month. A form will be published at the beginning of November asking you to tell us if you completed the event. You do not need to post anything you have created, we rely on trust and we will not check this.
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Thanks for the ask! This ran away a bit, definitely leans more towards a flashfic than a drabble, hope you enjoy!
This is set somewhere pre-series in the DXS era.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Stay still!” Jack shouted, praying his voice carried enough volume to reach Mac. “Mac? Don’t move, okay, bud?”
Was it good luck or bad luck that Mac had fallen off a thirty story high building only to land on a cleaning platform part way down? It was the kind of luck that Jack only associated with Mac, but if it continued to keep him alive then Jack hoped it never ran out.
“Mac!” Jack shouted again, lying down flush again the roof of the building, straining his eyes to see his partner. Mac had yet to move, slumped on his side and facing out to a fantastic view of LA that was sure to make him throw up, if the head injury didn’t get there first. Jack couldn’t see much detail from this height but it was hard to miss the blood pooling around his head.
Head wounds always bleed a lot.
Mac was so still. He could have easily broke his neck in the fall. Or his back. Or something inside that Jack could do nothing about.
“Mac!” Jack bellowed and glanced at the cables securing the platform, trying to assess just how insanely reckless it would be to try and climb down one of them until he caught the tiniest bit of movement out of the corner of his eye. “Mac?”
There. That was definitely a head movement and then-- a flinch, practically a whole body one. Probably the exact moment Mac opened his eyes and focused on what he could see. Or rather what he couldn’t which was the ground. Mac flipped over onto his back, causing the whole platform to wobble and Jack could see Mac breathing all too well now, the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he braced an arm against it and his whole face screwed up in pain and panic.
“Mac! Don’t move! You’re okay, but don’t move! Stay still!” Jack shouted down, not sure if Mac could hear him until he saw his hand move, a small aborted movement that resembled a wave.
“Okay, okay, that’s good buddy. Now, I just need you to slow down that breathing a bit, yeah? Take a deep breath for me?” All Jack got in response to that was a small shake of Mac’s head. “Nope, I don’t want to hear that, pal. You can do this, I know you can. One deep breath, Mac. C’mon, do it for me now.”
Jack continued calling down, a steady litany of reassurance and counting exercises, that Mac failed to match, his eyes still tightly scrunched together until slowly the movement of Mac’s chest eased into something steadier and calmer.
“Attaboy, you got it now.” Jack said. “I gotta go figure out how to get you back up here, so I’m gonna disappear for a bit now. You just stay still and focus on that breathing, okay?”
Jack could see Mac’s mouth moving in response, but his voice was too quiet, stolen away by the wind, a moment later though he followed it up with a small thumb raise.
“Okay, okay.” Jack muttered quietly to himself, taking a deep breath as he pulled back from the edge of the building. “He’s okay. He’s okay.” Mac was awake and moving. Alive. And now Jack just had to figure out how to keep him that way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Stay still,” Jack murmured, focusing on the task at hand.
“I’m fine.” Mac predictably replied, twisting his chin out of Jack’s lose grip.
“You’re not fine, you’ve got half a dozen stitches in your head and a bunch of broken ribs and they missed a spot of blood back there so stay still.” Jack repeated with more patience than he felt Mac really deserved but the kid was sporting a helluva headache so he’d earned a pass this time. “There, got it. You’re good.”
“I am. I really am.” Mac said, meeting Jack’s eyes sincerely and steadily.
“Yeah, I know.” Jack replied. “But you terrified me today, Mac. And I don’t think you were having much fun neither so how about you let me take care of you for a while and maybe we’ll both get to feel a little bit better before today’s over, yeah?”
Jack was half expecting a fight, the continuation of the sudden independent streak in Mac that had raised it head ever since he’d got to medical. But somehow, thankfully, finally Mac dropped his shoulders and simply asked what Jack had in mind.
“Pizza, movie, that soft blanket you always hog and absolutely no answering the phone, even if it is Patty. Sound good?”
Mac simply shrugged in agreement, but Jack still noticed the soft smile pulling at his lips.
“Alright, you go park yourself on the sofa and--”
“—stay still.” Mac finished for him.
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