71 and 63 for any Mac character
Two excellent requests, friend! Thank you so much for participating in getting Pandi out of her rut. Hope you enjoy. <3
“You know this is kinda ironic, right? Every single time -- Jack gimme your phone.” The timbre of his words inched higher as he sarcastically parroted his partner’s infamous phrase, then fell into his Texan drawl that emerged when stressed. “And now we’re stuck because you needed my damn phone for somethin’ else and can’t call nobody.”
Jack tossed the now-useless brick to the dirt floor of the abandoned barn, unable to hide his mounting frustration.
They were at least 10 klicks from the gravel road they’d abandoned the rust bucket of a vehicle Mac had hotwired. Their signal boosted comms fried. He had only two bullets left -- one in the chamber, the other remaining in the clip with three perps outside. Mac sat propped against an old tractor tire with a bullet in his gut. And they had no phone. How did it always go sideways?
“S-sorry.” Mac gasped out.
Jack’s focus snapped back from his racing thoughts.
He turned around and crossed the small distance between them without thinking. Crouching down, he gently cupped the back Mac’s wobbly neck. “Hoss, I ain’t really mad at you. We--we’ll figure out something.”
He ducked his head to catch the kid’s eye and to make sure he’d heard him. The glassy pain radiated in Mac’s brilliant blue irises jolted through Jack’s body. Breaking their tenuous connection, he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, then mentally opened himself up, determined to bear whatever pain Mac was willing or able to give him. Mac’s pain was his own as it always was and would always be. Jack opened his eyes, re-establishing their link and met the haze and agony head on. “I got you.” He repeated the promise as Mac’s eyes lost focus and began staring off at a point only the kid saw.
Looking down Jack’s dread grew as he saw the pooling blood beneath Mac. Whatever the new plan was, they needed it now.
Awareness hit Mac like a freight train. From the pain spiking from his head down his spine to the bright lights and the heaviness of the chains wrapping his chest to the squeezing pressure at his hand. He jolted upward, his back connecting with the slats of the chair.
“Easy, Hoss. Need ya to stay real still, okay?” Jack’s voice floated in his ears and through his aching head.
His vision went in and out of focus. Mac didn’t see any partner-shaped-blobs through the blur. “Jack?”
“I’m here. Back at your 7.”
Mac twisted in an effort to get eyes on Jack.
“Hey! Stop.” Jack’s order reverberated through the blank space where his brain used to be.
His lips struggled to help shape words. “Wh- happ’d?”
“The Ghost got the jump on us. We’re the bomb...or bombs. The bastard has us both rigged to explode. You so much as twitch your finger on that dead man’s switch and we’re both gone.”
The chains. The squeezing pressure at his hand. MacGyver was the explosive device.
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