Obligatory not quiteee a flashfic, but thought finally writing the beginning of my Prodigal Son & MacGyver crossover was too perfect a fit for the prompt "Mac's Dad isn't his boss... so where was he? AU" for me not to do it. @rosies-writealong hiii
Spoilers for up to s2e4 for MacGyver (lots of refs to that episode, this fic is set right after it)
Shouldn't really be spoilers for Prodigal Son past the basic premise (in this bit at least, the full fic will end up with sooo many s1 spoilers unfortunately)
****excerpt!
“I think he needs a break, that’s all.” Jack complained, sinking back into the plush war room armchair.
“I offered him a longer break, of course I did, he didn’t take it.” Matty was looking down at her tablet, as if she had better things to be doing with her time, but she’d also activated the privacy screen on the windowed walls so Jack knew she was taking him seriously.
“Well, maybe you gotta make him take it.” Jack crossed his arms and then uncrossed them immediately after, feeling uncharacteristically restless. Mac must’ve been rubbing off on him somehow. “He’s Mac.”
“Exactly, he’s Mac.” Matty put down her tablet and looked up at Jack. “This is what he does. The only time he’s taken vacation days since I became director here has been to fly around the world trying to track down his dad. He needs a project at all times, a problem to fix.”
“He might need it, but it sure as hell ain’t always good for him.”
“And what am I supposed to do with that gem of knowledge?” Matty retorted exasperatedly. “Be real, this is not either of your first rodeos. You’ve both been shot at on a daily basis, thrown into cells, interrogated, tortured—“
“This ain’t like that.” Jack interrupted. “Matty, he was at home. This wasn’t a mission, he got abducted at his own damn front door and I wasn’t—“ Jack cut himself off, falling silent. His jaw worked briefly before he grimly continued. “I wasn’t there.”
Matty grimaced. “He got himself free, Jack. He’s ok. Mac can take care of himself, you know that more than anyone.”
“Yeah, well, everybody who was ever able to take care of themselves did so right up until they couldn’t — and Mac shouldn’t hafta. That’s the whole point, why does he have a damn team if when it really matters he’s completely alone?”
“He’s not alone.”
“He was.”
Matty sighed, she moved over to Jack and rested a hand over the back of his, resting on the arm of the sofa. Her voice softened, gentle but emphatic. “You can’t be with him every second of every day, Jack.”
“I can try.” Jack retorted stubbornly.
“Which’ll exhaust you and drive Mac up the wall. Give him a little time to heal, give yourself it.”
“I don’t need to heal.” Jack made a brief sarcastic act of patting himself down as if looking for an injury. “Nothin’ happened to me.”
Matty sighed, her hand slipped away. “You are impossible.”
“Does that mean you’re going to make Mac take a mandatory vacation?”
“No.”
///
“What’re you watching?” Mac called over as he breezed behind the living room couch. He wasn’t really curious but since he’d been under the weather the last couple days and Bozer had been supplying him with a constant stream of — unasked for — foods and meds, he felt obligated to show at least a passing interest.
Bozer hooked an elbow over the back of the couch to peer after Mac as he continued into the kitchen. “It’s this true crime documentary, about some serial killer in NYC.”
“Oh, cool.” Mac’s brain flailed for another good question while the TV droned out some dramatic intro. He didn’t share Bozer’s fondness for true crime, their job veered dangerously close to it at times and that was more than enough exposure for him. “Is it, ah, recent?”
“The documentary is new, the killer was caught and arrested when we were little — long before I started keeping up with this stuff. You feeling any better?”
“Yeah, I told you, it was just a cold.” Mac opened the fridge and only spent a few seconds frowning at its contents before pulling out the milk. It was far too late in the afternoon for cereal, but he was feeling too lazy to make anything else. The worst of the cold was over, but he was still feeling a bit sluggish. “I have got to get back to work soon.”
“Nothing wrong with taking some time off.” Bozer replied noncommittally, but there was something obviously reluctant in his tone.
“…charged with the murder of an astounding twenty-three victims, the man known as ‘the Surgeon’ is one of the most prolific serial killers of his time…” The documentary continued to drone on in the background, flashing photos from missing person’s reports across the screen.
Everyone had been a little… off since Mac’s run-in with Murdoc. Or, at least Mac liked to think of it as a ‘run-in,’ it sounded significantly less traumatizing than an ‘abduction.’ Bozer had been a little too cautious with every word and movement, as if he thought Mac had turned into an easily-to-startle stray animal. Jack had practically lived at their house for the first week, and came over almost every day since — and Mac was pretty sure Riley had been behind the delivery for brand new security cameras to his house. Or maybe the cameras had been Murdoc’s own dark humor, Mac had decided not to bring it up to the others just in case. He was over the whole thing, and didn’t need them up in another tizzy about it. Concretely all that had been done to him was that he’d been tased, hooked up to some kind of barbiturate, and had fun poked at him about his absentee father. It was practically an average Friday night in his line of work, if everyone could be a little more normal about it…
“…as we close on two decades since his arrest, this documentary takes a moment to reflect on what we really know about Martin Whitley’s life and work — who really is the man behind the moniker?”
Mac made his cereal, the documentary mainly a faded background noise. Bozer had twisted back around to look at the TV, which was barely in Mac’s peripheral.
“…the fateful night The Surgeon’s reign of terror was put to a sudden end with the arrest of Martin Whitley — an unassuming doctor and family man, married to the prominent Jessica formerly Milton, and a father of two…”
Nothing had even happened, it was all about the ghost of what could’ve. Murdoc could’ve tortured him, Murdoc could’ve killed him. Neither of those things had happened, Mac hadn’t let them happen. He’d gotten free, and it was about time for everyone to stop focusing so much on those could’ve’s and start living in the reality where—
On TV, amidst a riot of reporters, an ornate door swung open and James MacGyver was marched out handcuffed and escorted by police.
Blue and red lights flashed over Mac’s father’s face, the same as he’d remembered it back when he was a kid. Scruffy and self-assured, intelligent eyes glinting out at the world as if he somehow was in control of everything. Underneath him ran the headline from a decades old news story, the words dancing in Mac’s vision. It was some blurry mix of The Surgeon, and Surprising Arrest in Connection With. For a split second Mac’s father’s eyes flicked up to meet the camera filming. He looked prideful, like when Mac had finally managed to get the avalanche beacon working by gutting his new Walkman with numbed fingers. He also looked bitter, more bitter than Mac had ever seen him before.
“Mac? That’s…” Bozer’s voice pitched up, glued in a bewildered horror to the TV. His voice overlapped with the crash of ceramic breaking against tile.
