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fallenqueen2 · 4 years ago

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Alpha + Omega [Macgyver/Jack]

Bad Things Happen Bingo Square Filled: Pinned To The Wall

Prompt: Alpha/Beta/Omega

Love + Angst

Bad Things Happen Bingo

Ao3

Jack let out a silent snarl at Kovac who was lounging in a chair across from him, a smug look on his face only increasing the urge for Jack to tear the other Alpha apart. He had been freaking stateside for a meeting about their newest plan to track Kovac and the damn terrorist himself had grabbed him off the street when Intel told them he wasn’t even in America.

“I’ve waited a long time for this face to face Agent Dalton,” Kovac admitted as he picked up a pen, spinning it around his hand that smug smile still on his face.

“Why don’t you come just a bit closer for a real face to face?” Jack leaned forward in the chair he was cuffed to, flashing his sharp Alpha teeth as his inner Alpha growled at being restrained and taunted by the other Alpha.

“Cute,” Kovac chuckled before he spun to the side in his chair, using the end of the pen to hit a button and the bank of computer scenes on the wall behind him came to life and Jack inhaled sharply as he went eerily still.

“I considered the young lady, but when I saw this cute blond Omega, I knew which one would hold more power over you.” Kovac’s smile widened as Jack’s eyes bled Alpha red as his body shook in restrained anger.

Mac was displayed on every screen, Bozer was nowhere in sight. What shook Jack was that Mac was wearing nothing but one of his Metallica shirts that stopped about mid-thigh. Jack traced Mac move across the screens from getting a drink in his kitchen to dropping down onto his couch as he picked up a stack of papers and a pen. A pen that instantly was stuck between his lips as he chewed absently on the end while he pushed his black rimmed glasses up his nose as he poured over the papers.

Jack felt heat bubble in his stomach at the sight of Mac looking so domestic and relaxed in one of his shirts. His inner Alpha crooned pleased when Mac ducked his nose down to the collar of Jack’s shirt and any remaining tension fled from his body as he settled down on the couch with his bare feet tucked under a blanket Jack also recognized from his apartment.

“Such a nice domestic sight, I don’t know why on Earth you would willingly leave that pretty Omega behind to chase me!” Kovac whistled and Jack’s attention snapped back to the terrorist, a snarl forming on his lips when he saw the dark look Kovac was giving the blond on the screens.

“I honestly thought it would take longer to find him, but it wasn’t even that difficult. The think tank he worked out was shut down a few months ago and now he works as a teacher. It made it every easy to find him Dalton, you really should have checked in on your Omega more often.” Kovac spun the pen around his fingers as he smirked at Jack who went still at the new information.

“When I get my hands on that pretty little ass, oh the things I have planned. He’ll be pregnant with my pups before the week is up, he’ll make a perfect breeding mare.” Kovac smirk widened when Jack snarled, straining against the cuffs.

“You won’t even get close enough to touch him!” Jack promised darkly.

“What are you going to do Dalton? Kill me? You couldn’t before and you only found me because I wanted you to.” Kovac leaned close to the screen, tracing Mac’s face on the screen as the blond turned on a movie without looking away from the paper’s he must be grading.

Something inside of Jack snapped when Die Hard started playing and a small, sad smile formed on Mac’s face. Jack had to get back to Mac; he had to protect his Omega from Kovac.

Jack’s vision went red and his inner Alpha howled inside of Jack’s mind as it took control. Jack allowing it to do so for the first time in years and his vision blurred with a deep red as his body moved.

Jack snapped the cuffs around his wrists with ease, his eyes burning a deep Alpha red in a way that was rarely seen nowadays. It only meant one thing and Kovac realized it too late as the Alpha solider pounced on him, Jack had gone feral.

The Alpha didn’t recognize anything but a threat to his chosen Omega in the room and used everything he could get his hands on to tear the threat apart. The opposing Alpha fought of course, but not even an angry Alpha could overpower a feral Alpha.

The Alpha stood in the middle of what could only be called a blood bath, dark red liquid dripping from his fingertips onto the floor as the Alpha stared at the mess that used to be the opposing Alpha. The Alpha turned his attention to his chosen Omega on the screen, oblivious to the fact he was being watched and the Alpha knew he needed to get to his Omega fast. The Alpha turned his back on the screens and left the blood-soaked room with his new mission burning in the forefront of his red-hazed mind.

~~/~~

Mac tapped his pen against his lower lip as he glanced up at the sight of John McClain tying a fire hose around his waist, as he got ready to jump off the rooftop. Mac considered shutting it off, but with it on had him feeling like Jack was there with him. Mac sniffed the shirt he was wearing again and sighed when he realized he could barely smell the Alpha’s leather and gunpowder scent that he adored so much.

Jack had been for a long time and so much had happened in that time. Mac twisted his toes in the soft fabric of the blanket he stole from Jack’s apartment, it still had a faint scent of the Alpha and Mac wasn’t above admitting he slept with it bundled around him on his rougher nights.

Mac shook his head as he ticked something off on one of his student’s papers before adding it to the finished stack. Teaching was fulfilling in a different way than he was used to, but he was adapting and he had to admit while he missed the adrenaline of a mission, he didn’t miss being hurt and shot at without Jack at his side to watch his back.

Mac set the stack of papers aside as he rubbed his hands over his face before he all but rolled off of the couch so he could refill his drink.

Mac tucked his pen behind his ear as he shuffled around his empty house, it hadn’t been a proper home since Bozer moved out and Jack left for his Kovac’s hunt. Mac wished he had been allowed to go with him, to watch Jack’s back but that wasn’t his place anymore.

Mac leaned his head against the front of his fridge before a knock echoed out and he blushed when he realized he was just wearing Jack’s shirt.

“Er, just a minute!” Mac called out as he looked around for something to work as pants that wouldn’t be so obvious when his front door crashed open. Mac gasped at the group of 4 Alpha men all of who were decked out in military tactical gear.

“Shit!” Mac swore he grabbed a knife from the counter that he had meant to wash later that night.

“Stun only men,” one of the Alpha’s barked and that gave Mac a spark of hope, they wanted to knock him out not kill him and that gave him an edge. Mac dashed out of his kitchen as he ducked under a spray of what Mac to assume were rubber bullets. Mac jumped over his couch, hiding behind the back of it as cover as his eyes darted around the room for something he could use to protect himself.

“Give it up little Omega, you’re coming with us one way or another!” The Alpha barked out as footsteps echoed out in his house. Mac resisted snorting at the cliché statement as he adjusted his hold on his knife. Mac leapt into action, swinging his knife as one of the men came into view, pausing to aim at him. The man went down with a gurgle of blood and Mac darted behind a wall to hide from the new spray of rubber bullets.

“Fucker!” One of the Alpha’s roared before he lunged towards the wall Mac was behind. Mac caught the enraged Alpha in a chokehold, dragging him out of sight before dropping the man to the ground when he passed out in the chokehold.

Mac inched back to the corner of the wall, peering around before gasping as a thick, gloved hand snapped out and grabbed him by his throat. Mac dropped the knife out of pure shock as his hands reflexively flew up to the Alpha’s wrist, gasping for air as he was pinned to the wall behind him.

“You’re more trouble than your worth Omega bitch,” The Alpha snarled, eyes flashing red in his anger as the remaining Alpha approaching with a needle prepped in his hand.

Mac couldn’t help the Omega cry that weakly escaped his throat as he clawed at the Alpha’s hand, his feet scrambling at the floor as he struggled to get out of the hold that was pining him to the wall.

Suddenly the man who was holding the needle went down with a spray of blood from his neck and Mac was slumped on the floor, gasping for air and holding his neck tenderly as the Alpha who had been pinning him by his throat was tackled off of him.

“Oh my god, Jack?” Mac rasped out as he got a good look at the blur that had tackled the Alpha off of him.

Jack’s hair was longer than Mac had ever seen it, his beard bushier but his eyes were glowing a deep, dark red that Mac had never seen before. His face was set with anger and the snarls falling from his lips as he all but tore the Alpha that had Mac pinned with his bare fingers.

Feral.

Jack was a feral Alpha right now and Mac couldn’t do anything but watch in shock. It was too much to process right now and by all accounts Mac should be shaking in fear or whining in hopeful submission. Feral Alpha’s and Omega’s were the horror stories that every child heard and warned of at some point in their lives. Mac never thought Jack would become feral, yet here Jack was, feral and protecting Mac.

Mac didn’t fall just that much more in love with the Alpha, no, that would be insane.

The Alpha breathed heavily as he looked satisfied down at the bloody Alpha who was just barely alive. The opposing Alpha no longer was harming his Omega so he could only puff his chest out in a job well done.

The sweet, tantalizing scent of his Omega wafted over to him and the Alpha turned to see the blond sprawled on the floor looking at him with wide eyes and a hand cupping his already bruising throat. The Alpha prowled closer, slowly and cautiously, as he didn’t want his Omega to be scared of him.

“Jack?” His Omega rasped out, voice quivering as if he wasn’t sure that the Alpha was truly there but the Alpha was pleased to note that there was not a single sour note of fear in his Omega’s scent. His Omega was sprinkled in one of the Alpha threat’s blood, proving what the Alpha already knew about his chosen Omega being capable on his own.

“Omega,” The Alpha crooned he nuzzled their cheeks together; smiling happily at the familiar scent he had been missing for so long.

“Alpha,” The blond gasped out, happiness bursting in his scent as they scented each other. The Alpha’s chosen Omega made a happy noise when the Alpha ducked his head down and lapped gently at the bruises that were forming on the Omega’s throat.

“Threats neutralized,” The Alpha reported smugly as his Omega gasped that before hugging him close.

“Will you stay with me Jack?” The Omega begged, breath hot on the Alpha’s skin.

“Never leaving you again darling,” The Alpha replied and held his Omega close, content to let his feral side drift away and he collapsed in his Omega’s arms, feeling safe and finally at peace.

#MacGyver #bad things happen bingo #pinned to the wall #alpha/beta/omega au #Alpha Jack Dalton #Omega Angus Macgyver #hurt/comfort #Feral Alpha #Feral Jack Dalton #possessive Jack Dalton #canon-level violence #scent marking #bamf angus macgyver #fallenqueen2

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emachinescat · 4 years ago

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Murdoc + Ithika + Mac

A MacGyver Fan-Fiction

by @emachinescat

@febuwhump day 14 - “I didn’t mean it”

Summary: As an artist, Murdoc prides himself in taking his time with his work - he never loses control. Except one time, with his favorite boy genius. He always imagined that when he finally made MacGyver cry, it would be his finest moment. Now, he’s not so sure.

Characters: Murdoc, Mac, Jack

Words: 3,454

TW: torture, broken bones, Murdoc being his creepy little self

Note: Happy Valentine's Day – the store was all out of chocolate, so I got you Mac whump! ;) The allusions to Ithika are from Homer's epic by the same name, but even more so from the incredible poem by C.P. Cavafy. The muse mentioned, Melpomene, is the Muse of Tragedy.

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging, and you can follow me for more content like this!

Ithika gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

- From “Ithika” by C. P. Cavafy

Murdoc enjoyed taking his time.

He was an artist, after all, and artists didn’t slap together a masterpiece in an afternoon – not the ones worth anything, at least. Most spent days studying their subjects, becoming intimately familiar with every line and curve and element – the shading, the lighting, the vibrancy of the colors. The very best didn’t even consider touching brush to canvas until they had developed a personal relationship with their subject – for how can a true artist paint that which he does not know deeply? Why bother recreating that landscape or tea kettle or sad-eyed little girl or bowl of fruit if it could be any landscape, tea kettle, little girl, or bowl of fruit? Why would someone paint something that wasn’t theirs?

Murdoc knew his subject very well. He, like a true artist, had studied it in a variety of settings. He’d watched and learned, dug deep into the core of its being, drawn out every secret and motivation and loss and love. He understood what made his subject tick. He’d even done some brief sketches, practicing each brushstroke with care, waiting patiently for the day he could at last, intricately, evoke that muse sought by the Romantics, that evasive Melpomene, and breathe his masterpiece to life. Or, more accurately, to death.

And now, after years of watching, interacting, teasing, sketching, his time had finally come. Months of planning had been sunk into this particular endeavor. And now, unlike the first time he’d been introduced to his subject, he hadn’t been commissioned by anyone. This portrait was personal, deeply personal. He finally had his subject right where he wanted it. The canvas was bare and waiting for the artist’s touch. Murdoc had chosen his palette, mixed the colors – it might be cliche, but he was a sucker for red, black, and blue.

Now that his moment had finally arrived, however, it didn’t mean that he could rush through the actual creation process. The act of studying one’s subject matter was slow and deliberate. So must be the painting.

***

Murdoc studied his canvas slowly, methodically, unsurprised that it wasn’t exactly blank. MacGyver stood, hands chained above his head, attached to a grate above. His bare toes just reached the cold concrete below. His jacket and Henley had been removed – he shivered slightly from the chill of the basement. Murdoc liked to think it was from fear.

“Oooh, this one’s fun, MacGyver!” Murdoc crooned as the blonde boy wonder eyed him scornfully. It was quite entertaining how expressive his prey’s pretty blue eyes could be. Murdoc briefly brushed the tip of his little finger against the scar of a bullet wound on MacGyver’s chest. MacGyver jerked back from the touch, though his expression remained stoic.

“Jealous that you weren’t the one who did it, Murdoc?” He sounded confident enough, but Murdoc knew his subject quite well by now. MacGyver was shaken. For once, he had no control, nothing to work with, no way to escape. He was at his captor’s mercy – Murdoc could do whatever he wanted, and MacGyver knew that.

“Oh, it’s nothing compared with what I’ve got planned for you, Angus,” Murdoc simpered sweetly, circling his catch of the day, dark eyes darting across more scars and recent cuts and bruises. He pressed directly into the dark center of a boot-tip bruise on MacGyver’s side, relishing the sharp intake of breath it elicited. “Someone on your last mission in Volgograd left their mark, I see.”

He circled back around to face his victim, who did a subpar job of hiding his surprise at the observation. “That was highly classified. How did you–”

“I’ve been watching you for a very long time, MacGyver. But you had to have known I would. After all, you’re my closest friend, and I know where you live. It’s kind of silly that you never moved, but maybe you just figured I’d find you even if you did. I wonder – have you always tossed and turned in your sleep or is that a more recent development?”

True horror flashed momentarily in blue eyes, tugging Murdoc’s lips up into a satisfied smile. “Oh, yes, your nightmares are very entertaining. I do hope the majority of them are about me. Oh, oh, oh! And I especially love it when they’re so bad you have to call your watch dog to calm you down. I wonder how Dalton’s taking your disappearance, by the way? I’m sure he’s in for some nightmares of his own.”

“He’ll find me, if I don’t escape first.” MacGyver’s bravado was both highly endearing and incredibly tiresome. Same old, same old.

“Doubtful,” Murdoc purred. “I mean, I know you well enough not to make stupid mistakes, my friend.”

“I escaped from the sewers, and you’d drugged me.”

“I intended for you to escape that day. I needed to draw your friends in, to focus their attention on finding you while I attended to other business. But this time – you’re mine.” At the fervor in his words, a shudder entirely unrelated to cold clinked the chains restraining his victim. Murdoc smiled, then continued.

“But now, there is no ulterior motive. I grabbed you for no other reason than because I wanted to. You are hidden away quite well, even more securely than last time, I’m afraid. And you will not be left alone, not even for a second. There may be things in this room you could use to escape, but they’re useless to you in your position. And I am not going to take my eyes off of you. You won’t have a chance to wriggle your way out of this one, MacGyver. Ooooh, is that fear I see on your face? No? We really must change that.” He tutted. “Defiance and bravado really are your bread and butter, aren’t they, Angus? What are you, an action hero from a cheesy 1980s TV show?” Silence, though the fiery glare spoke more loudly than words.

Murdoc clapped his hands together. “Well, there’s no time like the present. What do you say, MacGyver? Let’s get started.”

***

Three hours later, Murdoc admired his work. It was a slow process. He painted with precision and care, layering the colors just so, balancing the strokes, the lights and darks and brights. His brushes were many – laid out on the table before him were knives and pliers and blow torches and hammers and whips and cattle prods and other more specialized tools that he liked to work up to. He also had an oversized meat tenderizer, made of steel. He rarely used it – too garish for his refined tastes – but it did look nice and scary looming over the other instruments.

So far, he’d only used his knives and the cattle prod. The masterpiece was starting to come together, but it was hardly complete. He prowled around his artwork. MacGyver’s trembling had increased. He gasped for breath as Murdoc appraised his work – burns and cuts, some deeper than others – made a nice foundation. The drip of blood across bare flesh outshone any Pollock painting. He’d practiced his blending techniques, jabbing the cattle prod directly into the center of the lovely bruise he’d noticed earlier. MacGyver hadn’t been able to hold in his yell of pain.

Music.

“Are you enjoying our time together?” Murdoc asked.

MacGyver uttered a creative string of curse words that made Murdoc proud. He whistled appreciatively. “Who knew the boy scout had that in him? I’m almost impressed.”

“Yeah, well,” MacGyver said, hissing as he shifted and pulled at his many wounds. “Almost is about all you’ll ever be, Murdoc.”

Murdoc had been reaching for his trusty pair of pliers (those toenails could sure use a trim!). He paused, his back partially to his captive, fingers hovering over the tool. He was used to MacGyver’s sass, but what he’d just said hit a sour note that the hit man couldn’t shake. He didn’t know if it was the tone or the words themselves. “Excuse me?” He tried to sound amused, but his voice was tight, as if it had been squeezed out of him.

A clink of the chains, a grunt of pain that didn’t lighten Murdoc’s mood as it should have. Then, MacGyver elaborated. His voice was clipped in pain, breathless, but conviction lined every syllable. “You are doomed to live a life of almost, Murdoc. Nothing is ever going to be enough for you. Why do you think you take so long to get anything done? Why do you spend so much time talking and taunting and watching and waiting?”

Murdoc didn’t move, his hand still inches away from his delicate instrument that caused pain but did no lasting damage. “I’m an artist.”

“You’re afraid.”

“I fear nothing.”

“You fear winning.”

Murdoc laughed, a forced, uncomfortable sound that he’d never heard come from his own mouth. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Angus. Are you sure the pain isn’t getting to your head?”

MacGyver pressed on relentlessly. “You crave attention. You need a challenge. That’s why you picked me. And you’re afraid of what happens if you beat me. If I die, there’s always that possibility that you won’t find another playmate.”

Still, Murdoc didn’t move. His words, despite their teasing jaunt, had a forced quality to them. “Awfully full of ourselves, aren’t we, MacGyver?”

He could hear the triumphant smile in his adversary’s voice. “I’m just stating the truth, Murdoc. You might torture me, you might have your fun. But at the end of the day, you’re going to slip up somehow. It’s your way of making sure the game goes on. Without that challenge, what are you? Just an angry voice screaming at the sky, no purpose, no point. You say you’ve studied me, Murdoc. You’ve watched me and know me. Well, in doing so, you’ve shown me yourself, too. You’re not going to kill me today. You’re never going to kill me.

“I don’t know what exactly I’ve done to deserve this… honor,” he continued, placing particular derision on the last word, “but you’ve become obsessed with me, Murdoc. Believe me, I don’t like saying this any more than you like hearing it. But it’s how I know I’m going to walk away from this. If I’m gone, so is your fun.”

Murdoc prided himself on maintaining control over his emotions. An artist, though he might express the inner workings of his soul on canvas, could not let his feelings control the brush, control him. Look what had happened to Van Gogh – sure, beautiful work, but his emotions controlled him, destroyed him in the end. Murdoc didn’t make mistakes like that. He waited. He didn’t lash out in anger. It wasn’t because he wanted MacGyver to live, oh no. His fondest dream was to see the blonde boy cry, to watch him squirm and beg for mercy, and then, finally, only when he’d really begged for it, to send him to his death. MacGyver had no idea what he was talking about.

It wasn’t even MacGyver’s words, his cocky belief that he was important enough to his torturer to keep alive, that sent Murdoc over the edge. It was the tiny little voice, way back in the darkest, most depraved corner of his already dark and depraved mind, the one that spoke not in the voice of Murdoc, but one that sounded more like Dennis, the first casualty of Murdoc’s career – himself. The voice said, plainly, without emotion, You know he’s right.

And that was the catalyst for the tsunami of rage that crashed into Murdoc, pummeling his well-practiced and unshakable resolve to take his time. That was what spurred his frozen body into movement, curled his fingers around the handle of the meat tenderizer, that brash, archaic tool, rather than the pliers. That was what spit his next words out of his mouth as if they were poison, words that finally – beautifully – caused Angus MacGyver’s eyes to widen in real fear: “You are going to walk out of here?” A sadistic, mad giggle. “My dear Angus, it will be a miracle if you ever walk again.”

He hefted the heavy steel implement in his hand, pulled back, and lunged. MacGyver tried to back away, the chains around his wrists cackling and clicking against one another in his desperation. They held firm, and the meat tenderizer slammed full force into MacGyver’s left kneecap. Murdoc felt the crunch of bones. He heard the bestial howl, the scream of anguish, the body-jerking, breath stealing cry of a man in so much pain he lost himself. He watched MacGyver’s face drain of color, recognized the moment when the pain became too much, and saw the tear-streaked face go slack, the chin thud against the battered chest and stay there.

For a moment, Murdoc experienced the euphoria one could only find in hurting that special someone in such a catastrophic way. He relished in that moment the scream, the agony, the writhing and loss of control.

Then the moment ended – and far too soon.

Immediately after, the weapon dropped out of Murdoc’s limp fingers. It smashed into the floor below, with the jarring clang that only metal on concrete can produce. He looked at the limp, hanging form before him, and something twisted inside of him – a feeling he’d never known. It wasn’t guilt, nor revulsion.

It was, however, regret.

He didn’t understand it. He should be overjoyed. MacGyver was completely at his mercy. Murdoc could kill him now. Carve that bleeding heart out like a villain in a fairy tale would. But then, he realized, MacGyver would be gone. Forever. Even now, his kneecap had been crushed, shattered into tiny fragments of bone and cartilage, and unless he got treatment of the highest quality, and soon, he’d almost certainly be crippled. Even if he had extensive reconstructive surgery, his career as a Phoenix agent could still be over.

Wasn’t that what Murdoc had wanted? To end MacGyver’s pesky existence, to win at this game of cat and mouse? To create his most spectacular masterpiece with his greatest enemy? That’s what he had dreamed of for years now, what he’d studied and practiced and yearned for. And yet –

What was it that hoity toity Greek poet had written? Murdoc had read “Ithika” long ago, a random page in a poetry book of a man he’d killed. For some reason, the poem had attached itself to his mind and never let go. He could remember it even now:

Keep Ithika always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithika to make you rich. Ithika gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn’t have set out. She has nothing to give you now.

And he understood. The poem was supposed to be inspirational, for fools so focused on their goals that they missed the journey of life along the way – a mundane, silly sentiment. But now Murdoc could see – MacGyver’s destruction was his Ithika. Perhaps Cavafy had a point – maybe he had been a bit of an artist himself. And MacGyver had been right about some things, wrong about others.

He was right in that Murdoc wasn’t ready to end the game just yet. But it wasn't fear that held him back, that urged him to take his time. It was joy. Joy of the journey. The little pleasures of life that are so often passed by in the grand scheme of things – the poet had been speaking of knowledge, of friendship, of love, of experiences. Murdoc’s little pleasures were things like fear, drawn-out suffering, playing with his food and watching it squirm. He relished that joy. He wanted more of it, and if MacGyver died, or was out of commission as a spy, that joy would diminish. Even if MacGyver lived, it wouldn’t be the same if he couldn’t fight back, couldn’t play along.

Murdoc made his decision.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a burner phone. He dialed a number he’d memorized long ago, put the phone to his ear.

A fierce Texas twang answered before the first ring had run its course. “Murdoc, you son of a bitch–”

“Temper, Jack,” Murdoc drawled. He shivered in excitement at the mental picture of the inferno in Dalton’s eyes. “You just assumed it was me – imagine if it were your mother on the other line.”

“I can scent the devil from a mile away.” Murdoc heard muffled voices in the background, knew the call was being traced.

“Don’t waste your time running a trace, you grumpy old hound dog.” His words were light, yet he allowed the slightest hint of urgency to infect them. “I’ve had my fun for today. I’ll text you the address.” He paused. “Oh, and bring one of those fancy whirly-birds you like to use for medical emergencies. I might have been a little… over zealous this time.”

He closed his eyes, gorging on the incalculable levels of hatred in Jack Dalton’s next words. “If you hurt him–”

Appreciation turned to irritation. Murdoc rolled his coal eyes to the ceiling. “Weren’t you listening, you brute? Obviously, I hurt him. Quite a bit actually. You should have heard him scream.”

A short silence. Then – “You didn’t let me finish, you overgrown sewer rat. If you hurt him, I am going to tear you limb from limb. I don’t need any of your fancy tools.”

“Hmm, that was almost intimidating,” Murdoc teased in his most good-natured tone. “But you’ll have to find me first.” He let the words linger for just a moment, then continued: “Anyway, ta-ta for now. I’ll text you the address. I’ll be long gone by the time you get here, but feel free to bring all your little friends for a game of hide and seek. Though I have a feeling that you’re going to be more focused on sweet Angus.”

He hung up, texted the address, then turned to a feebly stirring MacGyver. Pity he was waking up right as Murdoc had to leave. Whimpers that would have torn the very soul out of Jack Dalton erupted unbidden from MacGyver’s lips. Glazed blue eyes cracked open, regarding Murdoc with a mixture of terror and acceptance. Though he had regained consciousness, MacGyver still hung limply from the chains, too weak and in pain to move.

Murdoc stepped forward, eliciting the tiniest of flinches Even that motion made MacGyver cry out. But Murdoc didn’t hurt him again. Instead, he said, “Your friends are on their way.”

MacGyver’s voice rasped in the aftermath of his screams. “You’re letting … me go… Why?”

“Got bored, I suppose.” No way was Murdoc going to let MacGyver know he’d been right, even if only a little bit.

MacGyver didn’t respond – maybe he didn’t know how to respond; more likely, he could barely form coherent thoughts, let alone words, amidst the torrent of pain.

Murdoc started to step away, then turned back, studying his latest draft of the elusive masterpiece that he would continue to dream about and that would fuel his passion and creativity for years to come. He pulled off one black glove, placed his hand on a pale, cold cheek. MacGyver jerked back feebly from the touch, grunting at the pain it produced. Slowly, Murdoc wiped one of the fresher tears away with his thumb. It might have been a power play. It might have been a show of comfort. Even the hit man didn’t know. He glanced down at the shattered knee, swollen and misshapen, a grotesque monster straining to break free from the unrelenting fabric of the khakis.

“For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, moving his gaze up from the deformed knee to lock his black eyes with fearful, anguished blue ones, “I didn’t mean it.”

He walked away, casting one final look over his shoulder before he left his art behind for the coming Phoenix agents to admire. “Until next time, MacGyver.”

And despite the extensive search conducted by Phoenix once MacGyver had been loaded onto the chopper, on his way to the best orthopaedic surgeons in the country, Murdoc had once more disappeared, like a ghost.

That night he dreamed about his Ithika, and this time, it was enough.

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bloodfromthethorn · 3 years ago

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Friendly Fire

Mac tries very hard not to make mistakes, because whenever he does, people always, always get hurt. An army days fic.

Part thirteen of the July of Whump 2021 prompt challenge.

Also on AO3.

Despite what a lot of people seemed to believe, Mac did make mistakes. It didn’t happen all that often because he was viscerally aware that a lot of what he did was dangerous to more than just himself and that meant that you goddamn checked your working, but he wasn’t infallible. When he’d been younger, those mistakes had usually been small things, like falling out of a tree because he’d misjudged the distance between two branches or not picking up on his father’s mood quickly enough to avoid a lecture, but there had been some big blowouts too. The football field was probably the crowning example, but it wasn’t the only one.

Then he’d joined the army and been sent into the desert and suddenly the idea of making a mistake went from ‘possibly dangerous’ to ‘will almost certainly cost lives’. It was around that time that he started triple checking his working, just to be sure.

Which made it all the more horrifying when he did finally screw something up badly enough to get someone hurt. And, just in case that wasn’t punishment enough for his own stupidity and hubris, of course that someone would be Jack. Of fucking course.

He dug through the rubble like a man possessed, tearing open a gouge on his hand as he did so but not faltering for even a single second.

“Jack!” He didn’t dare raise his voice too high just in case any hostiles had survived the blast, but he needed his Overwatch to answer him. Since the wall had come down, he hadn’t heard a peep. “C’mon Dalton, you’re not going out like this. You do not get to die on me.”

He scrabbled for a moment against a chunk of sundried stone just a little too heavy for him to comfortably shift, then was rewarded with the smallest sliver of desert camo. More carefully, he tossed aside some of the smaller bricks, uncovering a gloved hand to go along with the arm he’d first seen. From there it was the matter of moments to clear the rest of Jack’s body, quietly thankful with each new revelation that at the very least he was still in one piece. Bruised and bloody, but whole.

And still not waking up. Maybe Mac wasn’t so relieved after all.

“Jack? Dalton? Can you hear me?” He felt for a pulse, gusting out a pained sigh when he finally found it – a little too fast for his liking, but strong all the same. “Thank god,” he breathed quietly.

There was blood around Jack’s eye from a gash on his forehead, with more dripping from a split lip, but otherwise he looked remarkably alright. No doubt his combat gear and dust coated skin was hiding a multitude of bruises and possible broken bones, but at the very least he wasn’t in danger of bleeding out. Or- well. A thought suddenly occurred to Mac and he spent the next ten seconds wrestling with Jack’s vest to get at his stomach to search for any signs of severe internal bleeding, not relaxing until his search turned up nothing more than unbroken skin.

“Okay,” he said more to himself than his unconscious partner. “We’ve got to get out of here. Stayed too long as it is.”

A glance around didn’t turn up anything he could conveniently use as a litter. He was thoroughly unwilling to leave Jack’s side while he was so defenceless, particularly when hostiles might be closing in, so that meant they were doing this the hard way. He started by untangling Jack’s rifle and making sure the safety was on before setting it carefully on the ground beside him; Jack would be giving him hell for messing with it, but if that was an argument he wanted to have then he was just damn well going to have to wake up and have it, wasn’t he?

Next came the man himself. Even though Mac was technically classified as a non-combatant, he’d still had to go through Basic with all the other recruits, so he’d done plenty of fireman’s lifts before. None of them had really prepared him for the added weight of responsibility he felt as soon as Jack was on his shoulders. He’d always considered their partnership to be two-way: Jack protected Mac and Mac protected Jack right back. It had never really felt this literal before though. Normally his protection came in the form of defusing a bomb before it went off, not bearing the man’s limp weight as they moved through hostile territory when at any minute a bullet could come their way.

But now wasn’t the time to be frozen by indecision and fear. Certainly not when he had to contend with the not inconsiderable weight of Jack and his gear, and then had to juggle his rifle in his free hand. Now was the time for action.

Without stopping to overthink it, he hitched Jack up a little higher and took off in the direction of their Humvee.

No doubt he made a hell of a scene pulling into camp and skidding the vehicle to a stop beside the medical tent, but by that point he was far too wound up to care. Jack hadn’t so much as stirred once, and while his breathing and heart rate were holding steady, Mac could feel his skin crawling with the awful sense that maybe something was critically wrong after all.

As soon as the Humvee came to a stop, he was on his feet and shouting, summoning the random assortment of medical staff who happened to be both in earshot and available. On the other side of the ‘road’, a handful of signalmen poked their heads out of the communications tent to see what was going on. Mac barely spared them a glance – all he cared about was getting Jack inside and to help as quickly as humanly possible and then finding somewhere quiet so he could have a breakdown in peace.

To that end, he hauled Jack back up onto his shoulders and met the medical staff halfway, breathlessly explaining what had happened. A gurney was unceremoniously shoved in front of him and he carefully tipped his charge down onto it. The second Jack was down, the staff were pulling him away, whisking him off for an examination inside. He took half a step to follow, but was immediately blocked by one of the nurses.

“Sir, are you injured?”

Mac barely spared the Private a glance, trying to push past but getting stopped by a firm hand on his chest. “No, I’m fine, but he’s my Overwatch, I have to-”

“Specialist,” the nurse said sharply, moving with him to keep him from getting past. “Your partner is getting the best care he can. If you’re not injured, you’ll need to report in. Only medical staff and patients are allowed past this point.”

A prickle-hot wave of frustration raced through Mac at being denied access to his partner, but it was almost immediately chased away by a wash of cold when he properly registered what the man had said. ‘You’ll need to report in.’ Of course that’s what he needed to do – standard protocol and all that. Theoretically he was already in violation of his orders by not having turned on his heel the instant Jack was in the hands of the medical staff, although he was pretty sure he could be forgiven in this particular instance.

But even then, he needed to report in. He had to walk up to his commanding officer and explain that because of his own stupidity and carelessness, he might just have gotten his own partner killed. Jack wasn’t well liked by the Brass, exactly, but he was certainly well respected and now Mac had to walk up to the Major and explain just how badly he’d fucked up. And then, assuming that didn’t get him transferred or demoted or fucking arrested, he was going to have to walk into the barracks filled with Jack’s friends and hope that none of them decided revenge was a dish best served hot. The Brass might not like Jack too well, but the men sure did.

Well, at least he had one thing going for him: since they were in the FOB and not the main operating base, he wouldn’t have to report directly to the Colonel. Small mercies.

“Specialist?” The nurse was saying, apparently alarmed by his sudden freeze. “Are you injured?”

“N-No,” he managed when he finally managed to find his voice again. The nurse didn’t look convinced, so he repeated himself more firmly. “No, I’m fine. You’re right, I need to report. Just- Look after him, okay?”

The nurse’s severity and concern fell away under a blanket of reassurance, his expression turning soft. “We will, don’t you worry. I’ll make sure someone lets you know when he gets moved to the ward, okay? You’ll be able to visit him then.”

Barely clinging to the present moment, all Mac could do was nod. The nurse gave him an appraising look, but whatever it was that Mac was projecting apparently passed muster because he nodded sharply and backed off, giving him one last glance before ducking into the tent and disappearing. For a long moment, Mac just stared at the spot where he’d been in the hopes that if he waited long enough, his brain might kick into gear before he had to face the Major.

Of course, it didn’t happen.

In a daze, he backed up from the entrance to the medical tent, glancing about in sudden self-awareness but finding himself mostly alone. The few people he could see appeared to be going about their days as normal, not paying him the slightest bit of attention.

Right. Things to do. No matter what had just happened, he was still on duty. He had work to be doing.

With a firm mental shake, he forced himself to climb back into the Humvee and drive it over to the much more suitable parking lot. He procrastinated for a few minutes then, sorting out his and Jack’s stuff and making sure the equipment he’d collected earlier that morning was still secure. It already felt like a thousand years ago. That done, he checked the vehicle in with the mechanics and headed to the command tent to face his fate.

Mac had never had much cause to interact with Major Torres beyond receiving the occasional direct mission brief or having to give an in-person report when a mission went sideways. Both cases usually ended up being pretty stressful affairs, either because there was a lot on the line or because Mac had to own up to some hare-brained scheme that would probably have gotten him court marshalled twenty times over if his skillset hadn’t been in such high demand. The result was that almost all of Mac’s recollections of the Major were coloured in shades of concern and unhappiness, despite the man himself having never done anything particularly bad to Mac himself. On the contrary, the man had been ridiculously forgiving of some of the shit Mac had tried to pull in the past.

Nonetheless, as he stood in front of him now, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly small.

“So you arrived in Sakini at 1300 hours?”

“Yes sir.”

“What was the situation on the ground?��

“At first, quiet. There were a couple of locals around, but they didn’t appear armed and they didn’t visibly react to our presence at all.”

“At first?”

Mac swallowed, willing himself to keep his thoughts in the right order. The last thing he needed was to add ‘filing an inaccurate report’ to his list of transgressions. “Jack – Sergeant Dalton – went out to do a survey of the area. I stayed back in the vehicle. When he deemed it was clear, he called me out while he set up on the roof of a building in- the town square, I guess.” He pointed at the appropriate place on the map, well aware that the handful of buildings hardly constituted a town, much less one in possession of anything resembling a square, but the building Jack had chosen had good sightlines and that was the main point.

“You went looking for the IED.”

“Yes.”

“Did you encounter any resistance?”

“No. The locals all kept out of my way, but not so much so I thought they were actively avoiding me. More like they just didn’t want to get involved in our business.”

“But you did find a device?”

“Yes sir, but not for an hour or so. It had been tucked into the gap between two buildings and blocked off with crates. Just getting to it took longer than it should have done.”

Torres’ expression twisted in something that might have been sympathy. Two US soldiers alone in possibly hostile territory for over an hour was never the start of a happy story.

“Once I did get to it,” Mac continued, bracing himself, “I was able to disarm it pretty quickly. The device was well hidden, but not particularly well built. It had a single failsafe, but compared to a lot of what we’ve been seeing recently, it was surprisingly basic.”

Evidently, his opinion was not welcome; the Major’s face darkened. “If that’s the case, then why is one of my men in the infirmary following an explosion, Specialist?”

He ducked his head on instinct, shame and fear washing over him afresh. It didn’t matter; what had happened, happened, and beating around the bush now wasn’t going to change that.

“Because I messed up, sir,” he said honestly. “The device was successfully disarmed, but before I could pack it up, Sergeant Dalton alerted me to hostiles closing in on our position. One of them must have been watching Sakini in case we showed up. There were too many of them for Jack to safely deal with alone and they were between us and our transport, so I came up with a plan to funnel them into a small space, and then trigger the explosion. It seemed like our best shot of taking them all out at once, so Jack agreed.”

Torres nodded, but didn’t interject with his own opinion.

Mac cleared his throat. “I needed a minute to rearm the device, and we needed to make sure they all got into position, so Jack acted as the bait. He took a few pot shots at them to get their attention, then made a run for it. Thankfully, they followed. I planted the device at a weak point on the building’s exterior, armed it, and retreated.”

“Dalton didn’t have time to clear the building?”

If Mac had been a little more dishonest – and perhaps less certain that he wouldn’t immediately get caught in the lie – he might have said yes. It still put him on the hook for blowing up his Overwatch, but it still felt a little less like a crushing failure on his part. But that wasn’t who Mac was, and even if it had been, it certainly wasn’t who Jack was, and the second he woke up he’d be asked to give his own account of things. The only way forward was the truth, no matter what it might be.

“Actually, he made it out okay. Things appeared to have gone perfectly but… I wasn’t watching my back, sir. I thought that all the hostiles had entered the building and I wasn’t careful enough. One of them managed to flank me. He was yelling something – I don’t speak Arabic – and dragging me back towards the building – I fought him, but…”

The memory flashed back to him, a warm hand painfully tight on his arm, the hard barrel of an assault rifle jabbing into his ribs, and neither of those things as scary as the IED he was being hauled towards. He’d tried to say something, tried to struggle, but the man had been huge even if he hadn’t had a gun to back him up. Mac hadn’t stood a chance.

Fortunately, Torres seemed to read into what he wasn’t saying. “Dalton doubled back to help you.”

“Yes sir.” His voice sounded small even to himself.

“And he got caught in the blast when he came too close to the building.”

“Yes sir.”

A pause. “Were you hurt in the explosion?”

Mac blinked in surprise, caught off guard. In truth, once Jack had gone down and stopped answering his radio, it had never occurred to Mac to even think about himself. “Uh, no sir. The man holding me was – he was between me and the device, so he caught the worst of it. Knocked him out, I think.”

“You think?”

“I- uh. I knew Sergeant Dalton was hurt. I was more focused on getting to him and getting him out than I was about the hostiles.” He knew it sounded bad even as he said it. He tried his best to look sheepish, but all he really felt was bone-deep weariness. He wanted this to be done. “I’m sorry sir.”

The Major shook that off, unconcerned. “With your Overwatch down, Dalton should have been your priority. EOD aren’t trained to be combatants.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but Mac was hardly about to argue with the man. Besides, he doubted it had escaped notice that he wasn’t wearing his sidearm; he’d been given one as part of his kit and told to carry it with him whenever he was in uniform, but after about a month of working with Jack, he’d felt safer leaving it in the Humvee instead. He wasn’t confident that if there was a hostile in front of him he’d be able to shoot them anyway, so carrying around a loaded weapon was more of a liability than anything. Jack didn’t agree, but he hadn’t pressed the issue.

“What happened next?”

“I found Jack buried in the rubble. He had a visible head wound and he was unconscious. When I couldn’t wake him, I carried him back to our vehicle and came straight here.”

Torres nodded slowly. “Do you have anything else of note to report?”

“No sir.” He held still, waiting for his verdict. He could personally point out about twelve different things he’d done wrong, and every single one of them added up to Jack in a hospital bed. If it really was anything worse than a concussion…

If it came to that, there wasn’t anything the Major could do to Mac that he wouldn’t deserve.

“Alright,” the man said, his voice heavy and drawn. “I take it you know that I’ll have to report this up the chain. Circumstances aside, catching your own teammate in a repurposed IED blast isn’t going to look good and that’s before we even get to you getting ambushed.”

“Yes sir.”

Torres sighed, looking momentarily softer than he had any right to after the shitshow he’d just heard about. “For now, the most any of us can do is wait for Dalton to wake up so he can give his own report. We’ll go from there. In the meantime, I’ll send some men out to Sakini to work on clean-up; you go get washed up. You’re off rotation until your Overwatch is back on his feet.”

The very idea of having a shower and going to bed felt utterly heavenly – just thinking of being gifted such a reward after what he’d done made something in Mac balk. He straightened up, trying to make himself look firm. “That’s not necessary, sir. I’m still fit for work.”

Torres paused in surprise, then gave him a quick look up and down. “You’re asking for another Overwatch?”

Mac hesitated, but didn’t back down. “Not permanently, sir. I know Sergeant Dalton’s tour is conditional. But while he’s in recovery, if there’s work that needs doing then I’m happy to do it.”

The Major didn’t look entirely thrilled by the idea, but he wasn’t turning him down cold either. Mostly, he seemed thoughtful. “It sounds like you were pretty close to an explosion yourself. You’re sure you’re in good shape?”

“I mostly caught the blowback, sir. Made my ears ring, knocked the wind out of me. Nothing serious, nothing permanent.” It was true, too. He really had gotten off incredibly lightly given the severity of the situation, and he could mostly thank the man who had been trying to kill him for it. He’d ended up acting as a surprisingly effective human shield, in the end.

Slowly, Torres nodded. “Okay. I’m going to ask you to get a medical check-up to confirm you’re as okay as you say you are, but if that comes back clean, you can keep working. As it happens, one of our other EOD techs – Garcia – is shipping out in the morning, and his Overwatch doesn’t have a new partner yet. You know Corporal Lee?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. You can stick with him until Dalton’s back on rotation. Check in with him directly to get your instructions, clear?”

“Clear, sir. Thank you.”

“Good. Now, go get that check-up and find out what’s become of your partner. You know he won’t be happy about you working with someone else.”

Torres said it lightly, sharing something of an in-joke that Mac was only half party to. Jack had never properly explained the nature of his deal with Torres – and the Colonel above him – to extend his tour with some provisos, but he’d got the impression that there had been a lot of shouting involved. Honestly, he’d been glad to steer clear of it. Apparently, though, it wasn’t too much of a sore point with Torres anymore and Mac was grateful; he’d hated to know that Jack had put so much on the line for his sake.

With a clear dismissal, Mac saluted, then turned on his heel and headed back to the medical tent. He avoided the emergency area this time, electing instead to go into the space just beyond it that was set aside for the standard check-ups that active soldiers were routinely subjected to.

Stupidly, it wasn’t until he was gestured towards an unoccupied booth that he realised his palm was still coated in dried, flaking blood. In everything that had happened, he’d completely forgotten about the minor wound. Not that there was anything to be done about it now. It wasn’t like he could hide it and besides, it really was only very minor. It shouldn’t pose any threat to his ability to work.

When the doctor made it round to him, he suffered through the indignity of the exam with little grace, too worn out and drained to make small talk. Fortunately, the doctor seemed to understand his mind was elsewhere, because he maintained a solid professional demeanour throughout and didn’t prod when others might have done. He cleaned out the slice in Mac’s palm, agreeing that it wouldn’t need stitches, and carefully checked his torso for any signs of major damage. Finding none, he signed off on Mac’s duty form and gave him back his shirt.

“You’re Dalton’s partner, right?” He said, just as Mac finished getting dressed again.

Mac’s eyes snapped up to look at him. “Yes. Is he- Is there news?”

The man shot him a reassuring smile, flapping a hand to soothe his obvious concern. “Everything’s okay, calm down. He took a hell of a knock to the head, but there’s no signs of critical damage. We’ll be keeping him in for a few days for concussion and cognition checks and the like, but from what I’ve heard, he got off remarkably lucky. He’s sedated at the moment, but I think they’re planning to bring him around in the next hour or so – you can go and sit with him if you like?”

He made a vague sweeping gesture in the direction of the main ward, an obvious invitation, but despite his desperation to see that his partner really was still in one piece, Mac hesitated.

The last time Jack had been injured – a bullet graze over the meat of his shoulder that he seemed annoyed by more than anything – Mac had planted himself at his partner’s side and refused to budge. It had felt like the right thing to do; Jack had always made a point of sticking around whenever Mac was ill or injured, and the least he could do was return the favour. Besides, sitting and chatting with him was a lot better than continuously replaying the moment when the bullet had caught him, his cry of pain and surprise. Jack had certainly seemed to appreciate the company while he waited out the required bedrest portion of his recovery.

But that had been then, when Jack had been wounded by a bullet Mac couldn’t possibly have done anything about. Now, he was laid up with a head injury because Mac hadn’t been smart enough to watch his own back for all of five minutes and had ended up luring his partner into an explosion he caused. On every possible level, Jack’s injuries were his fault.

There wasn’t the slightest chance that the first thing he would want to see when he woke up would be Mac’s face.

He became distantly aware that he’d frozen in place and the doctor had started to eye him critically, so he slapped on what he hoped looked like a relieved smile.

“Nah, that’s okay. I don’t want to disturb him if he needs the rest. Besides, I’m knackered too.”

To his credit, the doctor managed to keep whatever he thought about that off his face. Instead, he offered an obliging smile. “Of course. You’ve had a rough day too.”

Mac nodded, then a thought occurred to him. “Can you let me know, though, if- If something happens?”

No matter how much Jack might not want to see Mac, the only way Mac would be able to not bear seeing him is if he knew that the man was going to be okay. He needed to know that his own stupidity hadn’t done worse than what he already knew about.

“Of course. You’re set up as his base contact anyway, so you’re supposed to be kept in the loop.”

He hadn’t known that Jack had done that, though in hindsight it made sense. He’d done the same the day after Jack had decided to stay on after all. Still, the very thought of it now, when Mac was just about the one person in the entire FOB who Jack shouldn’t be relying on to be there in times of trouble- It stung.

He buried the sensation as best he could under a wave of fatigue and hopped down off the examination bed. If he was going to have a breakdown over this, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be here.

“Is that everything?” He asked the doctor, wanting to be done and away from here.

He smiled. “That’s everything, Specialist. You make sure you get some rest before shipping back out tomorrow, okay? I don’t want to see you back here any time soon.”

“Sir yes sir.”

With that done and a form confirming he was ready for active duty clutched tightly in one hand, he scooped up his and Jack’s packs, as well as Jack’s rifle which he still hadn’t had time to return, and marched back out into the blazing sunlight.

The first few times Jack woke up, he spent the few minutes of consciousness he had in muddled confusion. There were bright lights and lots of sound, then pale blue moonlight and muffled voices, then light again – through all of it, he couldn’t have said where he was or what was happening. Everything was too distant and vague to grasp, and fatigue had sunk its claws deep into his mind, dragging him back whenever he dared to try to push ahead.

He couldn’t give up though. He might not know what was going on, but he was sure that there was something he was forgetting, something important. Whatever it was didn’t matter – all that did, was that Jack needed to wake up and get to it.

It wasn’t until he finally blinked himself properly awake that he was able to put some logic to the flashes he’d caught before. He was in a hospital bed, with the slowly undulating fabric of a tent above him – the FOB. That certainly made sense, given that he felt like he’d been hit by a truck, but it didn’t really explain the why of that whole situation and no memories seemed ready to spring forth from the depths of his mind to enlighten him.

Christ, what the hell had happened to him?

He crawled his hand over the scratchy bedding, searching for a call button and ending up surprised when he actually found one. Any higher tech than the stone age was normally reserved for the MOB, and since he was in a tent then he clearly wasn’t there. Shrugging it off as unimportant, he hit the button and waited.

A nurse appeared between the screens around his bed less than twenty seconds later. “Sergeant Dalton? Back with us this time?”

“This time?” He muttered, then regretted it when his throat rasped horribly over the words. Clearly he’d been out for a while.

Understanding brightened in her face, and she stepped closer to retrieve a cup of water from his bedside table and present the straw in front of his face. Uncomfortable as he was, he was pretty certain he could have held the cup himself, but it hardly seemed worth the argument when she was willing to do it. Besides, having a beautiful woman feed him by hand was hardly going to be the low point of his day.

When he was done, she returned the cup to its place and pulled out his chart. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling? Any pain?”

“Headache. Feels like I got run over. What happened?”

Her eyes flicked towards him, measuring. “How would you rate the severity of your headache on a scale of one to ten?”

“Four. It’s fine. What happened?”

She pulled a penlight out from the pocket of her scrubs and leaned in to examine his pupils. He let it happen with increasing impatience, long since aware that trying to rush medical staff when they were intent on checking him over was a losing game. Better to let her get it out of her system before pushing too hard for answers.

“Pupil response is normal,” she said after a moment. “It looks as though your concussion is clearing up nicely. Unfortunately you’re still in what we would consider the danger period for head injuries, so you’re going to be staying with us a few days yet for monitoring.”

That was annoying as hell, but with no idea what was wrong with him, he had no scale of what was reasonable. “Sure, fine, whatever. Can you please tell me what happened? I don’t remember getting hurt.”

Truthfully, he didn’t remember much of anything.

She hesitated, but she must have seen the determination in his eyes because she folded without further argument. “You were hit by falling masonry following an explosion. I don’t know the details beyond that. Your partner brought you in.”

His partner-?

Mac!

A rush of memories suddenly hit him, so sharp and fierce that he actually sucked in a hard breath in surprise. The IED in Sakini, hostiles closing in, an utterly insane idea from Mac that just might be crazy enough to work – and it did, right up until he heard a scuffle over the radio, Mac’s voice tight with stress saying, let go of me, we can’t go in there, there’s a bomb-

He hadn’t hesitated for a second to race back in the direction he’d come.

“My partner-” He said wildly, coming to life all of a sudden as cold terror rushed through him. “Mac- Is he- What happened? Where is he?”

Something had to have gone wrong. If he was alright then he would be here, teasing Jack for being so muddled and letting him see with his own eyes that he was unhurt. That was what they did.

The nurse’s hand pressed down firmly on his shoulder, forcing him back down from where he’d tried to jackknife upright. “Sergeant! Please, stay calm. Your partner is completely fine. Specialist MacGyver, right? He’s okay. No injuries.”

Jack’s wild eyes found hers and latched on, seeking truth. “He’s okay?”

“Yes. I promise you. When he brought you in, he wasn’t injured. He had a physical to clear him for duty and came up clean. You’re the one we’ve been worried about.”

There was a lot there that he needed to process, and most of it seemed beyond his exhausted mind, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Mac was okay. That was- well, honestly, that was far better than he had any right to expect given the nightmare situation they’d been in, and the fact that apparently Jack had just checked out and left the kid to deal with it, in hostile territory no less. God, he owed him a beer.

But if he’d been sought medical clearance, then that meant… “He’s back on duty?”

The nurse nodded, evidently surprised by the question. It was standard practice for uninjured soldiers to rotate as needed around their teammates’ injuries, and if Mac really wasn’t hurt then there was absolutely no need for him to be sitting around the FOB twiddling his thumbs. But, then, ‘standard practice’ had never been their way of doing things. Thanks to Jack’s very carefully worded agreement with the Brass, the pair of them should have been free to turn down any requests for temporary reassignment.

Then again, Mac didn’t seem the type to pass on a call to duty, particularly if there were lives on the line.

He nodded slowly, letting that knowledge settle inside him. Mac was alive and uninjured, if not exactly safe. Jack was – apparently – alive and relatively okay. A win all round, really – so why did he feel like something had gone horribly wrong?

“Okay,” he said slowly, then again more firmly. “So, doc. Give it to me straight: how am I doing?”

Jack had kind of assumed that Mac had been absent when he woke because it was clearly the middle of the day, which logically meant that he was off-base somewhere. That was perfectly understandable and given the circumstances, Jack could understand why he’d done it – Mac hadn’t known that Jack was finally going to wake up after all and since he’d apparently been in and out for three whole days, it wasn’t surprising he’d not elected to sit around, bored out of his mind. Still, that logic fell apart just a little bit when night fell and no blond bomb nerd appeared at his elbow.

He knew that Mac was his contact, which meant he must have been informed that Jack was awake and talking and yet- He went to sleep that evening with no visitors.

He slept in the next morning, unintentionally, so if Mac had stopped by before heading out then he would have missed him. He almost wanted to ask one of the staff, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the kid hadn’t been by at all and that… That didn’t feel right.

It wasn’t that Jack thought he was owed Mac’s time or attention or anything like that, but he’d kind of thought that he’d get it anyway. The last time he’d been stuck in the hospital ward, he hadn’t been able to shake Mac off for more than a few minutes at a time, no matter how much he’d pleaded with him to go back to the barracks and get some proper sleep. Any time one of the staff had tried to chase him out, he’d planted his feet and refused to be moved. It had been touching, in an odd kind of way, a clear demonstration of Mac saying ‘If you’ve chosen me, I’ve chosen you too.’

Now- Now it was different, and Jack was pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing.

Some careful questioning – and an outright demand for an explanation from Major Torres when he showed up to get Jack’s report – had brought some things to light, but made others even murkier. For one, Mac had actively requested to remain on duty. After what had happened last time, that was a big red flag in its own right. He did at least have Lee watching his back, someone who Jack knew to be a crack shot and clever with it, so he probably wasn’t getting himself into too much trouble, but still.

Torres had also made it clear that their failed mission was not being received particularly well by the higher ups. When pressed, he’d alluded to the fact Mac had – apparently entirely willingly – painted himself right into the corner and placed the blame directly on his own shoulders. Jack hadn’t been able to keep himself from swearing aloud. Goddamn self-sacrificing idiot. He’d tried to make it clear that Mac hadn’t been to blame for what happened, and Torres seemed inclined to listen to him, but the details of his report did match up squarely with what Mac had said. The only difference was that Jack wasn’t about to start playing the blame game.

All signs pointed to something being very, very wrong with his partner.

When that evening rolled around and there was still no Mac, Jack had been about ready to climb out of bed himself and hunt the git down. In the end he was spared the trouble by a surprise visitor – just not the one he’d been expecting.

“Jackie! You’re looking- well, a bit shit, honestly, but much better than before.” Corporal Lee – Ryan, to basically everyone who had known him for more than five minutes – stuck his head through the break in the screens and offered him a wide, toothy grin.

“Thanks,” he shot back, grimacing at him then stopping when it pulled at the colourful array of bruising he knew was adorning his face – and most of the rest of him, come to think of it. “What are you doing here?”

Ryan slipped through the screens to stand beside him, casting a careful eye over his injuries even while he waved a careless hand in dismissal. “Your boy got a splinter that I’m making him get checked out. Thought I’d stop by to see you since I’m already here.”

White, electric panic shot down Jack’s spine. “Mac’s hurt?”

“No, no, he’s fine! Yeesh, calm down. It really is just a splinter, I promise, cross my heart. If he was anybody else, I wouldn’t have made him come here but I swear to god, someone needs to teach that boy he’s not immortal.”

The words were clearly meant in jest, but Jack felt the pit of worry in his gut that had opened when he woke up without Mac beside him suddenly yawn wider. Mac had never been particularly good at putting his own safety on his list of priorities, and if he really was blaming himself for Jack’s injuries, then there was a good chance he’d be acting downright reckless.

“He’s been giving you a hard time?” He asked, just to make sure.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Honestly man, I have no idea how you do it. I’ve been driving myself hoarse telling him to keep his goddamn head down and I’ve only been working with him a few days.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he said, hoping his levity covered the ice crawling through his chest. Goddamn it Mac, you don’t get to do this. “You two have any trouble?”

“Nothing worth reporting on. More IEDs than I ever wanted to see in my life but that’s kinda par for the course, right?”

“Tell me about it.”

“But other than that, it’s been pretty quiet. Word got around that your boy took out ten hostiles on his own, so maybe the T-men are all too busy trying to stay out of his way. I sure fucking would if I were them.”

That did actually pull a smile out of Jack, despite everything. The situation was definitely FUBAR, but it was about time someone other than him realised the sheer elemental force that was a pissed off Angus MacGyver. For a skinny little bomb nerd, he packed a surprising punch.

“You haven’t seen the half of it yet.”

“You have no idea how horrifying that is to hear, thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Hey, you said he was here, right? In medical?”

Ryan rolled his eyes, smiling. Clearly he wasn’t distracted by Jack’s meek attempts at feigning disinterest. “Yes, he’s about twenty metres that way, and yes, I will tell him to come and see you as soon as that pretty blonde nurse stops flirting with him. I thought he was gonna come yesterday, but he ended up just crashing. Not sure he’s been sleeping all that well.”

The last was said with a quiet, gentle concern, the type of tone that made Ryan one of the most popular soldiers on base. He might be a devil in a firefight, but he was genuine and he cared about the men he served with well beyond what he was officially required to do. Jack was, not for the first time, very glad that this was the Overwatch Mac had been transferred to.

“Who does, in this place? Can you remember what your twenties were like? I’m glad I didn’t spend mine in this hellhole.”

Ryan shuddered. “I don’t think I was ever that young.”

“Me neither.” They shared a look of weary amusement as Ryan patted a warm hand to his shoulder and kicked off from where he’d been leaning against the bed.

“I’ll go make sure your boy doesn’t escape without saying hello. You take care man, okay? We’ve missed you in the barracks.”

“Not sure anyone’s ever missed my snoring before,” he shot back with a smile, then sobered. “And hey, thanks man. For watching out of him. There’s no one else I’d trust more.”

“Don’t sweat it. You’ve pulled my ass out of the fire before. You just rest up and let me take care of your bomb nerd for a bit.”

Mac knew that Ryan had only really been making him come to medical to prove a point and that it was all in service of trying to watch out for him while Jack was laid up, but he still found himself pissed off by it. He wasn’t a child in need of someone to pull out his splinters – he’d been perfectly capable of doing that since he was five. Besides, Ryan hadn’t even tried to pretend it wasn’t payback for Mac ignoring his warnings earlier that morning and momentarily ducking out of his sightline to check out a suspicious rock pile.

There hadn’t even been anything buried under the rocks – it was just a false alarm. He’d been back under the protective watch of Ryan’s scope inside of a minute.

All of this to say, he was pretty sour about the whole experience. The nurse was incredibly patient with him, raising an eyebrow at Ryan when he cheerfully explained the problem like he was a parent dropping a kid off at daycare. The attitude had not helped matters. Regardless, she’d sat him down and pulled out her disinfectant and tweezers, and hadn’t reacted at all to Mac’s stormy expression.

It was a waste of his time, and more importantly hers. There were soldiers here with real, actual injuries that needed tending to and here he was taking up space and resources for a ‘wound’ he had scarcely even noticed. Still, he was here now and it wasn’t like Ryan wasn’t going to give him shit for it if he didn’t stick around, so he stayed where he was, feeling worse with every passing minute.

The splinter was hardly difficult to find, in inch long fragment of wood sticking haphazardly out of the inside of his wrist. Too shallow to cause any real damage, but long enough to itch something fierce. It had taken all of Mac’s willpower not to scratch himself raw on the drive back. The nurse hummed in sympathy when she saw it, but didn’t take the opportunity to make a comment that would so visibly have been unwelcome. She simply disinfected her tweezers and got to work.

The process hurt, but it was superficial. More frustrating was the agonising amount of time she spent examining the wound, trying to make sure she’d removed every last bit of debris before she let him go. He knew that it was literally her job to thorough and that he’d live to regret it if there was something nasty still lurking under his skin, but he couldn’t help his own impatience. He’d done everything he could to avoid the medical tents in the last few days and now he was stuck here, no doubt metres away from his Overwatch.

The urge to give in and seek Jack out was almost overwhelming now that he was actually here.

He’d been told that he’d woken up and didn’t appear to have suffered any neurological effects from his injuries or from his extended sedation, but Mac couldn’t trust that until he saw it with his own eyes. If he hadn’t been so sure that Jack wouldn’t want to see him, he’d have been at his side as soon as he heard the news. As it was, Jack hadn’t asked for him so he’d stayed clear.

Ryan reappeared just as the nurse was smoothing a dressing down over the small gash. “Dalton’s a tough son of a bitch, huh?”

Mac’s head snapped up to look at him. “You’ve been to see him?”

“Yeah. And, as it turns out, I think he’s pretty surprised that you haven’t.” Ryan raised his eyebrows pointedly, somehow both a question and a condemnation. Mac was in no mood to answer either.

He shrugged. “I’ve been busy, and he’s been sleeping.”

“He’s not sleeping now.” Mac bit his tongue to clamp down on his response to that. Fortunately, Ryan didn’t seem to need one, because he continued, “He’s asking to see you. If you’re done here?”

The nurse, packing up her things, nodded amiably as an answer, then bid them both goodbye and left. Mac somehow felt more exposed with her gone and nothing else to distract Ryan’s attention.

He wanted to refuse. The only reason Jack would be asking after him is if he wanted to tear him a new one for being so uncompromisingly shit at his job that he’d nearly killed his partner, and Mac just didn’t think he was solid enough to take that right now. But, really, that didn’t matter. If Jack wanted to chew him out, then it wasn’t like it was anything Mac didn’t one hundred percent deserve. He’d have to face the music sooner or later and he stubbornly refused to be a coward about it.

“Okay,” he said instead of trying to find an excuse. “Lead the way.”

Brave face or not, apparently he was a coward in the end anyway, because he hesitated at the very last hurdle; it had taken Ryan physically pushing him forwards to get him past the screens surrounding Jack’s bed. The view that greeted him was- not unexpected, but hardly a pleasant one either.

Jack was awake and blinking at him, which was a vast improvement on the unconscious slump he’d worn the last time Mac had laid eyes upon him, but his face was also a patchwork of blues and purples, softening to a sickly yellow at the edges. He looked – well. He looked like a wall had been dropped on his head.

He opened his mouth with absolutely no idea what was about to fall out of it, but it didn’t matter because Jack immediately cut him off.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

It brought Mac up short. “I- What?”

“Me getting hurt. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Jack-”

“No, shut up, listen to me. I know you and I think I’m finally getting some idea of what’s going on in that idiot head of yours because you told Torres that you were to blame for all this. Isn’t that right?”

“Well. I am.”

Jack huffed, visibly annoyed, and Mac had no idea what he was supposed to do in this situation. He’d expected anger, shouting, not whatever this was. “Goddamn it kid. This isn’t on you, of course it isn’t. Why would you even think that?”

He’d apparently meant it as some sort of rhetorical question because he blanched when Mac put up a hand to count his mistakes on his fingers. Jack spoke before he had the chance to start.

“No, don’t actually answer that. Forget I asked. Look, whatever moon logic you’re using to blame yourself for this? It’s nonsense, man. And no one else is going to tell you that because they don’t know, but I was there, okay? I was there the whole time. And I’m telling you right now that you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Distantly, Mac felt his body trembling. This wasn’t what he’d expected.

“We were in a shit situation, and your quick thinking is what got us out of it. I’m the one who was stupid enough to run towards an active IED even when I knew it was about to blow. And even after that, when the person who’s supposed to be watching out of you was out for the count, you kept your shit together long enough to get us both home without any further injury.”

Mac blinked at him.

“You saved my life, man.”

That was too much. He hissed, flinching at the absurdity of it. “I nearly killed you.”

“Nah, I did that. My mistake, not yours. And besides, I’m fine – couple of bruises ain’t nothing.”

“You were coming back because I was in trouble. Because I couldn’t look after myself for three minutes.”

Jack was shaking his head and Mac wished he’d stop because it looked like it hurt, and he couldn’t bear any more of Jack’s pain right now. “We were surrounded by hostiles Mac. It’s my job to keep an eye out for them so you can keep your eyes right where they need to be, and even I thought they’d all gone into that building. Anyone outside of that was trying to keep out of sight and you had no way of knowing you needed to be watching for that kind of threat. That’s what I’m here for, remember?”

Unable to find words to refute him, Mac just shook his head adamantly.

His Overwatch’s gaze turned soft. “Hey, man, c’mon. You’ve got to know that you didn’t have any control over what happened, and the bits you did, you did great. You got me out of there all by yourself. So what’s going on man?”

Mac hesitated, feeling torn open and raw, but somehow still entirely safe under Jack’s eyes. When he said nothing further, Mac felt himself deflate. “I’ve never-” He stopped, retried. “I didn’t come out here to hurt people,” he managed quietly. “All I’ve tried to do is disarm IEDs and limit the destruction and then this time…”

“This time you were the one setting the bomb.” Jack’s voice was level, understanding and without judgement.

“Yeah. And, of course, not only do I manage to-” He bit off the end of that sentence, his breathing ragged. “I also nearly killed you.”

He was aware that there were tears welling in the corners of his eyes, but he honestly couldn’t have been sure what emotion they were trying to convey. He just felt overwhelmed.

Jack put out a hand, setting his fingertips lightly on Mac’s elbow, the only part of him he could reach where Mac was keeping his distance. “That was the first time you killed someone,” he said calmly.

Wordless and bereft, Mac nodded. One of the tears slipped free.

“Ah, kiddo,” Jack breathed, leaning over a little further to grab Mac’s arm properly and pull him closer. Laid up as he was, he couldn’t offer much of a hug, but he was able to settle for tucking Mac into the curve of his arm and settling him there. “You didn’t do anything wrong, you hear me? I’m so sorry that you were in that situation at all, but you did everything right. Those men- They would have killed you and me and everyone in that village without hesitation, okay? I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you were protecting people Mac.”

Exhausted, overwhelmed, and with no way of voicing any of it, Mac just clung to Jack with a desperation he’d be self-conscious about if he was anyone else. Jack shushed him softly, running his hand up and down his back, and it was only then that Mac realised he was crying.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled wetly, not sure himself if he was apologising for Jack’s injuries or his own meltdown.

“Ain’t got nothing to be sorry for.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t. I’ll keep telling you as long as you need to hear it hoss, but this wasn’t your fault. None of it.”

They stayed like that for a long time. Mac felt himself starting to come together again just a little, still raw and hurting but able to breathe again. It was imperfect, but it was still somehow the best he’d felt in days. When he pulled back his head to look at Jack, he found his Overwatch smiling at him.

“There you are. Had me worried for a moment.”

“Sorry.”

Jack snorted. “If you insist on apologising, you could at least have the decency to do it for something that actually deserves it. Like, say, driving Ryan up the wall with your reckless behaviour?”

Mac’s eyes dropped, flushing. Jack just laughed at him, warm and relieved, absent of any actual anger. That part would probably come later, but it was obvious to anyone who looked that Mac wasn’t going to be able to withstand that sort of attack right now.

“Damn it kid. You’re okay though, right? Not hiding any injuries or something?”

“No. I should be asking you that. You’re the one who nearly died.”

“I’m not that easy to kill, brother. And besides, I had you watching my back. I knew you’d get me home safe.”

Mac’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think unconscious counts as safe.”

“I’m awake now, aren’t I?”

“Jack.”

Unable to help himself, Jack ruffled a hand through Mac’s mop of hair, laughing when he chirped in alarm and rapidly backpedalled out of reach. “I’m going to be just fine Mac. Quit worrying about me. I’ll be back on duty and driving you crazy over the radio in no time at all.”

When it came, Mac’s smile was a careful thing. “Can’t wait.”

“Me neither kid. Me neither.”

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

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years ago

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Compare & Contrast: Trumbo vs Mank

It’s the rare movie that’s about screenwriting, and rarer still the ones about actual screenwriters engaged in their craft.

Recently two films about two of the most famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) screenwriters were released, and not only are they about actual screenwriters involved in writing scripts of actual films -- genuine classics in both cases -- but their protagonists are done in by the same group of antagonists (though to be fair, one film paints them merely as adversaries, not villains).

Yes, we’re pitting 2015’s Trumbo (directed by jay Roach, written by John McNamara off Bruce Cook’s Dalton Trumbo) nose-to-nose with Mank (directed by David Fincher, written by Jack Fincher), and may the best bio pic win.

First off, the bad: Neither film really jells seamlessly.

Both come across as a series of scenes, not a coherent story flow.

The dialog in both is too theatrical, too self-knowing though in the case of Mank’s Herman J. Mankiewicz, apparently a fair depiction of how he actually spoke (for the cheap seats: Like a pompous asshole).

Advantage: Mank because it never asks us to pity Mankiewicz as a self-destructive alcoholic no matter how brilliant his writing is. Mank’s struggles are more in the trenches -- even if those trenches run through the plush offices of MGM. Trumbo talks a lot about the struggles of the little guy but never really dips down to street level. For all its insights and good intentions, it remains a limousine liberal story.

You can’t do a Hollywood bio pic without having Hollywood celebrities in it, and for the most part Mank keeps the most famous names and faces at arm’s length.

Yes, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) plays a pivotal role but virtually nobody today remembers the real Davies except as she was unfairly depicted in Citizen Kane.

Orson Welles is the best known name and face in Mank and Tom Burke does a top notch job of capturing him at his charismatic young genius stage. Other off screen personalities also serve to flesh out their roles adequately, including Ferdinand Kingsley as Irving Thalberg, Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst, and Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer.

On the other hand, virtually none of Trumbo’s famous players look anything like their real life counterparts. Dean O'Gorman as Kirk Douglas comes closest in a dinner theater level of resemblance, but Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson and David James Elliott as John Wayne are virtually unrecognizable as their actual counterparts.

Trumbo also features Richard Portnow as their version of Louis B. Meyer and it needs be said thar Mank’s Meyer is far more dynamic and compelling.

Props to Christian Berkel as Otto Preminger for coming closest to capturing the real persona behind the role, but then Preminger himself deliberately created a living caricature of himself for public appearances -- no matter how far over the top you go, he’s already w-a-a-a-y ahead of you.

Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper is fairly accurate in her portrayal of Hollywood’s original queen of mean / notorious gossip columnist and plays the role as close to an absolute villain as possible.

John Goodman and Stephen Root as producing brothers Frank and Hymie King are a delight, and Goodman simply backs up a truck and drives off with the picture every scene he appears in.

Advantage: Mank because less is always more.

In terms of direction and cinematography, Mank is filmed in gloriously luminescent black and white. Mank also plays with and explores the boundaries pf film making much more than Trumbo. Trumbo is an expertly made film, but a very conventional one.

Advantage: Mank

The key question for both is how accurate are they?

Truth be told, not very for either of them.

Oh, both films get their broad strokes down, but a lot of minor details are garbled or misrepresented.

Dalton Trumbo, for instance, did not originate The Brave One, which won him a best screenplay Oscar under a pseudonym while he was on the blacklist. That project was handed to him by the King brothers who acquired it from special effects legend Willis O’Brien (i.e., the guy who brought King Kong to life) but then stripped out O’Brien’s fanciful stop motion allosaur to concentrate on the story of a boy and his bull.

One understands why this aspect was ignored -- it would contribute nothing to the actual story of Trumbo -- but it is the height of irony that O’Brien’s participation was cancelled due to Trumbo coming onboard.

Likewise in Mank there’s a scene where Thalberg complains the Marx Brothers started a fire and roasted hot dogs in his office; in real life Groucho & his siblings roasted potatoes. One can understand Mank changing the menu -- the audience can “smell” a roasted hot dog easier than a roasted potato.

But enough fiddle-faddle! How well did each capture their central character and their dilemma?

Ah, there we have a split decision.

While Trumbo focuses on Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), it also spends a lot of time with the struggles of his coterie of fellow blacklisted scribes.

Both Dalton Trumbo and Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldmam) fell under the curse of always being the smartest guy in the room, and when you’re the smartest guy in the room you grow impatient with all the others.

In Trumbo’s case, he runs roughshod of the eminently justifiable concerns of others involved in his crusade, and in the end his miscalculations of the era’s real politik led to the notorious blacklist and the rise of McCarthyism.

That he subsequently tries to mitigate this by creating an underground talent pool of ghost screenwriters is shown as positive in one sense and capitulation in another. Trumbo -- quite accidentally -- torments screenwriter Arlen Hird (a composite character played by Louis C.K. as if he were channeling the late Ricky Jay) , turning his already stressful life into pure misery.

Again, it is a tribute to Trumbo’s character -- at least the screen version of same -- that he recognizes the harm he inflicted and tries -- however inadequately -- to atone for it.

Herman Mankiewicz, on the other hand, was just an asshole -- a charming, entertaining asshole, to be sure, but an asshole nonetheless.

Both writers are laid low by far right politics determined to root out any and all “leftist” influence in Hollywood -- both the ideal and the workaday reality.

Trumbo depicts him as “a communist with a swimming pool” who enjoys the finer things in life while championing the largely unseen underdog.

The film doesn’t shy away from this and an encounter in prison with African-American felon Virgil Brooks (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is played as a reverse Shawshank Redemption in which Trumbo learns exactly how the underclass perceives his efforts on their behalf.

Mank makes more direct contact with this underclass -- while skewering Mankiewicz’ own hypocrisy in this area -- but Mankiewicz himself steers away from any direct involvement.

He’s bright and erudite and his scenes with Marion Davies do much to show the complexities found at the intersection of art / commerce / politics -- but in the end he remains more of a spectator (albeit a spectacularly self-destructive one) than a participant.

Mank creates the fictious character of Shelly Metcalf (Jamie McShane), a low grade MGM employee who makes anti-socialist propaganda for Hearst and comes to a tragic end.

This is part of what spurs Mankiewicz to a drunken rant at San Simeon aimed at Meyer and Hearst, and in the fallout of that, the inspiration for Citizen Kane itself.

This is where the two films share a profound overlap,

But with wholly contrary messages.

Both films try to humanize their players.

Mank gives Meyer, Thalberg, and Hearst very human and wholly believable reactions to Mankiewicz’ assholery -- they sincerely try to save him from himself and failing that, only then do they cast him quite literally into the outer darkness.

Yet in trying to humanize them it also shows their monstrous natures.

Hearst, escorting Mankiewicz out of San Simeon for the very last time, tells him the parable of the organ grinder’s monkey, and while the story is delivered in an almost sad patrician tone, the underlying threat and menace is unmistakable.

Trumbo, on the other hand, does a better job of humanizing its players, Hedda Hopper not withstanding (and she is depicted with deeply personal motivations, not purely ideological ones).

Quoting from the real Dalton Trumbo’s acceptance speech for his WGA lifetime achievement award, Trumbo the movie takes pains to recognize its story possesses no simplistic duality of good and evil, heroes and villains.

Both sides were caught up in a storm of societal change that swept the world and both sides did what they felt they had to do in response to it.

Trumbo doesn’t shy away from choices having consequences, but it recognizes the vast spectrum of gray in the middle.

Advantage: Trumbo

In summation: Two good but not flawless movies. Mank is the more fully realized one and all around better production, but Trumbo is then one that gives you the most to chew on.

#Compare And Contrast #Trumbo #Mank #screenwriting

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drawing-way-outside-the-lines · 5 years ago

Photo

Violet Thompson Lupei-McKinney *Supporting Character

Voice Claim: (Lily Collins) https://youtu.be/xDDQ1frptE4?t=38 Singing Voice Claim: (Violet Orlandi) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7eOne5Xiso&list=PLoqFP_2vv_6vesgVmH3z6y1AZmygeOT4t&index=16

Partner(s): None. Parents: Raven McKinney, Evan Thompson and Akin Lupei. Kids: None. Siblings: Liv, Evindora, Odette, Felix, Aedan, Caspian, Sam, Aishlynn and Annie. Age: Immortal, but translates into mid-late 20′s Birthday: 7th of December Height: 167cm Body type: Slim but with curves. Eye color: Light gray, but her eyes change color depending on mood. Light gray being her most neutral state. Classification: (Immortal) Half Demon. Known powers: Possession, shape shifting, teleportation, healing, sensing (the ability to determine the location and status of other beings by concentrating on them)

About: ~ Charismatic, adaptable, flirtatious, brave, caring, playful, elegant, observant, curious, teasing, passionate, intelligent, honest, flexible, sarcastic, humorous, open-minded, patient, helpful, understanding, respectful, caring, social, lazy, protective, optimistic, focused, fair, confident, out-going, dynamic, tidy, extraordinary, imaginative, creative, spontaneous and challenging ~ Can shape shift into a black fox. ~ Pansexual. ~ Has long black silky hair. ~ Has black tattoos on most parts of his body. ~ Part Romanian Gypsy, part Irish. ~ Has a rose tattoo on her right arm and a Sternum dotwork tattoo of a crescent moon and crystals. ~ Is very skilled at several instruments including guitar, bass, drums and violin. ~ Is very skilled at sword fighting/fencing. ~ Does Parkour and is very good. ~ Is a street artist. ~ Smells like black roses and Frankincense. ~ Can be a bit of a flirt. ~ Hates melted chocolate. ~ Hates Mosquitoes! ~ Gamer girl. ~ Lives with her roomies Dalton and Xue. ~ Very into Alchemy and witchcraft. But doesn’t consider herself a witch. ~ Doesn’t much understand the whole hype about celebs. They are just people. ~ Would never drink Starbucks! ~ Tends to laze around in bed for days. ~ Is a bit of a slob although she doesn’t look like it. ~ Is considered a bit of a wild card as she often acts random, and it’s hard to guess what her next move will be. ~ Her friends sometimes calls her Viola. ~ Very much a rebel. Doesn’t like authorities. ~ Loves her dads, especially Raven, her siblings, music, non-melted chocolate, modern art, staying in bed, youtube, going to concerts, singing, creating music, writing, doodling, eating potato chips, lounging around doing nothing at all, gaming, long showers, collecting gold teeth, Netflix, cupcakes, spiders, the smell of olive oil although she doesn’t like the taste much, Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, Hedgehogs, conspiracy theories and ‘end of the world’ fiction. ~ Dresses a bit Gothic, but doesn’t consider herself Goth. Always wears something black and white combined. ~ Doesn’t take herself, anyone else or life too serious.

Violet’s tag Violet’s house/home Violet’s moodboard Handwriting/ask answer pic:

One Gif to describe her:

One song to describe her: Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song Personal play list: 1. Blacktop Mojo - Prodigal 2. Gorillaz - 5/4 3. Yael Naim -Toxic 4. Nouvelle Vague - Guns Of Brixton 5. Raury - Devil's Whisper 6. Chelou - Out Of Sight 7. Billie Eilish - No Time To Die (in the Style of Chris Cornell) 8. The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army 9. Rainbow Kitten Surprise - It's Called: Freefall 10. Dan Black - Symphonies ft. Kid Cudi 11. Gorillaz - Rock The House 12. The Beatles - Penny Lane 13. Jack White - Love Interruption 14. Caravan Palace - Lone Digger 15. Chelou - Halfway to Nowhere 16. The Raconteurs - Sunday Driver 17. Slaves - The Hunter 18. Massive Attack - Karmacoma 19. Mcbaise - She's a Big Boy 20. Korn - Trash 21. Jack White - Would You Fight For My Love? 22. Pink Floyd - Breathe 23. Evanescence - Everybody's Fool 24. SEMBLANT - Mere Shadow 25. Otis Stacks (ft. Gift Of Gab) - Fashion Drunk 26.The Distillers - Drain The Blood 27. Green Day - Holiday 28. Linkin Park - Faint 29. Gorillaz - Kids With Guns 30. Moby & The Void Pacific Choir - In This Cold Place 31. Massive Attack - Inertia Creeps 32. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Hymn For A Droid 33. Portishead - Glory Box 34. Fatboy Slim - Don't Let The Man Get You Down 35. Moloko - The Time Is Now

#Violet Thompson Lupei McKinney #half demon #shapeshifter #immortal #supernatural #ts3 #sims3 #sims 3 #simblr #simographysup

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sybilius · 5 years ago

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baby steinway

Part (1/3) of a self-indulgent fluffy MacGyver Mactrio fic I’m working on. Figured I might as well workshop it here, happy Sunday Six!

A truly incredible notion, how little the state of his apartment has changed in the year or so that Murdoc has been...involved, should he put it? With MacGyver and Dalton, no less. Or Jack, rather.

He picks up an older floral lace shirt, one which he in fact had used recently. It served his employer’s purposes to have a woman in the secretary’s desk when it would set the clients at ease. And the practice was nice to keep in hand. At least gave some measure of purpose to the mountain of clothes in the bedroom.

The weapons on the other hand, he’d barely begun to redistribute. Not to mention the books, which he was disturbed to realize he hardly remembered buying or reading, nor the excess of ostentatious effects that were ever so fitting in that crumbling mansion he bought…

"Hey Murdoc! These real gold?"

Murdoc poked his head out of the bedroom, to see Jack brandishing a candlestick excitedly, "you know what these are worth? Where did you get em?"

"...don't particularly remember."

"Oh well, you want to keep em, I'm sure we could find somewhere in Mac's house they'd fit…" Jack's uncertainty was clear enough, but it did spark remembrance of when he'd purchased them. For that dinner set at MacGyver's home. Arguably the scene where it all began.

"Keep one. If you find a way to sell any others, that's fine by me."

"Putting it in the discard box, only this one is for me! Jack box. Heh," Jack scrawls his name on the side.

Murdoc nods, turning his attention back to the pile of clothes. He'd offered that deal to MacGyver, when he was going through their plans. There would be three types of items, those to be discarded (or sold at a substantial markup, if Jack would have his way), those to be stored in Jack's hangar, and those to end up in the small space of MacGyver's houseboat.

Moving in. It was truly dizzying to think about. And yet, three times the past week he'd woken with Jack's breath next to his ear, or fallen asleep on the couch next to MacGyver while watching one of those plotless westerns. What could possibly change?

For one: he would be there. That changed everything.

"Hey you know, it's too bad Mac is busy with Phoenix stuff. Could use his energy lifting up all these boxes."

"Yes, a pity," Murdoc murmurs distractedly, finding yet another Beretta amongst the lace and cufflinks. Unloaded, thankfully. Unlike the previous two.

Jack stops a moment, a slight frown on his face, "This is one of your 'things', isn't it?" .

"My...things, Dalton?"

"Oh see, I got you, you only call me Dalton when I get you," Jack stuffs the marker in his pocket, "I must be in love with you, coming over to kiss you making that sour face and holding a gun."

"...you're far too ridiculous for anyone to want to kill, Dalton," he lets the syllables snap that time, ridiculousness to match as Jack crosses the room.

Murdoc does drop the gun to let Jack frame his face with his hands, allowing Murdoc the space to hide in warm lips and a brash laugh. And to his credit, Jack steps away with a wink. Letting Murdoc know he doesn't have to explain himself.

But at this point, Murdoc supposes he might as well.

"It's not as if I didn't want to have MacGyver along. Simply that...well, he's made it clear what his thoughts are on my possessions."

"He has?"

"You aren't with us all the time, Jack."

"No I mean...what are you thinking he's thinking?"

"That I should get rid of it all, I suppose?"

"Oh. Yeah, he's like that. Always saying that about whatever plane I've bought next, you know? I just ignore him and explain to him how it's gonna make tons of money once he's fixed it up. And they're always beautiful things, like my Sharon," he sighs, probably seeing that rusty floatplane in his mind’s eye. Murdoc privately agreed with MacGyver’s protests there, but still, Jack’s sympathies aren’t unappreciated.

Murdoc picks up a round object on the ground. Hamster wheel. He’s never owned a hamster. See, the difficulty is, he’s not quite sure what he wants these objects for at all. He’s sure that getting rid of them sounds distressing, and keeping them even more so. That doesn’t help with MacGyver’s convictions.

“And besides, you know Mac, he likes having projects, things to fix. Figure I’m doing him a favor there, right?” Jack winks, utterly cheeky as always.

“I don’t particularly want my space ‘fixed’ to whatever MacGyver considers it as such,” that much, Murdoc is sure of.

“Makes sense. Well you know, anything doesn’t fit, you know where it’ll go! Safe and sound at Dalton air! Say, d’you think I could use this silver tray table? Maybe get a first class in after we stop doing cargo only-- oh, say!”

Jack has pulled a velvet curtain off the baby grand piano underneath all the debris. Murdoc feels the first twinge of possessiveness in seeing his reflection in its lacquered black. Yes, he very much remembers why he bought this.

“What are you thinking for this thing?” Murdoc pulls the cover off the keys near-reverently, only half listening to Jack. He touches the middle C key carefully. It rings discordant. The surreal elation he felt upon uncovering it pops like a soap bubble.

“...it’s very out of tune. Will be expensive to move.”

“Yeah, but it’s a pretty thing though, innit? You said you play, right? Hell, I bet Mac could tune it, if you give him enough time--”

“I would be opposed to any form of tinkering on a Steinway. Besides, I’m sure he has more than enough projects.”

“Sounds like you’re protective of her, she got a name?”

“...Claudius,” It would seem silly, admitting that name to MacGyver. But since Jack asked, and would likely have no idea of the context...

“Not a lady piano, huh? Not that I ever owned a piano, most I ever played was a beat-up sax. But say, we’ll figure out what to do with this after you tell me what’s to be done with all the silverware, huh? Put it all together and I think we could really attract some high-class people to fly at Dalton Air, say maybe you could cook…?”

Murdoc slowly closes the piano, settled by listening to Dalton prattle. What did it matter, where Claud-- where the piano ended up, really? It had been years since Murdoc had even pulled off the piano’s velvet.

Still, when they came across an old folio of Chopin, Murdoc did have at least one object to start a box marked to take home.

#my fic #MacGyver 1985 #macgyver #murdoc #jack dalton #mactrio #fluff #mac fluffic

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amortm · 5 years ago

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* 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓'𝐒 𝐔𝐏 , pretty kitties ! i'm terribly sorry abt my absence on the dash alongside you angels , & trust that i’m fully embarrassed of my slow ass , but i finally typed this baby out , & i can’t wait for y’all to meet my love , 𝒋𝒖𝒍𝒆𝒔 !

* ╰ it’s an absolute dishonour to meet you , julianna / jules . at twenty - one , you’ve disgraced the peralta family name & failed to carry on their legacy as an elite . as a result , they’ve requested that we at the academy do our best to rid you of your venality , & seeing as though they’re worth 86m , we dutifully obliged . while your pleonastic & inexorable attributes have always promised failure , it’s your spar with pride & ghosting your breakout acting role after you found out your daddy secured it for you that got you committed . before we take possession of you , it’s imperative that we know that you are a cisfem who prefers she & her pronouns , & you resemble diana silvers . your birthday is on april 26th , making you a recalcitrant taurus , & you were transported to us all the way from vail , co . at the present time , you work off campus at seaside florist . go ahead & purchase that extra large suitcase , disgrace . you’re going to need it .

your name / age / pronouns / timezone / etc .

hiya loves ! i go by blue & she / her pronouns , i’m 9teen , & i’m a pst baby ! i’m one of the six lovely admins @ #unholy , & they’re all superstars , so imagine my daily awe ! anyway , i’m beyond excited to finally get the ball rolling , & share the dash with you babes !

muse inspo .

noora sætre , the goldfinch , ella of frell , neil perry , charlie dalton , claire saffitz , monica geller , carla lalli music , mia thermopolis , adam parrish , blue sargent , anna ou !

character details :

💐 : sweetly judgmental , adoringly vindictive / vindictively adoring , witty ‘n gritty , bitingly tender , expressively stubborn , softly feral !

😈 : hershey’s chocolate , brooklyn pizza , baguettes , collector edition copies of wuthering heights , selfies , her mom , richard siken anthologies , twilight ( #teamedward ) , crowded movie theaters , english gardens , the air in new york , the air in vail , snowboarding , her hair , hot chocolate ( no whipped cream , half a bag of mini marshmallows dumped atop ) , andrew garfield , her discover weekly playlist , german shepherds , harry potter , lord of the rings , comedies , horror movies , nude lipstick , chocolate chip toffee cookies with sea salt drizzled on top , mamma mia franchise , dissertations , driving , any typa jacket / coat , being the big spoon , her father , coca cola , lilies , disney t - shirts , her father’s films , take out , farms , italy ( every single crevice of it ) , the plaza hotel , mint chip ice cream , hats , trains , monthly horoscopes , ancient history , greenwich village , maggie rogers , mating ritual , vampire weekend , mitski , the wombats , magic bronson , jade bird , hockey , pretending to be a fairy / witch / mermaid as a child , naruto , avatar the last airbender , stepping over state / country lines , hot water with honey , amazon prime !

👿 : the marvel franchise except for the captain america & thor trilogies , coffee & tea , shorts , sweet potatoes , layovers of any length , socks , soy milk , her arms , chihuahuas , a song of fire & ice novels , super fudgy / rich cake & brownies , cooking for herself , being told what to do , being wrong & having everyone know it , people who are rude to employees , bad tipping , margaret atwood , her first grade teacher , plastic coke bottles , too much pepper in a dish !

upbringing & family life , life before the academy , etc .

julianna rachel peralta was born to a beauty - charmed family of three , with a new yorker mother & italian father birthing the healthiest & happiest girl parents can dream for . her mother , susanna ‘ susie ’ peters , was coined the model that pioneered 90′s fashion , a la kate moss , & met julianna’s father , elio peralta ( think the francis ford coppola of this verse ) , whilst she was briefly on set for jack to see friend fran drescher . their love stemmed from there , after she made a mocking comment & he overhead & mocked her in return for it , & the whirlwind romance that captivated their world for the next few years led to miss jules being born . neither of her parents desired marriage from each other , rather believing that their love knew no bounds , even those of matrimony , but never did it dim the bond held between the small family of three . once jules was in their arms , they relocated from new york to colorado , into the quaint town of vail , surrounded by pristine mountains & crystalline air , where susie & elio found a pocket of indisputable peace after a small winter trip in their first year of romance .

it was there that jules grew up , & there that the love of her parents faltered . her mother missed the world of fashion , the rhythms & rhymes of the space she knew as well as in maintaining the fame that spotlighted her so , while elio’s passions for turning out film after film dwindled . & when the offer from vogue came in , waxing poetic about a fresh position as a fashion editor , both she & elio knew that their paths would veer . their love was no less , but integral factors of their relationship were now fractured , & they each desired after different things . this was all said to julianna , in soft tones & with assuring words . yet , never was it promised that everything would be the same as it was , for the truth was in something unsaid . susie moved to new york , while elio & jules stayed in that mansion in the mountains , & all was as fair & well as it could be , with julianna staying with her mom during the fall season & discovering every little piece of italy in the summers . christmases & hanukkahs were always shared in vail , & susie tagged along european dives when her schedule allowed for it . it was as if their relationship & subsequent uncoupling were trivial details no one could bother to account for , until , in the worst spot she’s ever seen her mother , it came out that elio peralta found a new woman to share a life with , & that their new life together would be housed in the same home that susie & elio specially chose & , in emotional terms , truly built themselves & carved their family in its foundations . it was a betrayal of the deepest caliber , & from there the small peace that still was at the core of their little family was forever severed , & it became obvious to jules that those few years were lucky .

she was thirteen when famed actress lily taylor ( aka jennifer connely lmao ) moved into her family home , bringing her adopted eleven - year - old twins with her . in a sense of loyalty to her mother & her own hurt over the despair that her father caused their original trio , jules was heartily & positively prepared to hate the new additions to her family with a vindictive fidelity . her plan was promptly overturned , however , when she spent day upon day with her new fam & steadily allowed them into her heart . this , of course , was paired with doubtless guilt , spurred on by her own mind whenever she flew to nyc to see her mother , but soon enough this was caught by each of her parents , & susie was insistent in her assurance that whatever frigidness she still held for elio & his new beau ( which julianna didn’t bother to correct with wife ) , it in no way extends nor should be mimicked by her . elio , in turn , was quick to promise to jules that his love for her mother flamed in his heart to this day , but each of them are happier living their lives in the lifestyles they’ve chosen , with the people they’ve chosen .

there really wasn’t anything to do but swallow their words , & live by the sentiments they expressed . jules was both a mama’s & daddy’s girl in one , so to take their words as fact was an ignorance she allowed herself , even when the hurt look on her mother’s faced inevitably shone through in hidden moments .

but when jules turned seventeen , susie fell in love with a musician / designer named tommy lever she met while interviewing his collection for vogue , & the two fell deep , far enough to sway susie into moving to brazil during the spring season , away from her beloved manhattan loft , to be with him in his home ( the link is crucial to his characterization lmao , as lenny kravitz is essentially tommy lever ) . when she can , jules visits as often as she’s allowed ( always ) & has gained a room herself .

after that , however , the cycle between her various homes continued , well into her slipping teendom , & when the prospect of college crunched down on her , the choice seemed inevitable . nyu gained a classics & theater major for its class of 2019 ( she skipped the third grade , a fact she didn’t stop bragging about at that age ) , but in her senior year of university , the walls came crashing down .

what sin are they categorized under ? why ?

jules belongs to the sin of #pride through & through . after all , if there was one damning trait to send her straight into the pits of burning infernos , her prideful sense of self would be it . that’s not to say she’s arrogant ( nor am i saying she isn’t ) , but it’s more that she can’t take being undermined or allow the supposed undermining to go unpunished . she has a great deal of #pride in her own self worth & capabilities , though she’s usually loathe to make it known in plain terms , & if she feels attacked in that manner , she’ll completely close up . this often , as you’ll surely be able to tell , beckons problematic shit .

what got them sent to the academy ?

during jules’ senior year at nyu , she was contacted by her agent ( shared with her father ) & offered an audition for a leading role in a major hollywood studio film . throughout the years , she dabbled in theater & attracted a starring role or two along the way , especially in school productions , but the plan for success was always envisioned after college . when she got the call , however , she handled it with a happy - go - lucky fuck it sort of approach , & a week later , when she received the good - bearing call , there was no backing out , or so she thought . tentatively dropping out of the semester in which she would graduate , jules modeled the next few months of her life around the film , happily doing so .

yet , the first week into rehearsals brought down a cloud so dark she thought she’d choke under it . she overheard a few producers on their lunch break , talking about this - & - that - esque bullshit , but just as she was passing , one of them made a comment about the peralta girl , & how hollywood legacies are the roaches of the industry . how directors from the middle ages should just stick to ruining things behind the camera , not forcing a disaster in front of it .

that day , jules walked out of set & never took a step back in . effectively ruining her future career in the process , she ghosted all contact from the production & even went as far to jet off to brazil to regenerate with her mom as an escape . she couldn’t even pick up where she left off during the semester , & simply had to sit back & witness her classmates of four years graduate without her . her parents were furious , but the only thing she gave in return was a steely silence , refusing even turn a glare to her father . now , she’s been shoved into the hands of the academy , biding the days until she could return to nyu in the fall .

what do you think they’ll struggle with the most at the academy ?

tbh , the biggest issue for jules is the resentment curling at her core . at her father , the film , the academy , herself . right now she’s just in a foul mood & sick at being forced into glitterati rehab , but her #pride won’t allow her to fail , even if she wishes to do it just to spite everyone . she is a people person , however , & will almost definitely warm up , even if it’s just for appearances sake .

extra details : links you’d like to incorporate , wanted connections , literally anything else you want to include , etc .

wanted connections will be coming soon ! for now , please enjoy this authentic video of jules chillin in her fav corner of the world , aka italia , taken by her bff eli 😔✌️

#unholyintro #icb how LATE my ass is w this gd intro #cue y'all throwing the torches and pitchforks @ me JDJKSDJSKDJDSKJDSDS #⋆ ╰ ` 𝒹𝒾𝒶𝓂ℴ𝓃𝒹 ╱ 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑦 ╱ 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 . : dev .

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