Chapter Text
Mac liked Doctor Amanda. She seemed nice. She’d greeted him warmly and given him a reassuring smile when he’d walked through her door, was sat opposite him with an open posture in an office that had been carefully arranged to be as neutral and non threatening as possible, and yet he was more uncomfortable than he could ever remember being. He was so tense his skin was prickling and the likelihood of it vibrating off his bones and crawling away felt very real.
Mac and Jack had looked through the list of therapist Jack had been given and had chosen Doctor Amanda as their favourite. When they’d gone to her office together to meet her she’d been friendly and professional and Mac had decided that he would start seeing her to talk. He hadn’t had any more flashbacks since the one in the stable but the memory of it and the potential for it to happen again sat heavily in the back of his mind. He knew that possibility worried Jack too. So here he was, in Doctor Amanda’s office, sat primly on her sofa for his first session with her.
“Would you like me to go over the agreement you and I have again?” Doctor Amanda asked Mac.
“Yes, please.” Mac remembered what she’d told him when he’d visited the office with Jack but one of them had to start talking and going over the ground rules they’d agreed on felt like a safe way to do that.
“Okay. Everything you tell me in here is confidential,” Doctor Amanda said with a dip of her head, “I will never tell your father, your school or anyone else anything you’ve said to me. I’m obliged to act if you say something that gives me a serious cause to be concerned that you’re about to harm yourself or someone else but other than in those circumstances everything you say in this room stays in here.”
“Good – that’s good,” Mac said.
“And you can tell me anything. I don’t want you to worry about offending or shocking me, and I’m not going to tell you to mind your language or correct your grammar. Nothing is too big or too small for you to talk about.”
Mac nodded, any reply he would have made caught in his throat.
During the drive to Doctor Amanda’s office Jack had pulled up at a stop sign and given Mac a significant look.
“You want to tell me that everything is going to be okay with Doctor Amanda,” Mac had blurted out at the sight of Jack’s bunched eyebrows. “And that I should be willing to give seeing her a try. And that I don’t have to keep going if I hate it. And that there’s no shame in seeing a therapist. And that you're proud of me for asking for help.”
“You're making me sound very smart there, bud.” Jack had said as he’d started the truck again, “According to you I’m full of good advice. Are you going to be taking any of it?”
“Yes, all of it, it’s just that,” Mac thudded his head back against the seat behind him, staring up at the truck’s roof, “lots of people have had bad things happen to them, lots of people have terrible things to deal with, there are people who are really struggling and what if - I’m... I’m fine, really, a lot of people are worse off than me.” Mac rolled his head to the side to look at Jack, a tiny smile playing at the corner of his lips, “I’m with you, we’re a family and everything’s great so maybe I should just,” he let his head fall back again, staring up at but not really seeing the metal above him, “maybe I should just – I shouldn’t be so...what if I don’t really need, you know, there are other people who probably deserve help more than I do, what if I’m not...if I’m not...”
“You’ve seen those games they have in arcades right? Pac Man and Space Invaders?” Jack interrupted Mac’s spiralling ramble and, confused, Mac answered with a ‘uh huh’. “If you play those games for a long time, blow up a truckload of aliens and score enough points, you get to put your name on the leader board,” Jack continued. “It takes a lot of time and practice to get good enough at a game to be able to write your name up there with the other high scorers. You have to put the hours in and work your way right through the really hard levels, don’t you?”
“I guess.” Mac was still none the wiser where Jack was going with his analogy.
“Needing to talk to a therapist isn’t like that. You don’t have to collect enough trauma points or bad memory tokens or whatever to earn your place with someone who can help you. If you want to talk through your troubles you should get to talk through your troubles. Simple.” Jack gave the steering wheel a definitive rap with one hand. “And if you ask me, most of the people I’ve met could have done with seeing a professional to untangle some of the twists and turns they have in their heads. I don’t think you can be in the world without the world making you need that at least a little bit.”
“But-” Mac frowned out of the passenger side window, looking at all the people passing by who weren’t going to meet with their therapist.
“Because you’re with me and you’re safe and happy you shouldn’t have anything to complain about?” Jack interrupted again. His usual policy of listening to Mac and letting him finish saying whatever was on his mind abandoned because he didn’t want to give the particular thought in Mac’s head time to fully take root.
“Yeah.” Mac shrugged. “If where I was living was like it was before, then maybe I should get to see Doctor Amanda but it’s not. Things aren’t bad, I’m okay now, I don’t need help like I did then.”
“Just because you’re more okay than you used to be that doesn’t mean that you’re totally okay. I mean, you are okay, but you’re not okay too, and just because you’re not as not okay as you used to be that doesn’t mean you aren’t still not okay, and that’s okay.” Jack’s brow furrowed as he thought his statement through. “What I’m saying is you don’t have to feel guilty about talking to Doctor Amanda. You aren’t getting anything you don’t deserve or taking something from anyone else. See?”
“I see,” Mac said because there was logic to be found in that disaster of a sentence. A Jack type of logic but logic nonetheless.
“Really?” Jack laughed, “I’m not sure I understood all that and I’m the one who just said it!”
Mac laughed too, which could have been Jack’s intention all along.
“Like you just said I’d say, everything will be fine with Doctor Amanda, you should give seeing her a try because what have you got to lose? If you really hate seeing her you can stop and we’ll find someone else because there’s no shame in wanting to talk about what worries you. I am proud of you for telling me that you’d like help, I know you don’t find that kind of thing easy.” Jack gave a pleased harrumph, “I do give good advice don’t I?”
The road signs Mac could see out of the window told him they were almost at Doctor Amanda’s office. They’d be pulling into it’s parking lot soon, they’d be climbing out of the car and walking through the office door. Soon he would be going to his first session of therapy.
“It will be okay won’t it?” Mac asked, referring to his appointment but to everything else too, everything in the truck with him and Jack and absolutely everything everywhere else that wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t fair to ask Jack to promise him that everything everywhere would be all right, no one should be expected to do that because it isn’t a promise that anyone can keep, not even Jack, as much as he wanted to, but Mac couldn’t stop himself from needing the reassurance just then.
“Of course.”
Mac wondered how deeply the sureness Jack answered with ran. Mac wondered if Jack was saying everything would be okay because he thought it was what Mac wanted to hear even though he didn’t believe it. Mac wondered if he would ever be able to stop wondering about everything all the time.
Maybe that was something he should talk about with his therapist.
Jack flicked the truck’s indicator on and Mac listened to it click in the silence that fell as the truck turned into the car park of Doctor Amanda’s address.
“Here we are,” Mac said.
“Everything will be okay, kiddo.” Jack rested a hand on the back of Mac’s head and Mac leant into his warm palm a little. “Even if things aren’t okay right now, like if it turns out that despite appearances Doctor Amanda is actually like the Wicked Witch of the West, we’ll find someone else for you to talk to. Eventually, one way or another, things will be okay, honest.”
Jack had promised, and he knew it was stupid but it had helped Mac walk through the door of the office and sit down on Doctor Amanda’s sofa.
“Do you have any questions?” Doctor Amanda asked.
“You don’t have a clipboard.” Mac gestured to her empty hands. “I thought you’d be writing notes or something.”
“I might make some notes about what we’ve talked through after you’ve gone but I don’t write anything down during our session. I wouldn’t want anyone scribbling down what I’ve said while I’m talking,” Doctor Amanda wrinkled her nose up in distaste, “would you?”
“No. But - ” Mac pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, “but I have written a list, it’s of things I want to talk about. It’s what I want to stop doing, like, why I decided to come here.” After tossing and turning restlessly the night before Mac had turned on his bedside light a little after midnight and made a list off all the things he wanted Doctor Amanda to help him with. He’d hoped it would be good to have the list somewhere other than in his head and that it would help him be brave enough to tell her what he wanted. The paper that Mac spread over his thigh, swiping one hand over it to flatten out the folds, read:
Things I want from talking to Doctor Amanda:
No more flashbacks
Stop overthinking things
Stop having nightmares
Stop bad thoughts getting stuck in my head
Stop being scared that Jack won’t want me anymore
“It’s the things I want to fix.” What had been comforting and reasonable in the middle of the night felt silly when Mac looked down at the paper in his lap. “I thought it might help to write them down,” he added, trying not to squirm with embarrassment.
He’d thought about putting the items on the list into order, with the things he wanted to deal with first at the top but he’d realised he didn’t know which of the problems was the biggest. Maybe if he stopped overthinking things he wouldn’t have any more nightmares, and if he stopped getting unsettling thoughts trapped in his head he would stop worrying that Jack would get tired of how much work he was and wouldn’t want him any more. The things on the list were probably all bound up with each other and it was hard to know which one needed dealing with before the others. That was the kind of thing that Doctor Amanda might know about.
“You’ve thought about goals, that’s good, it’s actually something I was going to discuss with you.” Doctor Amanda’s expression was pleased and full of reassurance.
“Do you want it?” Mac held the list out to her.
“Thank you,” Doctor Amanda said, she took the paper and laid it on the arm of her chair. “This is a good start and it gives us something to look back on when we want to discuss progress.”
Mac pressed his lips together and nodded, mollified a little. He hadn’t got that wrong after all.
“You can’t fail anything in here,” Doctor Amanda said, as if she’d understood his tense gesture. “There are no right or wrong answers, there’s just what you think and feel. I don’t have a check list I’m going to mark you against and send you home with an F on your report card.”
“Jack says something like that, he says he wants to know what I think, that whatever I’m feeling can’t be wrong and that if he wanted to live with someone he kept around to tell him the right answers he’d have adopted Wikipedia.” Mac smiled to himself, “Except he doesn’t say Wikipedia, he calls it ‘that witchy-media place on the internet that everyone looks stuff up on’ but it’s what he means.”
“Witchy-media?”
“That’s what he says.”
Doctor Amanda looked off into the mid distance as she considered the phrase, she smiled and turned back to Mac. “I like that.”
“Me too.” Mac felt the tension in his shoulders ease a fraction. He liked Doctor Amanda.
Jack didn’t like waiting rooms.
He wasn’t overly fond of waiting, truth be told. Not for things like this.
Not that he’d done a lot of things like ‘this’.
He wanted Mac to be okay. Mac wasn’t okay. The fact that they were both in a therapist office meant that he wasn’t okay. Jack’s son was sad, scared and haunted and Jack couldn’t fix that.
Well he could, and he was. He’d brought his son to someone who knew how to help him. Doctor Amanda had seemed nice, she had a list of qualifications against her name that read like a bad scrabble game (MA, Psy.D, ABCCAP Certified) and everything he’d read about her was positive so Jack felt cautiously optimistic she would be good for Mac. But she couldn’t help him with a single course of pills or the wave of a magic wand, it would take work and time spent revisiting the things that made Mac feel sad and scared and haunted.
Jack rubbed his palms over his jeans and tried not to twitch too much.
The four other people scattered around the waiting room all looked much calmer than Jack felt. One was reading a book, two were looking at their phones and the fourth was knitting with a cheerful yellow wool that made Jack guess that whatever was being made was destined to keep a baby warm. The knitter’s needles were moving and clicking rhythmically and Jack watched the back and forth of her hands for a moment letting the motion soothe him. He had tried fiddling with his phone while he’d been sat but none of the games or websites he looked at had held his attention. He was torn, uncomfortably oscillating between the urge to rush into action, pace, run, shout, kick down doors and maybe slide over the hood of a car because that always looks cool on TV, and the need to lie supine on the hardwood floor beneath his feet, relaxing into the cool, flat surface and allowing everything to just be. Wanting to help his son and letting his son be helped had led him to an unexpected place of not impotence (never impotence, excuse you) but inaction that didn’t suit his nature and Jack didn’t know how to channel the residual adrenaline that had left him with.
He suddenly missed Diane very much. She’d sent him a text saying ‘Thinking about you both, I hope everything goes okay, I’ll speak to you later xxx’ and while it was good to know she was thinking about him Jack would have liked to have her beside him, her hand in his hand, her weight just resting against his. She wouldn’t have even had to touch him, having her there beside him would have been steadying enough. He would call her later, he would tell her how the afternoon had gone and she would come out with a comment that was kind and funny making him feel connected to something good and real.
During his and Dianne’s date a few days before Jack had found himself staring into the depths of his cappuccino as if it had held the answers to life’s deepest questions.
“I don’t think you’ll find it in there.”
When Jack had jerked his head up he’d found Diane smiling at him. “What?”
“Whatever it is that you’re looking for,” she’d said. “I don’t think you’ll find it in there.”
“Do you ever wish,” Jack had stirred the remains of foam and brown sugar in his cup into marbled swirls, “that a grown up would come and sort everything out? I know I’m an adult and a father - that was my choice and I wouldn’t change being Mac’s dad – but do you ever want someone who’s more mature than you to show up and tell you what the right thing to do is?”
“All the time,” Diane had shook her head with a self deprecating snort, “sometimes more than once a day if a big bill comes in or the washing machine starts making a strange noise. I don’t expect that to ever stop. I think everyone would like a more grown up grown up to take care of things for them every now and then.”
“A more grown up grown up?”
“An adult-ier adult. You know, a proper adult, someone who actually knows what they're doing rather than someone who has an vague idea of what might work and is hoping no one will notice that they’re making everything up.”
“That’s parenting for you.”
“That’s life.” Jack and Diane had shared a rueful eye roll. “You’re thinking about Mac,” Diane had added.
“It’s all so out of my hands. If I knew that Mac’s first appointment with Doctor Amanda would be hard on him I could prepare us both for that but I don’t know if it will be, it might go fine,” Jack had said, rearranging the contents of his cup into small mountains of brown streaked white. “I’m hoping it will be fine and it’s the hope that’s making it hurt. It’s like what I want is right in front of me and knowing that I could have got the relief of holding it will make having it being snatched away more devastating if that happens.”
Diane had tipped her head to the side and Jack had seen understanding in the gesture. She understood so much, his Diane did. “Is it like because you know how good having what you want could be that would make losing it that much harder?” she’d asked, “and like waiting to see which one you’re going to get is like being on a knife’s edge?”
“Yeah. The therapy thing could go really right,” Jack had said, “but it could go really wrong too. I just want Mac to be happy and I have a real good reason to hope he will be so if he isn’t the disappointment will be tough.”
A mound of coffee scented foam had been flattened with an angry tap from the back of Jack’s spoon. He wanted Mac to be happy so he wouldn’t be disappointed, he didn’t like hoping his son would be okay because he didn’t want to feel bad if that didn’t happen, that sounded so selfish and stupid.
“Elwood would promise to change,” Diane had said with slow carefulness. “He’d swear that everything would be different and I used to believe him because I hoped he loved us enough to really try to be better. Hope is...”Diane had let out a sigh heavy with darkening shades of regret, “hope is intoxicating. It tempts you with promises that are fragile but possible so even though you know those promises could be broken you know they could be kept too. What I learned is that you need to really think about what you are actually hoping for and what you have to do to get it. I hoped Riley and me would be happy and what I eventually realised was that we needed to leave Elwood to have that.”
The rest of Jack’s cappuccino foam had been swatted into submission as he thought about the pure essence of what he wanted. “I just want Mac to be okay,” he’d said. “I want him to feel happy and healed.”
“He will. You’re doing everything you can to make that happen. His appointment won’t be as bad or as good as you think, it’ll be fine.” Diane had reached over the table and plucked Jack’s teaspoon from him then took his hand. “And neither of you are doing this alone.”
“Thank you.”
Jack heard Mac’s voice as the door to the waiting room opened. It was time to be an adult, an adult-y one.
He made himself rise to standing like a reasonable person, not jump up like an scared family member in an ER waiting room desperate to hear if their loved one had pulled through life saving surgery. Studying Mac as he walked towards him showed Jack that his son didn’t have red eyes so hadn’t been crying, and he didn’t look shaken or afraid. He looked fine. A spark of relieved optimism glimmered in his chest.
“Kiddo?”
Mac gave Jack a nod that was...completely normal, so it told Jack nothing about his mental and emotional state.
“Are you ready to go home?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Right. Excellent.” Jack was unable to resist throwing his arm around his son’s shoulders and squeezing so Mac was squashed against him when he led them to the door.
Jack let go when they reached the truck so they could climb in. He had been reluctant to hold back his questions but his reserved son might not have appreciated being interrogated about how he was feeling while stood in a parking lot.
“Was it okay? Are you okay?” Jack asked as soon as the truck’s door closed behind him. “Do you want to go back because if you didn’t like Doctor Amanda we can find someone else, I’ve been thinking about the other people we haven’t seen yet and...”
“It was fine, Doctor Amanda is nice.”
“So you’re okay then? You didn’t talk about anything that made you feel bad?”
“We mostly talked about ground rules and about you, my friends and school and stuff.”
“You talked about me?” That pulled Jack up short. Which made no sense. Why wouldn’t they talk about him – he was Mac’s dad? Still...
“Well, yeah,” Mac fiddled with the zip of his jacket, “we talked about my life and you’re a big part of my life.”
“That’s fair,” Jack said, because it was. He turned the truck’s key, pushed down on the gas and pulled into the street, comforted by his muscle’s memory of the twist, press and turn. Not everything was balanced on a knife’s edge of uncertainty, this he could do with ease. He would drive his son and himself home just like he’d done a thousand times before and would again. He’d get them where they needed to be safely.
Jack changed gear, adjusted the rear view mirror, checked his wing mirrors, twitched the rear view again to move it to a more perfect angle.
“I didn’t say anything bad, about you, that is,” Mac told Jack, perhaps seeing concern in his restlessness, “you don’t have to worry about that.”
“You can say what you like about me, and everything else, that’s the point of the whole therapy extravaganza. How about this,” Jack offered, glad to be given a chance to say this to Mac, “if at any point, and I know that the chances of this happening are teeny tiny itsy bitsy, but if I ever do anything that’s less than one hundred percent cool and awesome I hereby give you permission to tell Doctor Amanda about it.”
Mac smile was bright with fondness, “I’ll remember that, thank you.”
Mac’s smile didn’t fade as he turned from Jack to gaze at the road. From the far away look on his face Jack guessed he was processing the last hour, considering everything he’d said, thought, felt and heard, and he decided to let that happen in peace.
He clicked on the truck’s radio, he would give Mac relative peace at least. If they sat in silence it could become uncomfortable and Jack didn’t want his son feeling like he had to talk to fill the quiet or share before he was ready. The opening chords of Sweet Child ‘O’ Mine came from the radio and Jack took a deep breath ready to sing along while his son frowned in thought.
“She’s got a smile that seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories, where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky...
They were only a few steps inside the house - the front door hadn’t clicked closed behind him - when Jack invoked Rule Number One.
“We’re home so that means I get to do this.” He tugged Mac into his arms, closing his eyes and trying to breathe in the nearness of his son, pulling him in where he could be shielded by his arms and his love. “I get to hold you as much as I want, remember?”
“I don’t think there’s ever a chance of me forgetting that,” Mac joked, but he nestled against Jack, holding him back. Jack felt him relax.
There had been a lot of talking that day. There had been a lot of talking, planning and deciding in the days leading up to it so Jack opted for silence, he let his supporting, loving hold on his son tell him what he wanted him to know.
After a minute of silent, unconditional hugging Mac spoke. “You were as worried about how my appointment was going to go as I was weren’t you?”
“No.”
“When you said no just then you meant yes didn’t you?”
“No.”
“That’s cleared everything up, thanks.”
“I don’t think you can sass someone while you're hugging them,” Jack said into Mac’s hair, “I think one of those things cancels the other one out, like when you press two magnets together.”
“What? What are we doing with magnets?” Mac twitched in Jack’s arms like he’d thought about pulling back to look up in confusion.
“Pressing them together,” Jack would have waved his hands to demonstrate two things being pushed towards each other but that would have meant letting go of Mac, “when you get two magnets and try to squish their ends together one lot of magnetism works against the other lot of magnetism and the two magnets won’t stick to each other, or something.” Jack pondered, he hadn’t really been listening that day in school, there had been something about opposite poles, all he remembered about that lesson was that he’d dropped one of his magnet into a jar of iron filings and he’d had a hell of a time removing all the tiny pieces of metal, if he’d known he was going to have to explain a clumsy metaphor to a genius son he would have paid more attention to his teacher. “I can’t remember what happens, something cancels something else out for a freaky reason, anyway it doesn’t matter - magnets aren’t important - my point is that I am immune to your snark while you’re hugging me. It’s a science thing. And a dad thing. And a me and you thing so you are zero for three there, buddy.”
“Wow, it sucks to be me right now.”
Jack could tell he wasn’t the only one saying the opposite of what he meant.
“Cry me a river there, snarky britches.” Neither Jack nor Mac moved from their embrace, neither of them showed signs of wanting to. “Are you really okay, kiddo?” Jack all but whispered.
“Yeah, I think so.” Mac’s voice was soft but clear. “Doctor Amanda was fine. I still feel a bit weird about needing to see her but I’m glad I decided to go. I think it will be worth it.”
“That’s a mature thing to say, hoss, you sound almost like a grown up.”
Mac was acting like a grown up grown up, choosing a path that would get tough along the way but would be worth the struggle. Jack had wanted a more adult-ier adult to turn up and help show him what to do but he never thought that person would arrive in the form of his son.
Mac lifted his head a little, looking over at where Jack hung the keys to his cars. “If I’m so mature,” he asked, “does that mean I can drive the GTO when I take Katie out on a date this weekend?
“Steady on there, Casanova!” Jack spluttered, “I said you sounded mature, I didn’t say you were yet ready for the profound and deadly serious responsibility of driving my beautiful car.”
“Can I take it the date after that then?”
“That would still be a no.”
“The next one after that?”
“The more you ask that question the less grown up you sound, if you keep going you’ll get less and less mature by the second and I’m going to have to send you to pick up young Katie on a bike with training wheels.”
“She’d think that was cute.”
“Lord, she would wouldn’t she? Kids these days are weird,” Jack lamented. Things really had changed, he was pretty sure that Marcia Bell only agreed to go out with him in the twelfth grade because he told her he’d pick her up in his dad’s Shelby Cobra, but that was a story Jack wasn’t going to share with his son. “I’ll tell you what, you keep talking like a adult and give it five or ten more years then I might let you take Katie for ice cream in the GTO.”
“That’s great, thanks.”
“That’s my final offer, if you don’t like it you can always tell your therapist.”
Mac snorted, “Funny.”
“What,” Jack playfully nudged his son, “too soon?”
“No, I’d rather joke about it than be all careful and serious.”
“That’s smart,” Jack said, quickly adding, “you’re still not getting the keys to the car though.”
“I suppose I’ll have to learn to live with that,” Mac sighed.
Eventually Jack and Mac would let go of each other. They’d make dinner, watch TV, change into their pyjamas then sleep until the next day began and they started working and learning all over again. There would be more sessions with Doctor Amanda, and maybe some of them wouldn’t be as easy as the one that day, but they would help Mac reach the peace Jack hoped he would find. Jack knew that peace was out there for Mac to discover and gather to him like he was collecting sea glass on a beach, and Jack knew that he would just have to wait as each jagged shard was smoothed by the ocean and left in the sand for his son.
Jack didn’t like waiting, but some things couldn’t be rushed. The currents of the seas holding what his son sought could boil and dash but they could also wash and flow and if they both kept a weather eye on the tides there was no reason to think that he and Mac wouldn’t be just fine.
“Like pirates,” Jack said out loud.
“What?” Mac asked.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about the ocean, and tides, and navigating stormy seas.”
“Oh. Okay.” Mac clearly had no idea what Jack was on about but didn’t see the point in asking.
Eventually they would let go of each other but until then Jack was happy to keep holding his son. He’d hold and hope because that was the best he could do, and luckily that was just what Mac needed.
“Are you okay?” Mac asked his dad.
“I’m good,” Jack told his son, “everything is good.”