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Mac’s busy fiddling with the forward assist on Dalton’s rifle because the bolt carrier is dirty as hell. If this idiot isn’t going to clean it, then he’ll be depending on that stupid little button to make sure the bolt actually locks. It’d be a shame for someone to die because their overwatch can’t or won’t maintenance his own damn gun. Mac’s not even paying attention to the people around him when Dalton walks in.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dalton bellows.
Mac looks up, the bolt carrier still in his hands. “Fixing your forward assist.”
“I don’t need some snot-nosed little punk, fresh off his mama’s titty, to tell me how to take care of my gun,” Dalton says. Several of the guys around them laugh but Mac glares.
“Apparently you do, judging by the state of your weapon,” he counters.
“Oh the state of my weapon?” Dalton laughs and the next thing Mac knows he’s got a face full of fist.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. It was not supposed to happen like this.
The look on Dalton’s face says he knows, he feels it too. But as their nascent bond flickers to life, anger, frustration, and disappointment flood across.
Mac can read between the lines — he’s not wanted.
He’s just another disappointment in a long, long line of disappointments. Well fuck Dalton. He wants to be mad about being bonded to Mac, well Mac can be mad right back at him.
He swings. Hard. His fist connects with Dalton’s jaw and it makes Mac’s head ring like he was the one who got punched. Fresh rage pours across the bond and Mac sends it right back. Every punch, every kick, every elbow and arm bar — it hurts Mac as much as it hurts Dalton. He can feel Dalton’s worn out knees and aching back. He can feel the way Dalton’s knuckles throb with each punch and the way his heart beat hammers in his chest. It’s disorienting to say the least.
But then the fight is over and they’re standing there, answering up to their CO. And there’s the disappointment again. The frustration. And worse yet, resignation.
Mac had hoped, not that he would ever admit it to anyone, that one day he might find his soulmate, his other half. The person he’s destined to spend his life with. He’d hoped that it would be the end of his loneliness. That someone would want him and love him, and maybe he could actually have a family again. But even those childish fantasies, those ridiculous mental indulgences, don’t stand up to reality.
Their CO shouts, they shout. Anger. Anger . Anger . Mac plans to fuel his life with it like he did after Mom died and Dad left and Harry died. They’re at war. Crying about Dalton won’t do him any more good than crying about Pena did.
They finish their “talk” and go back to their bunks. Mac doesn’t have much to do, so once he finishes up folding his laundry, he goes for a walk. Or rather, he tries.
Mac makes it about fifteen yards from the barracks before the bond begins to stretch. It’s like his heart is being pulled out of his chest, like piano wire around his throat. It’s cold, cutting, and takes his breath away. Briefly, he contemplates fighting it. Walking farther away just to make Dalton chase him down. He entertains the idea of making the pain so unbearable for either of them that — he doesn’t know what he wants actually. So he sits on the ground in the scorching sun and closes his eyes, letting the cold from the too-stretched bond seep into his bones and steal his breath. It’s grief by any other name.
Mom. Dad. Harry.
He lets the memories wash over him. He breathes through the pain like so many times before, and he focuses on stretching the bond, acclimating himself to the sensation. They’ll be so much farther apart when he’s picking apart a bomb and Dalton is perched hundreds of yards away in a bombed out building.
Pena’s voice reminds him, Emotions get you killed. And Mac tries to let go of his own disappointment and hurt. Slowly, the pain dulls and ebbs away and for a moment Mac is delighted that maybe he’s finally managed to beat this stupid fact of biology.
“Kid, what the hell are you doing?”
Mac’s eyes fly open and there’s Dalton standing in front of him looking confused and slightly less ready to commit homicide. But despite his face, Mac can’t feel the rage from either. Dalton’s just… tired.
“Thinking,” Mac answers shortly.
Dalton snorts. “Yeah, thanks for the update there, Carl’s Jr. I meant with all the feelings. This about Pena? You out here wallowing your grief or something? Look, I know I shouldn’t have brought that up, kid.”
Mac’s anger flares bright and strong, right alongside his guilt. He shoves the anger at Dalton as hard and fast as he can. Fuck this guy. He wasn’t there and he has no right. It’s stupid and pointless, but Mac wants Dalton to hurt right along with him, wants him to hate this stupid bond as much as he does.
Dalton’s nostrils flare as the rage and hate hit and he glares. “And what’s with stretching the bond? What the hell are you trying to do? Sever it? You know that doesn’t work. We’re stuck. So why are you trying to give me a damn coronary sitting all the way out here? Didn’t your mama teach you about new bonds?”
Mac can feel Dalton’s irritation oozing across the bond. It’s not forceful, not the way Mac shoved his anger at Dalton like he was throwing a grenade. But it’s there and it feels like a grade school teacher being annoyed that he’s reading in class again. Like he’s just a fuck up, an unwanted kid with behavior problems that they have no choice but to deal with. Mac hates that this is the person he’s stuck with. Having no soulmate would be better than this.
Listening to Dalton’s words, images of Mac’s mom, only really memories of photos after all these years, immediately remind him that no, no one did teach him “that stuff.” Not that he didn’t learn about it on his own. But still. It’s just another thing that probably doesn’t measure up.
“Oh,” Dalton says softly, his eyes wide; tendrils of concern reaching out through the bond. “Dad? Brothers? Sisters?” Dalton’s voice grows increasingly desperate with each question. Mac can feel his own ache mirrored back at him as Dalton processes it. It’s tender, gentle, not the anger or bitterness from before. It feels like Dalton’s holding a baby bird, delicate and oh so breakable, and Mac hates it. He doesn’t want or need pity. He’s so far from breakable. “You got anybody back home?”
Mac’s frowns and looks away. “A friend from high school that writes sometimes.” Despite it all, lying to this guy won’t get him anywhere, not like this. Not when he’ll see right through it.
“Walk with me,” Dalton says abruptly, determinedly, softly.
Mac looks up again, making eye contact. “Why?”
Dalton laughs, sounding almost startled. “Why not? Do you have somewhere better to be? Come on, Carl’s Jr. We’re stuck together and I wanna go for a walk. Can’t go without you.”
Mac considers telling him to fuck off but Dalton’s right. This is forever. There’s no point in fighting until they die. And Mac was trying to go for a walk to clear his head before the bond made him stop. He might as well take the opportunity.
He picks himself up off the ground, dusts off his clothes, and falls in step with Dalton as they make their way across camp. Mac can’t think of what to say. They should probably get to know each other, find out who they’re stuck with for the rest of their lives, but what Mac’s learned so far hasn’t exactly been positive. He’s not exactly eager to hear more about Dalton’s frustration. But when Mac feels for the bond, the irritation isn’t there anymore. Neither is the disappointment or anger.
“Whatcha looking for?” Dalton asks.
Mac sighs and loosens his grip on the bond. “Nothing.”
“Yeah, that sure felt like nothing,” Dalton says with a snort. “You know, you’re a shitty liar.”
“So I’ve been told,” Mac mutters.
“You know, I think we got off on the wrong foot, kid,” Dalton says, coming to a stop. “I’m Jack.”
Mac looks at the outstretched hand, and he feels Jack’s trepidation and the banked frustration from earlier flares bright for a moment.
“Ground rule number one: don’t call me kid.”
Jack frowns and the hand drops. “You got a problem with me or just soulmates in general?”
There’s an unbreachable chasm between liking the concept of soulmates in theory and actually liking it in practice. Mac understands the roots of his fantasies — love, acceptance, loyalty, stability — all the things he never got. But in reality? He’s stuck with some jackass Delta sniper that’s headed around the world long before Mac’s ToD is up. Maybe it works out for other people, but Mac’s always known on some level, that it wouldn’t ever work out for him.
“I’m not soulmate material,” Mac says matter-of-factly. He tries to block, to stop the torrent of self-loathing and emptiness in his soul from reaching Jack. He’s pretty sure he fails.
The hurt on Jack’s face isn’t something Mac knows how to handle and he turns to keep walking, knowing that if he gets far enough away Jack will follow.
“Hey, come on, kid- uh, Angus. I-”
“It’s Mac,” he corrects.
Jack hurries up alongside him before the bond even twinges. “Look, Mac. I don’t know why you think that, or who told you that, or whatever, but clearly you are ‘soulmate material’ because here we fucking are. Stuck together until we die, out in the middle of the goddamn desert. So are you gonna drop the self-pity, self-loathing, marinating in your own despair shit long enough for us to work this out, or am I gonna have to beat it out of you?”
“Because round one was so much fun for both of us,” Mac retorts with a bitter laugh.
The dry earth crunches under his boots and Mac looks down at it. A miniature moonscape beneath his feet. A lot like what he imagines his soul must feel like to Jack. Empty. Barren. Arid. Desolate. Disappointing.
Wind stirs the dust at his feet and a simultaneous gust of mixed emotions blows across the bound — curiosity, hurt, frustration. Mac looks up and Jack is staring right at him.
“You know I can feel it when you do all that negative shit, right?”
“This is just how I am, Jack . What do you want? You want me to be happy? I’m not unhappy, but I’m not bursting with joy either. You want me to be family material? I don’t think I can do that and I’m not into men anyway. So here we are, and you keep pointing out my negative emotions, things you don’t like, but you’re not telling me what you want. So spill. Why am I such a disappointment to you? And don’t lie to me and say you weren’t disappointed because I felt it. It came across the bond like a damn flood. Right alongside anger and frustration and a bunch of other ‘negative’ shit,” Mac shoots back. Mac knows that Jack can feel it — the hurt, the anger, even the fear. And Mac doesn’t bother to block this because they both need to know.
Jack hangs his head and nods and Mac can feel his anger and irritation unspool, leaving only a deep well of regret and shame. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I was disappointed and angry. Frustrated, too. But it wasn’t at you. Mac, all my life I’ve wanted a soulmate. My mom and pop found each other in high school. Got married and stayed that way for over forty years. I wanted what they had.”
“You wanted a woman, not some grubby bomb tech more than a decade younger,” Mac says bitterly.
Jack shakes his head. “No. I wanted someone who was the other half of my soul. And the first time we connected was because I punched you. I was careless and instead of meeting you the right way. I-” Jack stops and blinks and Mac turns away. He can feel the remorse, the shame, the guilt. He doesn’t want to have to watch it on Jack’s face too.
“It’s fine,” Mac says. Jack’s guilt is enough to erase any hard feelings on Mac’s part. “I’ve had worse.”
Jack sniffles. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Mac shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”
Conviction and righteous fury snake across the bond and pool warm and heavy in Mac’s gut. Mac isn’t sure what to do with that. He’s long since given up being angry about any of it. It takes a little effort, but Mac dredges up some resignation and pushes it at Jack.
They stand there silently for another minute before continuing their walk by some unspoken agreement. There’s too much that needs said, too much that Mac never wants to hear — and it’s easier to just walk.
Mac’s not sure who was hungry first — him or Jack — but either way they end up in the DFAC for dinner. Most folks around them are chatting, laughing, sitting together and enjoying what little time passes for normal in the middle of war. He and Jack manage to sit off to the side and avoid everyone else. Eating in silence is even easier than walking in silence because there’s a legitimate reason to avoid speaking. Companionable silence, so long as Mac isn’t actively digging into any of his myriad old hurts, isn’t so bad. It’s when they get up to leave that it all goes to hell.
Jack, totally innocently, puts a gentle hand on Mac’s shoulder, as they leave. It’s a fleeting thing, just a friendly pat, but the contact nearly brings Mac to his knees.
“Mac?”
Mac does his best to stumble out the doors of the DFAC before slumping limply against the building. Jack’s concern wraps around him like a tight blanket.
Between ragged breaths Mac manages to cobble together a couple of words. “Did that not-”
Jack nods, cutting him off. “Yeah, I felt it, but not as strong as you did I guess. Do we need to touch or something?”
Mac’s heard the stories — newly bonded pairs having sex immediately after contact, desperate for the skin-to-skin to settle the bond. Mac would rather peel his skin off than have sex with Dalton. But the slightest contact — that wasn’t either of them trying to murder the other at any rate — feels like electricity and he goes weak in the knees, his heart skipping beats and leaving him dizzy, his full stomach trying and failing to flutter.
“Yeah, maybe just shirtless, back to back,” Mac suggests.
Jack’s mild discomfort flickers through the tight net of concern. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Come on, let’s get you somewhere where you can sit.”
Mac stumbles along towards their barracks which is unfortunate because there’s no privacy whatsoever, but it’s not like a bond is something they can hide for long anyway. Hell they’ll have to tell their CO soon. They can’t be far enough apart to work just yet, not until the bond stretches. It could take days. Or weeks.
Mac keeps forgetting that Jack can sense his emotions. The distress he’s feeling must have spilled across the bond because suddenly there’s a cautious hand on the back of Mac’s neck.
“Does that help?”
Mac’s breath leaves him in a rush and his vision whites out for a moment, but he doesn’t fall. It takes a second, but as the bond sort of comes into equilibrium, Mac finds that it’s easier to walk and breathe.
“Thanks.”
Jack nods quietly and they walk on like nothing has changed, minus the hand on Mac’s neck of course. But Mac caught a glimpse of Jack’s face and he’d bet his next paycheck that Jack’s eyes mirror Mac’s — pupils blown wide leaving only slim bands of the iris to be seen. It might not be hitting Jack quite as obviously, but it’s still coming down on him like a ton of bricks.
About two-thirds of the guys in their barracks are there when they walk in.
“Y’all kiss and make up?” someone shouts.
A few guys laugh, but it’s immediately cutoff by a hushed, “No fucking way. No fucking way!!! These dumbasses are soulmates!”
Hoots and hollers of laughter fill the building, but Jack just quietly directs Mac to sit on his bunk. Mac sags down onto the cot like a bag of bones someone just dropped. Jack has to take his hand off Mac's neck to peel his shirt off and Mac feels like his tether to the universe just evaporated. He scrambles for the bond and he can feel Jack doing the same thing. Desperately, Mac picks at his shirt, pulling it up until he can toss it to the floor. Then, finally, Jack’s behind him, his back leaning against Mac’s.
Mac closes his eyes and breathes as the bond comes together. If he’d thought they were connected before, it was nothing compared to now. The world explodes into blinding white light and tendrils of connection reach out between them, twining together, melding, fusing, until the bond encompasses them entirely like a bubble separating them, the singular them, from the rest of existence. He can feel the emotions of individual thoughts, though no context comes with them. Little fleeting ideas that flit through Jack’s head. There are memories, too, and those have deeper feelings — some happy, some sad.
And then there’s the physical. Mac can feel Jack’s heartbeat, the way Jack probably ought to pee sometime soon, and the way his left thumb probably got jammed on something recently. Every fiber and sinew lights up Mac’s body until he can’t feel where his body ends and Jack’s begins.
The laughter of the men around them, the sound of the fans in the barracks, the rumble of trucks outside, the static and screech of the PA system — it all pales in comparison to the sensation of being bonded, the way the universe coalesces into a singular point of light and feeling.
Slowly, though Mac can’t say with any certainty how long, the bond condenses and settles, and Mac remembers where he is. Despite the presence of others in the barracks, they’re quiet now, and it’s strange not hearing the constant bullshit soldiers throw at one another. People have always talked about bonds like they’re sacred, but Mac never understood why until now, and so maybe, for once, it’s important enough for the other guys to just let it be.
After a while longer, he and Jack sit up in unison. Their combined need to pee forcing them to locate their shirts and make their way to the head.
They’ve finished up their business and are making their way to their CO’s office. Mac can feel the trepidation before Jack ever opens his mouth.
“So, uh, what’s your favorite food?”
Mac snorts because for all of Jack’s emotional hemming and hawing, this is not what he expected. Mac shrugs. “Pizza isn’t bad.”
“Pizza? You’re going with pizza? I said favorite. You could have picked fillet mignon, lemon meringue pie, caviar-”
“Jack, have you ever even had caviar?” Mac interjects.
Jack frowns, “No. But I figure it’s probably good the way folks are willing to pay so much for it.”
Mac laughs. “It’s not. It’s awful. You could catch bream or crappie and the roe would taste the same, if not better.”
“Oh, well I’ve had that. But seriously dude, pizza ? Come on, man. You gotta go for something a little better than ‘pizza.’”
Mac laughs and opens the door to the head shed, letting Jack go ahead of them. This soulmate business should be fun to explain to their higher ups after their earlier altercation. Hopefully, by the time they sort this out, Jack will have forgotten all about pizza. Mac doesn’t think his answer of seared tofu in coconut curry pad thai would be particularly better received by a self-identified Texan, but they can cross that bridge later.
For now all they have to worry about are their COs, their bonding leave, and how they’re going to spend the few days or weeks. As they step inside, drawing their superiors’ disapproving gazes for the second time that day, Mac finds that he doesn’t mind the prospect of being bonded as much as he thought. Jack must feel it and Mac feels a gentle tug on the bond. He turns to see Jack smiling at him warmly and it feels like a soft summer rain washing dirt from his skin and soothing a sunburn. Mac returns the smile and he hopes, truly hopes, that this is only the beginning of what their bond will be like.