Chapter Text
The boy didn’t look like Mac, and yet. The sight of the dark haired, dark eyed bundle of energy had something as luminous as love and as raw as regret glowing in Jack’s chest.
“Look, daddy!” Six year old Curtis bounced on his horse’s back as it trotted in steady circles around the stable’s exercise area and raised one hand to wave at his father, “Look! I’m riding!”
“You are, son,” Curtis’ father was grinning wide and proud. “You look like a real cowboy.”
“Like Woody!” Curtis tightened his hold on the reins in his hands with a look of delight.
“Or the Lone Ranger,” Jack suggested from his place beside Curtis’s father.
When the child’s response to that was a blank look Jack turned to his dad, “I guess he’s much too young to know who that is.”
“I’m working on showing him the classics,” Curtis’ dad said, “The plan is to slowly get him to watch things that aren’t cartoons or YouTube videos of people playing Minecraft.”
“Good luck with that.”
Curtis was loving his first riding lesson. He’d been bursting with curiosity ever since the moment he and his dad had walked through the stable’s door. He’d wanted to look in every horse’s stall, climb the ladders to the hayloft, jump over a hay bale, touch every piece of tack and he’d asked approximately eleventy million questions. Jack’s own son was busy in the stable’s office going over Bronte Feed’s delivery note to find what mistakes they’d made with Jack’s order, again, because his attention to detail was more precise than Jack’s while all this was happening so Jack could indulge in wistful looks without worrying how Mac might interpret them.
Jack wouldn’t change Mac. Ever. A different childhood would have made Mac a different kid and Jack didn’t want his son to be any other way than how he was. And if Jack had met Mac before the day he’d stumbled into the stable after Bozer he might not have been ready to be his dad and they would never have become a family. Jack couldn’t be sorry about how and when he and Mac had met. But. To have had Mac come into his life when he was still as young and gleeful as Curtis, to fill his days with love and encouragement, to stop shadows from ever forming inside him and keep him happy and free from fear and doubt... Jack watched the little boy in front of him and wanted that more than anything.
During Jack’s mommas first visit to the Dalton household after Mac’s adoption, after the fussing and baking and hugs, Jack had told her about his longing to fix what could never be altered. He and his mom had stayed up late on her first night with them after Mac had been tucked up in bed talking, Jack asking how to give Mac all he deserved while not being paralysed by the need to make everything better for him. He wanted to heal Mac’s past, make his present perfect and protect his future but he couldn’t. No one could. It was too much. He was only one man, an average if a little busted up cowboy, how could he ever do or be enough for his amazing kid?
“The answer to the first part of your question is simple, honey, you can’t, you just can’t fix the past,” Jack’s mom had said, she’d put her mug of tea down on Jack’s coffee table all the better to turn her attention to her son. “No one can. Not even the best parent in the world can do that. And by the way,” Bea Dalton had cocked a finger at Jack, “you are not the best parent in the world. Now, before you get all offended,” she’d said, taking Jack’s startled face in her hands, “no one is the best parent in the world, there’s no such thing. Everyone is making it up, making mistakes and making an ass of themselves so the sooner you let go of any notions about having to be flawless the better. You hear me?”
“Yes ma’am,” Jack had said, reeling from the rush of being shocked, hurt then comforted in quick succession, and from having just heard his mom say ‘ass’.
“And the other stuff? Baby, you've just got to do the best you can in the moment you’re in just like all the rest of the folks on the planet.”
Jack had known that she was right and tried to remember that when he was worrying about his parenting skills. He wasn’t going to be a perfect dad and that was okay. He could be a good one though, a loving one. And he liked to think he could confidently claim to be a cool dad.
“Can I go faster next time? Can I jump over something?” Curtis, now down from his horse and being bundled into his jacket by his dad, was still keen to learn and wanted to stay at the stable to finish exploring absolutely everything. “Can I ride a really big horse? Can I learn to do a trick, like hang off the saddle by one leg?”
“Maybe we’ll wait until you’ve had a few more lessons before we’re tryin’ anything like that,” Jack chuckled.
“Okay, but we will try it though? Soon?” Curtis’s puppy dog look Jack rivalled Mac’s best, big, blue eyed pleas.
“One thing at a time, son,” Curtis’ dad said. “How about you learn the basics first. C’mon, I’m sure Mr Dalton has other things to do than answer lots of questions right now,” he gently tugged at reluctant fingers until a small arm finally slid through it’s jacket’s sleeve, “it’s time we got going.”
Only the promise of getting to tell his mom about everything he’d done in his lesson via a visit to the ice cream store could encourage Curtis to leave the stable. He ran out of the door yelling his flavour preference, ‘banana and chocolate!’ with his dad following, and Jack turned to head into the office to see if his son had finished wrangling with incompetence when he saw Mac in the office door wearing a stricken expression.
“Son?”
Mac wondered how a company that made as many mistakes as Bronte Feeds did managed to stay in business. He was sat with the list of the items Jack had ordered and the delivery note detailing what had actually arrived side by side in front of him surprised that Bronte Feeds managed to keep the lights of their company office on. They always got something in their orders wrong - mixing up amounts, transposing weights, randomly missing out items or sending things Jack hadn’t ordered. The snake food – pinkies, frozen rats – had been both Mac’s least and most favourite mistake of theirs. The unsettling look of the frozen rodents was worth seeing to witness the appalled expression on Jack’s face when he’d opened the box.
Sorting through the paperwork to find exactly what had gone wrong drove Jack crazy, he would be muttering darkly within five minutes of starting the task, so Mac volunteered to sort through the order while Jack gave a lesson. Mac kind of enjoyed combing through the details to track down exactly where the mistakes were, he liked solving problems. And Jack was still hovering around him a little. Mac was fully recovered from being laid low by mono but Jack didn’t seem convinced that he was completely well and kept peering into his face looking for signs of fever and fatigue thinking he was being subtle about it. Mac thought that if he sat down with a cup of coffee Jack would see that as him having a rest and would stop worrying about him wearing himself out.
“There’s a snake in my boot!”
Mac smiled at the enthusiastic call. The little boy taking the lesson was having a wonderful time if the whoops and hollers Mac had heard – some of them in Jack’s voice - were to be believed.
“Well done, partner, you did good today! Give me a high five.”
Mac shuffled the papers on the desk into order, took a last sip from his coffee cup and picked up the bridle that he’d fixed before he started working on the delivery paperwork. He’d finished with the delivery note and if the lesson was ending Jack might appreciate some help tidying up and feeding the horses. Negotiations about ice cream were happening between the boy taking the lesson and his father and as Mac headed for the office door he wondered if the idea of a double scoop would stay with Jack and he’d suggest he and Mac stop to buy ice cream on the way home. Ice cream might be nice - a scoop of chocolate and one of rocky road, with sprinkles of course - could be a treat to look forward to. And the calories in it would add to the daily number he was still supposed to be hitting, ticking a box of something else Jack didn’t need to worry about. Maybe Mac would suggest the ice cream store then, if Jack didn’t.
When he pulled open the office door and stepped into the stable what he saw drew him up cold, all thoughts of sweet treats, shared snacks and father and son time spent with head’s bent over a menu together disappeared.
He could see the horses in their stalls, some dozing, some watching the comings and goings of the stable with indolent eyes, some (Pepper) with their ears up as they looked around hoping for a little attention. That was just like normal. He could see a little boy happily bouncing from the stalls to the hay bales over and over again - that didn’t happen every day but the exuberance of the kids who came to the stable for lessons often spilled out as jumps, spins and with Cassi a performance of her favourite dances - so that wasn’t out of the ordinary. And he could see a man stood talking to Jack with his back to Mac. The man was about the same height as Jack, he was wearing a plaid shirt and cargo pants and while Mac couldn’t see his face every nerve in his body screamed with recognition. The man’s build, his stance, the slope of his shoulders and the way his greying hair had the start of a curl at the back of his head he looked just like...Mac’s gaze darted down to the man’s hands, they were by his sides, open, relaxed, not raised and without straining knuckles but they could be, might be soon, had been before.
James.
The man raised his arm, raised his hand, and Mac felt himself pale. The bridle in his grip slipped from his numb fingers.
It was James.
James was at the stable.
That wasn’t normal. It wasn’t okay. His dad had never been to the stable before. He’d never been interested in where Mac worked, and Mac had liked it that way. But if he’d come. If he was there. Then something must have happened. Mac must have done something wrong. James must be there to yell at him, or to drag him home or to... The world lurched sideways, Mac’s breathing grew rapid and ragged. He tried to think if there was anything he’d forgotten or if he’d made a mistake that would have prompted his father to drive all the way to the stable when he should have been at work but he couldn’t think of anything and it was always worse if Mac didn’t know what he’d done wrong. If his father had come to the stable he must be angry, furious even. And that meant...
“Chocolate and banana!” Mac heard as a distant shout, the rushing in his ears drowned out everything else. The screaming in his ears, in his head, was too loud. The world was too loud and too close and too much, his pulse was pounding and either the air around him was too thin or his lungs had stopped working because he couldn’t draw breath. He was stood on a hay strewn wooden floor surrounded by slanted late morning sunlight and the smells of straw, leather and four legged beasts but he was in his hallway too with a flight of stairs ahead of him, his front door behind, James’ coat hanging on a peg to his left and the yellow glow of an electric bulb spilling from his dad’s open office door the only source of light.
He was in the house with cold rooms and the cold father where the best he could hope for was a cold greeting, where yelling, the angry figure looming over him, the hurting grip around his arm and the hard sting on his cheek were found.
A man, James, was in front of him, a half empty glass dangling from his fingers and a dangerous, low growl in his throat.
“Son?”
A man moved towards Mac, and as he drew closer Mac’s mind named him ‘dad’ and he was terrified.
“I’m sorry.” Knees weak, Mac scurried backwards, his back hitting the solid wood of the front door. There was nowhere to go, the hallway was narrow and he couldn’t get past his dad. Not that running would do any good, his dad would find him. Mac heard his name being bellowed and the sound of glass smashing as the tumbler that had been in his father’s hand shattered against the wall beside him. “I didn’t think...” he pleaded, “I didn’t mean to.”
“Son?” His dad reached a hand out towards him and Mac pressed himself backward harder, sinking to the floor and wanting to curl up into something so small he’d vanish from his dad’s sight.
“I didn’t mean to.” It was true but saying it wasn't helping calm his dad’s fury. Mac didn’t know what else to do so he just kept apologising. “I’m sorry.” There were already going to be marks on him that he’d have to lie about and his dad still had him cornered. Mac was trapped. He was trapped and his dad was raging. Raging, out of control, screaming that he’d been driven to do what he always threatened to, and then it wasn’t going to be just a threat anymore, it was going to happen. His dad raised his hand.
“I’m sorry." Mac flinched violently when his dad dropped down to crouch in front of him, the sharp smell of alcohol surrounded him, turning his stomach. “I didn’t mean to.”
Mac protected himself as much as he could by curling his arms over his head. He waited for it to start. And he prayed it would be over quickly.
Jack looked over his shoulder, searching for whatever Mac had seen that had put that horrified look on his face. The only thing Jack could see was Curtis and his father climbing into their car, there were no robbers, armed or otherwise, rampaging hoards, impending natural disasters or anything else that could have justified Mac’s terrified expression. Jack took a step towards him.
“Son?”
There had been other times when Mac had looked at Jack in fear. When Jack had arrived home to the crash of breaking glass and the sight of Mac perched on the kitchen counter way back when they’d started living together Mac had been frightened of what he thought was going to happen but he hadn’t been afraid of Jack, not exactly. When Mac had looked at Jack he’d seen the leather in his hand not his soon to be adopted dad. He’d seen a different person and a different time and hadn’t been scared of Jack, he’d been afraid of what his experience told him was about to happen. As Mac backed away from Jack right then though the look on his face told Jack that his son knew he was looking at his dad and he was terrified. It was devastating.
“Son?”
“I’m sorry,” Mac said, pressing himself back against the office wall. “I didn’t think... I didn’t mean to.”
“Whatever’s gone wrong we can fix it.” Jack moved towards Mac, reassuring, watching carefully for his son’s reactions. “Bronte Feeds can’t have messed up that much, the order can’t have been that bad,” Jack forced a smile and tried for light-heartedness, “any delivery that doesn’t include rat popsicles is a win as far as I’m concerned, am I right?”
It was like Mac hadn’t heard him, he was wracked by tremors, his eyes wild, and Jack suddenly understood what was happening. “Aw, kiddo.” He reached out. “Son?”
Mac recoiled from Jack’s hand. “I didn’t mean to,” he pleaded to the father who had hurt him, not seeing the one who only wanted to offer comfort. “I’m sorry.”
Jack had experienced flashbacks, not many, but he’d had them. They hit with a breath-taking intensity that heightened every sensation and blurred the lines between reality and trauma. They were like stepping back into one of the worst places you’d ever been with the added bonus of feeling like you were going insane. In short, they sucked.
“You’re okay, kiddo,” he said. “I’m just going to get a little closer to you. I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not even going to touch you, okay?” he dropped to his haunches near where Mac was huddled. Mac flinched and drew his arms up, trying to protect himself.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know you didn’t. I believe you, it’s okay. It’s all okay, you know.” Jack settled himself more comfortably on the hard floor. “Everything’s okay.” He dropped his voice into a low, soothing tone, “You’re safe at the stable and there’s just me and you here. Well,” nodding back over his shoulder, Jack smiled, “you, me and the horses. Can you hear them? Listen, kiddo, listen hard and you’ll hear them. You’ll hear Pepper stomping and grumbling because her favourite boy hasn’t given her any attention for at least twenty minutes.” There was a whinny from over in the direction of the stalls, “That’s her reminding us that she’s there, as if we could ever forget. You’ll hear Archie stomping and getting restless for his lunch and if you listen really carefully you’ll probably hear Crosby snoring.”
Mac’s forehead creased in a frown. The empty look in his eye hadn’t cleared his but his shaking paused and he took a shuddering breath. Jack dared to hope that his words were getting through.
“And because we’re at the stable there’s plenty of this stuff. Straw.” Jack gathered together some of the strands that inevitably found their way into every corner and let them fall against the back of one of Mac’s clenched hands. “The stuff is as bad as sand for being coarse and rough and getting everywhere, right? If I had a penny for every time I’ve had a bit stuck to me or cleaned it up only to find it’s drifted everywhere as soon as I’ve turned by back I could take us both on an around the world cruise. Here,” Jack picked up the strands again and slowly brushed them against the back of Mac’s hands. “You can feel that can’t you.” He touched the palm of one of Mac’s hands with the straw and Mac pulled it into his grasp. “Now you know you’re in the stable, hmm? You’re here and I’m here and you’re safe. ”
“I didn’t...” Mac blinked and a tear rolled down his cheeks. He swiped it away with the back of one hand. Another blink, slow and with a sharp breath, and his eyes started slowly to clear.
“You’ve always been safe here, son,” Jack said. “And you always will be. I promise.” He risked a touch, reaching with steady care to brush fingers over Mac’s wrist. “You’re safe, there’s nothing here that can hurt you, I would never let that happen.”
Mac shuddered under Jack’s touch, he looked down at the wrist his dad had just brushed, staring at the pale skin like it held answers he would have to study hard to find.
“Completely, forever and no matter what, kiddo? I know you remember that, come on son, remember that and come back to me. Completely, forever and no matter what.”
Mac let out a gasp like he’d surfaced from a dive deep under the ocean. He lifted his eyes to Jack’s face, searching his features. “I...he...Jack?”
“I’m right here, kiddo.”
Mac looked around him in confusion, still hunched into a frightened ball against the office wall. “What happened?” Fear crept back into Mac’s expression. “What did I do?”
Jack risked shuffling closer to Mac. Mac flopped towards him and Jack caught him in his arms and put a gentle hand on the back of his son’s neck, pulling him close until his forehead was resting against Jack’s collar bone. A sob burst out of him.
“Nothing bad, buddy, you’re fine,” Jack said.
“What?” Mac asked. “What happened?”
The word flashback came with implications about trauma and mental health, and Jack wasn’t sure Mac was ready for what his experience being labelled that would imply; but Mac hated not knowing, and he didn’t know. So Jack told Mac the truth. “I think you had a flashback,” he said. The truth had to be the best option, Jack reasoned. It always was, surely? “Lots of people have them. I have, you were there for the last one remember, when you and Bozer decided to risk losing fingers making your own fireworks? I think you got caught in an old memory, one from before.”
Mac shuddered in Jack’s arms. “It was like I was back there, in my old house, before, with him. I could feel everything. I couldn’t get away.”
“You’re safe now, I’ve got you.” Jack pulled Mac snug against his chest and Mac sagged against him, one hand clutching at Jack’s shirt with a white knuckled grip. Jack knew how much revisiting your demons took out of you, it was shocking, terrifying and draining, like being chased by a ghost then hit by a train while suffering through the worse bout of flu you’d ever had. Mac needed to be somewhere comfortable where Jack could coddle him until he felt steady again. “I think we better get you up off his floor, this isn’t the best place for us to be resting,” he said. “Your butt is going to go numb and my old bones are going to start complaining soon if we stay here much longer.”
“Oh!” Mac tensed with a guilty start. “Oh, sorry.”
“Don’t fret, bud, I’ve got this.” Jack tucked one hand around Mac’s back and threaded the other under his knees. “Bear with me here, son,” he said. “This isn’t going to be elegant but it will be effecting. Effecting? Do I mean effecting?” he muttered into the soft hair on the top of Mac’s head.
“I think you mean efficient,” Mac replied with the softest chuckle, “but effecting kind of works too.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said and, bracing himself, stood with Mac cradled in his arms. It was a testament to how fragile Mac felt that he didn’t complain. If Jack had tried to pick Mac up at any other time he would have found himself on the end of loud and fervently sassy objections, but Mac just pressed his face into Jack’s chest.
The sofa in the office wasn’t far away and Jack quickly had Mac resting on it’s leather cushions and tucked up in a blanket to his satisfaction. He persuaded Mac to take a few sips from a bottle of water, he’d have preferred to give him a hot drink but didn’t think anything caffeinated was a good idea right then and there wasn’t anything other than coffee to hand. Jack cursed himself for not thinking to get a jar of instant hot chocolate in for emergencies and made a mental note to buy one the next time he went to the store.
“So, kiddo, do you think you can tell me what happened?” he said, lowering himself into the corner of the sofa behind Mac and arranging them so Mac was settled against his chest with Jack’s chin resting on the top of his head. “Where do you think the flashback came from, is there something I need to change so it doesn’t happen again?”
Mac spent a few seconds fussing with the blanket covering him before answering.
“The man,” he said, “the one who was here with the little boy taking the riding lesson, I saw him when I came out of the office, he reminded me,” Mac paused, wetted his lips then tried again. “I don’t really know why, but there was something about him, how he was stood, how his shirt looked on his shoulders or the way he was holding his hands - he reminded me of James.” Mac’s chest twitched under Jack’s arm as his breathing hitched. “I got scared. Thinking James was here made everything get all mixed up in my head. It was weird, like a nightmare, it was like I was back in my old house, from before, and something that happened was happening again.”
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Jack said. He pressed a kiss to Mac’s hair. “That must have been rough.” He hadn’t seen a resemblance to James in Curtis’ father but he supposed he hadn’t been as hyper aware of James’ every move like Mac had. If there had been something about him, no matter how small, that reminded Mac of his biological father it could easily have sent his mind spiralling, especially since he wasn’t a hundred percent recovered from being sick, no matter what he said.
“Have you ever felt like that before, have you had any other flashbacks like this?” Jack asked. Mac had never mentioned that he had but he was still struggling to allow Jack to see him as being less than in perfect health for fear of being a burden.
Mac shook his head. “Not like what just happened,” he said. His voice softened as if the vulnerability of honesty would be gentled if his admission came quietly. “But sometimes I see things in my dreams, like I did when I was sick. And sometimes I remember bad things for no reason, or have bad thoughts that won’t go away.”
Jack only realised he was stroking Mac’s hair when he felt it’s softness against his fingers. He wasn’t sure who the gesture was being made to comfort, him or his son.
“Like what was happening before when you got into the fight with Donnie?”
Jack and Mac’s confrontation about that fight had happened not far from where they were sat, with Mac screaming out how he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Jack hitting him. Thoughts of Jack hurting him, Mac’s fear of it’s inevitability and his guilt at part of him believing Jack capable of abuse, had plagued Mac for days, gnawing at him and grinding him down until he’d snapped and his pain had surfaced with him throwing punches at the school bully.
“Yes.” Mac pressed his cheek against Jack’s arm in what Jack thought was meant to be an apology. “Jack?” he said.
Mac once told Jack there’s estimated to be more trees on planet Earth than there are stars in the Milky Way. That sounded like a helluva lot of trees to Jack. He’d seen the Milky Way from horseback under the endless skies of a grassy Texas plain and with sand itching his delicate parts while the chill of desert darkness sank into his bones and from what he’d seen that thing had an approximate butt load of stars in it. He couldn’t imagine anyone having the time, resources or will to count all the spots and dots of white up there but he supposed someone could have done it. NASA has special telescopes for just that reason. Same with trees really - who has the time to count them all? Or to cook up some equation to calculate just how many oaks, pines and weeping willows there are? But some one must have done that too. Some math inclined souls had sat down with a calculator and figured out just how many trees were growing and stars were shining then surmised there was more of one than another. Good luck to them if that's what they were into, Jack thought, but he wasn’t interested enough to spend time on such things. He did wonder sometimes, however, when going about his day as a father of a teenage son, how many times he’d asked Mac if he was okay. If he started counting the number of times he’d felt the need to check if the scrawny, shy, supernova special boy he’d welcomed into his heart was all right, wasn’t hungry, wasn’t scared, needed love, needed comfort, needed his dad to tell him it was okay from the day he met Mac he would probably would add up hitting a similar number to how many lights were in the night sky, or how many tall, bark covered plants were stretching their branches up to the clouds. Jack didn’t think he’d ever stop asking those questions. He asked them sometimes even when he knew their answer, like now. He’d ask Mac about what he was feeling but he had a notion he knew exactly what he was going to say – going to apologise for.
“What is it, son?”
“I don’t mean to be like this,” Mac stuttered. “I’m sorry. I try to be better but sometimes I can’t stop the stuff that goes on in my head.”
“From what I recall you and I have had conversations about you being ‘better’ haven’t we?” Jack said, adding another tick to the question asking tally chart that would never stop growing, as far, far away another ball of gas started burning and in a forest somewhere on planet Earth a freshly fallen acorn began to sprout. “In my memory those conversations have mostly featured me telling you that there isn’t a version of you I’d like any better than the one I have now.” He tried to sound encouraging rather than chiding, he hated it when Mac told him that he would ‘do better’. When Mac said that it never meant he was excited to try something again hoping for a new and improved result, he meant that he thought he wasn’t good enough but was willing to tear himself to pieces trying to meet the vague and impossible standards he measured himself badly against.
Mac didn’t respond to Jack, but he did tuck himself closer into the arm wrapped around his shoulder.
“But you have got me thinking about something we talked about the other day,” Jack had put the subject of Mac and therapy to the back of his mind but after what had just happened it felt like a good time to bring it to the fore front again. There was no denying that his son needed help, the kind of help he wasn’t qualified to give, to help him heal so that Jack could stop needing status updates on his emotional state quite so often. “Do you remember me asking you if you wanted to find someone to talk to about things – about before and all the things you worry about? How would you feel about that?”
Mac answered with a very loud silence.
“I’m not suggesting sending you to some head shrink who’ll poke around in your noggin trying to make you ‘better’,” Jack explained. “I’m not saying you’re sick, or that you need fixing. The talking would be about healing, about hushing some of the noise in your mind and finding strategies to use when you get overwhelmed.”
Mac was still quiet, but he was tracing a finger over the plaid pattern of Jack’s shirt rather than sitting stiff and still with shock.
“I won’t make you go if you don’t want to but I think it’s something that you ought to think on. I don’t know much about head stuff myself, all I know about when it comes to giving advice is the few things I’ve picked up over the years and the smart stuff my momma’s told me. For what it’s worth I think it’s probably a good idea to speak about your worries with an professional who went to university for a bunch of years to get certificates in Talking About Stuff.”
Jack thought that would get Mac’s attention. Mac loved to learn, and if the idea of speaking to a therapist was framed as a chance to spend time with an expert it could help convince him to do it.
“That might be good,” Mac said tentatively. “I don’t want anything like the – the, um, flashback - to happen again.”
“Me either son, I think you’re making a smart choice.”
What if Mac had another flashback when he wasn’t with him, Jack thought. What if he was at school, out with his friends, alone somewhere or, god forbid, driving the truck? Jack tightened his hold on his son. He would have to speak to Cassi’s mom to find out some contact numbers of local therapists straight away.
“Okay.” Mac’s restless hands plucked at Jack’s fingers. “I’m sorry, you’d had a nice lesson with that little boy and I’ve kind of spoiled things.”
“I did have a good lesson with Curtis the Wannabe Rodeo Rider but that doesn’t mean what happened to you has spoiled anything. One thing happened this morning and then another thing happened, that’s all. Nothing was ruined. Unexpected and unexplainable things go on around here all the time, they just usually involve nine hundred pounds of horse flesh and often end up with me having to shovel something evil smelling. At least when something happens with you I don’t have to clean up anything with a spade, and I get to have a hug.”
Mac gave a small, brave huff of laughter. “Doesn’t Pepper ever want to cuddle?”
“Not with me, she usually just wants food or a scratch behind the ear. Which is probably for the best because I don’t know how you would snuggle with her without getting crushed.”
“I won’t tell Pepper you just implied that she’s fat.”
“Good, because that diva doesn’t forgive and she never forgets.”
Mac was loose limbed against Jack, tired but not broken, and Jack placed a kiss on the top of his son’s head.
“You okay, kiddo?”
“Yes, I’m okay.”
Which meant, ‘I’m not terrified or reliving past abuse anymore, I’m exhausted from dealing with bad memories but I’m trying, I know you love me and because I love you I’ll be as strong as I can be so you won’t worry’. Jack wanted to tell Mac that he didn’t have to try to be strong, that he could falter and Jack would take his weight, but there are days that are got through by everyone being strong for everyone else and if that’s what Mac needed Jack would give it to him.
“Good. I don’t have any lessons anytime soon so why don’t me and you just stay here like this for a while?”
“I’d like that,” Mac said.
And Jack closed his eyes and held his son.
“Jack?” A little voice asked.
“Hmm?”
“Could you tell me one of your stories? One about something funny you did when you were younger?”
Jack chuckled. “A Jack Dalton story is certified to absolutely bring cheer to any unhappy situation.” He hummed as he thought through which story to tell Mac, the first one he thought of was bittersweet and wouldn’t lift the mood in the way he wanted, the second was a bit too risqué to tell his teenage son but the third story Jack dredged up from his Anthology of Tales of a Misspent Youth and Other Stories of Heroism, Handsomeness and Daring Exploits was perfect.
“So, when I was a little older than you I knew a guy,” Jack wiggled in his seat, getting comfortable in his story, “he was a solid guy, a bit blurry around the edges but he was a buddy and you know how that goes? Anyway, he calls me up one day and tells me that he’s managed to get hold of a canister of helium and a truck load of balloons...”
Mac listened, Jack’s words calming them both till one of them felt roots securing him back into safety and the other that his heart was glowing brighter than a desert moon.