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Secondary culpability occurs when a person who is not the Agent who has been assessed an infraction has been determined to have had the opportunity to stop the Agent from committing the infraction and did not do so. It does not matter whether the individual determined to have secondary culpability was aware of the Agent’s actions, so long as it has been determined that they reasonably should have known and acted to prevent it. The consequence for a secondary culpability infraction is the requirement that the person who has committed it must remain in the room and observe the Agent being disciplined. As a person given a secondary culpability infraction is not disciplined directly, this is the one type of infraction that may be assessed to any person, and not just to an Agent.
- "Handbook on the Regulation of Disciplinary Infractions," Part 2, Section 2
There are a lot of things about DXS that Riley has found hard to believe. The whole world of people who work in and around the agency seems like something out of a novel or a movie, even for the things she’s already seen and known in her rather unconventional career. She’d known it existed but that was about it - there’s cloak and dagger, and then there’s DXS. When she’d been onboarded, there had been so many things Riley had been read into, and briefed on, and given instructional material about. After a while, it all blurred together.
There was one thing, though, that almost surpassed belief entirely. Right at the start, Riley was given a copy of a creepy little booklet, neatly bound with its glossy little cover announcing itself as the Handbook on the Regulation of Disciplinary Infractions. It talked about a branch of DXS with some stupid, long name that most everyone just called ‘the Department,’ whose agents were called ‘enforcers’ by everyone who didn’t work with them directly. Even though she’d read the thing cover to cover, she still can’t quite believe what it says. It just seems too cartoonishly awful to actually exist.
The one time Riley’s brought it up, Mac just quietly confirmed that the actions described in the Handbook, the disciplinary measures described in its clinical, distanced language, actually did happen. He’d refused to say any more than that, which just made Riley more anxious about the whole thing.
Jack was a little more forthcoming, though not really by much. He’d mostly just reassured Riley that because she had technically been brought on as an analyst, she didn’t have to worry about what the Handbook described. Infractions - the term used to describe something that warranted discipline by the Department - weren’t something she needed to think about. Analysts didn’t get issued infractions, it was part of the rules. Just field agents.
Which, yeah, Riley knew that. She remembers that part of the Handbook, which she’d read every word of twice, despite growing more and more revolted with every sentence, and while it was reassuring to some extent, it wasn’t quite as reassuring as Jack may have meant it to be. The fact that the things described in the part outlining what sort of punishment the Department delivers are things that happen to anyone is enough to turn her stomach and keep her up nights.
But then, there are about a hundred other patently insane things going on in her life, and the infraction thing, the Department, the spectre of discipline, while a little bit more insane than the rest of it, starts to slip out of the forefront of her attention.
Until Malta. Until she’s on the ground with Mac in Malta, with Jack somewhere a few streets over in the van they’ve tricked out for the op they’re running, and he ignores a direct order.
Riley sees Mac’s face when he makes the decision - the flicker of unease that’s followed by a complete mask of determination that doesn’t waver for a moment. It doesn’t even flicker when Jack snaps down the comms link that Mac better know what he’s doing, because this is all being recorded. Mac snaps back that he does know that, and he does know what he’s doing, “So let me do it, ” and Jack doesn’t argue after that.
He doesn’t say anything else either, which sticks out as strange. For all his talking, all his meandering anecdotes and tension-relieving jokes and butchered idioms, Jack just goes stony quiet down the comms and Riley doesn’t understand anything about what’s happening. Not until later.
For the moment, all she knows is that something has just gone horribly wrong, something’s turned sideways, and she can’t put her finger on why, but everything’s suddenly got the distinct feeling that they’ve just stepped on a pressure plate, and a bomb is about to go off. Then the mission gets all immediate and ‘might blow up for real’ on them again, and it’s got to be put out of her focus in favour of more acute concerns.
It’s not until they’re all together again, when the mission is concluded and they’re sitting around waiting for exfil to show up and take them home, that it comes up.
“What do you think they’ll give me this time?” Mac asks in a dry tone. They’re in a small, rural airplane hangar, sitting in an exhausted row by the wall and waiting for their transport to make its roughly-scheduled arrival. He’s leaning back into the wall, on the other side of Jack from where Riley sits, and she can see his leg bouncing rapidly out of the corner of her eye. “Think they’ll make it a Tier 3?”
The unfamiliar verbiage doesn’t connect, not at first. Riley frowns, but doesn’t get the chance to ask before Jack answers.
“Jesus, they’d better not,” Jack says, almost physically recoiling at the idea. The response is immediate and strong. “Not for this. Nobody even- No, everything turned out fine. They won’t go that far.”
There’s movement, and Riley looks over and watches Mac turn to the side. He looks at Jack with an eyebrow raised in a way that Riley’s grown familiar with, while the rest of his expression is cold and distant in a way she hopes she never has the chance to get used to.
“You know that doesn’t always matter,” Mac says. “Nothing happened in Jordan either, everything turned out totally fine, and they still-“ He breaks off, shoulders moving in hard, short breaths.
“Probably not this time. My guess? 1, maybe 2.”
“They won’t give me a 1.” Mac snorts. There’s nothing amused in it.
“Will one of you please explain what the hell you’re talking about?” Riley breaks in, unable to help it any longer.
They both look at her as one, which is a little eerie, and there are twin looks of shock on their faces.
“Right,” Jack says, strange and quiet. His ‘I’m being optimistic here’ voice is gone. “Right, you haven’t… Shit.”
“You remember the Handbook they gave you?” asks Mac. He’s looked away from her again, staring back out across the hanger again. “The one about disciplinary infractions?”
Riley feels cold. Her palms tingle, and she can’t catch her breath. “What? No, that’s not- They’re not really-“
“Yeah. They are.” It comes out short and abrupt, completely unlike any way Mac’s ever spoken to her before. “I’m gonna get an infraction for today, and they’re gonna discipline me for it. Soon as we get home.”
They’re gonna discipline me, Mac says.
They’re gonna beat me with a strip of leather, Mac means.
Because that’s what ‘discipline’ means, in the language of DXS, in the language of the Department for Enforcement of Regulation of Disciplinary Infractions. They say discipline and they mean physical violence, they mean whipping. And Mac seems just… resigned to the fact that this is what will be waiting for him, as soon as they return to the states.
When their exfil team arrives to pick them up, their leader hands Mac a slip of paper. He takes it and stuffs it into his pocket, only taking it back out again when they’re seated and strapped in and the aircraft is humming through the rapidly darkening night sky.
“It’s Tier 2,” he tells them, squinting at the paper as he reads the words printed on it. There’s a hitch in Mac’s chest, and he clears his throat, then adds, “Seventeen strokes.”
Seventeen. They’re going to hit Mac seventeen times.
“That sounds like a lot,” Riley blurts out, unable to stop herself. “Is that a lot? That has to be a lot.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot,” Mac confirms. He’s got the paper crumpled in his hand again, knuckles gone white with how hard he’s gripping it. The lighting in the plane isn’t great, but she can see the tense lines of his body, the grim look on his face. “Probably the direct order thing. Plus I’m a repeat offender. They don’t say it matters, but it matters. The more infractions you get, the more strict they get about it.”
The plane bumps at a spot of turbulence, shaking the already uncomfortable cargo bay that’s just a bit too rickety for Riley’s comfort. She can’t get her mind around what she’s been told, and though she knows she probably ought to drop it, she just… can’t.
“So they’re just going to…” Riley trails off, and Mac nods. She doesn’t bother finishing the sentence. His jaw is tight and he’s got a paperclip in his hands now. He’s not doing anything with it, not bending it into anything, just fidgeting. “That’s bullshit. Thornton just allows that?”
“Ain’t up to her.” It’s Jack this time, speaking up and taking over. “She doesn’t have a choice about any of this. The Department’s not really… She does the best she can but there’s not much she can do. Got caught a while back, trying to make things easier on us and it was bad. It’s out of her hands.”
That just… that answer just doesn’t work. Not for Riley. She can’t accept that, because doing so would mean that it’s just going to happen, that Mac’s going to be assaulted for doing his job in a way some rule compliance department doesn’t like, and that’s just going to have to be the way it is.
“So what, that’s all there is?” she asks, voice pitched up and angry. “Mac’s just going to get whipped and there’s nothing we can do about it?”
“Strapped.” That’s Mac again now, saying it in a strange voice while he looks across the bay. His face is distant and drawn.
“What?” The word doesn’t make sense. Riley has no idea what it means.
“They strap us,” he says, still in that odd tone. There’s no lurch in the plane’s movement to explain the way Riley’s stomach flips and jolts. “We don’t get whipped. There’s a difference. They’re pretty specific about it.”
What the point of making that distinction is, Riley cannot remotely get her mind around. She’s about to say as much when Jack catches her eye and shakes his head. The meaning is clear - just let it go .
It’s hard to let it go, but Riley has to. It’s not really about her, is it? Except that… Except there’s a piece of paper in Riley’s pocket, too. And it’s a piece of paper that means, according to something she remembers very clearly from the Handbook, that when Mac gets strapped , as he’s been so specific to call it, she’s going to have to stand there and watch every moment of it.
Back in Los Angeles many, many hours and some light, shitty sleep later, Riley walks numbly through the building to their assigned room in the enforcers’ wing. It’s got a different name - something more official and bureaucratic sounding, but that’s what she’s always heard it called. She’s never been here before, always seen the hall heading off to the left that no one walked down if they could help it and shuddered a little, when she noticed it at all. Now she walks towards the room on the piece of paper shoved in Mac’s pocket, the same room printed on hers, static buzzing in her ears and Mac walking silently beside her.
Neither he nor Jack are saying anything. They haven’t since they walked in the front door of the building and started heading straight for the wing. That was policy, apparently. You had to go right to the room named on your paper, and if they suspected you had delayed when you could’ve gotten there faster and didn’t have a good reason, you could get in trouble for trying to avoid discipline.
That’s what DXS called it when you got handed a piece of paper that gave you a room number and a time you had to be there or else . That’s what they called it when you were forced to strip your shirt off and kneel on the ground with only a bench to brace your hands against, and then they beat you with a leather strap. Fucking discipline . Riley had turned it over and over in her head on the plane, and she still can’t get her mind around it. It’s like her mind keeps so thoroughly rejecting the idea that every few minute she has to realize it all over again, just like brand new information she’s just had explained.
Jack has his hand on the back of Mac’s neck. He’s kept it there since they first got inside and Mac shuddered when they crossed the threshold, Adams apple bobbing as he swallowed hard and the muscles of his jaw flexing along with it.
It took Riley by surprise - Mac always seems so in control and unflappable, and this has been no different. He was handed the infraction slip as soon as exfil picked them up, by a woman who avoided eye contact as she passed it to him, and he’d barely reacted then. She doesn’t know what to make of the shiver.
Seeing it is the first time it really starts to sink in, what they’re headed for. What’s about to happen. That there’s no avoiding it, no hoping for a last second rescue, for this whole thing to turn out to be a huge, cruel joke. Riley can’t tolerate it, and Mac’s reaction when stepping through the front door of this familiar building that’s supposed to be safe is something she just can’t comprehend.
Jack seems to take it in stride, though. He had moved like on instinct when it happened, reaching up and taking hold of the nape of Mac’s neck, hand slipping in behind the collar of his jacket. His thumb moves in small strokes, brushing across the skin under Mac’s ear.
It helps. Not much, only a fraction, but as far as Riley can tell, it does help, and Jack leaves it there, keeping pace with Mac and holding his neck. Grounding him, as much as he can be grounded while walking down this hall, lined with rooms at least several of which he’s probably been beaten in before.
When they’re almost to the room with the number on the slip, Jack stops walking. Mac stops along with him, though he looks off down the hall, rather than at anything more immediately around him. There’s something a little distant in his face, and Riley can’t look right at it for too long. Instead, she looks at Jack, a question beginning to form that she doesn’t have the time to ask before he’s already talking, low, quiet, and quick.
“We don’t have a lot of time, we have to get in there,” he says, looking right at Riley as he does, “but there’s a couple of real important things you’ve gotta know before we do.”
Unable to be sure whether or not her voice will shake if she answers verbally, Riley gives a short nod.
“Okay.” Jack nods back. His hand stays at Mac’s neck, and Mac stays silent, staring off into space down the hall. “What’s about to happen is gonna be real tough, I won’t lie to you. No matter how many times we’ve been through it, that shit never gets easier, and I’m real sorry you’re gonna have to find that out too. But it’s gonna be important that you remember some things, or else you could make it worse for him by accident.”
That is the absolute last thing Riley wants to do, and so she nods more intensely this time, chin jerking up and down with the force of it. There’s stuff in the Handbook about this. She knows there is, but she can’t quite remember it at the moment. All she recalls is that it’s important, and it’s related to her own infraction, the one connected to the one Mac has been cited for.
There’s a slip of paper in Riley’s own pocket too, with her name and assigned identification number, and the same room number and time as Mac’s. Secondary Culpability Infraction is printed at the top of it - because she’d been standing right there with him when he did what he did, and by the standards of the organization, that means she was responsible for stopping him. She didn’t, and that means now she has to watch Mac be… be disciplined .
(Jack wasn’t given the same summons. He’s coming along anyway, because apparently they don’t stop you from doing that if you want to. They don’t even talk about it - Jack’s accompaniment. Jack just walks alongside them, and not for a moment does it even seem like a question that he’s coming with.)
At any rate, there are rules. Riley knows there are rules, things the Handbook said about what could happen - to Mac, not to her, all to Mac - if she were to break them, but she doesn’t remember what they are, so she listens hard to Jack and tries to absorb everything in precise detail. The instructions, which Jack delivers as quickly and as quietly as he can, are relatively simple, at the heart of them. All of it essentially means the same thing: do not interfere. If Riley tries to make it stop, if she tries to help Mac before the assigned punishment is over, it will have consequences - though not for her.
If Riley interferes, if either of them interfere, Mac will be beaten more severely. And that can’t happen. She can’t live with the thought of causing that to happen.
“Okay,” she says. “I get it.”
As bad as it had been to stand there and listen to the warnings about what she couldn’t do in there, the things she has to be careful not to say while Mac is being whipped- strapped , it’s nothing compared to what Riley has to do next. She has to follow him inside while all three of them willingly walk Mac right into what’s about to happen to him.
There’s a man already waiting inside the room when they enter. He’s dressed in an understated way that is clearly some kind of a uniform, though there aren’t any logos or labels on it. His pants are dark-wash jeans, and his black jacket is buttoned clear to his neck. They don’t make the enforcers dress entirely in black - probably figured that was a little too on the nose, though the thought of anyone considering the optics of how to dress the people DXS employs to physically abuse its agents makes Riley angry - but every one she’s set eyes on from a distance has been dressed in somber shades.
This is the first time she’s ever seen one of them up close, and he looks disturbingly normal. Just a regular man, with light, sandy brown hair and green eyes. There’s a tiny red spot on his cheek, probably where he’d cut himself shaving that morning.
When the door opens and closes behind them, it’s hard to tell if the man even notices their arrival. He’s focused on the digital tablet in his hands, scrolling through something as he leans against one wall of the room that somehow seems at once too big for its intended purpose and claustrophobically small. A few feet away from the enforcer, off beyond his right shoulder, Riley sees a rack on the wall. It takes Riley a moment to figure out what, exactly, is being displayed on it, and when she does her lip curls and she looks away sharply.
Straps. There are leather straps of varying sizes and lengths, hung one beside the other on the wall like some kind of display, at least six of them. Before she’d had to avert her eyes in revulsion, Riley had seen one at the farthest end that scared her badly enough that she felt it like ice sliding down her spine. It’s a long, cruel looking thing, blunt metal rivets studding the last few inches of it and glinting in the light.
The image is burned into Riley’s mind. Those little silver rivets looked so small but so threatening, and she’s unable to help imagining how it would feel to be struck with that thing. She can’t think about it, can’t bear to, at the same time it’s all she can think about. Has Mac ever been beat with that strap, the one with the metal on the end? Has Jack? How bad a thing do you need to do in order to get punished with that ?
“Agent Angus MacGyver?” the enforcer asks, reading off a tablet without looking up at any of the three of them.
Mac nods, then realizes the man can’t see him, and he clears his throat. “Yes.” It comes out steady, but there’s something deadened in it.
“Alright, thank you.” The enforcer taps something on the screen, still without looking up. “You’ve been issued a Tier 2 infraction, assessed at seventeen strokes.” That still sounds like a dizzying number to Riley. The man, whose name has not been provided, either verbally or in the form of a name tag or anything of the type, sounds almost bored. Like this is normal.
Because for him it is, right? This is his job. Beating people with one of the straps hanging from the rack next to him is his job, so of course it’s normal, of course he sounds bored rather than- than anything human . Anything churning in Riley’s gut - horror, anxiety, pain on Mac’s behalf for what’s about to happen to him.
“Yes,” Mac says. Still steady. Still flat.
Riley sees Jack’s hand twitch at his side like he’s actively resisting touching Mac again, putting his hand back at the nape of his neck or pulling him close, anything at all to comfort or shield him.
“Alright, you know the drill. Shirt off, to the bench. No restraints this time.”
Nausea lurches in Riley’s gut, and she feels for a moment like she might be sick. Mac just nods, takes a deep, slow breath, and steps away from her and Jack. She almost follows him by instinct, even shifting like she’s about to, but a touch at her wrist stops her. Glancing to the side, Riley makes eye contact with Jack, who shakes his head just the slightest bit, one short twitch back and forth.
If this were another situation, she might jerk away and glare at him. Things between them are still strained and odd, and Riley hasn’t fully decided whether to keep hating him or not. Now, though? Now, she lets go of the whole thing, puts aside their history entirely in the face of what the present is about to contain, and instead of pulling away, she pushes into him instead. Riley turns her hand and grabs onto his, squeezing Jack’s fingers hard. He squeezes back, and they stand close together, watching Mac walk away from them.
Mac walks alone to the side of the small room, to the wall opposite the one with the rack of straps that Riley’s been avoiding looking at since initially catching sight of it and realizing what it is. There’s a row of hooks on the side he’s gone over to, and as she watches, he shrugs off his jacket, hanging it over the hook on the far end. When he reaches for the bottom of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head, she can see that his hands are shaking.
It’s cold in here. Riley hadn’t noticed that at first, but she can’t ignore it now. Her arms prickle inside her jacket, and she can see goosebumps on Mac’s shoulders. Why the hell is it so cold in here - they have to know that’s going to make it worse, right? As soon as she has that thought, though, Riley has another. Of course they know it’s going to make it worse to force agents to strip their shirts in a room that’s unheated. That’s probably the point. The whole point of all of this is to hurt people.
Naked from the waist up, Mac walks away from where his jacket and shirt hang and over to where the bored-looking enforcer stands beside a short, flat bench. It reminds Riley of an ottoman, if an ottoman was lightly padded and covered in black canvas, with something hanging off the far end that she can’t quite make out from this distance and at this angle. Mac sinks to his knees in front of it and lays his forearms over the bench, gripping the far side. The surface is just higher than his waist, and it causes him to bend forward in order to brace himself, his back curving so that Riley can see the ridge of his spine.
The enforcer straightens up, hefting his hand at his side like he’s getting ready for something, and the moment that Riley notices he’s holding something is the moment he swings.
The sound that the thick leather strap makes as it cracks across Mac’s bare shoulders is one that Riley will never be able to forget for the rest of her life.
At first she thinks he’s cried out, made a soft, high pitched noise of pain, but the way that Jack squeezes her hand hard tells her that it hadn’t been Mac - Riley is the one who made that noise, involuntarily ripped from the back of her throat. She swallows and grips Jack’s hand back just as tight, determined not to react again. Though the enforcer hadn’t reacted to the noise, she doesn’t know if it’s because she got lucky, or because he actually doesn’t care. Maybe it’s unlikely that Riley is going to get an interference infraction for making an involuntary, sympathetic noise when Mac was struck, but she doesn’t want to take any risks. She can’t bear the thought of causing his punishment to be worse than it’s already about to be.
A livid red mark has already bloomed on Mac’s skin when the enforcer rears his arm back and delivers the second stroke. It lands below where the first had, lighting another line a few inches farther down, and this time Riley can see him react. Mac’s body seizes when he’s struck, just a ripple of a flinch jolting through him. He’s still silent. Riley wants to scream.
The blows come fast after that, one after the other with no pause in-between them. The strap is a blur as it’s swung down, the enforcer hitting Mac much harder than seems necessary. Riley wants to beg him to stop, to run over and grab his arm to halt the blows, to do anything to put an end to the vicious beating she’s bearing captive witness to.
Tier 2, she thinks, around what she thinks somewhere past stroke ten. It makes Mac slump farther forward, leaning harder on his arms. He still doesn’t make any noise. Tier 2 isn’t supposed to be that serious. Someone has to stop this, someone’s got to make this stop.
Nobody makes it stop. Riley doesn’t make it stop, and she hates herself for it, even as she knows it would only make things worse for Mac if she tried. Jack doesn’t make it stop, and she sort of hates him for it too, even though he’s caught in the same horrible trap. No one bursts through the door to announce it was all a horrible mistake and no one could actually be expected to just live with this. The enforcer doesn’t have a sudden epiphany that his job is a worse crime than half the people Riley met in supermax were guilty of and stop what he’s doing. It just… continues, until it’s over, and then the man casually hangs the strap back up on the wall and leaves without another word to any of them.
As soon as the door swings shut behind him, Mac collapses. He falls forward onto the bench, breathing in audible gasps, his whipped back heaving. Jack moves, letting go of Riley’s hand and starting over towards him. Riley is only a moment behind him, crashing to her knees on the opposite side of Mac to where Jack crouches.
“Hey,” Jack says, his voice softer than Riley’s heard it go since she was twelve years old. “Hey, buddy. It’s over, it’s done. You did so good.”
Mac’s only response is a deep, ragged breath that peters out into a wordless, strangled sound. His fingers peel away from the edge of the bench one by one and he withdraws his arms across the canvas and presses his face into them. Now that she’s this close, Riley can see that his entire body is shaking. The marks on Mac’s shoulders and down the upper part of his back are livid and they make her own body throb in echoes of sympathy pain.
“I’m gonna touch you, okay?” Jack asks the question still in that soft, quiet register. His hands are already out, hovering near Mac, but they don’t get any closer until he gets a response.
After a few moments, Mac nods his permission, and Jack settles one hand low on his back, away from the marks, the other on his head. Despite the warning, and despite how gently and carefully Jack touches him, Mac flinches at the contact. Jack takes it in stride. His expression goes sad, but he doesn’t react otherwise, except to thread his fingers through Mac’s thick blond hair.
“Riley,” Jack says, after a few moments of silently combing through Mac’s hair. Riley startles a little and tears her eyes away from the horrible red marks to look up at Jack. “Ri, can you grab his things for me, please?” While he speaks to her, he doesn’t take his attention off Mac, and he doesn’t stop moving his hand.
Though she’d heard the words, and knows what they all mean individually, Riley’s comprehension of them as a whole lags and buffers. She hesitates, the wood panelled ground hard under her knees, and doesn’t know what she’s being asked to do.
This time, Jack looks up. He makes eye contact with her and the gentle grief in his face makes Riley’s throat feel tight. There’s no disapproval in his expression, no reprimand for wasting time or not being able to follow a simple instruction. Jack just gives his head a light jerk, gesturing towards the rack by the door without taking either of his hands off of Mac.
Right. Of course. Obviously. Mac’s shirt and jacket are still where he’d hung them. Of course that’s what he’d been asking her. She pushes herself off the ground and walks over to the clothing rack, though every step she takes farther away from them is one she doesn’t want to take. She wants to stay, to remain close, but there’s nothing she can do for Mac right now. The only thing she can do is get his clothes so they can get out of here as fast as possible. As soon as she has the thought, Riley’s skin itches with the need to get away from this awful place. To get Mac away from this awful place.
Mac’s shirt feels distant and not entirely real. She rubs the material between her fingers and stares at it. It’s obviously the same shirt as before, though it doesn’t seem like it is. Maybe it’s her that’s different.
Behind her, she can hear Jack speaking in a low rumble, telling Mac, “It’s over. It’s over, now, and Riley and me are gonna take you home, and nobody’s gonna hurt you anymore. That part’s done now.”
The sound of it makes Riley’s eyes sting, and she looks down when she feels her knuckles start to ache. Her hands are gripping Mac’s shirt far too tightly, and it takes effort to release them, forcing them to loosen. Once she’s sure she’s not about to rip it by accident, she reaches back up for the jacket, and then turns to bring the clothing over to them.
In the time that Riley’s had her eyes off of them, Mac has moved. He’s turned to the side a bit, pulled himself across the bench so that he’s angled towards Jack, who’s still got one hand on his lower back and the other combing his hair in slow strokes. It’s almost a hug, except for the way that Mac is still slumped over the bench. The top of his head is almost brushing Jack’s chest now. His face isn’t visible, still buried in his arms, and Riley can’t quite be sure, but she thinks one of his hands might be reached out just far enough to hang onto the open side of Jack’s over-shirt.
When he sees that Riley’s returned with the requested items, Jack takes a deep, steadying breath and says, “Hey, bud.” The way he says the casual nickname makes Riley’s heart twist, hard. There’s a deep warmth in it, making it land like a much more affectionate term than it had seemed to be on the surface. “Ri’s got your shirt and jacket. We’re gonna get you dressed and then we’re gonna get out of here, sound good?”
Riley isn’t expecting much of an answer. Mac seems pretty out of it to her, which is understandable given what’s just been done to him.
Even so, he pulls in a slow breath, lets it out even more slowly, and says, voice muffled a bit by his forearms, “Yeah. ‘M okay.”
Jack’s face twists. “Not asking you to be okay,” he says. The correction is just as soft as every other word he’s said since the beating ended, and he pulls his hand through Mac’s hair again, nails scratching lightly at the back of his head. Clearly, Jack can’t quite bring himself to let that one go, which Riley appreciates. She hasn’t known Mac for very long, yet, but she gets the feeling he’s a person who says a lot of ‘okay’s and ‘fine’s that he really ought not to have said.
With a smaller, shakier breath, Mac nods into his forearms. “Yeah,” he mumbles, the word almost lost entirely.
“Just don’t want you to have to be here any longer than necessary,” Jack tells him, and Mac nods again.
Then, with slow, stiff movements, Mac pulls himself off of the bench. Jack’s hands fall away as he does, allowing Mac control of his own pace. Riley watches anxiously, the shirt and jacket twisted in her hands, noticing every wince and twist of his expression, hearing every tiny sound he’s unable to completely suffocate out of existence. Mac shifts until he’s no longer kneeling but sitting on the ground, leaning heavily on the elbow he keeps on top of the bench. It’s obvious from everything about the way he moves that he’s in a great deal of pain, and Riley can hardly stand to watch it.
She gives Jack the shirt when he waves a hand at her, and she watches with a growing sickness in her stomach as he begins what is clearly the very practiced, familiar process of helping Mac get dressed again. Working together, they’re able to get the t-shirt over Mac’s head without him needing to lift his arms. Jack pulls the hem down, lightly tugging the side to straighten out a deep fold.
The fabric pulling against his beaten shoulders and back makes Mac whine, just a little bit. Jack’s expression crumples with momentary heartbreak, and then smooths out into something calmer, though still serious and regretful.
“Sorry, kid,” he murmurs.
Mac just shudders when he hears it, a shiver coursing down his body like the apology hurt worse than the actual pain had. Riley might not have noticed or known quite what that meant if she weren’t the same way. She knows intimately what it’s like to take what hurts and swallow it down, roll with it, and keep on moving, at the same time that being treated with kindness is frightening and hard to understand. Jack sees it too, and he knows what it means. Riley can guess that from the look on Jack’s face and the way he keeps brushing the creases out of Mac’s shirt, careful to avoid bumping the now-hidden welts while he spends a few extra moments making gentle, painless contact.
The emotional toll of everything that’s happened - everything leading up to the beating, seeing Mac take seventeen blows from that heavy-looking leather strap without making a single sound, the way he seems so much less composed now that the punishment has ended and he’s alone with people he knows won’t harm him - throbs like a headache at Riley’s temples. She wants to scream about the unfairness of it, march into Patricia Thornton’s office and demand how she can allow this to continue, lay down in her own bed and sob until she passes out and sleeps for an age. None of those things are options, though. So, instead of doing any of them, Riley hands the jacket to Jack when he reaches in nonverbal request.
“Gonna hurt if we put this on,” Jack says to Mac, hefting the item where his partner can see it. Mac eyes the jacket and shrugs, then flinches hard and can’t stifle the sharp, pained noise that rattles out of his chest.
“Don’t care,” Mac tells him, a stubborn edge hardening his voice. He’s looking down, at the place where he’s picking at the edge of the bench’s canvas covering with his thumbnail, not lifting his eyes to look at either of them even as he gives such a certain answer. “I’m gonna wear it.”
“Are you sure?” There’s clear hesitation in the way Jack doesn’t immediately move to comply, the reluctance thick in his question.
“I’m wearing it,” Mac says, and that stubborn edge is even stronger this time. “Either help me, or give it to me and I’ll do it myself.” He holds out a hand for it, a challenge in the gesture even as his open palm is visibly unsteady.
Not for a moment does Riley think that Jack is going to make Mac get the thing on himself without any help. It’s an odd thing to realize, what with the resentment she’s allowed to build up towards the man, but Riley knows it without question. There’s no way that Jack is going to allow Mac to suffer even a fraction more if there’s anything he can do to prevent it, even if he’s frustrated, or he disagrees with Mac’s choices. No matter how strained things may be between Riley and Jack now, how strange it feels to realize it’s becoming harder and harder to remember to hate him, it’s comforting to realize she still has that amount of faith in the person he is.
Leaning forward, Jack opens out the jacket and helps Mac put it on. There’s no I told you so when pulling it up and settling it against his shoulders makes Mac’s entire posture falter like he’d come this close to collapsing in on himself. He just cups the side of Mac’s jaw and waits for his trembling, wheezing breaths to calm before pulling away.
Honestly, Riley understands the sticking point. It clearly hurts. Of course it does - his jacket isn’t exactly made of light material, and anything pressing into the welts is going to be painful, there’s no way around that. However, Riley still understands why Mac is so insistent on it, even despite the pain. If it were her, and she’d just been beaten that brutally, she’d want that extra layer of protection between her and the rest of the world. The idea of walking out into the hall, past the other agents and DXS personnel in the building, out into the parking lot and the world beyond, with nothing but a thin layer of processed cotton between skin and muscle that had just been whipped… Riley shudders just thinking of it.
Together, she and Jack pull Mac to his feet. They both pause, holding onto his upper arms, until they’re sure that he’s not going to fall when they let go. Mac’s face has taken on an ashen hue, and he’s a little unsteady, but his knees don’t buckle and he stays standing, so Riley chalks that up to a win.
”Ready?” Jack asks.
“Yeah,” Mac says, a little hoarse. He starts walking sooner than Riley would’ve expected him to, halfway to the door before she can get her legs to cooperate and start following him.
It’s quick and quiet, but on their way out of the room and into the hall, Jack catches her by the elbow for just a moment. He gives her a tight smile, eyes glinting, and tells her, “You did good. Did real good, Riley. I’m so sorry.”
Before Riley can process it, or say anything in response, or even figure out what the hot, spiky feeling in her chest even is, Jack’s caught up to Mac and they’re out into the halls of DXS again.
Walking down the main hall of the Department’s wing is an odd, troubling feeling. Riley walks on Mac’s left, Jack across from her on his right, and she tries her best to ignore the way it feels like they’re being stared at by every person they come across. There aren’t many people around this area of the building at this time of day, but it’s clear from the looks they get when they do encounter other agents or DXS personnel that everyone knows exactly what’s just happened. Mac’s gait is stiff and slower than it normally is, and given the expressions she’s sure are showing on her and Jack’s faces, along with where they’re walking away from, Riley is sure there isn’t a single person here who isn’t well aware one of their team’s been disciplined. The looks they get are a range of sympathy to avoidant discomfort, mixed with the rare smirk.
When she’d first started here, Riley had found the building DXS made its headquarters in impressive and interesting. A little intimidating, but mostly cool. Now, though, it just feels dangerous. There are too many wide open spaces, too many people she doesn’t know or trust around them. And Mac is hurt. The damage is hidden under his shirt and jacket, but he’s in pain, and he’s just been violently abused by the organization he works for and told it was only what he’d deserved. What he’d earned.
Everything feels like a threat, and Riley has been forced to stand by and watch Mac get hurt once already today. Protectiveness grinds between her ribs, and she can’t help eye the whole place with a deep and challenging suspicion. Yesterday, Riley would have said that the odds of someone trying anything while they were home, while they were walking through headquarters, were slim to none. Now, she’s not so sure.
Now, nothing about DXS feels sure, and it certainly doesn’t feel safe. So until they’re out, until they have Mac home where no one but them can reach him, Riley isn’t taking any chances.
“I’m gonna take us all back to mine, unless there are any objections,” Jack says, when they’re finally out of the building and heading for the parking lot.
Head dipped and eyes on the ground, Mac doesn’t say anything, which Jack seems to take as agreement. He’s got a hand out, not touching Mac but hovering behind him, ready to step in the moment it seems like something needs to be done. It’s been there the whole time, since the hall outside the disciplinary room. Over Mac’s head, Jack raises an eyebrow at Riley, and she shrugs.
“Sure, whatever,” she mutters, which is as close as she can get to pretending that the idea of going over to Jack’s apartment bothers her. Her attempts at keeping a prickly distance have fallen completely to the back of her mind in the face of the idea of being separated from Mac. Bozer doesn’t know about any of this and Mac won’t be able to disguise the consequences of the beating this soon after it’s happened, so Jack’s place is the only option. She’s a bit surprised at how little she cares.
Riley opens the door to the back seat of Jack’s car, still with that hand behind Mac as he climbs inside. She looks over at Jack and gestures, indicating what she plans to do, and he nods, telling her to do it. There’s something grateful and proud in his face, and Riley can’t stand to look at it for longer than a moment. Not when that expression on Jack’s face, looking at her , makes her eyes sting and her chest feel tight. Mac needs her to keep it together, because this is not about her right now. So she steadies her nerves, and climbs into the back seat of the car after him.
Once the doors are closed and the engine started, Mac gingerly turns to his side. The car starts to pull out of the lot and he leans heavily into the seat, his eyes closed and his face tight with pain. Riley’s mouth is dry and she doesn’t know what to do. What to say. The car bumps over the seam between the lot and the road and Mac lets out a soft whine.
“Hey,” Riley says, needing to say something, to do something. His eyes open and he peers over at her. She holds a hand out between them and he looks at it for a long moment before hesitantly meeting it with one of his own. Mac’s fingers are cold, and Riley puts her other hand over the top of them.
It would be a stupid question to ask. The answer is plainly obvious, and acting like it isn’t would honestly be insulting. Riley can feel it stuck in her mouth, heavy and unwieldy behind her teeth.
“I’m okay.” Mac’s voice is low but steady. She tilts her head to the side and tries to figure out what to do with the small smile Mac’s giving her. “It looked worse than it was. Promise. Sorry you had to see that.”
Riley’s eyes sting, and she’s a little worried she might cry. Honestly, she doesn’t care. Maybe she should. Maybe it would help if she did. If Mac saw how it really made her feel to watch that happen to him, how much it mattered to Riley that he’d been Then again, it seems just as likely to shut him down even worse. So, for lack of being able find anything else to do, Riley just squeezes his hand tight. She can feel Mac’s pulse in his wrist. It’s a little fast, just a bit unsteady.
“No one’s asking you to be okay,” Riley says, echoing what Jack had told him, and his smile falters. Something raw replaces it, vulnerable and uncertain. She squeezes Mac’s hand again. “You don’t have to be okay. I promise.” She hesitates, lowers her voice to barely a whisper, admitting, “I’m not. That was… That was fucking horrible.”
Mac worries his lower lip between his teeth, looking past Riley’s shoulder out the window rather than at her. His expression cracks open farther, and she takes a risk. Pulling at his hand, Riley manages to get Mac to tilt forward, leaning across the bench seat in the back of Jack’s car until his forehead gingerly presses into the top of her shoulder. She waits, telling herself to be patient, and her patience is rewarded when he presses into her harder.
“Yeah.” The word is almost completely inaudible. Riley would never have heard it if their heads hadn’t been so close together. “Yeah, it was…” Mac stops and breathes in. She can hear the way his inhale stutters, and the deep shame in the last word. “Horrible.” All he’s doing is repeating what she’d said back to her, but it seems like it was something worse and more frightening, as far as Mac was concerned.
Sighing, Riley doesn’t say anything else. She just leans her cheek against Mac’s hair, holds his hand, and tries not to think about whether this is going to happen again. Jack, up in the front seat, doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard any part of what they’ve said, and just continues driving. At a red light, he glances up and their eyes meet in the rearview mirror. He doesn’t say anything, but she can see the wrinkled crow’s feet of his expression, soft like a smile though it isn’t happy like one. Mostly, it’s proud.
It probably will happen again. That much seems obvious. Riley doesn’t know when, but she does know one thing. She’d been wrong. While she hadn’t been able to stop the beating, it isn’t totally true that there’s nothing she could do to help, nothing she could do to make things better. There’s this. There’s Mac’s pulse slowing under her grip, and his breathing warming the fabric of his shirt, and the way he’s stopped shaking quite so badly now.
Whatever else might be coming, whatever else might be wrong and sick within DXS, Riley can still do this.