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Mac didn’t mean to ease drop on other’s conversations, but sometimes it was impossible when the people holding the conversation were speaking so loudly it was almost impossible to ignore.
Something from a past outing had turned into a who has the most interesting story about a scar contest.
Mac listened in, about Travis having an arrow go through his hand, about Avery splitting his head open when he dove into the shallow end of a pool, about Evan getting in a bad car accident and having a crush injury on his leg.
He tried to keep his face straight and not react to the things that were being said, especially the dumb things like Joey knocking his head on a street sign and accidentally knocking himself out. It wasn’t nice to laugh at the expense of others, even though the man himself was laughing the hardest.
The whole situation got him thinking about his own scars and how he got them. There was the one on his knee, from when he and Bozer were first building their secret treehouse lab; Mac somehow forgetting about his acrophobia and having the time of his life in the tree, before looking down and having it crash back on him at full force. He lost his footing, slipped, tried to catch the rope ladder, only to have himself swing and scrape against a nail that had been sticking out of the wood. It had bled a decent amount and required stitches.
Or there was the very faint one on the back of his left bicep that pretty much went the whole length. The first year he and Jack had been employed at DXS during a group sparring session. Mac still hadn’t gotten an actual explanation on how it happened, but a dummy knife had somehow been equipped with a very small, sharp metal tip that had sliced right through the meat of his arm. Come to think of it, that was probably the start of Jack becoming the head of security.
There was the small puncture scar on the bottom of his foot from when he stepped on a nail, a small burn on his leg from a fire pit mishap, a barely noticeable white line just above his eyebrow, then the one right side of his abdomen from getting his appendix removed.
Those ones were all fine, accidents from things that were out of his control and easily explainable; the ones Mac didn’t hesitate to talk about if someone pointed them out.
Then there were ones Mac didn’t like to think about.
Specifically the ones on his collarbone and back.
The one on his collarbone was easier to speak to people about, but still brought up bad memories. It had been during his first tour in Afghanistan; he’d just finished disarming an IED and was packing up his things, getting ready to head back. His overwatch at the time had shouted something, and before Mac knew it, he’d been airborne. He couldn’t really remember exactly what happened, only that in the brief moments before his consciousness left him, his chest hurt and there definitely shouldn’t have been something sticking out of him.
It was later when he awoke in the infirmary that he’d nearly taken an RPG point blank. The area hadn’t been as cleared out as it was supposed to be, and Mac had unfortunately been the target. His overwatch had managed to put the terrorist off enough for him to miss his shot, but Mac still received the aftershock of the explosion that ended with him getting several pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body armor, and with a particularly large one getting dangerously close to his neck. It had lodged in his collarbone, more or less breaking it in the process, requiring surgery to fix it. The large pink scar going across it was one of the reasons Mac tended to wear button ups.
Then there was his back.
Mac hated his back.
He always turned the subject away from it if he had the chance. Thinking about it just brought back bad memories he’d rather forget.
The short answer was he’d been captured and tortured. That was the one he always gave if somehow someone got a glimpse of it. Just hearing it was enough to get them to change the subject themselves, if not for Mac then for themselves.
He remembered when Jack first saw it; the look of horror and pity that reflected in his eyes.
It had been after a particularly nasty day out. Not nasty as in it had been a bad day, but legitimately nasty because the IED had been set in an animal corpse, and had unfortunately gone off before Mac could disarm it.
“Mac!” Jack’s voice had echoed both in his ear through his headset and the surrounding area. “Answer me! Mac!”
“I’m good!” Mac coughed and gagged. He could barely stand the smell of the thing while he’d been trying to poke around in it. At that moment, he’d pretty much been covered. For once, he was grateful he’d skipped their last meal, because it would’ve most definitely made a second appearance.
“Hang tight. I’m comin to ya.”
Despite all the usual warnings Jack had given, Mac started to strip away his armor. His helmet went first, then his scarf— having thanked himself for having the thing pulled up past his nose. His vest was next, having received the brunt of the impact and the most of the corpse and sludge. His outer jacket had been offed as well. He just needed to get away from the smell for a second, and if he had another pair of pants, he would’ve taken off the ones that were currently splattered with blood and matter as well.
He was vaguely aware that there was most definitely something on the previously uncovered part of his face, but knew that if he thought about it, it would just make everything worse.
“Hey!” Jack was beside him. “Ya okay?”
“Please say you have water in your canteen I can use.” Mac held both of his hands out in asking for Jack to do something about the matter on his hands.
Jack unscrewed his canteen and slowly poured water over Mac’s hands, letting him clean away the blood that was staining them. “This is all from the animal right? None from you?”
“No, I just got knocked over when it went off. I’m good, I swear.” He coughed. “Might throw up a bit though.”
Jack couldn’t help the slight snort. “Just about empty bud. Let’s get yer things and head back to the ‘vee. There’s a gallon in there that ya can use for yer arms and face.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me it’s on my face.” He took a second to gag and dry heave in the sand. “How are you not disgusted right now?”
“Oh I am; who knows how long that things been sittin and fermentin in the sun to get like that? But I ain’t currently stuck with the smell, and it ain’t the first time I’ve dealt with a dead animal.”
They both gathered Mac’s forgotten gear and headed back to the Humvee. When there, Jack popped the back open and pulled out a gallon of water from their stash. “Alright, bend forward. I’ll let it pour out slowly so ya can wash yer face and it’ll all drop to the ground instead of down yer shirt.”
Mac merely nodded and did as he was told. The lukewarm water felt nice going through his hair, but he tried not to think about why he was cleaning his face.
“We’ll drive with the windows down and shove yer things in one of the boxes; give the guys a little surprise when they open it up.”
“I think they’ll know something happened when I come back without my gear on.”
***
“Woah Dexter! What dead thing did you roll around in?”
Mac ignored the guys as they got back, quickly grabbing his shower kit and running out of the bunks.
“Pretty sure it was a dog or somethin.” Jack said. “IED was inside it and blew before he had a chance to check it out; I pity the guys in laundry.”
“Now that’s nasty.”
“You have no idea. We had to drive all the way back with the windows down just so the stink didn’t set in; pretty sure we’re gonna need like a couple dozen air fresheners for a while. Ya shoulda seen it though, fantastic spray of nasty black goo everywhere.”
“Might wanna have doc check him over in case he got any in his eyes or mouth. Don’t want him turning feral or anything.”
Jack raised a brow before setting his things down and heading outside. “Good point.”
The showers were normally empty at that time of day. Showering at any point besides just before bed seemed rather worthless, and the hot water was reserved for the later hours of the day. So the only guys that would shower at that time would be guys in Mac’s position.
“Ya know Mac, Tommy made a good point.” Jack said as he entered the showers. “Might wanna have doc give ya a look over just in case—”
The sight made the words die in his throat.
Deep down, Jack knew there was a reason why Mac always showered the latest or earliest he could, a reason why Jack never actually ever saw Mac shower. If he thought about it, he couldn’t think of a time where he ever saw Mac with his shirt off, even in during the hottest days when nearly everyone slept shirtless.
They were subconscious thoughts, ones that flew to the forefront of his mind, and knowing the answer to them didn’t put him at ease.
Mac’s back had been littered with scars, large and small, stretching across his shoulders and down the full length. Most of the were long, with a few being small and round.
Jack had seen scars like that before, in books and training videos. He never thought he’d ever see them in the flesh.
Mac had whirled around a second too late, and was caught like a deer in the headlights. His eyes had been wide in the soft light, surprise written on his face, along with something akin to shame. If Jack had to describe it, it was like a child being caught with their hand in a cookie jar.
“I’ll, uh, I’ll wait for ya back in the bunks.” He didn’t wait for a reply, merely headed back out to give Mac his privacy.
***
Jack had actually been sitting outside, the guys in the bunks being too rowdy for him to think. He might accidentally ask someone about it, and the look Mac gave him made him believe no one had seen. The only one who probably had seen was Doc, and even then he knew better than to ask. If Mac didn’t want to talk about it, Jack wasn’t going to go sticking his nose in it.
He didn’t actually know what to expect when Mac came back from the showers, and honestly thought he wouldn’t actually appear until lights out. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before when something was on his mind and needed a distraction, or Jack pushing for something and waiting for an answer. Jack knew not to push that time though, because he too had scars that he didn’t like talking about.
But Mac had gone back to the bunks, ignoring Jack sitting outside at first, before joining him a few minutes later.
“They’re not exactly a secret.” He said, sitting next to him.
“You don’t gotta talk bout them if ya don’t wanna.”
“It’s alright. You’d probably find out eventually.” Mac sat up straighter. “I think it was seven or eight months into my first tour. A group of guys had been sent out to take a look at a town that had unusually high report rates of IEDs. Maybe a dozen guys in total to tackle it and get it done in a few hours. We split off and all started in separate corners to meet in the middle, but IEDs started to go off kinda everywhere and turned the whole thing into a shit show.
“Enemies came out of the woodwork and got the jump on us. Five guys got taken, including me. They took us deep into enemy territory and—” he took a deep breath. “tortured us for information. Sometimes it was as a group, sometimes it was alone. I, uh— we were there for two and a half weeks before we were extracted. When we were transported to a hospital, the doctor said I’d been the worst out of everyone; guys must’ve thought I looked young enough to break easily.
“My back had gotten infected, and I was in the hospital for almost a month. The other guys had gotten released at as early as two weeks. After that, I was pretty much desk duty until it had fully healed and the infection was gone.” Mac gestured behind him. “It was wires mixed with electric cables, like a cat-o’-nine-tails. The round ones were a broken bottle, almost like a cookie cutter. They always made sure it wasn’t enough to kill, just enough for constant pain.”
Jack just sat there; hands clasped in front of him, eyes not leaving the ground, trying to keep a neutral expression but a sad frown winning it’s way to the surface.
“Two of the guys were medically discharged, for a couple others, they were on their last legs of their tours so they didn’t bother signing up again. I’d been given the option of medical discharge if I wanted, but…”
“Ya said no.”
Mac snorted slightly. “I said no. It just didn’t seem right, despite what I went through. All the guys on base told me I was crazy for not wanting to go home after that.”
“I kinda gotta agree with them on that, Hoss.” Jack sighed. “I’m sorry I had to trudge up bad memories.”
“Like I said, they’re not exactly a secret. I think maybe a dozen guys here know I’m all messed up, but I guess only you and Doc know the actual story about how they came to be. I’m not— ashamed of them, they just…”
“Hey man, I got it. Ya don’t need to explain the reasonin. You ain’t the only guy around here with stuff like that, and ya won’t be the last. You don’t wanna talk then ya don’t gotta. It’s all good.”
Mac had honestly forgotten that whole conversation up until that moment. A lot of the time he forgot about the scars themselves because they’d faded a lot since then. There had been times where there’s been flair ups, where the slightest movement brought forth a twinge of pain, like a muscle spasm remembering the pain. He knew Jack had most likely seen them on occasions but was grateful he never said anything.
“Hey Macgyver!” One of the guys called. “Come over here! Need you to be the judge of something!”
Mac snorted, but nonetheless went over. “What up?”
“What do you thinks more stupid: walking into a street sign, or walking off your porch? These two are trying to decided dumbest scar incident and we need an unbiased opinion.”
“Sorry Will. I don’t think I’m going to be an unbiased opinion on stupid decisions ending with scars. I could get Jack in here. He’s probably have a better opinion than me.”
“Yeah, but then he’ll go on about how he got his stupid scar and ultimately win the whole thing.”
“You’re probably right.” Mac laughed. “But while we’re on the subject, do you guys want to hear about me trying to remove my appendix myself?”
The table was silent for a moment.
“Okay man, you win.”