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They knew it was bound to happen at some point. They hadn’t talked about it, not outright, but more so danced around the subject as a whole. Not that they were deliberately trying to ignore it or shut it down, it just never really came up as a topic until then.
Mac and Jack had been out of the army for a few months. They gone to visit Jack’s family in Texas before turning to LA to settle. Jack had been more than welcomed by Bozer and told their house was his until he found a place of his own.
Bozer had been more than supportive in the whole transition of everything. He had done extensive research on the difficulty of switching from soldier to civilian life, and done everything he could to make it all go as smoothly as possible.
“I know it’s different for everyone, but the basics of everything was the same. I got you both some nice, crisp, fresh sheets, some blackout curtains, white noise and noise cancelling headphones—”
“Boze, this is great, honestly, but you didn’t have to go through all the trouble.”
“Ain’t no trouble, man. I just wanna make sure my best friend and his best friend are as comfy as possible. I mean geez, I haven’t even begun to tell you about how horrible it was to look up everything you guys ate over there. So you just tell me whatever you wanna eat, and I’ll get right on it.”
“What if we want some of that nasty ass meatloaf they served that was the highlight of the day sometimes?”
“Then I’ll call you both barbarians and make you a better version of it. If you miss all the salt that was loaded into every single meal you ate, I’ll make you some extra salty homemade pretzels.”
It had gotten particularly bad for Mac for a little while in the first few weeks. Logically, he knew he was home, but just the never ending feeling of something was wrong made it practically impossible for him to sleep, and he found himself sitting awake in his bed, night after night, and trying to play it off in the morning didn’t work because Jack saw through him immediately.
“Why didn’t ya wake me? I woulda helped ya through it.”
“There was nothing to get through. It’s not like I had a nightmare or anything. I just— it’s too quiet and loud at the same time.”
“Hey, I’ve gone through this before. I know how difficult it is to transition to civilian life after so long. It just feels wrong, right?”
“I just need my brain to understand that I’m home and nothings going to happen.”
“If it happens again, tell me. Sometimes just havin someone next to ya helps take yer mind off it; tells yer brain the feelin that yer bein watched is just the guy next to ya, watching out for ya.”
It had gone on like that for months, and included a lot of very late nights of Mac and Jack finding themselves on the living room sofa. They didn’t talk much, no more than a can’t sleep and the TV getting turned on to some random channel with the volume practically muted for fear of waking Bozer when he had to work. It had gotten so bad at one point that Mac couldn’t sleep unless he had Jack next to him.
Of course, he had apologized profusely to Jack, for acting like a child and needing comfort to aid in his sleep. Jack waved him off, telling him he was the same exact way the first time he went home, that his mother needed to be sleeping with him in the same room for the thought to even pass in his mind that he should sleep. Mac argued that it was different, because he needed Jack right next to him to even feel tired.
“It’s all good man. We all got our things. If I need to bunk with ya so you can get some shut eye, I’m all for it. Besides, ain’t like I’ve never had to hunker down with other guys before. I’d tell ya bout the CIA op I had to do in like the asscrack of winter in Greenland, but I think I’m still under the NDA for it.”
Mac had denied the thought of it for about a week before Jack ignored him completely and just followed him into his room when he said he was going to bed.
That was the best night of sleep Mac had since getting back.
After a while, Jack had begun to sneak out of his room, or tell him to get in bed and he’d be there in a second. They were tricks his mother used on him and had helped immensely in getting back into the swing of civilian life.
The time that followed after that, looking for jobs and finding Jack his own place, they didn’t realize that July was nearly upon them, and it was something that Bozer was concerned about.
“The neighborhood has a lot more younger couples with kids now. It’s not as quiet as it used to be before you left. I mean, we used to be some of the youngest people here, causing trouble. My parents said their neighborhood is still pretty quiet if you wanted to make your way there for the fourth.”
“I appreciate it Boze, but I think I’m going to stay here. Couple of fireworks should be fine.”
“I just wanna tell you, they’re more like your type of firework.”
“Hey, if things go bad, ya got us all that stuff from when we first got back. Couple of booms shouldn’t be all that bad.”
“Whatever you say, man, but lemme tell you, they tend to start a few days early. I don’t think I got a decent night sleep last year until the sixth.”
The first of them started on the first. Short bursts throughout the day with the smell of gun powder lingering in the air. Mac would’ve lied if he said it didn’t surprise him, but more so on the factor of they were happening so early. In between searching for jobs, he’d started, or at least picked back up, old projects that had been forgotten since he left for MIT, and the muffled explosions in the background were more annoying than anything.
As the day grew closer though, the booms were less muffled and the smell of gunpowder was more prominent to the point of needing to keep all the windows shut. When the mortar went off at midnight on the fourth, it shook the house a bit, and that’s when the annoyance started to slowly shift into warning. He had trouble sleeping that night.
When the night slowly shifted into morning, Mac knew the day was going to be bad.
Bozer had been asked to work a double shift, so he wouldn’t be home until the night, and Jack had a last minute showing on an apartment that Mac urged him to go to. So Mac was pretty much on his own until mid afternoon.
It should’ve been fine. He had some music playing and was working on his bike in the garage. Overall, he was fine. The clinking of the metal and the loudness of the music was pretty much drowning out all of the smaller fireworks going off, and he was able to tell himself it was just fireworks, that he was home and not in any danger. With the crackles and piccolo pete’s, his mind was telling him it was just like rifle training in the sandbox, people that were on his side just doing their job.
When he took a break and went to the kitchen, the smoke he saw outside reminded him of the smoke bombs he used to make with Bozer in their backyard when they were younger, but also coming up on burning buildings from IEDs that had gone off before he got to them.
Seeing all his neighbors and their kids in their front yards and playing in the streets reminded him of the civilians he had to watch out for in the villages. The adults that would try to chase them away or just ignore completely, or on the off chance, try to help and tell him where the supposed IED was. The kids laughing was like the kids that would hide around corners and watch him work.
The mortars going off and shaking the house changed everything in an instant.
The laughing turned into screaming, the colored smoke turned black, and the smell of gunpowder was the only thing that was lingering in the air.
Mac knew, logically, that he was safe and at home, but he was thrown right back into the sandbox, and his mind was working overtime in trying to find where the next IED would be coming from.
He started looking, checking every place in his house; every cupboard, the pantry, the fridge, small cabinets, under the beds— he also made a magnificent mess of basically the whole house upturning everything, looking for anything that seemed out of place.
He knew he wouldn’t find anything, logically, but his head couldn’t differentiate between past and present. Every bang in the distance was a reminder that sent him back to the worst part of the sandbox, the kids laughing sent him way back to the most horrific. It sent him to a very specific memory, one where him and Jack weren’t as close as they currently were.
It started off as a regular day, as it always did, with Jack slapping his legs to get him up, and when Mac refused, Jack practically dragged him down from the bunk, earning laughs from all the other guys. They gone to mess for breakfast before receiving orders and heading out.
It was hotter that day.
Jack had the AC in the Humvee turned on full blast, joking that Mac would dry out like a raisin before they got to their destination with how skinny he was. Mac countered that the cool air would only help in that aspect and, though it would be impossible to dry up in such time, the best way to counter it would to have a swamp cooler, which Mac said he could definitely make happen.
“No fuckin way, man. I sweat my ass off outside; don’t need to be containin extra liquid in any form on the inside to make me extra uncomfortable.”
“You’re the one who thinks I’m going to dry up. I’m offering you a solution to the problem, but apparently you don’t want it and would rather see me shrivel.”
“Yer a little shit, ya know that?”
There was an unusual amount of people out and about when they reached their destination. Despite living in the climate, the native people still didn’t appreciate the supposed heatwaves that happened and would opt to staying inside in the barely cooler shade of the house. Seeing so many people out sent up a red flag for Jack.
“I’m stayin on yer six. Don’t like how animated it is on such a hot day. Somethin’s up.”
“Copy.”
Mac had navigated throughout the town to where the IED was supposed to have been held, but when they got there, there was an explosion in the opposite direction. Screaming immediately filled the air and people started to scatter, half toward the noise and the other away. Mac started to turn, to head to where it had come from, only for Jack to hold him back.
“Fuck no, Carls.”
“I need to see what happened. If I was wrong—”
“Ya weren’t. We’re goin the right direction to where it was said an IED was. Ya wouldn’t make a rookie mistake of goin the opposite way.”
“Why would we be given incorrect information on where it is?”
“Not sayin we were, just that it could’ve been somethin no one saw and didn’t report. As much as I don’t want ya to, go take a look at whatever’s supposed to be hidin over there. We can report we did our job but the info we got was skewed and there were multiple devices.”
Jack had also told him, multiple times, to trust his gut. And at that time, he still felt like there was an IED in front of him. So he checked, and there was.
But there was another explosion, and another after that. The screaming that accompanied them was something that still occasionally haunted Mac’s dreams.
And what he saw when they went back through the town was something that turned every dream into a nightmare. It was only a few seconds, as Jack was leading him back through the town toward the Humvee to leave, but it was enough, just before Jack curled his hand around Mac’s eyes.
“Ya don’t need to see that, Mac.”
Mac was scared to look outside at all; scared that he’d see the same scene on his street that he saw that day in the sandbox.
Every mortar going off, every boom that echoed and shook the house, was just another IED. It was another person that he inadvertently killed, because he couldn’t find and disarm the bomb fast enough.
“Yo, Mac!”
And Jack was there. He was as much of a target as anyone else was. He had to find the IEDs and stop them before Jack became an unfortunate victim in the whole thing.
“That place I looked as was nice, and the lady said that once I get a job lined up, it could be as good as mine.”
It wasn’t hiding in the linen closet.
“Don’t think I told ya, but a buddy of mine reached out a few days ago with an offer.”
It wasn’t under the couch, or in any drawer.
“Job title is security at a think tank, but there’s more than meets the eye.”
It wasn’t in any of the dozens of boxes laying around.
“Can’t exactly tell ya what it officially is, but if yer interested—”
He needed to find it before Jack got hurt.
“Mac.”
Jack was there, staring at him as he was desperately looking through all the cabinets again. He had to have missed something.
“Hey, I didn’t know ya wanted to redecorate. Ya know I woulda helped if that were the case.”
“I can’t find it.” He went over to the couch and ripped up the cushions.
“Can’t find what, bud?”
“Can’t you hear them? We went the wrong way. The IED we found wasn’t the right one and all the others went off.”
Mac stopped his frantic searching, only because Jack was holding on to one of his shoulders. “Where ya at right now, Mac?”
“You told me you didn’t want me to turn the Humvee AC into a swamp cooler.”
“And I still don’t.” A small, sad smile slid across Jack’s face. “I need ya to breathe for me, Mac. Big breath in, and out. I know ya know in that head of yers what’s happenin; it’s just misfiring is all.”
“All those people—”
“Big breath in— and out.”
Mac just stared, trying to do as Jack told him, but it wasn’t like him not to care about all those people. Mac remembered calling him out the first time, when Jack literally had to pull him away from a dangerous situation. Both of them got out safely, but a number of people in that town did not, and Mac had gone off on him.
“Hey, I need ya to listen to me.” Mac’s eyes smacked to Jack’s. “Everyone’s okay. No ones in any sort of danger. All them booms out there, they ain’t IEDs. It’s just a couple of people havin some fun with their families.”
Mac nodded, letting Jack’s words sink in.
“Yer home, in sunny California, in yer grandfather’s house, with yer polar bear that I use as a coat rack.” Another mortar went off, making Mac involuntarily duck. “I know it’s difficult, but I promise ya, nothin is gonna happen; not to you, not to me, not to any of those people outside. It’s just a real loud holiday.”
“I know.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, I know.”
“Ain’t anythin to be sorry for. It’s okay if yer head’s havin trouble tellin the different. Nasty side effect of what we’ve been through, but it gets easier, unfortunately, more times it happens. You’ll be able to find what causes it, and hopefully stop before yer too deep to where ya can’t pull yerself out. I’ve pretty much got a handle on my stuff, given I’ve had more experience with PTSD than you have. Also had the unfortunate fortune of nearly havin to go through everythin myself. But you got me, and it’s a hellva lot easier when someone’s with ya to walk ya back to the present.”
Mac continues to breathe deep, nodding and focusing on Jack’s words.
“I ain’t gonna lie, it’s gonna suck. Every time it happens, it’s gonna suck. Figurin out everythin that causes an episode, majorly sucks. Tryin to get any sleep tonight is gonna be sucktastic.”
“Stop saying suck.” Mac snorted.
“But, I’m gonna be here with ya the whole time. Can’t say I’ll be here every single time, but I’ll always just be a little call away if ya need it.” Jack slung an arm around Mac’s shoulders. “Now whaddya say we put on that documentary bout the deep ocean and you can ramble bout how like barely any of the ocean is explored and yet still try to deny that the megalodon ain’t extinct or that sharktopus actually exists?”