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Mack is not shipped out for the first mission the Unit gets since their reinstatement.
Neither is he on the second.
And by the third, Jonas knows better.
It is three weeks after they get Mack back, bring Mack home, that Jonas makes the call for them all. And he is not being presuming if he knows, and he does, he can recall that itch beneath the skin just as well as any one else on the team.
It is what makes him so good at his job.
“Fishing trip.”
He tells Molly, already putting his clothes into one of the army issued duffels, the worn one he takes, not on missions, but on personal trips just like this one.
“With Mack?”
Jonas stills, looks up and says, “With them all.”
When he gets into his truck and he is backing out of the driveway of his home, Molly is there by the door, smiling as she waves him off. And that will always be worry in the way she watches her husband go. But this, he is good at this too. Because this is what he does, keeping one world separated from the next.
Keeping one from colliding with the next.
Jonas picks him up at the bachelor’s barracks.
Takes his bag from his hands and tosses it in the back, has Mack sitting in the passenger seat before he can get a word out. On or off the field, it still takes very little for Mack to understand just what Top wants from him, whether it is a clean headshot or something else entirely.
It’s not blind faith; it’s years and years of hard earned trust.
Here, there is no one to wave them off when they go.
With the windows rolled down, and the distance growing greater and greater between them and Fort Griffith, Jonas waits for Mack to inhale, then exhale until he can’t taste blood at the back of his throat.
Until every breath of air he draws in isn’t about to suffocate him.
His eyes track every road and every turn they make, and it’s like he is looking out at the world through the lens of the sniper rifle he can dissemble on touch alone.
Jonas is not his anchor, doesn’t ground him in the way Mack wants him to.
Sitting there in the passenger seat, Mack has to learn to become his own.
When they arrive at the house, there’s already two cars parked in an arrangement that comes to them almost second nature, not so close as to block the only path leading up to the house but not so far as to make it a difficult ordeal if they need to get out quick.
The grinding of gravel beneath their wheels has the curtains shifting. The slam of their car doors has the front door unlocking from within.
“You look like shit, Mack,” Bob greets him as he steps in, and Mack just rolls his eyes in return, knows exactly how he looks in front of the mirror and too rung out to even drag a hand down his face.
None of it goes unnoticed, not the beer in one of Bob’s hand and his wedding band on the other. But what they are here doesn’t take away from what they are at home. What they have here is not what they have anywhere else.
Jonas closes the door behind him, and Bob nods his head in greeting, “Boss.”
And when their arms come, reaching out for him, Mack doesn’t bother with pulling away. Where Bob tastes cold and bitter when he crushes their mouths together, Jonas just wraps his arms tighter around Mack, careful of every broken rib that has healed.
Where they learn to settle at home, they learn to settle much quicker here.
And this is just another one of those Unit secrets.
The kind of affection displayed here is not displayed anywhere else, especially not on the field. Sitting around the coffee table, a worn deck of cards played through and through, Mack sinks back into the solid body behind him. And it matters very little who it is that’s bearing his full weight at the moment.
(Not that he can’t tell, only Hector bothers with sitting quietly even when there are pins and needles up and down his arm.)
Mack closes his eyes, and he breathes through his teeth.
It is here that he doesn’t feel helpless.
And that is an emotion that he has struggled with all this time. It is not the entire reason why he becomes an army ranger, but it does account for a lot. Being stuck pushing papers behind the desk, standing there in control, with only their voices over the comm. and his eyes on the maps as a nerve agent bomb heads straight for them.
There is little that he doesn’t hate.
Here, where he is allow to see and touch, and confirm for himself that these are the men he will lay his life down for, here is where that itch doesn’t need scratching with a few well aimed shots made on a paper target.
“I think it’s about time for me to turn in for the night.”
It is Jonas who stands up first, him with his empty bottle in one hand and the other reaching out for his duffel by the door. And it is Mack who sits up, not looking hopeful but expectant when he asks.
“Mind if I join you, Top?”
It’s not Jonas who replies but Charles, who takes all the empty bottles from their hands and heads for the kitchen with a rueful grin. It is Charles who stands by the door and tells him with a shake of his head.
“Bed’s big enough for five, wouldn’t know where you’d sleep if not with us.”
When they all fall to bed, and for them, it is not always an actual bed, but for tonight and tomorrow night, it can be. When they fall to bed, they don’t have to sleep pressed to one another. But everything helps, physical contact is not new to them.
The hand on his arm, the fingers grazing just above his hips, the leg slung over his all do when he is closing his eyes and all he can remember is the push of something foreign forced down his throat, bruises up and down his sides, kisses made to his skin with the toe of a man’s boots who have no rank.
He’s been dressed down, stripped down, and kicked until he is down on his knees, and then some more. There’s always more but Mack doesn’t need fixing in ways of bones or brain.
If there's a constant, this is it.
And if the rest of the team knows nothing, they know exactly this.
He wakes up to the sight of Charles’ head between his legs, Jonas lying right next to him, smoothing a hand down his abdomen.
Mack knows his pants are somewhere around his ankles, if even that, he also knows the soft, sharp inhale Charles pulls in before he takes the head in his mouth. Not that it prepares him at all for the heat of his mouth or the way Grey drags his tongue against the underside of his cock. They don’t take him apart because none of them has been in one piece for a long time now. They won’t ask to put him back together when they can’t even do it for themselves. It’s not an expectation when it’s a fact.
But this, they can offer, give and take when Mack’s groans are muffled in the crook of Jonas’ neck, his fingers flexing in the sheets.
“Not just yet, Master Sergeant.” Jonas says, reaching out to wrap a hand around the base of his cock, has him biting his lips, eyes barely opened and cock harder with the added pressure.
This is not about control, or pushing limits. In all honesty, this is about anything but.
When he comes, Charles catches it all in the palm of his hand, cum dripping down each digit until Mack gets his limbs to work again and hands him a tissue from the box at the head of the bed.
“Mornin’, Mack.” Charles says, looking like the devil as he cleans his hand and swipes the pad of his thumb against the corner of his mouth. Jonas just lets out a faint rumbling laugh when Mack answers with a flip of his middle finger, otherwise too content in moving another muscle.
It’s an interdependent thing they have between them.
And this is just another thing they are willing to do for each other.
It’s much better than taking a bullet when they can take each other in hand, every push or pull made in equal measure and strength, where giving in is not the same thing as giving up.
The bruises are a reminder, an ugly one but one nonetheless.
They don’t fade as fast as he’d like them to, and Mack feels a hundred years old even with the hot water running down his back. From where he has dislocated it too many times, his shoulder and every bullet wound that he has ever suffered from ache. His feet are sore from the hike he leads them on, fishing gear sitting forgotten in the back of Jonas’ truck still. And it’s not naivety if he doesn’t start swinging when the shower curtains are pulled back and Bob steps inside to join him beneath the spray.
“Turn around.”
“What, you’re going to scrub my back for me?”
It’s familiarity that Mack only asks when he already has his back turned to Bob, the splay of his muscles relaxed and almost docile when Bob brushes his mouth against the back of his neck.
The water is warmer and Bob’s mouth is hot when he bites him and follows it with a drag of his tongue, not looking to mark him up but just to ask, “Would you like me to?”
“I won’t say no if that’s what you’re asking.”
Bob laughs, and it doesn’t take long for Mack to follow. When Mack leans back, Bob just traces his hands across the bruises up and down his sides until he is making his own over the curve of those shoulders. And if Mack’s bruises are anything, they can be a reminder that he’s got this too.
This time, when he presses two fingers down, the ache is not so bad.
When Jonas says that Mack isn’t even going to bend to the breaking, he only means that Mack won’t be bending for anyone but them.
Because here is where he falls apart.
Here is where he can.
Crumble into dust in their hands, fall asleep without keeping one eye opened. Wake up without feeling the need to cock the gun already within arm’s reach. Because this is a responsibility that falls on everyone’s shoulders, weak links be damned.
There isn’t a single one here.
The team takes care of their own.
The noises he makes when Hector pushes a finger in is well worth the trouble of all that prep, lying stretched out on the couch with only his shirt pushed up to his chest, streaks of slick making his skin shiny with the dim lights still on in the room.
“I’m not just the pretty face—”
“No, you’re not, Mack.” Hector grins, “Neither are you the smarts either, so come on, relax.”
He scoffs but tries, settles his shoulders into the cushions and follows Hector’s hands as they guide him where they might. He sinks back into the worn couch and wonders when it is that they will finally break it. Hector fucks him open with his fingers alone, has him clutching onto him with his knuckles clenched white, breaths let out, uneven, when he finally presses pass that first ring of muscles with his cock. Fucking in, palms in place of clothes to skin and the feeling of being filled to the brink when he finally bottoms out.
“…Relaxed enough for you?”
Mack breathes out, eyes closed, fingers flexing over Hector’s arm. And the small tilt at the corner of his mouth is telling enough that he doesn’t need an answer so much as he needs Hector to move already.
There is a litany of swear words, not all of them English when he finally pushes him over the edge and fucks him right through it.
What Mack has on his hands is death and gore, what they all have on their hands is just that. And there is no glory to the decades of blood caked beneath his fingernails. Even from afar, when he pulls triggers from rooftops and watch them fall with a headshot, their blood is all on him.
There’s no regret, because it would be his blood on the dirt and sand otherwise.
They don’t know that when they go home, there will be a mission ready.
What they do know is that there are five of them already mission ready in this house. It might be weeks before all the bruises finally fade until he is just freckles and trashy tattoos he’s kept over his skin since he enlisted at eighteen again. But there is breaking, and then there is broken.
Mack Gerhardt is neither of those things.
The curtains are pulled back, sunlight streaming in through the windows. The room is warm, the floorboards smooth beneath his bare feet when he walks into the kitchen. Jonas is at the stove, cracking an egg open with one hand, gesturing to a cup of coffee already sitting on the counter top with the other.
Bob is halfway through his own plate of breakfast, sitting on one of the chairs with a half-smile playing at his lips. And it’s not a dare when Mack seeks Jonas out for himself, saying his thanks in the way he sinks his fingertips into the soft cotton of Jonas' worn t-shirt, has him canting his head back so he can capture his mouth. His tongue is still sticky sweet with maple syrup, and when he finally pulls back, it is just so the eggs don’t burn.
“Mornin’ to you too, Mack.”
Mack just smirks, and takes the coffee Jonas has already set out just for him.
Their fishing gear stays in the back of the truck.
He is not a mission to be accomplished or a target to be acquired
What he is though, he is a part of the team, just like them all.
XXX Kuro