This Trophy Isn't Real Love

Chapter 6

When James pulls up outside of Mac's house and lets him out, it's late at night. Neither of them says a word to the other the entire drive over, and this does not change as Mac gets out, shutting the door gingerly behind him. He walks to the front porch without looking back once, though he's hyper-aware of the sound of James' car pulling away down the street.

The question of how the hell he's going to explain the state of his face to Bozer is one that only occurs to him far too late, with his key already in the door. Adrenaline jolts through his chest as the door swings open and he braces for the question he's not going to be able to answer - what happened to you?

By some stroke of luck, though whether it's good or bad luck is undetermined, the house is dark and silence inside. Bozer must already be asleep, shut in his own room, and the building holds the hushed peace of night-time.

Maybe it's for the best. Mac is desperately avoiding the memory of the evening, trying in vain to shove it out of his mind every time it surfaces unbidden, and he doesn't know that he'd be able to talk about it, to explain how exactly he ended up bleeding. He couldn't've lied to Bozer about it, but the truth is something Mac doesn't think he could've said out loud. Bozer would've figured it out for himself, but he'd have added two and two together and come up to twelve, arrived at the conclusion that things were much more serious, much worse than they were.

Maybe it would've been better if Bozer had been there, if Mac had been forced to confront what James had done, confess it to someone who would've immediately done everything in his power to keep James from ever having the opportunity to do it again. There's no question in his mind about that. If Bozer found out, it all would stop there. What happened tonight, Mac is sure it won't happen again, but if his best friend knew, it wouldn't even get the chance to.

The question is moot, however. Bozer is asleep, and Mac slips through the house unnoticed. Once safely in his own bathroom, he stands in front of the sink with his head bowed and the water running, carefully not risking a glance upwards. He doesn't think he can stand to see himself in the mirror, see the immediate aftermath of the violence that he'd experienced not even half an hour earlier. The red smear on the back of his hand is bad enough, not to mention the maybe half-dollar coin sized stain that's grown on his sleeve from the effort of keeping the blood from getting on anything in his father's car.

Methodically, robotically, distanced from everything physically happening, Mac wets a washcloth and dabs at the corner of his mouth. What's left of the blood cleans quickly, there not having been much to begin with, and if there's any left behind, well, he'll deal with that tomorrow.

Without a single glance in the mirror and no idea what he currently looks like, Mac walks into his room and collapses onto his bed. A pulse of pain shoots through his cheek when the side of his face hits the pillow, and he sucks in a sharp breath. As he lays there in the dark, silent room, his brain is churning. He can't make sense of what's just happened.

Factually speaking, sure, he remembers the sequence of events.

He and James had their latest argument over a minor detail of the plan. Mac got tired of being told in a hundred different ways to disregard the life of the operating agent in favor of pragmatism and efficiency. James tried to shut him down. Mac got stubborn. James hit him. It's not complicated.

It just doesn't make sense, and Mac doesn't even know how he feels about it. He can't believe it happened. He can't reconcile that it actually happened.