i love me some outsider point of view fics, so here i am, finally giving a shot at one! let me know what you think, i'd love to hear you guys' thoughts! thanks so much to everybody on tumblr for cheering me on while i wrote this. if you wanna hang, or just get updates on what i'm working on next, come see me on tumblr at altschmerzes!

WARNINGS: it gets a little graphic at one point dealing with the aftermath of mac being shot. three or so uses of 'fuck', if that's relevant..

much thanks to clarissafrench, who partially inspired this one with a prompt!

additionally, i just wanna make it clear there's no like, ships here or anything, just found family and a bewildered but endeared new guy trying to figure out what the hell to make of all this.

Thomas King's first day with one of DXS's most highly regarded exfil teams is, as far as first days on the job at high-risk, extremely unpredictable places of employment go, pretty boring. His team lead, Lucia, is a straightforward but friendly older woman with decades of experience leading exfiltration missions, and the other two members of Exfil Team Sierra November are equally as promising. Vincent and Meredith greet Thomas with smiles and solid handshakes, and he spends the rest of the day following the three of them around the DXS base of operations, getting used to his new stomping grounds.

By the end of his first day, Thomas has learned two very important rules that do not appear in manuals or training materials.

Rule 1: Don't expect any of the agents to remember your name, and don't take it personally when they don't. Because they won't.

Rule 2: Don't get attached.

Thomas doesn't think he's going to have a problem with either of those things. He's a professional. He may be young and new to the team, but he can do this just fine.

And for the first couple of missions, everything proceeds exactly as planned. Sierra November fishes the same team out of different locations in the same distant country three times in a week as part of a complicated, multi-tiered operation, and they don't seem to even recognize that it's the same pair of gloved hands pulling them into the helicopters, much less remember the name of Thomas or any of his teammates.

The next week they're ordered to turn around and head home without the agents they were sent to retrieve, and Thomas watches his team lead turn the plane around without hesitation. He doesn't have second thoughts either. It happens, and they're good agents, they'll make their way out. Thomas is uneasy about it, sure, because he's human, and he's exfil. It's his entire job to get field agents home safe, and no part of that description makes him feel great about turning around and going home without them. He sits with a hunk of lead in his gut until he hears they're home safe, got out in mostly one piece.

But it happens, and life goes on.

They don't remember his name, and Thomas doesn't get attached. There are close calls, but nobody dies on their watch, and Thomas marks those down as good days. DXS is a good place with good people, and he thinks he's going to like it there. If there can be anything called an equilibrium in a job like theirs, Thomas feels as though he's found it with relative speed and ease.

It's two months later when things… change.

Thomas is standing in a sparring practice room, watching Lucia practice hand-to-hand with Vincent, on what seems for all intents and purposes to be a normal Thursday. Despite not being field agents, the nature of exfil is such that knowing how to defend yourself, your teammates, and the agents you've been sent to retrieve should the need arise is an essential part of the job. Thus, much of their time not spent actually on missions is occupied by training. Not all of their duties are, as his teammate Meredith describes it, functioning as 'International Uber Air'.

Speak of the devil, Thomas thinks, looking over at the door.

"We're getting sent out tonight," Meredith announces as she walks into the room. Vincent and Lucia's sparring match stops immediately, an expectant hush sitting over the room, waiting for the elaboration of the exfiltration op they'll be embarking on that evening. No elaboration is provided.

"And?" asks Vincent, waving a hand. "Who is it?"

"Guess."

"Oh come on, Mer."

Meredith shakes her head, still grinning. "Nope," she says, "you have to guess."

"What, Park and Katz?"

Meredith's grin widens. "Nope," she repeats, popping the word like bubblegum. "Try again."

It's uncanny, the way Vincent and Lucia seem to figure out where this is going at the same moment, leaving Thomas looking back and forth between them and Meredith in a manner reminiscent of a bobblehead.

"What?" he says, feeling very acutely like the new guy in a way he hasn't since last month. "Who is it?"

"We got MacGyver and Dalton," Meredith sing-songs, and Thomas's brain churns, trying to place the names he's sure he recognizes.

Vincent looks like he's aged ten years, and Lucia seems torn between laughing and crying. That's when it clicks, when the stories Thomas has heard about a blond maverick with a Swiss Army Knife and his partner with the rather… unique outlook click with the names MacGyver and Dalton, and he figures his day is about to get interesting.

Sitting in the back of the plane, ready to hop out and stand guard while Agents MacGyver and Dalton make their swift escape from the ground into the vehicle, Thomas listens to all three of his teammates tell a series of increasingly outlandish stories. In the midst of hearing Meredith recount a time she saw Agent Dalton fight through three armed gunmen with just a knife while Agent MacGyver did something with a bag of chips and a walkie-talkie, the plane lands, and Vincent throws open the door.

Agent Dalton is there waiting, like a perfectly reasonable person would be, and he is alone, which suggests his partner is a different case. This suggestion is backed up by the way, thirty seconds later, that partner quite literally crashes onto the tarmac of the landing strip from the roof of the municipal airport's only building, rolling and popping up like he didn't just jump off a building using what appeared to be a plastic tarp as a parachute to slow his fall.

The first thing Thomas thinks when he gets his first look at Agent Angus MacGyver is, 'holy shit, and Lucia calls me a kid'. Not much shy of thirty himself, a handful of years younger than Meredith and at least two decades behind Vincent and Lucia, he's nevertheless struck by just exactly how young this agent is. He looks all of maybe twenty years old, though Thomas knows he's got to be older, and it's a bit hard to tell, given he's moving extremely quickly when he first arrives. Thomas, guarding the skyline with a rifle scope, cannot spare a second to wonder. Behind him, Agent MacGyver is hauled into the plane by Agent Dalton's hands, fisting in his jacket and yanking, and the second they're both up, Thomas is whirling around and grabbing inside to the handle, pulling himself inside as well.

Once inside, the plane makes short work of taxiing down the strip and taking off into the darkening sky. Not a single bullet sounds after them, a completely clean extraction. It makes Thomas's face break into an adrenaline-fueled smile, and when he looks beside himself, he sees the same look on Meredith. It's a rush, what they do. Looking forward, he sees an expression of cool satisfaction on Lucia, pride on Vincent looking back at him, and he ducks his head away, cheeks getting hot. In trying to distract himself from the pride in Sierra November's second most senior agent's eyes, Thomas's attention lands on their purpose for being here today.

Agents MacGyver and Dalton are collapsed next to each other on the ground, both of them grinning like maniacs. Agent MacGyver's shoulders are heaving as he tries to catch his breath, hair a windswept mess. He's looking around, and when his eyes catch on Thomas, they stay there.

"Hey," he says, voice raised over the sounds of the small plane's dual engines.

Raising his eyebrows, Thomas points to his own chest in universal nonverbal language for 'you talking to me?'

"I haven't seen you before. You're new," Agent MacGyver calls over. Thomas's eyebrows climb even higher as the exhausted agent then shuffles down the short length of the cabin, holding out one slightly-shaking hand. "Agent MacGyver. Mac."

"Um. Thomas?" It comes out sounding like a question and Thomas cringes. "I'm Thomas." He shakes the offered hand. The grip is firm, despite the extreme exertion Agent MacGyver obviously went through to get to the extraction point. "Thomas King."

"Nice to-" Agent MacGyver cuts himself off, pulling his hand back to cover his mouth as a cough shakes his body. Despite the concerned frown from Agent Dalton, he recovers quickly, grinning even wider than before somehow. "Nice to meet you, Thomas."

It's a nice introduction and all, but as they see their cargo safe off the plane at home, Thomas reminds himself of Rule 1. Agent MacGyver was polite to ask his name, but Thomas isn't going to hold it against him when they meet the next time and it's like the first time all over again.

'Next time' looks like it's going to be the following week, until exfil is abruptly cancelled. Thomas is sitting in the lobby with his go bag leaning against his shin, waiting for the rest of his team so they can bolt out the door, when Lucia walks up to him at a slow, even pace. It's nothing like the undercurrent of urgency she moves with when Sierra November's been dispatched, and Thomas knows with a sinking feeling in his gut exactly what's she's going to say before she says it.

"We've been told to stand down, haven't we," he says, and Lucia nods, once, tightly.

"Yes." She stands there for a few still seconds before nodding again, and turning to leave. "Go home, Tom," she calls over her shoulder.

If Thomas hadn't gotten to know Lucia very well over the past couple of months, he wouldn't have noticed how unhappy she is with this order. Vincent is standing at the end of the hall waiting for her, his shoulders set in a hard line. Thomas can't see Meredith anywhere at all, and he imagines she's likely on the roof, watching the sky like she always does when they're given the order to stand down.

For himself, Thomas stays put. He sits in the lobby with his go bag at his feet and finds himself absurdly hoping that blond kid he met once, the one who was so friendly even while exhausted and airless, is okay. He sits and stares aimlessly at the wall, and hopes Agents MacGyver and Dalton make it out alive.

It's probably not a violation of Rule 2, a rule specifically for situations like this, where they're told to turn around and stay home while an agent they've pulled out of the fire before fights through it alone, to hope they make it out. That's just basic human decency.

They do.

They do survive, and no one is surprised, because as far as Thomas can tell, those two always make it out. It's a reputation that makes Thomas nervous. People who 'always make it out' are just asking for the universe to prove them wrong. You cannot base predicted outcomes in absolutes, and if you try, fate will relish in throwing it back in your face as hard as possible. Agent MacGyver in particular, he makes Thomas nervous.

So of course, Sierra November is sent to retrieve him again not even a month later. This time it goes through, and it's a relatively painless extraction. Agents MacGyver and Dalton are waiting calmly at the rendezvous point, chatting with each other until the car pulls up to get them. Thomas is sitting in the passenger's seat while Vincent drives. Lucia and Meredith are in the car behind them, watching for trouble.

"It's Thomas, right?"

Surprised by the voice from the back seat, Thomas glances at the rearview mirror. Agent MacGyver is looking at him with mild friendliness. It's not the frenetic elation of the first time they met, but it looks genuine. And, on a yet more surprising note, the name. The name Agent MacGyver not only remembered, but got right on the first try.

"Uh, yeah," Thomas answers, when it finally occurs to him that he's just been sitting here silent while his teammate and both the agents in the back seat wait for his response. "That's right. Good to see you again and still in one piece, Agent MacGyver." He tactfully doesn't mention the kaleidoscope of bruising spreading away from the kid's lip and down his chin.

"Appreciate you doing everything you have to keep it that way," puts in Agent Dalton, who shoots his young partner the fondest glare Thomas has ever seen.

There's a quiet snort from the driver's seat, and when he looks over, he sees Vincent, shaking his head with a bemused look on his face.

"I'll see you next time, Thomas," Agent MacGyver says to him when they reach the air strip, smiling around his horribly split lip. He looks to the side, to where Thomas's teammate has also exited the car, acknowledging, "Vincent." Agent Dalton gives them a wave.

Watching them go, Thomas shakes his head in absolute bewilderment. He senses more than sees another person walk up beside him, and the faint scent of pear shampoo tells him it's Meredith.

"Does…" The question sounds dumb even before Thomas finishes asking it. He asks it anyway, because he's too thrown off not to. "Does he know all your names?"

Rule 1: Don't expect any of the agents to remember your name, and don't take it personally when they don't. Because they won't.

"Yeah, you get used to that," Meredith says, smirking at him. "Mac is… He's different. In a good way. Mostly. Might take him longer, but Jack'll get your name down too."

It doesn't escape Thomas's attention, what she's called them.

Mac. Jack.

Rule 2: Don't get attached.

By the third time Thomas's path crosses with MacGyver and Dalton, he's been doing this job long enough to start sitting around with Meredith complaining about it at length. As the two junior members of Sierra November, they've taken it as their solemn duty to gripe about whatever possible whenever possible, if only in the hopes of getting a smile or even a laugh out of Lucia and Vincent. The latest object of their mutual consternation has been exfil ops where they arrived by one method of transportation and picked up a local vehicle for the actual extraction.

This is precisely how Thomas ended up in a dubiously sourced helicopter with three different flashing warning lights, some kind of smoke emitting from the dash, and an extremely obnoxiously pitched alert beeping through his headset. He's got radar pulled up, trying to find any safe place to land the bird before it crashes, and he can hear Vincent talking to Lucia from the other aircraft. The one he and Meredith are in with Dalton is, thankfully, completely functional, if a bit rickety.

No, it's the one carrying Lucia, Thomas, and MacGyver that's about to abruptly come to a devastating halt in the thick copse of trees zooming below them. Suddenly cutting into the intercom system, speaking through Vincent, is Dalton, demanding to know what's going on, why there's smoke coming from the helicopter his partner's in. Before either Thomas or Vincent can say anything, MacGyver's cool voice responds.

"It's gonna be fine, Jack, we've got it under control."

No the fuck we do not, Thomas thinks incredulously, head snapping up to look at MacGyver. He's just in time to observe MacGyver whipping out a pocket knife with a red handle - probably the anecdotally referenced Swiss Army Knife - and popping open the casing on the dash of the helicopter and then stripping the wire of his headset.

"What the hell are you doing, MacGyver?" Thomas yells, hopefully loud enough for him to hear without the headset. Worse still, is the fact that Vincent, a senior exfil agent, seems not in the least bit bothered by this. "Vincent? You can see this right?"

"He knows what he's doing," Vincent calmly says into his still connected mic. MacGyver ignores both of them, rummaging around in the internal workings of the helicopter's system.

That is not reassuring to Thomas at all. "Right. And what is he doing?"

"His job."

Thanks, Vin, Thomas thinks, shaking his head and beginning the process of coming to terms with his own imminent death.

Imminent death doesn't come, because after another ten minutes, MacGyver sits back triumphantly and lays the casing back over the exposed circuitry. The alert sounds have stopped, and all but one of the warning lights - the objectively least alarming of them - have shut off. Most importantly, the smoke has stopped smogging up the cabin, and relief is pulsing down Thomas's nervous system in icy cold shocks of adrenaline.

"Vincent, can you, otherwise he's gonna-" MacGyver calls over the sound of chopper blades overhead, and Vincent nods before he can finish the question.

"Hey Dalton," Vincent says, getting the attention of those in the other machine. "Your boy did it again. We should be set to reach the rendezvous point."

"Of course he did," comes Dalton's voice down the line.

Of course he did, Thomas thinks.

The mission ends without any explanation as to what, exactly, it was MacGyver had done. Given, though, that it kept them all alive, Thomas can't really find it in himself to be upset about that.

It's the hardest to be called off an exfil mission when they're already in the air. For the life of him, Thomas doesn't know how Lucia can always be so serene about it, guiding the aircraft in a smooth arc halfway over the Pacific Ocean. Her face is completely neutral, calmly indifferent, and that, Thomas supposes, is the point of Rule 2. It's the same reason doctors aren't supposed to treat family members. Emotional attachment clouds judgement, and makes it harder to call off a lost cause when it's lost.

As the plane glides out through the dark, still sky, Thomas wishes he didn't know it was MacGyver and Dalton on the other end, waiting for a way out that now won't come. They'll have to make their own way, and though exfil isn't needed on every mission, and it's certainly cancelled far more frequently than Thomas personally would like it to be, he can't help but worry. He doesn't want to have to carry with him for the rest of his life the knowledge that something terrible happened because he and his team were sent back before they could help.

There's a part of Thomas that's afraid that the day an agent dies after Sierra November was sent home before extraction will be the day he walks off the job and never comes back. He's afraid that if that dead agent is MacGyver, who remembers Thomas's name and asks about Lucia's grown daughter's post-college plans, something inside him will never be the same.

Of all of the strange things about MacGyver, and there are a number of them to choose from, one of them that strikes Thomas as perhaps the strangest is how he's always smiling. Even after exhausting, brutal missions, he sees MacGyver lean his head back against the side of the plane, the headrest of the car, wearing a faint look of pleased satisfaction.

Right now, though, as the van speeds away from the violent end of their latest mission, MacGyver isn't smiling.

He's screaming.

Thomas is frozen in shock and horror, back pressed to the side of the van, watching a scene from a nightmare play out before him. Lucia is driving, weaving around the sharply curving road so quickly Thomas is worried they're going to tip right over. He doesn't think MacGyver would survive if they did. There's already so much blood, absolutely saturating the side of the young agent's pants, seeping into the dingy carpeted floor of the van, and Thomas is sure he's going to lose his voice if he keeps yelling like that, wordless agony even the most reserved agent wouldn't've been able to keep in.

What happened that caused this, Thomas doesn't know. Exfil never knows exactly what's gone down in the last moments of a mission, what leaves agents looking thrilled or devastated, calm or terrified. All he knows is that when they arrived, Dalton had pulled MacGyver bodily into the van and hollered for them to go go go, Lucia gunning it without a second's hesitation.

Not for a moment since their arrival has MacGyver been coherent. He's crumpled on the ground, hurt leg flung out away from him as if distancing it from him could cause the pain to recede too, and his face is jammed into his partner's neck. Dalton's shirt is muffling his hoarse cries, but not nearly enough for them to stop making Thomas's ears ring. Whether MacGyver is doing this for comfort or in an attempt to quiet himself, Thomas isn't sure. Dalton is holding him tightly, one arm wrapped around the agonized arch of MacGyver's straining back, the other cradling his head, bloodstained fingers tangled in blond hair.

There's so much blood. There is so much blood.

"You have to tourniquet the leg or he's going to bleed to death." Lucia's voice takes a second to register as hers, and Thomas's head whips over to look at her, sure he must have heard wrong.

"Me?" There's no way she meant that. No way she, the team lead highly trained in filed medicine, was telling him, the new guy with barely a three week emergency first-aid course under his belt, to perform triage on a screaming kid bleeding to death three feet away from him.

"Yes you, Tom. We can't stop, not for a second. Grab whatever you can find and make a tourniquet before he dies."

Obviously, the time for mincing words has passed, but the bluntness with which Lucia speaks does not at all help Dalton to keep calm.

"You heard her, do it already," he barks, startling Thomas into action.

There's nothing immediately identifiable in the van that could work as an effective tourniquet, and for lack of any other options, Thomas yanks his own belt off and decides that will have to do. Farther behind them down the treacherous road, gunfire sounds through the trees. Much closer to them, a responding set of shots signals that Vincent and Meredith are watching their backs from the other car. Gritting his teeth and doing his best to block out the sounds of both gunfire and MacGyver's undisguisable pain, he makes his careful way over to the pair across from him.

"You've, um," Thomas says, willing his hands to stop shaking by sheer force of will. "You've gotta hold him still, so he doesn't…" The glare Dalton sends him could've melted cast-iron. His grip on MacGyver, who he has been holding the entire time, tightens pointedly. "Right. You're already. Okay. Just keep doing that."

Despite Dalton's careful grip, MacGyver's body spasms involuntarily when Thomas touches his wounded leg. The injury is about a third of the way up his thigh from his knee. A bullet wound. A deceptively small rip in his pants, soaked in more blood than Thomas has ever seen come out of a person that lived and still leaking more, is the source of all this grief. Before he can chicken out, Thomas quickly slides the belt under MacGyver's leg, threads the loose end through the buckle, and positions the loop above the damage.

"This is going to-"

"Just fucking do it," Dalton cuts him off before he can finish the warning.

Thomas yanks the long end, cinching the belt as tight as he can, and MacGyver screams. The long, shattered wail breaks into airless sobs, the kid now slumped completely boneless against Dalton's chest. The older agent looks like he's been shot too, curled protectively over his partner, holding him like a child.

With no warning, Thomas is struck by the memory of breaking his leg when he was eight years old. His mother drove the car to the hospital while his father had sat in back with Thomas in his arms, promising that it would be over soon.

"It's okay," murmurs Dalton. His chin is bent down, lips brushing the top of MacGyver's head when he speaks. "It's okay, kid, you're gonna be okay. I'm so sorry, buddy. I know it hurts. I'm sorry. You're gonna be okay."

"How far out are we?" Thomas's question is directed at Lucia, desperate for something, anything else to focus on.

"Twenty minutes."

"Better make it fifteen," he tells her. What little of MacGyver's face is visible is far too pale. "He is not doing well."

The floor of the van shakes with the force of the accelerating engine.

"The bullet must have hit his femur," Dalton says to no one. His eyes are distant and wet. "He's in too much pain. He shouldn't be in this much pain."

The car hits a rock in the road, and as though to demonstrate the point, MacGyver's breath leaves him in a sharp exhale. He's got no energy left, or he'd have screamed again, Thomas is sure, given the way his hand is knotted in the side of Dalton's shirt, knuckles completely bloodless with how tightly he's hanging on. Like on autopilot, Dalton's hand moves again through MacGyver's hair, thumb grazing his temple and leaving a small rust-colored stain behind. Whatever it is he's saying now, it's too quiet for anyone but the two of them to hear.

I'm not supposed to be here, Thomas thinks, a little addled and more than a little shaken. I'm not supposed to see this. We aren't supposed to see this part.

Back on safe ground, they pack MacGyver and Dalton into an ambulance, which speeds off over the crest of the next hill before the back doors have hardly closed. Thomas watches it go with wide, unnerved eyes.

"Tom?"

It's Meredith, come up beside him and touching his back. Without thinking, Thomas throws his arms around his teammate. She hugs him back just as hard. It's grounding, and Thomas thinks distractedly that he can understand why MacGyver had clung to Dalton like that, why massive agony had driven him to press as close to his friend as he could.

"Holy shit," Thomas breathes, chin digging into Meredith's shoulder. He notes that he's getting blood on her jacket, twin handprints inked into the fabric where MacGyver's blood had transferred from Thomas's skin. "Holy shit. Holy shit."

Three nights in a row, Thomas jolts awake with his heart thundering, the sound of MacGyver's piercing shriek echoing in his ears.

Needless to say, it's a while before Thomas encounters them again. A bullet to the thigh is hard enough to recover from, never mind the damage to MacGyver's femur. Thomas heard through the grapevine that the gunshot wound had indeed fractured the bone, and thought it wasn't broken badly, there's no such thing as a 'minor' broken femur.

So Thomas and the rest of Sierra November continues on as usual, performing extractions with practiced efficiency. It doesn't always go off without a hitch. Sometimes there's danger, and at one point Vincent cracks a bone in his hand, leaving them down a man for a month and a half, occasionally borrowing from one of the other teams if they absolutely couldn't go with just three. For the most part, however, it's business as usual.

Which, of course, was far too good to last.

From the moment he heard it was MacGyver and Dalton, Thomas should've known that this would be the moment their luck broke. Or, reflecting on it later, perhaps it was that having MacGyver and Dalton there was the stroke of luck that prevented the day from ending in tragedy.

How he ever managed to fall so far behind, Thomas doesn't know. Everything had been going fine, he and Meredith sprinting behind MacGyver and Dalton, trying to make their way out of what looked to Thomas like a horror movie serial killer compound dungeon. Or whatever. One moment he was running the next there was a barrier in front of him, and Meredith's voice yelling at him from the other side to, "Get over here already, Tom, I swear to god."

"I can't," Thomas yells back, slamming his palms against the rough surface. His skin stings at the harsh contact and he bites back a hiss. "I can't, you've gotta go. MacGyver and Dalton have the intel, get them on the plane and go."

This was always a possibility. There was always a chance the mission would have to come first, and one of them might die in the process. Thomas had hoped to make it longer, had hoped to be able to spend longer with these people he was coming to care for so deeply, but if this was where his number came up, so be it. He's just glad Meredith can't see his face. Otherwise she might notice how scared shitless he is.

"Go."

"No, asshole, I won't."

Of course. Of course she chooses now to be difficult.

(Meredith has never not been difficult a day in her life, but Thomas is both petulant and terrified right now, so he'll allow himself the exaggeration.)

He supposes he can forgive her that. Staying. What he doesn't know if he can forgive her for is what she does next. The sound of radio static is unmistakable.

"Thomas is trapped, they're going to find him and kill him, we need backup," Meredith says, and Thomas slams his hand even harder against the stone blocking the hall.

"Meredith, stop." Angry.

"Mac, Jack, please, we need help."

"Meredith, stop it." Desperate.

A fuzz of static, a response from the radio, "We're on our way, sit tight."

"You shouldn't have done that," Thomas tells her severely.

"Tough shit, Tommy, you don't get a vote."

Rule 2, he wants to tell her, wants to scream through the rock and plaster until she gets it. Rule 2, Mer, I think that meant us too, why else would you do this? The mission comes first. Rule 2, Meredith, the mission comes first.

"Talk to me." MacGyver's voice, addressing Meredith, no radio crackle, no headset static. He's here. He's on the other side of the barrier and he's not supposed to be here, he's supposed to be gone, he and his partner are supposed to be back at the van with Lucia and Vincent.

As Meredith starts to explain, Thomas hears something far, far down the hall behind him. Panic prickles up his spine in sharp spikes, and his breath chokes in his throat.

"Don't worry," MacGyver says, speaking to Thomas now. His voice is nothing like Meredith's. He doesn't sound anxious at all, and the calm just makes Thomas's nerves jangle harder. "We're gonna work together and get you out. Jack's on lookout, we're gonna be okay."

"What about the intel. You know. The mission," yells Thomas through the obstruction, too scared and angry to be worried about the fact that he's yelling at field agents .

"Intel's safe," Dalton calls from down the hall where he's standing guard. "Don't worry about it, kid."

"We came back." MacGyver's cheeks are flushed and his voice breathless through the barrier as he explains, "We left it with Lucia, came back as fast as we could. Now here's what you're gonna need to do…"

They make it out, a second before the whole building goes up in flames, explosions rocking the foundation and shaking the ground outside. Everyone is unharmed, except for a scrape on Meredith's cheek, and Thomas's right arm, which took the brunt of the impact when he was knocked over once on the way out. The inside of the van, making its swift way to the airstrip, is quiet. Wordless.

Thomas sits with his head ducked down, sure he's about to catch hell at any moment for the botched end of the extraction, the way the entire mission had been put on the line while two field agents ran back to pull the junior most exfil agent out of the fire. They shouldn't have done it. Protocol says they shouldn't have done it, that they should have taken the intel and left and let Sierra November worry about their own. MacGyver and Dalton, Thomas was never supposed to be their problem.

And now, because Meredith had asked, because Meredith had hailed them on the radio, called them Mac and Jack, asked them to come save her teammate, they'd done it, and everything could've been lost. It doesn't matter that it wasn't. It could've been, and that's enough. It's supposed to be enough.

It makes Thomas wonder if anyone ever bothered to try and teach these guys Rule 2.

Contrary to anything he'd expected, Meredith talks first.

"The worst trouble my brother got in growing up," she says, while Thomas keeps his face in his hands, not precisely excited for what the others' expressions might hold, "was one time he knocked a baseball through the neighbor's window and hid under the porch for two and a half hours while I was babysitting him."

In a move he also hadn't predicted, Meredith leans around so as to be able to sock Thomas in his uninjured arm. He supposes he should be grateful for that.

"Do not do that again."

The order is fierce, passionate. Thomas leans his head on her shoulder and mumbles, "Could say the same to you."

It's a point of acute shame, that Thomas never finds the words to tell MacGyver and Dalton-

He never quite figures out how to tell Mac and Jack 'thank you' for what they'd done.

Turns out, there are more ways than one to display gratitude for a heroic act, even one that was stupid and against protocol.

It's remarkable, exactly how fast things had gone wrong, once they began to. Jack is unconscious when they find him, and it takes a few heart-stopping moments to verify he actually is still alive. Thomas watches with his heart in his throat as Vincent tries to rouse him, to get any information to help them ascertain exactly what they're dealing with.

There had been no indication on the way in that anything bad had happened, outside of the usual. Then again, there hardly ever is, not when you're exfil. A situation can change on a dime, and it's their job to adapt, to adjust the plan and get everyone home safe anyway, mission accomplished with no body bags left in its wake. Or, at least, that's how Thomas understands it. Sometimes the orders they receive contradict this mission statement. As they do now, when it comes over the radio that they've been ordered to evac immediately and stand down.

With Mac still nowhere in sight.

The voice on the dash orders them to turn around. It's an order they've gotten before, at various points through an exfil assignment, an update that the circumstances have changed and they need to abort. Thomas has wondered before, watching Lucia, how his team lead manages to obey those orders. He can see her now, hands hovering over the helicopter's controls. The other aircraft has already taken off, Vincent and Meredith ready to head with Jack towards the nearest hospital. It's stalled in the air, waiting for confirmation from Lucia of where they are headed next. Her palm still hangs in the air above the control that will lift the helicopter from the ground. For once, it isn't moving. For once, she's hesitating to obey.

Thomas finds himself hoping she won't. One hand is on the gun strapped to his thigh, the other clenched in a fist to keep it still. Mac is missing. He's still back there. They have to go in for him, they have to get him out, Jack will have their heads if they don't and never mind that, it's their job. They're exfil. Getting these people out is their job.

The static of an active transmission is buzzing through the air every couple of seconds, the instructions becoming more and more agitated each time they're repeated.

"Return to base," crackles the voice on the radio, raising in volume. "Return to base, Sierra November. That is an order."

"We can't," Thomas blurts. Lucia looks at him sharply. "I can't, Lucia. I have to go get him. We have to stop so I can go get him. We can't go yet. We can't."

"Sierra November, stand down."

Thomas moves, but not to answer the call. His hand shoots out towards the door, his team lead's gaze following his every move. He can literally see in Lucia's face the moment she accepts what's about to happen, making direct, exasperated eye contact as she mutters, "Oh for fuck's sake," and answers the call from HQ.

"This is Sierra November Team Lead," she says, not moving her gaze an inch from Thomas's. "Your transmissions are unclear and interference is cutting the line. We're gonna lose you." With that, she slams the completely functional radio back into its cradle, and throws her arm out in wordless permission. Thomas slams out the door barely a second later, glad he has her go ahead, considering he likes his job, but was absolutely ready to go without it.

Vincent and Meredith are in the air already and Lucia has to be prepared to take off at any second, they couldn't spare anyone, so Thomas is alone. He's alone when the bullet grazes his arm, sending a streak of fire through tissue and muscle. He's alone when he runs through the grass, alone when he crashes through the door of the building, alone as his flashlight beam cuts swaths through the heavy darkness. There's more gunfire, and Thomas hopes that Lucia is okay, that Vincent and Meredith have stayed to watch her back. Some of them have to make it home, today.

Thomas is alone as he searches, and he's alone when he finds Mac, trapped by an avalanche of rubble in the basement of the building they'd been hiding out in. The same leg Thomas had been forced to tourniquet to keep him alive, what feels like forever ago, is now pinned beneath a slab of cement just too big for one man to move alone from an awkward angle.

"Thomas?" The name is gasped out in a tone of complete shock. The flashlight catches on Mac's blue eyes, wide and uncomprehending. "Why- What?"

Because it's my job, Thomas could say. He could say any number of things. Because I'm exfil and this is too far past the point of no return. Because I'd have to look Jack in the eye some day if I left you behind and I value my life. Because you're a human being. Because you're just a kid.

Because you always remember my name.

He doesn't say any of it. None of it would matter right now, would mean anything but a conversation longer than they can afford to have. So instead he crouches down, hears Lucia's voice telling him to lift with his knees not with his back, and focuses on levering the concrete up off Mac's leg. It takes an excruciating ten minutes to free him from his position trapped against the ground. Thomas helps him to his feet and wraps Mac's arm around his shoulders. Securing his own around the injured agent's waist, together they make their way out as quickly as possible.

"Jack?" Mac says as they step out of the building into the cool night air. "Is he- I mean- When I saw him he was-"

"Vin and Mer have him," Thomas tells him in a rush, if only because he knows Mac won't go quietly without an explanation as to his partner's whereabouts. "They're headed to the hospital, he's gonna be fine. But we won't be if we don't hurry the hell up."

Thomas shoves Mac up into the helicopter first, his own feet barely leaving the ground before they've taken off. The sound of chopper blades beats out a frantic chorus of restless anxiety against the sky. Thomas is grateful for it. Without the headset on, large earphones shielding him from the brutal sounds of a helicopter's crude but effective functioning, it's loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

Not for one second of the forty-five minute flight do Thomas's fingers loosen their grip. He clutches the sleeve of Mac's jacket the entire time.

Sitting in the hallway, with DXS dark and silent around him, the majority of those employed there gone home for the night, Thomas's knuckles still ache. The field bandaging around his arm is crudely tied and the wound throbs with the beat of his pulse. He clenches his hands and loosens them, trying to find some measure of calm, of comfort in the rhythm.

He's going to get fired over this, he's sure. He disobeyed direct orders from base, and practically begged his team lead to let him, surely landing her in hot water too. Everyone is in trouble now.

But Mac is alive. He's alive, and he's home, and last Thomas heard, he was at the hospital with Jack. It's something of a consolation, that at least his debt with Mac was settled, before his time with DXS came due.

"I'll drive him home," Lucia mutters out of eyesight and barely audible. She says her goodbyes to Vincent and Meredith while Thomas sits on his bench in the hall and waits for the other shoe to drop. She's sure to be furious, but when she reaches him, she says nothing, merely offers him a hand up.

If there are going to be consequences, they will come another day. In the meantime, Thomas follows his team lead out of the building in a daze, walking mechanically to the car and climbing inside. He sits still staring at the dashboard, barely seeing it. All he can see is the surprise in Mac's face, every time he blinks. Surprise that Jack had been downed and someone had come back for him anyway. It makes Thomas feel sick.

"Rule 1," Lucia says eventually, sitting next to him in the driver's seat. "Don't expect any of the agents to remember your name." Her quiet voice takes on another tone when she continues, a tone Thomas can't quite place. "Rule 2. Don't get attached."

"Maybe I'm not cut out for this." The words are muttered and sullen. Residual stress from the day still grips his shoulders in bands of tightly stretched tension. "Maybe I don't belong here."

Silence drips through the car sluggishly. At some point, Lucia sighs. Her hand comes to rest on Thomas's shoulder. He flinches but doesn't move away, and after a second, she grips a little tighter. Her palm slides up and her thumb grazes the back of his neck, the edge of his hairline.

"We're all attached, Tommy," Lucia tells him, soft and full of empathy. The use of the nickname lends evidence to her point, to what this team has undeniably come to mean to each other. "We try not to be, we try and tell each other we shouldn't be. We tell ourselves we aren't. But we are. We're attached. It doesn't make you a bad fit for the job. It makes you human, kid."

Squeezing his eyes tight shut, Thomas nods. His throat hurts, his face feels hot, and he could swear his breath catches at least once. Lucia's hand stays where it is, thumb stroking slowly over the skin just above the collar of his shirt.

"Rule 1, though," adds Lucia after a while, "that one stands. Those fools are never gonna get your name right. Mac and his team really are exceptions in that case. Better get used to it."

The burst of laughter takes Thomas by surprise, and soon they're laughing together, sitting in Lucia's car outside home base long after the sun's gone down. It's the lightest Thomas has felt since he realized he cared.

It's a comparatively easy exfil, with Agents Paiz and Luther making it into the helicopters exhausted and out of breath but unharmed.

"Thanks, uh, Tyler, right?"

"Thomas," he corrects mildly, smiling at Agent Paiz's apologetic wince, the sheepishness that lingers in her expression. "No problem."

Rule 1. Don't expect any of the agents to remember your name.