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bloodfromthethorn · 3 years

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Passing Out

When Matty calls you to the War Room, you don't stop to tell her that you're feeling a little rough. Even if you definitely, definitely should.

Part eight of the July of Whump 2021 prompt challenge.

Also on AO3.

If she was telling the truth, Riley hadn’t really been feeling up to a mission when they got called in. She’d woken up with a niggling headache and even two cups of coffee hadn’t been enough to properly offset the drowsiness clinging about her shoulders. Worse, all of her joints were aching quietly, like she’d somehow managed to sleep in the most uncomfortable position known to man and was now paying the price for it, despite the fact that she’d slept solidly through the night undisturbed.

Regardless, when Matty sent a message telling her to get to the War Room, she hauled ass with everyone else and didn’t even think to utter a complaint. It wasn’t until she was boarding the jet and found herself staring up at the overhead luggage rack, wishing her bag could magically lift itself up there, that she suddenly realised this was almost certainly a bad idea.

It was probably just a cold or something, she told herself, perhaps a little fatigue build-up from too many missions in the last month – nothing serious. Nothing worth bothering the others over and certainly not something she should use as an excuse to get out of going to Peru with everyone else. Besides, for the plan to work they needed her. She couldn’t let them down.

“Hey, earth to Ri,” Jack called, dropping a heavy hand on her shoulder and making her jump. He instantly withdrew, holding the hand up in surrender. “Hey, woah, you alright?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, trying to patch over her flinch with a sheepish smile. “Daydreaming, I guess. Sorry.”

Apparently her act wasn’t convincing enough. Jack squinted at her with one of those intense looks he always got when he knew something was up and he was trying to pinpoint exactly what it was. He was always scarily good at doing it, too.

“You sure you’re alright? You’re looking kinda pale.”

“Wow, thanks,” she muttered sarcastically, snatching at her suitcase as a distraction.

Jack’s hands darted out to take it from her instead, hefting it onto the rack as though it weighed nothing at all, despite the fact there were two back-up rigs in there with enough spare parts between them to build a whole other laptop if she needed. Even though she was vaguely annoyed by his hovering, she couldn’t help but be grateful he’d saved her the task. Her shoulders really were bothering her.

“I don’t mean nothing by it, you know that,” he said dismissively once the bag was settled. “I’m just worried about you. You’d tell me if something was going on, right?”

Sudden, sharp guilt bubbled up in the pit of her stomach as she forced herself to smirk. “Are you always such a worrier?”

“With you and Mac around? Hell yeah! Someone’s got to keep you kids from running into traffic.”

“Oh my god Jack, that was one time,” Mac put in loudly from the other end of the plane. “You’ve got to let it go.”

Jack’s attention was immediately diverted, and Riley had to stop herself from letting out a relieved breath. Trust Mac to come through for her when he didn’t even know he was doing it.

With Jack busy delivering a put-upon rant to a mostly bemused Mac, she was free to settle herself in her usual seat and get her laptop set up in front of her. She couldn’t do a lot to cover it if she really was pale, but at least with her rig she had a solid cover for sitting quietly and minding her own business – it was her usual go-to strategy for getting through long flights. Besides, she’d planned to go over their game plan again anyway.

Of course, she then immediately encountered another issue: what had been a mild headache in the back of her skull pulsed sharply the second she looked at her screen, the light burning her eyes. She squinted, wincing, but it did little to help. The pain was still bearable, but she had an instinctive feeling that if she had to keep looking at the screen for a lot longer, it was going to get worse. It was one thing to go into a mission feeling a little run down, but actively letting herself deteriorate on an infil flight was something else altogether. Putting her laptop away might raise questions, but she wasn’t stupid enough to run the risk of letting the others walk into danger when she might not be ready to back them up.

She shut her laptop with a decisive click.

Behind it, two feet away on the other side of the small table, Bozer was staring at her like she was the mystery at the heart of the universe.

“What?”

He raised an eyebrow, and said nothing.

“What?”

Still, nothing.

“Boze, I swear-”

“You know,” he interrupted like she hadn’t even been speaking, “It’s okay to say you’re not up for this if you’re feeling down.”

If she’d been smart about it, she wouldn’t have reacted; as it was, she couldn’t stop herself from shooting an alarmed look in Jack’s direction to make sure he was still too busy hassling Mac to be listening in. From the knowing look in Boze’s eyes, he’d definitely caught the slip.

“Like I told Jack, I’m perfectly fine,” she hissed, wishing that she actually felt it. The scrutiny only seemed to be making her feel worse – there was a warm blush rising on her skin that she wanted to write off as embarrassment, but likely had more to do with how overly-warm she was starting to get.

“And he didn’t believe you. Neither do I.”

“Boze, it’s going to be a long flight. Just leave me alone?”

He leaned back in his chair, visibly weighing up whether she trying to divert his attention or if she was genuinely frustrated at the pestering. In truth it was a little of both – she knew that she wasn’t in top form and it was a really bad idea to not at least let the others know that, but at the same time, she was sure that she had to do this. Her job in Peru would mostly be sitting around on her laptop and provided her headache didn’t get worse, she was perfectly capable of that. If she told Jack that she wasn’t feeling up to par then she wouldn’t entirely put it past him to get Matty to turn the plane around.

“Look,” she said, keeping her voice low to keep from drawing Jack’s attention, “I’m a bit tired, that’s all. I’m in for this mission one hundred percent. I was just hoping to get some shut eye on the way over there to be in the best shape I can be. Please, please just let this go.”

For once, Bozer’s expression was entirely serious as he took her in. After a long, tense moment he nodded. “Okay. I trust you. Just- let us know if anything gets worse, alright? I know Jack can be- well, Jack, but we’re all on your side here.”

Without waiting for her to formulate some sort of response to that – and god knows what that would even look like – he jumped out of his chair with an energy she wished she had and wandered over to insert himself in Mac and Jack’s conversation. A few minutes later, when she’d closed her eyes and leaned her chair back to try to get the sleep she’d asked for, she heard Jack muttering a quick aside to Bozer:

“Hey, is she doing okay?”

Riley tensed for a heartbeat, but it turned out she should have had more faith in her friend. “Yeah, she’s fine. Just catching up on a bit of sleep before we land. Can we do anything about getting Matty to stop calling us in at six in the morning?”

There was a quiet round of laughter, the comment launching Mac into a series of tales about the ridiculousness of their working hours when they were on rotation. That Jack didn’t join in immediately was telling, but he didn’t contradict what Boze had said and no one came to disturb her so he must have bought it at least a little.

Fortunately, Riley didn’t have long to ponder it. By the time they cleared California airspace, she was already asleep.

The mission was mostly a bust, in that their primary target had managed to flee the country before they’d even touched down, but there was still important information to ferret out. Fortunately, with the main head honcho gone, the rest of his men didn’t put up much of a fight and between them, Mac and Jack were able to get what they needed and get out without a single scratch between them. Bozer and Riley, confined to backup and technical support respectively, got to spend most of their time hiding out in a dingy hotel room with absolutely nothing exciting going on.

For perhaps the first time since joining the Phoenix, Riley was endlessly grateful for that. She’d hoped the sleep on the plane would help her get over whatever it was going on with her, but if anything it seemed to have made things worse. Her headache had increased ten-fold, to the point that even thinking about looking at her laptop made her feel distantly nauseous, and a sore throat had crept in to join the stuffy nose and creaking joints. She’d managed to explain away her persistent flush by citing Peru’s summer sunshine, but she knew that wasn’t the truth and from the sideways glances Bozer had been throwing her, he knew it too. Fortunately he’d been smart enough not to mention it on comms, or she might just have hit him.

Exhausted and feeling worse with every passing minute, she didn’t think she’d ever been more relieved when she and Bozer stepped out of their cab onto the airstrip. Mac and Jack were standing around by the steps to the jet, waiting for them.

“There you are,” Jack called when they were within earshot. “What kept you?”

“The hotel was on the other side of the city, Jack,” Bozer reminded him, clapping a hand to Mac’s shoulder in greeting. “Some of us had further to go.”

“Sure, sure. It wasn’t that you were leaving us to do all the work or anything.” Jack jostled his shoulder against Bozer’s, apparently thrilled that their mission had gone so utterly without note.

Beside them, Riley was staring at the stairs of the jet wondering just how exactly she was going to haul herself up them. Her skin felt too hot and the car journey over here had ratcheted up her nausea to the point she was reflexively swallowing every few seconds. Her vision was spinning idly too, which was doing absolutely nothing to help with the dizzy spells she’d been fighting off since they’d left the hotel.

Someone called her name, or perhaps something like it, but it sounded much further away than she’d expected. Had the others gone on without her? She turned her head to look, but as soon as she did, what little vision she was still clinging to whirled away in a cloud of black. She had a heartbeat to ponder that undesirable state of affairs, then the heat surged and her legs turned to water.

She was unconscious before she even started to fall.

She woke to find herself stretched out on the jet’s couch, her head pillowed on something soft that she rapidly identified as someone’s lap. A warm, familiar hand was stroking her hair. She remembered, distantly, waking in this exact position a thousand years ago when she was still young and naïve and trusting – and just like then, a tiny piece of her mind wished fiercely that she’d never have to leave it.

“Jack?” She asked quietly, her voice rasping faintly.

“There you are,” he responded, equally softly. He sounded watery with relief, but the hand didn’t stop its gentle path through her curls. “Don’t you worry about a thing. You’re okay. We’re heading home and you’re safe and sound, I promise.”

Inexplicably, she felt a sudden urge to weep. Here she was, cradled and cared for, and she hadn’t even had the decency to tell him that she’d been feeling ill. She didn’t deserve his comfort. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey now, none of that.” A second hand brushed soothingly up and down her arm. “Everything’s okay. You’re going to be just fine. You just rest up – we’ll be home before you know it.”

“Should have told you,” she said miserably, too cowardly to even open her eyes as she said it. She didn’t want to bear his frustration when she already felt so thoroughly awful and worn out.

“It’s okay, darling, don’t you worry about that right now. I’m not mad. You hearing me? I’m not angry or upset, I just want you to be alright. So quit worrying about any of that and get some more rest if you can. There’s a med team waiting for us in LA to look you over, but they think you’ve probably caught the flu. All you’ve gotta do right now is relax, okay?”

“Flu?” That couldn’t be right, could it? She’d been feeling off, sure, but it really hadn’t been that bad. If she’d thought it was anything serious, she would have said something.

“You spiked a fever,” he explained with what could only have been intentional calm. “You’re going to be feeling pretty rough for a few days, but you don’t need to worry about that right now.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling small. She thought she should be relieved at his lack of anger, but somehow it just made her feel worse. Like she knew she hadn’t earned his forgiveness, and he was insisting on giving it anyway. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“I told you Ri, you don’t need to be. I’m not mad. You just focus on getting better and I’ll be right as rain.”

He sounded genuine and this time she couldn’t help it; a few tears slipped out from under closed eyelids to wet the fabric under her cheek. It did nothing to make her feel less infantile, but her body was aching and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool and she felt utterly powerless to fix any of those problems. Childishly, she just wanted Jack to make her feel better.

“Hey, shh,” he soothed lowly. “It’s okay. I’m right here. You’re okay.”

The string of comforting platitudes continued, not really saying anything but acting as a constant reminder that she was not alone while she struggled desperately to reassert control over her emotions. It was harder than it should have been, with fatigue and malaise fighting her every step of the way, but she did eventually get the tears under control. The same instant that she did, exhaustion was right there waiting for her.

“That’s it,” Jack murmured, “You get some rest. We’ll be right here if you need us.”

Comforted despite herself and more weary than she could ever remember being, Riley took him at his word. She burrowed herself down a little, relishing the feel of fingers lightly brushing against her scalp and sighed.

This time, when sleep rose to meet her, she was waiting to greet it like an old friend.

#MacGyver #riley davis #hurt riley davis #jack dalton #wilt bozer #fanfiction #my fanfic #fanfic #whump of july 2021

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