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Murdoc had never intended to kiss MacGyver.
He had wanted to, of course. For years, decades— if he were being fully honest with himself, he had wanted to the moment he learned that MacGyver had used only shoelaces, a wrench, and a paper clip to so narrowly escape death, forty-six years ago. But the feeling had always been distant, blurred, shifting in the back of his mind as a dream just out of reach. Murdoc had never truly expected to act on that desire, never expected that he would ever have the opportunity to act on that desire. He had always known that he would never be close enough to MacGyver to do so. It just wasn’t how the story went.
But now they were both here, sitting on the thin, stiff mattress of the safe house HIT had assigned to Murdoc, and MacGyver was there and close and willing to be next to him. No traps, no schemes, no tricks; just MacGyver, sitting so near to him, who had somehow tracked Murdoc down on his own and didn't want a fight. This was never supposed to happen; he was never meant to be close enough to MacGyver to touch. Murdoc had never planned for this.
“Look, I know this isn't… exactly what you were expecting,” MacGyver was saying. “But I just… It's been so long.” Ten years. Ten years, three months, two days, to be particular about it. Murdoc had seen MacGyver in that time, of course, but MacGyver hadn’t seen him. “And, you know, I… I'll admit, I got a little worried about you.”
Murdoc didn't respond. He didn't know how he would respond, even if he wanted to. He was so close to MacGyver, it felt like claws rending his skin. It was so difficult to think properly, when it hurt so much to sit next to him. He had never intended to kiss MacGyver. He had never intended any of it, but all at once his mouth was against MacGyver’s and he didn’t even know if the thoughts that made him do it were his own. And MacGyver, somehow, didn’t pull away, and Murdoc felt MacGyver’s hand on his back and his heart was pounding because this, this is what he had wanted for so goddamn long and had never been able to have. Murdoc was burning, and he wanted it, he wanted it for the rest of his life.
MacGyver didn't recoil when they stopped, didn't push Murdoc away. That was good. Wasn't it? “I’ve wanted to do that,” Murdoc breathed, “for forty years.”
MacGyver’s face was centimeters from his, near enough that Murdoc could see the light shift in his face, the realization, the recognition of who he was with and what had happened. He pulled back, his hands falling away from Murdoc, and there was something strange in the way he moved, like he was somehow at war with himself. Acrid fear rose like bile in Murdoc’s mouth— MacGyver was already regretting it.
“No. No. God, no, this isn’t…” MacGyver pushed himself to his feet and walked a few aimless steps away from Murdoc. He sounded frustrated, or pained, or angry; Murdoc couldn’t tell what emotion was scarring his voice, but it certainly wasn’t good.
Murdoc didn’t move, stuck frozen as if any shift would cause MacGyver to run. Stuck still, like a hunter trying to placate a beaten dog. “Did…” Shit, no. Not again, not now, not in front of MacGyver. His voice caught in his throat, struggling to force its way out; Murdoc had thought he had abandoned this problem decades ago. “Did— you like it?”
“No,” MacGyver snapped, too quickly. The temperature plunged, or maybe it was just Murdoc— his skin felt raw and rough like frost, and he was aware, far too aware, of every scar that marked it. Each one a reminder of their past time together, in some twisted, broken way. Then MacGyver sighed, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I don’t— I don’t know. It’s so… hard with you, you know that?”
Hard? A strange, flimsy laugh was pulled from Murdoc’s lips like viscera from a wound. “It doesn’t seem very hard to me, MacGyver, not anymore. Not— not after—”
“No, that makes it so much harder, Murdoc!” MacGyver turned sharply, cutting Murdoc off with a hand swiped through the air. “How do you not know how much harder that makes it? How much harder that makes everything?”
“Because I—” Murdoc broke himself off. MacGyver was angry. There was bitter, ruinous resentment written in every line of his face, and a strange kind of pitying pain, but there was no hatred. No matter how much he scorned Murdoc… MacGyver couldn’t hate him. Murdoc closed his eyes and carefully planned out the words in his head. “Because… I love you.”
Silence fell thick across the room, coiling like snakes in the crevices. Murdoc didn’t want to look at MacGyver. Maybe MacGyver really did hate him now. Maybe Murdoc had thought wrong. Maybe none of this was worth it at all.
“No.” MacGyver’s voice was low, strained with the effort of holding back a raging fire of emotion. Murdoc glanced over at him; MacGyver met his gaze, his eyes dark with the shadows of all the years they had clashed. “No, you don’t love me. You can’t come to me now, after everything you’ve done, and claim you love me. After all the threats, and the lies, and the traps; after you tried to kill Pete, Penny, Jack, Nikki; my friends, my family—” MacGyver’s voice was rising as he spoke, the blockade that hid the wildfire beginning to crack— “after you spent decades trying to kill me, innocent people getting caught in the crossfire, you purposefully roping innocent people into the crossfire; after fifty years of stalking me— fifty fucking years! You can’t come to me and tell me that’s love! I know, I know you think it is. But it’s not. It never was.”
Murdoc rose abruptly, too fast— pain struck through his leg and he nearly fell, clutching at the bedframe to keep himself upright. He grasped for his cane and took a few desperate steps toward MacGyver, ignoring the sharp protests of his leg. “Please, MacGyver, you don’t understand—” he started. “I’ve n— I have— I— I— Fuck! I don’t know— I don’t know how to say this—” His chest felt tight; he knew what he needed to say, he knew how he needed to say it, why couldn’t he speak? “Please, just— listen to me—”
“Murdoc, look at me.” MacGyver gripped Murdoc’s shoulders, looking him in the eyes. He had changed, over the years; he had aged, but his eyes were the same. Always searching for the next solution, always picking apart another problem, always caring so, so deeply. The anger that had been there before was shifting, morphing to a pain that burned just as bright. Pain, and something that Murdoc thought might be a weary sort of hope. “Tell me you regret it.”
Murdoc almost took a step back, but his body didn’t let him, not when MacGyver was so close. He didn’t want to distance himself, or else he'd run the risk of never getting this close again. “What?”
“Everything,” MacGyver said. “Everything you’ve done. The people you’ve hurt, the lives you’ve taken— say you know why you were wrong. Do you regret it?”
MacGyver wanted him to say yes. “I—”
“Do you regret it, Murdoc?”
MacGyver wanted him to say yes. Murdoc opened his mouth but no words came out, only wretched, empty silence.
“Please... Answer the question.”
MacGyver wanted him to say yes. “Yes,” Murdoc said, far too fast, far too flat, not convincing enough.
MacGyver studied him, that tired hope slowly fading from his face. His eyes, those bright, clever eyes, were losing the fire. “Please… tell me the truth.”
Murdoc hesitated. MacGyver would know if he lied, especially now. “No,” he admitted. “No, I don’t.”
MacGyver closed his eyes and sighed. He had known exactly what Murdoc's answer was going to be, yet he had asked anyway, maybe for some desperate chance that Murdoc could change. “Yeah… that’s what I thought.” He dropped his hands and Murdoc felt a sudden, gaping loss, a paralyzing fear, a deep, pounding realization that MacGyver was going to leave. Murdoc lunged forward and seized his wrist, pulling him back.
“I’ll give it up,” Murdoc said, the words falling now with little control of his own. “I’ll give everything up. I'll change. You remember— thirty-five, forty years ago— I gave it up, I retired. I did it for you. I stopped killing, because I thought— I— I thought that maybe, if I didn’t kill anymore, you— you would want me. And it didn’t work, back then, but what if I did it now? What if I tried again? I can be a good man, I swear to God, MacGyver; I can try.”
MacGyver’s gaze raked over Murdoc. He didn’t look convinced, and god, Murdoc was so scared. He had never feared death. He thought that this, this freezing in his heart, must be what it was like to be afraid of dying.
MacGyver brought his hand up slowly, passing it gently over the twisted, long-healed burns on Murdoc's face. “Murdoc,” he said softly, “do you… understand why I care about other people?”
Murdoc's heart was pounding hard in his chest. MacGyver's touch made him feel like hands were wrapped around his throat, choking his air, and yet he was petrified that MacGyver might move away. “I care about you,” he snapped. The words were dry, brittle, broken like bone. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Human life…” MacGyver sighed again, the breath heavy like a doctor's when they know a patient is too far gone. “It means something. Everyone means something.”
“I don’t… I—” Ridiculously, a laugh escaped Murdoc beyond his own volition, wavering and unsteady and not at all certain why it was even there. “Everyone dies, MacGyver. Why is it so bad that I do it for them?” Murdoc's hand slid down MacGyver's wrist to his hand, gripping it as though letting go would cause MacGyver to bolt. “For all you know, they could step out on the street the next day and get hit by a car. Have a heart attack, or an aneurysm, or— or whatever else; I just speed up the process. So what if I… I have a little fun with it?”
The hope in MacGyver's eyes died, replaced by exhausted and horribly resigned defeat. No, no, damn it— Murdoc had said the wrong thing, he had been wrong. MacGyver didn't want him. He felt torn open, hollowed out, his dripping and bloodied organs held trapped under MacGyver's heel. Every part of him ripped from where it belonged, leaving an empty chasm, a shell. He was so close, so close to MacGyver. He wanted the light of hope back. He wanted the fire. He would burn every day for the rest of his life if it meant having the fire back.
“Please,” Murdoc repeated. His voice was fractured, barely audible but all too clear in the silent room. “I need you.”
MacGyver gave a small, sad smile, ground his heel deeper into Murdoc’s heart. “No,” he said, “you need help, Murdoc.”
He didn't need help. He had never needed help. Murdoc had survived just fine until then; the only thing, the only person he wanted was MacGyver, and that was slipping from his fingers, and MacGyver still couldn't realize how much Murdoc was willing to lose for him. MacGyver didn't think any of this was real.
“I know… this feels like love to you,” MacGyver said, his words slow and hesitant. “But… it's not. It's obsession. This, all this… it's not love.” His hand fell, haltingly, back to his side. “Not really.”
No. No, MacGyver was wrong. Murdoc shoved him back, and before he fully realized what he was doing, his gun was out of its holster and aimed at MacGyver’s chest. Did he still want to kill MacGyver? The image, vibrant and clear, of the bullet travelling through MacGyver, of the near-black stain darkening his shirt, of the look in his eyes as his life bled out of him, blazed in Murdoc’s mind. Some part of him, some depraved facet of himself, wanted badly to watch MacGyver bleed. He didn’t even know if it was out of anger or love. Was it evil, he wondered abstractly, if it were both?
“Murdoc…” MacGyver began carefully, raising his hands as if he were placating a wild animal. “Please don't.”
“I can't go back to how it was before.” Murdoc's voice cracked, and he realized with a mixture of rage, panic, and perhaps hatred that there were tears fighting to force their way out of him, a creature that wanted to claw itself out through his eyes and leave him exposed. “You understand, don't you? I can't go back to— to waking up in a stranger's bed and pretending it's yours. To spending the rest of my fucking life trying to imagine what it's like to be with you, not now that I've had it for a moment. You can't give that to me and then take it away.” It was getting harder to control his breathing. Murdoc was leaning heavily on his cane, his grip on it and his gun tight enough to send sparks of pain through his knuckles. “I've been playing parts all my life, MacGyver; I can play the part of a good man if you want me to. Just please…” The gun was shaking. “Please, say that you could love me.”
The look in MacGyver's eyes told Murdoc everything, even before MacGyver spoke. No hope, no light, no fire, just what Murdoc had come to identify as pity and regret. “I can't live a lie,” MacGyver said at length. “And… I don't think you can, either. I want to be able to love you, Murdoc, but…” He trailed off, looking almost lost. “Maybe in another world.”
It would be so easy to pull the trigger. Something Murdoc had done countless times before, stretching back to long before he ever met MacGyver. It would be nothing to him, another mark, another kill, just one more death in his record. Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be easy? To finally kill MacGyver… To finally watch him die, after all this time. What could he possibly mean to Murdoc now? What use did he have? What use, Murdoc thought, did either of them have?
What would he do when MacGyver was dead? The realization came as a chill, a slick of cold sweat across Murdoc’s skin. He had nothing, no one; MacGyver was the only person left he could say he cared about. MacGyver was certainly the only person left who cared for him in any capacity. How could he decide whether to be a ghost watching MacGyver live alone, or to be nothing at all having killed him?
MacGyver had been watching Murdoc; what he saw on Murdoc’s face was impossible to know. Perhaps MacGyver could see him crumbling from the inside out. Perhaps MacGyver could see him breaking himself.
“Murdoc,” MacGyver whispered. “Give me the gun.”
It was with those words that Murdoc deciphered the expression on MacGyver’s face. MacGyver wasn’t afraid of being hurt— he was afraid Murdoc would hurt himself. It wasn’t so strange a concept. Murdoc found himself fearing the same.
MacGyver was closer; Murdoc hadn’t noticed him reapproaching. MacGyver stretched out a hand and for a bizarre moment, Murdoc thought he was going to kiss him again. He so desperately wanted MacGyver to kiss him again. But no, MacGyver was taking the gun, their hands brushing each other, Murdoc’s grasp falling loosely from the weapon. Murdoc tried to take a step back, gripped by some vague instinct to run, but his legs buckled underneath him and he fell hard to the floor. He might have shouted; he wasn’t sure. His legs hurt. His ears were ringing. His senses felt disjointed, strangely disparate, disconnected from himself. “Fuck,” Murdoc gasped, still on the floor, pressing himself against the bedframe. His thoughts were racing far too fast; he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do.
“Murdoc?” Shit. MacGyver. Oh god, he had broken in front of MacGyver. He was still breaking. MacGyver was in front of him, on his knees— when had he gotten to his knees?— looking concerned. “Murdoc, are—?”
“Fine,” Murdoc rasped. He was shaking. He didn't know where the gun went. That was probably for the best. His ears were still ringing. Damn it, his legs still hurt. He couldn't do this.
“Murdoc.” MacGyver looked so fucking worried. “Are you hurt?”
Of course he was. That was how it worked, wasn't it? That was how it was always going to end. Murdoc looked over at MacGyver, realizing dully that at some point, involuntarily, he had started to cry, and he hated himself for it. “Walk away, MacGyver,” he said bitterly. “There's—” Murdoc cut himself off with a dry, tired laugh. “There's nothing for you here.”
“I don't think it's a good idea to leave you alone,” MacGyver said.
Murdoc cleared his throat, forcing a flat, painful smile onto his face. “I'll be fine,” he said, struggling to keep his voice from collapsing entirely. “Don't… worry about me. Everything… is going to be fine. I just…” It was so hard to speak. “Just go, MacGyver. Please.”
MacGyver's gaze flicked down, resignation carved into the lines of his face. When he spoke, his words were measured. “I'm taking the gun,” he told Murdoc. “I don't want… you to do anything rash, okay?”
“I'll be seeing you,” Murdoc said, his voice rough now, the mask of flippant carelessness barely holding together. “Even if…” Even if only from afar. Even if they didn't touch. Even if it hurt. “Even if you don't notice.”
MacGyver grunted as he got to his feet with some effort, looking down at Murdoc and offering him a hand. He was holding the gun in his other hand, Murdoc saw now— always careful, always sure to keep it where it wouldn't hurt anyone. Murdoc waved off MacGyver's offer of help; he wasn't yet ready to rise, and he doubted his legs would be able to hold him now, anyway.
“I'm sorry,” MacGyver said softly. “I'm sorry it has to end like this.”
Murdoc's insides were already strewn across the floor. He had nothing left in him, no beating heart to pierce. “It was never going to end any differently.”
Murdoc didn't remember hearing the door close behind MacGyver when he left. It had all come to nothing, hadn't it? Because that wasn't the way of the world. MacGyver always figured his way out of things, Murdoc always survived against the odds, and neither of them could love the other. Not the way they wanted to. Murdoc had tried, and it had cost him everything. He had gotten everything he wanted, just for a moment, and now he had to live without it. Now he had to live with only the hungry memory of what he could never have.
Murdoc inhaled deeply and held his breath, counting in his head. His senses were returning to him; he was regaining control of himself. His legs were hurting worse from the fall, but he was fairly certain he hadn't broken them. He knew what that felt like well enough by now.
It seemed everything would go back to the way they were before. Only slightly altered, slightly discordant— now Murdoc knew for certain how MacGyver felt about him, and he wasn't terribly sure what to do with the information. Life would go on for MacGyver. Murdoc supposed the only thing he could do was to keep living, too, even when it felt like it would be better not to.
At least MacGyver was alive. Murdoc still didn't fully know whether he wanted to kill MacGyver or not. But MacGyver was out there, living, which meant Murdoc could have him, even if it just meant from a distance.
It was better to watch a fire blaze from afar than to extinguish it entirely. Even if one wanted to burn.