Title: M is for Margin
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: PG
Pairing: Mac/Don
Summary: For iscaris.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.

***

"There's no margin for error here, Flack," Mac says. "None," and Flack wants to turn away from the coldness in Mac's eyes and the hard set of his mouth. The temptation to hit him, to just punch him in his smug jaw and watch him stagger, watch some of that coolness bleed out of him, is very nearly too great.

But if he does that, he'll feel like he's lost. Flack grits his teeth and breathes through it and doesn't look away. "There has to be," he says after a moment, once he trusts himself to speak again. "There always is. People are involved, Mac. Real, honest fallible people. You can't tell me, realistically, that no one is allowed to ever fuck up. The world doesn't work like that."

"If people did their jobs it would," Mac says. "If people -- if people just thought for two seconds before they acted, just every now and then."

Flack hates it when Mac gets like this. The worst part is that he's pretty sure Mac doesn't even believe any of this bullshit he spouts himself. He can't, Flack thinks; he's too smart for that. It might be the way Mac wishes the world would work, and yeah, wouldn't it be nice if it did, if they could all just trip along and not worry about fucking up, about getting it wrong? Or about hurting other people. But that's not the way it is, and Mac has been around for long enough, has seen enough, to know that as well as Flack does.

"Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if people thought?" Flack says. "Wouldn't it be nice if you could live up to your own standards? Oh, but you don't count, right? Just me and everyone else in the world, everyone who's not cold enough to -- " He stops himself.

"To what?" Mac asks. His voice is flat, unwavering.

"Nothing," Flack says. "Forget it. Don't know why I'm even here."

He looks at Mac, and Mac doesn't say a word. This time Flack does turn away.

***