Title: N is for Need
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mac/Don
Summary: For fruitbat00.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.

***

Everyone needs something, and Mac is no exception. No man is an island. Flack tells himself this over and over again, when Gavin gets let go and when everything happens with Truby, and when the situation with Gerrard and Sinclair blows up in their faces. He tells himself this no matter how many times Mac acts like nothing matters but procedure, no matter how many times he looks around with a blank face and cold eyes like he has no idea what words like loyalty and brotherhood even mean.

But Flack doesn't fully believe it, not really, not deep down. If there was ever a man who really was an island, Mac Taylor would be it. Flack goes on thinking this right up until one late night at Sullivan's when no one else is around, when it's just the two of them and Mac has too many whiskey and waters, and suddenly he looks up at Flack and says, "I never saw any of it coming," and his eyes are unfocused and weary.

Flack isn't sure what any of it Mac means, but it doesn't matter. "C'mon, let's go for a walk," he says. He was right after all, he thinks, and he thinks this again fifteen minutes later on a dark street corner as Mac bends to his kiss and as he shivers in his arms, suddenly just as lost, or found, as the rest of them.

***