A/N: Okay, I only became a fan of Mac & Dick like this week, so I'm new to the game. This is just something that I thought of while I was (surprise, surprise) doing jury duty. There are a few more chapters that I'll post in the next few days. And if I owned any of VMars, it would still be on the air, dammit. Anyway, enjoy!
Mac settled down into the chair and sighed.
'Civic obligation, my ass,' she thought to herself.
She looked around the sparse room at the rest of the jury pool and consoled herself that maybe she would be put on the jury for some sort of computer-related crime and thus wouldn't go out of her mind with boredom.
Just then a sun-bleached head of hair caught her eye at the front of the room and she had to look twice to make sure she wasn't seeing things. Dick Casablancas, doing something without the promise of pleasure or profit? It couldn't be.
Although she usually tried to avoid Dick, she couldn't quell her curiosity, so she began to make her way to the front of the room, where he was listening to his iPod.
"Hey dude," he said to a nearby security guard in a very loud voice, "Do you know when I can leave?"
The guard made a 'Keep it down' motion with his hands, then signaled for Dick to remove his headphones, which he did.
"You won't know how long you'll be here until you know what trial you've been assigned to," the guard said.
"Okay, thanks," Dick said, speaking just as loudly as he had before.
Mac reached where Dick was seated and stood there for a minute, arms at her sides.
"Hey," she said woodenly.
"Mac!" he said with exuberance. Mac wondered briefly if he had ever done anything without exuberance. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Baking a cake," she said.
He grinned and shook his head. "That's what I like about you, Mac. Your sense of humor."
"So can I sit down?"
"Oh, yeah, totally."
As she sat down, Mac heard his words from that day at the beach echoing through her head. "I get it now what my brother saw in you," he'd said. She still hadn't figured out what to make of it, and now didn't feel like the time to try.
"What are you doing here?" she asked after a minute of silence.
"Kind of blows your mind, right?" he said. "My lawyer made me come. I blew it off last time, and he got on my ass about it, and he kept throwing words like 'federal offense' around. So, here I am."
Mac nodded and tried to get comfortable in her chair.
"Nice shirt, by the way," Dick said, gesturing to Mac's tee, which let everyone know that she was chillin' like a villain.
"Yours, too," she said.
"Thanks. It's come in handy more than once."
Dick's shirt said 'Where are my pants?' in Spanish.
"What number does your card say?" Dick asked, grabbing for the piece of paper in her hand.
She evaded his grasp but answered, "Twenty-nine."
"I'm twelve," he said, looking disappointed.
"Well you certainly act it," Mac said with a small smile on her face.
"Ha ha, yeah, let's make fun of Dick for his youthful enthusiasm. Don't you know that you'll have a head start if you're among the very young at heart?"
"I prefer to be old before my time," Mac said. "It just suits me better."
"Yeah, well you might be a real live granny by the time we get out of this room," Dick said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arm out on Mac's chair back. His fingers brushed her shoulder and she tried to suppress a shiver.
Twenty minutes later the guard played a poorly made video about how jury duty works. As a woman with a lisp explained the purpose of a judge, Dick leaned toward Mac.
"Dude, even I know this stuff," he said. Mac gave him a half-smile.
When the video was over, the guard told the jurors that they had a forty minute break before they would be sent to their sessions.
"Break?" Mac asked in disbelief. "We haven't done anything yet. How can we have a break? This is a highly inefficient system."
Dick shrugged and got up without a comment. Mac almost got up to follow him but then she stopped herself, thinking that maybe he had to go to the bathroom or something.
He came back a few minutes later and handed her a large cup of coffee.
"They didn't have soy milk, sorry," he said, sitting down and taking a sip from his own cup.
"Oh. It's alright," Mac said, surprised that he remembered, or even knew in the first place, that she was a vegan. "Thanks."
"No prob," said Dick.
As they drank their coffee, they talked about their freshman year and their summer plans.
"I was supposed to go surfing with Logan in South America all summer but that sort of fell through," Dick said.
"Why?"
Dick shrugged and took a long sip of his coffee. "Logan decided to stay here with Parker, or something, I don't know."
Mac was pretty sure there was more to the story, but she didn't push him about it.
"Maybe one of your frat brothers could go with you instead," she suggested.
"Nah, I think the trip's just not happening—plus the other guys are fun to party with, but we're not, you know, like, close."
Mac nodded, and Dick nodded, too, and then his face broke into a wide grin.
"You thought at all about rushing?"
Mac snorted into her coffee. "Please. Can you really see me in a sorority?"
Dick closed his eyes. "Yep. There you are. Cute nightie. Oh, pillow fight!"
Mac laughed in spite of herself. She took another sip of her coffee, then she frowned.
"Wait, Logan wanted to stay here because of Parker? He doesn't want to get back together with her, does he?"
"Please, Mac, you know as well as I do that he's ass-backwards in love with Ronnie. He called off the trip while he was still with Parker, but now he's a free man again, not that he takes advantage of it. And now that the trip's off, he's got nothing to do this summer except pine over Ronnie while she's off solving crime and having phone sex with Marlon Bland-o. That's what I call Piz in my head sometimes."
"You shouldn't say things like that," Mac chided.
"Why not? Piz is lame, and Ronnie should be with Logan anyway. I was in the dining hall when these guys were giving Veronica a hard time about their video, and Piz didn't even do anything. He was holding her back, even. If somebody insults your girl, you kick his ass—end of story."
"Piz is a nice guy," Mac argued. "He's good for her. He's stable."
Dick snorted. "What's so great about stability, anyway? Takes all the spice out of life."
Mac didn't say anything, because secretly she agreed with him—she thought Veronica and Logan should be together. They had their ups and downs but they would do anything for each other. Also, they were miserable when they were apart.
Dick was looking around and jiggling his foot restlessly. "Think we can sneak out the back?" he asked.
"They collect the cards at the end of the day. They'll know if we leave."
"Think I can bribe the guard?"
Mac gave him a look. He sighed and handed her one of his iPod earbuds. He put the other one in his ear and started the music. He pulled out his PSP and started playing a really violent game, while Mac went over some program codes she'd brought with her.
Two and a half hours later, Dick was asleep and Mac was still listening to a playlist that she'd discovered was named "Music to score by." She hated to admit it, but the mix wasn't bad. She noticed then that the guard was headed towards the front of the room. Mac nudged the boy sprawled out in the chair next to her. Dick sat up and Mac laughed when she saw his hair sticking straight up in the air.
"Good afternoon, jurors," the guard said. "We are very sorry for the delay, but all the cases scheduled to go to trial today have been settled, so you are all free to go. Thank you for your time, and we'll see you in three years."
Dick yelled "Boo-yah!" at the same time that Mac said, "Are you kidding me?"
Dick turned to grin at Mac. "Put on your dancing shoes, girlie, we're going to celebrate!"
"Seriously?"
"Of course."
"It's the middle of the day, what is there to do?" Mac asked.
"I know a place."
"I'm not going to a strip club."
"Aw, come on, dude!"