AN: This has relatively substantial spoilers for 2.08, Packing Peanuts + Fire. Please watch the episode before reading this!

JACK'S CAR

ON-ROUTE TO MACGYVER'S RESIDENCE

LA

'…Alright, brother, I've taken two unwanted dips in a pool in like two days 'cause of you now, so you owe me one.'

Mac, sitting in the passenger seat and shaping a paperclip into a paintbrush, held out his hands and adopted an incredulous expression, as Riley, in the back seat with Cage, gave a snort and Cage shook her head with a little amused smile. Mac turned to his partner with a shake of his head.

'Jack, we wouldn't have had to jump into the pool in the first place if you hadn't sat on an original Louis XV and leaned on a 14th century Giotto di Bondone fresco!'

Jack shook his head as he made a turn.

'Brother, it was a chair and a wall. Chairs are made for sitting in! And walls are made for leaning on!'

Riley gave another snort of laughter, raising an eyebrow.

'Jack, we don't make walls to lean on them. You know, they're necessary for structural support and privacy…important little things like that, you know.'

Jack shook his head again, raising a hand off the wheel and pointing at Riley in the rear-view mirror.

'Oh, don't you get started too, kiddo! I can only deal with one Mac, and even then, he drives me crazy sometimes...'

That was said very pointedly to his partner, who just sighed and rolled his eyes.

(He'd apologized for the thing with Jack's boot on the plane ride home already. Besides, he only commandeered Jack's stuff – or other people's stuff - when he needed it for stopping bad guys, saving the world, saving people's lives or getting them out of a scrape, and when he was in a rush and under pressure like that, his mind buzzing and running at 100 mph…things like asking for permission or apologizing tended to slip his mind.)

(Mac was pretty sure Jack knew that.)

(Mac was also very sure that Jack would never stop grumbling about Mac taking his stuff for his crazy on-the-fly inventions.)

(It helped lighten the mood. Provided brevity.)

(Mac hoped that Jack never did stop doing that.)

(That was one of the things that Mac loved very much about him.)

After a pause, Mac spoke.

'Fine, Jack. I owe you one. What do you want?'

Jack grinned in a very satisfied manner.

'Now, that wasn't so hard, was it, man?' Mac raised his brows and turned to Cage and Riley in the back, the look on his face clearly saying can you believe this guy? Cage's smile widened a little and Riley shook her head with exasperated, long-suffering affection and chuckled. Jack made another turn, then continued. 'Okay, brother, what I want is to hear the full, the-whole-truth-and-only-the-truth story as to why you've got a whole Encyclopaedia Britannica of art in that big brain of yours.' Jack pointed at Mac, then at Cage and Riley in the rear-view mirror. ''Cause I know there's gotta be a good story behind all that.'

Mac gave a little nod, and a sheepish half-smirk grew on his face, as he pulled a paperclip from his pocket and re-shaped it into a can of paint.

'Well…it's a story alright.' Mac's smirk widened a little, and a hint of smugness appeared in there. 'Valerie says it's still making the rounds at Mission City High.' Mac's expression grew more sheepish again. 'Well, the first part of it, anyway.' He paused for a moment, mostly for dramatic effect. (You couldn't spend more than half of your life around Bozer without picking up storytelling skills.) 'When I was thirteen, I got really, really bored in Art class. And you guys know what happens sometimes when I get bored…' Mac's expression grew even more sheepish. 'I accidentally went a little Jackson Pollock on the ceiling of Mission City High's Art classroom…' He paused again and rubbed the back of his neck. '…and on the walls. And my classmates. And our Art teacher.' He paused again, expression becoming rather wry. 'Uh… more than a little Jackson Pollock, actually.' Mac snorted and shook his head, lost in a memory. 'I got a week's worth of detention in the Art room with our Art teacher. She wouldn't let me touch any of the paint or paintbrushes or pottery wheels or the like…'

Jack snorted and interjected.

'Yeah, don't blame her for that, brother.'

From the back seat, Riley and Cage nodded in agreement, both with wry, amused smiles that were half smirks.

Mac nodded rather sheepishly (they were right; he couldn't fault poor Ms Emmerson for that at all, in hindsight), and continued his story.

'But she did let me read the art books. I don't have much of an interest in art…' He shrugged. 'But I was really, really bored, so…'

He trailed off with another shrug.

Jack considered a moment, before pointing at his partner again.

(Mac's great knowledge of art certainly could not have come from reading one or two books about art. It probably came from reading a whole library's worth of art books.)

'Mac, brother, how many art books did you read in your week of detention?'

Mac pursed his lips and thought for a moment.

'Uh…twenty-nine.'

'You read twenty-nine books in a week's worth of detention?'

Cage sounded a little surprised and impressed. Riley's expression showed that she felt much the same, as Jack shook his head with an incredulous, yet affectionate, smile.

Mac shrugged rather nonchalantly.

'I was really bored.'

AN: If I, a not-genius, can read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in four hours, Mac can read 29 art books in a week's worth of detention. I know this is pretty much pointless, but did you enjoy it, at least?

If you're wondering why they didn't make him clean up the mess he made – by then, the staff of Mission City High had learned that Mac + cleaning supplies = more trouble. They thought that he couldn't possibly get into mischief while reading art books…if they'd heard about his and Jack's escapades in Belgium, then that'd be a whole other story.

For my thoughts on the episode – either PM me, or see the AN at the end of the latest chapter of Somewhere in the Middle; I don't want to double-post them!