A/N: More fun and frolics with our favourite geek girl and surfer dude...

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 7

Mac was a little surprised when the door to the Casablancas house opened and she realsied it was Dick himself standing there. Her surprise was nothing though in comparison to the levels of drunk to which he was striving and achieving, at only six in the afternoon.

"Hey, Macster!" he yelled joyfully, throwing an arm around her shoulders and practically dragging her inside, slamming the door shut behind her, "I am so psyched you're here! Come join the party!" he told her, loud enough for her to have heard if she was a mile away, and yet she was squished up right next to him.

For a horrible moment, Mac actually thought there might be a party occurring at Dick's house. There shouldn't be, given that she'd come here for a study session, but there was no telling what was happening right now either in the Casablancas house or its young resident's mind. Mac lurched along with Dick into the usual living room and was relieve to find it empty of people until they themselves arrived. Slipping out from under his arm at last, Mac turned to face her tutee with a face like thunder.

"What is going on, Dick?" she practically demanded to know, unsure where her confidence to get so mad at him came from.

She guessed she was royally pissed at him because he had been doing so well and was now making a mockery of the tutoring that had helped him achieve so much. Mac had snapped at him before but never with quite so much force or so fierce a look in her eyes. She had no idea of the effect she was having but Dick had never wanted a woman more.

"You're real sexy when you get angry" he practically leered at her as he downed the rest of his beer from the bottle that had been dangling from his hand this whole time, and then belched loudly.

Mac was too angry to even blush at the words he used to describe her and considered just walking out of here right now. Unfortunately, she wasn't that kind of person. She was the caring type, when it came to her friends at least, and that was what Dick had become these past few weeks. It was an odd kind of friendship to say the least but it was a friendship none the less. Something had caused Dick to go from joyful achiever to leering drunk in the space of the last few hours, and Mac intended to find out what that was. Celebration of his grade might have been an option were it not for the fact that this kind of drinking, as she understood it, was done in company and not alone. This was the drowning sorrows kind of drunk and though she knew she'd probably regret turning a maths tutoring session into a therapy session, she did it anyway.

"Okay" she sighed, tossing her book bag onto the couch and then looking for the door she thought might lead to some kind of kitchen area or any place with coffee at all.

"Hey, where are we going?" Dick stumbled after her, tossing his empty aside as he went.

Mac didn't answer, she would have if she couldn't've found what she was looking for, but she walked into a kitchenette type of a thing in just two turns and immediately started searching for a good source of caffeine.

"Yahtzee!" she declared as she stumbled on a concealed coffee machine all ready to go when she flipped the switch.

"You want a beer?" Dick asked, and she turned to find him practically standing in the nearby refrigerator, pulling out two bottles.

"No" Mac said firmly as she walked over, and squeezed herself between him and the appliance, "and neither do you" she told him, replacing the bottles from his hands into the fridge and closing the door.

It was only when she turned around, her back against the refrigerator door, that Mac realised quite how close together she and a rather drunken Dick Casablancas were.

'Houston, we have a problem' she said inside her head, at least she hoped it was a thought rather than a verbal. She wasn't entirely certain what the weird look on his face was all about but given that drunk guys usually either got sick or handsy, Mac was not about to stick around and find out.

"Ooh, coffee's almost ready" she said with a nervous smile as she slipped away and across the kitchen to what she considered was relative safety.

Leaving would have been so the better option, but Mac knew staying here with Dick was the right thing to do. He had no mother or brother anymore, his father didn't seem to care, and though there ought to be dozens of servants around the place, she'd seen not a one yet. It would be entirely irresponsible to leave Dick here alone where he might pass out and hit his head or something similar. She was doing a good deed, like Veronica was with Logan. There was nothing to read into the situation at all, she told herself, even now as she glanced across the kitchen and saw Dick was staring at her again.

"Coffee" she muttered to herself as she went back to pouring out two cups of the hot black liquid.

Mac added a liberal amount of sugar to her coffee, leaving Dick's as it was as she moved to sit at the small table in the middle of the room. Gesturing for Dick to do the same, he was soon there before her, half-falling into the seat opposite with a thump. He eyed the cup of coffee on the table with suspicion and distaste.

Coffee was not Dick's favourite thing, especially black, and he really only drank it when he had a hangover but absolutely had to get sober. Now was not one of those times so he didn't want it, not at all. Unfortunately, Dick wasn't so very drunk that he'd lost all his good sense, he was aware enough to know that he was going to royally piss off Mac if he didn't drink his coffee. Since she was the only person who seemed to give a damn about him at all right now, he'd make the effort.

Mac watched as Dick picked up the steaming mug of coffee with both hands and took a gulp. He reacted with distaste, which she had pretty much expected, but grossed out Dick was preferable to drunk Dick as far as she could tell. She sipped at her own drink, watching the blond over the rim of her mug, until he'd finished most of his own coffee, then she spoke up.

"You wanna talk about it?" she asked him, trying for sympathetic and friendly.

Mac didn't really do this kind of thing. She had friends, but not the kind that got wasted and/or needed to spill their guts to her. Her so-called computer geek buddies really only talked to her about technology, and she didn't have a whole bunch of girly friends. Veronica was the closest Mac had to that, and though they did share semi-private things and all, she'd never been in quite this situation with the PI's daughter, at least, not yet.

"Talk about what?" Dick asked with a sigh as he sat back in his chair, not looking so great.

"Why are you drunk and alone in your house at six in the afternoon?" she asked him simply, not bothering to mention the study session that was now clearly not going to happen.

Right now math problems were clearly the least of Dick's concerns though Mac couldn't figure out why. When she'd last seen him he was all joy and rapture about his great English grade and psyched about tonight's tutoring session. Okay, so there had been that one weird moment in the hall when he'd seemed a little odd, but Mac had come to realise Dick was just like that sometimes. Sometimes she thought she was learning as much about the real Dick Casablancas as he was learning about Math and English! Well, maybe...

"My Dad is working late, a bunch of the staff are sick..." he explained all of a sudden, knowing the alone part was Mac's lesser concern but it was much easier to explain than the drunk.

There were a bunch of reasons, everything from Madison being a bitch, to his friends ragging on him, and most importantly of all, the undefined feelings Dick had inside of him all connected to Mac. As far as Dick could tell, you dated girls for only four reasons - big boobs, long legs, sex, and love. The first three were most important to him, seeing as the fourth was something for old people and losers. He was young, free and single and wanting to date as many hot women as he could. He'd stuck with Madison quite a while in an attempt to nail her, but that wasn't happening.

So, now there was Mac, and whilst she was hot in her own way, Dick didn't want her simply because of her figure that she hid most of the time anyway, or what she might be able to do with it, since he doubted she was anywhere close to the most experienced girl in the world. That left one reason why he might want to get close to her, and there was no way Dick could be in love. That left him trying to figure out what the hell kind of control she had over him, and when he couldn't figure that out after several beers, he'd started thinking on how pointless it was to like her anyway.

Dick's problem was paradoxical, though of course he didn't possess the vocabulary to know it. He'd employed Mac to tutor him because she was one of the smartest chicks at Neptune High. Now he was getting these feelings for her and she was one of the few women who might just be intelligent enough to reject him if he made any kind of move.

Sure there was a chance he'd get lucky, that she'd fall for his obvious good looks and a little of the old Casablancas charm. That would bring with it a whole other set of problems for Dick. He'd be a laughing stock if he showed up at school or any 09er event with a computer geek on his arm. He knew the heckling he'd have to endure because on too many occasions before this he'd been chief heckler of other poor students who's only crime was to date someone from a different clique or worse a different social status.

"Dick, you're starting to scare me a little now..." Mac admitted, her hand landing on his arm and catching his attention more than her words did.

She'd brought him back to reality, at least she thought so as his formerly glazed-over eyes suddenly snapped open to meet her own gaze.

"I'm cool" he said then with a smile Mac supposed to be entirely fake, after all crazy drunk and starey to 'cool' in under a minute seemed unlikely.

"Are you sure?" she asked, retracting the hand she barely realised had crept across the table.

Dick didn't remark on the contact, or loss of same, just pulled his hand back off the table too before he answered her.

"Sure, I'm sure" he grinned, "Sorry, I guess I got a little... y'know" he shrugged, making some random gesture near his head that Mac wasn't sure whether to interpret as drunk, thoughtful, or all out crazy.

"Okay" she said, for lack of a better word, as she got to her feet, taking the empty coffee cups over to the sink for something else to do.

"Hey" Dick's voice behind her startled Mac so much she was glad the cups were not still in her hands as she turned to face him, "I'm kinda not in a study place right now" he admitted, "but, er, you wanna hang out?" he asked, shifting in his seat, almost as if he was afraid to ask her or perhaps just scared of what her answer might be.

"I guess I could" Mac said thoughtfully not sure if she was really making a sensible decision.

With Dick in his current state, she wasn't really comfortable with leaving him alone and it wasn't as if she hadn't planned to be here anyway. Whatever he had planned was bound to be a million miles from studying but so long as it wasn't anything outrageous like skinny dipping Mac figured she could deal.

"You wanna see my games station?" Dick was grinning like a kid as he got to his feet, "Computer chick like you should go wild"

"Okay" she nodded unable to suppress a giggle at his sudden enthusiasm as they headed towards his room.

What Mac didn't know was that the smile on Dick's face was still at least partially fake. He figured his only hope right now was to be friends with Mac. That way he could work up to the idea of dating her, and at the same time hopefully convince his friends she was cool enough for him to want to be with. It may be it wasn't the smartest plan in the whole world, but it was Dick's plan, and for now he was going to stick with it.

To Be Continued...