MISSION CITY HIGH
2005
Mac sighed as he reported to Coach Wilson's empty classroom after school. The football coach glared at him and pointed silently at a desk in the corner, before leaving to get his college friend whom he'd called in a favour from to 'instil some discipline' into Mac.
No matter what he said, Coach Wilson (and several other members of the Mission City High and Mission City Junior High faculty) refused to believe that the small nuclear meltdown that'd unfortunately destroyed the football stadium (which he and Bozer had solemnly dubbed the Football Stadium Incident and pinkie-promised to not talk about ever again) was an accident.
(Thankfully, the police had eventually come 'round on that, and his grandfather and Mr Ericson had believed him from the outset.)
He sighed again as the coach left the room, pointedly locking the door behind him, though not before shooting Mac a look that clearly said, no funny business, boy.
The blonde nodded in response to that look, then, as the coach left, ran a hand through his hair and debated starting on his chemistry homework, knowing Darlene would ask to look over it to check her answers tomorrow morning.
(She always smiled at him in a way that felt really special whenever she asked. It made him feel special.)
(Still, he was not going to ask her to Prom, like Bozer kept trying to get him to do. They were Chem lab partners; he didn't want to make it weird or awkward between them.)
(He'd really, really miss those special little smiles.)
At the same time, stoichiometry was pretty boring, and he could do it all in his head anyway, and he didn't even have Chem until third period the next day…
At that moment, Mac's eyes were caught by the only closed window in the room. Coach had opened all the others wide for ventilation, so it stuck out like a sore thumb.
Without even thinking about it, Mac went over to the window, and examined the opening mechanism, reflexively pulling the Swiss Army knife his grandpa had given him out of his jeans pocket.
Oh, that was the problem…
Jack opened the newly-unlocked classroom door (Wilson had headed off to run football practice, which was temporarily being held at a local park while the grass on what used to be the football stadium grew back), and almost did a double-take when he saw the boy inside, whom Wilson had described as a 'juvenile delinquent'.
Kid sure didn't look like one.
He was extremely blonde, and even more extremely skinny, seemingly mostly legs. The kid was wearing jeans (fairly neat, without any rips, though there were a couple of what might have been grease stains), a Henley and a flannel shirt over that.
He was also doing something to a window with a Swiss Army knife, which was more in line with what Jack had been expecting, based on Wilson's tales over beer a couple nights ago.
'You better not be repeating the Football Stadium Incident, kid, or another one of them incidents that've gotten you into hot water over the years.'
The boy, Angus MacGyver, made a noise of protest that was very teenager.
'I'm fixing the window!' He gestured at the mechanism. Jack noted idly that he had a streak of something that looked like a combination of grease and rust on his chin. 'The mechanism that opens it is jammed, so Coach hasn't been able to open it like the others, but with this…' He held up his Swiss Army knife. '…and this…' He held up a paperclip that was shaped like no paperclip Jack had ever seen before. '…I can fix it.'
Jack crossed his arms and studied the boy for a moment. He liked to think he was a pretty good judge of character. All Daltons had good gut instincts, it was practically their second last name.
Angus MacGyver seemed like a good kid.
(He was fixing a window for the teacher who hated him, after all.)
Jack nodded, and plonked himself down on a nearby desk, waving a hand.
'Well, go ahead…' He pointed seriously at the boy, then his own eyes. '…but I'm warning you, kiddo, I'm watching you.'
A few minutes later, Jack led the boy, who insisted that he call him Mac, out towards the school basketball court.
'Now, I was gonna teach you how to play football, since me and Coach played in college and all, but you're practically a stick, kid, so I gotta improvise.'
Unsurprisingly, Mac bristled a little, again in a very teenage boy way when Jack called him a stick. Jack had never been scrawny himself, and certainly not scrawny in the way this kid was, but he remembered being a teenage boy well enough to have a little sympathy for him.
Surprisingly, he actually seemed to cheer up (rather involuntarily) at the mention of the word 'improvise'.
Clearly, the kid was not only a real pain in the ass, he was also real weird.
Jack tossed him a basketball.
'Show me what you got.'
He got another surprise when the boy grinned with a touch of a smirk in the expression, dribbled the ball a few times as if testing it out, then got to work getting the ball past Jack and into the hoop.
He succeeded. Much faster than Jack thought he would.
He was quick, agile. Had good hand-eye coordination, was good at thinking on his feet.
Jack could work with that.
He wound up working with Mac twice a week, on Wednesdays after school and on Saturday afternoons.
The kid was a damn good basketball player, it turned out.
He was also, as Jack had thought, a fundamentally very good kid.
(Wilson was clearly a little biased. And had something against him. He'd always been the type to hold grudges.)
(It was just really important to stop Mac and his big brain from getting bored. When he got bored, Mac tended to get completely lost in crazy ideas, get so caught up in some science project or the other, that you'd better duck for cover and hope the explosion wasn't too big.)
(He really didn't try to be destructive. In fact, Mac was usually trying to help in some way. The destruction just…happened.)
Jack felt the boy kind of needed him. Needed an Obi-Wan Kenobi to his Luke Skywalker.
(His mom had died when he was five. His dad had abandoned him when he was ten. Mac had Daddy Issues, the kind that really did need capital letters.)
(He also had typical teenager issues – low self-esteem, bullies, an unrequited crush. Jack was no shrink, but he was pretty sure they were made worse by the fact that Mac was an actual Einstein-level genius – though Bozer said Mac was apparently technically smarter than Einstein – and two years younger than his classmates.)
(What had become known as the Darlene Martin Incident had had pretty substantial fallout. Bozer had dragged Mac out of a janitor's closet that he'd broken into after asking the girl to Prom and getting shot down cold, apologizing profusely over making him lose that bet. Mac had then taken to insisting to everyone that he'd planned to not go to Prom in the first place, since there was a live shuttle launch on TV he wanted to watch. He was a terrible liar, so no-one believed him.)
(While Bozer and Penny Parker were at Prom, Jack had taken Mac out for burgers at Burger Nirvana, taken him for a drive in his Shelby Cobra, let the kid take a good long look at the engine and the suspension, then tried to half-listen to Mac's lecture on space travel and rocket science while they watched the live shuttle launch. Bozer and Penny had stopped by afterwards with rocky-road ice-cream, and listened to Mac's second space lecture of the night, so Jack was pretty sure the kid had had a pretty good Prom Night in the end.)
He already had a family. Already had a kid.
(Riley was a great kid, but she was also fiercely independent, determined to prove she was all grown up, and like Mac, was possibly too smart for her own good.)
But the nice thing about family was that there was always room for one more.
HARRY JACKSON AND MAC'S RESIDENCE
MISSION CITY
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
'…hey, burgers are on the grill.' Riley's expression shifted into something that was half you're being really weird, and half-fond. 'Bozer said to tell you guys, we're thirty seconds from a taste explosion.'
Jack and Mac, who were sweaty and probably a little stinky and in the middle of game point (Mac was currently leading and had the ball in hand), both nodded at Riley. Mac gave a little smirk.
'Yeah, we'll be in soon.' He gestured at Jack with his head, twisting quickly away with the ball. 'I just got to put this old man out of his misery quickly.'
Jack snorted at that, blocking Mac's shot at the basket.
'Yeah, yeah, okay.' He glanced over at Riley as he evaded Mac's attempts to get the ball back. 'Yeah, tell Bozer to brand a big-ass L on Mac's burger, 'cause I'm gonna take this little boy to school!'
Mac finally stole the ball back, and smirking, feinted around Jack.
'Oh yeah, old man?'
Riley snorted and muttered something about testosterone poisoning, before heading back inside.
Bozer was probably going to continue to lecture her about making the perfect burger.
But he was actually kinda cute when he was being himself.
AN: With thanks to Clarissafrench.