A/N: Hey, you guys remember me? Well, I'm back! Also, the flu sucks! Thanks for all the feedback, peops! :)
(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)
Chapter 13
"It almost feels wrong, being out by myself," said Mac, shifting awkwardly in the seat opposite Veronica. "Like I'm missing something. I think this might be how new mother's feel the first time they go out without the baby," she said, frowning at the comparison she had made the moment she realised how weird it was.
"If we're going to start referring to Dick as your new-born offspring, I might have to seek out the antacids," said Veronica, making a face that showed how truly squicked she felt. "Actually, I might need something stronger than that."
"Sorry." Mac shook her head. "It is weird though, being out. Not bad weird, but weird. Wallace is saintly for sitting in."
"He's worried about you, and so am I," said Veronica pointedly. "It's great that you want to help out when Dick needs somebody, but you can't run yourself into the ground."
"Said the biggest hypocrite in the world." Mac smiled. "Anyway, much as you would tell me if I fussed over you working too hard, I'm fine," she promised her friend. "I was having kind of a hard time a couple of days ago when Wallace came visiting. He didn't catch me at the best moment, but... well, it's better now," she said with a smile. "I, er... I talked to Dick about the whole me and Madison thing."
Veronica's eyes grew comically wide on hearing that.
"The whole of the you and Madison thing?" she checked.
Mac nodded.
"Wow. That's kind of a big leap of faith," said Veronica, shaking her head. "I mean, Dick is... You think he's trustworthy enough to keep that kind of secret?"
"I cant imagine who he'd tell." Mac shrugged, leaning back in the chair as she thought it over. "Nobody he would be hanging out with is going to care. This isn't high school, the gossip mill isn't quite so crazy. If he slipped up in front of Logan it wouldn't be the end of the world, and you already know. I figured it couldn't hurt, and I really didn't know how else to explain the weirdness of my mood after we ran into the Sinclair monster."
"How is good old Mad?" asked Veronica with a deliberately over-done grin. "Any tropical diseases? Disfiguring scars?"
"None of the above." Mac smirked. "We got stuck by her car in gridlocked traffic the other day. She was with some guy, who I assume to be the fiancé or something. I really couldn't care less on any other day, but she was so flippant about Dick's attack and just a bitch about me. I don't know, after all the stress lately, I boiled over."
"It happens." Veronica nodded in understanding, putting her hand over Mac's own on the desk. "You cool now, Mackenzie?"
"The coolest," she promised. "Seriously, V, it's all good. I told Dick about the switch and he took it pretty well. Confused at first, but that's Dick. He has this theory that if me and Madison were never switched or if we were switched back later, that him and me might've be the ones that dated in high school."
"Ha!" Veronica exclaimed perhaps a little too loudly. "I'm sorry but that's one of the crazier things I ever heard."
"Really?" asked Mac, chuckling. "That's something coming from the woman who dated a guy who seemed to be her worst enemy Junior Year, and is back together with him now, after so many ups and downs, a yo-yo couldn't keep up."
Veronica tried to look shocked and appalled but failed miserably. She really had no place judging anybody's relationships, least of all Mac's choices in men. She had some pretty sucky taste herself, and though she loved Logan like nobody else in the world, even Veronica had to admit they hadn't always had the healthiest of relationships. It still seemed weird to think of Mac and Dick as a couple in high school, even if they were buddies these days. Veronica decided to delve no further into the subject right now, and Mac seemed happy to let it go as well.
"So, I'm guessing I'm here because of work, and most likely the case of the attack on Dick?"
"Very perceptive, Miss Mackenzie." Veronica nodded, pulling out a file and turning it towards her friend. "I got this report from my friend at the lab. That lipstick I told you about that turned out to be something else? It was a spray can, filled with knock-out juice. Enough to take down a small elephant from what my friend tells me, and yet, it leaves no chemical tracer on the victim that can be identified as a foreign substance."
"Which explains why the doctors at the hospital and the cops never noticed anything weird." Mac nodded in understanding as she read the results of the tests in the file. "So, who owned the not-a-lipstick?"
"That's a little trickier to prove," Veronica sighed, showing Mac another piece of paper. "I thought I got one decent fingerprint, and I tried to match it with the most likely suspect - Missy Stone."
"One of the bartenders," said Mac, recognising the name and then the picture she was shown, as one of the girls she had talked to Dick about.
"Exactly. Missy had a reason to be at the 09er and she was extra shifty when I asked about the night of the attack, but I can't get a definite match on the print to prove the chemical weapon was hers."
Mac took in a deep breath and let it out slowly as she looked over all the evidence. She hated that it wasn't easier, that they couldn't just identify the perp and make them pay for what they did to Dick. At least this spray thing proved somebody had a plan. This was no random attack, no simple mugging. Somebody intended to do Dick great harm and get away with it too. Mac felt sick, but she swallowed the nausea down. Concentrating on the facts would do better than worrying about what had happened or even what might have happened.
"The key might be the guy I asked you to look into in the Hearst records," said Veronica then. "You have any luck with Adam Durant?"
"Sure," Mac told her, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a thumb drive.
Veronica caught it easily as Mac tossed it into her open hands. Plugging it into the laptop, she called up all the data Mac had gleaned from not just Hearts own databases, but also internet searches and the like.
"Yahtzee!" said Veronica happily. "Missy's room-mate is a chemistry major!"
"Adam is Missy's room-mate?" checked Mac, the look on her face proving she was wondering why that had been kept from her before.
"I didn't want to say anything until I had all the information," Veronica explained, a little defensive now. "If I told you I might be close to cracking the case, it'd get your hopes up, and you might tell Dick and get his hopes up. That's not fair when I'm really not sure how close we are."
Mac had to admit Veronica had a point. Though she knew very well that cases were tougher to crack than they might seem on the surface, even for the great Veronica Mars, Dick might have got excited about it, thought justice would be done, when there was next to no chance of finding concrete proof or getting anyone arrested for the attack.
"All of this is pretty circumstantial," said Veronica, pushing her hair off her face with one hand and leaning her elbow on the desk. "Adam could have made this knock out spray and Missy could have used it on Dick, but there's nothing to prove any of it. Where's the motive?" she asked herself and the world at large, before focusing particularly on Mac. "You know as well as I do where these things normally stem from. Jealous exes, cheated partners. I mean, Dick has a rep. Are you sure he and Missy were never... bed buddies?" she said as diplomatically as she could.
Mac's mouth opened and closed without any sound coming out and Veronica regretted saying a word. The longer this situation went on, Mac living with Dick and being his only friend in so many ways, Veronica wondered how close they were really getting. She heard a lot about video games and take out food, a little about health checks and sunsets. Certainly Mac and Dick were becoming pretty good friends, but she had never expected them to be so close that he got to hear the story of the Mackenzie and Sinclair baby switch. It made Veronica feel awkward even talking about Dick the way she knew him, the drunken man-slut from their days in high school and college. The guy Mac was becoming closer to all the time seemed so different, so much more human and relatable.
"Dick said he only recognised Missy as a bartender," said Mac, looking more at her shoes than anything else. "He would've told me if there was more to it."
"Yes, because men never lie about women they've slept with," said Veronica, a reflex more than anything, though she regretted her smart-mouthed comment the moment she met Mac's eyes.
There was something akin to hurt in there and it made Veronica worry. She almost asked if there was more going on than even she had suspected but Mac spoke before she could.
"I'll talk to him about it again," she promised. "Um, is there anything else we need to go over? I don't want to leave Wallace on Dick-sitting duty too long. Those two never really did see eye-to-eye."
She didn't mean to be so awkward and uncomfortable. Mac couldn't even really explain why she felt this way, and was glad that Veronica hadn't asked. Mac and Dick had become good friends recently, it was tough not to when they lived together, practically in each other's pockets despite the size of the house. It was necessary to be close, physically when Dick needed the help, and in other ways because there really was no-one else to talk to about the kind of things that affected the two of them. Not that they did talk about it most of the time, but it was oddly comforting to know that they could if they wanted to, Mac supposed.
Any comfortable feelings she had developed whilst living with Dick evaporated during her conversation with Veronica, and in all the hours that followed she just couldn't seem to get them back. Mac knew she had to broach the subject of Dick's sex life at some point to find out if he really had known Missy Stone better than he said. Mac wouldn't have flinched in asking him outright before, but now was different somehow, and she didn't even really know why.
It was dumb after what she had told him about her and Madison. Mac divulged her biggest secret to Dick, so it should be no problem at all for ask for the same transparency when it came to some random girl he may or may not have taken to bed, and yet Mac struggled to just do it.
She spent all afternoon trying to find a good time to bring up the subject, but even with all the easy ins he gave her, like asking if 'Ronnie' had any breakthroughs on his case or making a big deal about some swim wear model in a magazine, Mac just couldn't seem to spit out the question.
It was getting late and they were crashed out together on his bed playing video games, as they did most days at some point or other. Mac figured with both Dick's attention and her own mostly on the screen, it might be slightly less mortifying to ask him about Missy and any possible relationship he had with her.
"So, there was one thing me and Veronica talked about today that I've been meaning to check with you," she said, entirely out of the blue. She paused in thought a moment as she took the next corner as carefully as possible, maintaining pole position in the Brazilian Grand Prix. "You remember the pictures I showed you of those girls, Stephanie and Missy?"
"The bartenders at the 09er? Sure," said Dick, manoeuvring around Lewis Hamilton and grinning all over his face at the success.
"Well, Veronica just wanted me to double-check, about Missy in particular," she went on, perhaps a little too quickly and quietly to be understood, but Mac pressed on regardless. "She just needs to know if you... Well, if you knew her as more than a bartender."
"I told you I never slept with Missy," Dick reminded her, frowning some when Mac glanced at him, though she wasn't sure if that was concentration at the game or annoyance at her questioning. "I'm pretty careful about getting with the help. Y'know that whole thing about not crapping where you eat? There are enough hotties swarming all over guys like me at bars, I really don't hit on the staff, y'know, unless they're really, really smokin'," he said, grinning wickedly now.
Mac tried not to feel disappointed on seeing and hearing a little too much of the Dick Casablancas she never liked and couldn't respect. He seemed so different lately, and she honestly believed that it was as much her getting to know him better as it was that he had grown up. Everything got blown out of the water if he could revert so easily. Mac hoped her disappointment didn't show on her face and tried desperately to concentrate on the game just in case.
"Okay," she said stiffly. "I just... Veronica asked me to check."
Dick looked sideways at her for a second, not sure what to make of Mac's body language. He was pretty good at knowing what women wanted and identifying when they were pissed. Years of practice made Dick kind of an expert when it came to chicks, but Mac wasn't your average woman, certainly nothing like the kind he was used to hanging out with, sleeping with, whatever. Mac was different, special, for lack of a better term. They had become buds over the last few weeks, proven more so than ever a couple of days ago when she told him what had to be the biggest secret of her life. It made Dick want to be really honest with her too, but he wasn't the kind of guy to have a lot of secrets and those he did have, well, he was too uncomfortable to even think on them much, never mind say the words out loud. One thing came to mind now, something he never told anyone, not even Logan. Mac could know it, it wouldn't matter much. In fact, of all people in the world, she was the one person who should know.
"You remember that day at the beach, Freshman year of college?" he asked, eyes glued to the screen, even when he felt Mac look his way. "I told you I was sorry for how I treated you back when you dated my brother."
"I remember," Mac said softly.
"Yeah, not my finest moment," said Dick, almost laughing at himself it seemed. "I mean, the apology was cool, I meant to do that and I'm glad I told you, but then you were so cool about everything, I just... Trying to kiss you was so dumb."
"I think my hand in your face proved that," she agreed, trying not to blush, trying even harder to keep her focus on the video game car she was steering - three cars had passed her in the last ten seconds.
"It was a dumbass move, but I'm not sorry about it," said Dick, in a soft kind of a voice that Mac was sure she had never heard before. "Sometimes I think maybe if it had been me instead of Beav that you liked, then maybe... I don't know, maybe things would've all been different."
Mac couldn't imagine what he was getting at. If she and Dick had dated in high school? It was a ridiculous concept and one that had made her laugh before. It certainly cracked up Veronica, and squicked her out to boot. Now, hearing Dick talk about it this way, Mac didn't think it was so crazy. She thought about what he said before, about how they might have been together if she was raised a Sinclair instead of Madison. She thought he was kidding, on some level she was sure he was trying to make a joke, but maybe not. Dick's logic was a little askew to the rest of the planet, but Mac could make sense of it more often than not these days. Certainly if they had got together in years gone by, the world would have been different place by now, or maybe not. She would probably have been here now, taking care of a man that she felt she was only just now truly getting to know, that she might have known and liked a whole lot sooner given half the chance to see the real person beneath the ridiculous exterior.
"Hey, Mackenzie! Get your head in the game!" said Dick so suddenly that she physically jumped.
Mac refocused her eyes and hit the accelerator on the game controller. She had gone from pole position to half way down the field in no time at all. God only knew how long she had been zoned out, but apparently it was long enough for Dick to gain ground in the race, and to get back to his normal self after what he must have considered a moment's soppy madness. It didn't matter. Mac wasn't really in a place where she was ready to deal with Dick getting serious and sweet on her in a big way. A little at a time was about all she could handle right now, and in the meantime, she had a championship to win!
To Be Continued...