A/N: Happy 2014! In the spirit of the new year and possible new beginnings I decided to write a MaDi smutty one-shot. It turned out a little more angsty than I originally planned, but I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it. This is unrelated to my other stories, just a little stand-alone piece. They have no history together in this story other than what was cannon. Enjoy!

Obligatory Disclaimer-Nope! I still don't own anything. The honor is solely Rob Thomas & company.

What You Wish For

10 PM 12/31/2013

Mac's eyes strayed to her cell phone sitting beside her glass of Cabernet Sauvignon on the bar. It was depressingly silent. No one cared that she'd sulked off and left the annual Mackenzie New Years bash.

She'd hopped in her car, the same one she'd had through high school and college that lime green beetle convertible, and somehow ended up at a bar called the Neptune Corner Bar. It redefined the term "dive."

It was two hours to midnight. Only 120 minutes left of this year. Good riddance, she thought gloomily. She'd been out of college almost five years now, she had a great job and career-wise she was on top of her game. Did she give a shit that she didn't have a social life to speak of? No, not really, except when she did, like tonight.

She just wanted someone to give a shit about her, care about the reason behind her little pity-party. And she could think of a few other benefits that would be a nice perk of having someone in her life. For one thing, she hadn't had sex in six months. Or was it eight? She couldn't honestly remember. Man, she was in worse shape than she thought.

Mac took a big sip of her wine and wished it would wash away her bad mood. What if it carried over and bled into 2014?!

It wasn't a good sign when you couldn't remember the last time you had sex, especially hot monkey, ass to the wall, panting, and messy, biting sex. She wanted a connection, something real, but she wasn't ruling out hot monkey sex either.

She took another big swallow of wine and thought she needed to get laid. Or maybe a lobotomy would suffice. Something had to give, that's all she knew.

Did anyone even notice she'd left the party? If they cared, she'd have a text at least. Just to be sure Mac took another glance at her screen.

Nope, nothing, nada.

Dick walked through the door of the Neptune Corner Bar, a dive he'd passed a hundred times but never went to before. He usually hung out at the more refined bar attached to Poseidon's Bistro in the lobby of the Neptune Grand Hotel. It was his Cheers, everyone knew his name, and knew his drink, and knew his history.

What were the odds he knew anyone here? He was hoping the odds were his bitch tonight because the holidays always underscored how utterly alone he was, and he hated the pity he saw in the eyes of his friends, and even acquaintances who also knew his sordid history. That was what happened when your life was front page news. So Dick really didn't want to see anyone he knew.

Was a couple (10?) beers huddled in a corner by himself too much to ask for?

Evidently the fates thought the answer to that was a resounding yes!

He took a seat at the bar and ordered a Guinness. He looked over at the brunette two seats away who was drinking her red wine like prohibition started tomorrow.

He recognized her right away. Ghostworld! Perfect. Maybe he could sneak off, there was a table open across the room, tucked off in the corner right next to the door leading to the restrooms.

Dick dropped a ten dollar bill on the table and had just turned his body around so he could hop off the stool and slink over to that table under Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie's radar.

"Dick? Dick Casablancas?" She'd know that lanky, playboy '09er surfer dude anywhere. His blonde hair was trimmed executive short, but he still had that perfect surfer physique.

"Mac," Dick said trying to act like he'd only now noticed her sitting two stools down from him.

Her hair was shorter now than it had been in college, gone were the blue streaks in her hair replaced by mahogany red highlights, but otherwise she looked remarkably the same. Which was also to say that she was still hot, he admitted. That did NOT change things though, he reminded himself sternly, she was still company and that was one thing he didn't need or want tonight.

She wasn't fooled. She gave him a smirk that communicated clearly that she knew he'd been about to plot his escape.

He returned her smirk with interest, and then biting back a sigh slid down a seat so he was sitting next to her. He'd figure another, less obvious, escape plan at a later time. He took a big swallow of his bitter beer.

"Of all the dive bars in all of Balboa County, you had to walk into mine," she teased.

"Cute, a Casablanca quote for a Casablancas, never heard that one before."

"A perversion of a Casablanca quote for a perverted Casablancas," Mac corrected.

"Touché."

"So what brings you here?"

"Hiding, actually."

"Me too, I'm hiding from my family. Who are you hiding from?"

"Myself, life, humanity in general, take your pick," Dick confessed. He took a sip of his beer again and slammed the beer stein a little too hard on bar. "Why are you hiding from your family?"

"I'm never home, I live in San Diego these days, and then I come back and it's like they think nothing has changed, but inside, in me, everything has changed. That's part of it, I guess." Mac looked surprised she'd opened up to Dick that much. He looked just as surprised. "I've never really fit in with my family."

"Like you were just dropped on the doorstep of strangers?"

Mac gaped at him. Then after a long minute, said softly "You have no idea how close to the truth you are." She drained the remains of her wine in one quick gulp.

Dick didn't like the look that flashed on her face; it was remarkably similar to the default expression he'd worn most of freshman year at Hearst, after Cassidy (his baby brother) dived off the roof of the Neptune Grand hotel. He could see the weight of a secret, its mass showing in her eyes and the downturn of her mouth.

Neptune fucked with everyone evidently.

Dick waved over the bartender and ordered refills for both of them. After the brief unveiling, her eyes shuttered back again and he decided not to ask her what she meant.

"Now, more than a decade later I wonder if that's how Cassidy felt," Dick confessed as he handed over his credit card to start a tab.

"Do you really want an answer to that question?" Mac asked, placing one neatly manicured hand over his calloused surfer hand.

Dick shook his head, but the eager look in his eyes said otherwise. She could tell he was desperate for answers, even to questions he couldn't bring himself to ask.

"Sometimes, but he loved you and looked up to you."

He nodded, and then looked down at his half-full glass of beer. He traced a finger back and forth along the handle of the beer mug, just for something to do with his hands. Then he looked up and over at Mac, into her blue eyes. They were a deep blue; he wondered if he'd known that when she was in the background of his life at Hearst and Neptune High before that.

"Thanks," he said softly.

"You're welcome. Okay, now that we've had our obligatory rehashing of the past, what's your present like these days?"

"Work, eat, sleep. Repeat."

"That sounds remarkably like my boring life. Somehow though I think you're leaving a lot out of that edited version."

"Wouldn't you like to know, Mackenzie."

They talked, and flirted a little bit too as the bar tab climbed higher.

Dick had stayed on in Neptune after graduating from Hearst with a degree in business. Though his mom's new husband's political connections had got him into Hearst to begin with, his business acumen not only kept him in the program, he'd thrived.

He was running Phoenix Land Trust now, a shell company Cassidy had started, though he'd done what many had deemed impossible and legitimized it. It was now known as PLT Enterprises, in an attempt to distance itself from it less than stellar beginning.

Mac told him about getting hired on at Kane Software before the ink was dry on her Hearst diploma. It wasn't long before she'd been running her own department. It was a small offshoot department of IT, the help desk services, but still she ran things tightly but fairly.

Then two years ago they'd acquired a little start up in San Diego, Echo Bravo Security Software, which had several hush-hush government contracts. Jake Kane himself tapped her to be second in command of the whole subsidiary. The only person placed higher than her, a woman rumored to be one of Jake's many mistresses (in addition to Lianne Mars), was really more than a figure head than anyone with real powers.

Not bad for someone who had just turned twenty-five.

After catching up on the present, Dick looked at Mac and cocked his head. She could tell he wanted to ask her something but was hesitant. Mentally crossing her fingers that it wasn't something buzz-killing about Cassidy or anything, she told him to just spit it out already.

"Dog Beach, freshman year—or I bet you called it freshperson year, the Lillith House chick that you were—when we, um, made up, do you remember that?" Dick rambled on nervously, hesitantly. He took another big swallow of his 3rd beer, 4th, something like that.

Mac thought it was adorable how he stammered it out, and then figured she should slow down on the wine if that was the kind of thought train she was riding.

"The almost kiss? When you yammered on all drunken-sailor like about how I intimidated you because I was so much smarter than you, then you went on about some sport analogy and ruined the whole moment by trying to stick your beer-flavored tongue down my throat? No, not really," Mac said.

Dick laughed at her snarky recap. "Yeah, I can tell it didn't make any impression on you whatsoever."

"Nope, None."

"Why didn't you tell Logan?"

"You asked me not to," she said simply as though it explained everything, because really it did. During the apology and up until his very Dick-esque kiss attempt she saw something in him, sincerity, and though they didn't become friends and definitely not lovers, it was a moment. It was a start, a hint that there was something vaguely humanoid in him buried down not quite as deeply as she'd once thought.

Now, on a night where her past and a present she had thought she wanted but now wasn't so sure, were colliding, he was there and she felt slightly less alone. Maybe more than slightly less alone, if she were honest.

Mac's parents had sat her down a couple of weeks ago, her 25th birthday in fact, and told her the truth about her auspicious start in life. She already knew she and Madison Sinclair had been switched at birth, but her parents didn't know she knew. Veronica had discovered the truth junior year of high school, and it explained a lot (everything), but it was a hard truth to accept too. Everything she thought she knew about life, her family, had to be reevaluated. It seemed like she'd lived a lie and once she knew the truth she was still living a lie, a different lie, but a lie still.

That truth hadn't set her free.

Her parents came clean and told her the Sinclairs were doing the same thing with Madison. She had thought she wanted to be part of the lives of her birth parents but all this had been thrust upon her all at once. It was all piling up all at once and she was feeling buried. So yes, she escaped, ran away, and no one seemed to care that she'd left the party. No one cared that she'd left the party that both sets of parents were at.

Maybe she was just an extra in her own freaking life.

For what felt like the zillionth time Mac looked down at her cell. No messages. She bit her lip. Dick gave her a searching look, and received a shrug in return. At first he assumed that's all he'd get. "Ever want something really badly, then you end up getting exactly what you want only to wish everything would just go back to the way it was?" she asked. It came out in a big, garbled rush.

"One or two hundred thousand times, give or take," Dick said not sure he was exaggerating all that much. "Sometimes though the reverse is true, too, I came here tonight looking to just get drunk and not talk to anyone. Then, I saw you, was forced to talk to you, and the reality doesn't suck."

"The reality doesn't suck? That's it, that's all I'm getting?" Mac said pretending to be put out by that. "Is the as much as I expected it would implied?" She protruded her lower lip in a faux-pout "Your corner table is still open you know." She pointed behind her.

"I never thought it would suck spending time with you, I just thought I wanted more of a pity party tonight, but I'm kind of over that now I think," Dick said. "I'll let someone else have my corner table."

Dick proposed his theory that Neptune would be the perfect holding place for people to start a new life in the Witness Protection Program. It was an innocuous conversation but for someone she never thought was the smartest guy she'd ever encountered, he was coming up with some interesting observations. His mind was quick.

The bartender interrupted their banter by turning on the TV above the bar. On the corner of the screen the time read 11:45 PM.

"Well, the time certainly flies, " Mac remarked.

"When you're having fun," Dick finished.

"No. I was going to say time flies when the company you're with doesn't suck," she smirked.

Dick smiled widely at that; she noticed the way his blue eyes crinkled. She watched his mouth and was shocked by the sudden urge she had to kiss him.

Dick was thinking along very similar lines. He tried to think of funny things to say just to make her smile, because when she smiled she displayed her dimple. It was just one dimple, completely lacked symmetry, and that was such a turn on.

They watched the time creep closer and closer to the New Year. Dick's leg caressed Mac's; at least she thought he was the initiator. She raised her brow at him—a look she'd been perfecting since she'd become boss—but didn't say anything about the game of full-contact footsie they were both now locked into.

Their game, match, set ended up being a draw though when the other patrons started counting down from 10. Mac licked her lips, in anticipation. Dick watched her.

The ball dropped.

Their eyes met, then their lips. What was meant as a brief(ish) Happy New Years kiss deepened. Dick plunged his tongue in Mac's mouth; she opened wider, permitting him entrance. Normally she wasn't one for public displays of affection, but that would have required a coherent thought process that was more than she was capable of as Dick's tongue traced her teeth. He pulled back slightly, nipping her lip. She moaned deep in the back of her throat. His hand grabbed her thigh, for purchase maybe, but she felt the current circulate. They were in the middle of the dive bar where they didn't know a soul but each other.

Dick pulled away first, smiling at Mac's look of surprise. He traced her kiss-puffy lips with his index finger. He caught the eye of the bartender and asked to settle the tab. He paid off the rather high amount, of course six beers and four wines add up, tacked on a sizeable tip and whispered to Mac that perhaps she would like to continue ringing in the New Year back at his place.

They decided neither of them was in any shape to drive. Betting that they would be able to find a taxi roaming the streets of downtown Neptune trawling for drunks, they left the bar and poured out onto 7th Street. Less than three minutes later Dick flagged one down and they piled in. He gave the driver his address and Mac wasn't going to protest. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the fact it was New Years, maybe it was because Dick showed he gave a shit about her, maybe it was because his kiss was electric.

It was a complex quadratic equation of all the above.

The taxi ride passed quickly in a blur of sizzling touching, and brief bursts of conversation. The driver pulled up in front of a luxury condo complex with the ocean as the backyard. It wasn't where she expected Dick to live; but the place suited him perfectly in its cool leather furniture and backdrop of cream walls. The grand tour went quickly with Dick pointing out the function of each room as they quickly walked through it on their bedroom quest.

Mac surveyed the red walls of his bedroom, the far wall broken up by a massive set of French doors showcasing the ocean backdrop. But it was his king sized bed that prominently took up residence in the otherwise sparsely furnished room. He flopped down on his bed pulling her on top of him and proceeded to help her shed her clothes. Carelessly, as each article was removed, he tossed them across the room. They landed haphazardly on the floor. Soon Mac was left in nothing but her red silk panties. Dick grew hard as she pressed up against him.

"Look at you with those matching panties," Dick joked, alluding to the fact her sexy underwear blended perfectly with his walls.

"That's the look I was striving for," she breathlessly quipped.

That conversation roadblocked quickly though as he caressed a nipple and felt himself harden even more at the moan it elicited. Mac arched back slightly as Dick skillfully worked her breasts. Taking her hands she put one in his head playing with his silky, slightly shaggy blonde hair, while her other hand went more southerly until she found his balls, giving them a gentle massage. Dick emitted his own groan.

He rolled her over, so she was on the bottom. Grabbing her panties in his teeth, he pulled them down all the way to her ankles. "Such big teeth you have there, stud."

Working her feet in the air as Dick continued to play with her nipples with one hand and stick the index finger of his right hand inside Mac's now exposed vagina she kicked her expensive underwear up in the air. She didn't care where it landed among the hurricane of her discarded clothes.

"The better to remove your undies with, my dear," he quipped in his best wolfish tone.

"How about you do less talking with your tongue, and a little more pleasure making," Mac ordered. She guided Dick's head down so his tongue could gain entrance. Magic!

He found her take charge attitude sexy.

As Dick followed her command, a shiver snaked its way up Mac's spine and she dug her hands deeper into his hair, plunging his tongue further into her vagina in the process. As Dick did some exploring of his own, she let another groan escape, her toes curling as she felt the waves breaking.

As his tongue varied its pressure from teasing little flicks to lingering strokes against Mac's clit, Dick's eyes tracked their way up so he could watch the expressions parading across her face. She bit her bottom lip as she continued to weave her fingers in his hair. Her fingers stiffened, she licked her lips, Dick, the man-slut that he'd been in the past recognized the signs that an orgasm was building and about to start its release, so he pulled away at the last second.

Mac removed her hands from his hair, but not before giving a generous chunk of it a not-so-gentle tug. "What the frak," she murmured, still breathless from her almost-crescendo.

"No, seriously, I want to be inside you so bad right now." Dick said plaintively. He reached over to his bedside table and opened the drawer. He felt around for a condom. With shaky fingers he ripped off the wrapper and Mac helped him encase his shaft.

Mac spread her legs wider so he could enter her. She tensed for a brief moment and then relaxed as he plunged deeper and deeper, connecting again with her clit. Before she could dial it back a bit, the hot, inky blackness of an orgasm wrapped its tentacles around her again, swelling then bursting over her.

Dick closed his eyes, enveloped in the feelings showering over him as he felt Mac clench up in climax. She screamed, not in a high pitch kind of way, but low, animalistic, in a forhis ears only fashion. Her short, business woman nails raked trails down his back. He kept up the frenetic paced plunges as if he could merge them into just one person, which is actually what he felt like at that exact moment in time.

She continued to quake beneath him, those little aftershocks coming on top of each other forcing him towards his own culmination. Mac nipped him on his right nipple and he groaned, his own orgasm dragging him under.

They cuddled together, Dick on the outside, curling Mac to him. He pulled the duvet up and over them both. They were both too spent to move, embracing that boneless sensation.

"Happy New Year's Mac," he whispered in her ear.

"You, too," she replied back.

At that point neither of them knew whether they'd continue "their friendship" beyond the first night of 2014 but they both felt less alone in the world, and that was what mattered.

-The End

**I'd love to hear what you think. Reviews are appreciated. Thanks for reading.

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