A/N: A response to this prompt from lilacmermaid25 ("Will started hitting back when he was 10, but he never found a way to stop the verbal abuse. What if Will's father called after the American Taliban broadcast to tell Will how much he hated it?") that got a little out of hand. Trigger warnings for past canonical abuse and rape mention. Thanks to Meg and Lauren and everyone who listened to me complain about how long this fic got to be...

AU, obviously, after the end of S1.

"The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—'Thou mayest'— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'—it is also true that 'Thou mayest not."

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

When he first started dating MacKenzie, he hadn't seen nor heard from his father since his mother's funeral six years prior. Six, and now plus another six. And only god knows how many years before that, letting the memories rot away, sequestered in some dark corner of his mind while he plowed through school, work, caseloads and speeches and shows.

Will spoke to his father tonight.

(It's the Saturday night after the American Taliban broadcast. Will isn't entirely sure where his father got his cell phone number—his personal one, even, not the work one—but he figures he sees Liz enough, since it was Liz who put him into rehab again.

And maybe, he thought, even if it wasn't on his own terms, this could be good.

So he picked up.)

And it's funny—or at least he thinks so, head cradled in his head, desperately trying to right himself because he can't drink for another week—because it took Mac days to get him to agree to come back. She didn't leave his bedside for days, convincing him he was good enough, smart enough, brave enough, after he went and basically asked Brian Brenner to tear him apart.

She didn't even get the fucking voicemail.

Mac didn't get the voicemail, Mac was at Northwestern holding up signs, Mac hauled him out of his hospital bed and put together this broadcast, staying night after night past 2 AM, Mac is his EP, his partner, his closest friend.

And he just had to defend her to his dad.

One of maybe a few (more than a few, if he counts the staff, which he should but won't because he's overwhelmed) people who unilaterally believes in him.

What has that bitch done to you? Fuck, I didn't raise you to kowtow to a woman. Won't even run your own goddamn show anymore? Who the fuck did I raise you to be?

It's a good question.

Will has spent most of his life trying to that out, and then do the opposite, while at the same time secretly craving his dad's approval.

(Results: a life of toxic friends, loneliness, occasional prescription drug abuse, and destructive perfectionism.

Except… except for MacKenzie. Except when she's there, even when he's so angry at her he can't see straight, even when he can barely stand to look at her, even when she's short and sarcastic and calling him an imbecile, telling him he can do better, telling him he's lazy and pandering.

His dad never wanted better. He wanted to control him.

Which is hilarious, because all MacKenzie had to do to own him was believe in him, support him, be in his ear through every spotty livefeed, every tense interview.)

But the thing is, when they're on the phone, neither of them can throw a punch. Will learned to hit back when he was ten. Be better, faster, stronger, resourceful. He never quite learned how to fight the constant belittling, the bitter remarks, the blunt insults.

Her name is MacKenzie McHale and I co-wrote the broadcast. With her. She doesn't put words into my mouth. Not for lack of trying, he thinks, laughing harder.

But he can't even remember which one of them thought up 'American Taliban' at this point, so does it really matter?

John had laughed. Outright laughed, and Will could imagine him in that tattered plaid recliner he lived in during the winters, barking at his children, ridiculing them until their shoulders curled in and they traced the outline of the living room on the way back to the one bedroom the four of them shared. Isn't she the cunt who made a cuckold of you? Jesus fucking Christ, Billy—

He doesn't even know why he said it. Combativeness, perhaps. First of all, she knows she made a mistake. Second of all, she's more than paid the price—

What? Her contract have sexual favors in it?

He balked. What the fuck?

John didn't let it go. Of course not. Will wonders how much he's had to drink, how angry he was that he can't control his son, who is hundreds of miles away and has an audience of nearly two million, who has an opinion that matters, is talked about. And now the son is a problem, and the son needs to be controlled, and to control something you must first make it small, to men in John's world.

Problems must be small enough that you can beat them with your fist.

If it was your mother—

Don't, he cut him off, quick and sharp. He spent too many years angry at his mother, but at the first he has always defended her, until she wrapped her arms around him when he was nineteen and told him he needed to run as far as he could, get out of Nebraska, go to law school on the coast.

Do better, go farther.

But John wasn't deterred. If it was your mother—

I know exactly what you'd do if it was Mom, and she wouldn't have deserved it either way. That's when he started to doubt himself, Will thinks, scrubbing his hands over his face. His cell phone is ringing, far off on the dining room table. He doesn't want to move and go get it. It's done. Everything is over, and now his head is racing. The ring. He bought the ring as a joke. The clause in his contract, the rotating door of women he's paraded in front of her, Brian fucking Brenner, all of the rejoinders he's piled on Mac's shoulders the past year. MacKenzie made a mistake. She left, she came back. She has been paying for her mistake. She does her job and she does it extraordinarily well, because she's brilliant, which is why I hired her.

His phone won't stop ringing. He wonders if it's his dad, and then decides that he doesn't care. For the first time in almost fifty years, he doesn't care.

Will's laughter grows short, constrained, his chest burning.

He doesn't care.

And good god does he need a Xanax, but he's not supposed to touch them for another few days so he keeps trying to breathe, even though he's having trouble sitting upright.

You're still in love with her. John gave a barking sort of laugh, the kind that's run through with clear liquor and the sort of aggressive stagger that was the easiest to dance away from. When Dad sounded like that, Will didn't bother trying to hide the kids. Yet. Weak. Fucking pussy.

He didn't even think about fighting back. Twelve years, and a career as a prosecutor, in politics, innumerable interviews with hostile guests.Forgiveness is a weakness? Why did Mom let you back into the house—

Your mother was weak. He wasn't boastful, wasn't proud, or scoffing. It was matter of fact. She made you soft. She made all of you so damn soft.

Liz is a physician and Mickey is a stock broker and Fi is a marketing executive. He raised them, from the time he was big enough to carry them in his arms. He raised them, and they aren't soft.

And even if they were—

Even now, he tries not to think of his mother, who folded like linen and dropped her chin, spoke in a soft whisper, too ashamed of her lisp, of the bruises on her face. Who never stood up for them, who was small herself, who should have gotten help from someone besides her oldest son. Mom had four kids to support, and she—she and I made our peace.

But his dad was unfazed. You went from one lying whore to another.

You don't get to call her a whore, Will said, voice rising.

Which one?

It didn't matter. Still doesn't. Both, he had wanted to say. You never deserved her. I should have stayed. What if I had stayed? Or taken her with me? I had the money, eventually. And then she got sick. She was a girl when they got married, when she had him. She made a mistake.

Both, because she made a mistake. He doesn't understand, can't understand, but she made a mistake. She's not a whore, he saw the way Brian got too close to her, how she folded her arms, made herself small. He saw the way the RNC representatives looked at her, he's read the tabloid articles. She made a mistake. He was there. He was the one who suffered, and he can say that she made a mistake.

Fuck you, he said instead. I don't need to listen to this.

He knows how he feels about his mother, how he feels about MacKenzie.

And then Dad didn't quite yell, wasn't quite drunk enough to yell, and Will wonders if his father fell off the wagon recently or if any of Liz's attempts to get Dad to stay sober really ever stick. So he didn't yell, but crimped his voice into the beginning of it. Tight and coiled, preparing to yell. Ready to intimidate. If-I-get-angrier-if-you-make-me-yell-it-will-be-your-fault-I-lost-control. Do you know how many people came up to me in town this week, talking about my Communist son? Dozens. You think you're some big shot, always have. Better than your roots. Our family built Nebraska, our farm has been in this family for five generations, I raised you to—

Hit women? Kids? You don't regret any of it, do you? He's never asked that before. Never wanted the answer, before, but Will thought that this was the last conversation he'd ever have with his father. Might as well. Even though each and every one of us walked out. Liz won't let you see her kids. You haven't seen Michael or Fiona since they left. I haven't spoken to you in twelve years. And you don't regret a goddamn thing, you son of a bitch. That goddamn house on your goddamn family land was like growing up in the arena for a cage match—

And then came the yelling.

Don't you dare talk to me like—

Will remembers it.

You-made-me-lose-control.

If-only-you-did-as-I-asked.

But he's paid nearly eight million dollars a year to piss people off, and he's not small enough that Dad can beat him anymore. Hasn't been in decades. Hasn't been since he ran him off for the last time, his hands wrapped around John's throat half thrown down the front stoop after he backhanded Fi for asking why he wasn't at her nursery school graduation.

John left after that. For years. Lived with his younger brothers on their own corner of the McAvoy land until Liz and Mickey were gone off to school, until Fi was old enough to run after Liz and he was old enough to pay Fi's tuition.

What? Are you gonna hit me? Will taunted him.

I—

He can't breathe.

He said it.

He finally said it, and it was different than every punch he threw, then wrestling Dad to the ground, cracking a bottle across his face or hitting him over the head with the closest thing he could fashion into a weapon.

He said it, and he didn't have the words to say it, the life to say it, until MacKenzie came back and handed it to him.

You lost everyone. You have your hands, who don't even like you, and your land. I have a woman who is my partner, eight young kids who work their asses off for the show, who I love, a boss who's treated me like his own, co-workers who are like family. It was then that he realized it, standing at his dining room table, quietly speaking into his BlackBerry. I don't give a fuck if the entire state told you I deserve to be blasted into the vacuum of space for calling the Tea Party the American Taliban. I don't care. I have everything you never gave me. So go ahead, Dad, call me ungrateful.

And then he hung up, because Dad had nothing to say.

He can't breathe.

Bracing his hands on his knees, he tries to sit up again. MacKenzie. He needs to call Mac, and apologize. He needs to call Mac. He needs Mac, because he thinks he forgives her. He thinks that's what this means. Loving her is certain, but this is—he thinks this is forgiveness, or letting go, or he doesn't even—

But it's past midnight on a Saturday, so really it's Sunday, closing in on one in the morning.

Will knows what kind of week Mac had, because he had it himself. If nothing else, he hopes that she's sleeping.

So he keeps trying to breathe, leaning back on his couch, considering going out on his balcony but it's hot and it's humid so he thinks it would make it worse.

He doesn't hear the elevator doors open in the foyer.

MacKenzie only wanted to ask him about one of the guests she wanted to bring on for the panel on the DOW for Monday. That was at eleven. At half past the hour she began to worry, but hoped that maybe Will just took his medication like he was supposed to and fell asleep.

She called again for good measure.

And began to pace her kitchen, the speaker of her BlackBerry pressed to her lips. Under no circumstances is Will a heavy sleeper. Two weeks prior she had waited almost four hours before finally calling Lonny, and then his building manager, and the night had cumulated with her standing in the ER trying not to lose it on Charlie's shoulder because they had found Will on his bathroom floor, his own blood running down the front of his shirt, caked onto his lips and chin, in the creases between his teeth.

At midnight she called again.

Then tried to tell herself she was being ridiculous. But then reminded herself that if Will was once again in trouble, and she brushed it off so soon after that night in the emergency room, it would be unforgivable.

So she called again. And again.

Texted Charlie, asking him if he's heard anything from Will, but doesn't get a response.

Which is how MacKenzie finds herself standing in the elevator leading up to Will's penthouse apartment, dressed in what she had been about to go to sleep in: tight-fitting black capris, and a ratty 7th Marines t-shirt that she cut up into a tank top years ago. And then flip-flops, of course, and clutching her purse tightly to her side.

She tells herself that if he's asleep she'll just quietly sneak back out, nerves and anxiety assuaged, and laugh off her paranoia on the cab ride back to her place. And if he's not asleep, and he's—

Will always picks up his phone for her.

Always, ever since she came back. Without fail, no matter what time of night or day. He wouldn't just—

Mac refuses to entertain the alternative.

Will is sleeping, probably passed out face down in his pillows, starfished out on the mattress, like he always does when he's exhausted. She used to have to lift one of his arms and pry him off his stomach so she could curl up next to him, and would always find herself half under him, his arms around her like a vice, his face pressed into her neck or her shoulder or her chest.

Don't think about that, either.

A few of his lights are on. The apartment is darkened, but she knows that's just the way he likes it.

"Will?"

He doesn't answer, and she grips the handle of her purse tighter, forcing herself not to rush through his entryway, past the guest room and kitchen. Forcing herself to take light steps, forcing herself to contemplate the possibility that he's just fallen asleep on the couch.

She calls out his name again to no answer.

And then she hears it.

"Will?"

Giving up entirely on being circumspect, she races past the kitchen and dining room and into the living room, where she finds him hunched over on his couch, body shaking in a way that indicates only the fact that he's hyperventilating.

"Billy?"

But he can't hear her, ears full of his own harsh breathing and blood pounding and she's entirely familiar with the sensation, and before she realizes what she's doing she's dropped her purse to the floor and is on her knees in front of him, trying to get Will's attention by taking his hands. Which is a difficult task with his fingers digging into the thighs of his pajama pants. But considering that she always winds up making her forearms bleed hugging herself, Mac frantically figures that it's probably a better panic reflex than hers.

When she manages to pry his fingers off his legs he finally notices her, head snapping up, eyes half wild.

Shushing him, she squeezes his hands. "It's okay, you're okay."

He says nothing—she doesn't expect him to.

"I'm going to take your pulse, alright?" she asks, tempted to make herself as small as possible. On her knees, she's already almost a head shorter, but she curls her shoulders in, ducks her chin so that she has to peer up at him, eyes focusing on his white-pale skin, his blown pupils.

What the fuck happened?

Will nods, and she wants to push his shoulders back, open up more room for his lungs, but she doesn't know how often he has panic attacks or why he's panicking and she doesn't want to make it worse, so she squeezes his hands one more time before lifting one to his throat. Glancing towards the clock on the cable box, she waits for the minute to turn, wishing she had thought to put her watch back on before rushing out of bed.

(She focuses on the details—the rigidity of his frame, his uncombed hair, how fast breath passes between his barely-parted lips—rather than allow herself to wonder what's put him in this state. Because she can help ease the former, but Will has made it rather plain that he doesn't want her in his head.

Not since she showed him the signs she held up at Northwestern.)

"You're okay," she murmurs, looking askance again to the clock.

He makes a strangled sound at that, lunging forward almost off the couch and burying his face in her neck.

The hand at his throat slides into the hair at the nape of his neck, clenching a little too tightly as she fights to keep them from toppling backwards. "Okay," she whispers, other arm coming up to cross over his shoulders.

Jesus Christ.

The keening sort of noise that he makes is distinctly desperate, painfully confused, and she hugs him tighter and maneuvers herself up next to him onto the couch. Mac isn't fully aware of what she's assuring him of, thoughts turning opaque while words rush out—you're okay, Will, it's okay, you're okay, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, whatever it is, Will, we can fix it—her head miring in fear. She's never seen him like this before. Not that she's wholly unprepared; MacKenzie has sat with veterans while they had flashbacks, held soldiers upright during panic attacks, stroked young boys' hair while they hid in their racks. She's no medic, but she knows the steps. She knows triggers.

(Too well, in the way that makes her jerk out of sleep, unable to hide from the thoughts she tamps down on during the day during the night, with her eyes closed. She's had waking screaming trained out of her, but she cannot stay in bed when she's tossed from sleep by a panic attack.

Winds up pacing her apartment, before carefully climbing back between the covers with production notes and legal pads, spreading articles and her own handwritten scrawl over the duvet and planning show after show and segments that will never run until her thoughts stop making her feel claustrophobic in her own head.)

"My dad called," he manages to get out, voice breaking over the soft vowel in called, some ingrained instinct trying and failing to tamp down on the more amplified strains of his Midwestern accent.

There's not much that Mac knows about John McAvoy, except that the relationship is non-existent, and his littlest sister doesn't speak to their father either and the middle two have tried, and it was bad when Will was a boy, and John wasn't much of a father at all and the house where Will grew up was very, very small and he got too big for it when he was still very, very young.

But Mac also knows Will is from rural Nebraska, and she can guess what his dad called about.

(And curses herself. She could have seen this coming.)

She doesn't ask him what his dad said.

"He—he um." He sounds like he's struggling to collect his thoughts, breathing erratic and shallow against the bare skin of her shoulder. "My dad called, and he…"

His voice chokes off.

Swallowing hard, Mac combs her fingers through his hair and positions her mouth close to his ear. "You don't have to—"

He shakes his head, adjusting his arms so that they come around her waist. "You were the one calling me, weren't you?"

She sighs, and tells herself she can't kiss the side of his head like she wants to, and softly explains, "Yeah, I'm sorry. I wanted to ask you something and then you didn't pick up, and you kept not picking up, and I got worried."

Just a little, she wants to assure him. It wasn't bad. It's not your fault, I'm here now. Don't worry about me.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, turning so his cheek presses against her collarbone. She'd care about the fact that he's probably getting a good view down her shirt, but figures it's nothing he hasn't seen before and considering how tightly he's fitted himself against her, Mac thinks he might have his eyes screwed shut too.

"No, honey, it's alright."

She indulges herself then, hiding a small kiss in his hair.

"Mac, it's past one in the morning," he protests, the words small and constrained.

"You and I both know neither of us really sleep," she tries to joke, but her attenuated attempt at brevity falls flat under worry straining through her voice. So she regroups, sighing heavily and rubbing the hand not engaged in smoothing down his hair in circles on his back. "You're okay. I can stay, or I can—whatever you need me to do."

Will tries again. "He…"

But he can't get it out, the tension in his throat hollowing out his attempts at speaking. Mac just wants to tell him to shush, to let her rock him and pet his hair until it goes away, that he doesn't owe her anything, fuck it all, just let her take care of him. Tell him to just stop, because he's still sick, he checked himself out AMA and only she's allowed to do that.

"You don't have to tell me anything," she does tell him, softening her limbs to mold around him.

"I really do," he objects, fingers clenching into the back of her shirt before releasing again quickly. Fidgeting, his palms skirt in short inches and bursts parallel to her spine. Again, his breathing becomes short, frantic. "I need to tell you a lot of things. Because I—"

But he still can't get it out.

"Will, you're having a panic attack," she starts slowly, almost like she's trying to remind a foolish child of their limitations. Rhythmically, she brushes her fingers again and again through his hair, fixing it into a semblance of neatness despite the hour. Calming herself, truth be told, as much as him. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere. We don't have to talk about it, unless you want to."

It doesn't help him any.

And Mac understands, she does. Keeping someone waiting is its own burden. But by now, Will has to know. He has to know that she'll be here, standing by. In front, to the side, in the control room. However long he needs.

(Ten minutes, or maybe longer, or so it seems. She stops looking at the clock.

She'd offer up her own stories, twenty-six months clocked in Middle East. But it's nothing like nineteen years in a tornado of a house, and none of this is about her.

Sometimes it's just easier to be alone with your own demons. That way you don't have to try to explain to anyone else their rules.)

"It was worse. I downplayed it a lot," he eventually says, leaning heavier on her. She feels her heart pound, and hopes that he can't. Because she knew, or at least thought that she knew. "He, um… he did a tour in Vietnam, right after I was born. You… I think I've told you that. And when he came back one of his older brothers gave him a hundred acres… you know that, too."

She nods, her nose almost pressed to his crown.

She knows, that she knows.

"And it was Nebraska, and the sixties, and no one gave a shit about PTSD and I had an uncle with a distillery on his farm, which was right next to ours. So he started drinking." His voice cracks again, shaping words into sounds she only ever hears when he's angry, or drunk, or in bed with her.

But that she knew as well, she thinks, forcing her thoughts to temper. My father is a mean drunk. I had to pick up the slack. I was the oldest, and he didn't get sober until… I'm not really sure he is sober. He's never apologized, and he's never liked me much. I think he saw me as competition.

That is what she knows.

Will begins to lean away from her, hands loosening from her shirt. Gently, she rolls her head so that his is no longer tucked into her neck.

He breathes heavily, absently untangling himself from her. "And my mom was a kid herself. She had me right outta high school, and I was so young and it just got worse and worse and Liz was born nine months after he got back suddenly she had two kids under the age of three and an alcoholic husband and—"

He stands up and turns away from her, towards the windows, unsure how to continue.

But he's no longer panicking, she thinks.

"I believe the term you've used is fucking Irish Catholics," she supplies, looking down at her palms where they've collected together in her lap.

He huffs a short, semi-desperate kind of laugh. "Yeah."

"He was violent?" she asks, glancing up him.

"Yeah." His response is softer then, and his shoulders fold in. "It got worse after Michael was born, when I was in kindergarten." Closer to the windows facing out to the skyline, he fades into a silhouette. "It got a bit better, before that, but then there was a drought, and the crop failed, and we were in so much debt…"

Shaking his head, he runs a hand through his hair, messing it up again and MacKenzie feels oddly bereft for it. Come back, she wants to say. Wants to stand, and wrap her arms around him from behind, press her face into his broad back. Instead, she watches him shrug, try to swallow it down. Will doesn't need her, it's easier like that.

"As soon as I could carry them I'd try to hide them, in the back closet, under the porch. I wonder if it would have been easier if he'd just hit us. The son of a bitch was a mean drunk, liked to talk..."

She can't imagine. And she could tell Will that, but it wouldn't help any. She can't image. She's so sorry. What can she do to help? —as if words could mean anything right now, except the ones coming from his mouth.

It makes sense though, now.

MacKenzie wonders if there's any going back for them, if he'll try to take it back, lock himself up and hurt himself again, like he did with Brian's hatchet job article. Jesus Christ, she thinks then, with sudden clarity that empties a sinkhole in her stomach. No wonder.

And if only she'd known—

There's no use wondering that, she tells herself, pursing her lips together.

"We shared a bedroom," he says, before pausing. Mac doesn't know where he's going. "Lizzie and I, and then Michael, and then… the walls were paper thin. In the winter they'd crawl into bed with me. And I'd put them in the bed furthest from the wall that met our parents' bedroom, but sometimes we could hear it anyway."

He says it so casually, shoving his hands into the pockets of his plaid cotton pajama pants, and her stomach drops out.

"What was she gonna do?" he says with a shrug and she has to stop herself from standing, crowding him, stealing one of his hands out his pockets. "Did you know that in Nebraska it wasn't a crime to rape your spouse until 1976? Fiona was born the year after. No one was even prosecuted under the statute until '86… State v. Willis..."

His eyes flicker back to her briefly, and she doesn't know what he's read on her face, in her clasped hands, her feet planted flat on the floorboards.

Shrugging again, he takes a deep steadying breath.

"He was just… and his family owned the land, so even if anyone could hear him… my mother called the police once, when I was ten. It's strange to think she was… she was Maggie's age. He wrapped his hands around her throat and she fought him off. Liz and Michael were outside, but I went back in, and I… picked up his empty bottle of Jack and broke it across his face, and he rounded on me." Tears threatening to spill, Mac bites down on her lip, willing herself not to make a sound. Will's voice is quiet in the way the the first crack in a pane of glass about to shatter is quiet. "She called the cops. Filed a report. They didn't do anything. It got a bit better, for a little bit. He was real apologetic. And then it just started over again. So I stopped trusting him. Trusting everyone."

Oh, Will.

He stands there, insecure, peering back at her. A black shadow against the ambient city lights; small in the face of it all.

She wants to hide with him here, forever. And then she decides, no. She wants to make him the best, so that John McAvoy cannot escape the boy that he decided wasn't good enough. The boy he decided he could hurt like this.

Small, and blonde, wide blue eyes in hand-me-down denim. A boy playing at being a man. Helpless, with no one to protect him.

She's almost sick to her stomach.

"He called you tonight?" she hesitantly asks, plucking at the pliable black cotton of her pants, hoping that her voice doesn't sound constrained by emotion.

He can always tell.

"He hated the American Taliban broadcast," he says by way of explanation, cocking his head. The fast nationals on the broadcast were over three million; she remembers the look of elation on his face in stark contrast to the look on his face when he begins to drift back towards the couch, and her.

She waits to see if he wants to elaborate on that, but Will just shakes his head as if clearing it, which makes it all the worse.

Clamping a hand over her mouth, she tries to keep herself from crying.

I love you, she wants to say. I love you so, so much.

But it won't help him, not from her.

"He had all this memorabilia, even though he washed out of the Army pretty quickly," he says, changing topic. "Did a tour in '66 and then was drafted again in '70. Michael was born while he was gone… he had this voice, he'd use on us. Even when he was sober. Like we never could measure up. Like he was commanding us… I wonder if he'd have gotten help, if he didn't have three kids at home."

No, don't.

"It's not your fault, Will."

But she knows that's not what he blames himself for. For the most part, anyway, which makes her as angry as she is distraught.

He gives her a small sad smile. "It always felt like we weren't good enough. Grades, sports, trophies—he had his little shelf of war memorabilia and we never measured up. He knocked out two of Fi's baby teeth and all he would talk about is how he got shot in the Kim Son Valley…" His eyes focus on the floor and he shakes his head, replaying a moment she's sure has been rattling around his head for decades, like a child's toy chest with too few things in it. "I should have been quicker, to get her."

"Will, no," she remonstrates tenderly, standing at last.

He looks at her, really looks at her, like he needs her to understand. "I had the grades. I could work in the field with the hands. I did my chores, watched the kids. I did well in baseball, and football. I don't know where I went wrong—"

"Nowhere," she says assuredly, stepping forward in a rush to touch him again. When she reaches him, she finds herself unsure how.

He looks at her with a heartrending vulnerability. Meeting his eyes, she slowly lifts her hands, fanning them over his chest, sweeping them out towards his arms and skirting them down the bare skin of his arms until reaching his hands, teasing them together with her own. Her lips quirk into an ephemeral smile, a hint of her own immense love for him.

"You're perfect," she says, and he gives her a smile she knows is just him trying to humor her. "No matter what, you're enough," she continues, not minding, trying to get him to understand. But he doesn't, because he can't trust her.

Fucking John McAvoy.

She plays with his hands, refamiliarizing herself with how his fingers fit with hers. "If you decide that Friday was your last broadcast, you are still more than enough. I promise I won't try to chop you up and reassemble you at the anchor desk."

It's a cheap attempt for a laugh, and he doesn't bite, but rather looks at her rather seriously.

"It might be for the best, if you did, for the both of us," he says in a poor attempt at a conversational tone. She lets it slide, of course, blinking hard when he traces circles into her palms with his thumbs. He cocks his head again, this time unconsciously, the way he does when he's decided a point. "I think I need the show. I definitely need you."

"Will?" Her voice sounds helpless, and she knows it.

This isn't where she thought he'd take the conversation.

"No, I… I need you, MacKenzie. Otherwise I'm just trying to survive my father's house." He's not entirely able to keep her eye, and she can tell how hard this is for him. Of course it is, forgiveness can't be easy for him, and he's all but crumbling in front of her again, swaying on his feet. "I told him to fuck off. He told me… well you can figure out what he told me, and I told him to fuck off. What you think about me, what Charlie thinks about me, and the staff… it's more important. Because I want it to be more important."

She finally cries, then. Ignoring the tears sliding down her face, she leans up and softly brushes her lips against the corner his mouth.

"I'm never gonna let you down again, I promise," she swears.

She's hurt him. And never again.

"You couldn't," he murmurs, before realizing it's out of his mouth, looking mildly shocked but somewhat pleased with himself, before shuttering again.

"No, I—don't say anything," he pleads, when she thinks he must perceive her as about to ask him about it. "I'm… my head's a fucking mess."

Nervously she twitches, shifting her weight, wondering if she's overstepped her bounds.

She needs to stop doing that.

She lets go of his hands, and he curses himself. He did this to her in the hospital, too. And when she tried to explain about the signs, when she's asked about the voicemail. He does this to her, lets her think that he's going to stop shutting her out, and then pushes her back once she's gotten her hopes up.

You can't think I meant it like that. I just told you that I need you.

But he reminds himself that she came here tonight because she thought she was probably going to find him face down in a puddle of his own vomit. Two weeks after doing that for the first time.

And less than a week after he blew up in her face.

After probably making her think he was about to kiss her.

(He was. When he first saw that she was there, at Northwestern, with her smiling sweetly and her eyes soft and doe-like… his first thought was to grab her face in his hands, and slant his mouth against hers.

And then he remembered he couldn't allow himself to do that.

It all seems so stupid, now. He could have kissed her. Should have, because she's waited fifteen months. Because she had Brian, but he trotted woman after woman in front of her in the newsroom, he bought a fucking ring, he brought Brian to shove into her face, he refused to tell her what the voicemail said, even as she stayed by his hospital bed, even as they put together the American Taliban broadcast, even as she brought Sorority Girl back.

His head is swimming, and he probably should sit down.)

Does he go after her?

She's a foot away. There's not much chasing to be done. But considering that he's let her go thousands of miles, the least he can do is chase her a few feet.

So he does, lifting his hand out to her.

Mac ducks her head, surreptitiously wiping at under an eye.

I'm never going to let you down again.

He doesn't quite know what he expected her to do, once he told her. It had never been a consideration for him; his childhood was something he wrapped up tightly and kept close, caging himself in and warding other out. If they couldn't get to it (and to him) then he wouldn't get hurt.

MacKenzie hurt him anyway.

He hurt her back.

To keep her out.

(What was it for?)

She isn't quite certain what to do, her lithe body curving to show reluctance as she examines his outstretched hand. Worrying her lips together, she looks up at him once more, gaining confirmation that he won't jerk it back, before finally taking his hand again.

"I need you too," she says tightly, pretending at casual. "For what it's worth," she adds, tears springing forth. "I know Charlie brought me back so you could do the show he knew you could be doing, but he also brought me back so you could keep me from losing it completely, after I came back and CNN let me go. I need you too."

Something falls into place, a week late. "Is that why you went to Northwestern?"

For over a year he worried, tried to deny to himself, that he saw her in the crowd of Northwestern, holding up IT'S NOT, BUT IT CAN BE,because some belligerent corner of his subconscious knew he needed her. And he tried to shove it away.

But she was there because she needed him.

(He needed her. He can admit that now.)

They needed each other.

She nods. "Charlie told me I could still do the job. I didn't believe him, and I didn't want to make you have to see me, so I… went… and you… had to see me anyway."

"Why did CNN let you go?" He's never asked, he realizes, and then when she doesn't immediately answer, eyes falling closed, he understands. "Mac?" Gently, he pulls her closer, and she half stumbles over her feet and he uses it as an excuse to catch her against him, wanting her closer. Hands battering against his chest, she makes a stunned sort of noise, leaning her forehead against his sternum.

Don't say anything, he said.

Framing her face with his hands, he pushes them apart far enough that he can examine her face, her guarded features making cold recognition pool in his stomach. "I—shit. Charlie all but told me, your first day. He said you were—"

Beleaguered, she steels herself and gives him a tired smile, eyes in between them instead of on his face. "Mentally and physically exhausted, among many other things I told him in confidence, and other things I'm sure the CNN executives with my psych evaluation should have kept in confidence." Her gaze lifts to meet his momentarily, and she shrugs. "You asked, and I lied."

"It's not your fault," he says, and half a second after he starts saying it, remembers her telling him the same exact thing five minutes ago.

She must remember it too, because she gives him a disbelieving sort of laugh, before shrugging and relaxing against him. "I just couldn't handle it, after a while."

"You don't have to tell me," Will blurts out, dropping his hands from her face to rub her arms. "I understand—you know that I understand—"

"Reciprocity is nice," she answers mildly.

Her smile seems real for a moment, but then falters. With soft hands and soft grip, she directs him to sit back down onto his couch, and finally takes his pulse like he faintly remembers her wanting to do when she first found him. Will tries to tug her hand, pull her down to sit next to him, but MacKenzie slips his grasp, kicks off her sandals, and pads towards his kitchen.

"I wasn't in good shape went I sent myself over there to begin with. I was looking for punishment and I got it, and I thought I'd still be standing, and I wasn't." He can hear cabinets opening and closing and then the sink running in the kitchen, and she reappears holding a glass of water and a wet cloth, looking on the verge of tears. "Functioning, really. I almost… something happened, and after that I felt paralyzed. I wanted to come home to you so badly, and I couldn't, and I think it hit me that my life was over but I was still alive. If it wasn't for Jim, I had to protect him, keep him safe, his career safe…"

Unthinkingly she wavers a foot from the couch, trying to keep her breath from catching. Emotion plays over her face, unbidden, and delicately he frames her hips with his hands, steering her to sit next to him.

Will himself tries to keep himself from showing too much of anything on his face, lest she stop.

He never wanted to have this in common with her.

Taking a large uneasy breath, she manages to steady herself and hand him the glass of water, leaving herself to twist the wet cloth between her fingers. "Anyway, I was stabbed, late in '09. In the stomach. And I just… stopped being good at my job. I failed a psych evaluation and was handed a PTSD diagnosis and a pink slip. Charlie found out, and called me, and rescued me. And here we are, fifteen months later."

She looks like she's about to cry. MacKenzie looks like she did the first day at the elevators, after the BP spill broadcast, clutching her folio to her chest, listening to him tell her about when he met her parents. When he asked her if she was okay.

He should have asked her that first, when she wouldn't stop clutching the arms of the chair she dropped herself into in his office.

But he can't…

Sipping the water (it's easier just to let her take care of him), he downs half the glass and places it on the low table next to his couch.

"I—" He's seen his mother's nose broken, seen his brother with a mouthful of blood, his sisters dragged across the living room floor by their hair, seen so many things and now… I love you is all that comes to mind. But MacKenzie, he knows, it not someone who will stand for him to protect her. "You were stabbed?"

When? And how did he not hear about it? He doesn't like the thought of Mac keeping it from him on purpose, thinking he wouldn't care, wouldn't want to know.

Is this his fault? he wonders, laying a hand on her knee, looking her over from her end-of-the-day hair to the frayed hems of a grey t-shirt she's cut into a tank top, her pedicured feet, red painted toe nails, slim legs. Tired, but still impossibly beautiful, face.

"We were in Islamabad, covering a string of religious protests. Towards the end they got increasingly violent. I got caught in the crowd, separated from our handler and Jim and our videographer." She's miles away — Will is familiar with thousand yard stares, but this is foreign and chilling on her — and her hands remember the cloth in her hands, and she returns. With his chin in her hand (he protests, she scowls, a shaky semblance of normalcy) she wipes his face, eyes focusing on that instead.

When she finishes, he takes the cloth from her and puts it out of her reach.

"I don't really remember what happened," she whispers. "I just remember laying on the concrete, unable to move, and thinking about how much I wanted to back to New York. How much I wanted to go back to you. Punishing myself didn't… and I was still so in love with you. I know I made a mistake, I know I hurt you brutally, I swear it wasn't intentionally, I know you don't believe me, and how can you?"

He thinks he might. Has a hard time understand, but he thinks he might. And even if he can't… there are things he'll never tell MacKenzie, never expect her to understand, or ask forgiveness. Things she's forgiven him for since.

Love, he's beginning to think, isn't singularly about protecting each other. Or never hurting each other. Love isn't about a victor or a loser, and there's no surrender. Which is terrifying, because his mother never left that tiny house on a road outside a town outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. She never surrendered too.

(Is this it? Is this forgiveness? Deciding not to be afraid? Deciding to be happy? Ceding the higher ground?)

"Why did you come back?" he asks quietly, rubbing circles into the inside of her knee.

"I came back because nothing in my life made sense anymore," she says, chin falling when tears finally make good on their threat to spill. His hands beat hers to her face to wipe them away, and she leans into him, almost desperate. "You make things make sense. I didn't expect you would take me back in any personal—I just wanted to see you."

"No one would hire you?"

It doesn't make sense. Brilliant MacKenzie, clever MacKenzie, bold MacKenzie. Resourceful and ambitious MacKenzie.

But Charlie took a chance on him, too. After midnight on 9/11, fifteen hours into broadcast. Will knows that Charlie knew by then that he would be the next in line for the chair, knows Charlie must have run a background check on him. And then wanted the story from the source, wanted to test him.

But even with PTSD someone should have—

Anger flares up.

"Except Charlie. And only after he wrangled the whole story from me." Will kisses her forehead. At her sides, MacKenzie's hands flutter out into half-formed, frenzied gestures. "I'm sorry, I really did think you saw me at Northwestern, and when I realized you hadn't I—I don't know, I was desperate. It was the end of the line for me. I love you, I do, and I know I fucked it all up, but I love you and I don't think it's ever gonna stop and honestly Will I don't—I don't care if you don't ever forgive me I just need to be here—"

And then he knows, undoubtedly.

This is forgiveness.

"MacKenzie," he says, cutting her off, leaning back to see her face, her eyes watching him, begging.

She looks up, mouth forming words she's already silenced, and then reforms them into "what?" but never gets to say it, his hand cupping her cheek and his lips against hers. Gently, barely a kiss at all, more the idea of it than anything else.

"What was that for?" she asks when he pulls away, eyes wide and stunned. Helpless. Please don't, he wants to say. Don't look at me like that. But maybe it's the night for it; adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. If he stops, he'd notice that his hands are shaking as hard as she is.

They're not the same people they were all those years ago.

And fuck what his dad taught him about love. Maybe love is knowing that you hurt each other and forgive each other and if you're lucky enough you grow your jagged edges together into something smooth, something without sharp fragments that make your heart hurt in the quiet moments. Grow, and keep growing.

"I never stopped loving you," he confesses, mouth hovering inches from hers. Shock, and then comprehension, and then something more pliable slides across her face, and she inches her body closer to his. "That's… that's what the voicemail said. I'm sorry, you didn't deserve—you deserved a lot better. You've done everything right."

She wavers then, almost falling away.

"No I haven't," she murmurs.

"I'm willing to let everything else go. You don't owe me a goddamn thing, Mac."

Hope, then, captures her features.

"I love you too," she whispers, a smile splitting her face, laughing when he unceremoniously drags her into his lap. "It was a good broadcast, you know. Although I can't remember which one of us came up with 'American Taliban.' Not that it really matters, I suppose."

Giggling, she closes the space between their mouths but doesn't join them.

"It's our show, of course it was good," he answers, a wry smile appearing on his face. They exchange a breath, and his eyes flicker between her own and her parted lips, before lurching forward and kissing her again. More urgent this time, he traces her bottom lip with his tongue, his breathing taking a harsher turn when she opens her mouth to him, wraps her arms around his neck.

"It was spectacular," he says when they break apart. Kisses her again, short and sweet, and then, "You're spectacular. And I love you so much."

MacKenzie winds up under him after that.

Will isn't entirely sure how, probably as a consequence of her legs wrapping around his hips, but she winds up under him on the couch with her arms wound around his waist, trying to pull him closer, riding her hips up against his. When her hands drift down under the waist of his pajama pants he drops his hips, pinning hers, and sends his hands up the front of her shirt. And finds a sheer lace bra, the flimsy wireless sort of thing she'd wear around her apartment when it was, in her words, too hot for anything else.

He slides his hands down the waist of her pants next, cupping her ass and pressing her against him, grinds their hips together. Making the very interesting discovery that between the two of them, neither are wearing underwear, he pulls back and looks at her openly.

"Take me to bed," she says with a laugh, nibbling on his lower lip.

He sits up, bringing her with him, smiling at her squeaking noise of surprise. "You sure?" he teases, half-distracted of the weight of her on him and the tenting in his pajamas, the bare skin of her ass under his hands, his mind egging him on just to strip her out of her pants.

He wants to see her.

"We could fool around a bit." Giggling, she unfolds herself from around him, and stands, offering him her hand.

He takes it, jostling her intentionally. "Is that all we're doing, fooling around?"

When her smile widens, the corners of her eyes crinkle. "Doesn't feel like it, no."

It feels wrong, and he almost digs his heels in. How can he be this happy? Every inch of him is saying that he can't, that he's not allowed, that he can't trust this. That he can't go from being totally alone, his dad's words in the forefront, coloring every action in his life, to this. MacKenzie grinning up at him, her hands undoing the knot at the front of his pants. Warm, and pliant, his fingers raising gooseflesh on her back with every stroke. Happy.

But he's been happy, right? Since MacKenzie came back, she's made him happier?

(Yes.)

And then he forgets to doubt it.

"No," he agrees, smiling himself.

"No," she repeats back, softer.

Which is how they find themselves stumbling towards his bedroom, her trying to tug his shirt over his head, him trying to coax her pants down her thighs. (His pants, however, he needs. It's been far too long since he's been in bed with MacKenzie and there is no way in hell he's just diving right in without… scoping things out, first. The woman's been through a war, for god's sake. Who know what might have changed, and he reminds himself there's going to be a scar on her abdomen and not to freak her out by looming over it.) Mac's chattering away the whole time, joking about anything that comes to mind; she's just as nervous and upended as he is.

(Mac has PTSD.

How in the fuck did he miss that?)

They topple together onto the bed—her shirt lands somewhere on the floor next to the footboard and she gazes up at him, stretched out on top of the duvet, arms folded back over her head, in nothing but the sheer lace bra.

What a sight. And he tells her, which makes her laugh, breasts moving in a way that is thoroughly distracting. Looming over her, he centers them on the bed, curls his fingers into the neckline of the undergarment and pulls it down under nipples, sliding the straps down off her shoulders. Circling her nipples with the flats of his thumbs, he bends his head to kiss her neck. MacKenzie moans, and he feels it where it begins, which makes him throb harder, press his erection into her hip.

Sighing his name, she cards the fingers on one hand through his hair, the other settling low on his back. He loses himself in her skin, relearning her birthmarks and freckles, kissing down to her breasts and then back up to her mouth. She's warm, and engaged, hands roaming and little sounds coming from the back of her throat, everything he's missed and tried to press down until he couldn't remember it at all. He turns that over and over again in his mind—what they've missed out on because of his stubbornness, his unwillingness to bend, his own rotten lessons in how to survive, hard wrought and twisted, like malformed iron. Brittle and strong, breaking before it bends.

"Sweetheart?" she murmurs, concerned.

"I'm fine," he offers, even though his limbs still feel tense, his heart pounding in a way that is not wholly derivative of having Mac under him, mostly naked, for the first time in years. "Mac, I'm fine."

And he proves it to her—tries to, at least, because her face is distinctly worried and she does know him too well, he knows—trailing a chain of open-mouthed kisses down her sternum and belly. The scar on her abdomen sends his pulse racing even faster, but he's determined to not linger over it, gracing both ends with a kiss before moving southward. Levers her legs over his shoulders, tongues a line on the inside of her thigh. And then another. Gasping, she squirms down, and when he looks up, their eyes meet over the plane of her torso.

He starts slowly, pushing his tongue broad against her folds. She stills, and then shivers, clenching one hand into the comforter and the other on his shoulder. He presses his face to her, lips and teeth and tongue, tasting her, and when her hips begin to push up against him, pins her to the bed. Her cries—high, and frequent, and loud—grow desperate, her hands scrabbling for purchase in his hair when he traces her clit with the tip of his tongue, before flicking over it and sucking the swollen flesh into his mouth.

Leaning up onto his knees he eases one finger into her, and then another, twisting and hooking them until he finds the spot that makes her shriek with pleasure, back arching.

"Will!"

It isn't the kind of night for teasing, or drawing things out. Tonight he needs her, and she needs him; he pushes her past the knifing pleasure of the edge and topples her over it. Her legs tense around his ears, fingernails scraping over his scalp while she cries out, and he feels her clenching down on his fingers, pulsing against his mouth.

MacKenzie reaches for him almost immediately, hauling him up her body so that she can kiss him.

"I love you," she says, bringing his mouth down to hers, pushing her tongue into his mouth and working his pants down his hips.

In the next break for air he echoes the sentiment, riding his hips against hers, and they trade it back and forth. She reaches between them, palming his erection, wrapping her hand around it and working him over. Muttering frantically, he's reduced to burying his face in her neck, stiffened member pulsating as he rubs it between her slick folds.

"Let me," she manages, voice clogged with arousal and emotion. Lifting his head, he realizes what she means to do, and lets her wrap a leg around his waist and flip him onto his back.

Brazenly (why not, after all, there's no reason to hide anymore) he stares up at her, her breasts flushed and heavy, throat covered in lovebites, hair damp with sweat and curling lazily at her shoulders. Her kiss-bruised lips part into an easy smile, and she reaches down to take his hands and put them on her hips before finally stripping her bra off and flinging it somewhere behind them.

There's a quick stilted conversation—yes, they're clean, yes, she's on the pill, no, there's nothing to worry about—and she lifts herself onto her knees and sinks down onto him, wiping his mind clean. A mellifluous gasp escapes her lips and she leans her head back, knees sliding outwards until her weight rests on his hips. It's quiet for a few minutes, adjusting to each other, and Mac leans down to bracket his head with her forearms, kissing him lightly.

She cants her hips down into his, and they set to losing themselves in each other.

Her weight on top of him is grounding. MacKenzie is warm and she's real and she loves him, and he loves her and god he should have done this years ago. Would they have gotten here, years ago? If only he had called his dad, or is it only now? Now that she's stood by berated the long clung-to instinct that he's not good enough, now that she's work to make everything his dad made him believe about himself come undone. Now that she's stood there herself.

Brushing her hair off to the side, he traces the line of her jaw with his lips, and breathes her name.

And realizes a moment too late how choked-off it sounds, when she lifts her head off his shoulder and looks at him, slowing the rocking of her hips. "Honey?"

"I love you," he says, hoping it's enough of an explanation, and then keeps going because he owes her more than that. "I love you so much, and I just—I wasted so much time—"

But she shushes him, smoothing his hair back off his forehead, panting. "It's fine, it's fine. I love you, it's fine." And then tightens her knees at his waist, encouraging him to flip them over again. Which he does, tracing her legs from hips to knees to ankles and back.

Hiding his face in her hair, he wraps her legs around his hips and begins to thrust into her, lacing their fingers together and joining their hands above their heads.

After that, time goes away for a little bit.

All her emotions are tangling down, a heady mix of exhilaration and anxiety and an elated sort of vacuum that abandoned secrets leave behind, love and other intoxicants. She wants to tell Will it's not his fault, that none of it matters, none of it matters because they're together now, like this. Wants to tell him a dozen or so things, but he's moved one of the pillows on his bed under her hips and apparently the sum of all her emotions is a rush of endorphins and it all just feels so good.

Will, on top of her, between her legs, marking her collarbones and shoulders. He's abandoned any form of caution, working the insides of her thighs raw, hitting that spot inside of her again and again and again, like he hasn't forgotten a single thing at all. She realizes her fingernails are turned against the skin of his back, and she tries to keep herself from scratching him, but when her hands drift and bite into his lower back, he groans. But she remembers that Will likes a little bit of pain, too, and does it again.

"Faster," she exhales, trailing one hand up his back to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck. "God, Will, faster."

He lets go then, and the room is filled with the wet suction of flesh hitting flesh. Cries growing louder, she throws her head back, baring her throat to him, egging him on with her heels digging into his hamstrings, her nails cutting into his skin. Grunting he moves faster, harder, sucking on the tendon joining her neck to her shoulder and she's so close, the pressure building and collecting, and she screams, muscles coiling and clenching when Will fits his hand between their bodies and rubs her clit in hard circles.

It's strange and it's terrifying and it's good, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes while lack of oxygen pushes her mouth open wider, gasping for air. She calls out his name again and again, her mind trying to catch up with the fact that years of traumatized fantasies have caught up with reality.

He keeps thrusting, pushing her higher and higher through oversensitized nerves, and by the time he comes with a shuddering gasp her thighs are trembling, her limbs numb with release.

She hopes its enough to make him forget too, for a little while.

"Mac?" he huffs, out of breath, limbs still locked up.

Combing his hair back she eases him down against her, and it takes him a moment, indecision playing across his features, but eventually he lets himself relax with his head pillowed on her breasts. Several laws of gravity dictate that at least she is going to have to get up and take a shower in the next ten minutes or so, but she wants to make sure that Will's not about to jettison himself back into a panic attack.

He seems better, she thinks, both of their breathing slowly evening out. He eases her legs down, massaging feeling back into her thighs, apologetically kissing the angry red marks on her chest. Seems fine, but they're both fairly talented at appearances. But she hopes that in the wake of what they've both revealed tonight that the masks have been dropped.

And she really is fine, for now. And she has her Xanax in her purse, for tomorrow, figuring that she's going to stay the night to make sure that he's fine… and because she wants to, because she can. Because Will loves her, and forgives her. Because Will never stopped loving her, and that's what the voicemail said.

This is Will, letting things go. For them.

(If nothing else, he's going to need to repeat that a few times a day for the next few weeks or so, until it sticks. Right now she's not doubting herself, right now she believes they can make this work, but it'll be easy for her to slip back into owing him, locking him out.

But then again, that's why god invented Xanax and put therapists on his green Earth.

They can do this.)

She tows him into the shower with her, lets him wash her hair instead of just piling it on top of her head, because she remembers that he likes to. Steam and hot water starts to put her to sleep, and they don't bother getting dressed, just towel off and fall back into bed together. Forcing her eyes open, she watches Will settle with his face pressed into her chest, an arm slung low over her waist, and waits until she's certain he's asleep.

And then follows.

When she wakes, the room is bright, sunlight reflecting off the windows the neighboring buildings into his bedroom, and one of their phones is ringing. His, apparently, because he's the one who gets up, and she hears the ligaments in his knees popping on his way out to the living room. Rolling onto her stomach Mac stretches out onto his side of the bed, planting her face in his pillow.

Half-asleep, she jerks to something mostly-alert (she'll have to warn Will that the Middle East has changed her sleeping patterns, has changed how she reacts when people try to touch her to wake her up) when he sits back on the bed, rubbing circles into her back.

"What?" she mumbles, curling up into a ball.

She opens her eyes to see him sheepishly handing her phone. "Our phones look alike when your eyes aren't exactly… open. It's Charlie."

"Oh, good. We have that out of the way," she says drolly, sitting up and letting the sheet fall to her waist. She glares sleepily at him for good measure before pressing her BlackBerry to her ear. "Good morning Charlie."

Charlie, for one, is thoroughly amused. "Good morning, angel. I take it you found him?"

"And then some," she says, snorting at Will's exasperated expression. Shoves him onto his back in retaliation, rolling her eyes when his hands (rather predictably) come to cup her breasts.

"I already told him off for worrying you," Charlie says, softer. And then, more loudly (and definitely not without a trace of suggestion), aimed for Will to overhear, "I hope he's made it up to you."

Mac laughs, batting Will's hands away from her face. "He has more than made it up for me. He could continue making it up for me by making me breakfast, though." She pouts, and then grins once Will concedes with a flippant hand gesture and the somewhat smug (and not entirely incorrect supposition) that her thighs are quite sore, because he is in no way, shape, or form, a small man.

(And not like he owes her anything, but she's hungry and doesn't think she could stand to walk quite yet.

Besides, returns to status quos are a good thing, at least when it comes to this. Teasing Will, that is. And she's sure once he has his coffee he'll start getting his jabs in too.)

Charlie barks a laugh, drawing back her attention. "I was going to ask you to come in, but it seems like you two already have plans?" Mac giggles, wondering if she really should confirm or deny any of this to Charlie, and opens her mouth to say they could come in if he needs them to when he cuts her off again. "Just stay in bed. I can get the story tomorrow. In my office. At ten o'clock, prompt."

Which is when Will steals her cell phone. "Good. Great. See you then." And hangs up, tossing the phone somewhere near the foot of the bed and dramatically burrowing his face into her stomach.

"Sweetheart?" she asks, pushing herself up onto her elbows and staring down at him, eyebrows creased.

He moans. "He's gonna be so full of himself."

"Yes, you two often have that in common," she jokes, but lightly, noticing that he's slowly knocking himself off-kilter again. Breakfast can wait. Work can wait. The whole fucking world can wait; she wasn't kidding when she told him last night that if Friday was his last broadcast that it was enough. She doesn't know if she'll ever get him to come around on believing that, but she can try to at least get him to hide in bed for a bit longer if he needs to.

It's probably jarring, she thinks. He's looked to Charlie for so long. And maybe not jarring in a bad way, but considering how tightly she has her arms wrapped around his shoulders she knows how troubling the good can be, too. And Will, she thinks, has never really known how to have things.

That too, is a choice.

So she turns on the morning shows (which turn out to be the afternoon shows, once she actually looks at the clock and realizes that its past noon which may be why part of why Charlie was laughing so hard) and lets him lie on top of her legs for a little while longer.

Thanks for reading!