So I needed to write some angst after writing and reading all of the fluff happening on here post 2x09. In my opinion things are not going to be smooth sailing for Mac and Will just because they're engaged. They still have a lot of crap that needs to get worked out. This story is my attempt at addressing that. The first two chapters are kind of weird format-wise and style-wise but stick with me.
He lets her walk out like last time and he doesn't go after her like last time and he wonders if he ever really learned anything.
He finds the ring and the note on the kitchen counter the next morning after noticing that some of her things are gone from the apartment. He grabs the closest object and hurls it across the room at the wall. The vase shatters as the yellow daisies she had picked in the park last weekend slide to the floor in a puddle of water and glass.
He's drunk and sitting on the floor flipping through photo albums within two hours of discovering the note. He spent the first hour sitting on the couch, scenes from last night and the days, weeks, months, and years playing on repeat in his head. Now the almost-empty bottle of newly opened scotch feels heavy in his hand as he lifts it to take the final swig. He can't remember the last time he was this drunk. But he can remember the last time alcohol failed to numb the pain of her departure. In those days he believed he could never hurt that much again. He might have been wrong.
He picks up his phone and starts to dial her number more than twenty times but he doesn't know what to say. When he finally hits 'Call' he gets sent straight to voicemail. His phone ends up in broken pieces on the floor with the vase.
When he's through torturing himself with the photo album he chain smokes on the balcony until he's forced to root around the apartment for his hidden packs. He flushes these down the toilet one by one, watching as each cigarette swirls and swirls and swirls until it's swallowed up by the rushing water. She'd always hated that he smoked.
She regrets leaving the ring behind immediately. She misses its comforting, reassuring weight on her finger and the luxury of just having to glance at it to think of him. It's been off her finger for five minutes and she already hates herself.
When she gets back to her apartment it's dark and cold like the weather outside and the feeling spreading in her chest. She tosses the random items she took with her on the floor by the door and stumbles to her couch. She sinks onto it wearily and rests her forehead on her palms. The tears come swiftly and furiously and for the first time in a long time he's not there to wipe them away.
She doesn't sleep that night. She drinks a bottle of red wine and writes lists of all the things she's done wrong and that he's done wrong and then she shreds them up and spends the next hour clicking through pictures of the two of them on her laptop. Halfway through the second bottle of wine she chucks her phone at her kitchen wall and watches disinterestedly as the battery skitters across the floor. It's been three hours since she left and he hasn't called.
She puts on a Van Morrison record around five in the morning and slides down the wall of her living room in defeat and exhaustion. The half-empty second bottle of wine sits abandoned on her kitchen counter. She drains the glass in her hand, tilts her head back, and closes her eyes. She lets Van Morrison's voice try to lull her to sleep but it's not the same and it only sharpens the ache that's settled in her chest. It doesn't erase the images from earlier in the night that repeatedly flash through her mind.
When the Van Morrison record plays out she doesn't move from the floor. She lets the fuzz of the record player fill the room and grate against her skin and her skull until she can't take it anymore and she finally heaves herself up and shuts it off. The silence in the room is deafening and oppressive. She falls back onto the couch and runs through every little moment of the last seven years as the early morning light filters into her darkened apartment. He'd always loved mornings.