Title: Through Roads (that you know)
Spoilers: Set directly after 1x10.
Summary: Will comes home after the August 8th show and is quickly reminded he hasn't been taking the best care of himself lately. Will/Mac.
A/N: Any mistakes are my own. More chapters to come if there is an interest. Thank you for reading.
"You've got blue blood on your hands. I know it's my own.
You came at me in the midnight to show me my soul."- Blue Blood, Foals
From the moment Will ripped out his monitors and IV, reciting Don Quixote like it was gospel, he had been living his days on a steady diet of adrenalin, conviction, and whatever food type thing Mac had put in front of him at his desk in the name of keeping up his strength. It was the kind of manic energy he thrived on, and thrive he had. Tonight, he had done a newscast that he was damn proud of with the help of an amazing EP and ridiculously dedicated staff.
Things were so much better than a few weeks ago. He had job security. News Night was something to be proud of again. Brian could go fuck himself because he had his Camelot kid. It also wasn't so bad to find out that the same woman who had cheated on him hadn't then doubly rejected him years later by way of ignoring his soul bearing voicemail. Though he couldn't get himself to tell Mac what was in the message, things felt better between them. Everything felt a bit less painful with her since he found out she had never even heard the thing. Even after she revealed that he hadn't been hallucinating at Northwestern he felt more exasperation with her than any genuine anger. He couldn't remember the last time he was happy, but this content sort of feeling was close enough.
(Will actually knew exactly the last time he was truly happy. It was late morning, maybe even early afternoon. Fluffy bed, his apartment, her bare breasts pressed against his side, her hand diagonal across his stomach. Black out curtains, sleep in Sunday, soft sheets, and tangled limbs. Mac's dainty mouth kissed his bare chest just seconds after her eyes fluttered opened. She continued her lazy kisses before mumbling something about needing food soon. He had dropped a soft kiss to her hair, squeezed her tight, and let her fall back asleep while he proceeded to the kitchen to try and make them a late breakfast. Mackenzie came out ten minutes later. When she saw him making his homemade French toast she looked less like she was hungry and more like a child whose balloon had just been popped. The French toast burned, while Mac explained she couldn't do this to him anymore. He was the kind of man who made her breakfast and she was just absolutely the worst person. Those were her exact words. He hasn't had French toast or lasting happiness since.)
When Will finally made it home, he was more than ready to decompress. He had been pretty much nonstop since Friday. He stretched out on his leather couch, bourbon in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He closed his eyes and let Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on vinyl wash over him.
As he stretched out to try and get comfortable, he realized his body was pretty trashed. The pain then immediately started to become more noticeable, dull, achy, and everywhere. He was almost proud. He has earned the aches with late nights and honest journalism. He eyed the pack of cigarettes on his coffee table and nothing had ever seemed like a better idea that he knew logically was a horrible idea. He reached over for the pack and lighter. Then groaned at how hard the simple action was. Ugh, he hated getting older. He lit his first cigarette since being admitted to the hospital and took his first precious inhale. Immediately he started to cough like he was a square in some fifties greaser movie. He assumed he had just gotten a little too excited and took a more modest drag. His cough was only more intense. The ripping burning feeling in his chest won and he put out the cigarette. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the coughing. The coughing quickly turned to gagging. When a tiny spot of blood flew from his mouth and landed on the back of his hand, it occurred to him that perhaps leaving AMA from the hospital hadn't been the best idea he ever had.
Will sat up knowing he needed to call someone and that time was of the essence. Shit! His cell was all the way in his room. The entire living room shifted in and out of focus as he began to get up. The dull aching in his body was now sharp and shooting. The gunfight at the O.K. corral erupting in the land between his stomach and throat.
"Damn it!" he rasped as he began to head towards his room.
He looked like crow magnum man as he moved. He was closer to the ground than to being upright, weaker with each step. The bleeding continued.
"Shit!" The words echoed in his empty apartment.
His head felt lighter by the minute. He knew the likelihood of making it to the phone was slimmer with every gag and off kilter step he took.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." Will repeated over and over again as his dizziness intensified.
He needed to lie down. He gave in to gravity in the middle of his living room, slowly lying down against the wood, cheek pressed against the floor. Later, they would tell him this move was a good one because it helped him to avoid adding a head injury to everything else. After that, everything went black for Will McAvoy.
"I can't believe this happened, again!"
Mackenzie was finally alone in the hospital room with a sleeping Will. Charlie had tried every trick in the book to get her to go home and get some rest when he left, but she wouldn't leave Will. Eventually, he capitulated leaving without her. Four hours had passed since another phone call had shaken Mac's world. This phenomenon was now happening at a frequency that had her wanting to throw her damn phone in the East River, as if not having the thing would prevent him from being hurt anymore.
Mac held one of Will's large hands in both of her tiny ones. Her chair was pulled so close to his bed that she had to sit on her feet, but it was the only way to reach him. The idea of not touching him right now was out of the question. The steady beat of the monitors seemed so loud to her right now. She welcomed the noise. it was the only thing that kept her from total silence. The only thing that kept her from going back to mentally berating herself for all the ways she has screwed things up with this man in front of her, the one man who lately kept scaring the absolute hell out of her.
She hadn't given enough weight to the fact that Will left the hospital before he should have and then proceeded to put all his time and energy into the show. Instead of you know, resting and relaxing like you probably should after internal bleeding and a significant hospital stay. That was what was clawing at her conscious. She should have done more to stop him. Mackenzie wasn't kidding herself. She knew she couldn't have gotten the most stubborn man she had ever known to stay in the hospital when he was all riled up like he had been. But, the truth was that when Will was reciting Don Quixote there was this fire dancing in his eyes, an electricity that had been missing. He didn't look defeated for the first time in weeks. He was the embodiment everything Mac loved about him at that very moment, and she didn't want to stop him. She hardly even tried.
When he came back to work she hadn't completely forgotten he had been sick, but he had seemed so healthy, so full of life and vigor. It was easy to put it all in the back of her mind. Sure, she had tried to make sure he wasn't overdoing it. Made sure he ate, but that was it. The reality was she was willfully ignoring what had happened because conjuring up what she felt when she saw him passed out on his bathroom floor was simply too fucking painful.
He should not have been left alone so soon after all this, which was clear to her now. It bothered her that it hadn't even occurred to her until all this shit happened again. She should have been there with him, for him, whether he liked it or not. She wasn't naïve. She knew he would have never have simply agreed to let her keep an eye on him. For fucks sake he wouldn't even tell her what was in that god damn message he had left her, so he certainly wouldn't invite her to stay over and nurse him back to health. It didn't matter, though. She should have forced her way in to his place, held her breath, and thrown a tantrum until he let her stay. You know like a mature adult would do.
Instead of even thinking to do any of that, she had gone home after the show to ruminate over what that voicemail could have possibly said. The journalist in her said that when looking at the few facts she had, it pointed to a confession from him of some kind of feelings for her. However, another part of her loudly cautioned her against vanity, he could have said anything, really. Not to mention hoping for the best with him in a personal sense had been a risky game since she returned a year ago. With every glorious step they took forward it was inevitably followed by his half way retreat. Not that she blamed him. This whole situation between them was 90 percent her fault. (Will recently gained an 8 percent blame shift when he hired Brian.) Things were so damn complicated between them. All she wanted was to hear him say he missed her even half as much as she missed him.
Then in the middle of her musings, her phone rang. She quickly put together that something was wrong with Will. She was halfway out the door heading for him before Charlie could say much of anything beyond Mount Sinai and relapse.
What a difference a few hours could make. Sitting next to Will now, lying in another hospital bed, Mac didn't give a shit what he may or may not have said in that message. All she wanted and needed was for him to be okay and stay that way.
All she wanted and needed was him.
Looking at Will like this again, just a week after the last time, made something inside of her shift. She didn't need to know what the message said anymore because she had her own things to say to this man. Once she knew Will was okay (which he would be, because any other option was simply unacceptable for her) she was going to start making her own confessions to him (minus the pot), no matter how scary it was for her. No more subtle hints mixed with sweet smiles. She was going to smack him with the truth, the same way she had smacked him with The New Yorker the last time he was in this place. She knew she was the one who screwed up everything with them in the first place. That the likelihood of him rejecting her or fighting her every step of the way was high, but she was determined to tell him anyway.
It was clear to her now more than ever that she was always going to be maddeningly and deeply in love with him. When Will woke up she was going to make two things clear to him. The first was that she was still in love with him, and the second was that he needed to stop fucking around and take care of himself because this hospital stuff was not going to fly with her anymore.
"I love you, you hear me, you asshole. Maybe you can't forgive me, but I am just going to be here next to you loving you and you can't stop me." She squeezed his hand before turning it over and placing a kiss in his open palm.
She waited a beat, and then two, wide eyed and alert, looking at Will intensely for any change. Nothing happened.
"Damn it, if this was a romantic comedy you would have woken up after I said that! Or at least opened one eye and feigned sleep to hear my confession..."
Mackenzie tried to scrunch up in the chair even more, throwing her legs over the arm of the chair to get as close to him as she possibly could, retaking his hand as soon as she had situated herself. She leaned back and the exhaustion of the last weeks hit her fast. Soon her light snores mingled with the sound of the monitors.